The Cylons' Secret: Battlestar Galactica 2

by CRAIG SHAW GARDNER

  She knew all the ways around the center. The ways built for people, the ways built for machines. She was thin, she was young, and could fit through most anywhere. She knew the quietest and quickest path through every one.

  She knew places where she could see and hear anything she wanted. Sometimes the doctor, or her brothers Jon and Vin, or even the companions would exclude her from some of their business. Jon had taken on many of the doctor’s duties. Vin studied the maintenance of the station and the companions. (She took care of the things outside the station. Didn’t they think that was important?) They would leave her out. But she always knew. She made a point of knowing about every change within the station. Somebody had to do it, after all.

  When people and companions kept things from each other, she kept them to herself. She knew all the secrets. What would happen after the people came to take them home? Would there be any more need for secrets?

  In the next few moments, she would find out everything. She quickly popped the hatch that would let her back into the interior of the building. She didn’t want to miss what the doctor had to say.

  Fuest was the third one in the room. Jon and Gamma had reached the observatory before him. Laea and Vin were right behind, followed a moment later by Beta and Epsilon. Together, the four humans and three companions ran what was left of the research station. They called themselves the senior staff. The doctor, though he never said the word out loud, considered the seven of them a sort of governing council.

  Each of them greeted him by name. He waited for all of them to settle into their positions around the long table.

  “You heard my decision. I was informed of our visitors’ intention to land. They did not give me a choice.”

  He paused, as if he was waiting for objections. But the council never spoke until he was done.

  “I had to act quickly. I decided to be gracious.”

  Beta nodded its shiny silver head. “Whatever you feel is best for the station.”

  The other companions added nothing.

  While all the companions that worked within the station had been given independent neural pathways (and, in theory, independent thought) as a part of this station’s original objective, they most often deferred to their human counterparts. Even these three, designed to lead the others, would only express a preference if addressed directly.

  “Well,” Fuest continued, “we will have to see what is best after we talk to these newcomers. But until then, we are to consider them as friends.”

  Jon, the oldest of the three youngsters—the doctor still thought of them that way, even though all three of them were over twenty—raised a hand. “Is there anything you wish any of us to do?”

  “I’ve given them the proper coordinates and guidance to land. I believe we should let them do this on their own, and see their subsequent actions. If they are as friendly as my wireless communication has indicated, I would suggest that you lead a small delegation to greet them and bring them up here. Once we determine their intentions—as best we can—we’ll see about letting more of them visit, and what they might give to us.”

  “Are you thinking of going home?” Laea asked.

  “I’m thinking of many things,” the doctor replied. “But I’m not committed to anything until we see our visitors a bit more closely. As I said, Jon will meet them once they’ve climbed from their ships. The rest of you should go to your emergency stations, as we’ve practiced.”

  Vin grinned at that, looking maybe half his age. “I never thought we’d do this for real!”

  The doctor smiled back. “Well, let’s hope this is not too real.” He looked directly at each of the companions. “Beta, Gamma, Epsilon, do you have anything you would like to add?”

  The three looked at each other, as if they were silently conferring. Beta looked back to the doctor.

  “As always, we are here to assist you.”

  Fuest nodded. “Very good. They will be here shortly. To your stations, please.”

  All six left quickly. Fuest found himself alone again—alone with far too many thoughts.

  Maybe he could go home. Maybe he could turn the station over to others.

  Maybe he should ask Vin to place himself closer to the field, in case Jon needed any help. He would have to give the young men a call.

  Maybe he never needed to be alone again.

  Laea thought she was all alone. She almost jumped when her younger brother came around the corner.

  “What are you doing here?” Vin demanded.

  “I’ll stay out of the way,” was the first thing she thought to say. “I know I’m supposed to be down in the records room” was the second. She stared at Vin for a second. “Aren’t you supposed to be somewhere else, too?”

  He grinned at that. “They couldn’t keep me away either. I think I convinced them that I’m needed. I’m supposed to watch from a safe distance, and come and join the newcomers if I get the right signal from Jon.”

  Laea stared at the young man. “I didn’t hear anything.”

  Vin grinned, looking at his feet. “The doctor called me. He spoke to me a few minutes after we had our meeting.”

  Laea thought of things she might say. In the original plans—the ones they had practiced a hundred times—the doctor thought any visitors would feel more comfortable with a human. But only one. With only four humans left on the station, they didn’t want to take any unnecessary risks.

  Until now.

  Nobody told her anything! She was always left out, the one to be protected.

  She guessed that was why she was always looking for secrets. And why she would never show her true feelings.

  “What do you think they’re going to do?” she said, just to say something.

  “They’re probably as worried about us as we are about them. Wouldn’t you want to see what a new world had to offer before you started shooting it to bits?”

  He led her over to the secondary hangar doors.

  Two of the companions stood to either side, two of the heavy lifters, the modified soldiers. She had never seen any of them in the old hangars before. She imagined, back when ships came and went on the landing field, this type of companion often worked here. They had even stored ships in these hangars for a time. She knew from the doctor’s stories that a couple of disabled vessels had been left behind in this very room. They had long ago been disassembled for parts. Now these vast rooms might once again store people and ships from other worlds. It reminded her how much things might change.

  Vin saw her watching the large metal companions. Close to ten feet tall, standing between the humans and daylight, they cast huge shadows on the far wall.

  “The doctor’s taking no chances,” he said.

  This seemed to be far more complicated than she had ever imagined.

  The sirens started.

  “The ships are coming in.” Vin pointed up into the sky, high over the heads of even the companions. “Look! There they are, flying side by side.” Laea looked up, and did indeed see two small metal craft, both trailing flame from their rear engines, as they circled the landing field.

  “They look like old Viper Mark Ones!” Vin was jumping up and down, no longer able to contain his excitement. “I didn’t know anybody still flew that sort of thing.”

  Laea nodded as though she knew what he was talking about. She had heard of Vipers, but never imagined there were different types of the same craft. She had never paid that much attention to something she never imagined she would see.

  “Man, look at the way they’re coming down! Would I love to fly one of those things!

  The two Vipers angled sharply down, their engines silent. They were on what looked like a collision course with the science center on the far side of the field.

  “They’re probably trained to come in like this—fast and steep—to make a harder target.”

  “Target?” Laea replied blankly.

  “Hey, not everyone’s as welcoming as Station Omega. Who knows what else these
guys have found out here?”

  The two Vipers cut the angle of their descent, swooping just over the top of the science building to land, side by side, at the center of the strip.

  The sirens stopped. Laea realized she had barely heard them in these last minutes.

  “Our visitors have arrived safely.” The doctor’s voice came over the station’s wireless. “Let’s give them a minute to look around before we go out and meet them.”

  The Vipers sat there for a long moment. Laea could see waves of heat coming from the rear of each craft.

  “They must still be waiting for hostile fire,” Vin guessed.

  “Or maybe they’re talking with their ship, asking for direction. The doctor said we should give them a minute.” Even Laea was getting impatient, waiting for the first sight of their visitors.

  “They’re opening their cockpits!” Laea saw the central section of each Viper lift away, revealing a single pilot in each craft. They paused a moment more, then both men—she was quite sure they were men—pushed themselves out of their seats and onto the wings of their craft, and from there onto the hard, paved landing field itself.

  Laea realized how big this really was.

  Outside of the three men on the station, these were the first people she had seen since she had been a small girl. People, new people, with more in orbit, maybe just minutes away. Two out of maybe a dozen or more—how big was their ship? Two who could take them all to see millions more, all the way back to the Colonies.

  “They’re holding something in their hands,” Vin said, stepping closer to the window to get a look. “Are those guns?”

  The two companions were instantly alert. They pressed themselves between Vin and the doorway.

  “Please step away,” they said in unison. “We do not wish you to be harmed.”

  “What’s happening?”

  Laea saw someone moving across the landing area. It was hard to get a good look with the two companions blocking their way.

  “Where’s Jon?”

  “We are obeying the original protocols,” the companions informed them. “We are protecting the station.”

  Somebody was shouting. The newcomers? They sounded frightened. She heard gunfire.

  She saw more movement on the field. These new arrivals were companions, all former soldiers like the two guarding their door. The guards shifted, and she could see the humans for an instant, surrounded by others.

  “No!” she shouted. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to begin. They were going to talk. The ship was going to take them home. “Put down your guns! We won’t hurt you!”

  But she was on the far side of the door. Even if the door had been open, the two on the landing platform were much too far away to hear.

  She heard another burst of gunfire, another scream. She could see nothing but a mass of companions, blocking her view of both Vipers and pilots.

  She squirmed between the two guards.

  “Stop it!” Laea called out as she flung open the door. “Stop it! Stop it!”

  The companions didn’t respond.

  She had never felt so helpless.

  “The Vipes are entering the atmosphere.”

  Griff’s voice pulled the captain from his reverie, but only for an instant.

  Nadu was tired of waiting. He had waited all his life.

  He had said it so many times: he no longer knew what he was looking for. But when it was right, he’d feel it.

  His humming grew louder. He had spent almost all his life as a raider, but for years he had only been a member of one of half a dozen crews. He remembered the day it had changed, fifteen years back.

  He was crewing for the Crusher then, with a bunch that made the Lightning’s crew look a bit like gentlemen. And that was before it all fell apart.

  Ah, but it had been a glorious fall. The men and women of the Crusher were no longer on their best behavior. They had found an ancient drug, not seen since the Cylon War.

  Scavengers were never good at restraint. It would have been far better if the crew had not dipped into the supply. It would have been the height of wisdom if Nadu had not sampled it himself. He had almost lost it all to Crystal Blue.

  They had found it on a moon with one lone settlement, a deserted chemical plant. Their captain at the time was overjoyed. Crystal Blue. Highly addictive, it was a license to make money. It had been outlawed on the Colonies for years, but here were barrels of the stuff—close to ten thousand doses.

  Crystal Blue. Some said the Cylons created it, to drive men mad.

  Crystal Blue. They were scavengers. They could take anything. Especially if you could snort it right into your system.

  It was boring in space—days and days of emptiness and the cold light of distant stars. They were not disciplined like the Lightning’s crew. They needed something to fill the time. At first, it gave them visions. Later, it gave them pain. They only found how difficult it was to kick after nearly everyone had sampled their wares.

  Their captain had tried to keep the Blue to sell back in civilization. The crew, already heavily addicted, thought otherwise. They had fought each other for the Blue, and destroyed their own ship in the process.

  Thank the gods they were on the edge of the commerce lanes when the explosion had occurred. And that he had had enough sense to walk away when the glass exploded in his face. It had destroyed half his face, but the pain had pulled him away from the Blue, and forced him to think. It had saved his life. He had made it to the pod before the fire used up all the breathable air—a pod with food and water and oxygen, but not a speck of Crystal Blue.

  Nadu had spent two weeks in that escape pod without the drug. Two weeks that had felt like forever, two weeks of searing pain, from the lacerations on his face and the need within his blood. He had nowhere to go, nothing to do. That was when he had first taught himself the song. The song pulled the desire from his blood and threw it out into the open air to be sucked away by the recycling units. The song pulled the need from his brain and scattered it in the space between the stars.

  Crystal Blue. When he was finally rescued, he realized he could live without it. He had to live without it. Thousands and thousands of doses were destroyed with the Crusher and its crew. The formula was forbidden, lost in the Cylon War. There was not a day he didn’t think about tasting it again. But he could stay free so long as he could sing.

  The need nearly made him crazy for good. He had been crazy when he was under its spell. Sometimes he could still feel the Blue singing in his blood. Especially when they were on the edge of something. He hummed to cover up the Crystal’s tune. He sang when the humming was no longer enough.

  The Blue had left him with a never-ending song, a song that robbed him of sleep, but made him clever. He had found new ways to rob and cheat, new ways to finance just what he would need.

  Within a year of his accident, Nadu had gone back into space with a crew of his own. A crew that his song had chosen, a crew that would complete the celestial music promised by the Blue and give Nadu all that he would ever need.

  Nadu could use that idealism. It could cover up a multitude of sins.

  A burst of static pulled Nadu back from his thoughts.

  “Sorry, Captain,” Griff said. “Having a bit of a problem getting our signals through the atmosphere. Might be a storm getting in the way.” He made some adjustments to the board. “That should help. Vipes! Please repeat!”

  “This is Vipes One.” Twitch’s voice came over the speakers, the static low behind his words. “We are making our final approach. This is quite a complex here. It’s the size of a small city. We’re each flying around in half a circle to see what we can see. Maybe we can get you a visual.”

  “I’ll try to throw it on the forward screen.” Griff punched a series of buttons and the screen overhead brightened. They could make out a whole series of towers rushing toward the camera. Vipes One still had its forward camera intact. Or so the theory went. But the picture didn’t seem much better
than the audio signal. It rolled, with bright lines flashing through the image, giving them little more than a vague sense of a city on the screen. Two many repairs on the reconditioned Vipers, Nadu guessed. Unless something was blocking their signals from below? Griff shut off the screen.

  “I’ve got some signs of an explosion here,” Symm’s voice cut in. “Looks substantial, like they lost a dozen buildings. I guess this was the accident, huh?”

  “Everything on this end looks brand new,” Twitch added. “Except I don’t see any people. In fact, I don’t think I see anybody outside at all.”

  “They wouldn’t be scared of us, would they?” Symm said with a laugh.

  Maybe the research staff was showing more sense than Nadu gave them credit for.

  “Remember, boys,” Griff reminded them, “they haven’t seen outsiders in thirty years. They’re probably scared of their own shadows.”

  “We’ll give them something to be afraid of, hey?” Twitch replied.

  Both the pilots laughed at that.

  “We don’t know what we’re going to do here,” Griff replied calmly. “Just because we don’t see much in the way of defenses doesn’t mean that they don’t have any. We may actually need to negotiate to take on some cargo. We go in easy here, and polite.”

  “Or you’ll answer to the captain!” Nadu shouted from his chair.

  “Aye, sir!” A command from Nadu made everyone polite.

  The static was getting louder again. Griff frowned as he tried to adjust the filters on his control board.

  “We see the landing area. Vipes One is going in first.”

  “I’m circling around to join you, Twitch!”

  Another burst of static, drowning a half-dozen words.

  “I can see him on the ground,” Symm’s voice broke through. “I’m about to follow.”

  Twitch’s voice followed. “Welcome down, Symm. I see some activity, Captain. We’ve got a door opening at the far side of the field. I think we’re going to see our hosts.”