Skeeter looked out at the ships sitting on the field. “You say this thing you want to show us is some distance away? Who says we have to walk?” He glanced over at Athena. “Haven’t you flown the shuttle a few times?”
“You don’t think the colonel would mind?” Laea asked.
“I think the Colonel wants to find those secrets more than you. What a good idea, Skeeter!” Athena smiled at Laea. “Would you like to take a little trip?”
Laea stared at the squat craft before them. “Could we? I’ve never ever been in the air.”
She could fly, just like this woman from another world.
But she had important things to do. This would give her the perfect opportunity to talk with them about the stranger. Maybe they could even bring the stranger back with them.
She looked around the field. “I had better tell someone we’re doing this.”
Skeeter followed her gaze. “You mean, you’ve got to check in with these things?”
Laea waved away his objections. “They mostly let me do what I want. Anyone will do. The companions all talk to each other.” She pointed and yelled across the field.
“Delta!”
A squat, pale beige companion with a padded midsection rolled in their direction.
“Laea!” the companion replied in a high voice. “It has been long since we’ve talked! What can I do for my little one?”
“Will there be a problem taking off without the doctor’s permission?” Athena asked as Delta approached.
Laea shrugged. “He’s in a meeting. He told me to give you a tour. And that tour will be from the air. I don’t see a problem.”
“I’d just as soon take that tour,” Skeeter agreed. “I can’t get used to these companions of yours.”
Delta rolled to a stop before them. “Laea? What have you been up to?”
“Would you tell the doctor that we are going to take the shuttle up for a look around? We won’t be going very far.”
The companion hesitated for a moment before replying. “This has been cleared with the doctor?”
“Yes, he just sent me to show these newcomers around.”
Delta paused before remarking, “I understand you are all expected for dinner.”
“And we will be there. Thank you, Delta, for reminding us.”
“You’re welcome, Laea. Now be a good girl.”
It turned and rolled slowly away.
“That Cylon seemed to be scolding you,” Skeeter said.
Laea smiled at that. “The companion is a Nanny Model. Quite gentle, really. She was one of those who raised me and my brothers. I think she has trouble talking to me in any other way.” She waved to the two pilots. “Now let’s get up in that shuttle before Delta talks to anyone else.”
Skeeter opened the hatch, and the three quickly climbed inside. The place was full of switches and dials. It reminded Laea of a miniature science center.
Athena sat dead center in front of the controls, and waved for Laea to take the seat on her left.
“I need to talk to someone, too.” She flicked a couple of switches in front of her. “Galactica, this is Athena.”
“Galactica here,” a man’s voice said from a speaker overhead.
“We’re going to take the shuttle up a few hundred feet and take a look around the research station,” Athena continued. “We’ve got someone with us who’s going to give us a guided tour.”
“Okay, Athena. Is Colonel Adama with you?”
“Negative. Just Skeeter and me and one guest on this trip. The colonel is currently talking to the head of the center.”
“Very good. Please let Adama know the admiral would like to speak to him at his first opportunity.”
“Will do, Galactica.” She flicked a couple more switches. “Well, now we’ve all gotten permission from everybody.”
Skeeter sat down in the next chair over. “You’ll need to strap yourself in there. Like this.”
Laea copied Skeeter’s actions. The belt closed with a satisfying click.
“I need to do a couple things to get us started.” Athena glanced over at her as she flicked a series of switches. “So what’s life like on the station?”
Laea shrugged.
“Nothing ever really changes. It just goes on. I think it made more sense when there were many humans to interact with the Cylons.”
“You’re the only ones left? You and your brothers?” The shuttle began to hum softly. Laea guessed it was the sound of the engines.
“They’re not really my brothers. We just grew up together. But they might as well be brothers. We know each other much too well. And they are both a little boring.”
“What happened to the other humans?” Skeeter asked.
“Many left when the war began. The rest, including my mother and father, were killed in an accident. I was very young, I don’t know many details. I just know that most of the humans were killed.” Laea paused, then added, “Cylons were lost as well. But they can be rebuilt.”
“Hang on,” Athena called. “We’re good to go.” She pulled back on a small wheel before her as the shuttle lifted into the air.
Into the air. Laea held her breath as the ground fell away beneath them. She wanted to laugh. She let herself smile instead.
“So where does the tour begin?” Athena asked.
Laea pointed out the window. “There’s a river that runs north of the station. If you follow that for a little ways, I’ll show you.”
Athena turned the shuttle north. The engine made hardly any noise. Laea felt like she was swooping through the air—like a bird riding the wind.
She took a deep breath. She didn’t have time for birds.
“There are other things I need to tell you,” Laea said hurriedly. “Back at that staff meeting, they had things they weren’t talking about.”
“Like what?” Skeeter asked.
“When all the bad stuff happened, when the scavengers and the companions started to shoot at each other, two of the scavengers’ ships took off, but neither of them got very far. There was another ship out here, waiting for them.” She took a quick breath. “The first one—the Viper—was shot down by the new ship. The second one landed somewhere out here—so it wouldn’t get shot down, is my guess. It’s still out here. That’s where we’re going.”
“A ship was up here?” Athena asked. “What kind of ship?”
How could she answer that? “It was a big ship. Big and round. When I was little, I used to read up on Vipers and other starships. Well, actually Vin did most of the reading. I used to look over his shoulder. Maybe he could tell you what that ship was. I never saw one of those in all the programs.”
“That means there’s somebody else out here, too,” Skeeter said.
“There were some experimental ships from the Colonies, back before the war,” Athena replied. “I thought all of them had been junked. But then, I never expected to find a working research station out in the middle of nowhere.”
“Could this be something the station’s involved in?” Skeeter asked.
Laea paused a moment to look out the window. The river wound its way past the cultivated fields and into the trees. They were already flying over the forest.
“I don’t know,” she said at last. “A week ago I would have said no. But now there seem to be things the doctor and the companions aren’t talking about. But there’s something else. One of the pilots from the ship is still alive. That’s the reason I was late for the meeting. I came out here to find him.”
Athena turned to look at Laea. “Are you sure about this?”
“I think he crashed around here. I saw him—I really saw him—from a distance in the woods. I wasn’t sure it was safe to talk to him. I’m afraid I got a little scared.
“I came back to the station to see if I could get somebody to go back out with me. But with both my bothers and the companions acting so oddly lately, I thought maybe it was safer to ask you.” She looked down at the chair she sat in and grinned. �
�I didn’t know I’d get to fly in one of these things, besides.”
She frowned as she looked back at the forest rushing by below. “I don’t know if I can tell exactly where I saw him.”
It was difficult from the air to tell exactly where she had traveled on the ground. She could see the river clearly enough, except in those places where the forest grew too thick to see the ground beneath.
She craned her neck around to glance out another window, trying to see where they were in relation to the station. Hadn’t they gone far enough by now?
She turned her attention forward and saw a flash of metal down below.
She pointed at the spot. “There! Try down there!”
Athena quickly landed the shuttle in a clearing by the riverside.
“This stranger, this scavenger,” Laea continued quickly, scared, she guessed, that they would find him before she could finish her story, “he might have been as surprised by me as I was by him. He called out, though. I think he wanted to talk to me. I hope he will now.
“I hope he won’t hide on us. Still, his lander should have come down somewhere nearby. Maybe if I call out to him again, he’ll show up.” Laea wondered if she was talking too much.
“We’ll do our best to find him,” Athena said as she shut down the shuttle’s engines.
“You can take the straps off now,” Skeeter said as he unsnapped his own restraints. “Are we likely to meet anybody else out here?”
Laea shook her head. “The companions rarely leave the station. Occasionally Epsilon will form a hunting party to bring back food for the humans. But with the recent crisis, everybody’s back at the station.”
They all climbed out of the shuttle. This time, Laea led the way.
The forest around them was very quiet.
“I saw a flash of metal, back this way.” Laea headed back the way the shuttle had come. She took a path along the river’s edge. Within fifty steps, they had turned a corner and lost sight of their ship.
She stopped abruptly. “I hear something ahead,” she said softly. There it was again, the snap of a twig, the sound of someone pushing his way through the underbrush.
“Whoever it is isn’t even trying to be quiet,” Athena whispered. “Do you have many animals here?”
“Native to the planet?” Laea shook her head. “There are very few. Birds and rodents, mostly. And I think the research station brought the rodents.” She saw a break in the trees ahead.
“I see another clearing. Maybe we can get a good look at this scavenger.”
They moved closer to the next open space, being careful to stay just inside the tree line.
“Over there!” Athena pointed. “Something’s shiny.”
“Maybe our friend’s carrying a gun,” Skeeter replied.
Laea heard another branch break, followed by the whir and clank of gears.
A dark metal machine stepped into the clearing.
“Holy frak!” Skeeter whispered. “It’s a toaster!”
Maybe, Laea realized, she hadn’t seen the stranger’s lander. Maybe the glint had come from the metal body of a companion.
The machine turned to look at them. Half of Laea wanted to stand up and identify herself, to ask what business the companions had in the forest. But the other half of her saw something else.
This companion was a stranger, too.
CHAPTER
20
Skeeter saw a Cylon. No, he told himself, they were called “companions” here.
“Hey!” he called to Laea. “I thought you said there wouldn’t be any companions this far out.”
Laea frowned at the machine on the far side of the clearing. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen this companion. I mean, it’s a Warrior—one of the new Centurion models. Except, see the way that red light flashes behind its visor? That’s different. That’s not one of ours.”
The strange machine lifted its arms. The machine held a weapon.
“Watch out!” Athena cried as a bright red beam sliced across the open space.
All three of them ducked behind the trees as the machine turned slightly, taking aim at their new position.
“Frak!” Skeeter whispered from where he crouched. “We’ve got ourselves a real Cylon this time!”
The forest would give them some cover. But the area behind them was filled with thick bushes. Skeeter thought he saw some brambles, too. They would make far too much noise trying to escape that way.
“How can this happen?” Laea demanded indignantly. “We’ve never seen Cylons here—I mean real Cylons—before!”
“That you know about,” Athena reminded her. “Remember you said you thought the companions were keeping secrets?”
“They’ve been talking to Cylons?” Her tone of voice said she couldn’t believe it.
“We probably now know who owns that big ship that shot the Viper out of the sky,” Skeeter added.
“You mean the companions knew about the ship? They hid it from us?”
“We don’t know that for sure,” Athena replied softly.
“It’s just damn well likely,” Skeeter added. He peeked around the corner of the tree. “Sooner or later, that thing’s going to figure out we’re unarmed.”
Red beams shot out suddenly from across the clearing—a dozen in rapid succession. Branches came crashing down from overhead, some quite close to their hiding place. Skeeter’s nostrils were filled with the smell of charred wood.
“I think it already knows,” he added. “That thing is going to kill us.”
“We have to get back to the shuttle and warn the others,” Athena said.
Skeeter looked at her. “Well, at least some of us do.”
He could hear his grandmother’s words filling his head.
You don’t go to bed on time
You don’t stop making noise
You don’t wash behind your ears
The Cylons are gonna get you!
Guess he was going to end up a naughty boy after all.
“I’ll distract the thing!” Skeeter whispered hoarsely. “You head back to the river!”
He jumped out from behind the trees before anyone could object, yelling and waving his arms as he tried to head in the opposite direction from the others.
He didn’t make it two steps before he felt a searing pain in his arm. All his breath left him as he fell to the ground.
“Skeeter!” Athena shouted.
He groaned. Frak, did that hurt.
“It got me in the shoulder,” he whispered as Athena crawled to his side. His right shoulder. He looked over at the wound. It seemed like there was an awful lot of blood.
“It’s coming toward us!” Laea shouted. Skeeter raised his head enough to see that the machine was marching straight at them across the field.
Laea glanced at Athena. “Maybe I can distract it while you get Skeeter back to the ship.”
Skeeter shook his head. “We already tried that one. We didn’t come out here to get you killed.”
The young woman kept her eyes on the machine. “I know my way around these woods. If I can avoid that thing, I can double back out of here and make it to the station in a couple of hours.”
A bolt of red light barely missed Laea’s head.
“I don’t think any of us are going anyplace!” Skeeter shouted.
They all ducked when they heard a huge boom. Skeeter looked up. The lower two-thirds of the Cylon still stood some twenty paces distant.
But the Cylon’s head was gone.
The machine fell to the ground an instant later. Skeeter tried to stand up and take a look around. “Who did that?” he demanded.
A man wearing torn, soiled clothes waved at them from the far side of the clearing.
“That would be me.”
Skeeter realized that standing was not a good idea. He looked down at his hands. Where had all this blood come from?
His eyes closed as he fell back down.
Laea watched the stranger as he kicked at the still
machine. The Cylon. Then Skeeter collapsed.
Laea turned to Athena. “Is he… ?”
“He’s badly hurt. We’d better get him back to the shuttle.”
The stranger walked across the clearing, a large rifle in his hand. He nodded to Laea, then smiled.
“I’m Tom Zarek, and I think we almost met before.” Laea nodded back. This time, he had his shirt on. It was torn and stained, but it still covered most of his torso. Maybe she could talk to him now.
“I’m sorry about what happened before,” she said quickly. “I saw your ship fall back to the ground. I went looking to see if anybody had survived.”
She felt herself growing hot. She took a deep breath. “I’m apparently not that good at talking to strangers.”
“I’m glad we had another chance to get together. So what happened to the man I saw before?” It was only then that the newcomer noticed Skeeter on the ground, his arm covered with blood. “Frak! The toaster shot somebody?”
Athena looked up from where she had torn off a length of cloth from Skeeter’s dry sleeve to wrap around the wound. “Yeah. Got him in the arm. If we can stop the bleeding, I think he’ll be all right.”
“You’re Colonial fleet,” Tom Zarek said. He shook his head. “I never thought I would be so glad to see you. But then I never thought we would have a Cylon problem.”
“And who are you?” Athena asked as she tied the bandage tight.
“Well, I was a raider on the cruiser Lightning, but I think I’ve recently retired. I didn’t like the job all that much after I got it.”
He sighed and glanced back at the Cylon. “I’m not so proud of what’s gone on here the last couple days. I was supposed to get our pilots returned to us. Instead, I managed to just barely duck out of a fight. I’ve mostly just been waiting to be rescued. I hope you can oblige. Especially since I think the Cylons are looking for me.”
Skeeter groaned. He was waking up!
“Why would there be Cylons here?” Athena asked sharply. “Do you know?”
“I think they were here long before the Lightning showed up. I tried to run, but there was another ship. Biggest ship I ever saw. I bailed before it could shoot me down.”
02 - The Cylons' Secret Page 15
