“What?” Both Zarek and Boone moved across the lander to get a look.
“It can’t be,” Boone whispered.
But it was. A tall thin human walked between two machines—machines that looked like Cylons. They weren’t the models used as warriors—seeing the military, Centurion Cylons would be as good as seeing a loaded gun. Zarek had been very young when the Cylons had left, but even he recognized that these were both domestic models—a Cylon Butler, maybe, and a Cylon Mechanic.
“I think Nadu needs to know about this.” Boone moved quickly back to the wireless.
“Do we get the frak away from here?” the Creep whispered.
“And leave the pilots behind?” Boone called over his shoulder. “Nadu would have our skins.”
“But—” the Creep began, but let his objections die. They all knew that, with Nadu, there were no extenuating circumstances.
Zarek tried to make sense of what he saw. At the end of the war, the Cylons had left for who knew where. Could it be that, when Lightning came to this outpost, they had actually found the edge of Cylon-controlled space? But then why would a human be walking with them? No, this was something new, something to do with this special research station.
Did their research here, far away from any civilized worlds, have to do with taming their former enemies? Or had the war completely passed this place by?
Zarek couldn’t judge anything by appearances. Humans and Cylons, side by side. He felt like he was stepping back into history.
Boone came up behind him. “I sent a coded message out to the captain telling him we’ve got something strange. Something that looks like Cylons.”
“No reply?”
“None yet. The last Vipers down here had their signal break up, didn’t they? Some sort of atmospheric interference, maybe.”
“Or maybe someone is jamming the signal.” Tom nodded. He realized he didn’t trust anything about this anymore. But he still had to finish his job. “Keep this ship ready to take off. I’m going to step outside. I think, if we want any hope of getting Symm and Twitch, we’ve got to show ourselves. But I don’t want anybody more than a step or two away from his craft.”
Boone returned to his station to tell the others.
“Vipes! We’re going ahead with the meet. Tom will go out first. Then we’ll all show ourselves. If possible, we’ll negotiate for our pilots. If not—remember, wait for Tom’s signal.”
“When I wave both hands above my head,” Zarek called over his shoulder, “get back in your flyers and go.”
Both Zarek and Boone went to look out the portal.
The Creep was right behind them. The three-member welcoming committee was halfway across the field.
“They told us not to judge by appearances,” Tom said softly.
“Cylon technology might be worth a lot,” the Creep added. “Didn’t the toasters take almost all of it with them?”
“We’re here just long enough to get Twitch and Symm,” Tom said. “I think any other talk will happen later.”
“Maybe we can send Nadu down instead,” the Creep suggested.
Boone glanced at Zarek. “Yeah, I guess you’ve convinced us to stay. I really wish our captain was a little less crazy.”
Tom nodded. “Open the hatch, Boone.”
The pilot flipped the lever. The hatch popped open with a hiss.
Tom stepped out of the lander. What did you say to a man and two Cylons?
Viper Three popped open its cockpit. Slam stood up in the craft, his hands empty.
Tom saw no movement from the other Viper. But the three locals were well within hailing distance.
“Greetings!” he said in a loud, clear voice. “I’m Tom Zarek, from the independent cruiser Lightning. We’re glad to finally meet you.”
The man and the two Cylons stopped, maybe twenty paces away.
Tom walked forward slowly, putting some distance between himself and the lander. Behind him, he could see that both his crewmates had stepped just beyond the hatch, showing themselves to be empty-handed, but keeping their weapons within arm’s reach.
Zarek could finally get a good look at the human in the center. He was a very thin, aged gentleman who held himself quite straight, in an almost military posture.
“You are Doctor Fuest?” Zarek asked as he continued to approach the three others.
“I am.” The old man stared at him. He did not smile. “And I want to thank you first for not overreacting.”
Zarek nodded to the mechanicals who flanked the old man. “I have to admit, I did not expect your friends.”
Fuest nodded at that, and finally smiled. Mention of the Cylons, oddly, seemed to put him a bit more at ease. He waved at his metal escort. “I would wonder if anything like this exists anymore, back in the Colonies. We work with our friends here—or, as we call them, our companions. I know, they remind you of certain mechanical servants the Colonies once employed, but our society here is far different, perhaps unique in all of known space—if you knew these companions well, you would not be so afraid.”
Was it that obvious? Zarek thought he had been hiding his emotions. He glanced around the landing area. The rest of the field still seemed empty. It certainly was strange, but no one had threatened them—yet.
But two people were missing here. Seeing the Cylons had thrown him off.
“We are here to receive our prisoners!” he called.
“Very well,” the doctor called. “I will have them brought out. I want nothing but for this exchange to succeed.”
So they would get Symm and Twitch? Perhaps he should take the final steps forward and greet the doctor more properly. Zarek smiled, and extended his hand.
“On behalf of the Lightning—” he began.
One of the Cylons—the Butler—stepped forward to block Tom’s way.
Zarek heard a shout. He turned as the final Vipes popped its top.
Ajay came out screaming.
“The Cylons run this place. They’re everywhere. Get back! Get back! Get away from here!”
Boone shouted behind him. Zarek turned, and saw something silver moving across the field.
Ajay had a gun. He pulled out his machine rifle and started shooting.
“No!” Zarek shouted, but his protest was lost beneath the gunfire.
Doors flew open in the buildings to either side. Plates drew back on the landing field to show Cylons hidden beneath. And not just domestics. Zarek recognized those barrel bodies and snakelike arms. These were Centurions. They leapt from their hiding places, weapons aimed and ready.
Ajay was right. The real Cylons were now everywhere.
Fuest was shouting something, too, but Zarek couldn’t hear it. He lifted his arms above his head—the signal to abort the mission.
No one was watching him anymore. It happened too quickly. The crew of the Lightning had been fired upon, and they were fighting back.
But only four crewmembers were firing guns. The Cylons seemed endless. Slam tumbled out of his cockpit as bullets ripped across his chest. Ajay’s mouth opened as a bullet opened the back of his brain. Zarek looked back and saw that one of Boone’s pants legs was drenched in blood. Both Boone and the Creep were hunched down low, using the lander for cover.
Maybe, Zarek thought, if he could get back to the lander, the three of them might still get away.
He realized no one was firing at him. No bullets flew around the group at the center of the field. Zarek was being protected by his proximity to Doctor Fuest.
He jumped forward, dodging the Butler, who now looked past him at the gunfire. Zarek could finally hear the doctor’s voice.
“Stop it!” Fuest called to the Cylons at either side. When he saw Tom approach he shouted, “I don’t want this any more than you.”
Zarek saw one of the doctor’s guardians out of the corner of his eye. The repair Cylon’s wrenchlike hands reached for his throat. Tom ducked and rolled, straight toward the doctor’s feet.
Zarek realized he had only one way out of
this. He jumped up behind the doctor, pinning the old man’s arms against his chest. Fuest was very thin, almost frail. Zarek lifted him off the ground and backed away, using the doctor as a shield.
Fuest didn’t struggle. “What are you doing?” the doctor called over his shoulder.
“If I don’t do this, I’m dead,” Zarek shot back.
Fuest shook his head. “No, no, the companions will listen to me. I can stop them.”
“Like they’re listening to you now?”
“It was working so well before you came. I can’t understand…” The doctor’s voice trailed off as his two guardians rushed to follow Tom.
“Stay back!” Fuest called to the machines. “We can find some reason here!”
The machines didn’t seem to listen.
“This can’t be happening,” the doctor mumbled. “This can’t be happening.”
Now Fuest was the one who looked really afraid.
Zarek backed up, with the old man stumbling after him.
He could hear the whine of gunfire in his ears. Boone and the Creep seemed to be holding their own against the Cylons. Zarek flinched as a shot buzzed past his head. A couple of the bullets were close, but for some reason, the Cylons seemed to value the doctor.
Maybe he was right, Tom thought, and these “companions” of his were different. Maybe they were slightly more selective killing machines.
The gunfire stopped abruptly as Tom reached the lander.
Boone looked up at him from where the pilot crouched against the ship. “Do you think we’ve given them enough chance to talk?”
Zarek nodded to the doctor. “I’ve brought a little protection with us. They don’t want him hurt. Maybe we can talk to him after we’ve loaded all of us back on the lander.”
Boone grinned. “That’s why Nadu picked you to be the leader.”
“Hey it never hurts to have a hostage,” the Creep agreed. “Watch out!”
Zarek turned, and realized the Cylons had stopped firing so that they could close in on foot. Half a dozen of the things towered over them. Boone rolled onto his back and shot one of the Centurions point blank, severing its head from its neck. But a pair of Cylons pushed past their fallen comrade. Four arms came down on Boone’s body, knocking the gun from his hands and crushing his chest. Other arms were pulling the doctor from Zarek’s grip. Still holding onto the old man, he used the Cylon’s weight to swing himself around toward the lander, diving through the hatch.
“Creep!” Tom yelled. “Get in here!”
A Cylon arm darted through the hatchway, grabbing for him. Zarek grabbed a rifle from the floor and clubbed at the thing until it withdrew. He hit the hatch controls. Other metal arms banged against the door as it sealed closed.
The Cylons had crushed Boone. The Creep had to be dead, didn’t he?
He moved to the window. He saw nothing but Cylons, three in a pile where he had last seen the Creep, the rest surrounding the now still form of Doctor Fuest.
Wait! He saw someone else moving, over by one of the Vipers. None of the machines noticed. The Cylons’ attention was focused elsewhere.
Somehow, Slam was on his feet out there, climbing back into the cockpit of his Vipes.
Tom jumped back to the wireless. “Vipes Three! This is Zarek! Let’s get the hell out of here.”
Slam’s voice came through a moment later. “Glad to hear there’s somebody else alive. Follow me out, huh ? I’ll get us back to Lightning.” He made a sound that was half laugh, half cough. “Then I’ve got to see the doc.”
Tom looked at the rows of controls before him. He realized he had to fly this thing. Zarek mimicked what he had seen Boone do only hours ago, flipping the twelve switches. He felt the engines come to life beneath his feet. The screen before him showed the Viper launching from the far side of the field. He eased the stick forward, worried he would fall too far behind.
The lander lurched off the ground as the Viper roared into the air.
Something pinged off the lander’s shell. The Cylons were firing at him! He doubly wished the Creep was here now, to lay down some return fire.
He’d just have to follow Slam home.
The next few minutes were pure nightmare.
Zarek managed to get the lander in the air, copying Boone’s movements as best he could remember. But the squat ship jerked and rolled. He had to right the craft or he’d crash right back down into the landing field.
He grabbed the stick and tugged. The lander righted itself—and it was rising! He could still see the Vipes in the distance, though it was far smaller than the last time he had looked.
But they were free of the base! Now, if he could just stay on the Viper’s tail…
The stick wouldn’t stay in one place. He had trouble keeping the lander flying in a straight line. It dipped again, swooping down toward the planet before he got it heading back aloft.
He looked back to the screen, hoping he could still see Slam’s Vipes. He saw something else instead.
Another, bigger ship was showing up on his screen. It blotted out one quarter of the view. That thing had to be close to the size of a Battlestar—maybe even larger. Where the hell had that come from?
He flipped on the wireless. “Vipes Three! Slam! What’s going on?”
“Incoming fire! I’ve got some monster ship on my tail! Trying evasive maneuvers.”
The transmission cut off abruptly.
The lander shook. Tom was tossed out of the chair, jamming his shoulder against one of the guns still strapped to the wall. He pulled himself up to look out the window.
In the distance, where the Vipes had been flying, he saw only a ball of flame. And above the flame was some huge, dark object that took up a large part of the sky.
Frak getting back to the Lightning, Zarek thought. He was headed straight toward that thing. Whatever had gotten Slam was going to get the lander next. He had to make his tiny ship less of a target.
He crawled back to the controls and cut the engines.
Without a heat signature, maybe the lander would become invisible to the monster ship above.
The lander, not yet free of the planet’s gravity, stopped its ascent and began to fall, slowly at first, toward the surface far below.
He looked at the controls. If he could cut in the thrusters at the last minute, maybe he could cushion the landing enough to keep both the ship and himself from getting hurt without giving too much of a signal to his enemy. That was a big maybe. But if he could do it, once the huge ship had disappeared from the sky, he could still find some way to get back to the Lightning.
The systems were still working. He needed to open the wireless and let Nadu know what was down here.
He decided he had to risk a short message on the ship’s secure frequency.
He flipped the send switch, and spoke quickly:
“We were attacked. They have a warship in orbit. I’m the only one who got out, and I can’t see a way of getting back to the Lightning. Captain, the base was crawling with Cylons!”
He was coming in at an angle. He’d have to wait and use the forward thrusters to cushion his fall. He remembered—vaguely—how Boone had held the stick as he prepared to land.
Zarek hoped he could remember a lot more.
He tried to figure out where the lander would fall. He was some distance from the research station. From his trajectory, he guessed that he had flown south. The screen showed the world beneath him as a mass of green.
The ground was coming up fast. Zarek threw on all four thrusters beneath the vehicle while pulling back on the stick.
The lander seemed to hesitate for an instant in its descent, then began to turn end over end. Zarek cut the thrusters and let go of the stick. The rolling continued.
He strapped himself into the seat at last. He could no longer tell from his instruments which way was ground and which was sky.
The ground rushed toward him. Zarek hit the thrusters and prayed to his parents’ gods.
A jol
t ran through him as he heard a horrible rending noise.
Everything went dark.
CHAPTER
11
FREE CRUISER LIGHTNING
“What the frak?”
Nadu stared at the monstrosity on the forward screen. It was one of those old supercruisers, built before the war, ten times the size of the Lightning. If it was fully operational, it would be fitted with fore and aft cannons, over one hundred Vipers, uncounted missiles and probably a few weapons Nadu no longer remembered.
No way the Lightning could stand up to that kind of behemoth. A ship like that could swallow the Lightning whole.
“Captain?” different members of the crew called out, reacting to his silence. “Orders? Do we fire?”
A part of him wanted to stay and fight. He had five of his own on the far side of this warship, looking for the two that had gone before. Seven out of a crew of nineteen.
He had never lost this many men.
“Captain!” Griff shouted. “We’re getting a radio signal from the lander.”
The message was heavy with static. “We were attacked. They—static—warship in orbit. I’m the only one who got out, and I can’t—static—getting back to the Lightning. Captain, the base was crawling with Cylons!”
“Zarek. That was Zarek,” Griff said. He frowned, staring down at his comm controls. “We’ve lost the signal.”
Nadu had known before his lost crewman had used the word. The Colonies had long ago abandoned those old ships, replacing them with Battlestars. The monster in front of them was a Cylon vessel.
His crew had been attacked by Cylons. He’d lost seven of nineteen. With that thing in front of them, he had no way to see if any were still alive.
They had flown into a trap. Nadu had been careless—worse, he had been blind. He had operated in a universe where the Cylons were long gone. A place where you could profit from a terrible war, and pick up the pieces from a time of terrible destruction. Now the Cylons had come back to change the rules.
Seven of nineteen. And what could he do?
“Out of here!” he called abruptly to his crew. “Chart a course, get us as far away from this ship as possible. We can’t outgun them. Maybe we can outrun them.”
02 - The Cylons' Secret Page 8