Laura Roslin set down the baby and the accompanying carrier with a stifled groan. Cottle caught it, but said nothing. He was carrying what remained of their gear and his back and knees were barely holding on. It wasn't going to work, he knew that and he suspected Laura knew it too.
They were moving too slow. That was the first problem. He didn't think Gaeta would intentionally rat them out to the other Cylons if he was found… or if he died and was reincarnated. He just wasn't sure if Gaeta had a choice in the matter. That meant they had to move away from where they had left Gaeta as fast as possible. Then there was the added problem of the blonde Cylon. He could justify not worrying about Gaeta, although that had certain risks, but the blonde Cylon, Shelly Godfrey….
She was dangerous. She wasn't likely to be swayed by her fond memories of living among humans. She was looking for Laura, and she wasn't likely to give up. Unlike Gaeta, she had power in the Cylon world. She could send out Centurions to hunt them. They simply couldn't move fast enough to outrun a Cylon search party. After two days alone in the woods without a younger companion to pick up the load, he knew they had hardly moved at all.
Worse, it wasn't like they were going anywhere. They had a map, but nowhere to go. The original plan had been to look for other people. He knew, from some quick conversations with a few of the pilots who had been gather gear to run, that there was a general rendezvous for the resistance in the direction they were heading. If the pilots hadn't been captured or killed. There was no way to know.
He just knew they weren't going to make it much longer. Not without help, and he had no idea where that help was coming from. Worse, he and Laura were barely speaking. She thought he was being too soft, and he thought she was ruining their chances. Gaeta was a Cylon and that made him dangerous, but Cottle hadn't liked abandoning him like a sick dog in the woods. Sure, the reality was that Gaeta would probably shake it off and be fine… They were healthier and had better immune systems and Gaeta had been turning the corner as they had left him. Gaeta had been a patient and it was against the oath to leave him for dead.
Which Laura didn't get. To her, it was a Cylon and they were just things. Leaving Gaeta in the woods was like leaving a piece of untrustworthy gear behind. It made Cottle angry. It was a wasted opportunity. He had a feeling that Gaeta, for some bizarre reason, wanted to be anything but a Cylon. Why not use that, take advantage of that? A Cylon that wanted to be human was a gift. At the very least, they could have used him to get them to safety.
He helped Roslin set up their evening camp. She was quiet, much as she had been all day. Resigned, he thought. Resigned to the fact that within the next few days she was going to need to put a pistol to the baby's head and pull the trigger, rather than let the baby die of exposure and starvation. It was coming. They were running out of food. They had left rations with Gaeta because they simply couldn't carry more, and the baby wasn't going to be able to eat ration bars anyway.
Not that he worried much. His chest hurt. It had been hurting for days, and he knew what palpitations meant. It was just a matter of time before the heart attack came, and he wasn't sure if he could survive it. He didn't want to die, he had an odd desire to see how it all came out. " I'm going to fill up the canteens," he said to Roslin.
She merely nodded, her mind was on something else, he could tell. Regret over the situation, most likely. He didn't envy her in the slightest. Politics made for regrets, no matter how successful someone was, and the reality was that Roslin had reason to regret things. He had warned her that Baltar was a more formidable political foe than he looked, and he knew he hadn't been the only one. And he was inclined to agree with Felix Gaeta on one point. Even if Felix had kept his mouth shut, Laura would have been caught and the longer the interval between the election and getting found out, the uglier and more dangerous it would have been. Granted, things were bad, terrible now, but if Laura had stolen the election and been caught at a later date, she wouldn't have retained any good will from the people.
He went down to the flowing river and began filling the canteens. He didn't hear anything, until Felix Gaeta spoke to him.
"You should be more careful, Dr. Cottle," he heard from behind. " There's a lot of scary things out here."
Cottle carefully turned around. He had left a gun with Gaeta. To be fair, and because… if no one ever even tried trusting a Cylon, then the Cylons were right to be afraid of humans. It was foolish and stupid but it wasn't like he thought he was going live much longer regardless of what Gaeta did. Gaeta did have the gun but it was neatly tucked into his belt. Gaeta was also carrying the gear they had left behind and looked tired but well.
" How do I know you're Felix Gaeta, and not some other Cylon?" Cottle asked after a moment.
Gaeta rolled up his pantleg and showed Cottle the wound he had received, still neatly stitched. " Don't worry… I don't plan anything." He gestured nervously in the direction of the campsite. " I'm not welcome, I get that, and I don't want to get killed. I know too much. But I had to warn you. You're being tracked. I saw Cylon Centurions looking… And I saw Six… the blonde Cylon," he added at Cottle's quizzical look.
But that wasn't what Cottle was curious about. If Gaeta knew that they were being tracked, it had to be in part because he was following them. The question was why. Gaeta seemed to understand, at least on the surface, that he wasn't human. It did him no good to even attempt to ingratiate himself. If for some reason Roslin didn't kill him, if they somehow got off New Caprica and back to the fleet, Gaeta would find himself locked in a cell, vilified by people who used to be his friends.
"There's nothing we can do," Cottle said after a moment. Gaeta's personal choices intrigued him, he was enough of a closet intellectual for that, but survival was the important issue. " You followed us, you know how fast we're moving." He didn't feel bad admitting that. Gaeta was pretty sharp, and he knew how fast they could move. He wasn't giving away tactical information to the enemy.
He wasn't sure Gaeta was the enemy.
Gaeta shook his head. " No, you can't. But I went ahead. There's people to the west. A bunch of pilots from the Galactica, and deck crew. I counted about twenty. They're about twenty five miles away. If you keep moving in the same direction, I can run ahead and tell them where you are. I would even lead them back to you… if I could get some guarantee that I wouldn't be shot."
Also interesting. " I don't know," he said, being honest. A thought struck him. " If they're twenty five miles away…. How did you find them and get back here?"
Gaeta looked down at his feet. A red blush seemed to creep around his ears. " I'm faster and stronger and I don't need to eat or sleep as much."
"All right." Cottle considered his next question carefully. " Why are you doing this, Felix? I don't think there's a thing you can do that would stop Laura Roslin or Bill Adama from putting a bullet in your head as soon as there's an opportunity. You're smarter than that." He was more than curious, he was worried. Gaeta was not behaving the way he was supposed to. On the one hand, Cottle had no intention of complaining that the Cylon seemingly wanted to help them. At the same time, he just didn't understand why. There was no way that Gaeta was going to earn goodwill.
Gaeta kept looking at his feet. Finally he said softly, " Do you think this has been easy? Everything I know is a lie. I don't know anything about myself anymore. I thought I was an officer, sworn to protect the human race… and I'm not, and that was everything to me. No matter what I do, I can't have that back. So I'm a Cylon, but they weren't planning on using me because they don't trust sleeper agents. I said I would help you and Ms. Roslin find help, and I will. After that, I don't know."
" Because you're a man of your word? Doing your sworn duty?" Cottle wondered about that. Six had come right and said that Gaeta wasn't much of a liar, that it was a design flaw. He wondered if all Cylons had ingrained personality quirks. Both of the Sharon Valerii Cylons had been prone to flighty emotionalism, no matter what the circumstance. Six, from what he knew of the Shellie Godfrey incident, and of the Cylon kept on the Pegasus, tended to throw herself around in a sexual manner, even when it wasn't appropriate. Perhaps, Cottle mused as he looked at Gaeta's stricken face, he's the good little soldier model. Talented, loyal, and follows the rules, that was Lt. Felix Gaeta. It had been well known on the Galactica that Gaeta was efficient, clever, and meticulous. Meticulous about his appearance, about his reports, about his work… Cottle had suspected that the lieutenant was sub-clinically obsessive compulsive more than once. So had Bill Adama, although Bill had been more concerned with making his tactical officer a more creative thinker, and to a point, that had happened. Gaeta had been loyal, trustworthy and dedicated… dedicated to saving humanity. Cottle wondered if it took more than just pressing the on switch to make Gaeta change sides. If Six had been telling the truth, she had activated Gaeta just to see what would happen, and Gaeta was reverting to what he knew best. Being a loyal, trustworthy officer dedicated to saving humanity. No doubt, if the Cylons had activated him for a reason, they would have spent some time presenting their case to him, convincing him to change loyalties. Because of the design flaw of loyalty and honesty.
Gaeta nodded to his question, looking embarrassed.
Interesting, Cottle thought. But interesting theory that it was, it wasn't going to convince Roslin to not blow the whistle on Gaeta. It was worth testing though. " Felix," he said softly, " did it ever occur to you that the smartest thing you could do to protect yourself is to kill me and Laura and join those pilots yourself? If you wanted to keep on being Felix Gaeta the human being, that is."
" Yes," Gaeta said coolly. There was a sudden cold flash in the man's eyes. Cottle had seen it before, in the CIC, in council meetings, in the sewer tunnel when Teppler was trying to intimidate him. When Gaeta was making cool, logical decisions that might be unpleasant. Gaeta eyed him carefully. " I considered that. But it is murder." He smiled slightly. " Ultimately it would make my arguing that I never betrayed humanity a little… awkward. At best." He sighed. " And I would be found out eventually, even if you and Ms. Roslin agreed to not say anything. Or if you were dead, and aside from it being murder, killing you serves no purpose and just makes me look worse. So you're safe from me. But you're not safe from Six. I could probably slip away from a rescue party so as long as you stay on the same path, you and Ms. Roslin will be with a safer group by tomorrow night. Maybe the next day if they're slow, but they looked like they were in good shape." His eyes darted nervously to the woods that led back to where Laura and the baby were. " I have to go…."
Cottle watched him slip into the forest and then sighed. He had a feeling he was right, that Gaeta was an unused cog in the Cylon machine. Without their influence, Gaeta was free to establish whatever moral code he wanted, and he was reverting to what he knew best, being trustworthy, honest, and loyal Felix Gaeta.
Which made it a pity that they couldn't afford the risk studying him would bring. Even more a pity, he was going to save Laura Roslin knowing full well that he was probably going to be killed doing it… because of a programming quirk. He wondered if Gaeta could turn that off.
Cottle shrugged to himself as he picked up the canteens. The important thing was that within a day or two, he could hand off the burden he had taken on, and have a massive coronary with a clear conscience.
As long as Six didn't find them first, and that thought was enough to keep his heart racing all the way back to camp.