(First published ‘Saga of a Star World 4’, The Thirteenth Tribe, June 1986)
"Starbuck." Apollo shook his friend by the shoulder. "Wake up and get dressed. We’re going to be late."
"Uh?" The sleeping warrior blinked open a wary eye. "Late for what? We’re on furlon.
"Not since a centar ago. We’ve been co-opted. The Colonel has to go over to the LEVIATHAN on a recruiting drive, and Father thought ..."
"Don’t tell me," Starbuck groaned, opening the other eye and focusing on his companion’s face. "Why did WE have to be the heroes of the fleet? I was looking forward to this secton - I wasn’t going to do a thing!
"Sure," Apollo laughed, getting out of the way as the Lieutenant swung his legs over the side of the bunk. "That’s why you booked us two seats on the shuttle to the RISING STAR, is it? So we could do nothing? Somehow I think my pay will survive a recruiting drive on the LEVITHAN a lot better than it would your secton of idleness."
"Felgercarb," Starbuck swore without heat, looking for his boots. Apollo grinned and handed them to him.
"Come on," he said. "We don’t want to keep the Colonel waiting."
Colonel Tigh was waiting. He stood at the open shuttle hatch, his hands clasped behind his back, and watched as the two warriors hurried across the deck to join him.
"Glad to see you could make it," he remarked frostily as they arrived. "I hope this trip isn’t too much trouble for you?"
"No, sir," Apollo and Starbuck chorused, exchanging a quick glance. It was easy to see that Tigh had no more enthusiasm for the journey than they had - and his manner did not bode well.
"Good," the Colonel acknowledged shortly. "Let’s go, shall we?"
Inside the shuttle, Starbuck winked at an anxious Corporal Komma as the Colonel took the seat beside him. "I see you got the short straw too," the Lieutenant joked flippantly, climbing into the shuttle’s co-pilot seat. Komma cast a hasty glance in the Colonel’s direction and risked a brief, "Uh-huh," before subsiding under Tigh’s disapproving frown.
"Well," Starbuck went on, ignoring the Colonel’s icy stare, "if you got to go - then enjoy! That’s what I always say." And he grinned at Apollo, strapping in beside him. The dark-haired warrior grinned back.
"Are we ready?" Tigh requested coldly.
Still grinning, Apollo thumbed the communicator switch with practised ease. "Shuttle to Bridge," he announced. "Request permission to launch."
"Affirmative," Rigel’s voice responded warmly. "Please state your intended destination and estimated time or arrival."
"We have rendezvous with the freighter LEVIATHAN," Apollo returned. "Estimated flight time forty centons."
"Roger, shuttle. We will inform LEVIATHAN of your departure. You may launch when ready."
The freighter LEVIATHAN was just what its named implied: a huge cargo vessel, nearly as large as the GALACTICA, its long framework strung with cargo pods, once used to carry bulk goods between the Colonies and now mostly packed with people in hastily constructed cabinways. About half of Leviathan’s bulk had been converted into a spaceborne city. The rest was piled with goods and materials collected for storage until required. Generally the ship’s population was concerned with the handling of those goods - converting raw materials into fabrics and other things for the fabrication ships, processing rock ores into useable form, acting as a general warehouse for the Fleet and, most vital of all, handling the chemicals.
The LEVITHAN was the only ship in the Fleet equipped to store and handle large quantities of volatile substances. Not tylium, which was kept separately in specialised fuel tankers, but the other, vital compounds which were in constant use and demand - raw solium, highly poisonous; metallic acids; inflammable phosphorus; sodium; the volatile hydrocarbons. Other chemicals, too, held in smaller quantities but no less dangerous. Explosives and poisons, stored and handled with care.
The ship had been designed with such a dangerous cargo in mind. Its structure - a long skeletal framework that supported hundreds of individual standardised cargo pods - was constructed in such a way that potential disasters could be instantly isolated and, if necessary, individual pods could be jettisoned from the ship at a micron’s notice. As far as anyone knew, such drastic action had never been taken, but the design had proved itself both convenient and practical. Cargo containers lifted from a planet’s surface could be attached and detached as required, and many of the huge pods were capable of limited independent flight, the better to facilitate their transfer from freighter to cargo tug and back. It had proved even more valuable during the evacuation following the destruction of the Colonies, and a large part of the fleet’s population owed their lives to the vast carrying capacity of the LEVIATHAN.
Apollo manoeuvred the shuttle into the cavernous maw that was the LEVIATHAN’s landing bay with the kind of nonchalant skill that made him one of the best pilots in the fleet. A welcoming committee was waiting for them in the form of the ship’s First Officer and three crewmen trying their best to look as though they greeted the second-in-command of the GALACTICA and the two heroes of the fleet every day. They failed dismally. Tigh took the welcoming speech with an impassive expression, though Starbuck had to stifle a smirk at the bit about ‘the brave young men who sacrifice so much to defend our humble lives’ and ‘the few who would prove worthy enough to join their exalted ranks’. Basically the message came over loud and clear: the Captain of the LEVIATHAN didn’t want any of HIS crew leaving him for the GALACTICA, but the passengers were fair game. That suited the aim of the mission just right - they weren’t after trained personnel, woefully lacking in the fleet as it was, but raw recruits, willing to learn.
Tigh answered the speech with a brief one of his own. "Thank you," he said. "Now can you direct us to the passengers’ lounge?"
As speeches go, it was short, and the three warriors grinned at each other behind the Colonel’s back. But it was to the point, and the First Officer, a man named Kerrim, politely led the way down a nearby corridor.
The interior of the ship was well signposted, a consideration to refugee passengers who probably rarely left their individual pods, and who wouldn’t know their way around a spaceship even if they did decide to explore. As the party made its way down the main access gallery of the ship - an interminable passageway that Kerrim took great delight in describing as the LEVIATHAN’s artery - they passed a sealed doorway with a crude Gemon Spirit Cross scrawled on it.
Tight halted abruptly in front of the unexpected sight. "What in Hades is this nonsense about?" he demanded.
Kerrim looked at the hasty scrawl of paint and then away, embarrassed. "Nothing," he dismissed hurriedly. "When we helped in the evacuation the Captain sealed the accessways to Cargo Level 5 because we still had some merchandise aboard and we were too busy to do anything with it. We just - haven’t got round to opening it yet."
"What?! Tigh was indignantly surprised. "Are you saying that this ship has an entire cargo level not in use? Six pods? What’s down there?"
Kerrim hesitated, with a nervous smile. "We don’t know."
Apollo had moved across to examine the seals on the doorway. Now he turned in some surprise. "Surely you carried out an inventory?" he enquired in some confusion. "Everything was checked and catalogued before we even got to Carillon."
"Yeah," Starbuck affirmed. "We were practically counting rivet heads."
"We WERE counting rivet heads," Komma murmured behind him. Starbuck had to grin at the man’s tone. The Corporal made it sound as though he’d had to count every nut and bolt aboard the GALACTICA. Maybe he had, at that.
Well," Kerrim was saying, "we were going to look down there, but ..."
"But?" Tigh echoed icily.
"But - no-one will go down there. Some of the passengers - they put that mark on the door after ..."
"After what?" The Colonel’s patience was wearing thin. He had enough to put up with, with Adama sending him on this recruiting mission, and he didn’t hold with the superstitions of ignorant civilians at the best of times. This was not the best of times.
"We sent a man in to check the pod connectors," Kerrim explained hesitantly, his acceptance of the situation crumbling under the Colonel’s frown. "He came out saying that he’d heard - ghosts, hammering inside one of the pods, trying to get out."
Apollo and Starbuck exchanged a smile of scepticism, but Komma took a casual step away from the door. He didn’t believe in that sort of thing, of course, but he knew what the Spirit Cross was for - to guard against evil spirits - and he wasn’t a man to take too many chances ...
"Sure he did," Starbuck joked. "A pod full of ambrosa, probably. I’ve never met any other kind of spirits."
Apollo laughed, then swallowed it as Tigh shot him an angry glance.
"You can laugh," Kerrim retorted defensively. "Captain Pineus didn’t believe him either. He sent him down there a second time. Three centars later he sent a search party. They found our missing man, all right. He was dead. Lying in front of the junction hatch by the first pod, his face contorted as though he’d looked into Hades. There wasn’t a mark on him. And they heard the hammering - inside the pod. The Captain resealed the accessway. We couldn’t get anyone to go down there - not even for routine maintenance checks. And some of the passengers put that mark on the door."
"Superstitious felgercarb," Tigh stated bluntly. "There’s nothing down there but goods this fleet could need. We’ll take a look ourselves. Captain ..."
"Yes, Colonel." Apollo snapped smartly to attention. This sounded better than a mind-numbing recruiting drive.
"Remind me on our way back from the passengers’ lounges. We’ll check each of the pods down there, and Komma can pass a report on their contents into computer when we get back to the GALACTICA. There will be an explanation," Tigh added pointedly, looking hard at Kerrim. "And we will find it."
"Yes, sir," the three warriors chorused. The First Officer of the LEVIATHAN shook his head with slow resignation. They hadn’t seen that man’s face - he had. And he wouldn’t go into that cargo level if his life depended on it.
Starbuck wasn’t sure what the worst thing he had to do on a recruiting drive was, but he was glad he didn’t have Komma’s job. After all, Apollo worked wonders with the LEVIATHAN’s children, persuading them all to be warriors when they grew up, and it wasn’t too hard smiling at all the young ladies (some of them pretty) and impressing them with his bravery, but all Corporal Komma did was record the details of prospective cadets with numbing exactness. After a while they all began to sound exactly the same, and the portly computertech had a very bored expression on his face.
Tigh’s speech had been very entertaining, an interesting variation on the ‘Our Fleet Needs YOU!’ theme that Omega pumped out on the IFB every secton. He’d concentrated on how every member of the fleet could make some contribution, however small, and how even the smallest and weakest among them could aspire to the heights of achievement. Had they not, after all, survived the destruction of the human race? And were they not, therefore, ALL heroes?
It went down very well on the LEVIATHAN, and by the end of the session Tigh had regained much of his good humour. The grip had turned out to be reasonably successful - seventy possibles, twenty-five definites - and the people had received them warmly, a marked contrast to the last trip he had made, where no-one had wanted to listen and someone had even spat on the recording clerk. That might have had something to do with the fact that the last time he had gone recruiting had been in the middle of that business with Iblis, but even so the atmosphere on the LEVIATHAN was a welcome change.
On the way back to the shuttle, no longer under escort but free to wander as they wanted, they once again found themselves outside the sealed doorway to Cargo Level 5.
"Colonel," Apollo called, as he recognised the scrawl of paint on the metal hatch, "you asked me to remind you ..."
"Ah, yes." Tigh looked up at the massive cargo door. "What do you think, gentlemen?"
Starbuck sauntered over to pound a fist on the painted metal. A loud note rang from the steel and reverberated along the corridor. "If that doesn’t wake the ghosts up, nothing will," he remarked. I say we take a look, Colonel. Just to show these civilians how brave we really are."
"Volunteering, Starbuck?" Tigh was amused. "That doesn’t seem like you. What do you think, Apollo?"
Apollo grinned. "I think he thinks there’s ambrosa down there. But I also think he’s right. You said we’d find an explanation, and we won’t make much of an impression if we decide not to now."
Tigh nodded thoughtfully, following the curve of the drawing with a relaxed eye. "Komma?" he requested absently, and the Corporal jumped, not expecting to be included in the Colonel’s discussion.
"Well," he hazarded, "he did say a man had died down there ..."
"Scared, Corporal?" Starbuck teased. "Don’t tell me you believe in ghosts?"
"Of course not," Komma retorted quickly. "That is, I ..."
"He’s quite right, Starbuck," Tigh interrupted quietly. "A man has died, and we will proceed with caution as a result. No doubt there is a perfectly logical explanation, but until we find it we cannot take anything for granted. Open the hatch, will you, Apollo?"
The LEVIATHAN, like so many ships in its class, was a maze of passages and walkways, their arrangement determined more by practicality and cost than the aesthetic demands of the human mind. It was not so surprising, then, to find that the tunnel that confronted them appeared to twist mind-jarringly sideways, so that a few metrons from the doorway the floor began to tilt disconcertingly, eventually becoming a wall.
It was not an optical illusion. Rather it was the result of careful engineering, changing the direction of the ship’s internal gravity to better utilise the space available. Further to the rear of the ship, in the wider sections where the pods were currently occupied by passengers, that definite twist was less perceptible. But here the effect was highly disorientating. The most peculiar part of it was that, although you knew the passage was slowly being tilted until it ran at right-angles to its previous orientation, the change in gravity was so subtle that it seemed as though you remained consistently upright. Only the tunnel rotated ahead and behind you in a disconcerting fashion.
Apollo strode down the passageway with confident steps, turning slowly onto his side as he went. Komma could not help the low groan the sight inspired, and Starbuck laughed. "Hey, buddy," he called, "I bet you couldn’t do that in a launch tube!"
Tigh coughed discreetly, reminding the warrior that he was still there. "If you are ready, Lieutenant?" he murmured. "We are not here for the view."
"Ah, no sir." Starbuck grimaced and followed Apollo into the passageway. He too rotated through ninety degrees, reaching his companion’s side with some slight surprise at how easy it had been.
"Are you all right, Corporal?" Tigh enquired at Komma’s expression. As senior officer he had to remain dispassionate, of course, but secretly he found the man’s reaction quite amusing. One had to remember, after all, that Komma was not a pilot and thus was unused to the rapid changes of direction and potentially disorientating effect of spacial combat. What might be merely unusual to the two warriors further down the tunnel was probably a totally new experience for the man.
"I - I’m fine, sir." Komma might have been a little scared, what with the weird tunnel and the tales of ghosts, but he wasn’t about to admit to it. He was a warrior, after all. "I - was just wondering - why we don’t have this kind of construction on the GALACTICA."
"Because," Tigh told him conversationally, taking his arm and leading him down the accessway, "this kind of technology didn’t exist when the GALATICA was built. Besides - a Battlestar is designed as a floating fortress. It has entirely different priorities to a cargo vessel."
The other end of the passage emerged into a circular corridor lit mainly by dim emergency lighting. A large sign proclaimed it to be Cargo Level 5 and indicated certain emergency procedures that were to be followed - in the event, presumably, of an emergency. The air was stale and contained unpleasant traces of an unidentifiable taint. Nothing immediate, but every now and then the barest hint of something not quite comfortable.
Ugh," Starbuck complained without thinking. "It smells like something died down here."
"Something did," Tigh reminded him tartly. "I suppose this passage runs the full circumference of the ship."
"There’s a map," Apollo called, examining a second sign with interest. The four of them crowded round it, trying to make sense of the colour coding.
The diagram showed a circle, the passage they had entered by clearly indicated on its inner circumference. From the outer rim, other passages ran directly at right angles, short accessways leading apparently to nowhere.
"Where’s the cargo?" Starbuck enquired, nonplussed.
"The other side of the airlocks," Komma replied, sounding surprised at anyone asking the question. "It’s just like the passenger levels - those spoke corridors lead to the supporting arms for the cargo pods. There’s an airlock at either end of every standard freight lifter - they just link in to the containing arms when they dock. We’ve been walking through them all morning," he added with an innocent grin. "In one end, out the other. It must be the same down here."
Tigh smiled to himself at Starbuck’s chagrined expression. The layout was in fact not that obvious, but Komma was more observant than a great many people gave him credit for.
"This passage here ..." Apollo indicated a point on the map. "It’s marked as junction one - that must be where they found the dead man."
"That seems likely," the Colonel agreed, studying the layout carefully. "I suggest ..."
He broke off abruptly. Somewhere close by there had sounded a muffled thump, almost exactly like the sort of sound that a man would make hammering cautiously. For a moment there was silence. Then it came again - once, twice, an eerie sound in the empty, dimly-lit corridor. Unconsciously, Starbuck and Apollo had reached for their lasers, and when nothing else happened they straightened with embarrassed relief.
"It certainly sounds," Tigh admitted cautiously, "as though someone is trying to attract attention."
"This place is enough to give anyone the shivers," Komma muttered, peering down the curve of the corridor. "Aren’t there any more lights?"
"Now you’re scared of the dark," Starbuck accused absently, annoyed with himself for reacting as he had. There was no reason to be jumpy. Was there?
"Starbuck!" Apollo warned. He didn’t like this situation any more than Komma did. And something was making those noises.
"Warriors," Tigh reminded them all tightly, "Do not jump at shadows. Or strange noises, for that matter."
"Permission to jump at shadows with Cylons in them, Colonel?" Starbuck requested, trying to settle himself with a joke.
"Granted," his senior officer allowed, throwing the Lieutenant a reproachful glance. "Let’s look at this junction hatch, shall we?"
As they made their way along the curve of the corridor, the mysterious hammering started once again. It was distant and muffled, an irregular intrusion on the silence. Komma cast a nervous glance behind him as the accessway disappeared from sight, while both Starbuck and Apollo kept a careful hand on the butts of their lasers, just in case. Tigh strode ahead, seemingly unperturbed by his surroundings, and turned into the first passage with barely a glance at the notice beside it. Then he backed out again, coughing, and looking a little green.
"What is it, Colonel?" Apollo joined him, concerned.
Tigh waved down the passage, still retching for breath. "Air," he gasped. "Tainted air. No wonder a man died down here! The passage is full of fumes."
Starbuck leaned cautiously into the turning and quickly drew his head out again. "Smells like a charnel-house," he remarked, wincing at the unpleasant taint that his next breath brought him.
"Of a chemical waste dump," Apollo suggested, looking around for the emergency ventilation panel. Komma pointed to it wordlessly, one hand over his mouth and nose.
A few microns, and Apollo had triggered the fast recycling system that all the chemical carriers were required to have by Colonial law. A moment’s discomfort as the contents of the corridor were unceremoniously dumped into space, and they were breathing bottled air that was musty from long storage but was far better than the fumes.
"The maintenance people should have done that," Tigh remarked, breathing deeply.
"Maybe," Starbuck suggested, "it wasn’t as bad as that before."
"Could be." Apollo was looking at the emergency panel. "Colonel - what if the man who died was trying to reach this panel? He could have gone into the corridor, noticed the fumes, and collapsed before he reached the emergency system. The search party would have found him out here, and not realised that the air was tainted.
"It makes sense, Apollo." Tigh stared thoughtfully into the passage. "But where are those fumes coming from? And what is making that noise?"
Even as he spoke it sounded again, nearer now, as though it came from the end of the dark passageway.
Starbuck shrugged. "Let’s take a look," he suggested, and strode into the darkness.
"Starbuck ..." Apollo called, alarmed by his friend’s sudden disappearance.
"Yes?" The Lieutenant appeared further up the passage, stepping into the pool of illumination thrown by an auxiliary light.
Wait for us, Lieutenant," Tigh requested. "And be careful. We can’t be certain as to what happened down here yet."
At the end, the passage widened out into a hallway dominated by three massive airlock doors, the same type of door that led into the passenger pods elsewhere in the ship. They had been open, caught back against the bulkheads to allow easy access. Here the one immediately opposite the corridor was fastened shut, an indicator panel clearly showing that there was nothing but vacuum on the other side of it. The one on the right was similarly sealed, but the other one was slightly ajar. And it was from there that the distinctly chemical taint was drifting.
"He opened the door," Starbuck concluded, eyeing the shadowed hatchway with distaste. "It must have hit him all at once. He probably didn’t have a chance."
A loud crack from the pod beyond the partly-open doorway caught their attention. It was followed by more of the muffled thumps, but this time the sound was clearer. "It’s barrels!" Komma exclaimed, with some relief. "Banging together. Just storage barrels."
"Storing what?" Tigh questioned. "And why are they moving?"
"The air isn’t too bad now," Apollo remarked, testing the weight of the door. "And I think this will open. Do you want to take a look, Colonel?"
"Yes." The GALACTICA’s Executive Officer didn’t want to admit it, but he was curious. After all, no-one had been down here since the destruction of the Colonies ... "Open it up, Apollo. Let’s see what this pod was carrying."
Beyond the doorway the cargo pod was dim, dark and shadowed. Ahead of them a walkway stretched, a thousand metrons or more, its length distorted by the low lighting, its other end obscured by shadowed distance. It hunt suspended over the compartmented cargo bay, the only thing illuminated by the red emergency lighting which reduced the structure of the overhead lifting mechanism to nothing but a menacing shadow above them.
The air was thick with the acrid scent of chemicals, an unpleasant, biting taste in the back of the throat that left a bitter aftertaste. And from the depths of the darkened hold, thin wreaths of black smoke were coming, drifting over the edge of the walkway rail to hang ominously in the still air.
"There’s something down there burning," Tigh murmured doubtfully, moving to the edge of the walkway and peering down into the shadows. He swept his gaze further along the structure, and frowned.
The walkway was supported by a number of scaffolded towers, dotted along the length of the pod at regular intervals. Beneath it, the bays were divided by thin intersecting walls, marking off regular containing compartments. They appeared to be practically empty, or at least those immediately nearest the entrance did. The depths of the compartment immediately beneath them were filled with indiscernible shapes and shadows. The air was very still, and yet - electric, filled with a brooding sense of tension.
"Excuse me for saying this, sir ..." Komma had moved down the walkway to stare down at the first dividing wall, "... but I don’t like this at all."
In the next compartment, more dim shapes loomed out of the darkness below - vaguely white containers, packages, bales, rolls, all stacked higgledy-piggledy, a cacophony of contents that made no sense.
And then - somewhere in the first compartment, something cracked, a dull thump as of something falling sideways, the sound of movement in the darkness.
"The cases ..." Apollo joined Tigh at the edge, leaning over to stare into the darkness. "They’re breaking open." He winced as a wave of acrid fumes drifted over his face. "Something’s going on down there - and it’s not ghosts."
"I wonder how long this stuff’s been packed down there." Starbuck had joined Komma and was peering into the gloom, trying to make some sense of it. "If that’s just a stockpile of chemicals, it may not be too safe."
"I quite agree, Lieutenant," Tigh nodded thoughtfully. "I suspect it is not at all safe. Some of these containers may have been stowed sectars before the destruction of the Colonies. They’ve been sitting here uninspected, jostled by Cylon attack and subject to the normal stresses of stellar carriage. Lords know what lethal combination may be brewing down there. I suggest we recommend to the Captain that he simply jettison this pod as quickly as it can be safely done."
He stepped back to stare speculatively at the shadow of the OLM above him. "Further, gentlemen," he continued decisively, "I suggest we vacate this pod ourselves. We already know some of these fumes can be lethal."
It was at that moment that it happened.
Afterwards, none of them could swear to the precise sequence of events that followed: whether the explosion that rocked the pod beneath them came first, or if the gout of flame that billowed from the depths to wrap the walkway in a sudden flash of heat was before or after the agony of the blast. The walkway supports creaked ominously around them, but they would never know if acids had eaten away at their bases or if it was that sudden release of chemical power that twisted the metal beyond recognition, tore and tortured the structure with relentless force. No-one could say. But what happened was in no doubt.
For the reaction below finally reached critical point, and with a horrifying thunder the world about them exploded into a moment of heat and pain and utter confusion ...
When Starbuck crawled back to consciousness an indeterminable time later, it was to a strange world of hot, bitter air and a disconcerting tingling sensation, as though someone has scrubbed his skin with sandpaper. He vaguely remembered the concussion lifting him off his feet, throwing him to the metal and rolling him over and over ... and then nothing; just darkness. He lay against the steel, and it was cold, oddly comforting in its solidness. Then realisation dragged him up into full awareness. Something ... what had happened?
"Apollo?" he murmured tentatively. There was no reply.
Groggily he dragged himself onto his hands and knees. The world swam in front of him, an echo of lurid red and darkness, and somewhere, somewhere far below him, the flicker of coloured flame.
With a start, he realised that he was perched on the edge of the walkway, the railing twisted and buckled away from him so that there was nothing between him and the drop beneath.
"Frak!" he swore, scrabbling backwards as fast as he could. His body protested at the sudden demand, joints aching, lungs tightening, and dizziness claiming him with violent speed.
"Hey!" he called into the general air, rolling onto his launches and watching the world go round. The sound echoed dully and died without an answer.
When his immediate environment had stopped spinning, he focused on the view in front of him. He was looking at the far end of the pod, where there was nothing but the red greyness of the shadows and the emergency light. But between him and that distant point, the walkway no longer stretched with rigid efficiency. Instead, it sagged dangerously, canted to one side where supporting towers had given way completely. To one side of him the railing was twisted and torn from its mountings. On the other ... He stared at the crumpled shape that lay on the metal for a long micron before it resolved itself into the portly form of Corporal Komma lying twisted into a heap.
"Komma?" He crawled over to the still figure, not willing to trust himself to his feet, not liking the way the walkway creaked beneath his weight. The man was still unconscious, though the sound of his ragged breathing reassured the warrior who, for a micron, had thought the worst.
Certain now of one, Starbuck turned to find his other companions and froze in horror at the sight that met his eyes.
There should have been the end wall of the pod, pierced by the access tunnel and the airlock. There should have been the overhead lifting mechanism, suspended above the walkway, with Apollo by its control box and Tigh underneath its bulk. Instead there as only a jangled mass of metal girders, skewed onto the walkway’s surface, twisted and torn from the upper mountings, the tunnel and the door totally obscured, the central mass of the lifting gear spilled towards the floor of the bay and supported crazily by the buckled railing at the walkway edge.
"No!" Starbuck abandoned Komma to throw himself at the savage twist of metal. Under its edge he found Apollo, pinned beneath a twist of scaffolding, protected from being entirely crushed by the crumpled control pillar which, by some miracle, had held the weight of the steel and cushioned his head and torso.
Starbuck pulled uselessly at the tangled mass. It was firmly wedged, and he quickly realised he was doing nothing but wasting his strength. Apollo was unconscious, his face pale and livid in the dim lighting. Breathing heavily, Starbuck leaned on the twisted frame and wondered what to do. A groan from within the mass of steel startled him.
"Colonel?" he realised with shock. The man had been right under the OLM when it fell. He could see no sign of ... Wait - behind the solid tangle of the lifting gear, which must have fallen sideways as well as down, he could just see a dim shape. Tigh must have thrown himself backwards, for he was lying against the corner of the access tunnel, securely held by the interlacing of the fallen metal.
"Colonel!" Starbuck’s call was a little desperate. There was no way he could reach the trapped man, not even to assess how badly he was hurt, and he needed to know.
"Starbuck?" Tigh’s voice was the most welcome thing the warrior had ever heard. "Are you all right, Lieutenant?"
"I’m fine," Starbuck breathed. "Just fine."
Starbuck might have been fine - the Colonel certainly wasn’t. He listened to the Lieutenant’s hasty sketch of their situation with the slow, heavy breath of a man who seeks to cope with pain. The warrior hesitated to ask the man’s condition; he couldn’t reach him immediately, whatever he did, and somehow he didn’t really want to know how bad the emergency was. He asked, though. He had to, and the non-committal reply the Colonel gave him only confirmed the worst. There was no time to go for help - the two trapped men had to be freed as soon as possible, and the crackle of fire from the pod below only served to emphasise the point.
"Don’t give up on us yet, buddy," a cracked voice murmured from beside him. "We’ve been in worse positions."
"We have?" Starbuck couldn’t hide the relief in his voice; Apollo conscious and capable of trying to sound reassuring - that was one point to their team. Trouble was, the other side was holding match point. One mistake and the game was lost for good.
"You know, Apollo ..." Starbuck was reaching for breath himself in the tainted atmosphere. "I can cope with Cylons and all the other bad guys outnumbering us. I just pull out my laser and reduce the odds. But that won’t do much good here."
"It might." Apollo’s face was beaded with sweat, and his friend had to crouch beside him to catch the words clearly. "If you could cut us free we might make it out the other end of this funhouse."
Starbuck turned to stare down the length of the pod at the far end of the walkway. It looked forever, across the sideways twist of the sagging structure and through the semidarkness beyond. He couldn’t see the hatch, although he knew it had to be there. All he could register in the vivid glare of fire and emergency lighting was Komma’s face, etched over with the horror of the collapsed OLM as he realised what it meant.
"Komma!" Starbuck was sharper than he’d intended. "Get your butt over here."
The Corporal crawled the cautious distance to Apollo’s side, one eye on the twisted railing as he came. He was breathing heavily by the time he arrived, and he flashed a nervous grin at the Captain, who found a reassuring smile from somewhere.
"What can I do, Lieutenant?" Komma asked, wincing as yet another muffled explosion echoed in the bay beneath them.
Starbuck was asking himself the same question. He couldn’t use his laser to cut away the wreckage - the impact setting was too wide, and he would risk sending the whole mass, trapped men and all, into the chemical Hades below. What he needed was a fine cutting tool, something he could control and use to separate the metal piece by piece. The laser could be adjusted, but he had no tools.
"I don’t know," he admitted, gasping as a reek of pungent smoke drifted over them. "Unless you can produce a maintenance kit from thin air. My laser needs some fine-tuning. He reached a hand to his trapped friend’s free arm as he said it, suddenly realising that without that adjustment talk of rescue was just so much felgercarb. Apollo’s hand tightened reflexively on his own. He knew it too.
"A - a took kit?" Komma queries, and for some stranger reason quirked a half-grin into his expression. "That all?"
"All ..." Starbuck groaned, cutting it short as the Corporal unclipped a small pouch from his belt and thrust it at him. Wordlessly the Lieutenant took it, flipping back the cloth cover to reveal a selection of extremely delicate probes and screwdrivers, an electrowelder, a miniature laser knife, and several other implements which he didn’t immediately recognise.
Under the man’s astonished gaze Komma squirmed embarrassedly. "I never know when I might need a screwdriver ..." he explained doubtfully, perhaps trying to excuse the fact that he was carrying non-regulation kit. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Starbuck made a mental note to ensure it became regulation. As soon as they got out of the mess they were in.
"Will it do?" Apollo asked, releasing his friend’s hand to pull at his arm, the better to see what he had.
"You bet," Starbuck announced, flashing Komma a broad grin. "I’ll have you out real soon, buddy. Colonel ..."
"Yes, Lieutenant?" Tigh’s voice was faint but firm. He was still on the team.
"Komma and I are going to try to get rid of some of the mass of the OLM. I’m going to adjust my laser to a fine cutting beam, and then we’ll try and free Apollo. Once we’ve got him out we can throw the lifting cradle over the rail and reach you from underneath the main structure."
"I understand," the Colonel acknowledged after a micron. "But you will have to hurry. The Hades-brew in this pod isn’t going to wait forever. It might kill us just from the fumes it’s putting into the atmosphere, but it’s more likely to reach some kind of critical reaction. These minor explosions are just a part of it." He paused, fighting for a hold on his pain. "Starbuck," he went on, his voice disjointed but his tone firm, "if the fumes or the fire get any worse, then you and Komma are to get out as fast as you can. Forget me. Forget Apollo, if you have to. But save yourselves. That’s an order. Do you hear me, Starbuck?"
"Sorry, Colonel," Starbuck called back, already inside his laser’s complex innards, "but I didn’t catch that last remark. I can’t hear so well - must have been the explosion."
Holding the tiny torch that was the working warrior’s only source of decent light, Komma grimaced at Apollo. They’d both heard Tigh clearly enough, but that was one order Starbuck wouldn’t hesitate to disobey.
"It’s okay, Komma," Apollo murmured. "We’ll make it. You’ll see."
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