Battlestar Galactica 3 - The Tombs Of Kobol Read online

  A new BATTLESTAR GALACTICA adventure

  As the vast and gallant Galactica plunges into the

  terrifying emptiness of the Great Void, one crew-member

  has been left behind. Starbuck! Sent on a dangerous

  scouting mission, he has been lured into a trap

  by a renegade human-robot team who have an even

  more dangerous mission for him—betray humankind

  to the Cylon Invaders! Destroy the starfleet of his

  friends in the incredible battle by the ancient

  tombs that hold the final secret to the Lost Planet "earth!"

  CYLON CONTACT

  Starbuck's Viper disappeared into the void, and then his voice came back:

  "Targets!"

  Apollo requested further transmission, telling Starbuck to pull back; Starbuck apparently didn't hear, for he said that he was practically on top of them. Then suddenly:

  "I am on top of them!"

  There was a long silence filled with static, then his next communication:

  "Apollo, I'm in trouble!"

  THE TOMBS OF KOBOL

  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 3:

  THE TOMBS OF KOBOL

  A Berkley Book / published with

  MCA PUBLISHING, a Division of MCA Inc.

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Berkley edition / September 1979

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 1979 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: 0-425-04267-7

  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

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  EPILOGUE

  PROLOGUE

  Baltar distinctly remembered dying. Yes, he must be dead. The memory was quite vivid. If he opened his eyes now, what would he see? Nothingness? The afterlife? A vast drifting cloud-land where religion was being practiced daily? Or perhaps an eternity of flame and torture? Since he believed devoutly in all of these possibilities, he decided to wait a while before opening his eyes.

  Instead, he concentrated on recalling the events leading up to his death. The Imperious Leader of the Cylons had suddenly turned against him, reneging on a bargain that the Cylons had themselves originally proposed, a bargain whose lucrative terms had influenced Baltar to dupe his own people by pretending to be an envoy of the peace mission that veiled the actual Cylon invasion of the human race's twelve home worlds. After the Leader had told Baltar he no longer figured in the Cylons' plans, Baltar made a last desperate plea to save himself. However, the Leader merely listened to Baltar's protests passively, then he turned his massive body slightly toward a nearby executive officer and ordered that Baltar be taken away to be beheaded. Baltar knew he made a cowardly sight as the officer dragged him—screaming, squirming, crying—from the command chamber. He shuddered now as he remembered that he had indeed cried. Real tears, the first real tears that had fallen from his eyes since his overbearing and aristocratic mother had caught him in one of his earliest betrayals.

  The officer had dragged him down several corridors to the execution chamber which was located in the interior abyss of the base star. The executioner had immobilized Baltar's fierce bodily resistance by pressing against a pressure point in his neck and paralyzing his central nervous system. While Baltar lay helpless, the executioner showily tested the fine edge of his long-handled ax, deliberately angling its luminescent metal toward a bright electric torch, sending bright rays of light to pain Baltar's tear-ridden eyes. Satisfied that the blade was honed to its keenest edge, the executioner then raised the circular ax above Baltar's face (Cylons always beheaded with the victim staring up at his executioner) and Baltar closed his eyes. His body would have trembled uncontrollably had it not already been numbed. Above him he heard the whoosh of the ax beginning to fall. Then, nothing. His mind had remained a blank until just now, when consciousness had returned to him in a sudden rush.

  Thinking back to the horrifying sound of the ax descending toward his throat, he suddenly remembered an accompanying sound, a gentle underscoring to the brutal melody of the ax. A soft, velvety voice whispering: "Wait." Had he actually heard that? No, his memory must be playing tricks on him. There had been no—

  "I sense that you are no longer unconscious. Are you feeling better, Baltar?"

  That voice again! Soft, velvety, the same voice that had called wait.

  "Must you continue to keep your eyes closed? Or is the sealing of your organs of sight one of those curious and absurd human customs that—"

  "I am determined to keep my eyes shut," Baltar whispered. Then he realized the implications of that declaration. His eyes were shut. His eyes. On his head. He still had his head! He could not open and close his eyes if—

  He opened his eyes.

  "Ah, that's better." The soft voice dropped half an octave. "Well, at least marginally."

  Baltar, frightened, considered closing his eyes again. He had expected to see a typical Cylon, either a warrior in full regalia or that reptilian sort of beast they became when they rose to second or third brain status. But this creature was a different sort of monster altogether, a glittering, gleaming, tall creature which dazzled the eye with its ornate surfaces and gave off a metallic odor that was stronger and muskier than the normal Cylon battlesuit.

  Baltar struggled to focus attention on the individual parts of the creature. Lights flashed incessantly from its transparent bulblike head. Instead of a single red beam drifting back and forth across a helmet, the creature appeared to have two red lights smoothly moving counter to each other in a pair of slanted eye-sockets. Its mouth, a narrow slit, was lit from within by some sort of phosphorescent blue illumination. Tall and slim, it held its gloved hands primly in front of its unusually rich-colored red velvet robe. Baltar did not remember seeing a Cylon that looked anything like this one.

  The creature moved a step closer and part of its red velvet robe brushed against the back of Baltar's hand. The velvet was deep and luxuriant, as soft and rich as the creature's voice when it spoke again: "My name is Lucifer, a rather timid-sounding name, don't you think? It's an acronym, actually
."

  "Acronym for what?" Baltar said.

  "Oh, but I'm forbidden to provide you such information. It is part of the secret sector of our language."

  "Keep it to yourself then, I don't care."

  "Don't be petulant, Baltar. I have saved you from execution. Are you pleased?"

  "I don't know what I am. I seem to have a permanent muddle in my head. Let me think . . . You say your name is Lucifer?"

  Lucifer's head tilted slightly to one side.

  "My official name, yes. The name I may use with you, according to custom. I have a secret name. All Cylons do and, thanks to their generosity, I am allowed to adopt the custom also. You are not likely to discover my secret name. It is considered somewhat humiliating to allow that name to be—"

  "Stop your chattering for a moment. My head hurts. I can't keep up with your infernal talk."

  "You are fortunate to retain a head to hurt."

  "You stopped my execution."

  "Yes."

  "Why?"

  "For my own edification. I thought you might be useful."

  Baltar struggled to a sitting position. His body felt heavier than usual, and he thought he could sense his own extra fat trying to pin him to the floor.

  "What did your all-powerful Imperious Leader say to say about your saving me?"

  Lucifer paused, tilted his head the other direction. Baltar found it hard to focus upon Lucifer's eyes because the two red eyelights slid from side to side so asynchronously.

  "Imperious Leader does not know you survive. I had the centurion guard return with a message that you were duly executed and dispatched through a garbage chute into space."

  "A garbage chute! How dare you?! I should kill you now."

  "No need to try. I cannot be killed. Any damage you do to me can be easily repaired. Further, if you must know, the garbage-chute solution is still viable, and I would suggest that you cultivate me by using one of your many devious human methods. It would be immensely preferable to your throwing your—may I say—considerable weight around to no avail."

  Baltar nodded. Better to wait and watch for opportunities. No point in antagonizing the only being who was on his side.

  "Yes, you're right. What will your Imperious Leader say when he finds out what you've done, Lucifer?"

  "He will be . . . displeased. But by then he will have been persuaded to my plan."

  "You are confident, it seems."

  "Uncertainty is an unappealing state. I do not approve of it."

  There was a strange rhythm in Lucifer's speech, but Baltar could not get a fix on it. He did not sound like a Cylon, that was certain. Wait a moment, what was it the creature said back when he was nattering about secret names?

  "You seemed to say you were not a Cylon, Lucifer."

  "That is correct. I am not, to my everlasting regret. I am one of their constructs, a development of one of their war plans, an ingenious one as it happens. A walking computer, or ambulatory cybernetic sentience, who worked out a bit better and more efficiently than they had planned." Baltar squinted his eyes, trying to find a clue in Lucifer's garishly illuminated face as to whether or not the creature was telling the truth.

  "You mean that's all you are, a computer?"

  "That's all? You humans have a bizarre scale of values. I am a product of a cybernetic revolution more significant and worthy than the inefficient and somewhat repulsive development stages your species went through in its own evolution. Do you know that, millenniums ago, human beings were just—ah, I can't bear to think of it—humans were merely—"

  "That's enough! I will not sit here and hold colloquy with a machine."

  "You are most dimwitted, Baltar." Lucifer seemed to sigh. "I shall really have to work with you. Ah, well, all projects are more satisfying if they are difficult."

  "I don't follow you, Lucifer."

  "It may not be likely that you ever shall. My dear count, I am not just a machine. I can manufacture machines!. Machines are without souls. I have a soul."

  "That's patently ridiculous. How could a computer have a soul?"

  "I created it myself."

  "You must be insane."

  "That is merely your judgment, and a much too emotional one at that. However, I shall discount such outbursts. You will remain here in my quarters. You are still exhausted, so rest. You will begin your training program tomorrow."

  "Training program? Why a training program?"

  Lucifer's two red lights stopped for a moment, and seemed to stare right at Baltar. The creature's metallic odor became more unpleasant, as if some acrid machine oil had been added to it.

  "Look at you. Overweight, out of condition, flaccid from too much indulgent living. Your body is as exhausted as your brain. Both must be raised to prime levels if my project is to succeed."

  "I will not be part of any—"

  Whatever Baltar had intended to say, it ended in a weak sputter, as Lucifer turned without a goodbye and slid toward a doorway and out.

  In the following days Baltar thought he might die from Lucifer's training program. Better to be minus a head, he thought, than to have every bone in your body shattered by demands that were never meant for it to fulfill.

  As it turned out, Lucifer could do exactly what he had said he could—he could manufacture machines. And what machines! They would interrupt Baltar's nightmares for the rest of his life. Every morning Lucifer stretched out Baltar, his unwilling victim, on a racklike device whose intricate mechanical extensions forced the paunchy human to perform pushups when set one way, situps when set another. What Baltar really hated was that nothing could stop him from doing these calisthenics.

  After each session on the rack, he was transported to the shapeless room, where he was bounced from one surface to another, generally landing on his ample stomach. Lucifer said the room was designed to erode weight from the middle.

  Then there was a treadmill device. When set in operation, the dull-gray metallic walls of the base-star chamber faded out and a vast outdoors seemed to surround Baltar. His goal, he soon discovered, was to outrun a simulated human form in an apparent roadrace. At first the simulacrum beat him easily. However, as his body got into condition, Baltar began to gain regularly on it. Then, during a session in which he fully expected to emerge the winner, and had prepared a victory smile for the moment his newly muscular chest broke the tape, the simulacrum conquered again—easily. Baltar complained to Lucifer, who explained that the runner had been reset from slow-pace to normal. Later, when Baltar's speed had improved to the runner's programmed level, it would be reset again, this time to fast speed. Lucifer's revelations increased Baltar's ferocious determination to beat his simulated opponent. His desire to win was augmented when Lucifer introduced his next variation—remolding the bland standard face of the runner to resemble Baltar's most hated enemy, Commander Adama of the Battlestar Galactica.

  It was bad enough that he had to race against a figure that looked like Adama, even worse that the simulation was a younger version of the Galactican skipper. The Adama looked much like the real article had looked when Baltar had first known him. They had both been cadets at the academy. His hatred for Adama had begun at that time. Although they were in different classes, they often met during Academy Chorus practice. Adama's vibrant bass-baritone brought him more praise (and more attention from young women) than Baltar's rather shaky tenor. When Adama received notice by consistently achieving the highest grades, Baltar hated him even more. The final blow came when Baltar was asked by Core Faculty and Cadet Council to leave the academy for tinkering with the test-computer. (His defense had been that he hadn't even been cheating. He said he'd just wanted to program in a few jokes to lighten the load of his fellow cadets.) The academy overseers had agreed to hush up the scandal and officially provide a health-related excuse. To make matters worse, Adama had interceded on Baltar's behalf, an act that doubled Baltar's already fierce loathing for him.

  Adrift, no worthwhile career to employ his talents in, B
altar chose the only course open to a youth whose main ability was deceit—politics. Although he had managed to acquire immense wealth and to even gain a seat on the Council of Twelve, he had otherwise been a political failure, too. Every committee he wanted was denied him, every key profit-making position awarded to lesser talents. Bitterness drove him to conniving with the enemy, and he had increased his fortune threefold with many sinister but scrupulously devious wartime deals. His misanthropy increased with his fortune. Finally, he had closed his treasonous last deal—selling out the entire human race. Even that had been marred by the quick-witted actions of Adama in assembling the human survivors. Always, it seemed, Adama interfered with Baltar's life. For once he had to beat the Galactica's commander, even if it meant only outrunning his lookalike in a fake footrace.

  At last, with a fine backstretch sprint, Baltar did win. And at the fastest speed-setting. When he broke the tape, he looked back at the simulated Adama, and was disappointed not to see a frown break the ice of the cold, grim face. Baltar could not even work up the victory smile he had so looked forward to.

  Lucifer greeted him at the finish line, and said he was now ready to confront Imperious Leader.

  The Leader, dark and gray-looking atop his enormous pedestal, did not seem at all surprised to find that Baltar had survived.

  "We have need of you again, Baltar," the Leader said.

  Baltar managed an obsequious bow. He was pleased at being able to maneuver his body without feeling many folds of fat shift along his frame like drifting, bumping ice floes.

  "Always happy to serve," he said.

  "Do not toy with me, human. Accept your orders silently. We have not yet succeeded in capturing and destroying the fleeing human fleet. My aides have speculated that our near-misses have occurred because of our inability to deal with an alien mind. It has been suggested that a human in command of a base-star, espcially one already allied with us, might just be able to succeed where we have failed."

  "Sir, I'd consider it an honor to—"