Snippet - A moment in time from 'The War of the Gods.'


Starbuck closed his eyes trying to block out the sight
before him, but the image
remained, burned into the darkness behind his eyes.  A
ghostly silhouette of
death.  No matter how hard he tried the image glowed in the
darkness, like a sun
burst imprinted on his retinas - a body lying still,
unmoving, dead.

He opened his yes, hoping the image before him had changed.
It had not.  Tears,
now released from their imprisonment behind the closed lids,
spilled down his
face in hot waves, flowing unheeded to fall upon the body
before him.

Everything was now forever changed.  Forever darker.

Gently he reached down and took an unresisting hand into
his.  It was warm.
Still warm from the life that had been contained with in.
Only now it mocked him
with its deceptive warmth, as he laid it over the chest of
the body before him.
Tenderly he placed the other hand over the first then looked
at the face lying
so still before him, willing the eyes to open, to dispel
this nightmare.  Oh how
he ached to see those emerald eyes flashing at him again
with anger or laughter.
But the lids remained deathly still.

Taking a deep breath to hold himself steady, Starbuck worked
his arms under the
shoulders and knees of the body before him and gently rose
up.  He held his
burden to his chest as a fresh wave of hot tears coursed
down his face, dropping
down onto the still form in his arms.

He watched numbly, as Sheba stiffly dragged herself to her
feet, one hand over
her mouth, to hold back her tears.  Their eyes meet briefly,
but the pain
reflected back at him was to close to his own and he turned
his gaze away.
Silently he followed her up the slope, back along the path
to the shuttle they
had brought.

Unaware of the blue white globes that had hovered in the
distance, watching in
guilty silence and debating the fate of those they watched.

The lights had watched these souls, the ones that had
reminded them so vividly
of how *they* once were.  That their compassion for them,
these victims of a war
they could not understand, filled their thoughts as they
came to their decision.

Rising up from the planet, they soared after the slower
moving shuttle prepared
this time, for once, to intervene.