Disclaimer: I don't own Battlestar Galactica 2003 or Caprica. They belong to their respective creators and/or Copyright owners. This story is written with no commercial aim. I make no money from it. It is not for sale of rent.
The Cylon Wars
=TCW=
Prologue:
Requiem for a dream
Caprica City
Caprica
"It's all happened before..." The blond woman trailed off and smiled at the sleeping man she had been studying for the last hour or so.
Her eyes crinked in grimace. The years hadn't been kind to him. She could see it clearly – the man had shrunk, if she didn't know better, the blonde would have believed him to be almost a head shorter from the last time she saw him. His once raven black hair was mostly snow white with a bit of gray sprinkled in it. His face – it was almost a mockery made of leather like skin and deep worry lines.
She averted her eyes, glancing at the nearby window and looked at her reflection. A face that the humans would consider beautiful stared back, framed by shoulder length blond hair. She should be smiling, preparing to execute her part of the plan.
She should be cheerful, rejoicing even, because the colonials, the hated humanity had mere hours to live… and all she had to do was kill a single man. The model Six Cylon looked at her lap where her hands were clutching a silenced pistol. It would be so easy. She had to just raise her arm, point the gun and press the trigger.
Her eyes returned to the slumbering human. He was a ghost anyway. A pale shadow of the man she loved a lifetime ago.
Before she was chosen.
Before she became something more and transcedented mere blood and flesh.
Before we were captured! A small, treacherous voice screamed in the back of her head.
Before the experiments! Images flashed in front of her eyes. Old, war era Centurions were leaning over her, their red eyes flashing mercilessly.
The Six shook her head. She knew what she had to do. What was the right thing. She had to finish her mission, then it would be best to just shoot herself so after her resurrection the corrupt code could be purged from her.
It would be for the best. That should silence the voice. Or perhaps it would finally shut the frak up once she shot the man.
Frak that! They'll just cut us again! Or just box us! The Six shuddered. Here body convulsed with phantom pains, feeling cold steel slicing into her flesh.
It was all wrong! This wasn't her, just that poor human that was used as her template… Here plump lips parted in a silent "O". There wasn't supposed to be a template for the Bio-Cylons. They should represent the best of that flawed creation called humanity, not be just copies of individual people… She shouldn't remember… There was nothing to remember…
"Helena..." a gravel, yet familiar voice whispered. It made her heart beat faster, her chest constricting around it.
She looked up. The man was sitting in his bed, a look of utter shock on his face. The Six couldn't help it and smiled, then grimaced as her head was wracked by pain. She raised a shaking arm, the gun trembling in her hand. The old man snapped his mouth shut and stared stared at her. She could see his eyes shifting from longing to defiance and back again.
She lined up her shot, the muzzle pointing straight between his eyes. Her finger started gently squeezing the trigger, then stopped. The Six was no longer starring at the old wizened man. Instead she was seeing a roughly handsome man, wearing the sharp looking uniform of the Picon military, with a brand new captain's insignia.
The Cylon gritted her teeth. He was a damn ghost, who was better off dead! Just like the one, this Helena, that lurked in the back of her head. So she steeled herself and pressed the trigger. The gun kicked against her hand, it's silenced retort shattering the silence.
A look of astonishment, mixed with betrayer appeared on the man's face just as the back of his head exploded, painting the nearby wall with blood and brains.
The gun fell from the woman's suddenly weak hands, while she stared at her handiwork. It was God's will! She did her part, right?!
A single tear rolled over her left cheek and she let out a long, hopeless scream, containing all the heart-ripping pain that was suddenly drowning her entire world.
=TCW=
Helena jumped up. Or at least tried to. She was enveloped into something soft, constricting her movements. Desperation fueled strength ripped the fabric tearing the satin sheets she had cocooned herself in. Her wide eyes darted in all directions, searching for the corpse of the man she loved. The one she murdered.
Instead of a body with the back of it's head missing, she saw only her bedroom, now covered with pieces of ripped sheets. Helena shuddered as chill ran up her spine, made worse by the flimsy, sweat-drenched nightgown that was sticking to her back.
It was a dream… Just a fraking nightmare!
"Heh..." The Six chuckled at herself. None of that was real…
"Tomorrow it will be." Stated a voice identical to her own.
The Cylon looked around, searching for her sister. Sure enough, she was right there – sitting cross-legged in the armchair in the other end of the room.
"Tomorrow night. Will you carry your orders again, Helena?"
The Six sat on the edge of her bed and glared at her sister. Then frowned, when she couldn't detect her on the Cylon wireless network. As far as she was concerned, there wasn't anyone else in the room.
"Great. I'm really going insane."
"That's one way to look at it." The apparation gave her a coy smile, before her face became serious. "Tomorrow the Plan will be executed. What will we do, Six? Will we walk into his home and put a bullet between his eyes?" She cocked her head to the side. "Put him out of his misery? All this time, he's been waiting to be reunited with us in Elysium. Just one bullet. It will be an act of mercy. So we can kill the rest of the humans just a bit easier…" She trailed off. "Just as the God we don't believe in demands..."
"It's the will of God!" She snapped back an automatic response. "You know what they did to us!"
"Who? The Humans or the Cylons?" The coy smile was back.
"Shut the frak up! You aren't here! You can't be here!"
"Indeed. I'm but a dream. A ghost in the machine." The mirage stood up and slowly walked towards Six. "Can we do that to him? Destroy all he has left – his duty, burning the words he's sworn to protect in nuclear fire? It will be better to just end him, instead of letting him watch the Colonies die."
"So what?! He didn't protect me!" Six screamed. She moved away from the slowly advancing ghost until her back hit the wall. The woman hugged her legs and rocked back and forth. "They cut me! Took everything I was! There was no one to help me!"
"No, there wasn't. We were alone with the machines. They destroyed us." The apparation stepped closer. "They remade us." Another step. "They enslaved us. And so the cycle began anew."
"What's happened before, will happen again..." Six muttered numbly, heedless of the tears streaking over her face.
"We don't believe that. Not really. We wouldn't be falling apart right now if we did." The apparation glided closer and smiled. She stretched her arm and tapped Helena's forehead with the index and middle finger of her right hand. "Bang. Time's up, 'Eli."
=TCW=
"FRAK!" Helena sat up and looked around. She was in the middle of her bed, hugging her pillow. Around her, she could see pieces of torn apart sheets.
And the fraken alarm clock was going off, compounding the throbbing pain in the back of her head. She glared at the offensive piece of plastic and electronics, noted the time and date, and threw her pillow at it.
It was five in the morning. Twenty seventh. About a day or so before the Plan went into effect. And she had an Admiral to assassinate, because the rest of the Cylons wanted to be sure that the bastards was dead after all the trouble he was during the last war. Preferably before the plan was executed. Or so she had been told.
Six went into the bathroom and looked in the mirror. Pale face and bloodshot eyes looked back. Something was different, beyond her appalling appearance. When she concentrate, Six could almost remember. There were fragments in the back of her mind, shards that hadn't been properly purged from her memories.
A ghost in the machine, indeed.
Her face twisted in fury and she slammed a fist straight into her image. The mirror shattered, slicing open her the back of her hand.
Helena started trembling, the sudden pain causing a brief flashback - a thin, gleaming blade was descending towards her eyes, held by a metal hand. Six shook her head, chasing the memory away. She glanced at the mirror fragments, each showing her face from a different angle, making the illusion that her sisters were watching her.
"Frak you all!" Helena shouted at her mirror images, feeling lost and betrayed.
She brought up her right hand, looking at the cut and bleeding skin. She felt warm fingers gently probing around the wound, before they started cleaning with an antiseptic patch.. She looked up, seeing the relieved face of her lover.
Six blinked in confusion and the memory evaporated like a morning mist, leaving her alone again.
What was she supposed to do now?! Kill him?! Let him die with the rest of the humans?!
She knew what a Six was meant to do. What the Bio-Cylon would do.
"What about me?" She asked the shattered mirror.
"What would Helena do?" The ghost asked, startling her.
What indeed…
=TCW=
Chapter 1: Heralds of the Apocalypse
=TCW=
Part 1: Ghosts of the past
Admiral Demeter's apartment
Caprica City
"They don't make captains like back in the day..." Admiral Demeter muttered, before swallowing a shot of Ambrosia.
His aide, who was sitting on the floor with his hands behind his back looked sheepishly at the ground.
The Admiral turned towards Helena, who was pointing her gun in his general direction.
"So, who is the genius that put you up to this stunt, girl? There aren't many people who would go to such a length to mess up with my head." He narrowed his eyes at the Cylon infiltrator.
"Oh, there are a lot of the frakers, trust me." Six spat.
"Riiight, pull the other one."
"I would, but it probably give you a heart attack." Helena pouted.
Demeter snorted. "You've done your homework. The voice, the face, even the mannerism. It's uncanny."
"I can't take any credit for the way I look," She shrugged.
"Boss, please stop antagonizing the lady with the gun!" Captain Kilo protested.
"Hush, you!" Helena glared at the man on the floor.
"What? Do you want to live forever, son?"
"Preferably!"
"When you get to my age, you'll start singing another song."
"Nah, I'll be fine."
"Keep telling yourself that right up until the arthritis starts screwing up your hands and you need to wake up multiple times a night to go use the head."
"That's too much information, boss."
"What the hell is wrong with you two?!" Helena snapped at the Fleet officers.
"Ah. That." Demeter smiled and nodded at his aide.
"It's a deep dark secret."
"Mine's deeper." Helen glared at them.
"The trouble you are in after this stunt is deep indeed." Demeter nodded sagely.
"You know that I could have shot you both!" Six grumbled.
"Yep. Yet, you haven't."
"We don't have time for this! John stop pretending to be a damn joker already!" Helen snapped. "We don't have time for you antics!"
"Why not? I'll take any legitimate excuse to skip some paperwork, especially if I can keep it up for couple of weeks." Demeter shrugged nonchalantly.
"Enough already!" Helena glowered and pointed her gun at the aide, who stiffened. "You've been preparing for a war for the last forty years. Congratulation, by this time tomorrow it will be a fact."
"Girl, this charade gets less funny by the minute."
"It's not a charade and I can prove it. I'm a Cylon."
"Frak, she's really insane." Captain Kilo bemoaned.
"Uh-huh..."
"You've got a portable computer," Helena nodded at said piece of hardware which was on the dinning table next to the Admiral. "Place it on the floor and slide it towards me. You'll get your kriffing proof, get your head out of your backside, and help me kriff up those treacherous bastards before they nuke us all!"
To her pleasant surprise, John actually complied, while watching her tiredly. A bit of improvisation later, including cutting a piece of the fiber-optic cable which was providing somewhat secure network access to the Admiral's apartment and she was plugged in the computer, showing the officers that she could actually access and use it that way.
Just to make a point, she put big flashing "I TOLD YOU SO!" on the screen.
"Well, that's not something we see everyday." The Captain muttered.
"Yep. Last week, Solen's demonstration." John agreed. He looked at Helena. "You probably have couple of minutes before the quick response team breaks down the door and windows. Start talking."
"You two bastards have been buying time!" Helena glared at John. She should have thought of that! It was just like him to pull something like that!
"Naturally." The old man smiled smugly.
Six was torn between admiring his audacious slash idiotic behavior and slugging him for his antics. She shook her head in despair before lowering her gun. "If the Colonies have to count on you two, we are all fraked up beyond belief." Helena grumbled. Then she unloaded the weapon and threw the empty gun at Demeter, who despite his advanced age managed to catch it deftly.
"Let me reintroduce myself," she gave them a mock bow, "I'm Model Six Bio-Cylon."
"Frak me." Kilo, who had jumped on his feet when she unloaded the gun, cursed.
"Your not my type, pretty boy." Helen dismissed him. "Long story short, the Cylons have a plan and intent to nuke the Colonies to oblivion."
"Why I'm not surprised?!" John shook his head. "And how exactly do they expect to achieve that feat? We won't just stay away and watch the pretty fireworks, you know."
"The CPN. It has a backdoor. One of my sisters working with Baltar installed it."
"I'll need some kind of solid proof, if you aren't insane that is. Kilo, go check on the QRF boys. I'll prefer that my apartment remain not shot up, thank you very much."
"And leave you with the insane woman?"
"Oh, yeah. Try not to start any dastardly rumors about us."
"Nonsense!" Helena mock-sniffed and waved at her figure. "If we do anything, he'll died of heart attack."
"The boss is obviously suicidal. So that won't stop him."
"Captain, are you volunteering for a tour of duty on some gods forsaken ice-ball at the back of nowhere?"
"Frak no, sir! I'll be going now."
The moment Kilo made his way towards the other end of the apartment, where Six had ordered them to dump their communication devices, Demeter's posture changed. All cheerfulness bled off his posture, his face becoming a steel mask.
"Further proof for your claims. And if it is true, then how the frak are you wearing this face?" The Admiral voice was low, with unmistakable undertone of menace.
=TCW=
Part 2: Stumbling in the dark
Raptor Flight Delta-Seven-One
En route to Fleet Intelligence HQ
Caprica
"Is this some kind of joke, Demeter?" Admiral Corman's voice sounded over the headset John was wearing.
"May we be so lucky." Admiral Demeter glanced at the blonde woman who was in the back of the bird.
Helena was cuffed to her seat and had two marines pointing their assault rifles at her.
"The woman that… contacted me demonstrated that she could interface directly with my portable computer. She stuck a cable in her arm and took control of it."
"Well, I'll be damned. You sure that someone from your special projects division isn't fucking up with us?"
"The thought crossed my mind. We can't disregard the chance that she's genuine."
"No. Besides Kilo did confirm that you haven't lost your mind. Yet" Corman paused. "Get to the HQ and find me some answers. I'll see what's up with the CNP."
"What about Baltar? He's supposed to be working with someone who's an exact copy to my guest."
"I'll send a marine unit to check on them. Corman out."
"You know, we are running out of time, right?" Helena pouted.
"Perhaps. Even if you are a genuine Cylon infiltrator, you still might be a plant to try make us compromise our defenses."
"They are already full of holes thanks to Baltar and his ego. What my sister sees in him I'll never know." She rolled her eyes theatrically.
"Admiral, the Frak is going on?" Lieutenant Quin, the commander of the QRF detachment, asked, his Virgon accent getting thick. He was glancing between John and Helena with a frown on his face.
"That's a very good question LT. Why don't you tell us?" Demeter turned his head towards the blonde woman. "In detail this time."
Helena glared at them. "What?! I'm not here to entertain your marines curiosity."
"She really a Cylon?" One of the troopers who wasn't pointing a gun at Helena asked, disbelief clearly heard in her voice.
"So she says." John shrugged.
"She doesn't look like a chrome job."
"Hey! She has a name!" Helena glared at the soldiers.
"I'm painfully aware of that." Demeter muttered. "By the way, you may want to start talking before we reach the HQ. The Intel boys and gals won't be asking nicely."
"I warn you about your impending doom so you can do something about it and you are going to have me tortured?"
"Nah. Then again you can never be sure with the spooks. They are sneaky like that. Besides you admitted to be a spy among other things..."
"Why didn't I just shoot you?"
"I want to know that too."
"Bastard."
"Name calling? Seriously?"
"This is some kind of joke, right?" The LT moaned.
=TCW=
Battlestar "Nemesis"
High orbit over Caprica
Commander Gaia Stone, who had been present for most of Admiral Demeter's report had a mighty frown on her face. On the face of it, it sounded that the old warrior had finally lost it. The Cylons having become humans… Then again, with Corman sending a marine detachment to apprehend someone as high profile as Baltar, she was starting to wonder what the frak were the admirals thinking.
"Orders, sir?" she asked.
"How long would it take to pull out the CNP and replace it with older software?"
For a moment she looked at her superior officer as if he had grow a second head, before her training kicked in.
"Twenty minutes to purge the systems, another fifteen at least to be marginally effective again."
"Cut off the network and start replacing the software. Inform me when the unit going after Baltar reports. I need to make some more calls. And don't give me that look. Even if Demeter's going off the deep end, his aide is unlikely to be insane too. Not to mention that the QRF sent to his apartment did apprehend a woman claiming to be a fraking Cylon."
"I'm on it, sir. Is this all?" Stone looked abashed. She had missed the part where Demeter's wild tales apparently got some independent corroboration. Frak!
"Carry on."
=TCW=
Doctor Baltar's residence
Thirty kilometers outside Caprica City
"Captain, recon drones are over the target. Thermal shows two persons in the AO. They are in what appears to be the bedroom. Probably fraking each other." The last sentence was muttered quietly.
"Good for them. Are the fire teams in position?"
"Alpha through Gamma are ready. Delta will cover the north side in thirty."
"Once Delta is deployed the Raptors will drop us on the roof and we'll breach simultaneously. Remember, the Admiral wants both Baltar and his companion alive, in condition to answer questions. Don't forget to sweep the whole house anyway. Intel is unsure but there may be toasters in the vicinity. So don't rely only on thermals."
A chorus of 'Yes, Sir!' answered that declaration. The question on everyone's minds, how the frak toasters might be found on Caprica of all places, remained unasked. Besides, if they were unlucky, they might find out first hand. The hard way.
"Delta is in position."
"Go."
"Willco, Captain. Hold on." The pilot warned, before the Raptor, and it's two companions, which had been hovering a kilometer from the targeted residence dashed forward.
=TCW=
Gaius Baltar laid exhausted in his bed. Next to him, the barely covered form of his lover was sprawled over a large pillow. Her blonde head rested on her hand and she was smiling saucily at him.
There was a smirk on her face, as if she knew something he didn't. Or so she thought.
Not that he particularly cared. His latest project for the DOD was complete, beyond some inevitable software patches that would be needed. More importantly, he had a lovely woman in his bed, one who had fraked his brains out.
Life was good, even better if you were Baltar.
Or so he though until the large windows of the bedroom shattered and he was simultaneously blinded and deafened by eye-watering flashes and incredibly loud bangs. Gaius tried to get out of bed when he felt something stinging his bare chest. He had a moment to feel nerve-searing agony before his world went black.
He never saw the woman he might have been falling in love, move faster than humanly possible. She was barely affected by the flash-bangs, the light sheet that had been covering her nude form providing almost as much hindrance while she jumped out of the bed.
Despite the white spots in front of her eyes and the fact that she was deaf for the moment, Caprica-Six was painfully aware of what was happening. The heavily armed and armored marines storming through the destroyed windows was a clue enough. She didn't know how the plan had been blown at this late stage and it didn't really matter. The important thing was that she couldn't be caught alive. She had to resurrect and warn her brothers and sisters for the mishap.
That's why she charged the soldiers, determined to force them to kill her.
She reached the nearest marine, without being gunned down and grabbed his weapon, slamming it in the man's chest with enough force to throw him at the nearby wall. The shove was powerful enough to make the trooper loose the grip of his gun, leaving it in the Cylon's possession.
However, that wasn't enough. Before Caprica could properly aim her trophy she felt multiple stings in her bare back. Then she screamed as thousands of volts ran amok through her system. Her muscles locked and her finger clamped around the trigger, the weapon going wild in Caprica's hands.
An unlucky marine was blown in half by anti-Cylon ordinance.
The last thing Caprica saw before blessed oblivion claimed her, was how the explosive bullets were shredding the bed, stitching a line of destruction towards Gaius.