Battlestar Galactica 12 - Die, Chameleon! Read online

  A new BATTLESTAR GALACTICA adventure!

  A mutiny is raging on board the fleet

  ship Eureka. A group of terrorists,

  intent on abandoning the Galactica caravan,

  have hijacked the ship—holding Apollo,

  Croft and Chameleon hostage.

  And while Starbuck attempts a most

  deadly rescue mission, the villainous

  Crutch toys with Chameleon's life—

  and the devastating truth about

  Chameleon's past is revealed!

  "Ease up, both of you," Apollo said.

  "Carome, Commander Adama has given me full authorization to negotiate with you and your followers. If you turn over the helm to me immediately, no recriminative action will be taken. All of you—"

  "You call that negotiation? You order, and we fold up?"

  "The commander's word—"

  "I'm supposed to believe the commander's word?"

  Croft stepped forward.

  "I'll vouch for it, Carome."

  "You can't even vouch for slime rats, Croft," Carome sneered. "I don't even want to—"

  "Hey, hey," Apollo intervened, "let's cool this off. We can go somewhere and discuss this—"

  Carome turned and played to the mob.

  "I'm not gonna continue this little stage-show. We got interest in you, as the commander's son. Grab him, men. And the other."

  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 12: "DIE, CHAMELEON!"

  by Glen A. Larson and Robert Thurston

  BATTLESTAR GALACTICA 12:

  "DIE, CHAMELEON!"

  A Berkley Book / published with

  MCA PUBLISHING, a Division of MCA Inc.

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Berkley edition / May 1986

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 1986 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: 0-425-09095-7

  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

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Epilogue

  For Jason

  And Russell Faison of the

  146th St. Squadron

  CHAPTER ONE

  Wherever you go in the universe, on the wilder as well as the more civilized planets, families tend to gather in central areas where the main objective is to retreat from social and personal difficulties in order to engage in recreational activities. There seems to be an urge in most societies to free the mind of its necessary clutter for a while and escape into less important interests or perform the household duties which, though annoying, must for some periods of time hold the attention of certain family members.

  On a backwater-galaxy planet whose unpronounceable name translates as "The Joyful Land," such gatherings ritualized family love and affection. As with most families, their feelings for each other were not often blatantly displayed, but they were nevertheless quite evident in their ease with each other, and in the kind of household calm which, while occasionally interrupted by admonitions and even anger, had settled into their homes.

  The father of one family, Trinzot, sat serenely in his society's version of an armchair, a bulbous item stuffed with the feathers of an indigenous bird. The feathers were soft, and Trinzot felt relaxed with the scroll he was reading. As he read, he unrolled the scroll in slow, steady movements. He was a tall man, not too thin, with eyes that appeared to change color in different lights. Usually they were violet or dark blue. In the subdued light of his living room, they tended toward the purple shade.

  His wife Diova puttered around the room, picking up the debris of her family's neglectful habits. She was very much a domesticated woman, scorning the independence of the more rebellious women of her home planet (which was not The Joyful Land, although she could no longer remember what its name had been). She was a petite woman, carrying a little too much weight for her small frame, and the strain of her frequent smile never showed.

  Their children sat in the middle of the room, on the floor, playing with their favorite toy. The boy Brynt was the oldest child. He was blond and rather calm for his age. The elder girl Chandra, a round-faced child with the nervous habit of drumming her fingers against the floor, as a rule displayed more energy than her brother. The younger girl Zossie, tiny and quite lovely, backed away from all confrontations with her older siblings.

  The toy that held their attention was an Imagescan, a holographic projection device that displayed a complex scene in an oval field around which they sat. At the edge of the scene, objects and people seemed out of focus but the central portion was vivid and quite busy with detail. At the moment a pitched battle was going on among large groups of small humanoid figures. The setting of the battle was a section of a city with several decaying warehouses.

  Without interrupting her straightening of a group of knick-knacks on a table, Diova addressed Trinzot. "What are you reading, dear?"

  Trinzot replied without looking up from his scroll. "New story from the Ennay, dear."

  The Ennay was the Narrative Association, sup
plier of printed fiction to the people of The Joyful Land.

  "I must say," Diova commented, "the Ennay people are doing their job well, and with such admirable efficiency. At the scroll-store this morning I saw at least ten new pieces."

  "Yes," Trinzot said. "Ennay is clearly functioning at max level without losing an iota in quality factors."

  Diova nodded. She now sat at the edge of the living room rug, picking up fuzz balls with her dainty fingers.

  "I agree," she said. "You know, I just finished the story you gave me two days ago. It was wonderful, as you said. I loved the part where that big fish invented land-gills and joined the society of its former enemies. What a fine lesson."

  Trinzot looked up from his scroll.

  "It's good to have the traditional values reinforced in stories like that, isn't it?"

  "Yes," Diova said, not realizing her reply was automatic, the one intended by the scroll-story of the big fish. "It's important for the community to welcome all strangers, even its former foes."

  Trinzot's commentary was just as automatic. They held conversations like this about every scroll-story they shared.

  "We can all pull together," he said, "for the greater good and the shining ideals."

  Trinzot's calm assurance comforted Diova, making her feel even more content with her comfortable lot.

  "Oh my, yes," she said. "What's the new story about?"

  "Well, I wouldn't want to give it away. It's about dreams of home, I'll tell you that much. How we must value our homelands but look to the future and our lives here, in The Joyful Land."

  "The Joyful Land."

  Diova's echoing of her husband's words was filled with awe, plus some wonder at the continuing good fortune of her family.

  Her memories of her home were not at all clear. She had been taken away from it when she was a child. She recalled fields greener than those of The Joyful Land, cities with technological wonders that even the technologically wondrous Joyful Land did not have. She sometimes wished she could return there for a visit just to see if her past impressions were correct, but on the whole she did not mind staying in The Joyful Land. She would never give up her residence here to return to her home, that was certain. There was so much love and affection in The Joyful Land that she could not imagine a more loving and affectionate planet.

  Trinzot's remembrances of his former land were clearer, although he had even less urge to see it again than his wife. He had not been happy there, a failure at his job, a man with a dangerous tendency to go too far with any indulgence.

  Neither of them remembered how they got to The Joyful Land, but it was not a problem that bothered them at all. Since they were so happy here, there seemed no reason for nostalgia.

  "Looka that, will you?" Zossie cried. Her eyes so wide they appeared to have more height than width, she pointed to the scene being enacted on the floor in front of her. The tiny holographic human figures there were fighting a frantic battle against some aliens. The aliens had round metallic bodies supported by very long pipestem legs. They seemed to hold weapons in their teeth. The weapons emitted thick blue rays which started tiny fires on anything they hit. In the sky miniature spacecrafts shot at each other. Once in a while a direct hit caused a ship to break into fragments which sailed outward, then drifted toward the living room floor before disappearing like dust at the bottom of a shaft of light.

  Small human figures fired upward at the aliens and dodged debris falling from explosions on the buildings. Debris was piling up all over the miniature city's streets, and authentic-looking dust clouds and apparent fire and smoke were scattered throughout the little city.

  Brynt, in charge of the holographic manipulation controls, nervously fingered a brace of toggles without flipping them.

  "Where's the Starbuck?" he shouted to his sisters.

  Pointing, the ever-vigilant Zossie replied, "He's over there, behind that car."

  Brynt shifted his position to see that area better. Crouched behind a red and black vehicle was, indeed, the Starbuck. The Starbuck's blond hair glowed brighter than the fires that surrounded him, and, even in miniature, his steely blue eyes could be seen vividly by the comparatively gigantic children. The two girls were especially fascinated by the Starbuck's gleaming eyes.

  This Starbuck was very much like the famous Starbuck, ace Viper pilot of the Battlestar Galactica. His friends and enemies aboard that redoubtable ship would have recognized him in the small moving facsimile on this living room floor. They might have discerned that the replica was handsomer than the original, his jaw somewhat firmer, his chin coming to a more dauntless point. The color of the real Starbuck's hair was more like straw than the deep golden hue that seemed to radiate from the holographic figure's locks, and Starbuck's eyes, however compelling, never glowed like that or got that kind of hard metallic look. However, the tiny figure was recognizable as the Galactica pilot, all cleaned up and unblemished. It was, in fact, the mythological version of Starbuck, formed by tales of his heroic exploits. The tales were exaggerated, and so, in a way, were the physical characteristics of the holographic version.

  His legs, lean and muscular, spread in a fearless stance, the Starbuck shot fiercely at the enemy aliens. Most of his shots were right on target. Wounded or dead aliens fell on top of other fallen aliens at a rapid rate. Next to the Starbuck was a beautiful woman. It seemed the mythological Starbuck did, at least in this way, strongly resemble the original.

  "I want to see the Starbuck closer," Chandra said quietly. She generally spoke softly. In most seen but barely heard children this was an attractive trait, but in Chandra it often meant sinister things. She never spoke more softly, for example, than when she was wrathful.

  "Okay," Brynt agreed, "I'll magnify."

  Examining his control board carefully, he chose his settings and flipped a few knobs and toggles with a graceful expertise. The scene at the center of the children's gaze shifted to a closeup view of Starbuck and the woman crouched behind the vehicle. Now the human figures were larger, almost the size of Zossie, who, when the view was magnified, liked to think of the Starbuck as her imaginary companion.

  "Turn up the sound, Brynt," Chandra ordered softly.

  Brynt turned up the volume control. Starbuck's voice echoed through the room, making the children's parents, who generally ignored the children's entertainment unit, look up startled.

  "We're trapped!" the Starbuck bellowed.

  "You've gotten us out of worse jams than this, Starbuck."

  The Starbuck smiled grimly, sending Zossie's little heart beating faster.

  "I sure have," the Starbuck said, "and this'll be no exception."

  "Go to it, Starbuck," Chandra muttered.

  "Yea, Starbuck," Zossie hollered.

  "Mow 'em down, blast 'em, eat 'em alive," chanted Brynt.

  Finally, Diova could stand the din no longer.

  "Children, children, not so loud!"

  Trinzot put his hands over his ears and tried to concentrate on his reading.

  "Did you hear me, Brynt?" Diova hollered. "Turn that set down. You know how many times I've told you not to play the Starbuck so loud. You'll all be deaf before you're old enough for processing."

  "Ah, mother," Zossie whined.

  "Zossie!" Diova said threateningly.

  "Okay, okay," Zossie murmured. "Brynt, please."

  With obvious reluctance, Brynt slowly lowered the volume until it reached a level that his mother clearly approved of. Diova nodded and returned to her housework.

  The Starbuck continued to shoot down aliens with an almost reckless accuracy. It seemed every time he raised his laser pistol and got off a shot, an alien fell somewhere.

  "That Starbuck never misses," Brynt whispered. It was a kind of stage whisper, performed for his mother, so that she would see he was trying to keep the noise-level down.

  "That's why he's the Starbuck!" Chandra said, just as quietly.

  "Right, Chandra," Zossie said. She was a bit loud and her siblings
glanced at her reproachfully.

  The children watched in fascination as the Starbuck mowed down any enemy who came close to him and the woman. Soon they escaped from the circling aliens and started running down the street. Brynt had to maneuver the controls frantically in order to keep up with the action. He had had much practice at image-controlling and was very good at it.

  "Go to long shot, Brynt," Chandra suggested in her quietly authoritative way.

  "No," Zossie protested, "stay on the Starbuck."

  Chandra turned to her sister and said firmly, "We're missing the overview, Zossie. I want to get a good sense of the action."

  Diova, who now stood next to Trinzot's chair, leaned down and whispered in his ear, "Chandra's got a real feel for the art of the Imagescan. She'll probably be a director."

  "I agree," Trinzot replied, looking up and studying his daughter's intense eyes. "Brynt should hand over the controls to her."

  "He can't. He's too jealous. No brother likes to be upstaged by his sister, you know that."

  The Starbuck and his female sidekick had rushed into a building where aircraft were housed. Brynt punched the scene-change button and the interior of the building was shown from a high angle.

  "Over there," the woman with the Starbuck shouted and pointed toward the other side of the chamber. "The Gazelle."

  "What's the Gazelle?" Zossie asked. The other two children appeared irritated by her talking at just this point of the action.

  "Don't you remember anything?" Brynt asked, disgustedly. "That's the special spaceship the evil one's invented to destroy the Gentle Federation."

  "Oh," Zossie said. "Yeah."

  "Come on, Denra!" the Starbuck yelled and sped toward the Gazelle. "That baby's our ticket off this blooming planet!"

  When the Starbuck and Denra reached the Gazelle, they leaped onto its wing and into the cockpit. As the Starbuck was closing the cockpit canopy over them, Chandra shouted, "Bring up the cockpit, Brynt! C'mon, quick!"

  "Hold on to your nose, Chandra. I'm doin' it, I'm doin' it."

  "Brynt!" Diova said cautioningly. "Mind your tongue."