Disclaimer: I do not own Battlestar Galactica.
Chapter One: One Mistake
Picon – Two Months Prior to the Attack on the Colonies
One mistake. That was all it took to change the destiny of twelve worlds and two races.
As he hurtled towards the ground he cursed himself in every language he knew. Wondered how he ever thought he could have made that catch, wondered how he could have risked so much for a fracking game, wondered how he was going to explain his many intercessions to the gods, wondered if the hole in his soul would finally be filled by death.
His head hit the floor and despite the blinding pain he thought for a fleeting moment that he may survive. Then the weight of the rest of his body slammed down on him.
His neck snapped.
The game came to an abrupt halt as medics rushed into the arena and the crowds screamed in denial but it did no good.
Samuel T Anders was dead.
The Colony – Two Months Prior to the Attack on the Colonies
Awareness slammed back into Samuel T Anders brain.
WHAT THE FRACK?
The pyramid player thought as he realised he was naked in a black bathtub filled with a slimy clear goo.
WHAT?… HELP!
He moved to stand and then sank back as memories crashed into him.
The heat washing over him, burning him as a new star flared briefly into existence over the city.
Waking up in their orbital laboratory, the Earth burning below.
Setting out in one of the few remaining ships with his four fellow researchers, the ones who had finally recreated the organic resurrection technology lost in the flight from Kobol and the 12 tribes of man who exiled them.
Retracing their ancestors steps back to the homeworld and then their parents steps to the Cyrannus system.
The despair of finding that their warning would come to late, that the 12 Colonies had created mechanical servants and that they had rebelled against their human masters.
The deal that they made with the rebelling cylons. They would stop the war and leave the humans in peace and he and his fellow researchers would help them create human form cylons.
The creation of the new raiders, hybrids, baseships, centurions and human form cylons.
The betrayal of model one and the death of model seven.
Daniel Jackson, my child, I'm so sorry, so so sorry that we failed to protect you. You were the first amongst our children, our greatest achievement and for that you were murdered. You died because we committed the cardinal sin and loved one child more than the others. Fighting back tears Sam forced himself to carry on reliving his memories, the pain of Daniel's death still raw, as it always would be.
Their horror when they found out what John had done.
The fear and panic as John locked them in the control room and pumped out the atmosphere.
Sam looked down at his hands, remembering them bloody and torn, the bone poking through his finger tips where he had tried to claw his way through the walls, out to where the air was as John watched, smirking. Telling them he was going to teach them a lesson.
As the rush of memories finally ended Sam finally sat up and took stock of his surroundings. He was in a small room, clearly secure in the centre of the colony as he could still recognise the architecture. His resurrection tank was one of five that were there, the others held copies of his friends from Earth, looking exactly the same as the day John killed them. Quickly Sam tried to figure out his eldest child's plan.
He wants to be the first amongst our children, he wants to be the favorate. Killing Daniel removed the one he saw as taking that away from him but he never liked how human we had made him so how would he do it? Unless? Ahh he had to kill us so he could send us to the colonies where he hoped our experiences as humans would break us before we died, then we would wake up here, apologies spilling from our lips, and tell him how he was right.
Sam snorted. He has forgotten that while our ancestors were machines in the 2,000 years of Earths civilisation we abandoned resurrection and were born, lived and died. He has forgotten how human the Kobolian psilons became.
Sam was the planner and theoretical mathematical of the group, in pyramid nothing had pleased him more than working out the maths of the perfect shot and then making it happen. Now he swung into action to counteract John's plan before he could do any more damage.
Quickly Sam climbed out of the tank, sparing only a brief glance for the bodies of his friends still lying in theirs before searching for the interface in the room. He quickly padded over using his hands to try and clear the worst of the resurrection gel off his face and out of his hair. The water droplets fell down strings suspended in the ceiling into the pools at waist level.
Hesitating only for a moment Sam placed his hands in the pools and once more swam in the stream. The data and knowledge of the cylon race filled his consciousness fully available to him in this room, though the blocks that John had put in preventing certain data from being accessible to everyone else were immediately noticeable.
Sam breathed a sigh of relief as he realised the override protocols were still intact. These protocols gave the ones the cylons knew as the Final Five complete control over cylon systems and no one could overrule them, not even John. When he killed them he'd had to physically sever every data linkage to the control room so that they couldn't simply turn the air back on or open the doors.
With a deep shudder Sam locked the environmental system on and then sealed all entrances and entrance corridors to the room before taking stock. It appeared that only two cylons, both model ones knew the truth about the Final Five. The original John and the second of that line to reach maturity whom the first had persuaded to help. The rest had had their memories erased and the information blocked from the stream.
Searching through the stream Sam franticly tried to discover their location before sighing with relief. The second one was aboard a baseship, while no doubt up to many many things that Sam and the others would disapprove of he was at least several dozen light years away and it would take him days to get to the colony even pushing the basestars hybrid and engines to their limits. John was aboard the resurrection hub which was randomly jumping around the galaxy with its own dedicated escort ships. With the constant disruption to the stream as they lost and then re-established communications after every jump it would be some time before he detected Sam's presence in the system.
Noting that the hub had jumped just before he made that stupid stupid attempt to catch an impossible shot in the area on Picon and had not yet re-established contact Sam searched the colony's outgoing communications and found the triple red flagged alert to John that one of the Final Five had resurrected ahead of schedule. Silently wondering what schedule they were supposed to die to Sam erased the message guaranteeing himself a little more time to put his plan into effect.
Cutting off the colony and her escort baseships from the rest of the stream in a manner that could easily be mistaken as disruption from the black hole they were orbiting swallowing an exceptionally large piece of stellar debris Sam stopped hiding and let the hybrids feel his presence. Wonder and joy exploded into the stream as the hybrids felt the presence of one of the Final Five. Sam smiled and sent orders to the hybrids who controlled the colony to initiate a total lockdown promising he would come and meet them soon. Then he summoned four centurions to his resurrection chamber releasing the lockdown just long enough for them to come to him.
He had a great deal of work to do.