Battlestar Galactica 6 - The Living Legend Read online

  The newest novel, adapted from the most

  popular BATTLESTAR GALACTICA adventure ever!

  A great warrior has returned to lead Galactica

  against its biggest challenge yet!

  Commander Cain, living legend of the cosmos,

  is marshalling his forces for a desperate

  counterattack against the Cylon marauders led

  by the ruthless Baltar. Yet, the young

  warriors of the besieged battlestar wonder:

  is the mythical "Juggernaut" really a military

  genius—or just an eccentric despot made

  crazy by the wounds of time?

  GOODBYE, GALACTICA!

  They weren't even making any effort to escape! The Galactica might possibly be able to make it, but that would mean leaving the rest of the fleet to be destroyed and that fool Adama would never do that. They were going to stand and fight against overwhelming odds. They had no chance, none whatsoever. Baltar knew he would get his victory and his place in Cylon history would be assured . . .

  "This is going to be a classic defeat," exulted Baltar, licking his lips. "It will be spoken of thoughout the Cylon nation for the next thousand yahrens! Goodbye, Galactica. Goodbye, Adama!"

  THE LIVING LEGEND

  The newest BATTLESTAR GALACTICA adventure!

  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 6:

  THE LIVING LEGEND

  A Berkley Book / published with

  MCA PUBLISHING, a Division of MCA Inc.

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Berkley edition / April 1982

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 1982 by MCA PUBLISHING,

  a Division of MCA Inc.

  Cover illustration by David Schleinkofer.

  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: 0-425-05249-4

  A BERKELY BOOK ® TM 757,375

  Berkley Books are published by Berkley Publishing Corporation,

  200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016.

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  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

  PROLOGUE

  Troy sat at the console in his cabin aboard the Galactica. He was alone and he stared at the screen, on which appeared the face of a very old man. The man was Troy's adoptive grandfather and, when he had been alive, he was the commander of the Battlestar Galactica.

  "Troy," said Adama, "I know it's you because no one else will ever receive the key to this program. If you're viewing this then I must be dead. Perhaps, I have no way of knowing, I have only just passed on or perhaps I have been dead for a period of time. There's no telling what the future holds in store and I have no way of knowing when you will be hearing these words, much less if you will ever be hearing them. But if you are, then I know that the Lord has preserved you and that you are now the new commander of the Galactica."

  The image of Adama paused.

  "As I speak these words, I know that I am dying. It does not disturb me. I am prepared to die. I have lived a long and fruitful life and the Lord has seen fit to allow me to survive this long. I can ask for no more than that and I am content.

  "If there was one thing I could have asked for which I have not received, it is that my son did not outlive me. I—I still feel his loss. When I think of all the yahrens that he served under me as my strike commander, the finest Viper pilot I have ever known, the bravest warrior, it pains me when I think that in all those yahrens I never once told him that I loved him. Oh, he knew I did, but it would have meant so much more, I know, had I been able to say those words out loud."

  Adama's image sighed deeply. For a moment, Troy thought that he would not be able to continue, but then he spoke again.

  "Your father was a great man, Troy. You were just a child when he died. Do you remember? We all used to call you 'Boxey.' I remember how you came to hate that name as you grew older and we had to find another for you, since we never knew your real one. But that's beside the point. Forgive an old man's rambling. I remember how you tried not to cry the day Apollo didn't come back from his mission. In a sense, you were wiser than I was that day, for you knew the truth, while I foolishly allowed myself to hope that some miracle would restore him to me once again, as had happened the last time he failed to return from a mission."

  Adama paused again, thinking back.

  "That was when we found Cain," he said. "Your father came back from the dead that day and brought another with him. He had been a good friend and I had thought him dead for over two yahrens. You were very young then, Troy and I don't know if you'll remember, but he saved all our lives.

  "That is but one chapter in the history of the Galactica. I had hoped that her next commander after me would be my son, but that was not to be. The Galactica is yours now, Troy, and it is for you to decide her destiny. But before you determine the future of your ship, you should know her past.

  "It's all here, in this program, the key to which no one has but you. These are my journals, Troy. I have kept them fastidiously ever since that day, back on Caprica, that the Galactica was commissioned and mine became her guiding hand. She has known no master but me in all those yahrens and now she passes on to you. No one else has ever seen my journals, Troy. You are the first. What you will do with them after you have seen them is up to you. Scan them in order, if you like, from the beginning to the end . . . or from the present point to the beginning . . . or according to your own memory. If there are incidents that you remember, the computer can locate those sections of the journals for you. All you need do is ask.

  "My final words to you, Troy, are these: circumstances made it impossible for you to have anything even remotely resembling a normal childhood. For that, I am sorry, even though you've grown into a man that I respect. We tried our best to make a home for the children in the fleet, for they were our hope for the future, but in your case, it was very hard. You lost your real parents back when Caprica was destroyed. You gained a new father in Apollo and you came to love him, only to lose your father once again. You gained a new mother in Serina, only to lose your mother for a second time when Serina died. Twice orphaned, you became a very quiet child, so different from the way you once had been.

  "I tried to be the best grandfather I knew how, but that was not enough. Having twice been orphaned, you put up barriers that no one could get through. You
didn't want to love anyone ever again, for fear of losing them. It was a long time before anyone could break through to you. I have some knowledge of how you must have felt for I, too, had barriers of my own.

  "You never really knew your father, Troy. Learn about him now. Learn about the man. It's all here, God knows, it's all that I have left. But before I leave you, there's one thing more I want to say. I almost said it to Apollo, that time with Cain, but I didn't and regret it to this day. I have since said it to you, but I want to say it once again.

  "I love you. And farewell."

  The screen went blank.

  Troy sat for a long time in silence. Finally, he leaned forward to the console to begin Adama's journals.

  He would start with Cain.

  CHAPTER ONE

  For the Viper fighter pilots of the Battlestar Galactica, there was no such thing as a routine patrol. Both Starbuck and Apollo knew that routine bred complacency. They could not afford to think of any of their scouting missions as "just another routine patrol," in spite of the countless missions that they flew, in spite of the sameness of many of those missions.

  There had been a time, when both Starbuck and Apollo had first entered the cockpits of their Vipers as newly graduated cadets, when they had felt the keen thrill of anticipation that came to all newly commissioned officers embarking upon their maiden flights. Although all cadets had opportunities to solo prior to receiving their commissions, it was not the same as piloting a Viper fighter for the first time without each little action being observed and evaluated by an instructor. Back then, they had known that there would be no one waiting for them when they returned, if they returned, to either compliment them on their performance or to point out the mistakes they made. If there was to be a test, it would be administered by Cylon fighters. And there would be no opportunity to make up for a poor score.

  Yet, even though their baptism of fire had not come with their first missions, the thrill of piloting their Vipers for the first time as officers of the fleet had not been diminished. It was only much later that they became aware of the dangers of routine.

  As children, they had both dreamed of spaceflight, but as adults, they learned the sad reality that spaceflight was often boring. Once the novelty wore off, the fascination faded. To a seasoned Viper pilot, flying a scouting mission was as mundane as walking. Starbuck and Apollo piloted their Vipers as though the sleek machines were extensions of their bodies. They were able to perform most of their functions without thinking, automatically, much as it took no thought to put one foot before the other. But with the ever present danger of a Cylon fighter squadron appearing out of nowhere, there was no room for a pilot to relax into a comfortable feeling of routine. If such an attack came, there would be no time for hesitation. Expert pilots had been blasted to debris because they had allowed themselves to become distracted, lost in reverie on a "routine" mission. Every mission had to be flown as though they might encounter the enemy at any time, even if there was no reported Cylon activity in the sector they patrolled. A Viper pilot had to remain constantly on the alert. Paranoia was a very useful quality in a warrior.

  Still, functioning at a peak level of awareness was exhausting. Whenever a pilot began to feel the strain of maintaining a constant state of watchfulness, his mind began to wander. To prevent this, pilots kept up a steady stream of chatter amongst themselves whenever they flew patrols. It was a way of reaching out across the distance that separated their fighters, a way of staying alert, of having the comforting feeling that a friend was near to lend a hand if need be. The camaraderie that resulted from this seemingly idle chatter was something only a pilot could understand. After returning from a mission, then there would be time in which to unwind, time to relax with their launch crews, their friends, their fellow shipmates.

  For Captain Apollo, if the patrol showed that the Galactica and its rag-tag fleet were in no imminent danger of attack from Cylon forces, there would be time to spend alone with his son, Boxey. If she could find time off from her duties, his sister would often join them, as well. Apollo cherished those private moments with Boxey and Athena. They were his family. Even though he had adopted Boxey, who had been orphaned when the colony on Caprica had been destroyed, Apollo loved the boy no less than he would have had the child been his own. His and Serina's.

  There was a void within him that had been there since the day Serina died. There were ways for Apollo to avoid that gut-wrenching feeling of despair whenever he thought of life without her. In the heat of battle, he never felt the loss. Sometimes he used his duties aboard the Galactica as a shield to protect himself from feeling the pain, but all efforts at escaping his grief were, at best, temporary solutions. He told himself that, with time, the pain would diminish. But no one knew just how much time they had.

  The war had brought the two of them together and the war had torn them apart. Their time together had been so unendurably short . . . Whenever he thought of Serina, Apollo's vision would begin to blur with barely restrained tears. He could not permit himself to cry while on a mission, or in view of his shipmates. But sometimes, in his private quarters, the nightmare visions of Caprica burning would awaken him and, instinctively, he would reach out for Serina. And she would not be there. Then, where no one else could see or hear him, Apollo would permit himself to grieve. He wept for the loss of his wife, for the loss of Caprica and the other colony worlds, and for the loss of the close relationship he once had with his father.

  Apollo loved Adama and he knew that his father loved him, but they could never go back to the way things once had been, before Apollo won his commission, before the Cylon treachery that made them all orphans of the stars. The bond between father and son was there, as was the love, but the war meant that before Adama was his father, he was his commander. That placed an often painful, but necessary distance between them.

  Adama bore the awesome burden of responsibility for the survivors of the holocaust. Their welfare, their survival, came first. If that meant sending his son out to die, Adama would do it. It was his duty, as it was Apollo's to lay down his life, if necessary, to protect the fleet. It was something both father and son understood. Both of them accepted it. They had no choice.

  Starbuck, on the other hand, had his own ways of spending his time alone following a mission, of dealing with the pressure of their situation. In a way, it was not as hard for Starbuck as it was for Apollo, because Starbuck thrived on pressure. And Starbuck thrived on war. That was the most difficult thing for him to deal with. Starbuck was not a war lover. There was insanity in that. He despised the war with the Cylons with a fury unmatched by anyone's save, perhaps, Apollo's. Yet Starbuck was a warrior. He knew that it was what he had been born to be. During his off-duty hours, he liked to pass his time playing cards and drinking baharri with the other pilots; he enjoyed the company of women and they, in turn, liked him. But Starbuck knew that the only time he ever really came alive was when he was in the cockpit of his Viper, engaging Cylon fighters in the biggest gamble of them all, the deadly game of life and death.

  Like Apollo, Starbuck had been born during the war. He had never known anything else, none of the survivors had. It seemed to him that the human race had been at war with the Cylons since the dawn of time, fighting for their lives against an enemy dedicated to the total annihilation of the human race. He longed for peace. In spite of that, Starbuck often wondered if there would be a place for him in a time of peace. He was a warrior, a maverick, a gambler. In his quiet, private moments, he wrestled with the dilemma of his own existence. He wondered what it was about him that filled him with such vibrant vitality each time he entered combat. What was it that led him to take chances no one else would take? What strange, perverse aspect of his personality drove him to gamble with the Reaper, often taking foolhardy risks, just so he could revel in the thrill of beating Death? When sleep would not come, Starbuck would lie in his bunk, staring at the ceiling, wondering what sort of man lived for the risk of dying. He did not know the
answer, and sometimes he wasn't sure he wished to know. It was a side of him that no one knew about. To the crew of the Galactica, Lieutenant Starbuck was a carefree rogue, a highly skilled pilot, an inveterate gambler, a womanizer and a rake. The old military catchphrase "Never volunteer for anything" had become known to the men and women of the Galactica as "Starbuck's Law." Yet those who knew him well, especially those who served with him, knew that in spite of his reputation for selfishness and self-preservation, Starbuck somehow always wound up flying those missions that, as he would put it, no one else would take on a bet.

  It was a hard life. A life that had to be lived entirely for the present. They could allow themselves to have hopes for the future, but as warriors they had to live one centon at a time. They had to fly their missions with their eyes glued to their instruments, never allowing their attention to wander. To the younger men and women in the rag-tag fleet, especially the cadets, the life of a fighter pilot seemed glamorous, full of adventure. Starbuck and Apollo, both seasoned veterans of the war, knew better. War had no glamour. And the taste of adventure soured rapidly when the adrenaline rush that came with combat wore off and the profound exhaustion set in, the exhaustion and the shakes which every pilot experienced, but none would admit to, even to each other.

  Sitting in the cockpit of his Viper, Apollo handled the controls with an ease that came only after yahrens of steady practice. His gaze never left the scanner. He was locked into a mode of hair-trigger awareness and it felt good to know that Starbuck's Viper paced him. The two men functioned together like a well-oiled machine. Despite the differences in their personalities, as Viper pilots they complemented each other perfectly.

  They were nearing the return point of what had been an uneventful scouting patrol when something made the hairs at the base of Apollo's neck bristle. He shivered slightly, as if he had just felt something crawling there.