Chronicles of a Sniper

**Posted: Mon May 08, 2006 12:33 am**

Chapter 1
Seven Hundred Yards

Seven hundred yards is my favorite distance. Six hundred forty meters, for you metric people. From that distance, they never hear it coming.

How did I get involved? It started a couple weeks after day zero. The day the Cylons dropped the nukes, I was out hunting—well, not really hunting, even though I had my hunting rifle with me. I was out in the hills, a good distance from Delphi up in the mountains, scouting, looking for signs of game, planning for the upcoming weekend. My dad had started taking me hunting when I’d been ten, had started the father-son activity, and this was… would have been, the eighth year.

But the attacks ended that.

I didn’t know what to do, but getting further away from the city seemed like a good plan. I had my rifle and knew how to use it, so I wouldn’t go hungry. My dad was—had been, a sharpshooter on the city police force, and he’d made sure I could shoot. He’d been a woodsman in the traditional sense of the word, and I’d soaked up every bit of knowledge he gave me.

Not normal, you say? Strange, for a teenage boy to listen to his father? Well, I can tell you, there were plenty of other topics we didn’t agree on. We argued about nearly everything else; my friends, school, study habits, the clothes I wore, the way I wanted my hair cut… but when it came to hunting, we were together. I’d wanted to be a park ranger because of what he taught me about the woods, about wildlife, about the ecology.

He would never realize how valuable that knowledge was going to be.

And so on the day of the attacks I headed away from the city; I could see it was war. At first I headed up, away from civilization, but I was worried about my parents, my friends, and not knowing what was going on drove me crazy. So I started looking for others who might have survived, and sixteen days later I met up with Sam Anders.

Sam Anders! The Samuel T. Anders, from the Caprica Buccaneers! I’d seen him play in person, once, in Delphi, from seats up in the arena’s nosebleed area. He was my hero, every boy’s hero, but the day I met him I didn’t recognize him at first. He was tired, dirty, grim, and very wary of me at first. I suppose because I was also tired and dirty, and I had my rifle.

I also had the remnants of the smoked haunch of a deer I’d shot, and that food along with my hunting ability was my entrance fee to join his team. It was truly his team, his fellow Buccaneers and a handful of others like me, who’d been out of the city during the attack.

“What’s your name?” he questioned once he decided I was okay.

“Danny Ellison,” I said automatically, then cursed myself mentally. I’d spent a couple years re-training my friends to call me the more adult ‘Dan’, and here I’d gone and ruined all that hard work in seconds.

He gave me a sideways look. “How old are you?” he asked casually.

“Eighteen,” I replied defensively. Then, more slowly, I qualified, “I’ll be eighteen in a month.”

He nodded calmly, and when he introduced me to the others, he called me ‘Dan’. For that alone I would have followed him to the ends of the world, but I learned that was his way—he was team captain for a reason. He knew how to get an assorted group of individuals to work together as a team. He knew when to use quiet, impassioned words, and when to yell blood-stirring rhetoric. He knew how to plan, and how to listen to others who might have a better plan, and he knew how to apply the unique skills of each of us.

He used my unique skill at hunting to help feed our growing team. Over the weeks that followed, more people joined us, one or two or three at a time. Survivalists, campers, hikers, people like me who’d been out in the forests on the day of the attacks. They brought news; Cylons had attacked all the colonies; there were people actually helping the Cylons; it wasn’t humans who were helping, they were actually human-looking Cylons. And, later, we found out that you couldn’t really ‘kill’ one of the human-looking ones… they could download, pass their consciousness and knowledge on to another body. Chilling news.

From the beginning Sam organized raids to get supplies, especially the essential anti-radiation medication. When I joined his team, he was already thinking of how to strike back, and as our team grew, each raid also became a military operation.

Sam kept me out of the raids, convincing me that my contribution of fresh meat was just as valuable as any other supplies, and I never went out hunting alone. I knew how to field-dress the game, but for the number of people on our team, we needed big game. There was no way I could carry the kill back to our ‘base’, Delphi Union High School, by myself. It was always one of the Buccaneers who went with to help, which didn’t hurt my ego any. Although I can’t say I didn’t wish we’d had a pack horse…

More news… two pilots from the Battlestar Galactica had shown up. I’d been out hunting, an overnight trip, and didn’t get to meet either of them, but I saw them as they were leaving. Helo and Kara; and by the looks of it, Sam and Kara had—well, they were already an item. I felt jealous for a minute, of both of them, odd as that may sound. Jealous of him because she was hot… and jealous of her, too. He was ‘our’ Sam, our team captain, not hers. I could have resented her, but after she’d gone Sam told us she’d promised to come back, bringing reinforcements, to rescue us.

Since I’d joined the team, I hadn’t thought of my parents or my friends or anything of the past—or of the future. All I’d let myself think about was day-to-day survival. Now there was a chance for rescue, for a future? It felt odd. I realized my birthday had come and gone and I hadn’t even noticed.

I was out hunting about a month later, Derrin Campbell with me. ‘Dare’, everyone called him. I’d bagged a deer from a decent distance, and we started hiking to the carcass when, suddenly, some of them were there. Cylons, two of the human-looking blonde skin jobs, and one tin can. They were closer to the deer carcass, not very close to Dare and me, but they’d seen us.

My thoughts were calm and quick… everything around me was in slow motion. The tin can could shoot back, but neither of the skin jobs seemed to be armed. Both Dare and I had taken cover behind the trunk of a fallen tree, and I chambered a round; fired and chambered; fired again and chambered. Two skin jobs, down. As I’d expected, the tin can didn’t move, didn’t jump for cover, that eerie red eye scanning, the guns it had for hands scanning. I steadied the rifle, resting the barrel across the tree trunk. I breathed halfway out and paused… taking down a tin can would need careful aim. I caressed the trigger, a touch almost too soft to feel, and thought the round to the target, and chambered another round automatically. The tin can lurched back, and I fired again, at the same spot, the articulation of its waist. It fell over then slowly clambered back to its feet.

“Aim for the eye!” Dare hissed, but I already was, and fired even as he said ‘eye’. He was armed too, a military weapon from a raid on an armory, but it wouldn’t be nearly as accurate as my bolt-action hunting rifle.

That time it stayed down. We ran, ducking low, leapfrogging, a couple hundred yards, then stopped and waited. Listened. Nothing.

“Damn,” Dare breathed. “You got the frakker right in the eye!”

I thought of things I’d heard my dad say. To me, to Mom, and to his cop buddies. He’d been a sharpshooter and knew a certain kind of war. Not this kind, but close enough.

“We need to make sure they’re dead,” I whispered to Dare. “And get the deer, if we can.”

He stared at me. “You’re a cool one,” he murmured, but he was already heading back toward the bodies. I followed, my rifle ready. I didn’t feel cool. I didn’t really feel anything.

The Cylons were—dead. Or whatever. The skin jobs looked even more human, close up. Somehow the blood looked a lot redder than I’d expected. Maybe deer blood didn’t seem as red, on their brown fur.

It was Dare who told Sam and the others what had happened.

“You okay, Dan?” Sam asked me.

“Yeah,” I told him. “Fine.”

I was fine, until later. When I was alone, long after dark, I started sweating. And shaking. For a bit I thought I was going to throw up. But then after awhile I felt okay. They were Cylons, not people.

Sam came and found me the next afternoon. He had a large case, a kind I recognized—a hard-sided rifle case. He put it on the table and opened it. “We got this on our last armory raid. Do you know how to use it?” he asked.

I gazed at the rifle. I nodded slowly, touching the stock. It was a weapon just like my dad had used, the same model, a sharpshooter’s weapon. He’d taught me to shoot his, let me practice with it. I lifted it out of the case, made sure it wasn’t loaded, and looked through the scope. I wondered where my dad’s rifle was.

It was a sniper’s rifle.

Sam was frowning at me.

“What?” I asked, defensive, putting aside thoughts of my dad.

He just shook his head at something he was thinking and asked me what kind of ammo I needed.

“If you want me to use this for what it’s designed for,” I told him, “I’ll need to practice with it.”

I zeroed it, and practiced. I wasted a lot of rounds… ‘wasted’ isn’t the right word. There was only one thing that Sam would want me to do with this weapon, and to do it right, I needed to be good with it. After days of firing thousands of rounds, I dreamt shooting.

Sam came to check on me. “Frak, what are you shooting at, Dan?” he asked, crouching next to where I lay prone. I nodded to the spotting scope, and he picked it up, looking downrange. It took him a minute to find my targets, just pieces of paper tacked up at chest height on trees. “How far away is that?” he asked quietly, still looking.

“About eight hundred yards,” I said. I aimed, fired, chambered the next round, fired again.

I heard him breathe out slowly. “How the hell do you know how to do this?” he questioned, finally looking at me.

I rested the butt of the rifle on the ground and sat back on my heels, easing my shoulders, stretching my neck. “My dad taught me,” I said.

He used the scope to look at the targets again. “That is a damn long way away,” he murmured.

“That’s how it works,” I said. I hesitated, and added, “Usually, there’s a spotter, too.”

He lowered the scope and looked at me again. I could almost see his thoughts. “I don’t know that we have anyone who would know what to do… who’s near as good as you are at this…” he said, gesturing down toward the targets. “And… I don’t know that we have enough people to spare…”

I nodded. “I’ll need to make a ghillie suit,” I said.

“A what?” he asked.

“Camouflage,” I explained. I didn’t think he’d had any military training, and even if he had, this was a pretty specialized field. My dad would appreciate the irony. All the things he’d taught me, the things I’d actually listened to, were the things we needed the most.

I told Sam how snipers worked. Some of it he already knew—hell, anyone who’d seen more than one war movie would have at least a little idea—and some of it he hadn’t known. He listened, though. And when he included me in the briefing for the next raid, he told the others how he’d changed things, to take advantage of what I could do.

One thing I can say about Sam, he knew how to plan. We had excellent maps of the area, some of them mine from my day zero scouting expedition. Detailed topographical maps that we all studied and memorized. Sam planned the raid like it was a championship Pyramid game, every possible contingency taken into account, every option drilled. And drilled. And drilled again. Each of us knew the others’ roles perfectly. Everyone could fill in for someone else—except for me. My skills were unique.

It was an ego booster, but it was also frightening. The success of the raid depended on me, on what I could do from a damn long way away.

The raid was on a building that the Cylons had turned into some sort of medical facility; the purpose, to get medical supplies. They’d built a fence around the place, with a guarded gate, and that had been the difficulty when Sam had first thought of raiding the place. Because there was no way to get close enough without the guard alerting those inside.

It took me half a day to get into position, then hours of waiting for the cogs of Sam’s plan to start turning. I was glad it was well into autumn, wearing a ghillie suit in the summer heat would have been like baking in an oven. I watched the guard, dialed in my scope, waited. Rested my eyes. Against all odds, dozed a little, then jerked awake. Berated myself for not paying attention.

And then it was time. I assessed the wind, the air temperature, the angle of the slope, the range for the thousandth time. Fired, worked the bolt, fired again. The guard was one of the generic looking brown-haired skin jobs; he went down and didn’t move. I kept watching through the scope. Everything was still; then, long moments later, Sam and his team went in.

It was seven hundred yards, you see. Six hundred forty meters. At about six hundred fifty yards, a little less than six hundred meters, air friction and gravity slow a bullet to sub-sonic speeds, so the target won’t hear that tell-tale cracking sound. As long as you don’t hit anything nearby, you can shoot at a target all day and they’ll never know you’re doing it.

Seven hundred yards is my favorite distance.

**Posted: Mon May 08, 2006 12:33 am**

Chapter 2
By the Numbers

Thirty-two, or thirty-four. Nineteen. Three. Six. One hundred forty-nine. Numbers mean different things to different people, but there’s no escaping them. You can ignore them, but not escape them.

One hundred forty-nine days since the Cylons had destroyed our way of life, and every day after that they’d been working on annihilating us. They didn’t seem to have unlimited numbers of skin jobs and tin cans, but they didn’t seem like they were in a big rush to finish us off, either. They were just—methodical. Relentless, like one of those big mining machines that crept forward at a walking pace, but nothing could stop it.

We knew who they were, the skin jobs. The generic male brown haired one, a female with dirty-blonde hair, a gorgeous female blonde who looked like a model, a dark-haired female who was also a knock-out, a dark-skinned male, and another male who looked sort of punk-ish.

Six of them altogether, but there was plenty of debate if there were any more. Gerry, one of our team who’d been a high school chemistry teacher, always had his still going; late at night, after everyone had too much to drink, the discussions could get pretty heated. Sam didn’t let it happen very often, people getting wasted. A couple weeks after I’d started using the sniper rifle he’d caught me nearly falling-down drunk… he’d yanked me away, practically carried me, and stuck his finger down my throat to make me throw up. He didn’t say much then, but the next morning he was furious at me.

“What the frak were you thinking?” he demanded, his voice low and hard.

I didn’t really have an excuse, and I had a rotten hangover and couldn’t really think clearly anyway. “I, uh, I was just--”

“Just!” he interrupted scathingly. “Dammit, Dan, you’re our number one shooter! If I needed you to go out now, do you think you could do a proper job of it?”

I didn’t look at him, shaking my head gingerly. I felt horrible physically, and also that I’d let him down. “Sorry,” I said in a low voice.

I heard him take in a deep breath and let it out. “Don’t ever do that again,” he said, his voice softening a little.

“Yessir,” I muttered.

Then, with humor, he said, “Anyhow, that rot-gut will stunt your growth. Look what it did to me.”

I glanced up at him, startled. “But—,” I began, then realized he was joking. He was not a small guy. I relaxed and rubbed my forehead. “Ain’t worth it, anyway,” I said. ‘Rot-gut’ was a good description of how I felt at the moment.

“Frakkin-A,” he nodded. Later I heard him cussing out Gerry more than he’d cussed out me.

It was just a couple days after that we had to bug out from our base at the high school. Sam had sentries posted all around, and the Cylons were getting closer. We hadn’t had electricity for awhile, but otherwise it had been a nice place to ‘camp’. The second camp was completely living off the land, shelters made of branches and tarps, and a few tents. I was used to it, but some of our team had a hard time, especially a couple of the older people. Sam could see it wasn’t good for morale as well as not being ideal for long-term, and he sent out scouting parties to find us a better place.

Three base camps. The third place, the place that the scouts found, seemed ideal. It had been some sort of summer camp, with a collection of small cabins spread out over a couple acres, a large covered pavilion at the center. On one side of the pavilion was a kitchen designed to cook and feed over a hundred campers; ideal for our group. The tree cover was thick enough to hide us from the air, but it was old growth, pretty clear underneath so we could see if the Cylons were getting near.

I went out on missions, sometimes to cover for a raiding party, sometimes alone just to up the casualty count. After we’d found out they could download, I’d wondered about the logic behind repeatedly killing them, but Sam believed that if they died, over and over, eventually they’d get tired of it, and leave. Jean gave me a more practical reason—we were depleting their supplies.

“They can’t have an unlimited supply of replacement bodies,” she told me in her dry, factual way. “They might have a great number of them, but every one we kill makes them expend energy and resources to bring the new one on-line. As long as we can disrupt their supply line, we’re hurting them.”

Jean. Jean Barclay. She was one of Sam’s top people. I think she did have some sort of military experience, although I never found out what it was. She was a redhead, hard and ruthless when it came to the enemy, only slightly more lenient on us. Sam and his Buccaneers had kept up with a fitness routine, but Jean turned it into a military workout for anyone who went on the raids, even those of us who weren’t Buccaneers.

The workouts were hard, but I didn’t care. I’d try to stay near the front when we ran, where I could see her. I wanted to feel that fiery hair, run my fingers over that creamy skin… yeah, I had the hots for her. She was about ten years older than me, though, and never looked at me like I was anything more than another soldier, a player in our war game. I’d heard that redheads were supposed to have tempers to match their hair, but she was always cool and in control.

I watched as she talked to Sam, on the other side of the pavilion, not eating the food in front of me. The food was actually pretty good, we had team members who knew how to cook. I watched Sam and Jean, though, because they were looking at a map and I could tell they were planning. They came to some sort of agreement, and they both looked over at me.

So I was going to be in on this one. I picked up my fork and pushed food around, waiting as Jean came over. Even though I saw her coming, I still jumped when she sat next to me.

“Hey, Jean,” I replied, glancing at her. It was hard to look at her like it was normal… I wanted to stare, and then I found myself not looking at her enough.

“Are you okay, Dan?” she asked.

“Huh?” I said, puzzled. “I’m fine.”

“You’re not eating,” she commented.

“Oh, uh… I’m not really hungry,” I told her.

“Are you sure you’re all right? You look tired,” she said. Was her voice a little softer than usual?

I looked around at the others in the pavilion, and said with irony, “Who doesn’t look tired?”

She didn’t speak, and I was compelled to tell her the truth, “I have a killer headache…”

“You haven’t been drinking Gerry’s poison again have you?” she asked sharply.

I shook my head and hid my wince. “Frak, no, Sam would flatten me if I did.”

She snorted softly. “Not if I flatten you first.”

I had to chuckle, and looked at her again. Was she concerned about me, Dan, or just concerned because I was a soldier and she had a mission for me? I couldn’t tell. “What do you have for me, Jean?” I asked.

“We found another of the farms,” she told me, smoothing the map over the table next to my plate.

I nodded, looking at it. I’d never been in a ‘farm’, but knew it was a building where the Cylons were experimenting with women, our women, because they couldn’t get pregnant themselves. I couldn’t understand why they’d want to, when they could make as many bodies as they needed, but I didn’t understand much about the Cylons. I knew about shooting them, though.

“We can’t risk blowing the building up, we’re getting short on medical supplies,” she went on.

I knew that; the last time I’d had a headache, our ‘doc’ didn’t have anything for it. I hadn’t even bothered to ask her this time.

“The site is ideal to drive a lot of them outside…” Jean said. “Main doors, a clear plaza in front of the building…”

I nodded again. Outside, where I’d have a clear shot at them.

“Tonight, we’re going to put a gas grenade on the roof by the intake vent… tomorrow you need to shoot it to set it off, then target as many as you can that come outside,” she told me more details of the mission, but once she showed me where it was on the map, I was concentrating on where would be the best place to shoot from.

We knew the skin jobs were susceptible to the gas grenades. I’d shot at gas grenades before, as well as power grid boxes and vehicles and satellite dishes.

“Tin cans?” I asked her. Everyone else called the Centurions ‘bullet heads’, but I called them tin cans, like the cans my dad would set up for me to shoot at, when I was a kid. Metal targets.

“Two that we’ve seen,” she said. Tin cans weren’t susceptible to the gas, so I’d have to get them down first.

“It will take me most of the night to get in place,” I mused.

“It’s going to take Sam most of the night to get that gas grenade up on the roof,” she replied.

I put my hand around my rifle, about to get up, but Jean put her hand on my arm. “You need to eat, Dan,” she said evenly.

“I’m not hungry,” I said irritably.

She didn’t reply, just kept her hand on my arm. I breathed in and out. The headache made my stomach queasy, but I nodded and leaned the barrel of the rifle against the front of my shoulder again, picking up the fork.

She took her hand off my arm, but didn’t move, sitting next to me while I ate. “You and that rifle,” she murmured.

I carried it with me everywhere, but that wasn’t unusual. A lot of us carried a weapon with us all the time; Jean herself had a handgun holstered on her belt. I’d named my rifle, which I’d thought was a bit weird, but once, under the influence of Gerry’s ‘poison’, I’d admitted it, and found out that others also named their guns.

Nemesis. The goddess of vengeance and justice.

“Get some sleep before you head out, Dan,” Jean said when I was done eating. She stood, and I got up also, holding the rifle. I felt naked when I didn’t have it with me.

“Yeah,” I said.

She looked at me steadily for a moment, then smiled slightly and nodded, turning and walking away.

I managed to get a couple hours of uninterrupted sleep with the memory of that smile in my mind, and after nightfall set out on my slow, deliberate journey to get in position.

After daybreak, I saw Sam’s signal that the rest of them were in place and ready. I double-checked the dialed-in settings on my scope, double-checked the wind, double-checked everything. Then I fired and set off the gas grenade.

I didn’t pay any attention to what my team mates were doing. I waited until there were a good number of the skin jobs outside, and started firing.

The impact of a round jerks a target around, making it hard for anyone else to tell what direction the shots are coming from. My rifle was camouflaged as well as I was, and I got quite a few before I ran out of targets. Most of them were the dark-skinned males, but there were some of the others, too.

There’s no escaping numbers. With this day’s count, I’d destroyed nineteen of the tin cans, killed thirty-two skin jobs. Or thirty-four, if you count those first two blonde ones.

**Posted: Mon May 08, 2006 12:35 am**

Chapter 3
Circles

Looking through a scope is like narrowing the whole world down to a small, sharply defined circle, every detail as clear as under a microscope. My world was a small, sharp circle with crosshairs at the center. Dots—‘mil-dots’—sit at regular intervals along the crosshairs like birds on a power line. You can use mil-dots to get a fairly close estimate of range by making a comparison to something in your sights that you know the size of.

I didn’t really need to use the mil-dots that often, our topographical maps were very accurate, and I spent hours memorizing the area I’d be shooting from and into, all the ranges engraved in my mind. Still, I practiced the quick calculation in my head every time until it got so automatic I didn’t even think of the calculation; the answer was just there.

When I looked through the scope, had that small circular slice in my head, I was calm. Everything was clear. I knew exactly what to do. I was in control.

I took the shots, then moved my cheek away from the stock of the rifle so I could watch as Sam and Jean and a couple of the others ran into the building. I kept watching to make sure they wouldn’t be interrupted, and it didn’t take them long. Less than five minutes later they were out again.

Once they were safely under cover, I started back to camp. I was almost there when the reaction hit… cold sweats, shaking, heart pounding… When they first started, about six or eight missions ago, I tried to shrug them off as being caused by something I’d eaten. Or an effect from the radiation meds. Or… well, anything else except what they really were. I knelt, leaned my shoulder against a tree and gripped my rifle tightly, waiting for it to pass. I breathed shallowly, trying not to throw up.

I didn’t understand why I’d have those reactions. The Cylons had killed nearly all of us, attacked without provocation, destroyed everything. They were made, not… not born; they were manufactured like machines were manufactured. They weren’t people.

But something in me rebelled from the killing, no matter how much I tried to rationalize it. I’m not trying to justify what I did, just—explain it. But even then, even in the grips of physical evidence, my mind still tried to deny the cause for it.

When I was recovered, I finished the trip back into camp, going to clean my rifle. It was dim inside the small building we used as an armory, but I could dismantle, clean, and reassemble my rifle with my eyes closed. In my sleep. Sometimes I did do it in my sleep.

Sam opened the door and stuck his head in. “I didn’t think you were back yet,” he commented, coming all the way in.

Belatedly I realized I’d forgotten to check in with him as soon as I’d returned. It always took me longer to get back to camp than the rest of them… it would be bitter irony if I was caught by the Cylons when I was leaving the scene, so I took just as much care exfiltrating as I did infiltrating. I always checked in with him as soon as I got back, though. Or had, up till this time.

“Sorry,” I said, not really looking at him, or at what I was doing. “I, uh, I…”

“Do you feel okay?” he asked with concern, sitting across from me at the small wooden table. “You don’t look so great.”

I grasped at the excuse. “I think I must have eaten something bad,” I said.

He didn’t reply, just looked at me steadily.

“I’m fine now,” I said defensively.

“Yeah,” he said.

“I did the job,” I told him, annoyed.

He nodded.

“What the frak do you want?” I asked with anger. “I took out the Cylons, we all got back okay. You’re not my frakking father!” I was gripping the barrel of the rifle so hard my hand hurt.

“Dan,” he said quietly.

“Leave me the frak alone!” I yelled. I was finally able to let go of the rifle, and I got up fast, taking a step, turning away and smashing the side of my fist against the wall.

He was silent for a long moment, then I heard him get up and go to the door. “Dan,” he said again, even more softly.

“I’m just—tired,” I said, and it was true. My anger left as quickly as it came, and I felt exhausted. I leaned my forehead against the rough plank wall. “I’m just tired,” I repeated.

He sighed. “Get some rest,” he said, and left.

Oh, hell, had I just yelled at Sam? I banged my forehead once against the wall. What the frak was wrong with me? I went to finish cleaning my rifle, and to try and get some rest.

PT the next morning was hard, but it always was. I slogged along at the back… I’d given up on my daydreams of Jean long ago. She would never see me as anything more than a tool. To her, I was Nemesis, my rifle. I delivered vengeance from a damn long way away.

And at any rate, I no longer had the energy to even think of involvement with anyone.

I was late getting to breakfast—only bland oatmeal, but at least it was piping hot. I put the bowl on the table and sat, resting my elbows on the table while the oatmeal cooled.

“Dan!” Jean said sharply.

I jumped, startled, and realized she must have said my name more than once.

“Yeah,” I swallowed, my heart pounding.

She sat across from me, frowning. “Are you all right?”

Oh, not her, too. “I was just waiting for my oatmeal to cool off,” I said, putting a spoonful into my mouth. It was completely cold, though, and I swallowed it with an effort. How long had I sat there staring into space, my mind a blank?

“Dan, you can take a break, you know,” she said calmly.

I looked up at her. “Take a break?” I asked, bewildered.

She breathed in and out deeply. “You’re getting worn out from the shooting,” she said gently.

“No!” I protested. “I’m doing fine. I haven’t missed one shot!”

“No, you haven’t missed,” she agreed slowly. “But I can see how it’s wearing at you. You should stop for a couple weeks, take it easy.”

“But I’m the only sniper,” I said, trying to stay calm and persuasive.

“There are--,” she began.

She was going to say more, but I started panicking a little, and before she could go on, I blurted, “Shooting is the only time I’m okay.”

“What?” she asked, started.

Damn; I hadn’t meant it to sound like that. “I mean, it’s… what I can do. To help. So I feel like I’m contributing.” My effort at trying to change what I’d said sounded feeble, at least to me.

It must have sounded feeble to her, also. “Dan, you said shooting is the only time you’re all right,” she said softly.

I tried to explain it to her. “It’s all so clear, when I’m shooting. All the details, I can see them all. I’m… it’s all in one piece, then. In control. You can’t…” I swallowed, trying to sound reasonable. “You can’t take that away from me.”

She gazed at me for a long moment. I couldn’t decipher her expression—pity? Sadness? Pain? Or was it just disgust? Finally she just nodded, got up, and left.

“Frak,” I said, and forced myself to eat the cold oatmeal.

I went to check the duty roster, to see what details I’d been assigned to, but after looking down the list three times I still didn’t see my name—then I remembered, day after a mission, none of us who’d gone out would be assigned camp details. So I took my rifle and went up the rough hillside behind the camp, and looked though the scope. We didn’t have enough of the special boat-tail rounds for me to practice with, any more, but I didn’t need to practice any more. I never missed. So I just sighted through the scope, in control, looking at clear circles of the world a thousand and more yards away.

I’d fired plenty of times from a thousand yards, and even further a few times. The record, from what I could remember, was over 2,500 yards, but I wasn’t looking for a record—unless it was the record for never missing.

I looked through my scope, examining the distant details of the landscape before me, dividing it up into circle after overlapping circle. I calculated the range, estimated wind speed, elevation, air temperature and the temperature of the rifle’s barrel, dialing in the scope and then moving on to the next circle, doing it all again. It was a soothing routine, and I didn’t realize how long I’d been at it until dusk fell and it was too dark for me to see clearly.

I stood slowly, cold and stiff, and folded the rifle’s bipod. Maybe I’d be able to sleep tonight…

I wasn’t the only one who had nightmares. Rich, a survivalist who’d joined Sam’s team shortly after I had, told me his sleep remedy. A couple shots of Gerry’s booze worked every time, or so he said. It did work, too--at least until lately; but lately the nightmares would wake me up again later on in the night. Rich shared one of the small camper’s cabins with me, and he always had a canteen of Gerry’s poison there. I never asked Rich, and he never said anything about how I helped myself, but the canteen was always there, and it always had some of the home-brew in it.

It was closer to dawn than midnight, but I took a couple of gulps and picked up my rifle, going outside to cool off and calm down before I tried to sleep again. It was one of those nights that was cool and breezy--enough to rustle the leaves on the trees and the dead leaves underfoot.

“Dan?” it was Sam; I hadn’t heard him, and I jumped, my heart pounding again.

“Yeah,” I said, sounding hoarse. I swallowed twice and cleared my throat.

“What are you doing out here?” he asked.

“Just… getting some air,” I said. I wondered what he was doing out here.

He stepped closer to me. I couldn’t see his face in the darkness and had no warning when he suddenly grabbed me by the shoulders and slammed me up against the trunk of a tree. The back of my head bounced off the tree and it hurt.

“You’ve been drinking again,” his voice was tight and quiet and furious.

He was pressing his forearm against my chest, putting his weight behind it. I’d been holding my rifle diagonally across my body, and he trapped it against me, and that hurt, too. I panicked and tried to fight him, but he was bigger than me and a lot stronger and he held me tight against the tree.

I thought he was trying to take my rifle away, and I held it more tightly, trying to get away from him. Somehow in the struggle the scope got jammed into my ribs. I gasped with pain, seeing stars, and my knees gave way.

He was saying in a rough voice, “No, no, no, don’t kill me, don’t kill me—,” but no, it was my voice saying the words.

Sam was on his knees next to where I’d collapsed, and he was saying, “Oh frak Dan, I’m sorry, I’m not going to kill you, oh frakking hell…”

When I realized what I was saying, I stopped. At some point I’d bitten my tongue and I could taste blood. I got to my feet, took a couple staggering steps, then fell to my hands and knees, throwing up the booze I’d just drunk. The bitter alcohol made my tongue sting where I’d bitten it. When I was done I sat back on my heels and wiped my mouth with the back of my left hand. I was still gripping my rifle with my right hand.

“Dan,” Sam said softly from behind me.

I turned, still on my knees, to face him.

“I’m not going to kill you,” he said, so quietly I could barely hear him.

“I know,” I said. “I, I’m sorry… I don’t know why I said that.”

I watched him as he breathed a couple times. Finally, I said, “I didn’t have much to drink. Just, just a couple gulps. To help me sleep. I’m fine.”

He sighed. “You’re not fine, Dan.”

Anger stirred in my gut, then faded. “My shooting is still good,” I said.

“Yes,” he nodded. “But that’s the only thing.”

I wanted to argue with him, but I knew he was right. I made my death-grip on my rifle relax. I couldn’t meet his gaze. “What am I supposed to do?” I asked him bleakly.

He shook his head slowly. “You need to talk to someone,” he said.

I looked up at him, then. I couldn’t tell him, what would he think of me? Hell, he was my hero, the one person I looked up to as much as my dad…

He must have seen something in my face even though it was dark, and he said, “Talk to Marin,” he said—our ‘doc’, although she was really just a medical assistant. “Or talk to the cleric.”

Marin wasn’t much older than me, maybe four years older, dark-haired and quiet. She’d been with the Buccaneers when they’d come up here, on the team’s medical staff. The cleric had joined us only recently, an older man with the kind of face you instantly trusted. I’d seen him around on occasion, but I’d never spoken to him.

I couldn’t see myself talking to either of them, but I nodded slowly, looking down, running my hands over the stock of my rifle.

“I can’t let you go back out until you get a grip on this, Dan,” Sam said gravely.

My anger flashed again. “You can’t—don’t take it away—,” I bit my words off.

“I can,” he sounded grim. “Jean told me what you said to her… I can’t let you go back out until I’m sure you won’t flip out.” He was looking at me steadily.

“I won’t flip out,” I tried to sound calm, but instead it came out desperate.

“Can you guarantee that?” He was the one who sounded calm. “Can you promise me you won’t get the shakes before you start shooting, instead of after?”

I stared at him. I couldn’t promise…

“I have everyone else to think of, too,” his voice was again grim, and it suddenly occurred to me how much we all depended on him.

I nodded, climbing to my feet. My head was throbbing where I’d hit it against the tree, my tongue hurt, and my ribs hurt. I was so incredibly weary, I wasn’t sure I could make it back to my cabin, but I did.

I didn’t get back to sleep. I lay there on the narrow cot and stared up at the ceiling, my rifle clutched to my side. It got light out. Rich woke up and said to me, “You going down to breakfast?”

“Maybe in a little bit,” I replied.

He nodded and left.

Time passed. A fly came in and buzzed around then left. I stared at the ceiling and thought of detailed circular slices of the world with crosshairs at the center.

The setting sun was sending slanted rays of light through the small window when someone knocked on the door. I watched dust whirl around in the sunbeam. The door scraped open and someone came in, but in the contrast from the sun shining on the opposite wall, and the darkness around the door, I couldn’t see who it was.

“Dan?” he said.

It was the cleric.

“Yes,” I acknowledged.

“Can I come in?” he asked.

“You are in,” I pointed out.

“Ah. Yes, right,” he sat on the stool in the corner, leaning back against the wall, almost invisible in the gloom.

I couldn’t think of anything to say, and he didn’t speak for a while either. After a bit, he asked, “What’s her name?”

I knew he meant my rifle. “Nemesis.”

He nodded. “Apt,” he commented. “They tell me you’re very good with her.”

Flatly, I said, “I have killed seventy-eight skin jobs with her.”

“You’ve never missed,” he said.

“Never,” I agreed.

He fell silent again. Finally, he questioned, “Do you know why I’m here?”

“Sam said I have to talk to someone,” I replied.

Patiently, he asked, “And why does Sam think you need to talk to someone?”

I stared at the ceiling. I didn’t think this would help. But I didn’t understand a lot of things. “How does everyone else handle it?” I asked abruptly.

“Not everyone does,” he said, crossing his arms.

I thought about that. The most we’d had on our team was a hundred and three… we were down to seventy-four now, and not all of those gone had been killed. Some had just disappeared.

He waited without speaking.

“You’re a cleric,” I growled. “Aren’t you supposed to say a prayer or something?”

“Do you think that would help?” he replied.

I blinked. I hadn’t ever really considered it. “No,” I finally said.

Again he was silent. The splotch of sunlight on the wall moved. I stared up at the ceiling.

I sighed. “I get the shakes,” I said. “I have nightmares. I… can’t sleep. I get pissed off at people I shouldn’t be angry at. I get bad headaches a lot. Nothing seems real, except for what I can see through the scope.” I touched it with my fingertips.

“Why is that?” he queried.

I breathed. “Seventy-eight,” I said softly.

He heard me, though. “You have killed seventy-eight skin jobs.”

I nodded.

“They are the enemy,” he said, as casually as if commenting that it looked like it might rain.

I closed my eyes, then opened them. “They… look like people. Through the scope.” I felt sick to my stomach again.

“So enemy or not, you are killing people,” he stated.

“Yes,” I agreed.

“Right, then,” he nodded and stood, going briskly to the door.

“Is that it?” I asked, startled, sitting up, the rifle across my legs.

He paused. “I can say a prayer if you like,” he replied with irony.

“But…” I was confused.

“You look the enemy in the face through the scope of that rifle,” he said calmly, nodding to it. “And you have no problem facing that enemy and doing what you have to do.”

I breathed in and out. “My enemy is on both ends of the rifle,” I murmured.

“Yes,” he said, in exactly the same tone of voice I’d used. He gazed at me. “You are the only one who can decide how you will defeat your enemy… but you must have a clear sight of that enemy first.”

I nodded slowly. He nodded back, and left.

“I have killed seventy-eight people,” I said quietly in the empty cabin. I lay back on the cot. My world was a small, sharp circle with crosshairs at the center. I closed my eyes and looked back at myself from the other side of those crosshairs. Every detail as clear as under a microscope.

**Posted: Mon May 08, 2006 12:36 am**

Chapter 4
The Hunter and the Hunted

After the cleric left, I slept. Oh, the nightmares woke me up, but I saw all the details of them in clear circles. The same six faces, seventy-eight times, the same but not the same. Seventy-eight different people who I’d killed. I didn’t dread going back to sleep any more, though. Those seventy-eight faces were my conscience, and my memorial to them. My face was in the nightmares, too: the hunter and the hunted.

I woke up in the morning tired, but it was a different kind of tired than the physical kind. Maybe calling it ‘tired’ was the wrong word. Maybe it was closer to resignation, acceptance of who I was and what I’d done. I was really no better than those who had attacked us, but I wasn’t any worse than them, either.

Do you think there’s any chance of redemption for any of us?

I took my rifle and went to get some breakfast. I had just finished, taken my bowl to be cleaned, when Sam came up to me, looking at me warily.

“I’m… not fine,” I told him soberly. “But I don’t think I ever will be fine again. I’m, uh, coming to grips with it, I think.”

He relaxed and nodded, regarding me intently. “You look—different.”

I breathed in and out slowly. “I’d like to go up on the mountain for a couple days, alone,” I told him. “Is that all right? Can I take some rations?”

His expression didn’t change, but I sensed his uncertainty.

“I’m the sniper,” I said to him calmly. “I’ll be back, but I’d like… I need a little time to think.”

He nodded, reassured. “Don’t forget anti-rad meds.”

“I won’t,” I handed him my rifle. “Hold onto this for me until I get back?”

He looked at it in his hands, then back at me, and he nodded. “Take extra rations,” he said. “You’re too thin.”

I snorted softly. “I’ll never be a Pyramid player.”

He smiled slightly. “You can never tell,” he replied with humor.

Up on the mountain, I looked at the sky. When night fell I looked at the stars. I could see ships, far out, but I couldn’t tell if they were friend or enemy. I looked at the world beneath me, around me, the smallest insects, larger mountains in the distance. I slept, and had nightmares, and slept again.

I missed the feel of my sniper’s rifle in my hands. I missed the feel of the stock against my cheek.

I had this skill. It wasn’t something that someone could just be trained to do, I didn’t think. It needed good eyesight, patience, strength to stay motionless for long periods of time. There were probably plenty of others who had those traits, but I think there is something else that you need, something I couldn’t find a name for. It feels like… an inner reservoir, a deep, quiet body of water. And you have to be able to breathe that water.

I really wished I’d taken my rifle with me. I felt incomplete without it.

When I went back to camp, I saw Sam at one of the tables under the pavilion, Jean and Dare and a few others with him. Sam was the first one who saw me, and he had my rifle with him. When I came up, he handed it to me without a word. I took it and breathed in deep, quiet water. I nodded my thanks, and sat next to Jean.

They were planning a raid, a mission, and because I was back, Sam included me in it.

Seventy-eight became eighty-one.

Seven hundred yards, eight hundred yards, a thousand yards, and eighty-one turned into eighty-two, then eighty-five, then eighty-seven, captured forever in small, clear circles. Eighty-seven in my nightmares, plus one: the hunter, me.

I’m not looking for forgiveness or understanding… maybe I just want someone to hear me.

A mission I wasn’t on, something went wrong; and Sam came back with a strange story. A story of two of them who’d saved him, let him go. Sam told us all about it, the tin can in the parking garage, the bomb going off, three Cylons and the two who’d let him go… we sat around the table and listened. I cleaned my rifle as he spoke.

It didn’t make sense to him.

It made sense to me. They were Cylons, but they were people, too. I’d seen them better than anyone, every detail clear in the circle of my scope.

Jean stayed with me after everyone else left, watching as I reassembled the rifle. “You’re doing all right,” she said.

I nodded, finishing with the rifle. She put her hand on my arm, and I glanced at her questioningly.

“You’ve changed,” she murmured.

“Many times over,” I agreed.

She smiled a little. “I remember how you used to look at me,” she said.

I shook my head wryly. Of course she would have noticed. “That was a long time ago,” I responded. Not that long in terms of months, maybe, but in terms of experience.

“You were too young, then,” she said, and the way she said it made me look at her more closely.

After a moment, I said lightly, “I’m not very much older now.”

“Old enough,” her voice was quiet.

I studied her face. I shook my head, feeling a twinge of regret at something that could never be. “Too old by now, I think,” I said as quietly.

She sighed and took her hand off my arm. “Not too old,” she murmured. “Too distant.”

She stood and looked down at me. I could see her face very clearly, a sharp circle, as if she was seven hundred yards away. “Good night, Dan,” she said.

“Good night, Jean,” I replied. She turned and walked away.

Another mission… I looked through my scope at a small clearly defined circle of the city. Cylons and tin cans, rebuilding a city that had once been ours. I wondered, if I knew them better, would I be able to tell one from another?

I was out on this one alone, ‘upping the body count’, Sam had said. He’d hesitated about asking me, but it was a good move, tactically. He was planning a big raid some distance away, and this would be a distraction to get the Cylons to look in the wrong direction.

Ninety-three. A brown-haired male.

My awareness was the bright clear circle, a slice of the world seven hundred yards away. I breathed deep water.

Ninety-four. One of the dark-skinned males.

Chamber a round, change focus, change aim, mentally adjust for the changing wind, barrel temperature...

I didn’t hear anything, but I felt the cold round muzzle of the rifle under my left ear, under the edge of the ghillie suit’s hood. I didn’t move. The hunter had also been hunted.

It was almost a relief, but there was some disappointment, too. It was over now, done.

I waited.

She said, “Take your hand away from the trigger.”

I took my hand away, rested my palm on the ground. I lowered my head a little, no longer looking through the scope.

“On your knees,” she said. “Put your hands behind your neck. Slowly.” She sounded—nervous? She took the muzzle of the rifle off my neck.

I pushed myself up to my knees, put my hands behind my neck.

“Stand up,” she ordered.

I stood, and slowly started to turn to face her.

“Don’t--!” she began to say.

We stared at each other. She was one of the gorgeous blonde ones, slender curves, as tall as me. She lookednervous, but she held the rifle as if she was used to it.

“You’re so young!” she exclaimed involuntarily.

It was the last thing I would have expected her to say. “Sorry,” I replied with irony. Why was I still alive?

She glanced very quickly at my rifle, then back at me. “Has it been you all this time?” she asked.

“Yes,” I answered, watching her.

She stared at me as if I was some kind of odd creature she’d never seen before. “Aren’t you hot in that?” she asked finally.

“Yes,” I nodded. I probably did look like some sort of odd creature, in my camouflage. The afternoon was warm, and I’d been sweating inside the ghillie suit for hours.

“Do you have any other weapons?” she demanded.

I could probably have hidden an arsenal under the ghillie suit, but my only weapon was my rifle. I shook my head.

“Take it off—slowly!” she warned me.

I pushed the hood back, undid the fastenings, shrugged out of the top. My t-shirt was soaked with sweat; I shivered in the warm afternoon air. I untied the baggy trousers, let them fall around my ankles. The difference in temperature made me feel light-headed for a few seconds.

“Are you going to shoot me now?” I asked calmly.

“You’re stronger than I would have thought,” she said, staring at me.

Her words didn’t make any sense to me; I was waiting for her to kill me. I wondered what it would feel like, to be shot. It was a satisfying kind of irony. A full circle. Both sides of the crosshairs. I breathed quiet water.

She didn’t shoot me, though. She took me to a kind of bunker, locked me in the basement of it. It looked like it had been a small armory, barred windows high in the walls, a similarly barred window in the door. She looked in at me after she locked the door. “I’ll bring you some food and water,” she said.

Food and water? It was too puzzling. “I’d like my rifle,” I told her. “Be careful, there’s a round in the chamber.”

“Your rifle,” she repeated, as puzzled as I’d been at her offer of food and water.

“I’m used to it,” I explained.

She shook her head slowly, and went away.

I shook my head also. As if she’d really let me have my rifle, even unloaded. I sat on the hard concrete floor and leaned in the corner and wished I had my rifle in my hands.

I fell asleep.

Nightmares woke me up later, but I was cold and stiff, too. I got up and walked back and forth, swinging my arms to get warm and loosen up; it was dark outside, I’d been asleep for three or four hours.

When she came back in the morning, she brought another female with her. One of the dark-haired beautiful ones, her skin the color of coffee with lots of cream, the way I liked coffee. She held the rifle and the blonde one had an armful of blankets, and a large bag over her shoulder. I stood with my back against the wall and watched them.

“What’s your name?” I asked the dark-haired one. She had my rifle slung along her back. I looked at the rifle, then back at her face.

“Sharon,” she answered. Her expression got grim and she added, “I’m an eight.”

What? An eight?

“I’m a six,” the blonde one said. “They call me Caprica Six. Caprica.”

I rubbed my face with my palm. This was getting more and more confusing. Caprica? There were lots of… er, lots of her here. Six? Eight?

“It’s what model we are,” Caprica told me.

I nodded slowly. Numbers. Caprica put the bundle of blankets on the floor, and opened the bag, taking out packs of rations and a large bottle of water.

“Why haven’t you killed me?” I asked, curious.

“What’s your name?” Sharon questioned me.

“Dan Ellison,” I told her.

“We want to talk to you,” Caprica said.

I breathed in and out. “I won’t tell you where the others are,” I said.

She shook her head. “We don’t care about that,” she replied.

I didn’t get any of it. They hadn’t killed me, they didn’t want to find out about our team. What the frak did they want?

Caprica took the rifle from Sharon, keeping it aimed at me. Sharon unslung my rifle and stepped forward to lay it across the pile of blankets, then she stepped back quickly. “It’s not loaded any more,” she said.

I didn’t move, kept the cold wall at my back. None of this made any sense.

“We need to go,” Sharon told Caprica.

The blonde model number six nodded, and they left, locking the door.

I picked up my rifle, automatically checked, but it was unloaded. It was comforting in my hands, though. I sat cross-legged with it on my thighs and opened up one of the ration packs, eating.

I was a prisoner, and I had no idea what they wanted from me. I paced. I did a bunch of sit-ups and push-ups, losing track of how many. I made a bed of the blankets they’d brought and stared at the ceiling. I did more push-ups. The day passed slowly. I sighted my rifle through the windows and remembered clear circles with people in the crosshairs.

Some time long after nightfall I fell asleep.

I heard them when they returned the next morning, and I gently laid my rifle in the middle of the bare room, backing up till I hit the far wall.

Sharon again held the rifle, but she didn’t seem as nervous this morning.

“Will you talk to us?” Caprica asked.

I don’t think I’d ever seen anyone as beautiful as she was. She looked different than the other sixes somehow. I thought I’d be able to tell her from the others. “About what?” I asked, sitting on the floor and leaning against the wall.

Caprica took the large bag off her shoulder. “I brought you breakfast.” She took a wrapped packet out of her bag and walked forward to hand it to me, then she went back to the middle of the room and sat, gracefully, just behind my rifle. Sharon crouched further back, her rifle ready.

“I still have rations left,” I said. I hadn’t known how long they’d leave me here, and at any rate, they’d left enough rations for two days.

Caprica smiled slightly. “You looked hungry,” she said.

Since I’d come to terms with killing people, I’d been hungry a lot, but food wasn’t all that plentiful, in the camp; not any more. The radiation was starting to take a toll on the animals, the game we hunted.

I opened the packet. It was a fat scrambled egg sandwich, with bacon. I hadn’t smelled bacon for months. I wolfed the sandwich down and wished I had another. I wondered how long it would be until the radiation started making me sick. I’d had two days worth of the anti-rad meds in my pack, but they hadn’t brought that to me. Only my rifle.

Caprica touched my rifle with her fingertips. “Will you tell us about this?” she asked.

“Nemesis,” I breathed.

They both looked startled. “That’s what I named her,” I explained.

“Justice,” Sharon said softly.

I shrugged. “That’s what I thought, back when I named her,” I said.

“And what do you think now?” Caprica asked, watching me.

I shook my head slowly. “I don’t know, any more,” I murmured.

I told them about how I’d started as a hunter, and how what I hunted had changed from game to Cylons. I told them about the significance of seven hundred yards, and the bright circles of the world I’d seen though my scope. The people I’d seen and killed in those circles. The hunter and the hunted.

“Ninety-four,” I said to them. “That’s how many of you I’ve killed. I can tell you how many of each model, if you like.” Numbers. They were numbers six and eight. We only knew about six of them, and I wondered which models we hadn’t seen.

“You’ve kept track of how many of each model you’ve killed?” Sharon was amazed, and appalled.

I tapped the side of my head. “I have nightmares of all of them, every night,” I replied.

“Nightmares,” Caprica repeated quietly.

I nodded.

“Why have you kept fighting?” Sharon asked.

I shook my head slowly. “For survival, I suppose,” I said. “What else is there?”

Sharon was staring at me as if I’d said something with deeper meaning for her. Almost whispering, she said, “But does humanity deserve to survive…”

It didn’t sound like a question, but I answered it anyway. “I don’t know about humanity,” I replied somberly. “I can only speak for myself… and I probably don’t deserve to survive. But I want to, all the same.”

The next morning, only Caprica came, again bringing me breakfast; two sandwiches, this time. I ate them both with my rifle at my side, but she didn’t seem to care. We didn’t talk much.

I started feeling sleepy and realized she’d put something in my food. I sat and leaned in the corner while she watched me. I sighed. “I’d rather you’d of shot me,” I mumbled.

She shook her head. I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I slid down the long dark slope into nothing. I dreamt she touched my head and said, “So young…”

I woke up and it seemed like a long time later. My head was pounding and my mouth was dry. I tried to stand, but my legs were like overcooked noodles. I rested, and fell asleep again.

The next time I woke up, I wasn’t as woozy, but I still felt sick from whatever she’d given me. Shaky, I drank some water, waited, and drank more. I opened a packet of rations and slowly ate, and started to feel better.

I looked out the high windows, trying to figure out how long I’d been here. Four days at least; probably more. I tested the bars in all the windows, but they were secure, as was the barred window in the door. More out of thoroughness than with any expectation, I tested the door handle, and found it was unlocked.

Slowly, I went out, squinting in the bright afternoon sun. I had my rifle, but no ammo… but just outside the bunker was my pack. I looked around, but saw no one. I opened the pack to find it had been filled with more ration packs—and the anti-radiation med injectors. The ammo for my rifle was still there. I loaded the rifle, then injected myself, and slung the pack on my back, going to where I could see into the city.

Through the clear sharp circle of the scope, I saw nothing. No one. The city was deserted. I was tempted to go down there, but instead headed back to our camp.

No one was in the camp, either. It looked like there had been a fight… but there were no bodies.

It was as if I was the last person left alive on the planet. It was unsettling. It was like my nightmares in a way; I was the only person still alive in my nightmares.

I started having a new nightmare. In it, I turn and look and see myself aiming through the scope… the crosshairs are on my chest. I look down at the crosshairs, and back at myself in the distance. The distant me fires, but I can’t hear it. I can see the round traveling through the air, see its vapor trail.

The round passes through my chest as if through water, and the water closes silently back over the void it leaves in its passage. It doesn’t hurt. I breathe the water, and look at my distant self. The hunter and the hunted.

**Posted: Mon May 08, 2006 12:39 am**

Chapter 5
The Rifle

My rifle had made me strong. I carried it and remembered when I’d first started using it. In the beginning I would get tired, my arms used to ache, but not anymore. Now my rifle was part of me. Now I was my rifle.

I left our deserted camp. I had no plan, just started hiking. I had anti-rad meds in my pack, a few ration packs, and ammo for my rifle, and I knew how to hunt.

I was walking across a fairly open area, site of a year-old forest fire, when I heard a strange noise. Familiar, but not… I turned, looked up, and saw them. It didn’t register at first what they were—Colonial Navy Raptors, a bunch of them.

I watched as they flew overhead, then on. It didn’t occur to me to wonder who they were, or where they were going. I watched them the same way I’d watch birds fly overhead.

But then they slowed, and the last one turned, landing nose toward me, 420 yards away. I kept on walking toward it as the hatch hissed open. A soldier jumped out, a real soldier, in uniform—a Marine. He stood there, holding his assault weapon across his chest, but I could see he was ready for anything. I just walked toward him, keeping my rifle in my arms.

I stopped in front of him.

“Dan Ellison,” he stated.

“Yes,” I was startled. “How did you know?”

He gave a slight smile. “We got a wireless message from, ah, a guy named Anders, in the lead Raptor. He said, dark haired young guy with a long rifle, that would be Dan Ellison.”

I looked on toward the other Raptors. So that’s where everyone had gone… Kara, the pilot from the Galactica, had returned to rescue us. I was impressed… all these Raptors—one hell of a rescue.

“Coming?” the Marine asked me.

I blinked. “Sure,” I said. “What’s your name?”

“I’m Corporal Rob Ames,” he said. He gestured and I climbed into the Raptor with him, the hatch closing behind us. The Raptor was crowded, mostly Marines, but a few of our team were there also. I found a spot on the deck, leaning back against the bulkhead, propping my rifle against my shoulder.

“Is that thing loaded?” Corporal Ames asked me as we took off.

“It would be pretty frakking useless if I carried around unloaded,” I replied with irony. “The safety’s on.” I turned it so he could see.

He looked like he was going to say something else, but he looked at my face and just nodded. “Have you ever jumped before?”

It took me a moment to understand he meant an FTL jump. I shook my head.

“It feels kind of weird to some people,” he told me. “We’ll be jumping a lot, to get back to the Galactica.”

I nodded; but when we jumped the first time, it didn’t feel that weird to me. It actually felt a bit familiar, like that short interval in between pulling the trigger and seeing the target go down. A moment of suspension too brief to measure.

I actually fell asleep during the journey, then jerked awake when Corporal Ames shook my shoulder.

“Yeah,” I said, instantly alert, my heart pounding. I loosened my grip on my rifle.

The corporal looked like he was as startled as me. “We’re here,” he said. “Landing in just a couple minutes.”

I took a deep breath and nodded.

“I can’t believe you slept,” he said, grinning. “You’d make a great Marine… are you sure you’ve never jumped before?”

“It didn’t feel that strange to me,” I shrugged.

We landed, and everyone got out. I stretched, a little stiff from falling asleep sitting on the hard Raptor deck, and looked around.

The Battlestar Galactica. It wasn’t anything like I’d expected, although I hadn’t known what to expect. A long landing deck, the walls narrowing as they went up, the Raptors neatly parked and orange-coveralled mechanics all over. There were a lot more people than I expected—not from the Raptors, but Galactica crew I guessed, pilots and officers and mechanics.

I didn’t know what to do, but Sam had been in the lead Raptor, so I headed that way. There was a crowd of people, but I could see Sam because he was pretty tall. Some of our people were still getting out of Raptors…

Then without warning, one of the guys in orange coveralls attacked someone getting out of a Raptor, yelling, throwing him down. I was ready without thinking, had the safety off my rifle—the Marines all around were the same. I couldn’t see what was going on and moved closer.

“He’s a Cylon!” the Galactica crewmember said.

A high ranking officer said, “Back off Chief, we got it.”

The Chief got up, backed away, and the person he’d attacked stood, catching his breath. I stared. The Chief had gone after the cleric… the older man who I’d talked to… the man who’d called the Cylons ‘the enemy’.

He said, “Well, this is an awkward moment… yes, he’s right, I am a Cylon, and I have a message. So… take me to your leader.”

“Take him to the brig!” the officer ordered in a hard voice. He turned and pointed. “That, too.”

I looked where he was pointing; at Sharon—well, a number eight model, I could tell right off it wasn’t the same Sharon I’d seen in my brief captivity.

What the frak? It didn’t make sense.

Things kept happening around me, but my body was frozen, my thoughts going in a thousand directions at once. I felt like I could hardly breathe.

Someone dropped a hand hard on my shoulder and I jumped.

“Relax, Dan,” he said—it was Dare, Derrin Campbell, one of Sam’s original Buccineers.

I sucked in a deep breath and nodded, but it was a lot easier for him to say than for me to do. He put his hand over mine on the rifle. My finger was close to the trigger but not on it, and I suddenly understood what he was worried about. I lowered my rifle, clicked the safety on, cradled it in my arms again.

“Sorry,” I said in a low voice.

“Hell, if I’d had a weapon, I would have done the same,” he said quietly. He looked at me straightly. “Are you all right?”

“It’s…,” I shook my head slowly, unable to find the right words. “It’s all too weird. Here, and, and—Cylons.”

He looked around. “Yeah, I know,” he agreed.

“So what happens now?” I asked him.

“Beats me,” he said. “Sam would know.”

Sam did know; we were all taken to some sort of briefing room, seats in tiers with a podium down at the front, and he came looking for me.

“What’s going on?” I asked him.

“We’re checking in and they’re checking us out,” he said, “medically, that is. Are you all right? What the hell happened?”

It took me a minute to realize what he meant. “Oh, uh, it was… I got captured. By one of the blonde ones. She locked me up and later on she came back with a dark-haired one.” I paused. “They go by numbers,” I said slowly. “The blondes are model number six, and the dark-haired ones are number eight. I thought they were going to kill me, but they didn’t.”

I stopped, remembering feeling the muzzle of Caprica’s rifle behind my ear. It seemed like everything had been sort of… suspended, since then. As if I was watching a video instead of being in real life. “All they wanted to do was talk,” I told Sam. “Not about us, the team, but to me, like they wanted to learn about me.” I frowned. “It was—freaky. And after a couple days the six gave me some sort of drug and I was out of it for awhile. When I woke up, everyone was gone… all the Cylons, all of you guys, nobody was left.”

He gazed at me. “You sure you’re all right?”

I nodded. “They didn’t hurt me, and once the drugs wore off I felt fine. What happened to the team, though?” I asked the last part quietly, because there were a lot fewer of us left now. Less than two dozen, and there had been more than twice that many when I’d left for that last mission.

Sam’s expression got grim. “They found the camp,” he said. “Bullet heads attacked, and we bugged out—that was the day after you headed out. They attacked probably about the same time you got in place.”

I nodded. I’d left in the afternoon, taking most of the night to get in place, and hadn’t started shooting until the next afternoon.

“They killed a lot of us right off,” he went on, still grim. “It looked pretty bad, then Kara showed up.”

I watched his face as his eyes automatically searched for her in the room, and I could tell by his expression when he saw her. I looked, too. She was talking to another Galactica crewmember, and I looked back at Sam. Even though he hadn’t seen her for all those months, it was still there—whatever you would call it, feelings for her.

He looked back at me. “I thought we’d never see you again,” he told me quietly. “It was pure chance we were flying over… Kara was checking to see if the Cylons really were gone, and there was no one. Until we saw you. I couldn’t believe it.”

“It was really weird,” I said. “The whole thing… nobody there… and then all those Raptors.”

“You look like you’re still weirded out,” he said soberly.

I shrugged. I couldn’t really describe how I felt. “I’m hungry,” I said.

He chuckled. “You’re always hungry, lately,” he teased me. “I’m sure they’ll have something for us to eat.”

I had rations in my pack, and ate some while I waited. It got to my turn, first a medic doing a quick check; took a blood sample, pulse and blood pressure, height and weight, and looked in my eyes.

“You look fine to me,” she said calmly. “The doctor will be doing complete physicals of all of you in the next few days.”

Next, I talked to a Galactica crewmember who introduced himself as Yeoman Cushing. He asked me the same questions he’d asked everyone else; my name, my birth date, which colony I was from, normal questions. When he asked ‘next of kin’, it was in a carefully expressionless voice, and he merely nodded when I replied in the same tone, ‘none’.

When he was done he said to the Marine who stood at his shoulder, “You can take his weapon now, Private.”

The Marine had already taken a step toward me when the Yeoman’s words sunk in.

“No,” I said, involuntarily taking a step backward.

Both of them looked at me with surprise. “You can’t carry a weapon on the ship,” Cushing said.

“No,” I said again in a low voice, my hands tight on my rifle.

The Marine took another step toward me, and I backed up more, right into someone, and I jumped as he held me strongly by the shoulders from behind.

“Dan!” Sam said sharply; the second time he’d said my name, I realized. “Dan,” he said again, more quietly, letting go of my shoulders.

I turned to look at him; Kara was at his side. “They want to take my rifle away from me,” I said to Sam.

“You don’t need it here, Dan,” he said gently.

I knew that. But I didn’t want to give it up. I was angry and pushed the anger down. It was stupid to be angry, I wouldn’t need my rifle here. Sam saw something on my face and he closed his eyes for a brief moment, then he looked at Kara. She was watching me, and she looked at Sam and nodded.

“Come on, Dan,” Kara said with a smile. “I’ll take you down to the armory myself, and you can lock it up.”

Just like that, as easily as locking myself away.

“I’ll show you the hatch code to unlock it,” Kara pulled at my elbow.

I nodded, and followed her. They were right, of course, I didn’t need my rifle here on the ship.

I locked it in a gun locker, putting the remaining rounds I had with it. Kara showed me how to set the code for the locker, then told me the hatch code for the armory as we left—and she made me try it, to be sure it worked.

I still felt lost without my rifle.

“Sam tells me you’re really good with that thing,” Kara commented as we headed back to the briefing room.

I nodded. I felt her looking at me, and said, “Yeah, I am.” It wasn’t anything close to being a boast. I couldn’t see why someone would be proud of it… but it was strange, because in some ways, I was proud of it. It was confusing, to feel proud of such a sinister skill.

She was quiet for a moment as we walked. “Sam said you’re one of his best troops,” she finally said.

I looked up at her then, startled. “Huh?” I hadn’t ever gone on raids with the rest of them… I was always a damn long way away, all alone. Then I understood what he must have meant. “Probably ‘cause I never miss,” I said, shrugging, pausing to let her go first back into the briefing room.

“Never?” she was surprised, looking over her shoulder at me.

I nodded, looking down again.

Sam was there and he asked, “Never what?”

“Dan says he never misses,” Kara made it sound like a joke.

Sam was completely serious, looking at me, and he said, “He’s right.”

I didn’t want to think about it, and brushed past them, going up the steps to a seat up in the back corner. I slouched down and tried not to think about anything and waited for whatever would happen next.

I was assigned to a bunk in a cold metal room, three double bunks across from each other, twelve all together. I got a top bunk and they put Dare in the same room, on a bottom bunk at the other end. Seven of the other bunks belonged to Galactica crewmembers, three were empty. Everything was square bare metal except for the blankets on the bunks, and curtains across the bunk openings for a little privacy.

I didn’t like it at all. The bunk was actually pretty large, big enough for me to easily sit up, but I felt closed in, even with the curtain open. Nightmares woke me up and I lay there for a minute, my heart pounding. It wasn’t entirely dark; it seemed like there was always some sort of dim lighting, so I could see pretty well.

But it felt like the bunk compartment was closing down on me, the walls moving in. I could see it wasn’t moving, but I felt like I was being crushed.

I panicked and jumped out of the bunk, landing on my feet, crouched, ready to run, and I froze. The crewmember who had the bottom bunk across from me was sitting there, unlacing his boots, and he froze too, staring back at me.

“Are you okay?” he asked. “You’re one of the resistance fighters, aren’t you?”

I got a grip on myself. Resistance fighters? I hadn’t thought of it that way. “Yeah,” I acknowledged. “Uh, sorry, um, I’m not used to it here.”

He nodded, but he was looking at me warily. I put my boots on and left without saying anything else, walking the passageways. I got lost. There were hatches with Marine guards and I didn’t dare try to go in where ever it was they were guarding. The passages weren’t much better than the bunk, too dark and close. Hard flat walls like a prison.

I found myself running, sweaty and out of breath, and totally by accident came out into the landing deck we’d arrived in. I stopped short and looked around… there were people here, working, but not that many and no one had noticed me. I took a deep breath and ran a hand down my face. At least it was bigger here, more open.

There were huge beams, supports, whatever you called them, at intervals along the bulkhead, and I went and leaned my back against the bulkhead next to one. There were a few tool boxes lined up nearby; I slid my back down the wall until I was sitting on the deck, and I was fairly certain that no one would notice me there.

I sat and stared off into nothing and calmed down. It was frakking stupid to have panicked like that. I sighed. I was tired, but I didn’t want to sleep.

I wanted my rifle.

I dozed a little and woke up and dozed again. I could hear the mechanics working. I had no idea what time it was.

I was dozing again when a voice demanded, “What are you doing?”

I jerked awake and scrambled to my feet, my back against the bulkhead. “Uh, um…,” I stammered, and saw I’d been challenged by the Chief, the man who’d recognized the cleric as a Cylon.

“Sorry,” he said at once. “I thought you were one of my knuckledraggers, sleeping on the job.” He regarded me, frowning slightly.

“No, sir,” I said. “That is, yes, sir, I was sleeping, but I’m not a—knuckledragger.” I willed my heart to slow.

“You came here from Caprica with the others, yesterday afternoon,” he said, watching me. “The kid with the rifle.”

I nodded slowly. More than anything I wished I had my rifle with me.

“I’m Chief Galen Tyrol,” he said. “You want to come to the enlisted mess and have some breakfast with me?”

I told him my name. I didn’t really want to be with anyone, but I was hungry and had no idea how to get to the ‘enlisted mess’; and I couldn’t think of a polite way to say no, so finally I just nodded.

He didn’t say much, but it didn’t feel awkward and I relaxed a little. We sat at a small table across from each other and ate. I was about halfway done when he said mildly, “Hey, slow down… nobody’s going to steal your food.”

I stopped in mid-chew and looked up at him. I swallowed. “Uh, sorry,” I said with a sigh. “I was hungry.”

He hadn’t finished nearly as much as I had. He chuckled. “I remember being hungry like that when I was your age. You can get more if you want, you know.”

“I can?” I was startled. He nodded, smiling, and I slowed down eating. “Food was getting pretty low, the last couple months,” I said with a shrug.

He gave a nod and resumed eating.

After I’d gotten a second helping, I asked him, “How did you know he was a Cylon?”

He looked up at me, not at all surprised by my sudden question. “Cavil? There was already one of him here on the Galactica.”

Cavil. I wondered what number he was.

“I’d… talked to him,” the Chief said slowly. “About some problems. I was having.”

Again I was startled. I stared at him. “Me, too,” I said in a tight voice. I felt that anger stirring again and swallowed it.

He regarded me. “Did he help you?”

I thought back to that day. “He didn’t really say much,” I finally said. “Just made me think about things… it seemed to help then, but I don’t know about now.” Could I believe what a Cylon said? I didn’t think so. “What about you?” I asked in response. “Did he help you?”

He started to shake his head, but stopped and shrugged. “Frak if I know,” he said. “I guess he did make me think about things, too.”

I wasn’t sure that thinking about things was any sort of help, anyway. I had a sudden image of Cavil in a bright circle, crosshairs on his chest.

I wanted my rifle.

I wasn’t hungry any more and pushed my tray away.

“Go sleep in your bunk,” the Chief said, not pushy but serious. “It’s a lot more comfortable than the hangar deck.”

I shrugged and got up to leave and paused. “Thanks, Chief,” I said.

“Sure,” he replied. “Any time.”

I was too restless to sleep, though, so I just wandered around the parts of the ship that weren’t guarded. I started to get an idea of where things were. I went to the armory and cleaned my rifle. I wandered the passageways some more.

I was walking along one of the passageways late in the evening and paused to let a couple of Galactica crewmembers go into a room—it was some sort of gathering place, loud laughter and music. I glanced in and saw it was a rec room, there were people playing cards, and some others playing vidgames, and the music hit me like a physical blow. I hadn’t heard music since… since the day of the attacks.

“Hey!” one of the crewmembers grabbed at my arm and I jumped. “You’re one of Anders’ fighters, aren’t you!”

“Er… yeah,” I said.

“You wanna come in and play some cards with us?” she asked.

“Uh,” I didn’t really want to, but the music…

“I’m Sophia Longio, everyone calls me Sophie, and this is Rex Morgan,” she said. She hadn’t let go of my arm, and she pulled me into the rec room with her.

“Dan Ellison,” I said.

“Here, sit here,” Sophie pushed me toward one of the chairs around a table.

I sat, but she headed off right away. Rex sat across from me and rolled his eyes. “She’s like that,” he said with a wry smile. “Best thing is just to go along with her!”

I nodded, looking around. Some of the crewmembers here looked like they weren’t that much older than me, but I still felt really out of place. I watched Sophie as she talked to a couple of others. She had light brown hair and was cute in a bouncy cheerleader kind of way, and I wondered what she looked like under the green utility uniform shirt she wore.

She came back with two guys she introduced as Tony and Yacker; and she had a bottle and some glasses. Yacker started shuffling cards and Rex asked me, “You know how to play Full Colors?”

I shook my head. I could smell the booze Sophie was pouring into the glasses. “I’ll watch,” I said.

“It’s not hard,” Yacker started dealing and Sophie handed the filled glasses around. “You’ll catch on quick.”

“Hey, are you over eighteen?” Rex asked as I picked up the glass.

I wasn’t sure if he was joking or not, and said with irony, “Yeah, I am.” By half a year.

Sophie snorted. “Like it matters?” she asked Rex, grinning.

He shrugged and grinned back at her.

The stuff tasted better than Gerry’s rot-gut, although I still didn’t like it. By the third drink, though, I started to relax, and listened to everyone talking. Some of the conversations were so… normal, it seemed bizarre. Stupid jokes, comments about some upcoming election, disagreements about the music or the cards, complaints about the food… I thought the food was pretty good, but these people hadn’t been eating the kind of rations we had been.

And there was talk about some planet, a place where people could live? I listened more closely to that, but it seemed like nobody really knew much about it. When I asked, Tony explained, “When all the Raptors headed out to Caprica, the jump coordinates for one of them got confused, and they found a planet instead. Lucky break, huh? Maybe we’ll get some shore leave… some people are saying we could even settle there. I sure wouldn’t mind getting off this bucket.”

I agreed with him wholeheartedly there. I’d been on the ship not much more than a day, and I already hated it.

It got late, and most everyone left… and I’d had too much to drink. I wasn’t drunk, but I wasn’t sober either.

But maybe I’d be able to sleep, so I went to my bunk and I did manage to sleep for a few hours, and when I couldn’t sleep any longer, I went and wandered through the ship some more. I heard an odd noise around the corner in one of the passageways, and I stopped, ready for—whatever, but it turned out to be a group of Marines, running in formation. I stood up against the bulkhead to let them go by, and with a shrug, fell in at the back. It wasn’t much different than the PT sessions that Jean used to make us do, on Caprica, and the Marines didn’t seem to mind me tagging along.

The next days weren’t much different. I learned how to play cards with the crew who hung out in the enlisted rec on deck G5, and I drank with them in the evenings. I found out that if I waited past midnight, the swing shift people would show up in the rec. I wasn’t that thrilled about being with that many people, but it was better than drinking alone.

I cleaned my rifle.

It was an aimless existence for someone used to clear circles and sharp aim. I knew Sam wouldn’t be happy if he found out I was drinking. At least I was doing PT with the Marines, even if it was really hard some mornings with my head pounding and my stomach queasy. I wasn’t sure if I cared what Sam thought… I didn’t have missions to do anymore.

After a long run with the Marines one morning, I went and showered and put on clean clothes. They weren’t my clothes, but I’d had only what I was wearing when I’d come on board. These clothes were a uniform, but without any insignia. I needed to cinch the belt tight to keep the pants up, and everything but the underneath t-shirt was baggy, but it was comfortable and didn’t have holes—and I didn’t feel like I stuck out as much.

I went and walked though the ship, now my usual daytime activity. I’d found the right pace that made it look like I had someplace to get to, but it wasn’t so fast that it made my head pound worse. If I kept moving, it didn’t feel like the walls were closing in on me. I’d just focus as far ahead as I could, and keep moving. A lot of times I’d find myself someplace with no memory of walking there, but that was all right.

When it got real bad, when I thought I’d be crushed and suffocate, I’d go to the hangar deck… or I’d go clean my rifle.

I wasn’t paying any attention at all to where I was going, and when someone grabbed at my shoulder, I turned swinging without thought.

It was Sam, and he blocked my punch automatically then backed off fast.

I backed up, too, my heart pounding. “Frak!” I exclaimed. “You scared me!”

“Hell, you scared me!” he said back. He looked at me, frowning. “Where the frak have you been?”

I shrugged, looking away. “Around,” I said.

He didn’t reply right away and I glanced back up at him. He was still frowning, and looked—suspicious. “I do PT in the mornings with the Marines,” I said defensively. “And I hang out in the enlisted rec and play cards.” I was beginning to feel angry. “Anyway, where the frak have you been? I haven’t seen you anywhere.”

It was his turn to look away, and I saw the muscles in his jaw bunch. He looked straight back at me and said, “Okay, you’re right, I should be around more.”

That wasn’t what I’d meant; I’d challenged him out of instinct. The last thing I wanted was him breathing down my back. I shook my head, and said in a low voice, “No, I know you’ve got stuff to do.” He was spending his time with Kara, and the thought made me resentful. That was stupid because they cared about each other, why should I resent them spending time together?

I could feel him still looking at me, and I glanced up at his face.

“You’re awfully pale,” he said slowly. “Do you feel all right?”

“I’m fine,” I said. My resentment was stirring up anger and I tried to keep it out of my voice.

“You don’t look fine,” he said.

“I have a headache, okay?” I retorted, and I couldn’t hide my irritation this time.

He breathed in and out deliberately. Calmly, he said, “You were supposed to be in sickbay yesterday after lunch, for a physical. You need to report there now.”

I nodded, my neck tight. I knew where sickbay was, and I brushed past him to head there.

“Dan--,” he started to say, and stopped.

I turned to look at him. “What?” I asked flatly.

“The doc can help you,” he said. “Tell him---,”

My anger boiled over and I interrupted, “You’re not my frakking father, okay? Just leave me the hell alone. I’ll tell the motherfrakking doctor what I feel like telling him!”

I turned away and strode off fast. My head hurt so bad I thought I was going to throw up. Once I was around the corner I stopped and pressed the heels of my hands to my temples for a minute.

In sickbay, it was the usual thing—hurry up just to wait. I sat on the end of an examining table with my shirt off and waited for the doctor. I stared without focusing, without even thinking much, and when he came in I jumped.

“I’m Doc Cottle,” he said to me in raspy voice.

He was old, white-haired, but he looked exactly like a doctor should look.

“Dan Ellison,” I told him.

He nodded, looking from me to the file in his hands. “Yep, that’s what it says here,” he agreed, reading whatever it said there.

I felt annoyed again for no reason, and I tried to squash it. Why the hell had I been angry at Sam?

Maybe I was going crazy.

“Blood work looks good,” the doc said, regarding me again, looking me up and down. “You’re too thin… are you eating properly?”

“Since I got here,” I replied. I would not be angry at him, there was no reason to be.

He nodded. “Says here you get headaches,” he commented, closing the file and putting it on the counter.

Now I was angry for a reason. I hadn’t told anyone that—how did it get in my records? “Everybody gets headaches,” I said testily.

“Do you have a headache right now?” he asked.

I relaxed my tight jaw and nodded. “So what?” I demanded.

He leaned back against the counter and crossed his arms. “What other symptoms are you experiencing?”

I stared at him. I felt like the room was way too small and I couldn’t get enough air. “There’s nothing wrong with me,” I said hotly.

“I didn’t say--,” he began, but I couldn’t take it any more.

I jumped off the table and headed for the hatch out. I hadn’t seen the Marine guard there when I came in, but he was there now, stepping in front of it and blocking my way.

I looked at the rifle he held across his chest. He wasn’t too much taller than me, but a lot broader, but I didn’t even think. I just acted.

I kicked him in the knee, grabbing his rifle in both my hands at the same time, twisting it from his grip, and all in the same motion I brought the butt of the stock up under his jaw. He fell and I jumped through the hatch, running with the rifle feeling like home in my hands.

But then there were two other Marines, just down the passageway, and I turned fast, but the one I’d taken the rifle from was just a few steps away. There was another passage and I ran, followed it as it turned—and came up against a closed hatch. I tried opening it, but it was locked.

I could hear the Marines behind me. I turned, my back to the bulkhead. I was breathing hard and there wasn’t enough air. The three of them slowed to a walk, then stopped, the one I’d hit in front.

“Just take it easy,” he said, sounding a little nervous.

I watched him, watched all three of them, my thoughts so fast and jumbled nothing seemed to make sense. I had a rifle in my hands, it wasn’t my rifle, but it was a rifle all the same, and I was strong. I could feel the rifle in my hands and realized the safety was off, so I clicked it on. I killed Cylons, not Marines.

He held one hand out. “Give me the weapon,” he said, sounding calmer.

I licked my lips and watched him. I knew it wasn’t my rifle, but I didn’t want to let go of it.

He took a step closer and I backed up; my back hit the bulkhead. My head hurt so bad I couldn’t think straight.

“Just take it easy,” he stopped. “I’m Mike Ford, what’s your name?”

I breathed. “Dan Ellison,” I said. My voice sounded tight.

He took another step closer. He was very close now. I could feel sweat between my shoulder blades. I could hear my breath rasping in my throat. I wanted to run, but I was cornered.

“Let me have my rifle,” Ford said persuasively.

That’s right, it was his rifle.

He took that last step and put his hands on the rifle. I couldn’t let go. He tried to take it, and I panicked; I fought him. My rifle had made me strong, but he was stronger. He was a lot bigger than me, and he wrestled me down and got the rifle away. Then the other two Marines were there, holding me down, and I tried to fight them, they were crushing me, I couldn’t breathe…

They got manacles on my wrists and dragged me to the brig, but I couldn’t stop fighting them. I was furious, I was terrified, my head was killing me.

They put me in a cell and slammed the door closed.

I found out that you can panic for only so long. After awhile, there’s no energy left. I hardly had enough energy to pick myself up off the floor and sit in the hard metal chair, bolted to the floor by the hard metal table, also bolted to the floor.

I put my manacled wrists on the table, and rested my head in my arms. I hurt all over. My head felt like someone was pounding on it with a sledgehammer.

What the frak had I done?

I was going crazy.

I wanted my rifle.

The door rattled and I jumped, but I didn’t look up.

“Dan,” he said. It was Doc Cottle.

“Go away,” I muttered into my arms.

He put a hand on my shoulder and I jumped again. “Come lay down on the bunk,” he said.

I breathed. “Leave me alone,” I said.

He wouldn’t, though. He took my arm and made me lay on the bunk. I rolled away from him, faced the wall.

“I have something to help you rest,” he said.

“Leave me alone,” I repeated.

He wouldn’t leave me alone. I felt the needle in my shoulder, sharp, then burning.

After awhile I fell asleep.

When I woke up, the first thing I noticed was that they’d taken the manacles off my wrists. I felt like I’d been beaten up, but not woozy like when Caprica had drugged me. I still had a headache, but it wasn’t as bad.

I didn’t move, just laid there on the bunk, facing the wall. I felt… despair.

I heard voices, recognized Sam’s right away. He was talking to—that high ranking officer, who I’d found out was Admiral Adama. They stopped outside my cell and Sam said quietly, “Dan.”

I didn’t move. How could I face him?

He said my name again, but still I didn’t respond.

“Doc Cottle gave him a pretty good dose,” the Admiral said, sounding somber.

Good, they thought I was still drugged.

“Oh, frak,” Sam said softly, and he sounded despairing, too.

“It’s not your fault, Sam,” Adama told him.

What wasn’t Sam’s fault?

“He should be in school,” Sam was bitter, his voice harsh. “He should be cutting class and kissing pretty girls and driving too fast in his dad’s car. He’s just a frakking kid! But I made him into a sniper, a killer, and this. Is. My fault.”

“The Cylons attacked unprovoked, Sam,” the Admiral said quietly. “We have all done what was necessary. None of your team would have survived if you hadn’t done what was necessary.”

They were both quiet for a long moment; then they left, not speaking again.

It wasn’t Sam’s fault. I was the killer. I could have said no, not done it. I had done it, though. Ninety-four times, proud of my skill, ashamed of my pride.

I felt the cell closing in on me and gripped the blanket on the bunk tightly with both hands.

My rifle had made me strong. I had carried it cradled in my arms and made it a part of me. I was my rifle, but now… I was nothing.

**Posted: Tue May 09, 2006 9:19 pm**

Chapter 6
Full Circle

I walked silently below the ridgeline, following tracks. I had my rifle in my arms. I knew exactly what my prey looked like. I stopped, put my burden down and sank to one knee, motionless. I looked through the trees and felt more at home in this alien forest than I’d felt any place else since the nukes had gone off. Even Caprica had seemed strange under the blanket of nuclear devastation, things that should have been familiar not.

I saw my target through the trees, and raised my sniper’s rifle to my shoulder, resting my elbow on my knee to steady it. It was a short shot, less than two hundred yards. The clear circle, details projected sharply into my mind; I fired and chambered another round, then went down to collect my kill.

We called them ‘boar’ even though they only vaguely resembled the boar I’d seen on Caprica, but their meat tasted similar enough, and when you said ‘boar’, everyone knew what you meant. This was my second of the day, about the same size as the first—around fifty pounds, and I wouldn’t be able to carry a third all the way back to the settlement. I dressed the carcass and added it to the first, easing the carry straps over my shoulders, and headed back.

New Caprica. I think it was more alien than most people had expected. We’d been here for two months and every day found it more and more alien. It was an abysmal place to call ‘home’; cold, rainy, and gloomy all the time. The nebula that hid us from the Cylons filtered the sun’s rays into an odd light spectrum. The trees that everyone had hoped to harvest to build houses had proven to be completely different than Caprican trees. The wood dulled even the hardest of cutting tools quickly; and at any rate, when it was cut, it shattered into tiny pieces that wouldn’t even burn. There were edible plants, but you had to be careful which of the nearly-identical ones you ate or you’d end up with a bellyache you didn’t soon forget.

There was ore, though, and a kind of coal that could be mined, but the process was much more difficult than just chopping down trees—Caprican trees, that is--and building houses. The experts had set up a sort of factory, to smelt the ore and make girders and ‘steel’ panels, but even the ore was different and they’d had all kinds of problems with the process. They’d tried to smelt pieces of the trees, too, and generated a noxious gas that made some of the workers pretty sick.

My skill with my rifle had again determined my place in this group. A kind of full circle—back to being a hunter of game.

It was a small circle of serenity in the turbulence of my soul.

It took me all day to get back to the settlement, walking in at dusk. I dropped the boar carcasses off with a butcher and then I went to clean my rifle.

Sam came in and said, “You have blood down your back… you must have been successful.”

I nodded and he came around and sat across from me at the table. He turned his head and coughed softly—he’d been one of those workers who’d breathed that nasty gas, and it seemed like it took a long time to heal.

“Two boar,” I told him.

“You look tired,” he said, looking at my face, and watching as I carefully cleaned the small pieces of the rifle.

I nodded. I’d been out overnight. I knew about preservation of resources, and I didn’t want to hunt too close to our settlement. They were trying to tame the boar that lived closest to the settlement, raise litters so we’d have a more reliable food source. Shooting the ones they were trying to tame wouldn’t go over too well.

I was tired, and not just from being out overnight. “Nightmares, but it’s not as bad when I’m out,” I told Sam.

He nodded calmly.

It felt warm to me, being inside after having been out for so long, and I paused to strip off the layers of clothing down to my t-shirt. Waterproof jacket, sweater, thick shirt--a motley assortment, but it kept me warm.

Sam eyed me. “You’re still all sinew and bone, but at least you’ve finally put some weight on,” he commented.

I snorted. “You still think you’re going to make me into a Pyramid player?” I asked wryly.

“Hey, you have grown,” he teased.

I had, too, a couple inches since the Cylons nuked the colonies, but I was still a lot smaller than the other guys in the game. Not that size was the whole issue, in Pyramid. “Even Kara can whip my ass at Pyramid,” I said ruefully.

“Kara is pretty damn good,” he replied. “You just don’t have that bloodthirsty attitude.”

Which was true. I could kill people from seven hundred yards, but I had a hard time making a hard tackle on the guy with the ball. I reassembled the rifle, loaded it, made sure the safety was on.

“You going out again right away?” he asked.

“Probably not till day after tomorrow,” I said. “There’s a meeting tomorrow night, isn’t there?”

He nodded, smiling slightly. “Just checking,” he said.

I gave him a mock glare and he nodded, still smiling, then he got up to leave, clapping me on the shoulder as he went by. “See you tomorrow,” he said.

He still blamed himself for how screwed up I was, but at least now he could also take credit for bringing me back from the edge. I held my rifle in my hands, looking down at it, and remembered…

===============
…Galactica’s brig…

Back and forth, back and forth, not looking up, trying to get enough air to breathe. I paced and sweated and waited for the panic to wear itself out. I wasn’t being crushed, I wasn’t being crushed. It was hard to convince myself of that.

I heard someone, heard the door being unlocked, but didn’t look up.

“Dan,” Sam said.

I looked up then, panic still fizzing in my blood. He had my rifle in his hands and I froze.

“Here,” he walked right up and offered it to me. “It’s not loaded,” he warned.

I rubbed my sweaty palms on my pants.

“Take it,” he said.

I took it. I felt lightheaded. I closed my eyes and I must have swayed, because he took my shoulders and guided me to sit on the edge of the bunk.

It took a little while, but with my rifle in my hands, I calmed down. Sam sat next to me.

“Sam,” I said in a low voice, looking down at my rifle. I was holding it so tightly, my hands hurt. My head was pounding. My heart was pounding. Almost whispering, I said, “Sam, I’m going crazy.” Oh, how hard it was to say that.

He put his arm around my shoulders. I leaned against him.

“If you’re going crazy, so am I,” he replied in a rough voice.

What?

Before I could ask, he went on, “I have nightmares, too. And… and, things that freak me out. And sometimes I get really pissed for no reason. At least, it seems like no reason.”

I breathed. Sam… my hero, the big brother I’d never had, our leader… he knew how I felt.

Maybe there was hope…

===============

There was even a name for it… post-traumatic stress disorder. It wasn’t just me and Sam, it was some of the others, too. And even some of the Galactic crew. It was normal. A normal reaction to the worst possible thing a person could experience.

That was the good news.

The bad news was, there was no easy fix. No shot, no take a pill for a week and you’re all better. Oh, yeah, pills, different ones for different people--Doc Cottle gave me one to help me sleep, and another one for when I had headaches. But that wasn’t any cure, it was just treatment for symptoms.

I had, at least, been doing one thing right: physical activity. That was about the only thing I was doing right. Booze was wrong. Hiding from things—people and memories--was wrong. Trying to ignore anger was wrong. Even the way I’d been thinking was wrong.

There was a lot of talking about it, about our experiences. It figured, the hardest thing would be the best help. I learned how to make myself relax. I learned how to direct my anger where it belonged… well, that was an on-going process. I learned how to box. It was strange, how hitting something could work out anger. We had these meetings, mostly those of us on Sam’s team, but also with a couple of the Galactica Marines who’d been in combat, and we talked about the hardest things to talk about.

I knew if I missed tomorrow night’s meeting, they’d give me hell for it. As hard as it was, though, I didn’t want to miss the meeting.

I wanted to survive.

It would never go away. I’d always remember what had happened. They said I’d probably have nightmares the rest of my life, but not as bad with time.

I looked down at the rifle in my hands, and with a sigh, got up, put all my layers back on, and went to get something to eat.

I had a small tent at the edge of our settlement that I called ‘home’, even though I was there less than half the time. Still, it was a space of my own, and if I wanted, I could leave the tent flaps open at night and look out over the land and into the forest.

I pulled off my outside layers of clothes and hung my jacket outside so the rain would wash the boar blood off. I thought about lighting the coal that fueled my stove and heated my tent at the same time, but I was warm enough, and I’d already eaten. By now it was full dark, so I thought about taking a sleeping pill and going to bed.

“Knock, knock,” she said.

I smiled. It always sounded silly to me, but how did you knock on tent flaps? “Come in,” I said, and Jean came in.

“I heard you were back,” she said, coming right to me and putting her arms around me. “Gods, you’re always like a furnace—warm me up.”

I put my arms around her.

It was more of a physical relationship than an emotional one. I wasn’t ready to handle anything else. I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to handle a deep emotional relationship, at least not for a long time.

She understood that, though. She said she didn’t want any ‘emotional baggage’ right now, either, and I believed her. I wasn’t certain I should believe her, but I sure wasn’t going to turn down the physical part. There was no awkwardness between us in bed or out of it, either, so it worked, for now.

Well… no awkwardness in bed any more. I’d never been with a woman before her, and while I knew the, ah, theoretical aspects of it, the actual practice was new to me. She’d been amazed and surprised and amused… and educational.

When we were done, relaxed and cooled off, she got up and got a sleeping pill for me, and my canteen, and I swallowed the pill with a gulp of water. I didn’t like taking them, and didn’t take them when I was out hunting, but I didn’t have as hard a time sleeping when I was out hunting.

“Could I stay with you, tonight?” she asked. “I’ve been freezing all day…”

I usually didn’t like to have her stay all night. Even with the sleeping pill, I worried I’d have a nightmare and scare her or hurt her. Not that I ever had, but I worried about it. And I just didn’t like to let anyone see the nightmares—even though she understood, I still felt ashamed.

But it was nice, having her asleep next to me in the narrow cot, and when a nightmare did wake me up, having her there brought me back to reality faster.

It was always nice having her wake up next to me in the morning. We got to breakfast late and the food was cold, but we were warm so it didn’t matter.

She brought me a second serving of oatmeal and sausage, teasing me about eating enough, then she headed out of the mess tent. As she left, Sam and Kara came in.

They talked to Jean for a minute, then they all looked over at me. I made an obscene gesture and they all laughed, then Jean left. Sam and Kara joined me once they’d gotten some food.

Kara put her bowl on the table and looked at me. A thought seemed to occur to her, and she looked the direction Jean had gone, then back at me. Finally she sat next to Sam, who was already shoveling in oatmeal.

“Dan,” Kara said thoughtfully. “You and Jean…?”

Sam stopped with his spoon halfway to his mouth. “What?” he asked, startled.

“Yeah,” I said to Kara.

She grinned. “Your boy is growing up,” she said to Sam.

“What?” Sam said again, staring at Kara, then at me. He must have seen it in my face, because he slowly grinned. “Well, good for you,” he said to me.

For some reason, I felt I had to explain, “It’s nothing serious. We’re just, uh… uh…” Oh frak, how could I get out of this one?

“Um hmmm, I can imagine,” Sam said, still smiling, teasing me.

I sighed, shrugged, smiled, and finished eating.

When I was done eating, I headed down the main… well, we called it a road, if you wanted to call packed mud a road, thinking about not much of anything in particular, and a small herd of kids ran around me, laughing and shouting, then they charged into the school tent.

I didn’t like the idea of having young kids down here already. Only about eight thousand of the total fleet population had come down to the planet so far, and I was worried about dangers we hadn’t discovered yet. I’d voted against it, when the vote came up, but majority ruled, so we had children of all ages on the surface now. And a school.

One of the teachers was the former president, who’d been voted out in the election that had happened while I was in the brig on the Galactica. Laura Roslin, her name was, but I hadn’t met her yet. I wondered if the dark-haired woman standing outside the school tent was her.

It seemed she was wondering about me, because she said, “Pardon me… are you Dan Ellison?”

Surprised she knew my name, I stopped and said, “Yessir… can I help you?”

“I’m Laura Roslin,” she held out her hand, and I shifted my rifle to the crook of my left arm to shake it. So this was the former president.

“Nice to meet you, sir,” I said to her.

She smiled. “Please, just call me Laura.” She paused. “Is the rifle necessary?” she asked.

I didn’t hear any censure in her question, just curiosity. “I don’t know, sir,” I said. “There’s a lot about this place we don’t know yet.”

I’d gotten to where I could leave my rifle secured in the arms locker and not get all freaked out, but Sam and the others thought it would be best if I just kept it with me. I supposed someday I might get to the point here I actually got tired of carrying it around, but for now I was content to have it with me.

She seemed satisfied with my answer, and said, “Sam tells me that you never got a chance to finish high school. You should come to class now and complete that last year.”

I stared at her, astounded. Like finishing my senior year of high school would have any practical use… like I didn’t already have enough to do… like it even mattered to me or anyone else.

In the end, all I could do was laugh. “You are a schoolteacher, aren’t you,” I said with amusement.

She laughed also. “I started as a schoolteacher, and now have come back to that,” she nodded. “A full circle, in a way.”

So much of life could be described by circles.

I was about to reply when people started yelling, alarm in their tones, just a short distance down the road. I had my rifle ready without thought, and I saw what made everyone scatter.

We called them mud cougars. They moved like cougars, smooth and stalking and swift, and they had fur like cougars, in a mottled brown and gray to blend in perfectly with the ground and brush. There the resemblance to cougars ended. The closest things their bodies could be compared to were alligators, and even that was only an approximation. They were ferocious hunters, and so far I hadn’t been able to tell if they had any natural predators.

I hadn’t heard of one coming into our settlement, and I hadn’t seen any reason to kill any of the few I had seen out in the forest.

I saw clear reason to kill this one, though, as it seemed to know I was the most danger to it. It kept its eyes on me, almost hypnotically, as it slowly stalked me, coming down the road toward me. I already had my rifle to my shoulder, the crosshairs between the creature’s eyes, and I fired before it could leap, chambering the next round automatically.

The shot was unnaturally loud in the settlement, and the power of the round fired at such close range threw the mud cougar back. I watched it a moment through the scope as it twitched and took a last breath, then it was still.

I was suddenly aware of Laura Roslin just a step behind me, and the school kids in the tent door, watching. I lowered my rifle, putting the safety on, and looked over my shoulder at Laura. She was quite calm—curious, actually, surprising me.

She took a step forward and put her hand on my arm. “Is it safe, Dan?” she asked, looking toward the dead mud cougar.

The concept of ‘safe’ had been so far from my mind for so long, it took a moment for her meaning to sink in. “I don’t know about safe, Laura,” I answered with amusement, “but it’s dead.”

I headed for it, and she said, “Come along, children.”

Again she surprised me, because her ‘come along’ meant for all of them to follow me. They stood in a cluster around their teacher, next to me, looking at the lifeless animal lying in the mud. I’d gotten it between the eyes, and the force had thrown it almost on its back, so the gore of the kill was concealed—just dark blood, not very much, oozed out from under it.

Alive, its size was deceptive. Lying there dead on the ground, I estimated it weighed at least a hundred and fifty pounds, bigger than I’d guessed. I got to one knee and bushed my hand over its fur, looking for parasites, and wondered how its meat would taste.

“I see the rifle is necessary,” Laura said. “That pelt will make you a fine trophy.”

I looked up at her and stood, wiping my palm on my thigh, and said, “Actually, I was hoping it would taste good,” I said dryly.

She regarded me thoughtfully. “You have the soul of a survivor,” she commented with a slight smile.

I shrugged. “I’ve come in a kind of full circle, too,” I told her. “The day the Cylons attacked, I was scouting for a good place to hunt game.” I looked down at the carcass, then back up at her. “And here I am.”

“A full circle,” she agreed.