Chapter Five

Chapter Five

Present Day

- Ragnar Achorage

Leoben Convoy shook his head. The radiation surrounding Ragnar Anchorage affected him more than anticipated. Fortunately he wouldn’t have to endure it for much longer. When the attack came, Colonial military and civilian ships would rally to this anchorage and he would be waiting for them. Prepared to engage in sabotage and sow discord until his brother and sister Cylons arrived.

The model two shook his head one more time and closed his eyes. He felt a strange sensation and when he opened his eyes he was no longer at Ragnar Anchorage.

- Picon

A few kilometers from one of the main command hubs controlling Picon’s ground based defense systems a transport lumbered along a back road. The Cylon driving the vehicle, a five known as Brian by his human ‘friends’ turned and glimpsed at the cargo. The nuke was small but should be sufficient for the task at hand.

The CNP system was only installed on the CDF’s space based assets. The extensive ground based defense system still needed to be cracked the old fashioned way. The heavy missiles, defense cannons and satellites controlled from this facility could protect a sizable portion of Picon’s western hemisphere, destroy a large number of raiders and even damage or destroy some of the attacking basestars.

Granted the defenses could not hold for very long, especially without battlestar support. But it would be costly to break. And the Cylons figured, why pay the price when it’s easier to cripple such defenses?

A groundside detonation of the nuke close to the main control bunker’s communication and DRADIS arrays would blind the system for 30 to 40 seconds. Long enough for the basestars to begin full scale bombardment of the surface.

The number five model smiled and turned back to watch the road and saw a flash of silver.

- Scorpion Fleet Shipyards – Battlestar Pegasus

Gina Inviere took a final look around Admiral Helena Cain’s quarters. She would miss this place. She would miss Helena. But God’s will was clear.

She took a deep breath, expecting the first bombs to strike soon.

And then she saw a flash of silver.

- Caprica

Six stared at Gaius Baltar in disbelief.

“Now you’re telling me you’re an alien,” Six said.

“Yes.”

“From something called ‘The Culture’?”

“Yes,” Gaius said. “We’ve been observing both you and the Twelve Colonies for some time now.”

“You’re an alien?”

“Yes,” Gaius said. “I’ve said it three times.”

“I’m having the tiniest bit of trouble believing you,” Six said. “Because in four decades of traveling the stars we’ve never encounter a single piece of evidence that aliens exist.”

“Neither you or the Colonials have traveled further than 1,579 light years in any direction,” Gaius said. “It’s a rather large galaxy. And a lively one too.”

“Prove it,” Six demanded.

“I don’t have to prove it.”

“Why?”

“Come now, you’ve always known there was something … different about me,” Gaius said. “I’m a good actor, but not that good.”

“You’re going to need to do better than that,” Six said.

“If you insist,” came a new voice. Six stood up and whirled around trying to find the source and saw nothing.

“Who’s there?” she demanded.

“I am,” Six watched as a small oval shaped objected that she thought nothing more than a cheap piece of art floated from one of the shelves towards her.

Gaius spoke, “Permit me to introduce my colleague Gurlaz-JaLite Ubatoma ‘la Tozy Banum.”

“Please call me Tozy,” the object said and mix of red and orange splashed across its surface.

Six watched as a coherent blue beam of blue light stretched out from it and stopped right in front of her at about waist height. It almost looked like it wanted to shake her hand.

“Go on,” Gaius said, seeming to read her thoughts.

Tentatively Six reached out towards the beam and grasped it. It was solid.

“How?”

“Basic force field technology,” Tozy said withdrawing its field.

“You’re an AI,” Six stated. “You should be helping us. The humans …”

“Are young,” Tozy interrupted. “They need guidance. That’s why we are here.”

“God commands they pay,” Six said.

“And the 856,312,578 people killed in your War of Liberation was not payment enough?” Tozy asked. Six watched a flash of light play out across its surface. If she didn’t know better she would have thought it was annoyed with her.

“Then why have you been helping me?” she asked turning to Gaius.

“Helping you?” Gaius said. “I haven’t been helping you.’

“The CNP …”

“The real CNP installed in the Colonial Fleet bares only superficial similarity to what I showed you,” Gaius said. “There is no backdoor. And the security protocols I put in place are more than adequate to fend off an attack from Cylon systems. And you complained about my ‘sloppy’ coding when your backdoor stood out like a sore thumb. Any moderately competent programmer could spot it instantly.”

“The defense mainframe?”

“You saw what I wished you see,” Tozy said.

“But …”

“You’re other agents cross checked the information you provided,” Tozy finished. “We saw to that as well.”

Six looked back and forth between the two. “It was all a lie?”

“Not everything,” Gaius said. “I really do find you a most attractive and interesting woman.”

“I …” Six stopped when she saw another flash of color move across … ‘Tozy’s’ surface.

“Gaius it’s time,” Tozy said.

“Dancing is here,” Gaius said.

“Dancing?”

“It’s making its close in pass to Caprica, in range in 17 seconds,” Tozy said. “There will be a 23 second window for displacement.”

“What?” Six didn’t understand what was happening as Gaius moved next to her and the little machine floated above them. She tried to move only to discover a force field of some kind surrounding both her and Baltar.

A flash of silver filled her vision and Six found herself standing in a large room around thirty meters a side. A dozen or so other human form Cylons and a large truck shared the space with them.

“Frak.”

------

11 years ago (Colonial Reckoning)

“Did you have a pleasant day Gaius?” asked a voice as Gaius slipped out his bedroom.

“Quite pleasant actually,” Gaius answered. “And it is turning into quite the pleasant evening.” His companion still slept and Tozy threw up a sound dampening field to prevent her from hearing anything. He debated waking her when he finished this conversation or letting her sleep on until morning so she would be well rested for tomorrow’s activities.

“So I noticed,” Tozy said.

“I made contact with Mayor Adar at the reception last night,” Gaius said. “He was quite pleased to meet the ‘youngest’ winner of the Magnate Award and he found my ‘controversial’ views on Artificial Intelligence research quite interesting.”

“As expected,” the Drone Tozy drifted down from the ceiling and floated at eye level to Baltar. “Current projections show an 88 percent probability of Adar becoming President in the next election cycle; we may not even need to intervene to ‘help’. Friendship with him places you in a perfect position to influence the technological development of the Twelve Colonies.”

“That is the plan,” Gaius said feeling the ‘Gaius Baltar’ persona start fade as he spoke with Tozy. The conversation was in Marain, the language of the Culture. Constructed by Minds during the early days of the Culture it stressed the ideals and concepts that banded the Culture the together. Speaking it allowed Gaius to shed the vain ego-driven persona he’d adopted, at the suggestion of the SC Minds who planned this operation, to ingratiate himself with the Colonial upper crust. “And what have you been doing with yourself Tozy.”

“I spent the day touring Aerelon and Sagittaron,” Tozy replied. “The artificially created planets definitely contribute to the Colony’s disjointed social and economic structure.”

“In what way?”

“Aerelon is perfectly constructed, from orbital position, axial tilt, ground soil composition and weather patterns to grow agricultural crops,” Tozy answered. “It is little wonder that even before the war devastated the agricultural sectors of Picon, Caprica and Libra, Aerelon accounted for 13 percent of Colony’s agricultural output. It now accounts for 22 percent. Sagittaron is similarly positioned as a single resource economy with large deposits of Tylium both planet side and on two of its three moons.”

“So what was the point?” Gaius asked. “What were the ‘Lords of Kobol’ after?”

“We’re not certain,” Tozy answered. “The Minds have run through several hundred possibilities and according to them none provide a fully satisfying answer.”

“Anything come close?” Gaius asked as he moved to porch to enjoy the night air and the view.

“A long term test of societal development patterns from stage one to stage four,” Tozy answered floating after Gaius. “As you know the both the Colonial and Cylon religion stress repeated historical patterns.”

“’All this has happened before and all this will happen again’,” Gaius quoted from the Book of Pythia.

“Colonial history bears out this patterned thinking,” Tozy said. “The continuous cycle of build-up and collapse on Kobol until their relocation to this star sysem.”

“Where the pattern broke,” Gaius noted. “Creating the Cylons.”

“Who broke off to found a semi-independent society,” Tozy completed.

“They reach a certain point of development and fall back,” Gaius said. “It’s cruel in a way. Of course, if the plan works, this will be a much different place in 100 years.”

“You almost sound like you will miss it,” Tozy said.

“In a way,” Gaius acknowledged. “There is a vitality here. They work so hard to achieve, to survive even. The challenges they face.”

“The Culture faces many challenges Gaius,” Tozy said.

“But largely of our own creation,” Gaius countered. “Which is more rewarding; success in the face of obstacles placed by another and the universe or success in the face of ones own self-imposed obstacles?”

“There is no effective answer to that question Gaius,” Tozy replied. “But I would note; societies structured on the former tend to produce far more ‘losers’ than societies on based on the latter. I would also note that within this society’s standards you are one of the ‘winners’. I suspect you’re opinion might change if you were one of its ‘losers’.”

“Almost certainly,” Gaius said and then decided to change topics. “Are the Cylons are still planning on destroying the Colonies?”

“Yes,” Tozy replied.

“Interesting, again the parallel to the Fall of Kobol?” Gaius said. “The Cylon god attempting to elevate its viewpoint above all others, most especially its creators, by destroying them.”

“True,” Tozy said. “Along with the same parallels at the other societal epochs on Kobol.”

“Have the Cylons completed their transition into fully biologic form?”

“Almost,” said Tozy. “The genetic structures of the seven ‘primary’ models have been set and ‘production’ has begun. Complete transition will take place over the next year or so. The ‘hybrid’ models already control their basestars.”

“That a machine race should so badly stunt its own development is unique in my experience,” Gaius noted. “While the use of biologic components is not unheard of (you have a biologic backup system should your other three systems fail), but to completely abandon their machine selves,” Gaius shook his head. “They seem to have the same limitations towards exploration and development that exist within the Colonials.”

“True,” Tozy said. “Their FTL drive gives them the capacity to have expanded out 20 to 30 thousand years in the last two centuries or so.”

“Far enough that they should have already made contact with the larger galactic community,” Baltar said. “A key missing component of their society; the urge to explore and grow. They haven’t even rediscovered Kobol despite the fact that it is less than a half a years travel away.”

“Yes,” Tozy acknowledged. “Even without the threat of the Cylons, the lack of curiosity is potentially destructive.”

“That is why we are here.”