Officially, there have only ever been twelve colonies, excluding Earth. But unofficially, other colonies have always existed. Some of them are satellites of a major colony – officially part of Picon, or Sagittaron, or Virgon – and some of them are unofficial, with no government representation and no legal standing. Some were started for mining purposes, secretive purposes, or political reasons and religious beliefs. Unofficial settlements are discouraged by the government – sometimes brutally – but there are always people willing to scout for new livable worlds and transmit their locations in secret. And there are always people looking to leave one place and start anew. * It has only been a few months since New Caprica was officially settled, and already the colonists know better than to approach the president when there's a problem. Baltar had looked so calm, reasonable, and committed during the elections. Now that reason looks weak, and the commitment is arrogance. He's rarely calm, and when he is, it's chemically-induced. Instead, people come to Felix looking for help, security, control. This isn't the role he envisioned for himself, but he's starting to understand that he has what people want – solutions, reliability. And he knows how to ask the right questions. "You're frakking kidding me." Starbuck looks at him, looks at the blood on her hands – thankfully not her blood – and says, "Do I look like I'm kidding?" No. Of course not. This isn't a story. Another crisis has fallen into his lap, and Felix can only thank the Gods that Starbuck and Anders were the first to encounter the creatures. At least they'd had the presence of mind to run to the outskirts of the settlement, where the former Fleet marines had set up an informal club and shooting range. The number of deaths had been minimal. If they'd run into the town centre or a section with living quarters, with the creatures following them, the death toll would have been worse. So would the rumours, and he's going to have a frak of a time trying to provide a plausible reason for the loss of three colonists. But he's becoming adept at plausible excuses and half-truths; he works with them every day, he has no choice. Perhaps he'll advise Baltar to blame previously unknown wild animals. "They just kept coming," Starbuck says. She doesn't look particularly bothered by the fact, but maybe to her, it wasn't all that different from the Cylons. "We shot the frak out of them, and they just kept coming. Until we hit them in the head." Felix nods and makes a note. "So a head shot is the kill shot. Nothing else works." "Yep. Good thing they move slowly. Gave us the chance to figure it out." "Slow movers, head shot, and ah – if they catch you, they really – ?" "Eat you." Her face screws up. "Yeah." He doesn't have words to describe how that makes him feel. "That's just – " "I know." "Where did they come from?" She shrugs. "I told you. They came out of the water." But that's not what he means. * News travels slowly between towns. Gev has always been told this is a good thing, and he's never had reason to believe otherwise. Long distances between towns keep people from panicking when there's a problem, and it leaves plenty of time for visiting family and friends when the work's done. Too much time spent on big-city politics and mindless entertainment breaks down family structure and social bonds. He and his parents had left Geminon for exactly this reason. They'd long lamented the ways the Gods were being abandoned in a race for new technologies and faster lifestyles. New Geminon, a livable planet well hidden from the Colonies in a cloud of spatial interference, offered a new beginning and hope for a better future. Gev was young when they left, but he still remembers Geminon's capital city, the day that they all joined the small group of colonists: bustling, busy, full of smells, people, and things to do. He'd seen visitors from Caprica and Aerilon and Picon, dressed in ways that strangers dress. It had been bright, the sun shining even through the thick smog that surrounded the spaceport. Years later, he's an adult with a family of his own. Here on New Geminon, there isn't any smog. Almost every morning, when he looks out over his farm, the day is clear, full of the buzz of native insects. Only on the hottest days is there haze, the air laden with moisture, sometimes so thickly you can see it glistening in the sunlight. It settles on the dull green of his crop, bringing dazzle to ordinary things. It's on one of these early mornings – heavy and hot already, a day for staying home with his family, not for working in the fields – that the messenger comes. Afterward, when the man has died of blood loss and exhaustion from moving from house to far-distant house, Gev wishes that for once, news had traveled more quickly. * After the elections, after it was decided to make a settlement, Felix had known he wouldn't be staying with the Fleet. Resigning his commission had been hard. Accepting a position in the presidential staff hadn't been. He's used to taking orders. He'd never expected to be the one making the hard decisions. He'd never imagined that almost every day, he'd be forced to make decisions about what to tell the president, and what needed to just be dealt with, fixed, kept out of the presidential gaze. He'd expected strength in the presidency, not inadequacy. And with inadequacy all around him these days, there's no room for it in himself. One of his early decisions had been to authorize a small extension to the medical facilities tent, something to use for postmortems and body storage. This is the first time it has been used. So far, no colonists have died, although there has been plenty of illness and mental stress. Inside the tent, the air smells faintly of cigarette smoke, and sure enough, Dr. Cottle is already looking over the remains of the creatures. Nearby lie the covered bodies of two colonists – the victims that had been only partially consumed. Partially consumed. Felix shakes his head and asks, "So?" Cottle looks up. "These – things – are in an advanced state of decomposition. Frankly, I don't see how they managed to walk, much less kill anyone." Felix moves closer. The creatures were clearly human at one point. Now, their skin is graying and loose, in some places falling open and exposing bones. There is no blood. One is missing an arm; the other lacks his jaw. "The internal organs are necrosed. I have no idea why they were eating. It's pointless. It's unlikely they were capable of processing any nutrients." Cottle points at the one with only half a mouth. "How this one even chewed – although maybe he lost his jaw when he took a bite. Impossible to say." Felix turns away from the remains and gestures instead at the covered bodies of the colonists. According to his notes, they belong to Mara Leagh, age 28, Sagittaron, and Liam Annogh, age 32, Picon. The other colonist – the one who died at the water's edge – was Ben Starey, 37, also from Picon. No surviving relatives. "What about them?" Cottle moves toward the bodies, uncovers them one at a time. "Simple enough. Grisly, but simple. Leagh's throat was torn open. There was massive blood loss." Felix can see the missing flesh, and he looks away quickly. "Subsequent postmortem injuries include loss of –" He doesn't need to hear the explanation. He's heard it already from Kara and Anders; he can see it for himself. He tunes out Cottle's details, and he ignores the description of Annogh's death as well. The president won't care to know this information. "Deal with it," he always tells Felix when there's a crisis. By now Felix knows that means he's to do whatever needs to be done, and only report to Baltar when all loose ends are tied up. "Thank you," he says when Cottle stops talking and looks at him expectantly, as if waiting for instructions. "Bury the bodies. All of them. Take some of the marines – former marines – who have already seen this." Burn the bodies, he almost says, but fires attract attention. They don't need to contribute to the growing unrest in the colony. * It's tempting to ignore the news. Occasionally people get it into their heads to make up fantastical stories, always with some underlying moral about the Gods and their tests for humanity. Gev has always taken these stories with a grain of precious salt, but Emma listens when a traveler comes, bearing tales of the Gods' tests just five settlements to the east, or the punishment of failed crops only seven settlements to the north. Now, she looks at Gev, her hands still covered in the stranger's blood, and says, "We should wake the girls." He nods his agreement, but gestures at the body, at Emma's hands. "Seeing this will upset them." They bury the stranger at the edge of their land, under the fast-growing trees they planted for building material. Even though they don't know the stranger's name, they leave a wooden marker. Gev writes "Servant of the Gods" on it, and he promises himself that he'll carve a proper marker out of stone during his free time. He goes to wake the girls while Emma washes her hands of dirt and blood. * Before colonization, teams had scouted the planet. Surveys had assessed water access, plant life viability, weather patterns, geological stability, and approximate number of daylight hours. Coming together, teams had shared data and suggested the most likely sites for a stable colony. Not all data had been equally shared. One team, piloted by Racetrack and containing a geologist, an atmospheric expert, and an old farmer, had landed in a low, flat area that seemed initially viable. They'd found ruins. "Ruins?" Baltar asked. "What kind of ruins?" Racetrack shrugged. "I'm not an archaeologist." The farmer spoke up. "Wasn't much left, mostly just concrete floors, but from the size, I'd say maybe storage areas. And –" He hesitated until Baltar waved his hand, "And what? Come on, man." "And there was a thresher." "A thresher?" "Yep. Didn't look too old – a little out of date, maybe, a little different than what I'm used to, but it could have worked back home." A thresher. Felix grinned – threshers meant grain could grow – and then the grin changed to a frown. If this was a human colony, why are there no records of it? And if it was a colony, where are the people? Baltar had clearly stopped listening by then – he stared at the wall, half-smiling, and after a few minutes – too many minutes – of silence, Felix had shaken his head. Turning to Racetrack, he said, "I think we need a more thorough survey of the ruins." "Yes, sir." "And Racetrack? Look for bones." * The girls are shrieking with laughter, chasing each other in circles outside of the house. Gev's stomach is full from Emma's fine lunch, and he smiles as he watches them. Around they go, running past him, behind the house, the pound of their feet on the ground giving away their path. Around and around, and Gev doesn't know how they don't get dizzy. He's lulled by their laughter, by warmth and food, by the company of family, all of which has dulled the horror of the body he and Emma had buried. All morning, he'd been thinking about the stranger's news and what it means. He'd mentally calculated the amount of food they have, figuring out what he and Emma can afford to buy from town, just in case. But now he's resting. There's time – at least the stranger had assured them of that. Even evil things move slowly on New Geminon. He sees the girls run past him once more, Sara chasing Thene. And then their shrieks of the laughter change to screams of fear. * Racetrack found bones. So did some of the other survey parties. In some cases, the bones were haphazardly scattered, as if people had just fallen and never been buried. They found more small, distant settlements, most of the buildings collapsed and rotting. Eventually, they tracked down an archaeologist in the Fleet, a doctoral student who had been traveling from Caprica to the ancient ruins on Aerilon when the Cylons had attacked. She'd assured them that the ruins were not ancient. The buildings had been primarily made of wood, and Felix still remembers the way she'd put it. "A damp climate coupled with high temperatures for much of the year means that organic materials break down more easily. It also makes it hard to estimate when these settlements were last inhabited, because I don't know the exact rate of decay. My best estimate would be sometime in the last 25 to 50 years." Only 25 and 50 years, and they almost missed the signs of previous inhabitation. Now, Felix walks into the inner sanctum, where Baltar keeps files, records, supplies of his so-called medication. He taps the key code into a pad on the wall, opens a small safe, and removes a package. This is the secret they'd kept from even the archaeologist. There had never been any good reason to keep this secret, except that Baltar makes it routine to release as little information as possible. "Informed masses pain me," he says often. The package contains records, originally found sealed in a heavy metal box and protected from the elements. Felix had initially glanced over them looking for clues about the failure of the colony. He'd assumed plague, geological calamity, crop failures, war, or fertility problems – something understandable, a reason not unlike those leading to settlement failures in other places. He'd found birth and death records that suggested a healthy fertility rate. He'd found the tallies of grain yields for three seasons from one settlement. Yields had appeared stable despite the troublesome photoperiod; yields had even increased. There were no indications of geological or sociopolitical unrest, although it was possible that such events might have happened too quickly to be recorded. In an adjacent homestead, a notebook had been found, wrapped in a waxy covering. The words had been scrawled across the pages, messy and indistinct, in Colonial standard, although with unfamiliar turns of phrase. Gaeta had read it front to back, then dismissed it as notes for a fictional work, or perhaps the ravings of a lunatic who had been obsessed with corpses, reanimation, and plagues of the Gods. Now, he unwraps the waxy layers, and starts rereading. * Gev rounds the side of the house at a run, and when he sees it, he freezes. He cannot speak for a long, long moment. Then he yells for the girls to get inside. The stranger – still bloody, covered in the grave dirt he and Emma had shoveled onto him – lurches forward. His mouth is open. He's moaning, and it sounds like he's dying. "Stranger," Gev says in a voice that's not his, "you're hurt." He doesn't know what else to say. Of course the stranger's hurt. He died on Gev's porch, with Gev's wife pressing towels into his wounds to try to stop his bleeding. The stranger is walking now, though, still walking toward Gev's daughters. "Stranger, stop. You're scaring them." The stranger doesn't stop. He moves forward and forward, his steps awkward and slow. Slow as he is, and fast as Gev is as he darts forward, he gets to Sara first – reaches out before Gev can grab her – and pulls her in toward him. "Father!" she yells. Her clothes are dirty from playing, and the stranger bends, brings her arm to his mouth. He bites. Sara screams in fear and pain, the high sounds guttering to sobs of pain. And the stranger's head explodes in a spray of bone and gray matter. It explodes, and Sara falls to the ground, clutching her arm. Gev knows that behind him, Emma's standing, holding the shotgun. But all he can see is Sara's shirt, smeared with dirt, highlighted with her blood. * New Caprica's new settlement was situated far away from any of the ruins, in an area less attractive, but also remote enough to make it difficult to question decisions. Some of the archeological data were used in deciding on construction methods. "Do it as cheaply as possible," Baltar had ordered, "but for the Gods' sake, don't use organics in the buildings." "Sir," he'd replied, "at this point we don't have many organics to build with anyway." "But we will." "Eventually." He hoped. "And when we're settled, people will want to build their lovely little houses with nice wood detailing. And then they'll complain when that detailing rots away." He'd sneered. "I'll make a Presidential Decree making organics illegal in construction. Inorganics only." Inorganics. Plastics and metals. Felix had transcribed the Decree. He had ordered copies made, and he'd had it officially and publicly posted. All the while, he'd wondered whether President Baltar realized that they might not have many organics, but their inorganic supply was also finite. He still wonders. He wonders what Baltar would say about this situation. Would he make a Presidential Decree, perhaps? Forbidding anyone from being attacked by unknown, once-human creatures? Depending on Baltar's mood – and the number of pills he's taken – Felix wouldn't be surprised if that's exactly what happened. * Sara's wound could be worse; the stranger's teeth took a chunk of her flesh, but they'd packed it and bandaged it, and the blood stops seeping through quickly enough. Gev is surprised when she dies – surprised and broken, because the wound wasn't bad. It hadn't even had time to become infected. He may have been surprised when she died, but when she comes back, stumbling through the grass toward the house, he's almost expecting it. He isn't expecting the way his hand shakes when he takes aim with his gun. The next time someone comes to the house, it isn't a stranger. It's Liss, from town, and Gev meets her at the road. But even from the house, he'd seen that she's injured. She's bleeding from cuts – bites – on her arms and shoulder. "Things," she says, gesturing down the road. "In town." Gev nods. "How many?" "Many." Her face crumples, tears running down her cheeks. "Everyone. People we knew. My husband." It's a long walk from town to home, and Gev already knows that the things move slowly. Still, he doubts they'll be far behind Liss, who couldn't have been moving too quickly herself. "Help me," she says, gesturing at her arm, "I'm bleeding. They bit me. Tried to –" He nods again, because he knows. "I can help you." "Thank you, Gev," she says, turning toward the house. "You're a good man." A good man, he thinks, as he shoots her. * When Annogh and Leagh wake up, Felix is waiting for them. The journal had suggested that the dead would rise. It sounds fantastical, but Felix hasn't made a habit of living his life ignoring possibilities and leaving matters unattended to. He's made mistakes before. He won't make this one. He sets a marine detail to guard the graves, and he takes a watch himself. When the earth moves, he's already aiming his gun. His is the first shot, and it isn't the last, but at the end of it, Leagh and Annogh's bodies aren't moving any more. And he doesn't lose any more people. * Gev doesn't know what it is or what it means. It could be a plague from the Gods, sent as a punishment for leaving the Colonies. It could be something from the unexplored regions of the planet, places only hastily mapped, places deemed unfit for human habitation. He doesn't know what it is, and he doesn't care. His mother would have said that the will of the Gods should not be questioned, that these creatures were something to be borne and succumbed to, if necessary. Sometimes, she'd told him once, the Gods demand a sacrifice. Gev has never believed in sacrifice. He believes in planning and preparation, organization and skills. He and Emma take stock, make lists, talk things through. "We'll need more food, eventually," Emma says as they fortify the house. "We can't just live off whatever harvest comes through." Hammering another nail through a precious board – covering a window – he nods. Maybe they'll make it to harvest. Maybe they'll even be able to bring the harvest in, store it. Maybe not. That night, he starts to write it all down. * Felix helps rebury the bodies and orders the marines to secrecy. If anyone asks about gunshots, they're to say something about training runs, practice bullets, straying too close to the settlement. They're to apologize for any disturbance. The next morning, he pulls on a clean shirt and heads to Colonial One. He expects to find Baltar passed out at his desk – or more likely, on his bed – the way it is three days out of five. Instead, he finds Baltar shaved, dressed, sitting at his desk, and writing. When he looks up, Felix thinks that he looks like a president. "Mr. Gaeta. I understand there was a disturbance yesterday of some sort. Gunshots were heard." "Yes, sir." "Care to enlighten me?" His tone is precise, expectant, and for a moment, Felix's heart soars. This is the man he voted for, the man he foresaw leading the refugees to safety. He'd prepared the story for the president, the same one he'd told the marines to use, but seeing the president like this, in control, he changes his mind. The president deserves to know the truth. He might even be galvanized by a potential threat. "Sir, yes, we had a situation. Starbuck –" "A situation?" The president laughs. "Mr. Gaeta, you're ridiculously formal. What kind of situation could we possibly have here? What, some colonists whining that the Talk Wireless goes silent too often? Or moaning about the weather?" He leans forward, across his desk. "Do you know what a situation is, Mr. Gaeta? It's a frakking big ship being nuked, killing everything that some people care about. That's a situation. This place doesn't have situations. It has annoyances. Especially if it involves Lieutenant Thrace." Felix's heart sinks back down to where it has become accustomed to living. "Sir. I see." He doesn't even bother to correct Baltar on Starbuck's rank. There's no point. No point to any of it. "I'm so very glad you frakking see. Now get on with it and tell me what happened." Felix opens his mouth, still half-intending to be truthful. But he can't say it. He can't face Baltar's weaknesses and inadequacies. Instead, he takes a deep breath and says, "The marines undertook some training exercises too close to the settlement. I've taken care of the problem." In a way, it is the truth. |
| Rating:
PG-13 Words: About 3800 Summary: New Caprica has been settled before. Notes: Many thanks to kylielee1000 for the great beta! All remaining mistakes are my own. Partially inspired by recently reading Max Brooks' Zombie Survival Guide. A continuation of the Starbuck, Anders, zombie ficlet posted here. |