Battlestar Galactica 11 - The Nightmare Machine Read online

  A new BATTLESTAR GALACTICA adventure!

  When a missing Viper pilot returns to

  the Galactica, the mighty starship is

  infected with a mysterious form of madness.

  The evil Baltar and his cybernetic Cylon

  ally Lucifer have programmed the Galactica's

  crew to carry out one final order—

  self destruction—and it's up to Apollo,

  Starbuck, and Boomer to discover a

  cure before the alien intruders

  succeed in their ruthless plot!

  DEVIL'S PIT

  Apollo proceeded warily through corridor's and maze-like areas. Up ahead he saw movement, a person or creature edging along a wall. Whatever it was, it scampered away as soon as it saw Apollo.

  "Devil's pit, huh?" he muttered. "They name it right, anyway."

  A few more steps and something made Apollo glance upward abruptly. He was certain he saw more than one pair of eyes gaping down at him from the metal rafters . . .

  Berkley Battlestar Galactica Books

  BATTLESTAR GALACTICA

  by Glen A. Larson and Robert Thurston

  BATTLESTAR GALACTICA 2: THE CYLON DEATH MACHINE

  by Glen A. Larson and Robert Thurston

  BATTLESTAR GALACTICA 3: THE TOMBS OF KOBOL

  by Glen A. Larson and Robert Thurston

  BATTLESTAR GALACTICA 4: THE YOUNG WARRIORS

  by Glen A. Larson and Robert Thurston

  BATTLESTAR GALACTICA 5: GALACTICA DISCOVERS EARTH

  by Glen A. Larson and Michael Resnick

  BATTLESTAR GALACTICA 6: THE LIVING LEGEND

  by Glen A. Larson and Nicholas Yermakov

  BATTLESTAR GALACTICA 7: WAR OF THE GODS

  by Glen A. Larson and Nicholas Yermakov

  BATTLESTAR GALACTICA 8: GREETINGS FROM EARTH

  by Glen A. Larson and Ron Goulart

  BATTLESTAR GALACTICA 9: EXPERIMENT IN TERRA

  by Glen A. Larson and Ron Goulart

  BATTLESTAR GALACTICA 10: THE LONG PATROL

  by Glen A. Larson and Ron Goulart

  BATTLESTAR GALACTICA 11: THE NIGHTMARE MACHINE

  by Glen A. Larson and Robert Thurston

  BATTLESTAR GALACTICA 11:

  THE NIGHTMARE MACHINE

  A Berkley Book / published with

  MCA PUBLISHING, a Division of MCA Inc.

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Berkley edition / December 1985

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 1984 by MCA PUBLISHING,

  a Division of MCA Inc.

  Cover illustration by James Warhola.

  This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part,

  by mimeograph or any other means, without permission.

  For information addresss:

  MCA PUBLISHING, a Division of

  MCA Inc.

  100 Universal City Plaza,

  Universal City, California 91608.

  ISBN: 0-425-08618-6

  A BERKELY BOOK ® TM 757,375

  Berkley Books are published by Berkley Publishing Corporation,

  200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016.

  The name "Berkley" and the stylized "B" with design

  are trademarks belonging to Berkley Publishing Corporation

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  To Jason

  And to Davy Fraser and the

  Baldwinsville Squadron

  CHAPTER ONE

  I've been in Cylon traps before, Starbuck thought, but this one takes the felgercarb.

  A Cylon fighter, narrowly avoiding the sweeping fusillades from the pursuing craft of Greenbean and Jolly, now headed right for Starbuck's viper. Slamming the joystick of his viper to the left, he swerved violently to avoid the pulsing bursts of fire from the Cylon ship's laser cannons. If laser fire had had odor, and if there had been air outside Starbuck's fighter for him to fling open his cockpit and smell, he might have been overwhelmed by the fumes.

  Instead of pursuing Starbuck, the Cylon ship veered off and made for Boomer, attacking his blind spot from high-side.

  "On your tail, Boom-boom," Starbuck yelled into his commline mike.

  "Watch it!"

  Boomer's voice roared in Starbuck's ears:

  "Got it, bucko. Thanks."

  Boomer executed a precise reverse loop, followed by a rollover, and came down at the Cylon, with all artillery blazing. The Cylon ship, hit dead center, exploded suddenly, in one of those almost-beautiful displays that transformed a well-tooled piece of machinery and technology, plus its trio of alien inhabitants, into space debris in no time at all.

  As he dipped his viper away from a portside attack, Starbuck got a quick glimpse of the barren planet beneath them, in whose skies the battle was taking place. Red Squadron had been on a routine probe from the Galactica, locating and mapping star systems and planets, looking for colonies and places where the exhausted population of Galactica and its ragtag fleet could find a few moments of rest, when this Cylon phalanx had appeared, as if out of nowhere, to attack them. He suspected they flew out of camouflaged pods on the planet's surface. Many ships rose toward them from the barren plains below. No matter how many of the Cylon ships they put out of commission, others seemed to materialize in new attack waves. Already three vipers had been destroyed. If Starbuck was right about their pilots, a trio of young cadets had been blown up with their ships in the first ambushing volley. Even in the midst of his anger, tears of mourning flowed out of his eyes.

  "Attaboy, Boomer," came Jolly's voice over the commline after his well-executed victory.

  "Right on target," shouted Ensign Greenbean.

  "I try, fellas," Boomer answered, more than a touch of relief at surviving probable death mixed with the pride in his voice.

  "Don't pat yourself on the back yet, Boomer," Starbuck cried. "Another one coming at you starboard!"

  Boomer yelped with both fear and joy as the laser fire from the attacking Cylon raider came so close he was afraid it nearly singed his hair. Zeroing in on the Cylon ship, he split it wide open stem to stern before it exploded. He whooped again with the victory.

  Greenbean, zooming up behind him as backup, laughed. "I don't believe it," he said. Greenbean had never quite gotten rid of the naive country-boy sound that made his voice go high when he was excited. "Good shooting, Boomer. Fellas, an ace has been hiding secretly in our midst. Son of a—"

  He hadn't seen the Cylon ship that, with the sudden acceleration so characteristic of these powerfully built enemy craft, had grown from a distant pinpoint to a gigantic marauder in an instant. Jolly saw it first.

  "Greenbean!" he shouted. "Hit the deck!"

  Frightened, Greenbean responded quickly, plunging his joystick forward and accelerating his viper in order to avoid the shots of a ship he hadn't yet seen. Arcing around to face the Cylon raider, he hit his firing button with a ferocity uncharacteristic of the soft-spoken shy young pilot. His shot was on the mark, adding another destroyed Cylon spacecraft to Red Squadron's growing and impressive kill-score.

  Greenbean, who hadn't breathed since Jolly's abrupt warning, inhaled deeply and muttered to himself:
"That was close." As it often happened when a Galactican pilot narrowly missed death, Greenbean mentally reviewed, in a fast sequence of battle memories, all the times that his life had been on the line, and he wondered what kind of blessed luck had been flying with him. Starbuck was, after all, the warrior with the legend of luck attached to his records. Greenbean had hardly been aware of his own luck until this moment. How long could he survive? How long could any of them survive, fleeing to God knew where with a ragtag fleet to protect, and seemingly endless hordes of Cylon ships pursuing them?

  Boomer's soft voice coming over commcircuit seemed to whisper in his ear:

  "Nice move, Greenbean."

  The praise was like credit from one's father, and Greenbean was pleased by it.

  "Good reaction time, buddy," Jolly said.

  Although they could not see it from the dark, polarized cockpits of their own ships, their comments made the shy ensign blush. A deep red blush that made the near-white blondness of his hair seem all the paler.

  Another wave of Cylon raiders was headed their way.

  "Would you guys stow the postbattle analysis while the battle's still on?" Starbuck shouted as he accelerated his viper to meet the new marauders.

  If there had been an observer on the surface of the planet below, he would have watched a frantic and confused melee in the skies above him—beautiful sleek ships interweaving and almost touching, seemingly joined in an intricate and lovely laser fire netting; sudden fiery explosions and pieces of metal drifting slowly away from the area of battle, descending eventually to the barren planet, maybe to be later discovered as mysterious and anachronistic archeological artifacts; awesome maneuverings, quick and impressive, in which Galactican pilots saved themselves and their fellow warriors from destruction. The whole array of human battle skills was brought to bear against the dazzling numbers of well-equipped Cylon fighters. The fight raged for only a short while, the humans holding their own against their opponents. Then abruptly the surviving Cylon contingent broke away from the battle and disappeared in the distance as suddenly as it had originally appeared.

  Starbuck breathed a sigh of relief that all the other pilots heard loud and clear on their helmet receivers.

  "I think we discouraged them, fellas," Starbuck announced.

  "They probably got a whiff of your cigar," Jolly said.

  "Your folly, Jolly. I've given 'em up. Told you that."

  "Believe it when I see it, bucko."

  "And since when did I ever smoke in a cockpit? Why, the smoke'd—"

  "We of the lower echelons are convinced you can do anything you want to, Starbuck."

  "Aw, shucks, Jolly, I don't know what to say."

  "Another peculiar phenomenon, Starbuck speechless."

  Starbuck was disturbed by the strangeness of their enemy's sudden retreat but, for the moment, he didn't want to upset his men, so he kept mum on the subject.

  "Starbuck?"

  "Yeah, Boomer."

  "You think they got a fix on us? They can't trace us back to the fleet, can they?"

  The cautious Boomer was famous for his ways of worrying a subject. However, he had saved Starbuck's butt so many times with that exact same caution that Starbuck always gave it prime consideration.

  "Well, Boomer, I really doubt it. We're pretty far off course. We'll fly back with our jammers tuned high, for safety's sake. But we shouldn't take chances. Just be careful, guys. We don't need any of those creepos tracking us. Everybody all right? Boomer, you and your ship shipshape?"

  "Yo!"

  "Jolly?"

  "Aye, aye, cap'n."

  Starbuck laughed and reminded Jolly he was still just a lieutenant.

  "Don't pull rank, sir," Jolly said. "Even a lower one."

  "Dump it in the head, Jolly. Greenbean?"

  There was no reply. Starbuck twisted around in his seat, tried to get a visual on Greenbean's viper.

  "Greenbean? GREENBEAN?!"

  All of the pilots started circling around, passing each other, creating a balletic air show without an audience to see it, looking beyond the farthest ship for a magical sighting of Greenbean, swooping close to the planet's surface to try to see the signs of a crash. Finally, Jolly's voice, trembling with emotion:

  "He's gone, Starbuck. He's not anywhere."

  "Jolly's right," Boomer said. "Maybe one of those louses got him."

  "Maybe," Starbuck said, "but I don't think so. There was something . . ."

  "What, Starbuck?"

  "He was flying right beside me. Right before the creeps took their powder. I don't think they got him. I'm sure they didn't. They captured his ship, took him prisoner, I'm—"

  "Easy, Starbuck, easy," Boomer said.

  "It's possible, Boomer. They do take pris—"

  "I know. And that's what we always hope—that our buddy's not dead, that we'll see him. It's natural."

  "But, Boomer—"

  "We got to assume he's dead. None of us saw it, but we were all pretty busy at the time, right?"

  Boomer was always adept at getting Starbuck back on track when he seemed about to be overcome by emotion. Starbuck was such a tough hot-tempered leader that he even hated to admit the loss of a pilot under his command. Boomer was used to the response, and knew how to minister to it.

  "You're right, Boomer," Starbuck said. "Greenbean's gone."

  "No, he's all right!" Jolly screamed. The fact that his best buddy was lost was just now settling into his mind. He and Greenbean had been wingmates for so long that Jolly could not perceive the future with someone else flying beside him in formations. "He's got to be all right, he—"

  "Steady, Jolly," Starbuck said, realizing he was now doing for Jolly what Boomer had just done for him. In the unwritten logbook of colonial warrior camaraderie, the soothing of panic was an essential ability. "You know Greenbean. If he's gone, he wouldn't want us to panic about it. And, if they got him, he'll find a way out."

  "I sure hope so," Jolly said, his voice only a shade calmer.

  Me too, Starbuck thought as he checked with the rest of the squadron to see who'd survived the furious and intense battle. In addition to Greenbean, four other pilots could now be listed among the missing. However, in each of these other cases the Cylon kill had been observed by a fellow pilot. No one had seen Greenbean's viper go up. A pity, Starbuck thought, there should always be a friend or ally around to see your death. Himself, he was terrified of dying alone. Telling himself to get the morbid thoughts out of his head, he ordered the squadron back into formation for the long journey home to the Galactica.

  Close up, in the middle of the monitor's screen, Greenbean's sleeping face could be seen beneath the pale brown visor of his flight helmet. He looked peaceful, as if he were just taking a quick nap for which he'd forgotten to remove his headgear. A pressing of the camera's remote-control button, and the picture enlarged to show, through a transparent canopy, that he was still in the cockpit of his viper. Another push of the button, and the camera pulled back to show on the screen a view of the entire captured viper, where it was tied down in the landing area of the Cylon base-star. Cylon centurions clumsily approached the vehicle and, roughly pulling at the rim of the cockpit canopy, flipped it open. Two of them lifted the unconscious pilot out of the cockpit and began to carry him away.

  Using the ham of his hand, Baltar punched the monitor's shut-off button and the picture faded. He laughed softly to himself. Lucifer recognized that laugh. It meant that Baltar was definitely up to something. Lucifer had to be on his guard whenever his commander chortled like that in order to help rectify any blunders the reckless Baltar might cause.

  "I think we can break the spirit of this one," Baltar said. "He's so young—why, the polish of youth still shines luminously on his face. He's clearly impressionable. Don't you think so, Lucifer?"

  "I am unable to read the human face," Lucifer said. Except for yours, Lucifer thought. Baltar had a soft-looking face whose skin lacked any tinge of health. He never suspected
how emotions displayed themselves in that tarnished face.

  Baltar looked at his assistant as if he were seeing him for the first time. For the first time viewing this Cylon construct, this rude robot, with his transparent bubblelike head and its slanted asynchronously moving red eyes. Lucifer, tall as he was, looked down on Baltar whenever the commander condescended to come down to floor level from his ridiculously high command pedestal. With his ostentatious clothing and prim gestures, Lucifer's stance suggested superior attitudes that could not have been originally programmed into him. As Lucifer might have said, association with Baltar brought out the superiority naturally.

  "Well, take my word for it, Lucifer, this one's an easy target for us. Initiate the usual procedures."

  "The torture?"

  "Of course the torture. It's going to work on this one. This lad'll lead us right to the Galactica, I promise."

  "I wait eagerly . . ."

  As he often did, Baltar studied Lucifer's face for signs of irony. There could be none there, of course, since the Cylon creation had no mobility in his hooded manufactured face.

  For his part, Lucifer also studied physiognomy, searching Baltar's face to see if he could detect what deviousness the man was planning now. Frustrated so often in his need to finally defeat the Galactica, and destroy his hated enemy, the Galactica's commander, Adama, Baltar had grown thinner with each setback. He rarely ate anymore and his face had become gaunt and tired looking. Lucifer recalled how fat and flabby Baltar had been when he'd first rescued him and set him on the exercise and diet program that restored him to health and made him fit to command a Cylon base-star. Now it looked as if the man might collapse at any time. That was one of the troubles with humans. They broke down too easily. Lucifer did not have that problem. One of his parts could wear out, yes, but break down completely? Impossible. He was like the admirable Cylon Imperious Leader in that respect: Humans could collapse from emotion, Cylons could deteriorate, but Lucifer and Imperious Leader went on forever. Well, perhaps not Imperious leader.