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  “Uh, hi,” he said hesitantly. “I’m looking for … Peter Attis?”

  “You’ve found him,” Peter said, standing up and extending his hand to shake. “What can I do for you?”

  Billy introduced himself and his position. “I’ve been trying to track you down for a while. There’s someone who wants to talk to you.”

  “And that would be … ?”

  “Me,” said Laura Roslin. She entered the room, her face pale but her expression determined. “Thank you for finding him, Billy.”

  Kara and Lee leaped to their feet, and Lee offered the president his chair. She accepted without hesitation, and Billy took up his usual position at her right elbow. Kara knew all about President Roslin’s cancer, and she greatly admired the way Roslin seemed to draw strength from illness. It was almost as if the woman forged ahead all the harder because she knew her time was limited. Kara also felt a certain awe in Roslin’s presence. The Book of Pythia foretold a “dying leader” who would lead humanity to the promised land. So far, Laura Roslin’s leadership had uncovered the fact that Earth, the fabled thirteenth colony, did indeed exist, and she had sent Kara back to Caprica to find the Arrow of Apollo, an artifact which had ultimately let President Roslin and Commander Adama uncover star charts that gave clues to Earth’s location. Kara had considered herself only vaguely religious before, but nowadays she was a believer, and a Roslin supporter all the way. Eventually, Kara was sure, the Fleet would decipher those charts and figure out how to find Earth—and a new home, just as the Scriptures said.

  Assuming the Cylons didn’t kill them all first.

  “I have to admit I’m something of a fan, Mr. Attis,” Roslin began, “and I had to come over and meet you. You’ve probably heard it before, but I admire your work. I even have a few albums back on Colonial One.” She gave a wan smile. “They may be the only surviving copies left in the universe. A tragedy indeed.”

  “Thank you, uh … Madam President,” Peter said. “And I have to admit I’ve never met a president before. Definitely not under these conditions.”

  “We’re all going through a lot of firsts,” she replied. Then she leaned forward slightly. “Mr. Attis, I’m afraid I need to ask you a tremendous favor.”

  “Shoot.”

  “I know you’ve dealt with a lot—Commander Adama briefed me on some of it—and I’m sure you’re aware that your presence in the Fleet has generated some excitement.”

  “I’ve kind of gotten that idea.” Peter grinned a wide, handsome grin. “I’m used to it. It’s been like that for me since I was a teenager.”

  “The Fleet is in a state of constant crisis, Mr. Attis,” Roslin said.

  “Please—it’s Peter.”

  “Peter.” She nodded. “At any rate, it’s not just the Cylons that cause problems. We have shortages of food, water, medicine, clothing. And entertainment. It may sound strange, but that lack is a major problem. We have an entire Fleet full of people with little or nothing to do. Thousands and thousands of them had careers that the Cylons rendered obsolete or worthless.”

  “Not much call for insurance adjusters or carpenters these days,” Peter said.

  “That’s right. There’s some entertainment, of course. Storytelling is enjoying a resurgence, for example. But for the most part, the Fleet has a lot of bored people. And bored people get into trouble.”

  “So you’re hoping I’ll give them something to do.”

  “Exactly. Would you consent to putting on a concert or two? Cloud 9 is a cruise ship, and they have excellent facilities. We can arrange for whatever you need. And, just incidentally, this will give a bunch of sound technicians and stage hands something to keep them occupied. I don’t know how quickly we can get a band together, but—”

  “If you have my albums, Madam President, we can strip the vocals and I can sing to the music tracks. Later, we can get a band together.” Peter rubbed his hands together in growing excitement. “Hell, this’ll be great. I was just wondering what I was going to do with myself.” A look of sudden pain crossed his face, and Kara wanted to grab his hand and reassure him. “It’ll also be the perfect way to take my mind off … stuff. You know?”

  “I do know, Peter,” Roslin said. “And maybe for a while, you can take everyone else’s mind off their stuff.”

  “Will you be there?”

  “You couldn’t keep me away.” She smiled a mysterious smile. “Maybe I’ll bully Commander Adama into escorting me.”

  “I’d like to see that,” Lee said, speaking for the first time.

  “Contact Billy here if you need anything.” Roslin started to her feet with obvious difficulty. Lee and Billy sprang to assist. Billy escorted her from the pilots’ quarters and Lee shut the door behind them.

  “A concert!” Kara clapped her hands with a laugh. “Geez, Peter—this is frakking awesome! What do you think, Lee?” she added a little wickedly.

  “I don’t know,” Lee said, shrugging wide shoulders. “I outgrew puffball music.”

  “Sourpuss.” She turned to Peter. “Can I get a ticket?”

  Peter shot Lee a look that said the puffball remark hadn’t gone past him. “For the woman who saved my life? You bet! Front row, with a backstage pass.”

  “Oooo, I’ve always wanted to be a groupie! Do you think I can meet the band?”

  “Why not?” Peter laughed. “The transistors and hard drives are always up for a kiss from a hot babe.”

  “Flattery will get you everything,” Kara said with mock seriousness. Holy gods—she was flirting with Peter Frakking Attis. And Lee clearly hated every moment, which made it all the more fun.

  “I think I’ll head down to the galley,” Captain Adama grumbled. “I need a drink.”

  The pain woke Helo. His jaw pulsed with ragged red agony. Blood was filling his mouth and he automatically spat it out, bringing on fresh spasms from his jaw. It felt like an elephant had stomped on his face, and he couldn’t remember what had happened. Cold deck plates pressed against his hands as he pushed himself upright. His head rang like a temple bell. Why was he lying on the floor? Who had—

  Memory rushed to fill the void. The empty brig. The motionless guards. Sharon. Helo bolted to his feet, then staggered as the deck dipped and swayed beneath him. He caught his balance on the smooth Plexiglas of Sharon’s cell. The two marines assigned to guard it still lay face-down on the deck. Helo’s heart began to pound, and his head throbbed in time with it. Every harsh beat was like a knife blade through his skull. He forced himself to move, to kneel down beside the first marine and feel for a pulse at the man’s neck. It took a moment, but he found one. Quickly he turned to the second man. No pulse. Helo rolled him over, pulled off his helmet, and checked again. No pulse, and no breath. His head lolled. Broken neck? Tension tightened Helo’s muscles as he checked for life again and again. The man had to be alive. He had to. Sharon hadn’t killed him. She wasn’t a murderer because this man wasn’t dead. He wasn’t!

  Helo abruptly realized he was pounding on the dead marine’s chest, trying to pound life back into him. He made himself stop, force back the panic. One step at a time. He got to his feet and snatched a phone from the wall.

  “This is Lieutenant Agathon,” he barked—or tried to. His jaw was stiff, and it mangled some of his words. “I need an emergency medical team in the brig now! We have two men down.” He waited for acknowledgment, then disconnected and, with shaky fingers, punched in another number.

  “CIC. Lieutenant Dualla.”

  “Dee? It’s Helo.” He swallowed, not wanting to speak, knowing he had to. What he said next would set into action a chain of events that would end in … what? Sharon’s death? His own arrest? But he had to go through with it. It was the only choice.

  “What’s up, Helo?” Dee asked. “You sound funny. Is something wrong?”

  “Yeah. Uh … tell Commander Adama that … there’s been an incident in the brig. I came down to see Sharon. The door to her cell was open and her guards were down. One u
nconscious, one dead. I’ve called a medical team.”

  There was a startled pause, then, ″Where′s the prisoner?”

  “Gone. No trace of her.”

  Dee’s voice became shaky. “I’ll tell the Commander. You’d better come up to CIC, Helo. He’ll want to talk to you in person.″

  “Tell him I’m on my way.”

  Helo hadn’t even made it out of the brig before both radios on the marines behind him crackled to life. “Code orange twelve,” said Dee. “Repeat, code orange twelve. All marine personnel report to commanding officer for instructions.”

  Code orange twelve. Enemy aboard ship. Helo’s mouth was dry as he trotted toward CIC. Already he could hear the quick-march thump of boots on ceramic plating—marine search teams. If they didn’t know by now that Sharon had killed one of them—that maybe she had killed one of them, he corrected himself hastily—they would know soon. No one, certainly not marines, took it well when one of their own died, and their primary target would be Sharon.

  A trio of medical personnel bustled down the corridor and Helo paused to point the way. One of them tried to examine Helo—his jaw was so swollen he could barely speak—but Helo only accepted a painkiller before continuing up to CIC. The throb in his head and jaw receded almost immediately, but his tension remained, twisting his stomach into a nauseated knot as he threaded his way through Galactica’s busy corridors. Helo passed half a dozen fully armed and armored marines. They were searching side corridors and rooms. Helo stopped one of them.

  “What are your orders, Sergeant?” he asked.

  “Find the toaster, sir,” she said.

  “And then?”

  She shifted her pulse rifle and gave him a critical look. Helo felt cold under her gaze. “Capture if possible, kill if necessary.”

  “Toaster lover,” someone said behind him in a barely audible voice.

  Helo rounded on the other marines, anger replacing his tension. “Who the frak said that?”

  “Said what, sir?” replied a marine with utterly fake innocence.

  “Sergeant,” Helo said without taking his eyes off the man, “it sounds like your people aren’t familiar with rank and respect.”

  “Sir,” the sergeant said noncommittally.

  “Maybe this group needs to search the bilge next, Sergeant. What do you think?”

  “Sir, the Cylon killed Corporal Mason when it escaped,” the sergeant said. “Everyone’s on edge.”

  “Is that an excuse, Sergeant?”

  “No, sir.”

  Helo closed his eyes. It wasn’t worth it. “Carry on, Sergeant. And have a talk with your people once this is over.”

  “Sir.”

  Helo left the marines and trotted the rest of the way to CIC. He hesitated outside the hatchway for a long moment, then entered.

  CIC was, as always, busy. Dee talked into her microphone and routed calls. Felix Gaeta pored over printouts and dashed from one computer console to another. XO Tigh shouted into a telephone. In the center of the room was a light table. William Adama, his craggy, scarred face serious behind his glasses, was marking up a diagram of Galactica with a grease pencil. He glanced up and removed his glasses as Helo approached and saluted.

  “Lieutenant,” Adama said. “Care to tell me what happened?”

  “Sir. I don’t know much.” Helo related his story, leaving out nothing. His heart beat fast and he tried not to shift uneasily. It was no fun coming under the scrutiny of the single most powerful man in the Fleet, one who could order Helo imprisoned or even executed. Adama knew of Helo’s involvement with Sharon and he knew about the baby. Helo was well aware that this probably made him a prime suspect in Sharon’s escape. When Colonel Tigh came over to listen, Helo caught a clear whiff of alcohol on the XO’s breath. Not for the first time Helo wondered why the hell Adama tolerated Tigh’s drinking. A drunken officer on duty was a danger to himself and everyone under his command. But Adama seemed to disagree.

  “Did you let that Cylon out?” Tigh demanded.

  “No, sir,” Helo said through gritted teeth. “As I said, she had already escaped by the time I arrived.”

  “And she got the drop on you,” Tigh observed. “Sounds mighty convenient, if you ask me. Maybe you let her out and she socked you on the jaw to make it look like you had no part in it.”

  “No, sir,” Helo said. “That’s not what happened. You can question the guards—guard. The one who survived. He’ll tell you I wasn’t there.”

  “How do we know you didn’t get the drop on him, too?” Tigh said. “Maybe you—”

  “Thank you, Saul,” Adama said. “We’ll question the marine, but I doubt very much that Lieutenant Agathon had anything to do with the Cylon’s escape.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Helo said. He noticed the tightness around Adama’s mouth and remembered how Sharon—or a different version of her—had shot Adama in the gut, with almost fatal results. Helo suspected Sharon’s escape was causing the commander a certain amount of stress, perhaps even fear, though he would never allow it to show. That particular copy of Sharon had thought she was human, and she had attacked Adama only because hidden Cylon programming had taken over and forced her to act.

  “We’re keeping this quiet,” Adama said. “Anyone who asks is told that we’re searching for an escaped prisoner. It’s not generally known in the Fleet that we have—or had—a Cylon in the brig, and the last thing I need is panic and riots on the other ships, got that?”

  “Yes, sir,” Helo said.

  “Where do you think she would go, Lieutenant?” Adama asked.

  Helo spread his hands. “I honestly don’t know, sir. It would depend on why she escaped. I don’t think she wants to go back to the … to her home planet, wherever that is. She says they see her as an outcast because she helped me escape the Cylons on Caprica. They’d kill her if she went back.”

  “Even though she’s pregnant,” Adama said.

  “They don’t know about the baby, sir. Sharon never told them—”

  “—as far as you know,” Tigh put in.

  “As far as I know, sir,” Helo agreed. “But by the time Sharon realized she was pregnant, the other Cylons were already trying to kill us. She couldn’t have communicated with them—they would have shot both of us on sight. There’s no way Sharon would go back to them.”

  “So why escape, then? Is she planning some sort of sabotage?”

  “That would only hurt her, in the long run. Her and the baby.” Helo paused. “Commander, I don’t know why she did this. I … she swore to me, to all of us, that she had no sleeper Cylon protocols in her. She’s helped us half a dozen times when she could have let us all die. This escape, the killing—they don’t make sense”

  “She’s a Cylon,” Adama said, turning back to his diagram. “It makes perfect sense.”

  Gaius Baltar groaned as the staffer placed yet another stack of papers on his desk. The staffer left quickly, before Baltar could respond further. He looked around his laboratory, with its outdated equipment and half-assed computer system, with a mixture of annoyance and longing. It wasn’t right that the most brilliant mind in the galaxy—perhaps the universe—was forced to endure such conditions. How could he get anything done in a lab filled with junk and a desk covered in paperwork? Laura Roslin must take perverse delight in shoving her load of paper onto him instead of doing it herself. As an experienced bureaucrat, she should be the one handling this, not him. He should be at work in his lab, making new discoveries to help all humanity, not reading reports and signing forms. Even working with outdated equipment beat mindlessly scribbling his name. Half the time he signed without reading, just to get the stupid paper off his desk.

  In addition to his lab work, he had a lecture to prepare for, the first in a series. “Life Post-Apocalypse,” he was calling it. He had thought of the title himself and was quite proud of it. The first lecture was called “The Sociological Effects of Limited Resources in a Declining Gene Pool.” His star power as Dr. Gaius Bal
tar and his position as Vice President of the Colonies would guarantee a packed auditorium on Cloud 9, along with full press coverage. But even his star power wouldn’t save him if he stood in front of an audience with a half-prepared lecture, and he’d never get the lecture finished if he had to do all this stupid paperwork.

  He picked up another memo and scanned it. The Cylon woman who had escaped yesterday evening had not been recaptured despite all attempts to find her, the military was searching all ships leaving and approaching the Galactica, the escape remained a classified incident, blah blah blah. He supposed it was a good idea to remain informed about the situation, in case there was a danger to him, but he didn’t seriously believe the Cylon was coming after him. She had no reason to. It still made for a long, boring series of memos.

  A pair of warm hands slid over his shoulders from behind. “It’s an outrage. A waste of your brilliance.” The hands slid lower, over his chest, down his stomach, toward his waistband. Number Six’s distinctive scent washed over him, and her white-blond hair brushed his face and neck. Gaius felt his body respond. His breath came faster, his skin grew warm, and his groin tightened.

  “You’re not helping,” he murmured, though he didn’t push her away.

  She ran a hand over his inner thigh and at the same time gave his ear a long, slow lick. “Depends on what kind of help you need.”

  “That … isn’t … exactly it,” he managed. Then he straightened. “What do you want this time?”

  “Just to give you some encouragement.” Number Six put her hands back on his shoulders. “And I wanted some company. Being ignored is never easy, Gaius. You know that.”

  “Ignored?” He gestured at the paperwork mounding his desk. “What are you talking about? I’m anything but ignored these days.”