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  And Caprica Sharon was still at large, Adama couldn’t spare the personnel to look for her, and gods only knew what she was up to. Still more cats to juggle.

  He banished further thought with firm discipline. Right now, he had to deal with the Monarch and Peter Attis. The Sharon problem would have to wait.

  The picture on the monitor was silent and fuzzy, despite—or perhaps because of—Gaeta’s ministrations. A group of helmeted marines, their face plates down and their weapons holstered, burst into a roomful of people. Adama had no way of telling which one was Lee. His muscles tightened. Beside him, he sensed Saul Tigh tensing up as well. Adama understood why. Tigh had been in charge of the Fleet during the Gideon incident—the civilians called it a massacre—and Adama knew the man lived under a cloud of guilt over it. Tigh covered it well and acted as if the entire incident had never taken place. Adama wondered sometimes if it wouldn’t have been better for him to show guilt or other public feeling about the Gideon. There were times when the commanding officer needed to be a god and times when the commanding officer needed to be human. The Gideon might have been one of the latter times. Well, it was too late now. Tigh making any kind of public statement about the Gideon would only tear open wounds that hadn’t fully healed yet.

  On the screen, the people in the processing room swarmed toward the marines like ants on a pile of sugar. Several of them wore masks over the lower half of their faces, creating two groups of masked, anonymous people thronging toward each other. Army ants and worker ants, heading for the clash. Adama held his breath. If the people attacked, the marines had the right to defend themselves, but that could quickly devolve into something worse. Another Gideon loomed.

  But the people just surrounded the marines and stood there, unmoving. The two groups froze, staring at each other. Then one of the marines, the one in the lead, tentatively tried to nudge the woman in front of him aside. She didn’t fight back, but she didn’t give ground, either.

  “Can we get sound on this?” Adama asked. His hands were shaking again, a situation that made his mouth go dry with a fear—

  the prion is chewing on your brain

  —that he refused to examine closely.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” Gaeta said. “The security cameras on the Monarch aren’t wired for sound, and the marines are still keeping radio silence in case Lieutenant Thrace’s kidnappers are listening in.”

  Adama nodded acknowledgment and went back to watching. The marine—Lee?—tried pushing forward again, but the woman still didn’t move. Neither did the people standing on either side of her. Another moment passed, and then the lead marine—Adama was more and more sure it was Lee—signaled, and the entire platoon tried to push forward.

  The people didn’t resist, but neither did they get out of the way. They fell against the marines or went limp or formed human barricades. The marines were easily outnumbered ten to one, and their progress through the crowd slowed to a maddening crawl. Adama recognized the technique, of course. Passive resistance. There was no riot, no attack, nothing the marines could really fight against, but it hindered progress nonetheless. Against an opponent willing to kill, it was almost worthless. The Fleet marines, however, didn’t want to kill anyone, and the civilians knew it. It made an effective wall between the marines and Peter Attis, wherever he was.

  “Why don’t they fire off some tear gas?″ Tigh said. “That’d clear the area right fast.”

  “It would get into the ventilation system,” Adama pointed out. “In a ship that small, the gas would fog the entire place in just a few minutes, and there’d be nowhere to run to. Then you’d have a shipful of angry civilians in pain. Bad combination.”

  “Right, right,” Tigh said, clearly disappointed.

  On the screen, the marines tried to wade through the mass of people, but were unable to make progress. Every person they pushed aside was immediately replaced by another, and then another. Every so often, one of the resisters fell twitching and convulsing to the floor. When that happened, two of the masked Unity followers hauled the victim into the path the marines were trying to take. The symbolism was clear—the people touched by the One opposed the people who fought for the Lords of Kobol.

  “Frak,” Tigh muttered. “They’re going to have to open fire if they want to get through.”

  “They have orders not to,” Adama said. “And I’m not going to change them.”

  “Then we’re all dead, Commander,” Tigh said. “If they don’t get Attis back to sickbay, the prions and Cylons win.”

  “I won’t have an—a massacre on my watch, Colonel,” Adama said, dropping the word “another” just in time. But another voice inside his head said he might need to issue killing orders. A hundred civilians might die, but it would mean the rest would live. He frowned hard. Why did so damn many of his choices come down to letting a few die so many could live? Why couldn’t it ever be that everyone gets to live?

  The marines continued to wade through civilians, making no real progress but also inflicting no casualties. Adama’s left hand was seriously shaking now, and he wondered how long it would be before he joined the masses writhing down in sickbay and on deck five.

  “Commander, Dr. Baltar is on the line for you,” Dualla said.

  Hope and relief washed through Adama. If Baltar was calling, it could only mean he’d finished a cure for the plague. He could order the marines to return to the Galactica, and Peter Attis could sing and preach blasphemy to his heart’s content. End of problem. He felt the weight of stress lift. Even Saul Tigh looked relieved. For once, the solution would be easy. He picked up the receiver with his right hand, the one that wasn’t shaking.

  “Hello, Doctor,” Adama said. “What can I do for you?”

  “Commander, I’m afraid I have bad news,” Baltar said.

  Adama’s stomach tightened again, and the weight crashed back down on him as if it had never left. “What is it, then?” he asked with resignation.

  “Prion C, the cure prion, is far more complicated than I anticipated ,” Baltar said regretfully. “I can eventually synthesize it, but … I doubt I can do it before the majority of patients become terminal.”

  Adama’s insides turned to liquid and he almost dropped the phone. “What are you saying, Doctor?”

  “I’m estimating that by now, over ninety percent of the Fleet’s population has been infected with the plague prion and that by the time I’ve finished creating the curative prion, close to eighty percent of the Fleet’s population will have died.”

  Baltar delivered this news in a calm, flat voice. A thousand different thoughts swirled through Adama’s head, making him dizzy. Or was the prion affecting him? He wondered how much time Baltar had wasted calculating how many people would die and how fast, and he wondered if more people would die because Baltar was talking on the phone instead of working in his lab.

  “How long before you have the cure, Doctor?” Adama asked, his voice betraying none of these questions.

  “Two or three days,” Baltar replied.

  “Thank you, Doctor,” Adama said evenly. “Don’t let me keep you from your work.” Then he hung up.

  “How long?” Tigh asked.

  Adama didn’t see any point in concealing the truth. “Two days, maybe three.”

  “But we’ll all be dead by then,” blurted Felix Gaeta, violating the unwritten rule about mentioning the elephant in the room with a commander who juggled cats.

  “Then we’d better hope Captain Adama and those marines bring us Peter Attis,” Adama said. With that, he hid his shaking left hand under the light table and turned his attention back to the marines on the monitors.

  Nonsense fell in long strings from Kara’s mouth now. The only way she could stop it was to bite her lips shut like a child refusing to take medicine, but her treacherous muscles didn’t always obey her. Most of her body trembled with earthquake aftershocks, and the moment she stopped concentrating, more bullshit tumbled from her mouth. It wasn’t even real words. She c
ould say real words if she worked at it, but she was so tired. All she wanted to do was pass out. Except her twitching, jerking body kept her awake on the cold floor.

  Peter sat cross-legged with her head in his lap. He stroked her hair and said things that he probably thought soothing. “Everything’s going to be fine. I know it’s bad now, but eventually you’ll see the One and you’ll recover, like I did. You’ll be fine. Just fine.”

  Kara had never wanted to hit anyone more in her entire life.

  Sharon, meanwhile, was kneeling over the red duffel bag, dipping tools in and out of the ordnance that squatted inside like a malevolent toad. The red mask still covered most of her face. Except it wasn’t Sharon’s face. It wasn’t the Sharon Kara knew. She was someone else, another copy of Caprica Sharon. Kara should have realized it. Caprica Sharon wouldn’t endanger her baby by escaping and trying to commit acts of terrorism. This Sharon, a different one, had somehow gotten on board, probably hidden somewhere in Peter’s escape pod. There had been one Sharon on it—why not a second? The pod had been searched, but a secret compartment would be easy enough to add, especially since the Cylons had been in possession of the stupid thing for months. And if this Sharon was caught and executed, so what? She’d get a brand-new body and probably spend her remaining days lazing around a Cylon swimming pool bragging about how she put one over on those idiot humans.

  The bitch had certainly outfoxed Kara by convincing her to keep silent about Sharon’s identity as a Cylon. Black, tarry anger bubbled like pitch, and one of Kara’s hands actually managed a fist for a couple seconds before losing it again. Sharon, glancing up from the ordnance, noticed and flashed Kara a quick thumbs-up before turning back to her work.

  A monitor set up on one of the shelves showed a troop of marines trying to force their way through Peter’s followers. They made almost no headway. The Unity members created a solid wall of bodies five and six people thick. They flung themselves down on the floor. They draped themselves over the invaders like boneless lovers. And the marines clearly had orders not to kill. Or if they did, they hadn’t acted on them yet.

  “Still silence on the radio,” Zarek said. He was fiddling with a frequency scanner, his face serious. “They either know or suspect that we can listen in on what—”

  “—change your orders, Captain,” said the scanner. Kara’s heart jumped. It was Commander Adama’s voice. “Dr. Gaius says he can’t replicate the cure prion in time for it to do us any good. Peter’s blood is the only cure, and we need him back on Galactica no matter what the cost.”

  Kara gasped. So did Peter and Tom Zarek. Peter’s blood would cure the plague? Kara’s limbs shook with a terrible, allencompassing palsy, and the cure was standing only a few feet away. Kara wondered what would happen if news of this hit the entire Fleet. She imagined hordes of people stampeding toward Peter, all of them hungry for his blood.

  “I have new orders for you,” Adama continued on the scanner. There was a pause, and Kara held her breath, knowing what was coming next, praying she wouldn’t hear it. “You are authorized to use force against the civilians. Deadly force, if necessary.”

  “Sir? I didn’t quite copy that.” It was Lee’s voice, and the sound swelled Kara with a bright elation she didn’t think was possible. Lee was leading the force that was coming to help her. Help was coming. Lee was coming. For a moment, she felt Lee’s arms lifting her, holding her and keeping her safe. The hardbitten part of her, the part that let her survive broken fingers and bruised skin, told her that no one could ever keep her safe, but the part of her that was tired ordered it to shut up. Lee was coming, and she could relax.

  If he could get through the civilians.

  “I said, use deadly force if you need to,” Adama said. “Peter Attis is your top priority. Nothing else matters, Captain.”

  There was a pause. Then Lee said, “Understood, sir.”

  “You frakking bastard!” Zarek shouted at the scanner. “Didn’t you learn anything from the Gideon?”

  Kara licked dry lips. Lee wouldn’t shoot unarmed civilians. Would he? But she knew the answer. He would have to. Peter carried the cure for the disease. If sacrificing a hundred people meant several thousand would live, what choice did Lee have? Kara thought about the image of the little kid crying over her daddy’s chewed and bloody corpse on the Gideon and wondered how many more kids would be crying over their parents in just a few minutes.

  “Sounds like our time here is limited,” Sharon said, still working on the duffel bag.

  Peter stared at the scanner. “What did he mean when he said my blood would cure the plague?”

  “I didn’t think that remark needed interpretation,” Sharon said. “But I’m betting that once word of it gets out, there’ll be a whole lot of people wanting to go vampire on your ass.”

  “People like me,” Zarek said coldly. “Frak—this explains … Look, are you telling me this is a real disease? I thought it was religious fervor. Your groupies were the ones who came down with it.”

  “It’s … it’s real,” Kara managed to gasp out. “Real service gets good tips for—”

  “The plague doesn’t need a cure,” Peter said. “I was out cold for a while, but I recovered. Everyone else will recover.”

  But Tom Zarek was already rummaging through a first aid kit. He came up with a syringe. “Let me have some of your blood, Attis.”

  “You’re not a doctor,” Peter protested.

  Zarek held up shaky hands for a moment, then grabbed Peter by the front of his shirt and shoved him against a wall. He was older than Peter, but his arms were heavy with muscle. “No. I’m just a man who spent twenty years in a prison that taught me a dozen ways to cause someone serious physical pain. You let me draw some blood right now, or I’m going to pound you into a frakking pancake.”

  Peter shot Sharon a glance, but she just returned his gaze, an amused look in her eyes. He finally nodded. Zarek pushed up one of Peter’s sleeves and jabbed the needle into the man’s elbow. Peter yelped.

  “Watch it!”

  “Shut up, god-boy.” Zarek filled the syringe despite his shaky hands, then jabbed the needle into his own arm and depressed the plunger. Kara stared hungrily at the syringe, but Peter and Zarek seemed to have forgotten she existed. She wanted that syringe more than anything she had ever wanted. Life in a few cc’s of human blood.

  “ATTENTION CIVILIANS!” boomed a voice from the scanner. Kara didn’t recognize the speaker. “IF YOU DO NOT VACATE THIS AREA IMMEDIATELY, WE WILL BE FORCED TO OPEN FIRE!”

  Zarek tossed the syringe to Peter, who caught it automatically. “You can frak your revolution,” he said. “Your religion isn’t real, your followers are deluded, and you’re as empty as your music. Those people out there are going to die for a cause that doesn’t even exist.”

  Peter looked frantically around the room, as if his world were coming apart. Kara supposed it was. “They’re going to kill my people. I should be with them.”

  Faint shouts came over the scanner. Clearly someone had left their radio open. “Up with the Unity!” someone shouted. Someone else started singing Peter’s revolution song.

  “Not that piece of shit again,” Zarek muttered as Peter headed for the main door. “Gods, I can’t believe I thought this was a group worth helping.”

  “Stay here, Peter,” Sharon ordered without looking up from the duffle bag. Her voice was cold and brittle as a knife made of ice. “Don’t frakking move.”

  He stopped and looked at her. “Exactly what are you doing with that?”

  “I’m putting a timer on the ordnance so we can set it off properly.”

  “But we don’t want to set it off,” Peter said, growing more and more agitated. “We don’t want anyone to die!”

  “The marines don’t know that,” Sharon said calmly. “It’s a much better bluff if they can see the countdown. And don’t try to pull the timer out once I’m done. If you do, you’ll have ten seconds to live before the ship-shattering kaboom.” />
  “THIS IS YOUR SECOND WARNING. MOVE ASIDE AND BRING US PETER ATTIS, OR WE WILL OPEN FIRE.”

  “Why not remove the explosive part, attach a timer to the rest, and bluff with that?” Peter said.

  Sharon paused.

  Ha! Kara thought, feeling a moment of triumph seep through the fear and exhaustion. He’s frakking got you!

  “There is that,” Sharon said slowly. “But I don’t think we’ll do it that way. We need to move out.”

  “Move out?” Peter echoed. Kara wanted to roll her eyes. Peter seemed to spend most of his time repeating what other people said. “We’re staying here to confront the marines if they get past my people.”

  On the monitor, one of the marines looked up at the camera. He raised a pistol and fired at it. People ducked and screamed. The monitor image dissolved into static.

  “My people,” Sharon said, a smile in her eyes. “I like the way you say that, Peter. As if you own them.”

  “I don’t own anyone.” He took a step toward her. “Who are you, anyway?”

  “Someone who’s telling you we have to get the frak out of here,” Sharon said. “Grab your girl-toy and we’ll go. Tommy’s already left. Didn’t you notice?”

  Kara, still shaking on the cold floor, managed a glance around the storeroom. It was empty except for the monitors in the corner. They still showed that the marines weren’t making much headway against the room packed full of people. Tom Zarek was gone. Kara wasn’t in the least surprised. She raised her hands, trying to wave them and get Peter’s attention, but she didn’t have the coordination. He still held the syringe, and it was half full of blood.

  “THIS IS YOUR FINAL WARNING,” the scanner said. “MOVE ASIDE AND BRING US PETER ATTIS OR WE WILL BE FORCED TO OPEN FIRE!”

  “The marines are wrong,” Sharon said. “The schematics they’re undoubtedly using to get around are telling them that the only way into this part of the ship is through that room your people are guarding. Problem is, when the Monarch was modified to take on algae, the workers added another access passageway to make air circulation easier and to simplify transporting goop around, and those changes aren’t on the schematics yet. That means we can get out of here just like Tommy did and put the bomb someplace where it’ll do some good. It’s not close enough to the outer bulkheads here to cause a breach.”