LXXIV

ZEUS

1,140 Years Before the Final Exodus

 

"Where are you?" Zeus said.

"Home. In Delphi."

"I'll be there in a few minutes. Be ready to leave."

"Why? What's going …" Zeus turned off the earpiece.

He smiled a little to himself. Zeus was eager to see his son again. He wanted to rub his face in it.

The others abandoned him. Hephaestus, Aphrodite, Dionysus … they left a couple of centuries after the last Olympic Council. Ares put himself under more recently; saying he could be awakened if a problem emerged. Artemis left centuries ago without even saying goodbye. Hestia, too. When she left, she made a big deal about it. She told the world she was leaving the Olympic Council. She didn't go into detail but it still pissed Zeus off.

Regardless, Zeus could admit he made a mistake. He let Aurora get to him back then. He regretted his outburst and even some of what he said. But he knew he was still in the right. Apollo, Aurora, and Hephaestus kept information from him. They created spaceships and faster-than-light engines against his wishes. They led the Thirteenth Tribe away from Kobol with no input at all from Zeus. They should have known better.

In one way, they did know better than he, Zeus had to admit to himself. Kobol was better off without the bulk of the Thirteenth Tribe in many ways. First and foremost, there seemed to be little chance of the Olympians being found out. That alone helped Zeus sleep better at night.

The dartship landed in Apollo's front yard and he left the front step toward the craft. As Zeus pressed the induction panel, the hatch opened and his son stepped inside. "Apollo."

"Father." Apollo reached out and grabbed the hatch, pulling it shut. "Hope you've been well."

Zeus nodded. "I have." It had been a few hundred years since he saw Apollo.

"What's going on?"

"Chickens, son," Zeus said with a smile. The dartship lifted off and he finished his thought, "They're coming home to roost."

Apollo squinted and leaned over in his chair so he could see Zeus' face better. "What do you mean?"

"Remember the Thirteenth Tribe? One of your FTL spaceships jumped into a high orbit a little while ago with an automated emergency beacon blasting across all channels. They're going to be landing soon."

Apollo's eyes widened and he sat back in his seat. "It's been so long. Why did they come back?"

Zeus shook his head, still smiling. "An exodus from your exodus. I can't wait to hear why." He tried to squelch his smugness, but he was having little success. "It's landing in the fields south of Megara. We'll be there in a bit."

Apollo shook his head. "It doesn't make sense. If something was truly wrong, why only one ship?"

Zeus shrugged. "Who knows? We'll find out."

Apollo sighed. "I don't quite understand your attitude. You're not worried about their return?"

Zeus lifted his eyebrows. "Why?"

"What if that priestess left Kobol on those ships? What if she said something?" Apollo studied his father's face before covering his mouth with his hand.

Zeus thought about it for a moment and then he saw where he was. The dartship hovered into place just outside of the city, north of the large fields where twenty-six vessels took off so long before. "It looks like the people have heard about the ship's arrival."

Zeus looked out and saw dozens of Megarans standing in the nearby park and along sidewalks. They were all gazing into the clouds. He didn't recognize any of these Cylons; the original twelve models were long gone and even most of the Megarans still here had abandoned their resurrection technology.

When the dartship landed, Apollo threw open the hatch and stepped out onto the grass. He was met with several cheers and scattered applause. With a smile, he waved at the group and then walked south toward the field. When Zeus stepped out of the craft, the same crowd gasped and stared with reverential awe. He had never been to Megara before. He looked across their faces, wondering why they didn't seem happy to see him. Had he been out of the public eye too long? Zeus nodded toward them and chased Apollo.

"There it is," Apollo said. Zeus followed his gaze and saw the large blue-tinted craft breaking through low-lying clouds. Its descent engines were on full burn and the huge, round-hulled vessel slowly dropped into place. The landing struts were already extended and they gave way under the weight of the craft when the engines decreased and then turned off. Several ports vented steam and other gases into the air. The primary boarding hatch did not open.

"Well?" Zeus asked. "Why don't they come out?"

Apollo remained still and looked at the ship. Zeus studied it, too, and noted various burns, pockmarks, and other damage. "It looks like they've had a rough trip."

"It's an old ship, too." Zeus turned and saw that hundreds of Megarans were now gathered behind them and moving toward the craft. He was about to say something when the hatch opened and the metal gantry extended toward the ground.

Apollo stepped forward and Zeus began to follow. His son stopped and held up a single hand. "Keep everyone back. Who knows what kind of germs they might be carrying."

Zeus moved toward the approaching crowd and lifted his hands. "Please, everyone. Stay back. If the people on there have been to another world, there is a possibility of infection." They stopped upon hearing his booming voice.

Zeus turned toward the ship and worried about another kind of infection. Apollo reminded him of that damned priestess. What if someone on board knew about the Olympians? That knowledge could spread like a disease. He glanced back at the Megarans, realizing that several thousand of them had lived on Kobol for centuries. In all of those years since that priestess went to Olympus and tried to blackmail them, there hadn't been a peep about it. Perhaps he was worried for nothing.

Apollo walked up the gantry and into the craft. Zeus turned away from the people and began to walk toward the ship. He stepped just under its curved bow and looked up. The bluish metal was tarnished but still somehow beautiful. He had forgotten how lovely spaceships could be. None had existed on Kobol for many years as their space program died a slow death after the departure of Hephaestus. Above the hatch, he was able to make out a word etched in the hull. "PEGASUS."

"Help me," Apollo said as he stepped out of the craft carrying the body of a man. Zeus ran to his side and saw several other people stumbling behind him inside the ship. "There's a woman lying by the hatch controls."

Zeus walked into the ship warily. About a dozen people filed past him. They seemed to be in a daze and only a couple managed to look up and recognize who was in their presence. Zeus looked at the bulkhead and saw a woman slumped against it under a panel. He picked her up and carried her down the metal ramp to the grass below.

Apollo laid the man onto the field and the people that followed him off wandered about and flopped onto the ground. Some lay on their backs and looked into the sky, smiling. Zeus laid the woman next to Apollo and then he stood back, looking from one to the other. "What's wrong with them? Are they ill?"

Apollo was checking the pulse of the man and then he leaned over to listen to his heart. "I think it's radiation sickness."

"Are you sure?" Zeus asked.

One of the more lucid passengers crawled across the grass to Apollo's side. "Are you … Lord Apollo?"

"Yes," he said.

"I'm a doctor, Lord. Can I help?"

Apollo looked at her and said, "You don't look like you feel well yourself."

"I don't, really. But I can help."

Zeus knelt by Apollo's side and spoke, "Was there any kind of illness?"

The woman inhaled slowly and said, "Well, there was. But we quarantined the sick in a separate part of our ship once we discovered it."

"A disease and radiation poisoning?" Apollo asked. The woman nodded and he looked up solemnly. "What's your name?"

"Sarah Hylae, Lord." She nodded toward the man and said, "This is Saul Krases, our captain and pilot." She looked at the woman and said, "That is Maggie Polyta, our engineer and co-pilot."

"So why are you here? Are you all that's left of the Thirteenth Tribe?" Zeus asked.

Hylae sat up in the grass a bit more and shook her head. She straightened her legs and felt the forehead of the captain as she spoke. "We left in two ships, the Pegasus and the Eos. Has the Eos arrived?"

"No," Apollo said. "You're the only ones."

Hylae nodded. "After so many years, there were some of us who wanted to … come back here. To see the homeworld. Goddess Aurora told our people before they left that there would be a reunion later. We wanted that reunion."

"I see," Apollo said as he moved to examine the unconscious female.

"So, we took the ships. Stole them, I guess." She lowered her head. "The other vessels were disassembled for shelters and parts shortly after they got to Earth, so these were the last two. They were … museum pieces."

"How many of you were there?" Zeus asked.

"More than two thousand were willing to return. One thousand are on the Eos, wherever it is, and one thousand on the Pegasus."

Apollo looked around him. Barely four dozen people lingered in the grass. "'One thousand?'"

Hylae nodded. "Their bodies are inside." Apollo and Zeus both looked toward the ship as Hylae continued, "We stopped at the algae planet to resupply our food but we didn't have enough tyllium to go the long way around the star cluster."

"Oh, no," Apollo said.

"We flew straight through." Hylae shook her head. "We gathered in the central parts of the ship and we thought we had enough anti-radiation meds to last us." She stifled a sob and wiped a tear from her eye. "And then, people started getting sick. We thought it was radiation at first, but it was something else. We separated them as quickly as possible. It didn't matter. People started dropping from some kind of meningitis or encephalitis. Then the radiation sickness started. Those two," she said, pointing to Krases and Polyta, "are heroes. They kept that ship going far longer than it should have. We broke down twice after leaving the star cluster. They got it going again and got us here."

Apollo nodded and folded the woman's hands on her chest. "She will be remembered as a hero, then."

Hylae's mouth fell open and she looked at Polyta's still body.

"Where could the Eos be?" Zeus asked.

"I don't know," Hylae said. She looked away from Polyta toward Krases. "It happened some time after we left the star cluster. One jump they were there and then the next they weren't. We were in a nebula for days, waiting. So we decided to leave a beacon behind and keep going. We left beacons after every jump so they could find us, but we never saw them again."

Apollo glanced over his shoulder toward Zeus and then he looked back at Hylae. "When you stopped by the algae planet …" he began before his voice trailed off. She nodded and he took her hand and asked very softly, "Was there a temple?"

Zeus looked at Apollo hard and then he waited for Hylae's response.

She had an odd expression on her face but she nodded. "There was. We had a priest with us. He seemed to know all about it. He said five priests built it on the way to Earth … we thought it was made for you," she glanced toward Zeus, "the Pantheon, I mean. But the priest said it was made for a god whose name couldn't be spoken."

Zeus exhaled loudly and shook his head. He was growing angry and the woman shrank from him. He saw this, stood up, and walked away. Apollo and the woman continued to speak and Zeus remained as close as he could to listen in.

"Where is Goddess Aurora?"

Apollo turned aside and said, "She is gone. She has become one with the dawn."

Hylae looked into the sky and nodded. "I wanted to meet her. Her temple on Earth … it's still standing. Still beautiful. It was the first permanent structure built there once the Tribe landed."

Apollo sighed and folded the hands of Krases across his chest. "I see."

Hylae closed her eyes and fell away from Apollo. She sprawled on the grass and he leaned by her side. Zeus stepped closer and said, "Is she going to recover?"

"Probably." Apollo looked toward the other passengers and saw Megaran medical officials moving among them. "When they get on their feet again, there's going to be a lot of priests and historians who will want to speak to them. We're going to have to quarantine the ship, too, until we figure out what that illness was."

Zeus nodded and turned away. He looked at the prone forms of people scattered about on the lush grass. "I'm sorry, Apollo."

He stood and turned. "Why?"

Zeus' shoulders sagged and he moved toward his son. "I brought you here … I wanted you to see the error of your ways."

Apollo's face twisted and his eyes glinted. "You got your wish." He motioned across the grass to the weary passengers. "Now I know. I know that there could be some sort of plague killing everyone on Earth. Are you happy?"

"I didn't mean …"

"They left a thousand years ago and you still want to have the last word on this?" He shook his head furiously and stormed away. "You just can't not be right, can you? You are impossible."

Zeus walked after him, "Apollo …"

"I don't need leadership lessons from you," he barked. "I've been on my own here for four millennia! You can't be the same micromanaging asshole you were all those years ago!"

"Apollo," Zeus said.

"You can't control every facet of my life or their lives," he said, sweeping his arm toward the ill people again. "When will you learn that?"

Zeus shook his head. "This isn't what I wanted at all. I just wanted …"

"What?"

"I was eager to see you," Zeus said. His head lowered and he spoke softly. "I missed seeing you."

Apollo scoffed and shook his head. "And this is how you chose to do it? To bring me here, shove suffering in my face and … berate me?"

"I'm sorry."

Apollo said nothing. He turned and walked back toward the Earthers.

Zeus watched him for a moment as he tended to the sick. Finally, he walked across the field, up toward Megara. The citizens were still crowded there and an ambulance drove off the road and into the grass toward the Pegasus.

Zeus climbed into his dartship and he started it up. He was done for good this time. No more festivals. No more temple services. He would fly back to Olympus and stay there.

Alone.