== Part 16 – Doing Business ==

The Basestar's Dradis arrays instantly detected the radar waves bounce off its hull. The Dradis system was not a single sensor per se, but a collection of many different sensors types that all fed into a single management system that compared and contrasted the takes from all the different detection systems to get a single coherent picture of what was really there.

"Hey, they finally noticed we're here," One observed. "It only took them forty seven minutes."

According to the Argyles, Langhorne was what passed for an industrial node in this region of space, exporting high tech goods including weapons and armor to surrounding systems including ones in the nearby Periphery. The Argyles didn't know the complete list of what they did and didn't make, but the Cylons needed to learn how to do the same and Langhorne seemed like the best place to start. Any suggestion of just attacking and stealing what they wanted had been shot down, both because of their new mission to uplift humanity, and because their run in with the pirates had disabused them of any notion that they could successfully do any military operation more delicate than carpet nuking the planet.

One of the Basestar's telescopes was trained on the HPG Station. It was unmistakable as nothing else on the planet had an intact radio dish that big. Flashing red lights started to appear in the facility.

"We better call them before they do something stupid," Eight suggested.


Chaos had enveloped Langhorne's HPG Station. Mercenaries employed by the station were running to the mech hangars while their techs readied the mechs in them. Acolytes were calling local militia and civilian leaders to warn them of what had appeared in orbit. Precentor Hwing, the man in charge of the station and all Comstar operations on Langhorne, had just gotten off the phone with Baron Taggart's majordomo who ran the planet in the Baron's absence; the Baron himself pretty much never set foot on Langhorne, preferring to spend the local taxes on more comfortable worlds.

So now all Hwing could do was stare at the hologram of the gargantuan object that had somehow appeared in Langhorne sky while he waited for the HPG to finish warming up. The image was a construct, a composite created from telemetry gathered by a network of automated telescopes and radar sets that the SLDF had hidden around the planet prior to the Succession Wars. What Hwing saw was an impossibility.

Yes, Hwing was a Periphery brat. But he'd taken all the tests needed to enter Comstar, gone to Terra itself for education which not every Acolyte achieved, learned all the knowledge that he wanted to share with the common people to lift them up out of their poverty, and also learned the heartache of not being able to share that knowledge for fear of what the Successor Lords might do with it.

One class Hwing had taken – an elective at that – had gone over pre-Succession Wars Warship design, at least in general terms. But this... thing in orbit violated every principle of Warship design that Hwing had ever learned. It was too big; its mass must surely be too great to safely jump through hyperspace. The central hub was too small to hold a KF Drive that could encompass those oversized booms. And while the sculpted organic look was not impossible for the Star League – or even today – the overall aesthetic just struck Hwing as alien.

Hwing's roommate back on Terra had been a fan of alien invasion movies, and he'd spent many a night listening to a thousand years' worth of such movies playing in the background, and such movies were made even today. But he never thought he's live in one, and he doubted Kerensky's army would return in the nick of time to save this world. But between its ability to beat Langhorne's Observatory system and its impossible design, there was no doubt in his mind that this thing was alien.

And he didn't need a thousand years of alien invasion movies to expect them to invade. He only had to look around the Inner Sphere today.

"Precentor Hwing, it's the Majordomo!" one of the Acolytes operating the phones called out. "He says that he was just contacted by the strange ship. They want to trade, not attack."

Hwing blinked in surprise. He was still trying to process the information when the HPG control panel pinged, signaling that it was ready.

"David," Hwing said mildly to the Adept sitting at the panel. Amazingly, he somehow gave off the air of being calm and in complete control to his subordinates despite being mentally stunned like an ox. "Hold off on the transmission. I may have to change my message."


Six stared out the window – yes, the Basestar had actual windows even if the Cylons didn't use them in person much – at the Dropship Middle Finger as it sat docked on one of the Basestar's arms like a limpet mine. It was just too big to fit through any of the Basestar's airlocks, but it could fit just fine between the Basestar's pylons, the contents of which were carried through an FTL jump, much like anything placed on a Battlestar's landing deck.

The Jumpship Providence on the other hand had been left behind in the Pressville system with a Cylon crew to continue studying it. Aside from the fact that the Cylons had taken physical samples of its KF Core, rendering it unusable for jumping ever again, the Cylons had discovered that the tylium in the core was always in an active state, even when completely discharged. That meant the Basestar couldn't carry the Providence through a jump without its KF Core screwing their own jump field to hell and back.

But the Cylons could carry the Middle Finger just fine. The Dropship's KF Extenders – the mechamism by which Dropships could be safely carried through an FTL Jump in what would otherwise be considered an unsafe zone - could also screw with the Cylon's FTL drive. But the KF Extenders didn't activate unless they were directly hooked up to an actual KF Drive. Why the KF Core was always on and the KF Extenders weren't, puzzled the Cylons, and they hoped this visit to Langhorne would clear that up.

And the reason the Cylons had brought the Middle Finger to Langhorne was that given what they wanted to do was trade, a lot of Cylons would be going down to the planet, far more than the usual casual visitation that they had been doing thus far in the Periphery. And they'd probably be bringing back a large amount of cargo as well. The Cylons had a fleet of shuttles that could do the same job, but the Middle Finger fit their needs perfectly as it could move everyone and everything in one go.

Given what had happened to Six on that ship, she never wanted to be board it again. But if she was ever going to fully heal inside, she was going to have to face her demons.

"Hey," Three said, placing a hand on Six's shoulder. "It's going to be fine."

"Thanks, I'll be fine," Six replied, but she could tell the other Cylon didn't believe her.

"Yes, you will be," Three said firmly. "We cleaned the Middle Finger's insides up as best we could after we rescued you. You won't even recognize it as the same ship. It doesn't even smell as bad anymore!"

Six snorted. It wasn't quite a laugh, but it was something.

"See, there you go!" Three told her encouragingly. "Seriously though, I think we need to give it a new name, and not just to make you feel better. 'Middle Finger' has the exact same meaning in the Inner Sphere as it does back in the Colonies. Since the ship is ours now, we should name it something more appropriate. Maybe something to commemorate our victory over those pirates."

"Like what?" Six asked.

"How about," Three began with a mischievous grin that Six would have more expected to see on one of her fellow Sixes, "Six's Knife?"


"All right people, listen up!" One roared, addressing the large congregation of Cylons assembled in the main mech bay of the newly renamed Six's Knife. One didn't need to roar as the mental network would allow everyone to hear him, but although he despised Colonials, he'd watched his fair share of Colonial military films and he had always wanted to do something like this. He paced back and forth as he spoke, using the back of a flatbed truck as his stage. "I know you all know what I'm about to say, but it bears repeating: We don't know these humans and they don't know us. That means no one goes anywhere alone, every group has at least one Centurion with you, everyone hits their objectives, and gets out with what they need! If anyone gets into trouble that their Centurions can't handle, we have Raiders waiting on standby."

"One, we're going shopping," an Eight complained. "We're not storming the planet."

"The pirates had quite a bit of loot on this ship including quite a bit of hard currency," One continued, ignoring her, "so everyone has has some spending cash in their pockets. But don't spend too much on personal purchases, because we don't have an infinite supply of money and we do have a long list of things we're here to buy already. But we're also selling, so depending on what prices we negotiate, we might have some extra cash left over. In other words, if you want to make any impulse purchases that you can't pay out of our own pocket, check in with our designated bankers ," he waved at a group of Fives standing to the side, "to see what we have available."

He paused, spotting Nine in the crowd. She was dressed entirely in black and chrome. Black leather jacket with chrome spikes in the shoulders and elbows. Black tank top that revealed her midriff. Black leather pants that hugged her legs with a belt made of chrome rings and more chrome spikes at the knees. Black boots, also with chrome spikes and stiletto heals. Chrome rings on all her fingers. Even Nine's hair was dyed black, her lips and eye shadow were black. But the most startling thing was that Nine's skin was so white that she looked like she was made out of printing paper.

"And someone make sure Nine only bleached her skin and didn't actually take all the melanin out!" One roared again. "Langhorne's sun is pretty bright and I don't want her getting sunburned."

With that, One jumped down from the flatbed grumbling. The Ones didn't want Nine to go down to the planet; they wanted her safe on the Basestar. But the others had insisted that she come because she seemed to get more responsive around humans.

"Hey, are you guys okay?" One asked a Zero. They all seemed to radiate apprehension. It wasn't mental broadcast of emotions that tipped him off as they weren't radiating at all. It was their body language that One noticed, a subtle fidgeting and occasional flexing of hands that the other models might not have noticed.

"We are fine," Zero replied. It paused, noticed that One wasn't buying it, then relented. "It's just that we are going into a possible confrontation with new humans again, and we didn't do so well the first time on Pressville."

"Don't worry yourself about it," One told Zero. "You guys should be able to handle the odd mugger. Besides, the only thing you shouldn't be able to handle is if the locals sic mechs and military vehicles on you, in which case, we're all screwed."


Precentor Hwing should have suspected something was off when the Majordomo had told him that the "human" who had called him had used a number for their name. Perhaps he had been lulled into complacency by seeing something as mundane as a Union Dropship launch from the strange warship and make its away down to the planet's sole Dropport. But for some strange reason, he had expected the landing party to be composed of normal people.

Well they were normal... if you ignored that most of them looked young, in their twenties, maybe thirties at the latest. And that there were only eight or nine faces among them despite being nearly three dozen in number. And make sure to ignore the bodyguards that were clearly some kind of bipedal robot instead of humans in armor.

After a short welcoming ceremony and introductions, these "Cylons" had scattered, split up to conduct the business that they had come to Langhorne for. A good half of them had flooded into the HPG Station's public library, which was for the good citizens of Langhorne to use. They wouldn't find much in the way of advanced technical information there, especially anything on weapons technology, which they were clearly looking for. But that didn't seem to bother them as they seemed intent on reading every book in the library. Even the robots were pulling volumes off the shelves and flipping through them. Hwing did not envy the clean up the librarians were going to be doing after this visit.

One of the Cylons had decided to strike up a conversation with Hwing, perhaps to distract him. Or maybe seduce him given how she was dressed and acting. But he did learn where they came from.

"So these 'Twelve Colonies' as you called them made you and kept you as slaves?" Hwing asked nervously. He wasn't nervous because the Cylons might hurt him, although that one robot staring at him with the bouncing eye and doing nothing else was intimidating. No, Hwing was nervious because he was single and hadn't dated much despite the Order not demanding celibacy, and this Six seemed to be cuddling up to him while drawing circles with her finger around his collar.

"Hmm, that's right," Six confirmed with a breathy, low voice that sent tingles up Hwing's spine. She seemed fascinated with his collar – or his neck – for some reason that just made his spine more tingly.

He glanced around the room, noted that all the human Cylons were very attractive in one way or another.

"I wonder why?" Hwing muttered rhetorically. He knew enough about what went on in the dark underbelly of the Inner Sphere to know exactly why people as attractive as these had been kept as slaves.


"I'm sorry," apologized Adept Grace nervously as she returned the ledger to the two Cylons in her office. She was in charge of Comstar's banking services on Langhorne. And the last thing she wanted to do was to deny service to people who had an honest-to-Blake Warship in orbit of the planet. But she really had no choice. "Without the passwords, PIN numbers, biometric ID, or some other form of verification, I can't help you."

"Why not?" demanded Eight.

"The first four numbers on all of the bank account codes indicate that the accounts are all kept in the Bank of Terra," Grace said as she opened the ledger and pointed to the numbers in question. They all started with a block of 0000. "That is on Terra, not Langhorne or any other planet. Without some form of account verification, there's no point in even sending an inquiry. You'd be charged for the transmission of the inquiry, whatever service fees the Bank of Terra will charge, and the transmission of the denial of service response back to Langhorne."

"I don't get it," Five said. What she said made sense. Colonial banks operated the same way. "We got this ledger book from pirates. Why would pirates steal a bunch of bank account numbers that they can't even access?"

"More likely than not, the accounts belong to the pirates," Grace told them helpfully.

The temperature in the room seem to drop below freezing as Eight's expression grew thunderous.

"Excuse me?" Eight said, outraged. She leaned forward in her seat as if she was about to jump over the desk to attack the Adept. "Are you saying that you let pirates use your banking system?"

"Uh, well, you see," Grace stammered nervously as she leaned back, "Comstar is primarily a telecommunications service with some additional services tacked on. We don't do law enforcement, so if a man lands peacefully on a world and walks into our offices and wants to do business, we wouldn't know if he's a pirate. We leave law enforcement to the secular authorities such as the local governments and the Great Houses."

Eight deflated, defeated. "God, this place is such a mess."

"Well, if we can't use these bank accounts," Five said, taking over as Eight sat dejected in her chair, "what are the requirements of opening a new account?"


Three hot women entered the mech hangar. One brunette, and two blondes. One blonde was in a sexy, skin baring red dress and moved with sensual grace. The other blonde was her twin, far more conservatively dressed – which was arguably just as sexy to those who leaned that way - and her entire body language screamed "Ice Queen" to all but the most clueless observers. The brunette between them was the epitome of a mech fan girl. A robot entered behind them, but stayed at the door.

These were Cylons, Rick knew. He had been part of the welcoming party after all.

Technically speaking, unauthorized personnel weren't supposed to be in the mech hangars. It was a rule that was supposed to bar possible saboteurs from entering military facilities, but it got broken all the time because clients and their buddies didn't give a damn, and someone in the unit was always finding cause for an exception to be made. And looks like what these girls had were a commonly used exception.

Unfortunately, Rick was on the upper catwalk by his mech's cockpit talking to a tech when the Cylons came in. As a result, one if his pilots – Rick thought it might have been Stoner - got to them first as Rick was making his way down to the ground floor. Unlike Rick, poor Stoner was one of the geekier types of pilots, more interested in tech than women, so of course Stoner was utterly unprepared for Red to turn up her sexual wiles on him. But Fan Girl kept distracting Stoner, grabbing his attention away from the Red with chatter while pointing up at the mechs in the hangar. Eventually, Fan Girl led Stoner away across the bay floor, leaving the blondes by themselves. Red turned to Ice Queen.

"What the frak just happened?" Rick heard her say as he walked up. Ice Queen just cracked a smile in response.

"Hello, ladies," Rick said as smoothly as he could. Unlike Stoner, Rick knew how to handle hot women who wanted to flirt. And how to thaw out the ones that didn't too. "Welcome to the hangar of Rick's Ravagers! I'm Rick by the way."

"Well hello, Rick," purred Red Dress as she looked him up and down. She moved to invade his personal space to which Rick had no objection at all. "It's so nice to meet you."

"Rick Ravagers are mercenaries, yes?" Ice Queen asked, seemingly not noticing or caring that Red Dress was practically hanging off Rick's shoulder or that he had one arm around her waist. Rick carefully kept his other arm free, just in case Ice Queen decided to join her twin.

"That we are, darling," Rick said with a grin, trying his best to turn up the charm.

"And what do mercenaries like yourself do here on Langhorne?" Red Dress asked breathily, her mouth right by his ear.

As much as he thought with his balls, Rick was the leader of a mercenary lance and knew damn well that Red Dress wasn't just flirting. This was a job interview, albeit the most pleasant one he'd ever experienced so far.

"Oh, right now, we're on garrison contract with Comstar," Rick told her. "Technically, we're only contracted to protect the HPG Station itself, but the Precentor here likes to 'loan' us to the locals as extra protection against pirate raids."

"Pirates raid here?" Ice Queen asked, tensing. Rick could read between the lines; she'd had a bad experience with pirates.

"Oh yeah, but don't worry, darling, I'll protect you," Rick said confidently. "There this really nasty bunch out there that's hit Langhorne a few times. If he keeps to his routine, they should be hitting Langhorne again some time in the next month or so. And when they do, I intend to bag me some reward money!"

"And who are these extra nasty pirates?" Ice Queen asked, still tense.

"Don't have no real name," Rick answered. "But they're led by a guy named Antonio Holstfast. He's one of the nastier pirates out there."

"Oh dear, I don't think you're getting your reward money, Rick," Red Dress said with a pout.

"What? Why not?" For a seduction line, the actual content was odd.

"Because we killed every single one of Antonio's pirates," Ice Queen said with satisfaction. Out of her sleeve popped a knife blade, one larger than Rick would have thought could be hidden in it. She raised the knife and examined it carefully. "And I gave him every bit of careful attention that he gave me." Ice Queen's eyes swiveled away from the knife and locked onto Rick's.

"Riiiiight," Rick said quickly, raising his free hand in surrender. "No touchy!"

The knife vanished back into Ice Queen's sleeve and for the first time, she smiled warmly at him. "Thank you," she told him.

"Hey, guys!" Fan Girl called out from across the floor. "These guys have a battlemech that can turn into a plane!"


The autocannon fired, sending a stream of depleted uranium shells down range into the thick armor plate, blasting chunks out of it. When it stopped, the human leader stared at it hard and just hmmed and hawed.

"Aren't you going to go and do a close examination of it?" Four asked.

"Nope," the human said. He had introduced himself as Jeb and was almost as conservative with his words as Nine. "Don't need to."

"And what's your evaluation?" Four asked patiently.

"It's shit." Jeb replied, spitting a wad of chewing tobacco over the front railing of the observation platform. There was a pool of something disgusting at the foot of the platform.

"We already know that," Four replied, just as patiently. He was NOT going to let this human make him lose his cool. "What we want to know is, how 'shit' is it exactly?"

"Well, son, you look like a nice boy, so I'll be honest," Jeb said. "It's primitive as fuck. Modern armor, even commercial armor used by civilians, is rated as BAR10. I'd rate this shit as BAR 7, maybe 8. The only reason my test weapons aren't blowing right through these plates you brought is because they're so damn thick. Where'd you get 'em anyway?"

"They're the kind of armor used by our enemies back home," Four told him. And us, he didn't say out loud and hoped that Jeb didn't catch that implication.

"Sucks to be them, then," Jeb commented.


Remote controlled armatures pulled the irregularly shaped armor component out of the bath of genetically engineered bacteria. Said bacteria had deposited a coat of iron, carbon, and miscellaneous other elements onto a synthetic diamond lattice frame, and the elements fused together to form not just a steel alloy, but an alloy with self reinforcing microstructures that gave Inner Sphere armor its strength and toughness. The dripping component was quickly moved to between two drum like machines that then blasted it with hard radiation to sterilize it of any residual bacteria on it. As the plant owner explained, live bacteria would continue depositing material until they died, and if left on the armor too long, those excess deposits could ruin the microstructures of the armor and with it, its toughness.

Watching the component being made through the shielded glass window, Two's mind flicked back to the analysis of the Deliverance's KF Core. The tylium steel rod was made up entirely of similar microstructures and he wondered if they had been made using similar methods.

"I'm sorry, folks," Hannibal Bergstrom, owner of the armor plant, apologized. "Even if I wasn't booked solid with orders for the next three months, I couldn't fill your order even if I wanted to. Not in a timely manner anyway. Maybe I can make a small batch of plates for these fellers" he pointed at Zero, "but mass production for hundreds of aerospace fighters? A two kilometer long ship? Especially that surface area nightmare you got in orbit? Not a chance in hell."

"If it's a matter of money, we are attempting to rectify that," Two told him. "And we can provide raw materials if that will help lessen the cost."

"It's not about money... well it is about money, but not directly," Bergstrom told him. "The problem is production capacity. I can only make so much armor so fast. As I said, I already have a three month backlog of orders. If you want all your armor from me before the next century rolls around, I'd have to expand my operation by at least an order of magnitude. And that takes money that I don't have."

"How can that be?" Two asked, mystified. He might not have a Five's love of numbers, but he could do math as well as any Cylon. "If you have so much demand that you have three months of backlog, shouldn't you be making money hand over fist and be expanding your company to meet demand?"

"Well, some of it's price fixing by the Lyran government because they don't want to pay more than they have to to patch up their armies," Bergstrom began. "Some of it's the pirate raids that damage my factories; costs money to fix the damage and you don't wanna know what the insurance premiums are like. But honestly? The biggest culprit is taxes. Every time I get a little ahead, the Baron raises my taxes, which is a hoot, because he only spends the bare minimum of Langhorne's taxes on Langhorne. He'd rather spend our taxes on parties on Tharkad or Solaris VII or wherever it is he hangs out at."

Two nodded in understanding. The Cylons had seen similar setups on the poorer Colonies, especially Sagittaron. The ongoing unrest resulting from that kind of corruption was one of the reasons the Cylons were convinced that the pan-Colonial government was eventually going to fall apart, especially when there was no attacking Cylons insight to create any kind of sense of unity.

"So what you're saying is that you really need is an outside investor," Two said slowly. "Perhaps one that can supply raw materials, construction equipment, labor, security forces and maybe more?"

"Yeah sure," Bergstrom agreed. "But who's going to do that kind of massive investment on a backwater like Langhorne?"

Two just stared at him.

"Oh, right."


"I thought we weren't supposed to make any side trips," One grumped.

"Oh, lighten up," Three told him, "It's just ice cream. See, Nine likes it, don't you, Nine?"

Nine looked up from the banana split in front of her at the sound of her name. She paused stuffing her mouth just long enough to nod enthusiastically before returning to his treat. The three Cylons were sitting at an outdoor cafe in one of the nicer parts of Langhorne's capitol.

"You're telling me to lighten up?" One replied. "I think you Threes have been around these humans too long. Used to be you'd laser focus on the mission, whatever it was at the moment."

"We are laser focused on the mission," Three told him. "Right now, the mission just happens to be to make friends with the humans of this planet. Now eat your ice cream before the wait staff think you don't like it."

Grumbling, One dug into his rocky road.

"It is important that one does not become so focused on their goal that they lose sight of their surroundings," the Zero with them said. It was standing of course, next to their table and scanning the area for threats. "It is important to stop and smell the flowers."

"Oh really?" One said doubtfully, pointing his wooden spoon at Zero. "You just came up with that just now?"

"A Two just read that line in the Comstar Library," Zero told him.

"Wait, are you reading books through someone else's eyes?" One asked. "I thought you were supposed to be looking out for threats."

"I can do both."

"Well, I'm going to go to the restroom," Three said as she was standing up, "And since we're not supposed to go anywhere alone and these people gender segregate their bathrooms, Nine, would you like to... where's Nine?"

One and Zero turned and saw an empty chair where Nine should have been sitting. Her banana split was nothing more than an empty bowl with a wooden spoon left in it. The Cylons looked up and down the street. There was no Nine in sight, and the street wasn't so crowded that they would miss her distinctive outfit. And she couldn't have gone into the shop or else they would have heard the bell ring.

"Dammit," One grumbled, accessing the Basestar's tracking system. "Now where... she not broadcasting."

"What?" Three said, concerned. In case some human tried to kidnap a Cylon again, everyone in the landing party was constantly broadcasting their location, and would continue to do so even if they were knocked unconscious. A human would have to kill them to stop the broadcast, in which case they'd just resurrect.

Or a Cylon could just stop broadcasting voluntarily.

"Nine's not broadcasting her location!" One snapped. "Call out the Raiders! We need to find her!"


The Raider swept by low overhead, just above building level. Nine stepped out from under a decorative tree, watching it go and wondering why the Raiders had begun flying around the city so much. She could ask the Basestar, but that would mean opening up and letting the others know where she was.

Nine knew she wasn't supposed to be out alone. The others were worried about bad humans that might hurt them. But Nine had been monitoring everyone all day, and no bad humans had attacked any Cylon. And if no bad human had attacked a Cylon yet, Nine reasoned, it was unlikely any human would now. Besides, if a human did attack her, Nine could defend herself. She had downloaded the martial arts skill sets, practiced each move once to be sure she could do them. And all the spikes on her clothing and the jewelery she wore wasn't just for show; why, the rings would hurt very much if she punched someone with them!

It didn't even occur to Nine that a human that might hesitate to attack a group escorted by scary robot soldiers wouldn't hesitate at all to attack an attractive girl out all alone by herself. Or that being able to fight one human handily was a very different proposition from fighting many of them. The Cylons had programmed her with basic motor control skills and language skills and a smattering of other minimum basic knowledge required to function on a Basestar. But they also wanted her to form her own associations, discover her own preferences, and create her own personality rather than dictate them for her. After all, if they just dictated the contents of Nine's mind, she'd be as much their slave as the Centurions had once been to the Colonials.

But that also meant that Nine was still struggling to understand things like context, nuance, and even basic logic. She had perused the accumalated knowledge of the Cylons, learned their history and the purpose they had chosen for themselves in the Inner Sphere, but that didn't mean she understood any of it beyond a surface level.

So she wandered, taking in all the interesting sights, barely comprehending what she was seeing. Buildings became less regular, sporting fascinating splotches of colors and cracks. Vegetation began sprouting out of cracks in the road. She admired the pretty tree that grew out of the roofless house. She saw a smelly human sleeping on the sidewalk, his clothes full of holes and his hand clutching an empty bottle, and left him alone to enjoy his nap. The few awake humans she saw said nothing to her, so she said nothing to them. Many of them wore black like she did, although not all black, and they merely stared at her as she passed by, actions she had long become accustomed to on the Basestar.

"Hey, hey you, girlie!" a voice called, drawing Nine's attention. The speaker was a human and he was looking straight at her. She noticed that his clothing was far less ragged than the other humans around here and that he didn't smell, but those facts meant nothing to her.

Nine put a hand to her chest and raised her eyebrows questioningly before she remembered that she was supposed to talk back to humans that talked to her.

"Yeah, you," the human said, "You're one of them Cylons, aren't you?" Nine noticed he was fingering a bulge in the pocket of his coat. She wondered what as in there.

"Yes," Nine answered. "I am Cylon Model Nine."

"Nice," the human said nodding, smiling a strange smile that didn't reach his eyes. "I was wondering, you wouldn't happen to know how your ship got past the local sensor net, would you?"

For a moment, Nine puzzled over which ship he meant.

The human must have realized her confusion because he clarified, "The one in orbit," he added in a tone that Nine had heard many times when she had done something wrong on the basestar.

"Oh," Nine said, suddenly understanding. You couldn't see a ship before it jumped from some place you couldn't see. That made sense! "Basestar used FTL drive to jump into orbit."

"Huh, really?" the human said, looking like he had just hit his head. "Man, I know quite a few people who would love to get their hands on a drive that could do that."

Things suddenly clicked in Nine's head. She had seen a conversation like this in some of the Basestar's movies.

"You want to buy FTL Drive?" Nine asked, excited. The Cylons were here on Langhorne to buy and sell. This human wanted to buy an FTL Drive. It was so simple!

"Huh, you'd sell me one?" the human seemed surprised. Nine wondered why.

"Yes!" Nine answered enthusiastically.

"And, uh, how much do you want for it?" the human asked slowly. He pulled his hand out of his bulging pocket, but didn't bring what was in there with it. That was disappointing to Nine.

How much? Nine knew what money was. She knew there were various forms of currency. But she didn't have a clue what anything was worth. But she did know she should try to get as much money as possible, and her only reference for what anything was worth was the price of ice cream and the Argyle's board game. Of course, she realized, the board game used money! And a lot of money in the game was...

"Five thousand C-Bills!" she told him.

The human seemed shocked, surprised. Then he began to laugh. Yay! She had made him happy!

"Sure, okay, I can pay that," the human told her. "When and where can I arrange to pick it up?"

"Here. Now." With those words, Nine finally opened her mind and called out.

Within seconds, a Raider flew over a house and dropped down to the street, coming to a hovering stop just above Nine's head. It spoke to her in wordless sounds and images and emotions.

"Oh, you were looking for me?" Nine said in surprise. "Okay, hold on a second," she told the human. He didn't seem happy anymore. He was making a strange wide eyed expression that Nine didn't understand while staring down the Raider's gun barrels.

Nine walked to the rear of the Raider and popped opened a panel. After a couple minutes of fiddling, she pulled out a metal cylinder the size of a large thermos with glowing lights and loose cabling hanging from it. Holding the device in one hand, she closed the panel and walked up to the staring human.

"FTL Drive!" Nine said proudly, presenting the device to the human.

"Well, uh, I don't actually have five thousand C-Bills on me..." the human began.

Nine lowered the FTL Drive in her hands and pouted. She was disappointed that the sale might not happen. In response to her mood, something at the rear of the Raider's guns clacked.

"But, but.." the human stammered looking around. He ripped a sheet of paper off a nearby lamp post. "How about I write you a check! You know what a check is, right?"

Nine nodded. "Yes," she said, her mood improving.

"Okay then!" Pulling a marker from one of his pockets, the human quickly scrawled on the blank back of the paper. He turned it so she could read it when he was done. "There! A check for five thousand C-Bills! Is that good enough?"

Nine examined the check. "A check must have routing number, account number, and signature," she informed him.

"Oh, right, my bad." The human scribbled the required information on the sheet. "How's this?"

"It is okay!" Nine said happily. Nine gave human the FTL Drive and he gave her the check.

"Thanks, babe!" the human said, and then turned and ran, whooping in joy.

"You are welcome!" Nine called after him. She turned to the Raider, excited and happy. "Look! I made a sale. I made lots of money! The others will be so proud!"