03 - Sagittarius is Bleeding Read Online Free Page A

his
salvation, who had given him something other than machinery and research to live
for and had horrifically turned it into a means of destroying the human race.
What the hell kind of man was he, that he could only have happiness at the cost
of genocide?
    He swore he could smell her perfect scent, and his heart raced—not from fear,
but from hopeless longing for a woman, a time, an innocence and naiveté long
gone.
    “I don’t know,” said Baltar, and he was speaking of so much that he didn’t
know—his destination, what would happen next, whether they would survive another
minute, why he even deserved to live considering so many people had died because
of his stupidity—that the three simple words spoke volumes of his character.
    They meant nothing, however, to the agent, who simply replied, “There’s
nothing you need to know right now, sir, except that you need to keep moving.”
The agent’s voice snapped Baltar back to reality and he struggled to keep up
with him while, at the same time, he swore he could hear the faint, mocking
laughter of Number Six in his head.
     
    Boxey had been modest when he spoke of how he had picked up tips on quality
card playing since making some new acquaintances. He had, in fact, acquired—in a
remarkably short time—some other skills as well.
    Actually, “acquired” might not have been the best way to put it. “Honed”
would be more accurate. Boxey had always been an exceptional hide-and-seek
player in his youth. Many was the time that his parents recounted incidents
where Boxey seemed to have literally disappeared into thin air. They would enter
his room, calling his name, and there would be no sign of him. With weary cries
of “Not again!” they would wind up tearing the house apart before Boxey was
inevitably betrayed by his laughing—no, chortling—with glee that he had driven
his parents crazy once more.
    All of that was long ago and far away, or at least so it seemed. Boxey’s
tendency to laugh aloud at his own cleverness was gone. So was the life. It
seemed to Boxey that the memories he had might as well have come from someone else entirely, for all the
relevance they had to his current life.
    Nevertheless, one of the skills that had not disappeared with his aging into
adolescence had been the ability to be sneaky. To make himself not be seen, to
blend into the background. He had said nothing to Starbuck or Apollo or any of
the others about it, but he had acquired quite the nimble set of fingers. It had
been more out of profound boredom than anything else that he had taken up petty
thievery on the Peacemaker, the civilian transport ship to which he’d
been assigned. It was one of the larger transports, and it was extremely easy to
slip into and out of the throngs of people who seemed constantly to be milling
about in the corridors, looking for something to do to occupy their time. The
truth of the matter was that they were as bored as he was; he was just being
aggressive about killing the boredom.
    It was after he had lifted the wallet of one particularly officious gentleman
that he had turned around, prepared to blend in with the shadows, only to
discover himself face to face with a smiling red-haired girl. She had freckles,
which initially struck Boxey as odd until he remembered that, yes, not all that
long ago, the sun had shone on people’s faces and done things to their skin.
Freckles were gradually beginning to disappear these days, as were all hints of
tans, but this girl still sported them. Her face was round, and she had deep
brown eyes and small ears that poked out from copious straight hair that hung
down to her shoulders.
    Boxey braced himself, waiting for her to sound the alarm. Instead all she did
was say, “You call that blending in with the shadows?” and she rolled her
eyes in impatience over this Obviously Dumb Boy’s ham-handed attempt at
thievery.
    Her name was Minerva, Minerva Greenwald, and as she gave Boxey