02 - The Cylons' Secret Read online

  Not that Tigh had expected to be in that situation for long. When Adama got himself back into the military, he promised to bring Tigh along. All of a sudden, Saul had had big hopes for his future. The Battlestar brass had turned him down three times for reenlistment, sure; but they had turned Adama down twice. Not enough positions open in a peacetime navy, was the official line, even for the most honored of veterans.

  But then, despite every door that had been slammed before them, his best friend was back in uniform. Adama had stayed on top of the news, kept in touch with an old Battlestar crony or two, listened for the first mention of an expansion of the fleet, and—bang—had talked himself back into a job. With Bill Adama, Saul realized, anything was possible.

  Anything but keeping close. Saul realized Bill was busy now, what with a full-time military career and a family back planetside. Tigh hadn’t wanted to bother his old buddy unless he had to—reminding Bill of unkept promises just wasn’t his style. Tigh even stopped sending those short, joking missives they had usually used to keep in touch. The messages had stopped coming from Adama as well. He hadn’t heard from his best friend in the better part of a year.

  When the two of them had been close, it had given Tigh a reason to keep going, a reason to hope. But all these months of silence had led Saul back into his bad habits. He always drank, he guessed, but back with Bill he had kept his carousing to off-hours. Now he drank all the time.

  It had cost him his job. As crappy as the last freighter had been, they couldn’t harbor a drunk. They had canned him halfway through their run, and left him to rot on Geminon. Maybe even Adama couldn’t talk his superiors into taking a middle-aged man—an old lush, really—like Tigh back in the service. Saul still thought Bill’s offer had been a nice gesture, but it had been far too long since he had put on a uniform. Who would look at him now?

  So he sat for a month in his rented single room, using up the last of his money, cut off from the stars. Without somebody like Adama around, Saul had been drifting, lost. He had thought about wiring his old mate one more time, to see if there was any hope. He had decided to spend the money on alcohol instead. Saul was already fresh out of hope.

  He could only see one option—to end it all. He’d drink himself into a pleasant stupor. Liquid courage, that was what they called it. Then he would pour the rest of the bottle over his clothes and strike an open flame.

  He had always wanted to go out in a blaze of glory. He was ready to burn.

  And then the knock came on the door. When Tigh had been at the lowest of the low, he’d opened the damned door and seen—not Adama, but a couple of men in uniform, informing him that he was back in. Adama had been promoted. They needed someone to fill his old position. Saul Tigh had been William Adama’s personal recommendation.

  In two weeks, he’d be Captain Saul Tigh, serving on a Battlestar.

  Now Saul was convinced Bill really could do anything.

  He had been back in the service now for a little over two months. He had been surprised at how easily he had slipped back into the military routine, how natural the rhythms of a ship seemed, even though he had been away from them for close to twenty years.

  Before that? Well, maybe that was better forgotten. For years he had tried to forget what had happened in the war. Why not forget his own little war with the bottle?

  He was a captain now, assigned to train all the new pilots who shipped on board the last time they stopped on Caprica. Twenty-three pilots, nineteen of them green recruits—nineteen youngsters who would learn to eat, drink, and sleep with their Vipers before he was done.

  They were a good bunch of kids. He just hoped they never had to be tested in battle.

  The Cylons had almost broken humanity. Humanity would never allow anything like that to happen again.

  Tigh sighed and hauled himself off his bunk. Enough of the introspection. The last time he had gotten this deep in thought, he’d ended up looking to light himself on fire.

  He was on duty in twenty minutes. He’d stroll up to CIC, see if anything was happening, before he chewed out the troops. These days, he liked to get out and stretch his legs. Saul just wanted to walk down the corridors of the Battlestar—his Battlestar.

  He looked up at the sound of Klaxons. A voice came over the shipboard wireless, instructing all senior staff to report to Combat Information Center at once.

  That meant they’d found something—something serious.

  Well, so much for the stroll. He shut the door behind him and quick-marched down the corridor.

  It was time to do his job.

  Today he had a purpose. Today somebody else could look over the edge.

  Colonel William Adama looked up from the star charts spread before him. A dozen others busied themselves in other parts of the CIC, the huge, central space that served as the beating heart of the Battlestar. He was surrounded by stations that handled navigation, communication, air filtration, artificial gravity, and every conceivable line of supply, both for ship functions and the needs of the crew—every piece of that complicated equation that kept a starship alive and running. Each of the many tasks was overseen by a member of the operations crew, working with their own individual computer designed to perform that specific assignment. Before the war, they had networked the computers together to run all the ship’s functions. But the Cylons had learned to subvert those networks and turn them against their human crews, shutting down life support, exploding fuel tanks, even plunging whole spacecraft into the nearest stars.

  The CIC was still filled with gray metal panels and a thousand blinking lights. But each panel had a living counterpart, men and women who specialized in each individual task and shared their knowledge with those around them. Rather than let the machines do their work, they were forced to network the old-fashioned way, as human beings.

  And all of those specialists reported to Bill Adama.

  Adama looked quickly about the room before glancing back at his map. He allowed himself the slightest of smiles. Everyone around him seemed engrossed in his or her different job, a dozen different pieces of the great human machine that ran this ship.

  He was still trying on the fit of his new executive officer position. In the two months he had held this position, the Battlestar had certainly run well enough, even though, on some days, he didn’t feel quite up to speed.

  “Sir!” the dradis operator called. “We have a large ship, just within range, moving erratically!”

  Adama turned to the comm operator who controlled the ship-to-ship wireless. “See if you can raise them.”

  “Aye, sir!”

  Some days, the XO position came with a few surprises.

  These last two months, Galactica had been exploring the edges of what they called “known space,” hopping from one solar system to the next, looking for worlds, moons, even asteroids where humans had been before. Until now, they hadn’t found much at all.

  Before the Cylon rebellion, humanity had spread far and wide, each of the Colonies claiming their own little corner of space and defending those claims against all others. Some of those territorial disputes were what had brought on the inter-Colony wars of a century past—battles that had also led to the invention of the original war machines, the Cylons.

  Back before the Cylon conflict, humanity had lived under an uneasy truce. Every Colony pushed at the limits imposed on them. Some built secret installations to give them an advantage over their Colonial foes. Some secrets were so deep, even the Colonies’ own citizens knew nothing about them—hidden installations run by a few individuals in government or the military; it varied from world to world.

  And then the Cylon War came to dwarf all their petty disputes—a war that almost killed them all.

  “Any luck with that comm?” Adama asked.

  “No sir. No response at all.”

  They hadn’t found much of anything at all this far out—until now.

  “Let’s take the Galactica in a little closer. See if we can find out anythi
ng else about this ship.”

  Maybe they had really found something this time.

  With the Cylon conflict fresh in their minds, the Twelve Colonies had been eager to cooperate, and the Battlestars had been able to repair much of the immediate damage from the war, cleaning up asteroid fields that had been littered with mines, reopening supply stations and mining operations, even relocating survivors. But years had gone by now since the Cylons had disappeared. A whole new generation was growing up—a generation that had never seen a Cylon.

  They were lucky to have the Battlestars out here at all. Sometimes, Adama wondered how long the Colonial alliance would actually hold. The Cylons, after all, had never really been defeated. The Colonies had to stay united. But the politicians, eager for the approval of each separate world, already seemed to have forgotten. If the Battlestars wanted to keep exploring the edges of space, they needed to find results. This exploration of the outer reaches, delayed though it was, was the last step in putting all the far-flung pieces of the Colonies back together.

  “Sir, I’m getting some strange readings here.”

  Adama looked over at the technician. “Explain, Lieutenant.”

  “I’m seeing bursts of radiation out of this new ship. I think their engines have been breached. We’ve got a very unstable situation on our hands.”

  “Sound the alarm,” Adama said. “Let’s get the senior staff up here.”

  The Klaxons rang out around the room.

  The first thing they had found out here was about to blow up in their faces.

  Saul Tigh showed up first. The ship’s doctor and head engineer were right behind him.

  “I was on my way to the morning briefing. What have we got?”

  “Admiral on deck!” The shout rang out before Adama could even begin to explain. The crew snapped to attention.

  “At ease!” Admiral Sing announced as he strode into the room, then stopped to return their salute. He was a compact man with skin that looked like aging parchment. But while the admiral might look ready for retirement, Adama often thought his superior’s energy rivaled that of a raw recruit.

  “Colonel Adama, please report.”

  “We’ve picked up the signal of an unknown ship, a potential hazard. It seems to be leaking radiation, sir.”

  “Are there any signs of life on board?” Sing asked.

  “We’ve attempted to establish contact, but we’ve gotten no response.”

  “We’re close enough to get a visual, sir,” one of the techs called.

  “Put it up on the forward screen,” Sing ordered.

  “It’s an old B-class freighter,” Tigh said with surprise in his voice. “Bill—Colonel Adama—and I shipped out on one of those when we first met. Just looks sort of dead in space.”

  Sing frowned at the still image in front of them. “Could the ship have been damaged in a fight?”

  “It doesn’t look like it has a scratch,” Tigh replied.

  “And it’s leaking radiation?”

  “Intermittently.” The tech checked the dials before her. “Sometimes, there’s hardly any reading. At others, the sensors are going wild.”

  “Captain Frayn.” Sing addressed the ship’s engineer. “What could cause those sort of readings?”

  “It has to be the engines. They must have been stripped of most of their shielding. That sort of damage had to have been done internally.”

  “Sabotage,” Adama added. “They wanted to blow up the next people to board her.”

  “Quite possible,” Frayn agreed. “Without getting close enough to get blown up, I think it’s a reasonable assumption.”

  “This isn’t the friendliest of gestures,” Sing remarked. “Who do we think is responsible?”

  “We’ve been trailing scavengers for some time,” Adama replied. “I’ve mentioned it in my reports.”

  The few abandoned Colonial sites they had managed to find had been well picked-over.

  “I recall,” Sing replied. “Seems our scavengers don’t like being followed.”

  “They’re probably trying to cut out the competition,” Frayn ventured.

  “Won’t they be surprised when they find their competition is a Battlestar?” Tigh asked with a smile.

  “And I think we need to find these folks before they leave any more gifts.” The admiral looked to Tigh. “Let’s get some pilots out there to take care of this, shall we?”

  “Yes, sir!” Tigh saluted and left for the flight deck.

  “Colonel Adama, you believe the scavengers are exploring the same area we are?”

  “The evidence suggests that we’ve crossed paths half a dozen times. I’m guessing they have the same intel that we have.”

  “Knowing how difficult it was for us to get the intel out of the Colonies, they may have more.” Sing shook his head in disgust. “Let’s increase our speed, do a sweep of the area. Maybe we can pick these characters up.”

  “And if we find them, sir?” Adama asked.

  “A bunch of crazy scavengers who leave bombs behind as gifts? We may just have to blow them out of the sky.”

  CHAPTER

  4

  UNCHARTED TERRITORY

  FREE CRUISER LIGHTNING

  Tom Zarek ducked back out of the way. A boot went sailing through the room, barely missing his bunk.

  “I’ll frak you!”

  “When I’m done with you, you won’t have anything to frak with!”

  Zarek leaned closer to the bulkhead as one of Scag’s fists went flailing by, missing both him and the fist’s intended target. The target, Symm, punched Twitch in the stomach. The two of them crashed into a bunk on the other side of the aisle.

  These morons had to find some way to let off their excess energy. Scag and Eddie were a couple of the Vipe pilots, of course. They were always the first ones to get sent out, and the first ones to fight when there was nothing else to do.

  Zarek waited for the fight to roll out of the crowded bunkroom and into the corridor beyond. Fights always ended up out there. The fighters had more room to swing their fists. He climbed down from his bunk and walked to the far end of the room, a space not much wider than the corridor outside and crowded with a dozen bunks: rows of three, two high on either side. A small portal at the end of the aisle was the room’s only interesting feature, a tiny window that looked out at the stars.

  Zarek tried to shut the noise of the fight out of his thoughts as he stared out into the near-nothingness of space, and wondered for maybe the four hundredth time what the frak he was doing here.

  Oh, he knew why he was supposed to be here, on a “Recovery Ship”—the polite name for a scavenger crew. He was officially the second communication officer, in charge of the ship-to-ship radio when Griff, the main operator, needed to sleep or had had a bit too much to drink.

  He was the new guy—still not quite accepted by many of his fifteen crewmates. The captain valued him for his special skills. Zarek was better educated than most on board. He could think on his feet, and spot the worth of something other scavengers might overlook. Even more important, Zarek could concoct a good story when they had to radio something to the authorities.

  Nobody argued with the captain. But his special status made some of the crew hate him even more. That and the fact that he read books—he had brought a dozen on board, and was already reading one for the second time—marked him as an outsider. But he got along well enough with all but the most muscle-bound oafs—like Scag and Eddie.

  Scag threw Eddie back into the crew’s quarters. He banged into the side of Zarek’s bunk as he jumped in after the other pilot.

  “Maybe we should put old Tommy boy on your side. Two losers together.” He laughed like that was the funniest thing in the world.

  Eddie came up under his foe, pulling Scag’s feet out from under him. Scag’s head hit the metal rim of the bunk with a deep, satisfying clang.

  “Maybe Zarek can send you a message!” Eddie grinned at the first assistant comm operator. “Tom,
I owe you one.”

  Zarek nodded back, even though he hadn’t done any more than act as a distraction. That was a Vipe pilot’s idea of humor. All in good fun, huh?

  Zarek didn’t talk about his past. A lot of the crew didn’t, for one reason or another, and Zarek always imagined that those few who did boast of past adventures weren’t telling the whole truth. Life had taught all of them to be a little cagey. That way, nobody could get the upper hand.

  He hid his origins from the others for his own protection. Some of them would always be losers, the scum of the streets, no matter how much money they had. But Zarek came from a “nice” family—a privileged family, really. His father was a ranking company representative.

  Before Tom had left, there was talk of his father running for office. Tom was supposed to fall in line, to be the good son. But Tom was too restless to be quiet about anything. He’d made it through school, went off to college. He had gotten involved in a couple of political causes that didn’t go anywhere. He ended up not doing much more than neglecting his classes. He didn’t make a name for himself, either at home or at the university. His father was a big man, but Tom was nobody special. And that was the problem.

  One way or another, Zarek was going to be special.

  When he was a boy, it had felt like a new age. After the end of the Cylon War, there had been a sense of freedom, of new possibilities. Something like the relief a drowning man feels when he finally makes it to shore. But soon the old interests kicked back in. Political and religious leaders all wanted to backtrack, to an era before the Cylons had even existed.

  The Cylon Wars were a quarter of a century behind them now. The Colonies were closing back in on themselves. Doors of opportunity were being slammed shut in whole new ways.