Fuest was tired. It could not be undone. He allowed them to lead him back inside. They were efficient machines. But, as machines, they could see none of the ramifications of their actions.
The senior staff would have to sort this all out. He would assign the children to check the companions’ programming, to find ways to prevent this from ever happening again.
If the companions were correct—and they had never lied to him—there would be other visitors. He hoped they were both more official and more trustworthy.
Next time, Research Station Omega must be truly prepared.
Laea had seen it fall.
She was hoping that this meeting would be a new beginning. She would have no more of the little world she had grown up in, full of men and machines that told her what she could and couldn’t do. She would meet other people—people who would lead her to new and different places. It was a brand-new world.
Her brand-new world had been torn apart.
She could not believe what had happened. Before today, her mechanical brethren had never shown the faintest signs of aggression. Ancient programming must have overtaken the companions.
When the shooting began, the companions blocked the doors, not allowing any of the humans to watch what was happening down on the field. No doubt the machines would claim they were protecting the humans.
But Laea wanted no more protection.
She didn’t stay with the others. Her brothers stared in horror at the landing field. Ten times worse than the last time, they said. They, too, told her not to look.
Nobody watched her leave. They only wanted to keep her safe. She walked away from the death, away from the noise. She was safe, she knew, so long as she was behind closed doors.
But she had never planned to stay inside. Once away from the field, she was questioned by no one. She saw no one. She felt as if she were the only one inside the entire station.
She easily got up onto the roof, and carefully crawled over it toward the field, worried that some stray bullet might come too close, but too curious and excited to stop herself.
The gunfire seemed to die down after a while. She peered over the edge and saw a body lying on the ground, close by one of the Vipers. She gasped. Half the pilot’s face had been blown away. This was the first time she had ever seen a human in a pool of blood. Parts of companions were littered around the body, and something wet—lubricant from the machines, perhaps, or fuel from the Viper—had started to burn.
It was terrible, but she couldn’t stop looking.
She realized why the station had seemed so empty. It seemed like every companion on the base was out on the field. She had forgotten how many of the machines were here—close to a hundred, she guessed. And most of them were now carrying weapons.
Someone shouted below. Two of the ships were taking off. The Viper Mark One rose in a graceful arc. The other seemed to barely get off the ground, then jerked farther aloft to follow the Viper.
The companions all turned to look at their escaping foes. A few shot at the slower craft, but both ships seemed to get away safely.
Her gaze rose to follow their trajectory. This time, she actually cried out.
She saw a new ship in the distance. It was a large vessel, unlike any she’d seen in her research. Its appearance was similar to some warships she had seen, only far more massive. She guessed the ship hung miles overhead, yet it seemed close to the size of the planet’s smaller moon. She supposed that was an illusion. No ship could be that large.
The Viper, only a dot now with a bright trail of fire, flew up and above the oncoming craft, reaching for the sky.
Suddenly, a single jet of flame came from the large ship. The Viper exploded in midair.
The other ship, still far closer to the surface than the Viper, paused abruptly, as though it had lost its engines. It dropped like a rock toward the forest below.
The large ship hung in the sky for a moment, as motionless as that newly discovered moon, then slowly moved away.
It was suddenly very quiet.
Laea realized that she was probably the only human to have seen it all.
She saw how the companions clustered around the doctor, protecting him from harm, perhaps, but also keeping him from seeing the true nature of the damage.
They guided him back inside the hangar.
The remaining Viper was wheeled away out of sight. She wondered if she would ever have a chance to look at it.
She knelt on the edge of the roof as all the parts left behind of men and machines were scrupulously scrubbed away.
It took very little time at all.
She decided it was best to climb down from here, to reenter the station before anyone realized exactly what she had seen. She would go back to her room, tell everyone that the noise had been too much for her to handle. Wide eyed, she would ask the others to describe what had happened.
She wondered exactly what their answers would be.
They had killed the humans so quickly. And where had that great ship come from? Could it be another vessel from the Colonies? But why would they shoot down a Viper?
The companions suddenly seemed so unlike those gentle machines that helped to raise her. After this, she wasn’t really sure she knew the companions at all.
But what would happen now?
The companions were the doctor’s whole life. Man and machine working together—it was his life’s work. He wouldn’t change his mind no matter what happened.
The research station was a small place, and everyone shared everything. Or so Laea had thought.
She had never seen a reason for secrets. The companions heard everything. And the companions shared many things of interest with their four human counterparts.
The companions had become so much a part of their lives, they were almost invisible. She and her brothers treated many of them like friends. Sometimes they forgot they were there, almost like furniture.
But the companions also spoke among themselves, exchanged data in ways far too fast for humans to even comprehend. Laea had found ways to listen in to many of these exchanges. Most were about technical data, having to do with the station’s ongoing research. But there had been a few messages she could not understand, messages with symbols and number sequences she had never seen before.
She still hoped there was a logical reason behind all of this. But they all seemed very different than they had a few hours before.
How could she look into the true heart of a machine?
She wanted to talk with Jon and Vin about what she had seen. But she knew that could only happen if the three of them were alone.
They might have to leave the station to make that possible.
She had to have an honest talk with her brothers. Alone. She would tell them what she had seen, and see if they could tell her anything about the giant ship in the sky.
Maybe the fallen ship would give her some answers. She would very quietly get the station’s systems to find it. And then she would take a look at it for herself. She needed simple, straightforward answers.
Somehow she knew she would get none of that from the companions.
CHAPTER
13
BATTLESTAR GALACTICA
“Enter!”
Admiral Sing looked up as Captain Draken, the officer of the watch, stepped through the doorway into the admiral’s quarters.
“Thank you for seeing me, sir. I thought it was important that I show this to you in private.”
“Yes, Captain. So you said on your wireless call.” The call had sounded very urgent. Now, Draken looked uncomfortable, as if he would rather be anyplace but here. “And what is this exactly?”
Draken held out a small disc. “It’s a distress call, sir.” He glanced down at the recorded message. “More specifically, it’s a wireless communication we picked up a few hours ago. We think it may have something to do with the ship we found. It was encoded, but it was a very old code, and simple to break. The signal was pretty faint, but w
e managed to boost it enough so you can make out the words.”
The admiral nodded to a small slot on his phone. “Why don’t we play it here. And you think it’s from the scavengers?”
“I’ve probably said too much, sir. I think you should hear this for yourself.”
Sing nodded and waved the other officer forward. He had never seen the young man so distracted.
“We worked on this overnight,” Draken explained as he inserted the disc. “The duty staff in the CIC all heard it before I could get a really clear idea of what it was.” He coughed. “I wanted to bring it to your attention before it got all over the ship.”
The disc played its very short message. With the last words, Sing understood Draken’s concern.
Cylons.
Something like this would spread like wildfire. “Very well. I think we should have a meeting of all senior staff.” He checked his watch. “At oh-eight-hundred hours.”
“Very good, sir.”
“And I want to meet in the CIC. I’d like as many to hear this as possible, before the rumors get too far.”
“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!”
Adama knew now why Sing had brought the dozen members of the senior staff here to hear this—besides Adama, the circle included the ship’s doctor and chief engineer, the Viper captain and the men and women that ran the other important functions on board. Each one could tell their subordinates exactly what they had heard here, and what they had subsequently discussed and decided. And they were playing the message right in the middle of the CIC—where everyone could hear it and the subsequent discussion by the senior staff. There were no secrets here. It would be the best way to quash the rumors that were no doubt already circulating around the station.
“You all heard that?” Sing asked. Everyone nodded.
“And this message came from where?” Bill Adama asked.
“Captain Draken?” Sing asked in turn.
“We’ve determined the signal came from somewhere around here.” Draken pointed at the star charts displayed on a large screen before them. “We’re quite close. Probably the only reason we picked it up at all.”
Tigh grunted in disbelief. “There’s nothing there!”
“Star charts have been wrong before,” Adama reminded him. “We’re dealing with information supplied by the individual Colonies, information that dates back to before the war.”
Tigh frowned at the thought. “So we may have come across something that some government doesn’t want us to see?”
“Exactly.”
“Or there may be nothing there,” Sing cautioned. “This could be nothing more than a wild goose chase.”
“Or a trap?” Tigh suggested. “Maybe the scavengers are looking for some slightly used Vipers?”
The admiral considered the suggestion. “That seems particularly unwise. These raiders have the reputation for being ruthless, and anybody who chooses to make his living out here may be a little crazy. But they have to know that the fleet would send a Battlestar. The scavengers haven’t survived so long by going up against far superior odds.”
“Maybe it’s something set up to scare others away?” Draken suggested.
Adama nodded. “What’s more frightening than Cylons?”
No one had an answer for that.
“So what next?” Sing asked. “Recommendations?”
“We have to take this message seriously,” Adama offered.
“We go in and take a look,” the ship’s engineer chimed in.
“We should send out a Viper squad—maybe three planes with experienced pilots? I’ll lead them in,” Tigh volunteered. “It’s not like I haven’t seen Cylons before.”
“I agree,” Sing replied. “We have to treat this as a serious threat. Let’s get the Galactica a little closer before we send in our team. In case you do get something on your tail, we want to be able to blast it out of the sky.”
He paused as he looked at his officers. “But you realize this may be nothing at all.
“Tell all your subordinates. Tell them about this, but call it what it is—a message of unknown origin. We’re going to investigate this message, but that is all we know. While it could be Cylons, the possibility is still remote. I will inform Fleet HQ of our decision, and keep them up to date with our findings. If we do find something, we’ll have every Battlestar on this side of the Colonies here in a matter of days.”
He paused again before he added, “I don’t want anyone to panic. This could have any number of explanations. Or it could be somebody’s idea of a cosmic joke. Understood?”
The senior staff once again murmured their assent. He didn’t want any alarms sounding among the troops. Word of mouth could turn a single Cylon into an entire fleet overnight.
“Remember,” he added, “we are no longer at war. We signed an armistice two decades ago. No one has seen a Cylon in years!”
“And I hope we don’t see any either,” the ship’s doctor chimed in. It brought a laugh from all around.
“Maybe,” said the admiral thoughtfully, “if we do meet them—we can open negotiations. Maybe we can keep from ever having another war.”
Adama was impressed. The admiral knew just what he was doing, ending on this. He reminded them all that the Cylons weren’t unbeatable. The Colonies had fought them to a standstill once. Maybe neither side was eager to resume that battle.
“Good,” Sing continued. “Then go back and talk to your people now. Let them know they need to be ready. But don’t believe anything until we see it for ourselves. Dismissed!”
The crowd began to leave.
“Captain Adama,” Sing added, “you have the CIC. Plot a course for that empty corner of space. If you need me, I’ll be in my quarters.” The admiral followed the others from the room.
Saul stayed behind. He walked up next to Adama and took a look at the star chart.
“Just like old times, huh, Bill?”
Adama smiled. “Let’s hope not. The war is one place I don’t want to revisit, ever.”
“But we know something about the Cylons. There may just be a reason they’ve put veterans back on board.”
“Well, let’s hope we don’t have to gain too much more experience.” He slapped his old friend on the shoulder. “I am glad you volunteered to lead the exploratory team.”
Tigh shrugged. “I couldn’t see who else could do it. Oh, I’ve got a couple of good youngsters who I think would do all right, but most of them are green kids. This exploration stuff I have them on is nothing more than a glorified training mission.”
“We were all green once,” Adama reminded him. “We were tested, and we came through.”
“At least we lived to talk about it,” Tigh agreed.
Bill nodded. “Let’s hope your pilots don’t have to become too tested too quickly.”
Tigh’s gaze focused somewhere far past the star charts. “With Cylons, you can never tell much of anything.” He glanced back at Bill. “They shot down a few too many of my friends. I never felt like I was quite even. Part of me would like to finish the job.” He looked back at the charts.
“How long until we get there?”
“I’m guessing a day, maybe two,” Adama replied. “I’ll let you know as soon as I finish my calculations.”
Tigh nodded. “I’ll go and tell my kids. I think some of them would like a challenge. But let’s hope the challenge comes up empty.”
CHAPTER
14
THE WILDERNESS
OUTSIDE RESEARCH STATION OMEGA
Tom Zarek had nothing but time.
By late morning on his second day, he knew his surroundings pretty well.
He was in a valley. Fruit grew on trees, and a small stream passed only a few hundred steps from his front door. He could hear the call of something in the trees. Small birds maybe. So he was surrounded by so
me sort of wildlife. The birdcalls made the place seem a little less threatening. It was a nice surprise.
Tom’s next surprise came when he opened the survival kit. Not only were all thirty-three items inside clearly labeled, but the kit actually came with instructions, with separate entries for each item.
He saw things he could use immediately. And other things—first aid and the like—that he could use over time.
He inspected the outside of the lander, which appeared to have crashed down through a group of trees. That might have lessened the impact of his fall, but it also brought a lot of branches down with it. That caused substantial damage to one corner of the ship, tearing a hole the size of his fist in the outer hull. He imagined some seal had been broken as well—that was probably the hissing he had heard. At least he told himself that. Without any guides to the structure of the lander, he really knew nothing.
The only thing he knew was that the lander wasn’t going anywhere, anytime soon.
It had gotten dark a couple hours after his crash, and Tom had made himself as comfortable as possible in the copilot’s chair. He slept fitfully, waiting, he guessed, for some large beast to pull open the hatch, which he had left closed but unsealed. But he had heard nothing. He had wondered then if this place had any animal life at all.
In the morning, he had taken his first exploratory walk, a few hundred paces toward the rising sun, then, after returning to the lander, a few hundred paces the other way. It was on his second trip that he had found the small running stream.
At midday, he had returned to the stream and taken water samples, which he tested with Boone’s survival kit.
Tom didn’t think anything had ever had a truer name. The kit gave him something to read, and instructions that told him what to do without making a frakking fool of himself. He wished that Boone had left more instructions elsewhere.
Everything else was going to have to be trial and error. He followed the instructions, mixing the water with a small packet of powder—the book said the results might take a couple of minutes.
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