Copeland Supply, Salvage, and Resale

by cliff.west

This is a spinoff story. It takes place after "But a somehow a most melancholy" and" Hunted Tribes". Please read those before this bit of work. I will not be recovering those stories, but re-reading them will help you fallow this story. This fiction also will be slow on the combat action.

68. Chapter 68 7 Aug 3051

Note: did not send out a notice when I posted chapter 67, at least I didn't get one. So, you might want to read that before this one.

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Chapter 68

By Cliff

Beta and Clean up: Not done

Reviewed by Hotpoint and Cannonshop

7 Aug 3051

Helios Beta

Planet Leonis

City of Hedo

Hedon Grand Casino.

Wade "Jeff" Sitar looked over one shoulder to make sure the soldier was still there where they were supposed to be. He had to fight down a chuckle at the thought of someone from the government helping him do this kind of work. All as he went about his work that in the past had gotten him in a set of silver bracelets that soo were not a fashion statement. Wade had been on the Astral Queen when the Cylons had attacked and blasted the Colonies of Kobal into ash.

Wade had been a second story man since he was in his early twenties, and he had spent a half decade in prison in that youth. By now that had been a few decades ago, and he had only been caught by the police only twice in his whole life with enough evidence to get him sent to prison. It was not lost on him that getting caught that last time doing a crime had saved his life. It was just too bad that his mentor Luther Whitney had not survived the Cylon attack. At least no one with that name and face had made it to New Circe. But with someone like Luther you never would know for sure, and Wade was okay with this. That was because sometimes he would swear that he saw Luther out of the corner of his eyes around the Colonial City State.

After being released into the "normal" populace of New Circe. Wade had been tempted to return to his old life using his memories of Luther, to try to guide him to stay under the DRADIS of the local law enforcement officers. That had been until the public trial of the syndicate enforcer and his Ha'la'tha boss after running some scams against a group of the Wolverines. He was too old for hard labor for the next two or three decades of his life if he got caught again. So, he had tried his hand at an honest trade. He had even started going by his real first name of Jeff, and after a few false starts, he was at least starting to make it in the light of a legal job.

Going by his real first name was a nice way of dividing the type of work he had done. Wade was a second story man that could get into any safe made in the Colonies, and Jeff was just someone you called when you needed to open something that you forgot the lock code. There were jobs that needed to be done all over the Colonial city-state as more and more people settled into a new life being off of those frakking ships. All you needed was some brains, common sense, could do work, work alone, and could work with small tools without breaking them. Well, he had 4 out of 5 of those traits on his bad days and 5 for 5 when he was having a good day. Still, this gave him a leg up on over a third of the Colonial survivors that would be lucky to have 2 out of 5 of those skills on any given day of the average week.

Wade knew that Colonial law enforcement knew about him, and that they kept an eye on what he was up to after being released from the Astral Queen to start a new life on New Circe. After the Colonial fleet had returned from its first run to the Cyrannus system. He had been "asked" and then escorted to the Main military space field that the Colonials were still setting up with a lot of help from the SLiE. They hadn't told him why he was needed and then "helped" into the transport. Sitting in the back of the military truck as it bumped down the still dirt roads of the growing city, he had time to think about all kinds of bad things that might happen to him in the next few hours.

After he had been brought into one of the bases few permanent buildings. Wade had been asked to "unlock" half a dozen recovered small safes that looked to have been ripped out of walls or floors with powered equipment of some kind. As his eyes went around the metal boxes, he felt professionally offended at the heavy-handed tactics used to get these items to this location. Each of the safes would have been child's play for him to open, if he had the right tools to do the work. He had not had his tools returned to him when he had been let out of his cell on that prison ship. It was not like the prison ship would have kept them for his trial, and the evidence lockers were nuked from space or under Cylon control.

Wade had taken the job, but he had demanded a set wage for the work he was to undertake. Another condition for the job, was that he would have access to a support team that could make the tools he would need. Making the criminal tools had been an issue, but they had worked it out so that any tools Wade had made for this job would be left under control of the Colonial Military or Government. They would review this agreement after they had a better idea of what he wanted them to make. Wade had flatly turned down a share in the recovered items from the safes for the flat wage. He knew enough about his old line of work, that most of the time. Safes were empty wells, even after all of your research of the target before you committed to your larceny.

With the agreement in place, and the paperwork drawn up and signed by both parties. Wade had gone to work on what should have been the easiest of the safes to open. Without his old tools, what should have taken only a few minutes. It had taken the safe cracker two hours to get it opened and that was after setting up his workspace for his audience. Wade had one person keeping an eye on him while he worked in the hyper quiet room of what he thought of as an interrogation room. After the thick metal door had opened to his fingers, he had just stepped out of the way of the 40cm long hatch. And just as he had thought, it had been filled with paper that was now useless to those living on New Circe. About the only thing he had seen that was of value in that safe was a loaded military side arm and a few old gold coins someone had kept as an investment for a rainy day. With his skills proven, he had gone home for the night.

The start of the first full day of working had been spent in a workshop getting the tools of his trade rebuilt. Wade had spent the night getting some of the more common tools together on his own. But having access to all of the goodies in a machine shop, and the well-trained hands to make better tools was too much to pass up. It had taken him only three days to get all of those recovered safes opened. When he left that office at the end of the last day of work? He was able to keep the tools that had been made to do the job. He even was able to add "lock smithing, repair, and recovery specialist approved by the Colonial military and government" to his company business cards. That was not an unimportant addition to someone like him.

Every so often, Wade would be called back to that military base to open a freshly recovered safe for a set pay rate. Twice he had been lifted off the planet to handle a "found" safe on one of the civilian ships of the Rag Tag Fleet. With each new "job" he would have made new or better tools to do his old job all at the expense of the Colonial Government and the military. That had not gone over very well with some members of both of those groups.

Some of the Colonial military had tried to do the job, so that they would not have to call him in. They might have had the tools, but they didn't have the years of the skills needed to use them or the raw base talent that he had. After a few tries, they had just given up and called him when they had to open lock boxes and the like. He was even making a good enough living just with these commissions from the Military to cover his living expenses. On top of that he had been even able to work on some of the safes in Wolverine areas, after word of his skill got around outside of the City State. Then his world had come crashing down around his ears like a dropship with blown out engines. Sometimes it was not good to be known at being the best in a rare skill set.

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Wade had been called to the military base and asked to bring all of his tools for a mix of jobs that could take some time for even him to complete. He had assumed that they had another round of safes or lock boxes recovered from one of the military bases from the old Colonial planets for him to open. So, you can imagine the surprise he had felt, when he was escorted into an unmarked room on the base. He pulled up some of his other old skills when he was left alone in a room that looked not unlike the room you would see in a law enforcement office. When he tried the door, it was locked. Without anything to do and no books to read to help pass the time. Wade had thought about "opening" the door and then changed his mind. Instead, he had taken a seat and then taken a nap in the quiet room.

Most of the time that he was in that room, he didn't sleep, it only looked that way on the outside. All he could do was wait and wonder how many people were watching him while he cooled his heals in that soundproof room. While he waited, he went down the list of possible laws he might have broken while he had been on this planet. For the first time in years, he could not think of a law that he might have broken without being on contract with the military or local government. Oh, he knew that he had bent more than a few laws, but still most of that had been while he was working for the Colonial Military. Those should not have been things that landed him in a room like this.

When the door opened to this holding room again? Wade was expecting to see someone with a gold badge on and a military uniform to enter the room to take him to see the magistrate. The two people who entered the room were in uniform, so he was half right in his guesses that he had been thinking about while he had been faking sleeping. He remembers every second that passed for the next half hour, like they were cut into his forebrain with the galaxy's sharpest knife.

Wade was informed that he was being drafted into the Colonial Military, effective immediately. The Colonial City State had passed a law that said you had to serve at least 3 years of military service. This was really only a reinforcement and a light modification of an older law that had never been removed from the legal books that the Colony of Kobal used. The modification was that this Draft would only end when the war with the Cylons had been finished. And after a "thorough records check" it was found that neither a Wade Sitar nor a Jeff Sitar had served their draft time, before the coming of the new war with the Cylons. That was going to change now, and unlike in Kobal space. There was not an option of doing jail time or "public service" instead of going into the military. There was only the question of what type of military unit and what job you would do during your service.

Due to his age and his proven skill in a rare field. The Colonial Military was not going to be sending him to "basic training", but he would have to attend the Physical training group to get him ready "for the rigors of military service". The effective start date of his draft was today, and he was now in the Military as of first light this morning. The pair of uniforms had read to him a lot of rules, and they made him sign on the line that said he understood what he had just been briefed about. When he had asked for a lawyer and started falling back on old skills? He had been told that he could find one, but only after he finished with the quarantine period that all "new" recruits had to undergo.

With not being able to see a lawyer and all of the paperwork done. One of the pair had escorted him from the room. Jeff Sitar now became Wade Sitar for the time and length of his draft. Wade had seen enough behind him to know that the remaining uniform was entering another room next to the one Wade had been held in. All before they made a turn into a different hallway. Wade was betting someone was about to have their day ruined, like he had. He was taken by his escort out of the building and for what seemed like a few kilometers of walking before they entered another new built building on this military base.

When Wade was brought into the two man room, he had found one of the beds was already occupied. He was not surprised to find that his clothes and few personal items had been brought from his modest home and placed in the room by the time he arrived. For the next few weeks, he had found out that anyone with some skills at things that might have been on the grey side of the law to outright being against the law were all called up. Then they were put into one large class of "People with specialized skills".

At first Wade had no idea why he had been called to duty for the Colonial Military. After that first day, he had some idea of why they might need a person of his age and skill sets for the current war with the Cylons. They had given up a long time ago to get him to train some younger troopers in his line of work. There was just no way that he could give them years of his experience and natural talent in just a few months of training, now they had circumvented that issue. Then he had been "introduced" to the rest of his unit, then many of the other blocks started falling into place one after the other. The trainers had even started off the first full day with an Immortal Warriors episode centered around a group of criminals helping with the war effort back in the Inner Sphere. The episode was called something like "the dirty tank company."

They had spent months working on his physical condition by instructors supplied from the Wolverines. These were not the much feared drill sergeants, but people trained in physical therapy and repairing the body after major trauma or just old age. That didn't mean that they did not do their fair share of sweating, they just spent many more hours at a lower level of stress of physical training than the younger generations. Wade had laughed at the idea of doing Yoga, that is until they were in their fourth straight hour of it after a 5km "walk" around the airfield. If it was not for the heart and other monitors, that they all were wearing. They would have thought that they were going to die of heart attacks or strokes and not under Cylon guns.

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When they had been brought up to the Zephyr and assigned rooms on the great liner, the rumors had it that they were going to the edge of the map called the Inner Sphere. Some had even said that they were going to Earth to steal copies of the original scrolls from a group of religious heretics called ComStar. You could have knocked him over with a feather when Wade and others were brought into a small briefing room of the old liner and the rumors were dispelled in a few short words. They were not going to the Earth, or Terra, or anywhere close to the Inner Sphere for that matter. They were going back to the Cyrannus system.

During the rest of that meeting, the special unit was broken into smaller groups. Each of them was given a list of targets and items that needed to be recovered from the cinders of their people's worlds. The list was a total disaster. Whoever had come up with the list and then assigned the people to do them, had been watching way too many entertainment shows or had been hitting the pharmaceuticals way too hard for their own good. They had no problem with the targeted items, it was where they were located that was an issue for the teams. The briefer was about to leave the front of the room, when one of the people that had closer contacts with the still active parts of the Ha'la'tha on New Circe almost yelled his lungs out in protest.

After about half a minute of unintelligible babbling from so many throats that the SLS Nike would not have been able to figure out who said what. The problem was finally intelligibly brought up, and the look on the young captain's eyes went as wide as Viper thrusters. The meeting broke into even a higher level of bedlam, and it took some more yelling to get the room back under control. For the next few hours, the list was changed, and the teams shuffled around to make them better suited to the missions that they were given. And that was how Wade the safe cracker was on the planet Leonis with his armed and armored escort.

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Leonis had always been a major center of education and small specialized industry for the Colonies. With almost no axial tilt, the planet had a mild and extremely predictable climate, at least compared to some of the other planets in the Cyrannus system. It was known for its spectacular beaches, ski slopes and "other" recreational areas. It was also filled with Casinos for all levels of income and risk levels someone was willing to entertain.

The City of Hedo had the Hedon Grand Casino as one of its many center pieces for local and the tourist to use. That casino was where all the rich, famous, or those that wanted to be in one or both of those categories would throw their money and time away while being able to see or being seen by others. It was a massive 8000 room hotel and casino spread over three city blocks that was a thief's dream. And more than a dozen movies had been made about people like Wade trying to break into this one or one like it.

Now knowing what was expected of him, and what his targets might be, as supplied by people who were amateurs at best in knowing what to look for. He had spent most of his "free" time in the liners machine shop, and with one of the human form Cylons that was making the trip with the special skills unit. At first, he had to fight down the revolttion at seeing the Cylon, but that had only been his first response. Then he had to fight down the urges to ask her on a date, but Wade had a mission to do. Wade was a planner, and he had felt like he didn't have that much time to plan, and he could not waste his remaining time with other distractions.

As he had expected, the local recon unit leader had wanted to check every one of those rooms of the huge hotel/casino. That had not been part of the plan as Wade had been briefed, but he suspected that he had not been told everything. This was both to check for survivors and find any "cultural items" that might have been left behind from "that day" by the visitors of the casino. As soon as Wade was on the ground, he had been taken by the local recon team and some of the found survivors from outside of the local area to the huge and ornate building.

Wade had called for a meeting to help explain what he could do, and what was just something they saw on an entertainment show or maybe what someone had told them was true. After about ten minutes of talking and seeing that much of what he was saying was going over their heads. Wade had just stopped talking. Then Wade had handed out some very detailed "how to guides" that he had printed out while he had been on the Zephyr. The documents were mainly on how to open each of the hotel room's safes. It had started with a list of "default" manufacture codes, and then it showed them where the Hotel default code was listed for any emergencies at certain staff areas near the room. After all you didn't want a guess not to be able to spend their money because they could not access the room safe.

It took him an hour to walk each of the mixed groups threw on how to open those small devices of false hope that would be in each of the hotel rooms and suites. Wade then handed off the training to a woman who knew a thing are three about where people tended to hide items in hotel rooms. He had no idea how long that would take, and he didn't care. Wade had a date with the hotel's public safe, high roller safe, and the management safe on the main levels of the building. He knew that the last one was going to be a problem, but it was a problem he was looking forward to having to solve. One of the requirements to be a safe cracker was the desire to solve really hard problems.

The reason that the mission had been launched into looking into these safes, it was because data had been found by someone. It had said that important artwork and other items that the people back on New Circe wanted to collect might be there. So, Wade and four others left the training area on the first hotel floor that also just happened to hold the cheapest rooms in the whole place. The higher up they went in the casino, the more expensive the rooms would be and the better chances of finding something…..interesting, but that was not a guarantee only a guide line.

Gold was gold, and silver was silver as the old saying went, and the government of the Colonial city state could use every gram of those metals that they could find. They could always use the paper notes of Colonial cubits as butt cleaning paper, that stuff was always in very short supply on these planets. Thankfully that was not so much of an issue on New Circe. It was that, or the bills would be used for fire-starting supplies for the dinner fire. The Colonial city state used what the SLiE called Star League script or Colonial made precious metal coins to pay the bills and not the old Colonial paper notes. The rest of the economy ran on digital money, but most Colonials still kept jars full of silver, gold, or copper cubits in their homes.

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The public safe for the hotel had been about half full with "stuff". Wade had not even helped to empty it after he had gotten the rusty beast opened for the team to deal with. He might have been tempted to take a few items out of habit, and he just didn't want to look in to be tempted. Part of his briefing had been what would happen to him, if he or any of the others got sticky fingers on this mission. Mining on an Ice moon at the edge of the star system was not something he wanted to experience in person. The rumors about what that was like was enough for him. The third person on his "team" had taken the almost filled rucksack and his own escort to the main collecting point. It was in an area of the hotel that the ground recon team had made secure or at least secureish before Wade had landed on this wreck of a planet.

While they were still emptying the safe near the check in counter, Wade headed towards the next target on his little list. The high roller safe had taken him four hours to get open, even with all of the equipment that he had with him. His only breaks had been when his escort had tapped him on the shoulder in an agreed upon warning sign. His "personal" escort was a thickly built woman from the SLDF with thick and heavy arms that held a Colonial made battle rifle like it was a twig. She also had a handgun on her hip that look like she had been born with it fitted there.

They were worried about Cylons, humans, wild daggits, and the many animals that had been released from the many small and even medium sized zoos that each of the casinos on the planet seemed to have managed before the war. That first time he had gotten that hard tap on the shoulder, it had turned out only to have been when the rest of "his team" had rejoined them. Thinking that they had been found by the Cylons and then not, had taken Wade some time to get his heart rate back under control. Then he could continue breaking into a safe that cost as much as an average house in the capital city of Caprica. Or in other words it cost as much as one of the MK II's three engines. It cost a lot of money to protect things that were worth a lot.

The second time that he had to stop due to that hard slap on the shoulder. It had been when a pack of "wild" daggits had followed their noses to the colonials working in this building. There had been some issues with wild daggits had by the recon team at the start of their mission, but this group had just wanted some food and attention before mostly moving away from the working team. That could have gone worse, from the stories that had been told by their briefs back on Ragnar Station, and Wade went back to work when they were given the "all clear" sign. There were a few more stops of his work, but that had been expected if not optimal for Wade's work.

Each time Wade had to stop what he was doing with cutting into the hard metal. This would let the cutting hole cool, and this would delay the finishing of the cutting of the thick outer skin by a very measurable amount each time. At least with this set up he didn't have to worry that much about noise his supporting equipment might be making while he worked. That was not a small issue to not have to worry about in his line of work. But the equipment was bulkier and about a third as heavy as what he might have been using. But it also was faster, a lot faster than anything that would have been based on purely Colonial tech.

The high roller safe was a huge safe to see and the recon lance had taken some time to find it, and they had only found it after they had been sent a message with a list of suggested offices or rooms that had certain words on the door. The recon unit had been very impressed with what they found, and if you were not in the business Wade would have been also. Still Wade had seen way larger one's dozens of times, and he had even heard about way larger safes from fellow people in his line of work. Most of this information was something he had not talked about with others, not even when he had been held on the Astral Queen waiting for his next legal hearing.

This safe had a heavy metal door that was almost five feet tall, about four feet wide, and a little over three inches thick sticking out from the wall. It was not like in the movies with a huge wheel that you turned to unlock and then pulled on to open the hatch. The colonials were way past that safe locking technology, if you had enough money. There was a digital keypad mounted on the center of the door that would do all of the work, if you had the right codes. It was a very good system, unless you had a cutting laser bit, very small wire snips, thin wires, and an external power supply. Oh, and knowledge on how to get around any locking codes held under the hard outer skin without tripping any traps the builders had installed to stop people like Wade.

There was no way to know how deep into the wall that safe went, only how wide and tall it was on the access point. It was not like he could have pop down to the public records office and drop off a few bribes to find that kind of information out. Besides the Colonial military would not have known were to look for this kind of data in the first place. So, Wade was on his own. He would open the safe and they would find what they could find. Wade just hoped that it was not a totally dry hole and he put the odds about 70/30 that it would have something useful for his current pay masters. The odds would have been higher if there had been an event or holiday close to the day of the attack. More people in the hotel would mean a higher chance of valuables being here.

When the power laser drill and material excavator jumped forward? Wade had to react very quickly, or the powerful device would damage the specially designed to be fragile gears, electronics, and any anti-tampering devices that should be between the thick metal halves of the vault door. There was no way that Wade could have finished opening the safe after the special laser drill and cutting bits had done their jobs.

It would take steady hands and a sharp mind to work the gears to drive each of the locking pins back into the door, and one wrong move would make all of his hard work useless. Then there were the wires he would need to cut, hooking up his own wires, and then working the digital code holder. Wade already had a full day fueled by New Circe coffee, and high stress. It was the rare thief that would try to open two high end safes on the same day. That was not how you got to his level of skill, not by taking risks like that. He lived by the old thief rule about never pulling the same gag on the same mark. That was a good way to get those not so nice locking twin silver bracelets. The whole team minus a number of guards would spend the night in the nearby office to the safe that Wade had just been working on. They now could get some sleep without the sound of the cooling fans or the drill cutting through metal, which had started life on a Battlestar as her hard armored outer skin.

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To finish the work the next day had only taken less than an hour of Wade's full attention to find the right gears and wires to be spliced and hotwired. When the heavy door opened a low mumble went around Wade's escorts that had been waiting for this minute in anticipation. Wade was too busy finding something to hold the heavy safe door open to look at what the vault hatch had been protecting until just now. When he looked up again, bags of items were already being pulled out of the now opened hole in the wall.

Then a glass fronted wooden case comes out of the safe and Wade about fell over. Wade had heard of the Bident of Hades, and he had seen more than a few images of the artifact. There were very few people in his line of work that had not heard of it, at least in passing. It had been missing since the start of the First Cylon war, along with tens of thousands of other artifacts large and small that were of high value. Wade walked up to the woman carrying the case like it was nothing more than a fancy looking two headed metal headed spear out of a costume shop. The soldier had no idea that the wooden case alone cost more than what the trooper would have made in a year at her old job before the new war. What that case carried within was worth more than many lifetimes of work.

Wade could not take his eyes off of the Bident as he walked over to the recon group leader standing off to one side. The officer saw Wade heading his way, and that Wade was eye locked on what one of the survivors his team had found in the newly opened safe. At first, he thought that he was going to have a problem with those two. It was not unknown for two people to have a "relationship" in this new war, but it still was a major no go while they were still in the field. Then there were the issues that one of them was a person with a criminal history longer than his arm.

When Wade was about six steps from the officer. The officer's-tired voice seemed to break out the thief from his stumbling through the wreckage of the office. "What's on your mind warrant officer? Are you ready to set up on the big Frakking vault?"

Wade was watching the case with his whole head, and it seemed like he was trying to break his own neck watching it move across the room under the arm of one of the troopers. His head does not turn to look at the officer who had just talked to him. Then Wade throws a thumb towards the trooper's back carrying the long wooden case. "You might want to make sure that case gets sent back to the President as soon as you can. It's been missing for a frakking long time, and she will know what to do with it a lot better than anyone below her rank would."

Wade's head snaps over to the hole going deep into the wall, and he has to get up on his toes to see over some of the other people grabbing items out of the open safe. "There should have been a name card near it. She or the Admiral will want to know who was storing it here. You also might want to make sure any records are recovered and kept with the objects. It could lead to more clues that they were looking for when they authorized this mission."

"Really?' The tone the officer used held more meaning than what you should get from just one word, and the officer made sure to see where the other trooper was going. He had to admit that the thief had a good point about knowing who or what group held valuable items in these safes. And it was not to return the artifacts.

Wade had to smile as the officer in charge of the local recon team stopped talking and headed towards the open safe. He was just in time to catch a thick old looking book that one of the troopers had tossed aside like it was a dime store novel. The officer opened the book and ran his hand down what could only have been high quality Vellum. That was the final nail for the officer to take what the thief had said to heart. The rate of emptying the large safe slowed down as the officer took control of the operation.

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It took Wade a day and a half to open the main safe for this casino. And that was only after they spent half a day ripping off the false cover keeping the vault and the locking devices hidden from the average person that worked at the casino. There had been a few times while he worked that Wade, or the mission leader had wanted to just use some explosives to open the vault and be done with it. They had not, but that was mostly out of fear that the Cylons would hear it detonate. The idea was shelved because it was thought that the damage that the explosives might induce on whatever was behind that first hard layer of the car sized metal door might induce.

The door to this car sized vault hatch was massive, but Wade in his group had no idea that it could have survived a near hit from a tactical nuclear weapon. The shockwave most likely would have buried the vault, and that kind of event would have damaged some of the stored items but that was what glue and insurance was for. Shock damage was a lot easier to repair than fire or radiation damage. It was not perfect, but it was better than nothing and the safe would keep anyone with sticky fingers from removing some hard to replace or things that were going to be hard to explain to the press or the local law enforcement agencies. It was the old saying that a lock will only keep an honest person or the law out, and make a thief work harder to get.

If the size of the vault door was an indicator of how deep this vault went into the bones of the building? This should be a huge haul for anyone who could get the frakking thing opened without losing their minds or being caught by the law. With the coming of the Cylon attackers, worrying about the Law was less of an issue. But in most ways being caught by the Cylon Empire would be so much worse. For the first time, after going straight and crime free. Wade wanted to see what was behind this one-time locked door.

As the vault door was almost fully open, the special batteries activated the emergency lights inside the vault room. The vault door had been made so balanced, that only one person should have been needed to move it while opening or closing. With over seven years of age and the elements working on those hinges and pistons, had made it hard work for four strong people to open the huge mass of metal and now dead electronics.

Slowly the lights grew brighter in the dark room, and a 4,000 square foot room was put under at least some light. Near the hatch that a Battlestar would have loved to have mounted within her hull were racks after man high racks filled with all kinds of poker chips. Most of those chips were not worth the effort to take them in any numbers by the people that had just broken into this vault. They were only made of a special high-density plastic with some equally special ink to keep counterfeiters at bay. Both of those things were not needed in any numbers back on New Circe. Well, there was some value that might be had on the collector's market, but that was not a guaranty.

It was only when you got to the high roller chips that what they were made of changed to something that might be worth the time, effort, and space to take them off planet in an official capacity. Those chips were made of more valuable materials, and those would be collected by the tray full by this crew. The stacks and stacks of those lower "value" chips that the casino needed to keep on hand to cover all active betting would be left behind. Thanks to some data that was found by someone that had made it to New Circe was going to be very valuable. They knew what the different casinos used to make their "high cubit" chips. Who knew that a book called gambling for Dummies would turn out to be so valuable for the Colonials now living on New Circe?

The Recon team had no idea why they were told to make sure that they separated certain chips, by name, from the rest. Gold and silver were common metals, but there were others that were stamped with names of Rhodium, Osmium, and Palladium that most of these troopers didn't recognize. This casino started using aluminum cores for 75-cubit chips and they went for rarer metals at higher levels. The 500-cubit poker chips had a half ounce of near pure Germanium displayed at the chips center. It was not called that name by the Colonials, but atomic number of 32 was number 32 no matter where you were in the universe. Renierite had been "only" 1000 cubits per Kilogram when the Cylons had attacked. Germanium, much less the highly refined metal used in these chips was worth a lot more than that back on New Circe.

Wade was looking around at all of those gambling chips when he ran into the man in front of him. He had suddenly stopped moving while Wade was seeing more paper money than he had known could exist outside of numbers referred in government budget announcements. And every note of those cubits was not worth the time of picking up much less carrying around for the next few weeks. There just was something wrong with the world that the Cylons had left him when 100-cubit notes were not worth picking up off the sidewalk.

Wade's head turned to see what had stopped the other man in his tracks, like he had hit a parked Battlestar. Wade could not breathe much less say anything as his eyes fell on to something out of a little boy's dream, but not connected to sex. But in a voice of wonder that carried in the metal vault the size of a very large house, horse words floated light as a feather from Wade. "The Throne of Zeus. Can you frakking believe it!" His light words seemed to break the shock of the man that Wade had just run into.

The still slightly stunned man didn't even look over at the thief with legal papers standing beside him. "How the frakk did they get it in here?"

Wade had to admit it was a good question. He spends some time trying to come up with an answer and came up blank. "I will raise you, with. How the frakk are we going to get it out? Then I will raise you again, how are we going to get it to New Circe."

It was said that anyone who sat on this Throne would be given the God's approval to command all of the people. Well, it said command the people of the colonies, and until New Circe it had been just assumed that the tail referred to "all people" not just the ones that had fled Kobal. The last three dictators that the people of the Colonies had to deal with, all had their images taken while sitting on this small SUV sized golden and jeweled Throne. A Throne whose image that also just happened to grace the back of the 1,000 cubits Colonial note. It also had not been physically seen by anyone since some time in the 1st Cylon War, and it had not been seen on this planet or any other planet going around Helieos Beta before it was lost.

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While the team was gob smacked like hinds caught in the head lights of your fully loaded cargo truck. The leader of this part of the recon mission was filled with dread as he looked around the huge mass of gold and jewels. All he could see were item after item that should have been in the largest museum and not hidden in an underground vault under a big Frakking casino were no one could see them. He was one of the few people outside of Ragnar station, which knew that this part of the mission was a test run.

They were using Leonis as a proving ground for what had seemed like frakking crazy ideas to those when they were briefed. He had thought that the orders were some kind of joke, and he had even sent a note back to Ragnar Station to make sure they were real orders. Even when he got confirmation of those orders. He had not been happy about them, and he had thought it was going to be a waste of both his time and the time of his scouts. He also worried about the risk that his people would have to endure during this joke of a mission.

Now they would have to search each and every one of these frakking hotels across the whole of the Cyrannus system, along with the list of other places that was longer than his arm. What was found, in what the thief had called "the management safe". That alone would have caused this effect that was about to ruin the days of a lot of the scout teams. All even without finding the Throne of Zeus under the Frakking building would guarantee that more homes and other buildings would have to be searched from top to the lowest basement in some close detail. His job had just become that much harder, and they would have to pull all of these "high value items" out from under the Cylon's noses. And then they would "only" have the slight problem of getting it back to New Circe. At least that last part of the mission was not his job to have to plan for.

The Recon commander made a sour face at thinking about the problems with just his part of the mission. Dealing with the one-time members of the Ha'la'tha was bad enough, but it was not the worst part of his mission. There was always the other team that was working with one of the "friendly" Cylons somewhere else in this city. If they found anything near as good as what this part of the mission had found already. His life was going to get very hard for him for however long it was going to take, to do what had been expected of him and his unit. The suck value of his life had been high on this mission, and it was now shooting up like a Viper on turbos and might even start to climb even faster. He was starting to think that things were going to get even more interesting, like the demon murphy loved so much.

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The Human Form Number Three had her eyes closed, and a wire went from her tanned and colorful stitched leather covering over her left wrist. That thin wire went through the leather and into a connector that she had brought in her backpack that she was currently using to lean against the damp wall and not get her back wet. That thicker cable was connected into a server that was drawing power from a SLDF made solar power generator/battery sitting about 4 meters from her knees. One of the nice things about this type of generating device was that it barely gave off a hum as it did its job. It had been once used to recharge power packs for Laser Rifles and other DEWs that the SLDF issued to their combat personnel. Now it was being used in other ways that the original designers had never ever would have thought about would be needed by a field team.

The Number Three had a name at one time in her life. But it had belonged to someone that she didn't want to be anymore. That name had belonged to a steward on a large passenger transport that had been what the SLDF would have called a saboteur. When she had been told on a certain day to do something that was not normal for her. She had opened her digital mail with a special code while on duty. Then she had casually walked over to the main hatch of the liner, and she had pushed a button that should not have worked, but for her making a few changes without being noticed or remembered by the Number Three.

She had been the first one on that ship to have been sucked out into space when that hatch had opened without even sounding the alarm in the cockpit. She had lived long enough to see the other bodies following her out into the death pressure zone. Those had been very small bodies that had followed her out into the black of space. Bodies that had belong to an 8th grade school field trip class to what was considered to be the capital of the Colony as part of their government class. She had "died" while the small bodies were still being sucked out into the death pressure zone of space.

Her memories ended right there, but she was told that they put her in a new body after that mission. That "new" body had died of unknown means before she knew about Adama's new allies. Then she had been pulled out of the data banks for yet another new body, but this new body would change her life. She had wanted to die as soon as her head had come up out of the goo. It was only threw the intervention of the Final Five, that kept her sane or at least more saneish compared to others of her line.

They had then shown her the memory blocks that the One's had put in her and what those blocks and special coding had made her do without knowing that she had been doing those actions. That had made her want to die again, but she had worked mostly threw it. Then had come the briefings on the Cylon rebellion and the information about these human forms and other Cylons working with the Colonials and the rest of the humans to fight against the Cylon Empire.

She had worked with one of the Number Sixs to study the memory blocks and other coding that she had loaded into her mind without her consent. Her past actions had been carefully hidden from leaking to the Colonial public. This was done under an agreement between the leaders of the Cylons, Final Five, and the colonial government. It was hoped that this would protect the other human forms from repercussions of their actions during the war, but only if they did not have full control of themselves at the time. If those human forms had done those actions without those blocks being in place? Well, the Final Five had a way to deal with those that would make sure that they didn't interact with other humans ever again. Well outside of one of the prison islands that the SLDF ran. If they messed up again, well there was always the prison on the Ice moon.

After coming to grips with what had been done to her and what it had forced her to do in turn. She had thrown herself into working on how to break those mental blocks, and she had worked on helping with other coding issues. Not long afterwards, she had started working with SLIC and the SLDF military. They had her working on computers, coding, and dealing with the mass data that was coming in from the Cylon Rebels and Copeland.

Now she was back in Colonial space, and she was working with groups made up of both the Colonials and Star Leaguers. She was officially a member of the SLDF as part of the mission of the short-term reinforcements of the recon units currently on Leonis. She had been asked by the people she had worked with in SLIC, and she had agreed to come along. She had been very skillful in the application of her new skills that she was picking up from SLIC and the Final Five.

She had to learn to do something else with her life, because working as staff on a space passenger liner was not needed on New Circe. Her next line supervisor in SLIC had said that she was one of only a hand full of people that had the skills that SLIC thought this mission might need. She could go or she could stay on New Circe, it would be up to her. Nothing would be said if she declined the job, but the members of Clan Wolverine were not known to avoid the threat of combat or discomfort if that was what the mission required.

The Colony of Leonis had maintained its own distinctive language and culture even after it was unified with the other planets of the Colonies. Those two things had a huge impact on how someone wrote computer code or managed their files within that type of working environment. She had been dealing with computer codes written in dozens of different languages coming out of the Inner Sphere. She should be able to "access" any data storage and servers that the recon team might find. Besides Leonis had a very well-developed high-tech industry, and they had used the local education system to support their R and D departments for both military and civilian uses. The term was called "a brain trust" and this time it was not meant to be a derogatory term.

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So, that was how a Number Three human form Cylon had come to be sitting in the low light with a wire running from her arm into this server stack. They were currently high in this office building and her two far escorts were armed with SLDF weapons were watching out for her. The Number Three was armed with a Colonial design handgun along with the two close escorts and "helpers" for this mission. She knew that her far escorts would make sure she was safe, and that their weapons would never fall into Cylon hands. She had not asked how they would do that to weapons that were known to last hundreds of years of use in field conditions. There just were some things that you felt better just not knowing about, and the Number Three moved this firmly into that mental category.

They had a list of places to check on this mission, and this was the first one after they had landed on this planet and had joined forces with the recon team already on the planet. This team had started in the basement looking for the data server rooms, but all they had found was water and other things that she could wish that she could forget the smell of. The water they had found had come in through wrecked walls, cracked ceilings, missing doors, and shattered windows of the thirty-story building. There was nothing that they could do with that junk, not after over a half a decade of soaking in water and trash. That was where the data from the recon team that had been on this planet for months had come into play. They had found data racks on other floors for companies like this, so this team had started looking higher in the building.

With this information they had started walking up many flights of concrete and steel stairs, but they were stopping on each floor looking for computer servers. Most high-tech companies had gone to what they called Cloud computing over the last few years before the new war. That was just a new name for the old style Main frame computers from before the 1st Cylon war, so they didn't have to look for computer towers on every desk. It was a sign that the Colonials were starting to come out of the computer tech malaise caused by the 1st Cylon war.

They still had to check every frakking room and door on each of the floors of this assault on the eyes and noses. They were looking for supplies, signs of survivors, and any hiding Cylons of both Rebel and Empire varieties. They had not found anything useful besides some stale snack foods and some signs of gun battles done sometime between months and years ago. They had found this room on the fifteenth floor, and it looked to be filled with computer servers and other support equipment needed to run the building.

Now it was her job to find anything useful that the R and D department of this company might have been working on before the Cylon bombs had started to fall. So far, she had found a lot of porn, office gossip, and little else that would be worth writing home about. There was no way to take all of the individual data files that this company might have with them off planet, not even with the technology that the SLDF had let her bring on this mission. Still, they could pack down a lot of data, but it would take longer to get this data off planet. They would take what they could and work on taking out data on less capable devices that the Colonials used. At least Ragnar station had the equipment and the additional people needed to deal with that old crap.

But besides the official R and D files she might find. She was also copying any music, entertainment shows of all kinds that had been illegally copied to the storage devices in this company by someone long dead. Back on New Circe, the Colonial city state had one whole building set aside just for collecting books, movies, shows, music, and anything else about the home planets that could be collected and collated. It was something to just to be able to listen to music from your childhood or watch your favorite show from high school. It was not complete, not by a long shot. But they were growing and looking for more data from anyone that was willing to provide it. This mission might just turn out to be another source of data.

So, any data she could find while on this mission would be very welcome at that collection point of Colonial culture. That type of data she was finding would go into one of the SLDF supplied data storage devices that had been supplied for this mission. Any data that was technology based would go into a second device for the SLDF to first see. She had no doubt that SLIC would be looking at every file that she brought or sent back to New Circe. But the SLDF was "paying" for this part of the mission, so they got to have first look at any data that "their" team found. It would be shared later with the Colonials, there was little doubt about that, but the SLDF would see all of the technical data first. Then it would be up to them to decide when to release it to the Colonial City State.

##############

The Three's eyes shot open when she heard an odd slapping sound and something warm and wet was splattered all over her face. All she could see was the barrel of the weapon pointed towards her head, and she felt her heart stop and her stomach fall to her toes. For just a second, she thought that the SLDF trooper, a human trooper, was going to kill her. it was just like she had expected to happen every time she saw a Colonial. The shooter must have seen the look of worry on her face and worked out what she had just thought. The shooter let a small smile come to his face and then pointed to her feet with his trigger hand.

The Three looked down and the largest rat she had ever seen was laying there dead at her feet. It had nearly been cut in half by the shooter with the sound suppressed weapon. It was an impressively sized animal that was nearly the size of a small dog, if it had not lost a lot of that mass taking the bullet to its main body. She had to force her mind not to think about what that thing had been eating to grow to such a size or how many others like it might be around her hiding in the low light. The Three used her right foot to push the now dead animal away from her and then the smell hit her and she almost gagged. If she had eaten in the last few hours? It would have come up to join the smell of the internal organs of the now dead rodent.

The shooter saw the second look on the human form Cylons face and decided that he needed to act on the orders that he had been given in private. The smell didn't even register to him, after so many years of war. By now he had smelled worse, a lot worse. "Did you find anything?"

The Three snorted and she was distracted from the smell and her stomach settled down. "Just that a bunch of sick people worked here, and that their taste in music and entertainment shows frakking sucks. Other than that? Nothing to write home about."

The armed escort tilted his head to one side a little, and he gives the woman a level look. "Need a break? You have been going for a few hours looking at that thing, and it took a while to get to this floor the old fashion way. This is only the first day, and we might have a long way to go."

The Three looked over to the SLDF power supply near her feet, and she didn't say anything as she took in the data on its display. Her Cylon brain worked quickly, and she worked out the numbers in her head. "Not yet. I might need another hour or so for this one. Can you get the next one ready to put power to it? That way I just have to plug in and start shifting the data. After that? We will need to stop anyway and set the power supply in the sun to recharge."

The shooter of the rat gave a short nod of his head and went about doing what the Number Three had asked. Admiral Adama passed a long a warning before this mission to the assigned Cylon escorts. He had said that the well-known drive of the Human Forms could make them work longer than was effective for the war against the Cylon Empire. And that it would be a good idea to have a third party keeping an eye on them to manage their workload, for the betterment of the overall mission. The hard part would be to manage the human forms so that it did not look like they were being managed by the SLDF personnel. Bill Adama had made a funny face and he wished them luck on this work, and not to take it personal when the human forms got mad at them.

The Three's eyebrows shot up as the back of the soldier was turned towards her. She had just more or less ordered a human to do her bidding, and they had done so without so much as a complaint about her words. It took the Three almost five full minutes to get fully back in the data flow of the old server blade at her feet. Still, she had to fight to keep from being distracted at the changes in the world around her. For the first time. She truly felt like a member of a team, and that she had value as being a part of it and maybe as a leader of one.

##############

The 10kg Generator and battery had more than enough power for the second server blade to be searched of data, and for anything to be pulled out of it. Compared to what a laser rifle needed to power up. The power needed to access a computer server blade was almost nothing. The sun was just about to come up when the second blade was done with her attention. The Number Three helped move the generator/battery system to a nearby window so that the collector cells, that were an updated version of the ones that a Jumpship Sail was made to be used to charge her jump drive could do its job. They were going to need that power in the morning and not just for data mining on half wrecked Colonial made servers.

With the work done, the team broke down into shifts for guard duty. The Number Three was not put on a guard shift, and this was explained to her before the mission had left Ragnar Station. She had her job to manage, and the escorts had theirs. Oh, and she only had what the SLDF ground forces command would have called barely basic weapons training. Her assigned escort had a lot more than just basic weapons and field craft skills to call on. They had not come right out and said that the ground team thought that she was more of a threat to them, due to those lower military focused skills.

She took some time to clean up after the generator was set up to get sunlight to recharge the device. The dried rat's blood on her face and neck was starting to itch, and then she got some food. You didn't want to think about why you were itching while you were eating a Field ration, much less what might be falling into it between bites. The SLDF field rations were bad enough tasting as it was, in the Number Three's opinion. It was six hours later, and she was gently being awakened to start her next day.

She was not even surprised that the rest of the computer server blades had been collected and then moved over to be closer to the charging generator while she had been sleeping. All she would have to do was connect the wire on the leather brace around her wrist to the converter cable, and then to the blade at the top of the pile. While the generator supplied power to the blade, it would be recharging in the slowly growing light of a new day. She could even eat and drink while she worked on sifting the data. When she needed a break, she would just open her eyes and turn her head to check the power on the generator still converting solar energy into power.

That little movement was all that was needed, and one of her team would come over and say a few words to her. After this check in, they would stay and try some "small talk" with her and then move the checked blades out of her "workspace". Now that she was "used" to the computer's data flow, the job of sorting the files went quicker after each blade she reviewed. Sometimes she would just stop and mark the blades with a code using a pen she had been given before the mission started.

Some of the server blades were just broken, and they would be marked and moved to a small pile on the other side of the room. This could have happened before the war or due to just wasting away in this shell of a building. The end state was that any data that might have been on them was as gone as if it had never been there. There was no way to recover the data with Colonial, Cylon, or the limited software that the SLDF had released. Any of the server blades with a lot of data that was useful was marked to show what it might be useful for with a T for tech and a E for entertainment being the most common marks of the code that she used. The same markings were put on the SLDF supplied data storage devices she was filling up with her work.

That load of computer equipment would be split between the whole team to carry to spread out the weight. The sun was almost halfway into the sky when she had finished checking out the stack of computer equipment found on this floor of the building. She helped break down the generator and put it in a specially designed rucksack that she would be carrying up more flights of stairs.

The one good thing about the break was that after the night guard shift had wakened up, and they had gotten some food and water into their bodies. The pair of them had already checked out the next two floors while the rest of the team had finished working this floor. They had found nothing, so the Number Three and her close escort would have to climb up three flights of stairs to catch up to them. All while packing all of their field gear. The sooner they reached the top of this building, the sooner they could walk back down and find the next building on their list and repeat the whole process all over again.

She would spend most of the next night working on shifting more data from more found computer server blades. But they would only have to spend another full day and night cycle in this building after that first night. That is if that first night, was a gage for the rest of this building. They even found a pair of wall safes on each of the top three floors of the building that they could not open. Well, they could open them, but it would be a "loud event" and that was not recommended for this team. The offices on those top three floors were huge and belonged to the top leaders and their close staff of this company. Most of the team thought that it would hold data that they were tasked to recover, and probably would be a better fit for the other team to deal with.

They had tried to open the safes, but when that failed and as per orders they were just marked and mapped out. Then that data would be physically handed over to the leader of the recon team the next time they crossed paths. Any locked door, drawer, or cabinet was opened by pry bar, knife, or boot. But most of the time it was done by the expedient way of ripping the covers off their hinges with bare hands thanks to the SLDF and Cylon strength. What might have been found was not listed, if it was not directly related to military matters. Yea, they found some good ambrosia and other "exotic" but stale food items. The Number Three thought that only she knew about the team breaking into the safes scattered around town. Oh, how wrong she was, but it was noted that she had not talked about it to the rest of "her" team if the subject came up during meals or breaks.

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Wanda looked down and threw her scope fixed mounted on her FNF-J12. This type of weapon was called many things, but Wanda called her's Juliet. The weapon was older than her, it even was a lot older than her parents or even grandparents. It had been fitted with a very hard to find James, Airmore, and Fiat made JAF-05 Flash suppressor before she was born. It had been modified from an old grenade launcher that had been found while their unit had been doing an inventory of a cache site. They had been granted permission and the miss marked item had been removed. It had taken a lot of work to get the device back into working order again, but now it was the best 50 grams on her rucksack. The nice thing was that she could move this device to any of the laser rifles on this mission. It would take a lot of work, but she knew how to do it. It was one of the best kept secrets that this could be done and that she knew how to do it. As was said, it was the best 50g in her whole rucksack.

She enjoyed the view this thirty story tall building currently gave her, but she had hated walking up all of those Frakking stairs to get to this view. To compound the issue was that she was taller than most SLDF personnel, much less the average Colonial as noted in the local building codes. This had caused her to have to adjust her "natural" step length every time she moved. The stairs were short on each step that she had taken, but they were still just a little too long for her to be able to take two steps at a time comfortably. Then there was the stress of being in the dark vertical tunnel while not knowing when they would run into Cylons or just hostile half wild colonials. The last part she had loved, it really got her blood pumping.

Now they were at the top of the building, and she had some free time to look around. They would soon be heading back down to ground level, and that was a lot of stairs to have to deal with again. But at least this time they would be going downhill and not up. Wanda was part of the "far" escort for this team in the over watch mission. Her job was to find any threats and then take care of them or report them to the rest of the team.

When she had not been needed to keep an eye out closer in, she had been using the huge windows to see what was going on outside of that floor of the building. Wanda was a long shooter that just happened to have some skills at using other weapons that had ranges that were "normal" in combat. But her true love was taking the long shot and hitting what she had been aiming for. One shot, one kill was something that she felt deep in her soul. That she was normally taking out one of the Frakked up Number Ones was just icing on her cake. Well, the real icing was that for each Number One she took out, her mother would send her a dozen homemade cookies. And her mother's cookies were something very special.

So that was why she was set up on a long wooden conference table that must have cost a fortune just to have been brought up to this room and put together. It had taken the whole data team to move it into this room. Now she could use that expensive conference table in ways that even the most "inventive" designer would have never thought of. Now it was her sniper's "perch" for the rest of her stay in this building. It just happened that the window she was looking out had the bottom part opened and a breeze blowing fresh air into the room.

She could not see the base of this building or even the ones that were the nearest to her. But there was a star pattern of roads running off into the distance that was visible from this room heading to the edge of the city. Wanda used her scope to first check out the nearby buildings, to see if she could see people moving about that had not known they were being watched. Then she went to check out any movement along those long, straight, and wide roads moving towards the parts she could not see at the base of this building going towards the city's edge.

Wanda had no idea why she suddenly shifted her gaze, but she did, and she saw movement threw the mounted powerful scope. The movement that had drawn her eye was a person moving down there, and they seemed to be in trouble by the body language. She could not tell if the person was male or female even with the passive optics of the 31st century from her elevated position. This planet was very comfortable, weather wise, but that didn't mean that you walked around in your birthday suit or such like every day of the year. Wanda could see that the person was in distress, they had "peeked" around a corner that they might have just come around to see if danger was lurking there. Then they would move quickly before taking cover again. It was very tactical like movement, but after so long in this war it was not a guarantee that the person on the street was a military person. You either learned how to move or you died. There was no other way to move on a planet that had been under the Cylons Empire's thumb and weapons for close to a decade.

Wanda keeps her eye on the area of the person moving, and then she noticed that the person had started to move towards this building at the soft run. It was not an outright sprint, but it was fast as well as quiet. It was going to let the person cover a lot of distance during the day without drawing a lot of attention of the Cylon kind. As Wanda was watching, the person suddenly dived into a store front that had a missing window like a rope had pulled her in. It was like something had spooked them into doing something rash.

"Oh frak!" In the few seconds it took for the sniper to realize what happened. Wanda now could see what the person was running from, and it was a Centurion. A Centurion that was on the hunt for a human type of game. The question was, what would Wanda do about it?

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Kara heard the metal foot hit broken glass on the street that she had just left, and she dove into the dark mouth of some kind of store that was close by. One that had seen its front display window broken, and she had jump threw it like her life depended on it, and it did. The window damage could have been from weapons fire or a rock, it was an opening and she needed one right the Frak now. She could feel the glass cutting into her thick pants and long coat when she first hit the dirty floor when her jump ended. And she still rolled deeper into the open space until she hit a table, a little pain was better than a lot of death.

When she came up to her knees? She looked back the way that she had come, through where the plate glass window had been. She didn't need to see more, to know that she was in an old deli. The smell of rotting meat was just strong enough for her to notice it lingering in the background over the smells of a long dead city. After so many years of no power or other attention, the smell had "mellowed" out as nature took its course on the organic material. But all of that was not much help to her right now. She was able to get behind some concealment just in time to see a Centurion start to come into view.

She knew a lot about Centurions, but then again you needed to if you were going to survive on a planet that was occupied by the Cylon Empire. One of the things that she knew was that they didn't use visual sensors like a human would. She had used a large slab of broken mirror to see the Centurion outside of this long dead business. From this location behind serving tables of what had been a small eatery, she could see without being seen by the Cylon standing in the street. That is as long as she didn't move or make a sound above the level of a very soft and wet mouse fart. If she did that? Then it was going to be a good chance that she was going to die in the next few minutes. She would not have much time to react, if the Centurion noticed her. And it was not like she knew this place well enough to know how to exit out of it with a Centurion on her heals, literally. It was one of the reasons she had stayed out of the city, until now.

From under her monk style hood, Kara forced her breathing to stop when the metal Cylon came to a halt right on the spot where she had launched herself into the deli. After so long of being on the run, she was ready to bolt if it looked like the Cylons had seen her. She flexed her knees a little when the Centurion turned and was starting to face the broken window of the deli. Then as if by magic the left side of the metal Cylon was caved in and then the right side area, about at the Centurion's elbow height, was blown out in a shower of sparks and flying broken Centurion parts.

Kara didn't move, not until the shield in that right arm of the Centurion fell to the ground in a crash of metal on concrete. She was up and moving before the rest of the metal Cylon fell over like a freshly cut down tree in the forest to the street side. She was making a run for the missing door to the wide road as fast as her tired and hunger starved legs could push her. There were only two types of people that took out Centurions, which was a Colonials and the Human form Cylons that were Rebels. Right now, she would love to see the second and deal with the first if she had to. She had seen how the Centurion had been hit, so that gave her a good idea of where at least one survivor was. It had just happened that she had been heading that way while she had been running from the Centurion hunter before hiding in this deli.

As soon as Kara hit the open road, she turned and ran as hard as she could. It was time to make distance and not worry about how much noise she was going to have to make to cover that needed distance. It was not much, but it was the best speed that she could get out of her quickly flagging legs. The reason she was in this dead city in the first place, was that she had ran out of food a while ago. And this was the nearest place that she could find more that she would not have to kill or have to fight other Colonials over. Her last meal had been five days ago, and it had been three days since the last time she had more than a few cups of water. She was slowly dying, and she was now burning up what energy reserves that she had remaining in her body.

She was running as hard as her abused body could muster, and she heard more Centurions coming behind her at the run. It was the sound of metal marching death that many people on this planet had heard before they had died. She looked over her shoulder in time to see one and then a second Centurion fall over behind her with holes blasted into their front chest plates, and a little to the right. That was exactly were the control CPU was for this version of the Centurions was located. Only a highly trained fighter against the Cylon Empire would know about that spot to aim with a heavy enough weapon.

Kara tried and failed to see where the weapons fire was coming from, so she still had no idea of exactly where they were shooting from. All she could tell, was that someone was shooting Centurions and they might be towards her front. At this point in time, that was enough for her to risk her life on. While Kara was looking around, her low sugar levels in her blood chose that time to affect her in a major way.

Murphy smiled at seeing his recent handy work unfold. She fell and the last thing that she saw was the grey concrete coming up to say hi to her eyes and nose. She didn't hear the rest of the battle after that. It might have been the lack of food and water, but most likely it was the hard contact between her head and very hard ground that kept her unconscious.

############

Kara was back on "her" Raptor on the first day of the Cylon Civil war, for her. She had been expecting something like this to happen and she had planned accordingly. She had been putting items in a special Raptor on the Basestar that she was assigned to. It was not as much as she wanted, but she was more worried about stealth than the volume of supplies she could acquire and then hide in a useable place. Besides each Raptor already had a crash kit, which was fixed mounted on the craft for some of the same reasons that she was adding her own supplies to that human made craft. She had been just close enough to "her" Raptor to escape the Basestar without waiting to see if the Ones would let her resurrect, when weapons fire could be heard threw out the star shaped Basestar.

She had not been able to wait for the Number Six that would have been her EO, and for all Kara knew she was shot down already by the Cylons that thought an Empire was a great idea. Even flying the craft alone, she still had been able to take out three of the Raiders that had been sent after her. That had not helped with the fourth one flying up behind her. That last Raider had put a burst of KEWs shells into the back of her craft that had killed her jump drive and one of the high mounted sub light thruster engines. It was not what the humans would have called a golden BB, but it was not doing this female Cylon any favors. She had been followed down into the thicker parts of this planet's atmosphere by that same Raider that had killed her craft. She had been able to successfully fly the damaged craft all the way to the crash site.

She had been knocked out for an unknown length of time after the impact with the ground that was well over "hard landing" status in any logbook. But she had come back to the world of light, wind, and the smell of things that should not burn without dying to fire or KEWs first. She had worked quickly and pulled out the survival gear from what was left of her Raptor. Kara had started with the survival pack that the Raptor was fixed mounted for just this type of crashing event. Then she went back into the crashed Raptor and started pulling out the small packages that she had added on her own. That was harder because all of the smaller packages had been thrown around the compartment due to the battle and gravitational dis- harmonization. She had fallen down and gone boom, but she had been lucky and that she had lived through that small landing issue.

She had been able to move most of her supplies to a spot about half a Kilometer from the crash site before the first Cylon overflew the wreck of the Raptor. This made Kara work faster, and she had gotten all of her supplies safely hidden and a firebomb thrown into the wreckage of the space craft before any more Cylons loyal to the Empire showed up. She had to pull out some lessons learned from the Colonials, and she had buried everything but the survival pack she pulled from the now burning and useless Raptor.

She spent the next few days moving further away from the now very actively burning crash. She pushed hard until she could not see the smoke in the sky anymore. When she was sure that she could not see the smoke, she kept moving, just slower to "see" what was going on around her. It was hard living in the wilds of the planet with only the pack and what she had remembered to guide her. When she found a "nice" place to set up for a long term camp, she spent a few days getting it "ready". When most of the work seemed to be done at her "home"? Then she started working on bringing all of her hidden supplies to this location.

She had packed down a few survival guidebooks that had been popular with the Colonials before the war. She had quickly found out that they were not to be taken as if they had come from the lips of God. Still, it had given her a starting point after she had moved over her remaining support items from near her crash site. Besides the few books that she had worked in helping her to pass the time. The books also at least gave her ideas for projects that might help her quality of life.

She had been trying her hand at fishing and learning about why it was called fishing and not catching. But at least this planet was pleasant enough, if she didn't think about all of the nuclear weapons that had been used on it. At least fewer of those weapons had been unleashed on this planet compared to Caprica and the like. The people who put the Raptor survival pack together had expected this Cylon weapons choice, and she had a good supply of meds for that kind of thing.

##########

"So how are they biting?" Came a voice from behind Kara.

Kara had about jumped out of her skin at the sound of a male voice coming from behind her in a tone that carried just far enough. She dropped her improvised fishing pole with her survival line into the slow moving stream without thinking or worrying about making a replacement. In one fluid motion she had spun and pulled out her Colonial made sidearm and pointed it towards the sound.

Standing there at the edge of the tree line and a dozen meters from the stream she was trying her hand in fishing were three men. One was older and the other two were younger, and you could tell that they were not from the same family tree. Each one of them had a projectile weapon, but only the oldest held a hunting rifle for ranges over a dozen meters. The weapons were all drawn, but they were not currently pointing at her.

This had been the first contact with humans for Kara. They said that they would leave her alone, after she had told them that she had been out here from the second day of the war and living alone. She had not been in her Colonial/Cylon space suit like when she had crashed the Raptor, which was many dozens of Kilometers away from her. She had enough time alone to come up with a good cover story for an event like this, Cylons were planners. The small group of armed men had offered for her to join them, and she had declined. That had not gone over well, at first, but they had seemed to have accepted her desire to remain alone when they parted ways.

Even with very little axial tilt there still was a winter on this planet. She was well north of the equator, and not that far from the planet's North Pole. It was on the fifth meeting with the group of men, when she had finally agreed to join the Colonials. She had brought her remaining supplies with her to the Colonial camp. The camp was just two old cabins and a barn that they had made after the attack of the Cylons. They had the foundation and the floor set up for a third rough cut log cabin, but the construction seemed to be stalled.

There was not any room for her in the two well-made cabins, and unless she wanted to sleep in the barn she was going to need to sleep outside. The weather was still nice, so she set up her survival tent next to the still building log cabin. She could not shake the feeling, but something was off now that she was in the camp with the humans. There were two familyish groups, but she could not help but feel like someone was a threat within this group. She spent the next three days working with a different one of the camp occupants, and she had even help with the adding of a few layers of logs to the third and smaller cabin.

Things had gone off the rails on the fourth night of her being in the camp. Kara woke up to feel someone climbing into her sleeping bag with her. She had reacted as you would expect, and then she felt strong hands holding her down. A low voice told her to stop, or he would hurt her. Kara had gone into full Cylon mode, and she snap the man's neck like a dry twig. When the body stopped moving, she had thrown the body off her and reached for a field light in her rucksack. The body of the camp leader's son was staring back with lifeless eyes at her in the bright beam of blue/white light. She started dragging the young man out of her tent by his bare ankle, before his dead body started smelling up her tent. A scream from a young girl of eight woke the camp like a Centurion attack.

The camp had converged on her like a wave of anger. The leader of the camp had collapsed by his son's body, and he had not said a word. His wife had grabbed Kara by the arm and jerked her around with surprising strength. Kara was told to run, before she was put into an unmarked grave next to her son. Kara had heard the truth in those words, and she had packed up her tent and all the items that would fit into the one survival field ruck. She made a show of checking out her pilot's side arm before heading out into the night air.

Just before she was about to leave the clearing that held the camp of cabins, a voice had called out to her. When she turned with the weapon at low ready. Kara didn't want to shoot anyone, but she would if she had to. Kara was told to wait where she was, and while she waited. Kara saw a small group talking very animated near the still kneeling old man and the body of his now dead son. Quickly the third man that she had met on that first day came walking up to her. He passed her a hunting rifle with what looked like six extra rounds and a bag of food. When she opened the bag? There was a note that she almost reached for, but a slight negative head move stopped her hands mid reach.

##############

Kara had walked through the night with the rucksack over her back with everything she had left in this world. She would stop every now and then, to check to see if anyone was following her. No one had and when the sun rose in the morning, she checked out the "parting gifts". The weapon was a hunting model that held six rounds in a tube magazine with a holder on the fore grip that held another six rounds of ammunition. They were all soft tipped rounds, and they would not be that much threat to a current generation Centurion. There was enough food in that bag, which would feed her for a few days before it would start to go bad. It was not much, but it would buy her some time without needing to touch her now very limited survival food in her old Raptor survival kit. What remained of her extra supplies had been left behind in her rush to leave the humans.

Then she had gotten to the note hidden in the bag of food. It was simple and it was done by the messy handwriting in what had to have been done in a rush. It was a map with notes to a cave that was some distance from this camp. At the bottom of the map was one word. "Sorry". It was a long hike, and it took her a week for her to find the undercut cliff that was marked as a camping site on the map in her hands. It even had a pair of outhouses a few hundred meters from an area cleared for tents to be set up. It was in an area that would be protected on three sides by the rock of the cliff face. It was a very nice camp site, and she never would have found it without that last second note. It was on a hiking trail, but it was only a trail that was for those individuals that like marathon length hikes every day for a week would use to reach this spot.

She took the whole camping site as her new home. She worked to make it a home, and she spent the next year in that one campsite. She worked on her field skills and made sure that she stayed hidden from anything that walked on two legs. She had not seen any Colonials, but she did see some Cylon craft flying overhead. It was a long year, and she was lonely, so very lonely. So lonely, that she started making mistakes and not noticing them. When she was out looking for more game trails to set up traps, she had run out of those dozen rounds for the hunting rifle months before. She found a nice sized lake that held another refugee camp on its edge.

############

She had joined that camp, and things seemed to be working out for a while. She was one of the better providers of fresh meat in the camp, and she had started making some friends. That had changed when someone started passing around images of the human form Cylons. When "they" had come for her, she had not resisted being put in a set of rusty hand cuffs. She was brought in front of the small group that governed this camp of refugees. They had point blank asked her if she was a Cylon. She had not known about the images someone had brought to the camp, or she might have made a run for it before they had those cuffs on her. She had passed some kind of test when she had told them that she was a Cylon. When asked what she had been doing in the camp? She had told them her story and about why she had been hiding from the other human forms.

The Colonials had trusted her, and the cuffs had been removed when she had finished her story about living in the campsite of the cut-out cliff alone for over a year. She had been as truthful as she could, and she was shown the images of human form Cylons. She had pointed out the Cylon common names for each of the images. Then she got to the last five images of the short stack of pictures. She had no idea who they were, and she told them that she had no idea if they were Cylons or not but only that they were not known to her.

They talked some more and then she noticed the weapons in the hands of some of the guards around the room. She knew down to the round what was in this camp for weapons in her role as one of the main hunters for the camp. She was now seeing real colonial military grade weapons where they only had a few hunting weapons and law enforcement sidearms before. This was a change, like how they got the information or images of the other human form Cylons. Someone outside the camp had to have given all of those things to this camp.

Kara was not so much interrogated, as she was just having a long and very detailed talk with the leaders of this group. When they were done, she was told that when word got out to the rest of the camp that she was a Cylon? And that information would get out soon, that she would not be safe. It would not matter that she was one of these Rebel Cylons or not, there was too much bad blood between humans and Cylons in this camp. She would be allowed to leave the camp, but she would need to hurry. The council would come up with a story, which said she had left to go on a long range hunting and scouting mission. This was something that Kara had done in the past, and the council had no idea when you would be back. It would be some time before any questions would be asked about her whereabouts.

With those words done, she was escorted back to her spot in the camp. She quickly went about packing up her stuff. She was moving a bit frantic in her packing. That was when one of her escorts told her that they would make sure that she got out of the camp unmolested, and to make sure she packed what was needed for her survival. Her escorts/guard would change every half hour while she was packing down her camp. The first relief guard brought her a hunting rifle with two large boxes of ammunition. It was all hunting rounds, and she knew that this was about all that was left in the camp before these changes came along. The next surprise was when her over and under sidearm was returned with five filled magazines. She only had the one magazine and it had been emptied of ammunition when she came to this camp. Another guard brought some real packaged food and even some of the few remaining sweets in the camp, one that she was known to like.

She made notes of all of this as she packed and then she was "escorted" out of the camp. They had not even said anything when she chambered a round into the rifle while they walked towards the edge of the lake. The escorts walked with her going around the lake at the pace Kara set. They even made some small talk while they walked with her, and when they were a few kilometers from the camp the escorting team called a halt. Her three person escort stopped with two of them taking over watch of the break area. She could have been knocked over with a feather when the leader of the escort hugged her. Then he wished her luck, and he was sorry how things worked out.

Kara didn't have much to say to that and she broke contact. Quickly she went deeper into the forest with her weapons and large survival rucksack packed to capacity and maybe just a little more. By now she had spent a lot of time in these wilds, and she was one of the better hunters in the camp that was now behind her. She even had taken many days long scouting missions when it was reported that another group was in the area, or that the camp needed to find something in an emergency. Still, she had hidden her abilities as a Cylon. So, she used those new skills she had gained after leaving the Basestar with what the Final Five had given her. She ran. Well, she moved very fast and did so without leaving a trail that could be easily followed. Kara had no idea if she trusted how this little break up had gone down, and she was not going to stick around to find out.

###############

It took her many days of travel at her "best" field speed to get out of the area that the camp had used in her time there or from stories that she picked up while living there. At first, she was heading towards the cliff camp, but changed her mind when she was about halfway there. She used her Cylon memory to pull up a story from one of the members of the camp. That person had lived in an estate housing area that had been really high end before this war. They had only left that area out of fear of the radiation from the Cylon weapons, but Kara thought that it should be safe. She had access to the weather patterns and how large the weapons were that the Cylons had used. With that data, she had more than a working idea of what areas were safe on the planet, what areas were not, and what areas were borderline. That had been her back up plan for many, many months if she needed to leave this lake side camp in a hurry.

So, she had made her way to that location, and just as she had guessed. There were not any radiation hazards there, are anywhere close to it. Each home was on a 5.5 hectare lot, so they were like small farms and they were even sold as "genteel farms" before this Cylons had attacked. Kara went about setting up her own camp in one of the nicer homes, and she had started to live her life once again. She had picked up a few things from the local area and soon she had a nice garden growing. She had the time and skills needed to repair a greenhouse that was going to help with her hunting and traps she had set up within walking distance of her "farm" for fresh meat.

Kara even had a few wild cats that joined her that would come around begging for food, warmth, or attention of someone with an opposable thumb. Between the now little less wild small furry animals, hunting, gardening, and all of the books that she had found in this huge gated estates of genteel farms in the local area. She was both making it physically and mentally, even if she found that she missed her interactions with the humans of the camps. Not all of them, but some of them made her sad when she thought of them. After all even humans can be a pain in the neck almost as bad as the Number Twos could be.

Feeling this loneliness, she started looking to see if there were any other human or Cylon survivors in the local area. Then she slowly had figured out the patterns of some of the small groups of locals, which turned out that she could do some trading with them. But she would never go to their camps, and she would not let them come to her "farm". She would just brush them off with saying that she had some bad experiences with other survivors, and she didn't want to repeat them. She would say that she liked people, but she liked people under her own rules.

She made a seemingly offhand comment about turning the last person that had stopped by her farm uninvited into fertilizer for her truck garden. They seemed okay with that agreement, and small trades would continue with the small groups of colonial survivors in this local area. It was more just seeing new faces for both groups, more than the need for trading meat, some vegetables, or books. They even set up a method of passing letters between each of the groups without violating each of the group's privacy and security. Humans and it would seem that Human forms Cylons all were social animals.

She had lost track of time as it was measured in days of the week or month, and she was well set into a pattern of watching seasons when she had to change all over again. She was setting on the "Great Porch" of the farm with a cat on her lap, when something drew her eyes up to the local horizon. There was a dark black smoke cloud rising up in a thick column. It was a dark stained cylinder, and it was climbing rapidly into the grey sky. There had not been any rain in the last few days and no dry lightning, so there should not be anything burning in that direction. Then she noticed half a dozen more black and rising smoke columns in the area, and her blood went cold. Kara knew at the gut level that each one of those columns of smoke was in line with other homes in this estate.

###########

She had no idea when she jumped out of that wooden porch swing. After having to run so many times, she had a go bag ready and within easy reach. She thought about how far that the nearest smoke column was, and she knew that she didn't have much time. So, with the rucksack that she had since she crashed the Raptor. She made for the wood line at the run all while she was still putting the straps over her shoulder. She was just into the wood line when she heard something that she had not heard in a very long time. She was hearing ground transportation that was working and moving around. She could not tell how many there were, but they were not large truck like sounds. What she was hearing sounded like some kind of sedan. And then she heard the pounding feet of what could only be Centurions at the run.

Kara had gone about two kilometers from her "home" when she found one of her tree stands that she used to target a heard of Hinds that was growing in this local area. She went up the tree as fast as she could, with the ruck still over her back. Kara pulled out a pair of field glasses from the survival gear and worked them to find the house she had been living in. It didn't take long to find it; the column of dark smoke was a quick reference guide for its location.

Threw the glasses she could see a Number One looking around like he knew she was still close by. Kara could clearly see that he still had a Colonial made flamethrower strapped on his back. In that second, she knew what the One was doing. He was systematically destroying any human made constructions that might be used by any survivors to hide from the Cylon Empire. It would take a long time to do that on a planetary scale, but the Number One's would get enjoyment with each human made building that was put to the torch. They had referred to it as "removing the human stains from the planets" before the start of the Cylon Civil War.

Kara had been on the run ever sense that day the Number One had burned down her home, and the hounds of the Cylon Empire had been more or less dead on her heals ever since that afternoon. She knew that it was at least a Centurion platoon that had been after her, but sometimes she thought that there were more of them. But Kara knew that no matter what, a platoon was always seemingly on her heels. She had not been able to hunt as she ran, and Kara could only grab what food was handy right off the bush.

Even a human form Cylon had a limit to what they could do without fuel to feed their bodies on a regular basis. After many weeks of running in the woods and suburbs of what had been human towns, now she was hoping that she could lose her pursuers in the wrecked Colonial city. Her last meat had been a large rat that her snares had provided her during a short nap. She had not even been able to cook the beast before she had to eat it. With each close call with the Empire of Cylon's forces, she had lost more and more of her limited survival equipment. Kara was on the clock, and it was quickly running down. When it reached zero, she would die.

###############

Kara wakes up as she relives the meeting of her face with the street's hard, and grimy surface. When her eyes focused again, she almost choked when she saw a Number Three and two humans standing over her with weapons drawn and pointing right at her face.

A large woman spoke to the standing Cylon Number Three in an odd accent. "Do we keep her, or throw her back? She looks a little on the small side to be a legal catch. Query affirmative."

The Number Three tilted her head to one side in an exaggerated way and didn't say anything for a few seconds. Number Eights were not the strongest built of the human form Cylons. Still this one human form looked to have lost about half her total mass due to lack of food and exposure. And that didn't mean that the Number Three was not going to Frakk with her.

The Number Three made an odd throat noise. "Hmmm maybe, your right. She is on the small size. Do you or anyone else have a copy of the rule book on what is a legal catch and what has to be thrown back? Query negative."

The third person standing over Kara was a male, and he started patting his uniform like he was looking for something. "I thought I had one. Must have left it in my other combat smock. We should throw her back, just to be sure. Query affirmative."

##############

The Number Three and most of her escorts had dropped what they were doing at the first weapons shot from their sniper. After seeing what was going on below them, they all had run down all of those stairs as fast as they could without breaking bones or tearing to many muscles. The Sniper had stayed in her "perch", and she kept up supporting fires. The Cylon and people with Wolverine's genes were the fastest as they skipped sometimes half a flight of stairs with each step going down the dark stair well. They had hit the lobby like an avalanche of flesh that was armed and armored for modern warfare. For the whole time that they had been running. Wanda had been shooting the Centurions as they came around the corner and into her field of view. She was a kid in a candy store and loving every second of it.

They had run to the body lying in the street with a growing number of metal hulks of Centurions stretching out into the distance. Now that they were closer to the battle, the team started firing their own weapons at the enemy that was advancing a little faster than the sniper could take them out. While the escorts took care of the rest of the Cylons, and the sniper could get back to shooting the ones further away. That had left the Rebel Cylon with "nothing" to do.

The Number Three had reached for the unmoving figure with both of her hands. She was the only one in the group that had not been issued a rifle, so she was the only one that had both hands free to use in this situation. During the Person's fall, the covering over the figures face had moved. It took a few heartbeats for the Number Three to see the emaciated and dirty Number Eight. That caused the human form to freeze half bent over. Then one of her escorts fired a burst not but a meter from the ears of the Cylon, and the Number Three was brought back into the rest of the world.

The Number Three without a "real" name reached down and lifted the Number Eight into a fireman's carry, and she started moving towards a building at the dead run. It was the one off to the side of the building that the recovery team had been searching for computer data. Her escorts joined her after taking care of the rest of the Centurions following the now knocked out Number Eight. They had only paused long enough to check to make sure that there were not any more Centurions coming down that one road, before following the running computer expert with a body over her shoulders like it was a light leather coat.

That action had taken longer than it should thanks to the heavy metal shields carried by each of the advancing metal men. The range only made the weapons the escorts were packing more effective, but the same was true of the effectiveness of the Centurion defenses. But when you had the support of the fire coming from their sharpshooter high in one of the buildings around them, which drastically changed things on the ground. Thanks to the very old SLDF flash suppression device casting fake "flashes" all over the area, that was just what the JAF-05 was designed to do. No return fire came her way, and the snipers weapons fire had a better angle to get around those heavy shields.

The Number Three kept moving deeper into the lobby of the nearby building to the one holding the sniper. Just like most large office buildings in this area, there was a small food shop in the lobby. A lunch table was used, and the nonmoving Number Eight was dropped on to the cheap tabletop with a wet thump. The Number Three had little more than basic combat medic training, that she had needed to take and pass to be accepted for this mission. Near as she can tell, the Eight was okay. She just needed water and some food, okay a lot of food, clean water, and she very badly needed a shower with a frakk ton of soap. Oh, and a splint on the broken nose, or it could be too late for the way the Eight had looked. That nose had been broken for at least a week, before the Eight had landed face down in the street and maybe broke it again.

"Well, this Eight will stand out compared to her other sisters." As soon as those words left the Number Three's mouth, the thin woman started to moan.

The standing group only had enough time to pull their handguns before the eyes opened on the Number Eight spread out on the table. After the light banter the Number Three asked something that was very important. "So, you think this is the Number Eight that the recon team had been looking for, before we changed their primary missions?"

One of the Humans sat a canteen full of flavored water and a half opened ration pack near the almost skeletal like human form Cylon. When he steps back, he made eye contact with the thin human form. "So Cylon? What's your name, and what is your story?"

Between sips of water and bites of bland tasting field ration the Number Eight told this odd group her name. She had hoped that the Number Three was just hiding like her, but after seeing them interact and that they knew she was a Cylon caused her to throw out her planned lie. Then she recalled about what had been said about a recon team looking for her. She decided that she would tell the truth, the whole truth as she knew it.

The Number Three had an evil smile still looking down at the other human form spread out on the old deli tabletop. "Oh, Captain Starbuck is sooo going to love you. I would think about changing my name if I was you."

This statement got a few rounds of laughter from the SLDF ground team, and small packages of food were put near the thin human form. The Number Three looked back down at the Number Eight still laying on the deli table converted into her medical bed and dinner table. "Well at least now I'm not the only Cylon on this frakking team. After we get some meat on those bones of hers. She can at least help pack out the hardware we are going to be packing out of this frakking mission."

The Number Three looked down and the Number Eight and gave her an evil smile. "Kid I hope you are good with sorting gross data, because you have just been drafted into the Star League military. If not? You will become my favorite pack mule."

#########

Kara had no idea what was going on, and the last few parts of them talking had been in a language that she could not fully understand. But for the first time since she had crashed on this planet, she felt a little safer. Wisely she kept her mouth shut and slowly feeds more water and little bites of food into her body. Even this early, she could feel her body starting to improve with the supplies they had given her. She would have to be careful about how much she could eat at one time over the next few days. Another carry over from the Colonials had been what would happen if you overate after a long deration of no food.

Kara was watching this odd team as she ate while she was sitting on the tabletop. She noticed that one of the team had been keeping an eye on what was going on outside of this building. With a selection of food and flavored water spread out before her, she was more focused on that more than what was going on outside of this lobby. What Kara did notice, was that the group spoke a language that was not Colonial but it did have more than a few Colonial loan words that let her get the general idea of what was being said. After being on her own for so long and under a life or death condition for so long, her eyes were drawn to any movement.

While she was eating the strange food, the team made their way to the front of the lobby and were looking out while they softly talked. When the Number Three left that group at the exit, Kara got a little uncomfortable with the look the other Human Form Cylon was giving her. When the Three was near the table top that the Eight was still using as a bed/dinner table. She stopped and put both of her hands on her hips.

The Three put on her "we have an issues stance" and wondered how much of a short term problem the Eight was going to cause her. "It looks clear out there. We need to move to better meet up with the rest of the team. Are you good to move a few blocks without falling on your face again? Query Negative."

Kara took a little larger bite of food to finish off the package of food that she had been working on, and she gave the Number Three a positive head nod. She didn't wait to have a verbal exchange and slides off the table top. She looked around the table and then quickly around the darkish room. She was not about to leave these supplies and trash for the Cylon Empire to find. Without finding anything to work as she needed. She concludes she only has one option.

The Number Three was relieved with the positive head nod from the other Cylon and Kara started moving. Before the Number Three could say more, Kara took off her over coat and started filling the exposed insides with food and empty food wrappers from the deli table top. The Number Three was about to say something about leaving the trash, when the smell hit her hard enough that she had to take a pair of steps back. Yea, this woman badly needed a shower! The Number Eight smelled like she had been rolling around in six days old roadkill.

The Three went back to the front of the building to get the rest of the team ready to move, and to protect her now limited nose hair from being singed by the smell. She didn't need to hear the other Cylon coming up behind her, nor did the rest of the team. The smell reached them hard enough to get them to turn to see the very thin Eight with a small package made up of her outer coat and filled with what had been on the table. They had smelled her while she was a dozen steps away and closing on them.

The Number Three just gave a head nod and the team started to move towards the exit of this building. They slowly made their way out of the lobby and headed towards the building they had been looking for data in. They moved low, slow, and used every bit of cover as they tried to make life harder on any nearby Cylons. If they made contact with the enemy while moving? They would fall back away from one of the local tech company buildings and going towards a pre-planned fallback position. That was not needed, and the team with the Eight made it to a different building without any Cylons witnessing their movement.

Kara had no idea why they had come to this particular building, but she was just along for the ride. They went through the lobby like ghosts, with weapons sweeping for any threats they might run into, and then up three flights of stairs. She followed the team of humans being led by the Number Three without saying a word. They seemed to pick out a room by random and pointed her towards it. The only two bodies in the room now were the Three and the Eight.

The Eight was holding her package made up of the food and her outer coat like her life was depending on it. The Three kept stealthily looking out the door as periodically some soft sounds would leak into this room. The room was an interior area, and it had no exposure to any windows on this floor of the building. The Three could tell that the Eight was starting to get nervous without needing to actually see the other woman.

"The rest of the team are checking out other parts of this floor. Then they are going to be heading up to collect some items we were looking at before you crashed our party. We will wait here, until "we" can get our team members and supplies all in one place." The Number 3 had not looked around as she was talking to the other Cylon.

A triple tap came from deeper within the building and the Three rapped four times on the door frame in reply. "We are clear, for now." The Three turned and her nose burned. "And how about we get you cleaned up a little while the rest of the team is gone." The Three reached for one of the tactical "butt" packs one of the escort team had dropped here while they re-cleared the floor before they headed up to the top of the building. There should be some sealed wet hygiene wipes in this one or one of the other packs. This seemed like the perfect time to use some of them.

####

Wanda was a large person, much less being a large female, and she was even stronger than most people close to her raw size. This was purely thanks to some tweaking of her genes before she had been born. Still she was overloaded with the mass of gear that she was currently packing. When the escort team and the female Cylon had been able to get back to this building. They had given her a few clicks on the radio, and she had passed along the click code that said all was clear. A return click code had her packing down her perch and taking everything that she could carry down to the planned fall back floor in this building. She had her long rifle, her "normal" weapons, her pack with the rest of her field kit, and as many of the computer parts as she could carry.

That just happened to have been all of the electronic devices on the top floor of this building. She passed the rest of the team heading up, about at the twenty story line of the stair well. They would still have to go to the top of the building, if only to recover their sleeping and other gear they had left behind when they had run down the stairs. Her taking the load would make it quicker for the rest of the escort team to start back down. It would slow her down, but it would speed up the movement to get everyone down to the fall back floor.

Wanda pushed away the tablecloth that was blocking the access to the room that should be their sleeping area with the barrel of her issued weapon. Before she could ask for help, her eyes were greeted by seeing a walking skeleton running damp hygiene towels down her body. Her mouth started moving before her brain could stop it. "Good God! Someone get that Cylon a sandwich!"

The Three translated what the other woman had said for the Eight. Kara tossed the now abused hygiene towel to a small stack and picked up another one before looking over her boney shoulder at the woman overloaded with military equipment. In accented, broken, but in still passible English she said. "I would not turn one down. Do you have one that you are willing to give up?"

Wanda started dropping her load around the room that would be out of the flat areas needed for sleeping. When she was done, she dug around in her rucksack and pulled out a package that had the word smörgås printed on the side. Wanda underhanded tossed the package to the thin woman that was now putting some fresh but oversized under clothes on. Wanda went about setting up her sleeping area, as the far escort. She would be expected to cover the rest of the team, so she needed to hurry.

With some clean clothes on, even if the Three was larger than the Eight, she felt more alive. But the Number Three was a lot closer in size to the Eight, than the walking wall with breast would have been that Kara had just seen. Kara opened the package that the huge woman had passed to her. When the food slides out into her hand. Kara had no idea what she was seeing. All she knew was that the Three had said that this was a sandwich, now she was confused. "Hey, shouldn't this come with another slice of bread on top?"

The Three gave a smirk and continued to work on repacking her ruck. "Everywhere in the Galaxy but New Circe and someplace called Rasalhague, yes."

Kara had no idea how to take that statement and decided food was food. She took a small bite and then a larger one of the open topped sandwich. After the raw rat, she was not going to complain about a half finished sandwich.

###########

Notes:

Wade "jeff" Sitar: Second story man, safe cracker, and thief. He only has a few current Ka'la'tha contacts. Gets drafted by Colonial military and sent to Leonis to use his skills. His next three years will be spent opening more safes than he knew had been made.

Data Recovery Team Sniper: SLDF enlisted Wanda with FNF-J12 (Shrapnel #1 page 81 fitted with JAF-05 (TRO 2750 p 156)

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