== Part 33 – Rock Show ==

"You're on, milady," the CIC technician said.

"Thank you," Eve Steiner replied, nodding to the man. She raised a wireless microphone to her mouth. "Cylon basestar, this is Lyran Commonwealth Dropship Sound Investment, please come in."

Eve's Dropship and escort were only an hour out from hitting Langhorne's atmosphere, and she thought it prudent to call ahead to avoid any... unfortunate misunderstandings. After the spectacular show of jumping from Langhorne orbit to the pirate point, the Cylon basestar had jumped back an hour later, taking the captured Leopard Dropship and leaving the Merchant Jumpship behind seemingly unmolested. A few long distance messages exchanged with the Merchant's captain confirmed that the Cylons had decided to let the Jumpship go after a thorough top to bottom examination of it. Given the Cylon's own demonstrated FTL capabilities, Eve had mused, regular Inner Sphere Jumpships would of course be totally worthless to them.

The day after the aborted raid, a merchant Union had taken off from Langhorne and started boosting for the pirate point. Apparently, it's captain had been unable to outbid his competitors for collar space on the Jumpship that Eve had arrived on, and he was now taking advantage of the unexpected boom in local Jumpship traffic.

"Sound Investment, we're receiving you loud and clear," replied a pleasant male voice, not the booming electronic one that had been on the recording the Merchant had sent Eve. "Am I speaking to the Lyran ambassador?"

"Indeed you are," Eve replied back just as pleasantly. This was going well so far. Eve didn't have much diplomatic experience, but she'd dealt with her fair share of arrogant, overbearing nobles – including a certain Baron and his wife who had decided that they wanted to tag along on her mission – and this Cylon sounded nothing like such people. So at the very least, the Cylons could maintain an affable veneer over their true intentions, which was more than Eve could say about certain arrogant, overbearing nobles. "I am Lady Evelyn Archibald Steiner and I am here to represent my Archon Katrina Steiner and the Lyran Commonwealth," Eve introduced herself. "But please, you may call me just 'Lady Eve' or if you prefer to be informal, just 'Eve'."

"Very well, Lady Eve," the speaker began. Eve's mentally checked off another question answered. These Cylons understood formality, and that informal name usage was only done when a certain rapport and friendly familiarity had already been established. "I am Seven." Eve had studied the surveillance pictures taken of the Cylons, and Eve could easily see Seven's face in her mind's eye. "Welcome to Langhorne. Will you be flying down to the planet, or would you like to dock with our basestar first?"

"I've actually given this quite a bit of thought on my journey," Eve replied. "Thank you for the invitation, but it's been a long journey from Tharkad and I'll need to rest up a bit before I can officially begin talks. I'll also need to talk to my people on Langhorne as well as check with Comstar to see if there are any new instructions from my Archon if I am to truly represent my people. I hope this doesn't offend you."

"Not at all, we understand and we're in no hurry," Seven replied. And indeed, he didn't sound the least bit offended as far as Eve could tell. But that second part implied that the Cylons had a certain sense of superiority over the Lyrans, like a master fencer patiently waiting for a neophyte struggling to don their safety gear. Eve wondered if he had deliberately intended that meaning, or if Eve was simply reading too much into his words.

"I just wanted to inform you that on final approach, my escort Dropship will be deploying aerospace fighters to escort us to the ground," Eve told Seven. "I'm just calling ahead to ensure that there would be no misunderstandings."

"Thank you for the advanced notice, Lady Eve," Seven acknowledged. "Would you object to an escort of our own Raiders flying in formation with yours?"

"Not at all," Eve assured him. Eve had expected this offer as well. A display of trust could go a long way towards building a friendly, working relationship. And in any case, if the Cylons wanted to shoot her out of the sky, they had a Warship and wouldn't need to be sneaky about it. "I'll inform my people to expect your Raiders."

"Lady Eve, before you sign off," Seven began, "we have a show planned for you that your Dropship should be able to see. Please direct any cameras you might have at the space above small continent that is currently in the middle of Langhorne's day side just above the equator."

"Of course," Eve replied, nodding to the appropriate technician.

The technician tapped a few buttons on his console, looked at his screen, then went white as a sheet as she cursed loudly enough that Eve was glad her thumb was off the mic's send button. After a short rebuke from her supervisor, the technician tapped her console a few more times with shaking hands, and the CIC's theater video display changed to show what the technician had seen.

At which point Eve and everyone else in the CIC had more or less the same reaction.


"Hello, I'm Mandy Declerk of the Langhorne News Network," the woman on the screen said as the LNN ticker scrolled by beneath her face. Instead of a business suit, Mandy was wearing casual hiking clothes and behind her was a bright and sunny scrub desert that was flat as a pancake as far as the camera could see. Mandy's hair was streaming in the wind and she had to speak up to be heard over it. "I'm reporting live from the Bushweed Desert on the continent of Dodge." The camera pulled back to show a man in a hard hat and bright orange safety vest standing beside the reporter. "With me is Foreman Jack Chin of the Langhorne Mining Company. Jack, could you tell everyone what you're doing out here?"

"Well, Mandy," Jack began, "them Cylons contracted the LMC to start an operation here in Dodge, which the Majordomo gave them a provisional land grant for. The new factories they're building are going to need raw materials after all. But they didn't say where specifically they wanted to mine, and for some reason told us not to come out here until they gave the word. Well the bosses back home were kinda curious about what the Cylons had found, so me and my team were sent out here to survey the continent and see if we could figure it out."

Behind Mandy and Jack, a shadow crept across the desert floor towards them and the camera, cutting off sunlight to the affected area. Perhaps it was caused by a cloud?

"Have you found anything, Jack?" Mandy asked as the wind picked up.

"Not a thing, Mandy," Jack answered. "It's just nothing but worthless desert as far as we can tell. If there's anything out here worth mining, it's going to be buried deep. And deep means it's gonna be expensive to get to and dig out, which combined with the fact that Dodge is on the other side of the planet from where everyone lives is gonna mean this operation is gonna be hella expensive and likely not pay for itself."

The two fell into shadow, but ignored it.

"So why do you think..." Mandy began, but she was interrupted by someone shouting.

"HOLY SHIT!" The camera spun to show Jack's surveyors looking up into the sky, one of them pointing. Following the pointing hand, the camera panned up to show a huge, dark, globular shape that looked like it filled half the sky. Just to drive home how big this thing was, it was behind the sparse scattering of cirrus clouds decorating the sky, which were already scattering away from the thing driven by the air it was displacing.

"EVERYONE GET TO THE VTOLS NOW!" Jack was shouting. "WE GOTTA GET THE HELL OUTTA DODGE BEFORE IT LANDS!"

"We told them not to go there," Three said as they watched the humans scramble madly for their aircraft. She was offended that the humans hadn't just trusted them and done what they were told.

"Maybe we should have told them why they should have waited for us?" Five suggested.

"What?" Eight laughed. "And spoil the surprise?"


"You dropped an asteroid on Langhorne?" Eve demanded in shock, her years of training in always being calm and collected – not just from Foreign Affairs but from her parents as well – battled valiantly against the storm of emotions wrought by what she had just seen. She stared at the image of the seven kilometer wide dome that now sat in the middle of Langhorne's Dodge continent. Computer generated labels highlighted a couple dozen ships, each roughly the size of one of the basestar's pylons, lifting off from the landed asteroid.

"Please, Lady Eve, we didn't 'drop' an asteroid on Langhorne," Seven said gaily, clearly enjoying Eve's reaction. "We safely lowered half an asteroid down to Langhorne in as controlled a manner as was possible. We're keeping the other half in orbit for our own use." In a more serious, sober, and oddly sympathetic tone, Seven added, "But to be honest, Lady Eve, we've never actually done this before. So we weren't actually sure we could lower a rock this size all the way to the planet's surface without our tugs accidentally dropping it. That's why we made sure to put it down as far away as we could from everyone who lived on the planet. That way, if we had dropped it, the worst the people of Langhorne would experience would be some mild tsunamis on their ocean waterfronts and perhaps a few mildly colder than average years from all the dust raised into the upper atmosphere.

"We Cylons usually mine asteroids in space," Seven continued to explain, "but Langhorne lacks an asteroid mining industry. So rather than have Langhorne's industry grind to a complete halt the next time our basestar has to leave the system, we brought the asteroid to them. It should have almost every mineral and trace element Langhorne will need for the next five years or so of projected growth. By that time, we're hoping that Langhorne will have advanced to the point that they can do their own asteroid mining so that we won't have to pull a stunt like this again."

"I... I..." Eve stammered, trying to get her thoughts in order as her emotions wound down and discipline reasserted control of her mental battlefield. "Thank you, Seven," she said finally with complete sincerity. "I'm sure this gift will greatly benefit the people of Langhorne and perhaps even the Commonwealth."

"That's what we're here for, Lady Eve," Seven replied softly. "God be with you, Lady Eve. We hope to meet with you soon."

Eve sat for a long moment in the CIC, thinking before she spoke again. The Cylons' "show" had been a show of power, pure and simple. It wasn't unlike the joint military exercises between the LCAF and AFFS. Except that it wasn't just meant to intimidate, but also to entice. It was both the carrot and the stick.

"Alice."

"Yes, milady?" Eve's personal secretary replied. If Alice was disturbed by what had just happened, she betrayed no signs of it.

"Add a new item to the Questions list," Eve told her. "Can the Cylon basestar land on a planet's surface?"


"Oh my God, that was a pain," One groaned as he climbed out of Nine's control tub.

"Strong words for an atheist," Seven replied with a smile as he helped One out. "I thought you liked using this thing."

"I do," One replied, accepting a towel from Seven. "But coordinating those gravity tugs was way harder than it should have been because I kept getting distracted by seeing X-rays and feeling neutrinos in my gut and shit. How does Nine do it?"

"Well she's had more practice in the control tub than anyone else," Seven answered. "Maybe we should make more tubs so the rest of us can practice using them more, maybe even try holding a command council meeting in them so that we all sync up with each other better."

"Oh sure, I can just see it now," One replied sarcastically. In a high falsetto voice, he added, "I think should help the humans by OOH! Look at the pretty nebula and how the stars in it light it up!"