Note For this to make sense, you should read Taking Shield: Starbuck and Taking Shield: Apollo first.   Manual Dexterity is set around 10 sectars later, and gives some back history to why the skilful Shield Warrior is the same klutz who drops electronic devices all over Cylon base ships in Hand of God…

There's a mention of Jacks – smugglers and pirates and people who generally have trouble obeying the law. 

ORIGINAL CHARACTERS :  Joss, Apollo's much older, very rich boyfriend; Rosie, (aka Shield Lieutenant Rosalyn), Apollo's Lieutenant on the Shield Ship Hyperion; and Acer, a solium miner and ex-infantryman.  Acer also appears in Mapping the Genome which isn't part of the Shield universe--so this is a different Acer, really. Brief appearance by Infantry Lieutenant Grant, who's a regular inhabitant of my versions of the BSG universe and a mention of Lt Chivers, the Hype's ensign.

 

Section One : Putting Out The Lights

 

Two Vipers curved in from the battlestar's flank, cutting across the bow of the destroyer following in Galactica's wake. The other ships of the First Fleet, the frigates and corvettes, were further back behind the Patroklus, faintly lit by their own navigation lights and little more than greyish shapes against the bright starfield. Nearer to hand, only a few miles away, one of Patroklus' own patrols cut in from the other side, heading back to their infinitely more cramped quarters on the destroyer.

It hadn't been a joint patrol. The small squadron on the destroyer rarely flew patrols with the Galactica's own, although if it came to a pitched battle and the entire First Fleet was committed, they flew and died together then. Under less terminal circumstances, there was a more-or-less friendly rivalry, characterised on the Galactica's side with a kindly pity. Poor sods on the Patroklus: they weren't battlestar pilots. Although, admitted Starbuck in one of his more generous and egalitarian moods, he supposed even a lesser Viper pilot could aspire to greatness.

"But not, of course, reach it," he remarked to his wingman after they'd landed in Galactica's cavernous Alpha bay and were settling into the decontamination chamber for the obligatory clean up session.

"Mmmn," said Boomer, concentrating on the big plasma screen set into the wall.

A recent innovation to keep them occupied during the decontamination procedures, the screens were thought by the Management - otherwise known as the command team - to be an excellent opportunity to communicate important messages to a captive audience. Propaganda plasmas, Starbuck thought, declaring that he'd rather take the time to be quiet and relax after a patrol. Which would be fine, agreed Boomer, except that the only time Starbuck was known to be quiet was when he'd been gagged with his own flight jacket and had had his helmet jammed on backwards over the top to muffle the squealing.

Well, that might have been true once. Once Starbuck would have been very loud indeed. Once he would have protested loudly if he wasn't the focus of all hearts and minds around him, but often now he let it slide. It was becoming a habit, Starbuck allowing someone to give him only partial attention, the way Boomer was now. He wasn't subdued, exactly, but sometimes he found it harder than others to be the nonchalant maverick - the resident subversive, someone had called him, sectars ago now - and although he cherished the title, it wasn't always the role he wanted to play. Instead of demanding that Boomer concentrate on him and him alone, he shrugged and sat quietly, occupied with his own thoughts, principally bitter-sweet reflections about wanting something you couldn't have.

Sometimes he found it a little worrying, the change in him. He wasn't sure about growing up at last.

For a centon or two there was silence, then Boomer sighed. "It seems to me that all we do these days is fall back. If we give up much more space, we'll all end up sitting on each other's laps."

"Huh?"

"The news, Starbuck. Don't you ever watch the news?"

Starbuck glanced at the screen. The internal vid-channel screened ship news, items on everything from the orders of the day to the games played in the Galactica's own Triad league - Starbuck and Boomer were going great guns for the championship, having just defeated a hotly favoured security team - but on the centar, every centar, they broadcast the main headlines from Inter-Colony News, ICN. It was just on the centar. Starbuck and Boomer were now officially off duty.

"Only when the prettier newscasters are on," said Starbuck, giving Boomer's question a little attention. "I don't like that one much."

"Serina's beautiful!" protested Boomer.

"She's pretty enough, but she's not sexy. Now Alissa's sexy."

"You have no class at all. Alissa just has bigger - " Boomer gestured towards his chest.

Starbuck smiled as he mimicked Boomer, but with far more exaggeration, momentarily energised. "Oh my, yes."

"But that's beside the point," said Boomer, hastily. "Be serious. We're falling back again."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. They're evacuating Telnos."

Starbuck looked at the screen with a lacklustre eye, his faint interest in the mammary development of ICN's newscasters already faint and fading. "Never heard of it," he said, at last.

"Me neither, but it looks like the Tinheads will own it this time tomorrow. All the colonists are being pulled off."

Starbuck watched for another centon, trying to work up some interest. Film footage of Infantry herding sullen-looking farming types onto shuttles didn't do it for him, and he thought that civilian newscasters, Serina included, looked ludicrous in battledress, as if they were playing at soldiers. In the end, he shrugged.

"Sorry, Boomer," he said, keeping it pleasant. "I can't begin to imagine the circumstances in which I'd even consider beginning giving a damn. Sorry." He grinned, forcing something of the old Starbuck back to the surface. "Now, my friend, on to more important things. What *are* you going to do about trying to win back all that money I took from you yesterday?"

 

 

Telnos stank, literally and metaphorically. Shield Captain Apollo couldn't really work out which offended him the most. Sometimes it was the sheer physical awfulness of Telnos that got to him; sometimes the spiritual desolation of being at war on one of the most unprepossessing planets in the galaxy. After only five days, Telnos could have that effect on even the most equitable of tempers, and not even Apollo would claim that for himself.

At that centon, as he sank down to rest his back against a tree, it was the real stench that was annoying him. He and half of his small Shield company - the rest held the Hype in close orbit under Ensign Chivers' command, flying patrols in their Raptors and watching for the Cylons - were dealing with what had to be the worst part of the planet. Festering marshlands stretched in every direction for what seemed for ever, a series of shallow pools, seldom more than a few inches deep, threaded through with thin strips of what passed on Telnos for dry land. The thick, glutinous mud of the pools smelled vile. Apollo thought that there was a strong smell of decay underlying the scent of vegetation, that there was something rotting and foul underneath the rampant, venomously green plant-life, as if it was feeding off the decaying corpse of some leviathan that had long ago sunk into the mud.

"Either you've been taken with a romantic fit, which is probably hormonal," said his lieutenant, dryly, when he offered this as serious analysis, " - or these bloody little flies have given you a fever. Either way we'd better get you off planet before you start writing bad poetry." She pushed her helmet back off her forehead and scratched vigorously at the midge bites. "God, they're even in my hair!"

Marshes the galaxy over had but one function: to be perfect breeding grounds for nasty little insects. There were two types that afflicted the troopers. One seemed pretty harmless, if noisy. Night and day, without ceasing, there was a creaking and whistling noise from every hummock of grass, every thicket, every reed patch. Never managing to catch sight of their aural tormentors, even the hardened Shield warriors were half out of their minds with frustration and lack of sleep. The other insects - tiny, flying, stinging, ever-hungry gnats - were potentially far more serious. There were billions of them, hanging in dark, roiling clouds under the tree cover.

"Whatever did they live on before I got here to add spice and variety to their diet?" Rosie pulled her helmet back on, settling it so far down on her forehead in an attempt to keep the midges out of her hair that she looked like a small torpedo. She sprayed insect repellent around herself in vicious little bursts.

Apollo didn't dare smile. For some reason she was far more bothered by them than he was. Maybe that was hormonal, too - or pheromonal, at least. "As long as they continue to prefer your spice to mine, I can live with it," he said. "No-one's got sick yet."

"Yet," said Rosie, with unusual gloom.

She was right to be pessimistic. This was not a healthy planet and undeniably the illegal colonists they were clearing out, had got sick. They all - colonists and rescuers alike - would be spending a lot of time in decontamination when they finally got off planet, maybe even days of quarantine. No one wanted to be famous for importing some deadly new infection into the main Colonies.

The Shield warriors had found and cleared more than one small settlement in the five days that they'd been on Telnos, ignoring the colonists' protests at being forcibly and swiftly removed from their farms. Several of the people they'd evacuated had been sick with a low grade fever, but Apollo hadn't time for niceties. His job was to locate the settlements and then whistle up the Infantry for transports to get the colonists off Telnos and onto the ships that would take them back into Colonial territory. If some of the colonists had to be carried to the transports and were sick all the way up to the ships, then the Infantry - and the colonists - just had to get on with it, just as they'd all have to get on with being quarantined as a result.

Apollo's view on all this was quite simple. If people were stupid enough to set up illegal and unauthorised colonies on a desolate hell-hole, then the consequences were entirely down to them. What he objected to was them dragging him and his people into it. He said so, rather forcibly.

"Gives the crew someone to blame," said Rosie, killing another few hundred gnats with noxious chemicals. "Other than you, of course."

Apollo wriggled to get a little more comfortable under the dubious shelter of the tree. It was, of course, raining. It was always raining. If the rain had brought any cool refreshment with it, that might have been a blessing. But Telnos' rain was more like a permanent warm mist, smelling as foul as the mud.

It meant that all of them were damp and hot, uncomfortably sticky and sweaty, all of the time. He could only wonder at the reasoning that had brought the colonists to choose Telnos to create their religious paradise. He could understand why the miners were there, twenty miles north of him, in the hills. At least there, where the marshes gradually gave way to solid land, there were some economic arguments for settlements where they could lever solium out of the deep mines and sell it to the Colonial governments. The climate was better too.

"Why did they choose to set up home here, do you think?" asked Rosie, echoing his own thoughts.

Apollo slapped at an adventurous gnat or ten, settling on his neck for a snack. Silently, Rosie proffered the can.

Apollo added his mite to reducing the insect population. "Apart from escaping from the dread hand of a secular and therefore profane Government, d'you mean? The only reason I can think of is that nowhere else in the known universe offered as much opportunity to mortify their bodies and consequently purify their souls."

"Ah," said Rosie. "I thought you'd have a theory. That religious upbringing of yours, I expect."

Apollo snorted. His family of patrician Kobolians didn't have a lot in common with these fundamentalist colonists. Even his father, so religious that he sweated prayers, wouldn't be able to understand the mentality that had brought these dozens of families to this remote outpost, and caused them to renounce all modern technology when they got there.

"And I suppose it explains why they settled in a swamp," she said.

"It doesn't smell good, but it's fertile. If you're determined to regress to the stone age, it's as well to choose somewhere where the crops that you put in with such back breaking manual labour will at least grow." Apollo looked around him and snorted again. He'd never had much patience with religion. "Idiots."

"How long do we have before the Cylons get here?"

"God alone knows. They can't be more than a day away, if that."

"I can't see them staying here long," said Rosie, practically. "They'd rust solid in a secton."

"They'll stay long enough to get the solium." Apollo leaned his head back against the tree and closed his eyes against the strong greenish light. "And what does the Empire care if it loses a few thousand centurions in the process? All they have to do is crank up the manufacturing plant and they've covered their losses in a sectar."

"We should stay and fight," said a Shield Warrior from the shelter of a nearby tree.

Apollo didn't respond, but he had a lot of sympathy for the man's views. Humanity was slowly falling back from the frontier, securing an inner core of systems around the main Colonies themselves. It bothered Apollo. He was no warmonger, but he'd never yet heard of a war that was won from a state of defence. There'd been several lively debates with some of his colleagues in the Strategy Unit about it. Consolidation, they called it. Apollo was more concerned about ossification, and the difficulty they would have, if they gave up too much ground, in ever finding the strength to retake it.

At the same time, he did realise just how unimportant Telnos itself was. It didn't sit on any of the major space routes so losing it wouldn't threaten the main Twelve Colonies or any of the many smaller subsidiary colonies, and despite the presence of economically viable amounts of solium, Telnos didn't have enough natural resources to offer to make it worth fighting for.

He'd told his crew all this, in the pre-mission briefing, but he could understand their frustration at the limited job they had. He knew they'd do it to the best of their ability. They'd get the illegal colonists and the miners off, and leave it to the Cylons to flounder through the mud to conquer the place.

They'd do it. But no-one said they had to like it.

 

 

They were clearing their eighth settlement when the Raider came.

It had fallen into a pattern. Walk into a settlement with Rosie at his side, the small company of Shield Warriors at his back, fifteen strong here on Telnos. Greet the patriarch in charge politely - it was always a bearded man, he noted. Accept dubious and half hearted blessings and respond in the ritual Kobolian style that was ingrained in him from his childhood, and that usually surprised the patriarch into granting him a reluctant hearing and giving him, as someone who knew the words, at least some benefit of the doubt. Talk to the adults, persuading the colonists that it was time to leave. Check unobtrusively, while so doing, that Rosie had sent the warriors to ring the little houses, interdicting the settlement and ensuring that the families couldn't break out: they'd learned that lesson the hard way at the first settlement, when over twenty adults and children had scattered into the marshes and it had taken Apollo half a day of slipping and sliding through stinking mud to round them up. Herd colonists, persuaded or not and more or less reluctant, into the landrams, adapted as hovercraft to deal with the marsh. Accept the ironic congratulations of the Infantry escort in the spirit in which Lieutenant Grant offered them. Move on to the next settlement.

Repeat, ad nauseum.

It had taken on a dull monotony, and he hated it. He hated the planet, he hated the marshes, and he hated what he saw as cock-eyed religious mania that had brought these people here in the first place. While a part of him persisted in admiring their tenacity and independence, a bigger part of him worried about leaving people, even religious fanatical type people, behind in this place when they had to abandon it. Anyone they left behind would be as good as dead. And he knew they wouldn't get them all. There wasn't time to get them all.

That made him angry enough. What he found in that first settlement, and every settlement after that, made him angrier still. The primitive conditions were enough to sicken any one who had a claim to being even half-civilised. He hated the stench, he hated the lack of any sort of amenity, and he hated the thought of the back-breaking labour that every man, woman and child put in to make this way of life even slightly viable. Especially, he hated the thought of the labour put in by the grubby, stick-thin children who should have been in school, or, God forbid, playing rather than praying.

So by the time he - and the Raider - reached the eighth settlement, the patience and politeness were wearing perilously thin. When the Cylons arrived, Apollo was in bitter dispute with the patriarch of the group of four families who'd built their little hamlet on one of the larger patches of relatively dry land. The bearded and rigidly upright man reminded him irresistibly of his father: never short of a Book quotation or some prophet's wilder foreseeing to back up his arguments why God should do exactly as he wanted Him to. Of course, his father thankfully didn't have the beard.

And, thought Apollo, a little contritely, as he endured another rant - his eighth in five days about the imperative laid down in the Book that man and, although not specifically mentioned, presumably woman and progeny, depend upon the labour of his hands in order to be closer to the will and voice of God - he was being unfair to his father. Adama's deeply held religion was parsecs away from this blind fanaticism. Adama was religious, yes, but hardly in this maniac's league. There was a vast difference between the cold, ascetic, terrible beauty of the high Kobolian services and this primitive stinking marshland.

Apollo forbore to make judgements about which might be closer to God. He had enough trouble dealing with fanaticism, without stoking the fires of religious controversy. Still, his problems didn't seem to match the trouble the male colonists had dealing with Rosie. Their women appeared to be silent, obedient child bearers, if the numbers of children in any settlement were anything to go by, and Rosie spelled danger to this convenient arrangement. Apart from the subversive role model she offered, she could have decked any one of the colonists, one handed, and the confidence that gave her made the men uncomfortable. While it amused both her and Apollo, it didn't help persuade these people to be sensible, so a low profile for Rosie became part of the pattern, too. She'd stay back, managing the interdict, while Apollo gave himself a headache arguing religion with whoever was in charge. Apollo knew which one of them had drawn the short straw.

So he was faintly surprised when she broke this now-familiar pattern to jog up to him, her face set. Holding up a hand to stop the farmer speaking, and ignoring the man's outrage at being interrupted by a mere woman, Apollo turned to her.

"They're through," she said, tersely.

"Great."

"Chivers says it's a base star and a whole slew of raiders. All of our ships are engaging, but they're outnumbered, even with the destroyers there protecting the infantry transports."

"No time, then."

"No. And the tinheads will pick up the activity at the landing area, if nothing else."

"No time at all." Apollo said it calmly, consideringly, when what he wanted to do was kick a few things in frustration. Preferably the idiot in the beard who'd put so many people in danger.

"We've had the recall signal."

"Where's the Infantry?"

"Grant's on his way. The landrams will be here in less than five centons." Rosie glanced past him to the assembled families. "They'll pick up that, too."

And the Cylons would. The settlements and individual homesteads themselves would be harder to spot - abandoning technology meant that at least you weren't leaking revealing power signatures all over the place - but both the landing area and the moving transports would show up on even the most basic of scanners, like beacons in the night.

Time to go.

Apollo nodded and turned back to the colonist. "Get your people together. We leave as soon as the transports arrive."

The man drew himself up, throwing back his shoulders, evidently reckoning on his superior height and bulk to help him face down Apollo. "The Lord spake unto Jonas and Said, Work thou, and by the labour of thine hands shalt thou glorify Me and glorious shall be the fruits thereof, and thou shalt know Paradise and drink of milk and honey..."

"I'm sure of it," said Apollo. "No-one's going to stop you labouring, friend, and if you're still here when the Cylons arrive they'll make damn sure you don't stop. But there won't be a lot of glory. Not a lot of milk and honey, either."

"We are protected by God," said the man, stiffly.

"Actually, you're protected by me."

The man glared. "He will not allow the ungodly to harm us."

"Well, look on me as His means to stop them." Apollo raised his voice to reach the group of thirty or so people grouped behind the patriarch. "The Cylons just came into orbit and they could be here any time. You have four centons to get what you need, and only what you need. You'll have to leave everything else - we don't have room for it."

They stared back at him, faces as expressionless as a herd of bovines. Even the children. No-one moved.

Apollo kept his eyes on the group. "Get ready to leave."

Nothing.

"Fine," said Apollo, losing what little patience he had. "Then you go as you are."

"We won't be going anywhere," said the Beard. "The Lords led us here."

"I'm not arguing any more," said Apollo, cold as his father could be sometimes. "When those transports arrive you are all are getting onto them, if I have to use force. Am I understood?"

The man blinked. Apollo turned away to rejoin Rosie before he could get another mouthful of religious claptrap spouted at him.

"You're handling this with a little less than your usual charm," said Rosie, as soon as they were out of earshot.

"You don't normally admit that I have any charm." Apollo glanced back, to see the patriarch in the middle of the assembled families, talking rapidly.

"You don't," she said, with a dry significance.

"That's a bit harsh," he said, wounded.

"So were you, Apollo. You usually manage to control that temper with civilians."

"I don't like them." But she was right, and he knew it. It wasn't professional to let his antipathy to them show so much. They were his to guard and protect and he shouldn't let his feelings get in the way. It was a job, like any other. Feelings shouldn't come into it.

"They're a bit plebeian, I expect," said Rosie, sweetly.

That startled him. "Plebeian?"

Rosie swept an arm out, indicating the venomously green marshland around them. "I mean, it's not the Temple of Kobol, is it?"

Apollo scowled. "And here was me disliking the fact that they'd condemn me to hellfire without a second thought if they knew about Joss. And I really, really hate what they've done here."

Rosie's disapproving expression softened, showed understanding and bewilderment all at once. It wasn't his first statement that needed clarification. "And what's that, apart from getting free of the government to go their own way, free from interference?"

"They've been here - what, five yahrens? They were told not to colonise this place, that it was too close to the Cylons, but they took no notice. I don't care about the adults - they were able to make the decision for themselves. But how many kids have we picked up since we got here? How many kids have been dragged into danger because their parents are too blinded by religion to think straight?" Apollo turned back to look at the families. "Look at them. The kids are scrawny and undersized, they're sick half the time, and I'll bet they've had no schooling since they got here. But I'll also bet that they've been working on the land since they learned to walk. It's five yahrens of a deprivation that amounts to child abuse, Lieutenant Rosalyn, not a bloody class war."

"Apollo," she said.

He shrugged, throwing up his hands in defeat. "But you're right. Who am I to judge?"

"I'm sorry." She looked at him thoughtfully, then nodded. "You're taking this to heart, a bit."

He shrugged, eyes on the thin, underfed children for a micron. "I don't like to think about the kind of lives they've had here."

"You'll make a good Dad, someday." She paused, then said with perfect timing, "Of course, it'll have to come out of a test tube. I know."

Despite himself, he laughed. "Maybe I'll adopt."

"Or get adopted," she said, and grinned. "I won't tell."

"Won't tell what?"

"That there's a soft heart under that charmless exterior."

He grinned back, reluctantly, unable to be angry with her for long.

She put her hand on his arm. "I'm sorry," she said again.

Apollo sighed. She was in the right: she shouldn't have to apologise to him. "I'll be good. You know what's really bothering me? We know we haven't got all the families, and now we're out of time. How many kids are we going to be leaving behind today? We could have got them all off if these people hadn't been so fanatical."

"I know," she soothed. "But that's not our doing. We're just doing the best we can in the circumstances." Her grip tightened. "What's up, Apollo? You've not been like yourself for sectars."

"Haven't I?"

"No. You're not usually this bad tempered, but you've not been our old Apollo since that mission you did with your father. There's something on your mind. Is it that? Your dad?"

He shook his head. No, it wasn't Adama. "No, not that. Like I said, we got a lot of things sorted out. Things are pretty good with Dad now."

"Joss, then?"

"Ah, well, that's different," acknowledged Apollo. "Things with Joss are... difficult."

He felt the familiar little kick of nausea that he got whenever he thought about how difficult things were. His lover of more than eight yahrens was having a very hard time adjusting to the fact that Apollo wasn't the impressionable seventeen-yahren old that Joss had seduced all those yahrens before, and over the last few sectars Apollo had abandoned all the ruses and compromises that had so far dulled this particular realisation for Joss. Apollo hadn't the patience any more, and Joss's epiphany was painful for the both of them as they adjusted - or not, as the case may be. Apollo was adjusting. He wasn't so sure about Joss.

It meant that often he didn't want to go home, not if it meant going home to fights and histrionics and more accusations of selfishness. His home leaves were bracketed in resentful, sulky silences or screaming matches. Joss may have found the dramatics recreational, but they were anything but restful.

"I had to grow up, sometime," said Apollo.

"And he thinks you did it to spite him?" Rosie knew him better than anyone, was closer and dearer to him than his sister. She didn't know everything, but she knew a lot. She knew Joss, and she knew how demanding Apollo's home life could be.

"Nail. Head. The. On. Hitting. The." Apollo grinned at her. "Any order you like."

She laughed. " If you're grown up now, what does that make him?"

"I dunno. Older than me?"

"Exactly. A whole heap older than you. You're not twenty six yet, Pollo. Time to think about that."

"He's not that old!" protested Apollo.

"He's more than forty," said Rosie, ruthless. Her tone implied wrinkles and a general decrepitude that no-one could really apply to Apollo's elegant, sophisticated Joss. "And he's not making you happy."

Another nail tapped firmly on the head. Apollo sighed. "That's mutual."

"Then think about that, too."

And if it was only that simple. But eight yahrens before, a frightened and hurt seventeen yahren old had given up home and family for his lover. The way things had turned out, that act of defiant bravado seemed neither necessary nor irretrievable, but it was still a huge emotional wrench that was only just coming into some sort of perspective. But even so, even with his determination to live his own life and stop clinging to Joss as a substitute for everything he'd once given up, he had too much invested in his lover just to walk away. And he loved Joss. He still loved Joss.

It was just that he loved someone else more.

"And what else is it? You've always been able to cope with Joss before now."

They were interrupted by the roar of engines, four landrams busting through the thick marsh undergrowth to skim towards them on little beds of air, vapour roiling from underneath the thick rubber skirts over the hovercraft engines.

Apollo turned towards them. He paused, watching them come to a halt, and said, over his shoulder, long legs covering the ground back to his bearded protagonist, "You've always said I was spoiled, remember? Rich family, rich boyfriend, never wanting for anything because I always got what I wanted? Well, it doesn't always work out. Not this time. There's something I want and I can't get it. I'll never be able to get it."

"And you're having trouble adjusting?" She came to join him, half walking, half trotting towards the group of colonists. "Welcome to the ranks of the normal, Apollo."

"Normal?"

"It's normal for us poorer folks to be deprived of something we want. Usually we just can't afford it." She nodded over to the rigid, offended-looking patriarch of this little group of colonists. "Our friend over there would tell you a little deprivation is good for your soul."

Apollo snorted. He seemed to be doing it a lot on this God-forsaken planet. Telnos was playing merry hell with his already fragile social graces. "What soul? Our friend over there would deny I had one."

 

 

"We don't have very long."

"I know." Apollo looked from the Infantry lieutenant to the sullen, resentful-looking families. "Start herding them in."

"We'll be pushed to fit everyone in, including you lot," said Lieutenant Grant. "I don't suppose you want to walk back?"

Apollo gave him a cold look, and Grant grinned. In the last five days, Apollo had learned that nothing much fazed Grant.

"You'll have to ride on top, then," said Grant.

"S'okay," said Apollo, going back to join the Beard. "The view's better."

The colonist viewed him with deep suspicion. "We've discussed it. We remain here."

"You're getting into the landrams, friend. The Cylons will kill you."

"We don't believe that they're here. This is some ploy by the Council to get us to return."

"Is he mad?" asked Grant, quietly.

Apollo ignored the lieutenant, shushing him with a gesture. "You've been here for five yahrens and no-one's bothered with you until now," he said, forcing himself to be patient, aware of Rosie's eyes on him.

"They didn't want us here."

"No, because it's so close to the War Zone. But they didn't make a move on you for five yahrens. They didn't care about your colony until it became clear that the Cylons were on their way. If the Council just wanted you to move, they wouldn't have waited this long to do it."

The man stared at him, doubt in his eyes.

"Think about it," said Apollo softly.

"I - I don't know," the man said, with a doubt that sat oddly with his religious certainty of a few centons before.

"The Cylons are here, friend," said Grant. "It's not a trick."

It came, then; the Raider.

It looked like a blunted arrow head, rounded at the nose and with swept back convex wings, a dark dull grey against the paler greyish white cloud cover. It screamed overhead, shattering the normal sounds of the marsh like a hammer smashing glass, drowning the dry creaking of the invisible insects and sending flocks of wading birds flapping into the sky in panic. So far as Apollo could judge, the gnats ignored it.

Eyes narrowed, he tracked it over the clearing, freezing for just an instant with the shock of its sudden appearance. It was barely past him when he reacted, swinging round to face his troopers.

"Everyone in the 'rams! Move it! Run!"

It was coming around for another pass. Even though the trees blocked it from view, he could tell from the sound of the engines that it was turning and banking, coming in for a strafing run. They'd been seen. Laser in his left hand, Apollo grabbed at a woman's arm with his right, jerking her out of her dazed terror.

"Run!" he screamed, pushing her towards the landrams. He caught up the small child clutching at her skirts and started running. "They're coming back. Run, fuck it! Rosie!"

For an instant it was stunned chaos. The Beard and the other colonists stared in blank surprise, then several of the women reached understanding and action almost simultaneously. Dragging at their children, they started to run, some grim faced with resolve, others with features slackening in terror, mouths already opening to scream. Apollo's troopers were moving almost before he yelled at them, trained to a hair, knowing what they had to do. Within microns they had the colonists surrounded, pushing and shoving them until they all broke into a jog trot for the landrams.

"Grant! Gunners!"

"We're on it!" Grant yelled back.

On every landram, a khaki-clad Infantry soldier scrambled into the gun turret, firing up the laser cannon, swinging the big barrels over towards the sound of the approaching Raider. Others jumped down from the 'rams to throw open the doors. Apollo hurled the child bodily into the nearest 'ram, the mother scrambling in after her. The little girl was screeching with fright, but Apollo had no time to do anything but push the mother in hard and start on stuffing the next child in.

Hurry, hurry, hurry... he could hear the scream of the Raider's engines, drowning out everything but the voice inside his head. He jammed his laser back in its holster - useless thing that it was against a Raider - and ran back to help chivvy the panicking colonists into the dubious safety of the landrams.

As it breasted the trees, the Raider began firing, two lines of laser charges from the twin guns in its blunted nose, cutting two streaks of burning death and destruction with the machine-like precision and perfection that was the Cylon idea of existence. One of the little wooden houses went up first as the twin lines of charges ripped through it, exploding into nothingness, blasting fragments of wood and metal all over the clearing. The second round of laser shells caught at the edges of the fleeing group of pitiful, frail human bodies.

"Bring it down!!" screamed Apollo, before the percussion of the nearest shell threw him off his feet and sucked all the air from his lungs. Flat on his back, he whooped painfully for breath, the next shells well beyond him, nearer the landrams. He heard the deep boom of the landram guns, answering back, and the Raider was gone again, and again came the sound of its engines straining against the thick air as it banked and turned and headed back towards them for another run.

He rolled over, pushing at the soggy ground to get himself to his knees, and then somehow up onto his feet. He wasn't hurt, but his knees were trembling as he started running, heading for the obscene, tumbled mass of people who'd been caught too close to one of the shells.

The Beard, dead, the once hot and fervid eyes staring blindly up at the sky. A woman near him, dead, her body horribly mutilated, her thin, pretty face untouched, expression calm and serene. The children, dead, small bodies twisted. One child died as he reached her, and he had no time to do anything but let some closed off part of his mind note the little death as he caught up another small, bloody body that still showed some signs of life.

"It's coming back!" he roared at the Infantry as he ran for the 'rams, hearing the child's distressed whimpering even over the top of the Raider's engines. "Get ready!"

Troopers all around him were getting back onto their feet, pulling the colonists up with them. Someone, Rosie, pulled the child's body from his arms and he turned back to the dead and wounded.

Another child, dead. Another woman, dead, body curved protectively and uselessly around the child's, her back an open, bloody mess. He could see the vertebrae of her backbone, gleaming white in the red. One of his warriors, his face creased with what looked like outrage. Another woman. And another child. All dead.

And Grant, rolling over onto his front and trying to push himself up onto his knees, as Apollo had done microns earlier, a lifetime earlier. Apollo reached him and hauled him up.

"Fuck," said Grant, white faced. His left hand was a mess of torn flesh and splintered white bone, fingers gone. He stared at it, looking surprised.

Apollo held him up, looking around, and then started them both for the 'rams. No-one else to pick up, no-one else alive.

Hurry, hurry, hurry...

The first landram was already lurching out of the clearing when the Raider came back. This time the infantry gunners were ready for it, and it veered away from the ferocity of the return fire, banking steeply off to the right, its shells passing harmlessly overhead to hit a barn on the far side of the clearing. Rosie slammed shut the door of the 'ram Apollo was heading for, and was on Grant's other side now, helping hold the shocked lieutenant up. They scrambled up onto the outer casing, feeling the 'ram lurch as it followed the others out of the clearing and into the relative cover of the trees, taking Grant with them. The lieutenant was almost helpless between them, his breathing as harsh and distressed as the child's had been.

Apollo hooked his left arm through one of the restraining straps, the other firm in Grant's belt, holding him against the side of the 'ram. Rosie reached around to hold Grant's other side, her arm crossing over Apollo's in the small of the lieutenant's back.

Apollo glanced at Grant, then at the gunner. The lieutenant needed help before he bled to death. "Can you hold me on?" he yelled, somehow finding the breath.

She shook her head, but ducked swiftly down into the landram, shouting something that Apollo couldn't hear. Another trooper pushed up into the gun turret with her, holding some field dressings in his hands.

"Can't stay up here," he shouted at Apollo. "Here..."

He leaned out of the turret, dangerously close to falling out head first, and loosened one end of a restraining strap. He threaded it through Apollo's belt and tied it firmly to one of the struts, his movements sharp and precise despite the 'ram's lurching. He got another free and secured Grant as well as he could.

"I'm needed down there. Can you take care of the Boss?"

Apollo nodded, catching his breath at last. He took the field dressings and glanced up, looking for the Raider. He could hear it, close overhead, but he couldn't see it. Laser shells ripped through the trees to the right, missing them, but making the 'ram shudder. The gunner cursed, and started the laser cannon. He could feel the heat of it.

"I've got him, Apollo," said Rosie.

Apollo worked his right arm free, ready to catch Grant if he fell, but the lieutenant's head came up, and Grant, swallowing hard, wound the end of a strap around his right hand, holding it so hard his knuckles whitened.

"Okay?" said Apollo. He tucked the dressings in between the fastenings of his jacket, to keep his hands free, using the first dressing as a rough tourniquet.

"What the fuck do you think?" said Grant, but there was no malice in it. "Fuck."

"Don't look at it. Look at me instead," said Rosie. "I'm prettier."

Grant choked and somehow managed a laugh that had no amusement in it. Apollo took hold of the maimed arm and started on getting what remained of the hand wrapped. It wasn't possible to be as careful and gentle as he might have liked, riding on the outside of a landram bulling its way at top speed across marshes, pursued by Cylons, but he did his best.

"Next time, I won't hold onto my bloody laser when there's shells going off all around me," said Grant, white to the lips. Despite Rosie's admonition, he couldn't take his eyes off what Apollo was doing. "Bloody thing blew up in my hand."

Apollo just grunted, concentrated on keep his footing on the heaving 'ram, while both his hands were occupied in getting the mess into field dressings, and the bleeding under control.

"Left handed?" asked Rosie.

"Not any more," said Grant, and the laugh sounded more like a sob. "Shit, it hurts."

"That's the best I can do until the medics can see to it." Apollo hooked his left arm around the securing strap again, and used his right to cradle Grant's arm just below the elbow, keeping the injured hand from banging against the side of the 'ram. He listened for the Raider. "It's coming around again."

"They don't give up," murmured Rosie.

"Neither do we," said the gunner, tracking the Raider on the sensor pad. "I'll get the bastard this time. Duck!"

The hot gun barrel swung round over their bowed heads, spitting the intense white light beam. Either it, or one of the gunners in the other rams, caught the Raider as it came around on another pass, and the Cylon ship sheered off, engines screaming at such a pitch that Apollo's ears rang with it.

"I was thinking about joining your lot," said Grant, as the Raider vanished into the cloud cover, trailing smoke. "Guess I blew it."

"Not necessarily," said Apollo.

"Don't be daft. I'll lose that, I reckon. Fuck, but it hurts!"

"I can't give you anything here," said Apollo, who didn't have anything to give the poor bastard, anyway, here or anywhere else.

"I know." Grant's bemused, pain-filled eyes met Apollo's. "I'd have liked to join you lot," he said regretfully.

"Even after five days of watching us at work?" Apollo grinned at him.

"Hey, I always wanted to do a little swashbuckling. You get all those sorts of jobs."

"Tell me about it," said Rosie, from Grant's other side, in what Apollo took to be a praiseworthy attempt to keep the lieutenant's attention from his mutilated hand and try and keep him from going into shock. "We're the best there is at swashing buckles." She grinned at Apollo over Grant's head. "Of course, Apollo being the perverse beggar he is, he buckles swashes."

"Huh?"

"Ignore her," said Apollo, straining to hear the Raider. All he heard was a silence, followed by a tentative scraping noise as the insect chorus started up again. In a micron or two, the marshes sounded like they had before the Cylons came, as if nothing could really touch them, nothing but the green and water and insects were permanent. "You do realise that it's 'buckler', really, not something that helps hold your belt together and your pants up?"

Both of them stared at him. He noticed that there was a trickle of blood running down Rosie's face from a nasty gash just below the edge of her helmet. She ran her tongue around her lips to clear the blood away and scowled slightly, but it didn't look serious. He thought of Kerr, the Shield Warrior dead in the clearing behind them, and suppressed the relief that it hadn't been Rosie. He wouldn't think of the dead children. He wouldn't.

"A round shield," he said, kindly. "Pretty appropriate, when you come to think of it."

 

 

There were three shuttles at the landing site, including the one from the Hype, interdicted by a circle of Infantry, some manning field laser cannon. The 'rams jolted their way to the shuttles, coming to a halt beside them. Apollo and Rosie got themselves free of the restraining straps, and Apollo jumped down, helping Grant. The lieutenant's face was grey now, his eyes glazing. He was shaking.

Rosie looked around her, one arm still around Grant, the weight of her laser in her other hand. Across the clearing was a chilling row of very still figures, mostly khaki clad, some civilian. An infantryman, the paramedic who'd given them the field dressings for Grant, climbed out of their landram, carrying the injured child Apollo had rescued. He carried it carefully to the line of bodies and laid it down. Two others in the line were as small.

Rosie looked quickly at Apollo. He closed his eyes briefly, and when he opened them again, she was sorry to see how tired he looked, how much the vivid green was dulled with grief for a child whose name he didn't even know.

"Are we leaving them?" she said, as the paramedic started towards them at a run.

"I guess," said Apollo. "We'll be lucky to get the living out."

Rosie sighed, knowing he was right, and that the living mattered more than the dead. She managed a grin for Grant, as the lieutenant got his head up. The paramedic nodded at her and lifted Grant's arm, eyes on the blood-soaked stump of a hand.

"Captain!" The Infantry colonel jogged over to them, her face grim. "We've got more incoming. Your shuttle's the fastest: can you hold here while we evacuate?"

Apollo nodded, and the colonel hurried away, shouting orders into the tumult.

"I guess someone has to be last out," said Apollo, after a micron or two.

Rosie rolled her eyes. And just who was Apollo kidding? It was always Shield, left to do the dirty work.

Grant managed a faint grin as two of his own platoon took over from Rosie, helping him stay upright. "Be sure to turn out the lights."

"That's our job." Rosie leaned in and kissed his cheek. "Good luck, Grant. Be seeing you." She watched them take him onto the nearest shuttle. "He'll lose that hand," she said.

"He already has," said Apollo.

He sounded tired now, and she grinned at him, encouraging, once again feeling that faint regret that all he would ever want her for was sisterly affection. Bloody stupid time to be thinking of sex, anyway, but that idiot Joss wanted a kicking.

"Better than being dead," she said, and glanced at the row of bodies.

Apollo shrugged, and looked around the clearing. "We'll be spread thin. Let's get them out there."

She nodded, and went off to do his bidding, getting the fourteen remaining Shield Warriors, fearsomely armed now with hand held cannon from the Hyperion's shuttle, ranged to interdict the direction that they expected to be the enemy's approach. She thought she could hear another Raider in the distance, but if it was a Raider, it was heading somewhere at a tangent to them. Heading up into the hills towards the mines, maybe.

A couple of the warriors were seeding the approach with explosives, some strung between the trees at chest height - if you were a two metre tall Cylon centurion, that is - some scattering tiny but efficient mines over the ground. She watched them and the approach at the same time, gaze flickering from one side of the clearing to the other and back again, repeatedly.

Behind her a shuttle took off. Glancing over her shoulder, she watched a line of infantry running for the other transport shuttle, running in an orderly fashion that struck her as incredibly funny. Why, she couldn't have said, since if you didn't get the irony, then no words would explain it.

As soon as that shuttle lifted off, they could be gone, leaving this hell hole to the tinheads. It couldn't be soon enough.

Apollo jogged over to her. He'd taken a hand held sensor left by the retreating Infantry. "This thing's jumping like crazy," he said, quietly. "A couple of Raiders, and ground troops, I think."

"How long do we have?"

"Centons. Three or four, maybe." He swung around in a half circle, eyes on the sensor display. "Make that three."

Tense now, Rosie looked behind her again. "They're closing up the Infantry shuttle," she said.

"Then let's get the hell out of here," said Apollo, and the grin he gave her betrayed that he, too, was tense and nervous.

She grinned back, and looked for the company's top sergeant. Tim was at the other edge of the clearing, watching for her signal. She called him over the com, waving at him for good measure, and within a micron Tim was yelling the orders that got the Shield Warriors running for their own shuttle. They weren't as tidy about it as the Infantry had been, but they were faster.

She could definitely hear a Raider now, definitely coming their way.

"I think we should move it right along," said Apollo, and even he sounded a bit harried.

She started for the shuttle, making sure that the warriors were in front of her. Only the two mining the clearing were still behind her, and out of the corner of her eye as she glanced back, she saw them start running towards the shuttle. The first two warriors were inside now.

She reached the shuttle before the Raider did. Tim and a couple of the warriors had set up a field cannon in front of it, and they were already firing when the Raider came into view over the trees, traversing the laser with expert skill as the Cylon ship went overhead. The all too familiar twin lines of shells bracketed the shuttle on either side, mercifully missing anything vital.

"Fucking hell!" she said, buffeted by the abrupt changes in air pressure following the explosions.

One of the two remaining Warriors was down, screaming. Apollo, almost behind the illusory safety of the gun, spun on his heel and ran back.

"Get moving!" he shouted at Rosie. "Get them out of here!"

The second Raider was so hard on the heels of the first that the paint on its nose must have been blistered by the afterburners. The shell hit. For a micron Rosie saw Apollo's body silhouetted against the explosion's brilliant white glare, as he was hurled backwards to land sprawled on his back, a still black figure spread eagled against the poisonous green.