Recon Raptor

Deep Space

Nikos reached inside his duty overalls pocket and produced a cigarette, lighting it and taking a long drag.

Hatchet frowned. "I really wish you wouldn't do that. Besides the frakking smell, if we suffer a breach, you're not going to last long enough to get your helmet on. And godsdamn, at least buckle in."

"Whatever." Nikos said, looking through the haze of smoke at his computer console. Two jumps left before they had to report back to Summers. The DRADIS readings were empty, but Nikos felt his gut was trying to tell him something.

The same gut that saved his life when he fled Halatha service after his Boss wound up getting spaced by a rival clan. What did the Cylons have compared to what the Halatha would have done to him if they found him? Frakking machines probably did me a favor by exterminating them all, he thought.

Something was off, though. Background radiation was damned odd at this jump location. He wouldn't have noticed it, except that they had been jumping all over for the better part of a day, and this particular set of coordinates registered a very different background radiation profile, and there was no good reason for it. They were nowhere near a star system, or even a brown dwarf or other substellar object. It was a whole lot of nothing that shouldn't be registering any different… but somehow, it did.

So why is it different? He did some quick calculations. If this is a communications signal of some kind, well… let's see. Signal strength implies a distance calculation of… accounting for the time it would take to get here… Godsdamnit, I was never good at this part. We'll be lucky to get within any kind of DRADIS range of this whatever-it-is.

"Hatchet, I'm sending a vector to your console. Can you jump to a location along that line, say… roundabout point-zero-one light years?"

"Why?" The pilot wondered aloud.

"Got a hunch. Something is different about this one. Want to check before we finish up here." He finished his cig and rubbed the butt out on the deck.

"Fine. Spooling."

As the world seemed to reform around him, Nikos crushed the cigarette butt with his boot and reached for another.

Then his world went insane.

"FRAK ME!" Hatchet yelled, banking the Raptor at maximum g-load. Nikos hadn't bothered to belt-in and went flying out of his chair against the bulkhead.

"Godsdamnit who taught you how to drive this bus!" Nikos yelled back. Then he looked out the front viewplaz. A basestar covered his field of view. "GodsDAMN."

"Frak, I need time to respool the drive!" Hatchet said. Nikos climbed back into his seat, remembered to buckle himself in this time. Hatchet angled the Raptor up, buzzing the deck of the basestar which, inexplicably, had not opened fire on them yet.

"Getting a communication signal." Nikos said, confused. "It's in a standard colonial frequency. Open line. And… what the frak?"

"Well," Hatchet said, "what is it?"

"They want to… surrender."

"Huh?"

… … …

Dreadnought

Deep Space

"This plan of yours is frakking insane." Nash said over the wireless.

"Maybe, maybe. But that's why you're staying with the Galleon." Summers said.

"We'll have no fighter cover to speak of if this thing is a frakking trap." Isard added.

"That's why we're taking all the gunboats, the frigate, an extra helping of rocket-armed Raptors, and doing a synchronized jump. But, still, spool the drives immediately upon arrival, in case this is some fucking scam." Summers ordered.

"We're ready, Dreadnought," Manning said over the wireless. Charybdis wasn't going to stand up against a base ship, but it could cover Dreadnought's backside from an unexpected fighter assault, at least for a little while.

Nikos leaned against the bulkhead, holding a flask in his hand. "They said they will transfer command codes to the baseship to us. For whatever that's worth."

Summers thought that over for a moment but decided it didn't matter. It was a Cylon vessel, and command codes or not, if they Cylons wanted to control it, they would have a way to do that. No, that promise didn't hold any weight. He needed something more real. If he did not like what they had to say, well… Dreadnought was more than adequate to finish off a basestar as badly damaged as that one was.

"I wish Dana could come with us." Isard mused. "Bet she could tell us if these things were full of it."

Over the last year, the efforts of the galleon's AI had not gone unnoticed even by the most angry and bitter of the survivors. The records of Kobol's fall had spread through the fleet, mixed with the captain's own writings and commentaries, it might even serve as another book to be added to the ancient scrolls, assuming anybody lived to tell the tale.

But trusting a galleon's AI, a member of the Thirteenth Tribe, and one that had fought the machines on Kobol, was a vastly different matter from trusting the frakking Cylons.

"We can't let them know about the galleon, or its location." Nash said.

"True," Summers agreed. "At least, not until we have control over the situation."

"Control? They are Cylons." Nash replied.

"Yes. But I think there is some opportunity here. We have the marine contingent from Ares aboard. If – and I frakking stress IF – I like what they have to say, we take them prisoner. Put them in one of the cargo bays. Post marines outside. Shit goes bad, we airlock them all. But I want the intel they have. I want to know about the other Colonial fleet out there. I want to know what the frak is going on with the Cylons and how the fuck they found our trail." Summers said.

Nash grudgingly agreed.

"You're in command here, Nash, until I get back. If shit goes bad, jump to the rendezvous coordinates. Dana will cover you."

I'm taking an awful risk, trusting him this way. If he takes the agro freighter and decides to make a run for it, I can't stop him… Summers thought. Oh well, this mistrust shit has got to end someday.

"And the basestar? If we can control it…" Nash said.

"I don't know. I do not frakking know. It would be nice to have another ship, but from Nikos's report, it looks pretty badly damaged, and we're low on scrap metal. Not to mention I do not know that we can ever trust a Cylon salvage. Not without gutting every computer system from the whole frakking thing." Summers answered. "If they want sanctuary, it'll be on my frakking terms."

Nash nodded. "Good luck, sir." He said, without a trace of his usual sarcasm.

… … …

Caprica Cavil accepted the shackles without any resistance as he stepped out of his heavy raider into the docking bay of Dreadnought. Ares marines guarded him and his female companions warily, weapons trained on each of them. Cavil studied the team that was greeting him. That'd be the captain, Thomas Summers. Well, he does look like he's changed. For that matter, the ship had changed, too, compared to what he remembered from the pre-war intel reports. It was very well armed, and covered in additional armor and point defense weapons. The ship was no battlestar, but the pirates and Ares survivors had done an amazing job with what they had. Clearly, we underestimated them.

Cylon Command had decided to put an agent aboard every Colonial capital ship they could without blowing their cover, though that had not always proven possible. There had been some debate about whether Dreadnought was really worth the trouble. But as the only major civilian operator of a capital warship, no matter how old and stripped down, it had been decided to do it. Not that Thomas Summers was considered much of a threat at the time.

Well, that sure frakking changed.

Underestimating the crew of Dreadnought had bitten the Cylons in the ass more than once. We just weren't prepared to think like humans, not really, despite sharing this form with them. Annihilating their civilization had proven relatively easy but annihilating the species had proven impossible.

John would have said that they were like cockroaches, always crawling out from under some galactic rock when you least expected it. But Caprica Cavil thought differently. They've evolved to survive, and when we attacked them, we separated the wheat from the chaff, the roughest, toughest survivors from a whole species of survivors. No wonder we could never get them all.

But he no longer wanted to, anyway. He approached the pirate captain, looking him in the eye. "We surrender." He said.

Summers stood there a moment, as if struggling to figure out an answer to that. The Sixes behind him approached, wearing their own shackles.

"Jamie?" One of the salvagers said. Ah, that'd be Ellison's boyfriend, Cavil thought.

"Well, I don't want to interrupt this reunion of sorts, but can we get to business?" Cavil said, trying to ignore the byplay. He wasn't sure if the Colonial pirate was going to space Ellison, or frak her. And he was not particularly eager to find out which.

"Fine. Business." Summers said. "First, what do you want from us? And second, what can you give us to make it worth not spacing your entire lot?"

"Right. Look, we know it was a mistake to do what we did. You're not going to believe that, because I wouldn't. But it had to be said. For the rest, well we're wanted men. Well, mostly women," he cast a glance back at the row of Sixes behind him. For some odd reason there was a chubby salvager nearby who was staring at the Sixes like they represented the apotheosis of heaven or something.

He shook off the strange sight. "Civil war between Cylons. Our faction wanted peace with humanity. Our faction wanted to keep our brothers from being lobotomized by the others."

"Didn't work out for you?" Summers said, a hint of a cruel grin crossing his hardened features.

"No, not really." Cavil admitted. "We can't resurrect, the others have blocked us from downloading, and at any rate, the resurrection ships are not near enough, if any survived the fighting. Most of the fleet was destroyed. This ship of ours isn't in much better condition. We need food. Air. Water. In exchange, we'll help you."

"How?" Summers asked.

"Intel. We'll give you what we have about remaining Cylon forces. Staging areas. That sort of thing. If they attack, we may be able to do more. And we'll work. Since you're still alive, I figure you've figured out a way to keep your food stocks in line with consumption. That's probably labor intensive. We'll help you. This ship of ours is in bad shape, but it's better than nothing, and you can do whatever you want with it and our supplies. And we have four heavy raiders we can add to your arsenal, though we'd have to fly them if you wanted to use them for something."

"What about Galactica? The other Colonials? What can you tell me about them? And you need to tell me what all Cylons look like. We need to know, right frakking now, if there are any Cylons in the fleet."

"You know about Galactica?" Cavil wondered aloud. "Well… yes, they survived. Pegasus too, though she was destroyed over New Caprica. A huge fleet of civilian ships has been following Galactica…"

"A caravan of the heavens," a pregnant woman said, standing next to what appeared to be Summers' second in command. "What is New Caprica?"

"Something like that. Look, I've never been particularly religious. New Caprica was this barely habitable cold-as-hell world Galactica discovered. There was uh... well, we found them and tried to live in peace with them there, and it didn't go very well." Cavil explained, doubtful that this particular line of questioning was going to help his cause. "Anyway, yes, most of our forces have been trailing Galactica's fleet. At least they were until we started killing each other. I doubt John has enough forces left to do that particularly well, now. Anyway, I'll give you the identities of all twelve models of Cylon, but I'll also save you the trouble. None are in your fleet, and the ones in Galactica's fleet, well… they already know who they are. Saul Tigh, Ellen and…"

"WHAT? Saul and Ellen were CYLONS?" Ellison's would-be boyfriend exclaimed.

"Looks like you frakked two Cylons, Jack." Summers laughed, despite the seriousness of the situation.

"Look, I can give you the full download later…all the intel you want," Cavil continued, frowning with mild distaste as he thought about one of his own models doing similarly. I can't believe John frakked his own mother. Gods, what a sanctimonious asshole. "And look, we've got a ship full of two-hundred and thirty-nine women."

The chubby salvager looked up, as if his prayers had been answered. "How many guys?"

"You're looking at the only one." That has got to be worth something, Cavil thought. "At least, if you don't count a few Centurions… Look, this is a decision that has to be made soon. The others don't know where you are, they never believed Ellison when she said you pulled some kind of smuggler's trick, but they damn well know we are out here, and they will find us, soon."

"How many basestars are left after your little spat?" Summers asked.

"The General has a force of three, two new ships and one older basestar like this one. There are three more guarding the Hub. He may have a couple more that survived the fighting, I don't know, but not many. The carnage on both sides was terrible. And then there's the Colony…"

"The Colony?"

"Yeah. We don't have a home planet. We built a station around the Thirteenth Tribe's sublight galleon. Equipped it with a jump drive. I'm sure John jumped the thing as soon as the war started, to keep the others away. I have some idea of where he might take it, and trust me, you don't want to go there."

"So you have a galleon of your own…" Summers wondered aloud.

"Of our own? What do you mean."

"Never mind, you'll find out soon enough. Look, I'm going to accept your terms, but hear my frakking warning first and tell all your buddies. You're alive for two reasons. One, because we figured out that not all AIs are frakking monstrous assholes, so we're going to give you one chance. And two, because I need the intel… okay and three, maybe because half my crew hasn't been laid since you nuked the frakking colonies. But if you do anything dishonest, we're going to space every single one of you. Don't lie to me, not even once. I don't care what I ask. And we are going to test you on that, and you won't know when, and why, so make that real clear. I have no frakking patience right now, and others in the fleet are going to be fighting over who gets to cycle the airlock, trust me on that."

"We're going to place your entire crew in a cargo bay on Dreadnought. They will be monitored at all times. One false move, and the whole thing opens to space. You will only leave the cargo bay in ones and twos, and at our specific direction. Any attempt to escape, and we space you. If we ask you to do something, we will send the work to you, and you will do it, or you will be spaced. In exchange, you'll have food. Water. Basic sanitation. And we don't space you. Do you frakking understand?"

Caprica Cavil considered that for a moment. But the alternative was death, either from running out of supplies, or at the hands of the other Cylons. "Agreed. I'd shake on it but…" he shook his shackled hands behind a bit.

"Frak that. We drink to a deal." Summers took a swig, then placed the flask to his lips. It was awkward to try and drink from it with no hands, but the captain lifted it up for him. Tastes like shit, he thought. But he drank it and found that alcohol wasn't entirely unwelcome at this juncture. He even managed to avoid puking it back up.

… … …

It had taken the better part of the day, shuttling Cylon babes back and forth from the damaged basestar, to get the crew settled in, Frank thought, but this was the last flight out before other techs would figure out what to do with the damaged basestar, though from the sound of it, they were going to partially disarm it, then jump it to the fleet's location with the tracking beacon disabled and left behind. There, maybe they could figure out how to repair it, or strip it for parts.

The Centurions had proven to be a bigger problem. The humanforms would not allow them to be destroyed, since apparently that had been a big part of why the Cylons were killing each other in the first place. It didn't make a lot of sense to Frank, but Cylon politics certainly weren't his specialty. The fact that they even had political problems had been oddly comforting, though. It seemed like they had a lot of the same flaws humans did.

Eventually a compromise had been reached. The Centurions would go into hibernation mode until the pirates were certain the newcomers could be trusted. They would be housed in the starboard landing pod in Eternal Star, where both the salvagers and Dana could keep an eye on them, in case any awakened. And that had been a major revelation to the Cylons, that not only did another galleon of Kobol exist, but its AI was intact and helping the humans.

If Summers' warning to the one calling himself Cavil had been stern, the ship's AI had been much worse. "There are worse things than death," it had claimed ominously. Apparently it had whole files on how to torture an artificial intelligence. Gods, Kobol was a shithole, from the sound of things. Human sacrifice, AIs torturing each other, wars over dumb shit.

Frank held his trusty shotgun while one of the Ares pilots handled flying the converted shuttle. This run was much smaller. Only two of the Cylon models called "Six" were present, appropriately confined and shackled, along with a load of foodstuffs and other useful supplies lifted from the basestar. The shackles had been custom-made on Dreadnought, much thicker than any human ones. One of the Sixes slept quietly, her head resting against the cargo mesh. The other Six just looked at him curiously, almost innocently.

"Are you alive?"

"What?" He said, confused.

"I've never seen a human before," she said.

"Don't get out much?" Frank answered. He sized up the Cylon babe. She was smoking-frakking-mega-hot, and he found his mind wandering into places it shouldn't. Or maybe that's exactly where it should go. Oh, all the frakking pilots from Nash's tin can get some. And all the bigwigs on Dreadnought. But nope, not us salvage techs, even though we keep everything fucking working. Frakking shit, he thought.

"I was made only recently," she said. "The last one of my model before Cylon turned against Cylon. I do not understand all that happened." New machine or not, whoever designed the Cylons knew his business. He found himself committing every curve to memory. It was very strange thinking that this being – whatever it was – was recently made, and yet contained a fully adult personality. How the frak does that even work? It was maddeningly strange.

"You weren't alive when your kind nuked the colonies?"

"No," she said. "I remember it. We share a lot of memories, and our base personality matrix. But, it is so confusing. The memories are not mine."

"Well, what do you think of Cylon handiwork?" Frank asked.

"We have sinned against God." She said. If the software was faking a human response, it was damned good at its job. Her eyes began to mist up, and she blinked away the tears. "We need forgiveness."

"Probably aren't gonna get that, lady." Frank said as the ship left the confines of the basestar, heading to its jump out point. Some of the cargo jostled around in its netting. The other Six kept snoring. "Leastways not from me. Not after all the frakked up shit your kind did. But if you weren't there when it happened, don't know how that works. Dunno if the Gods'll hold you to that. Between you and them, I guess."

He found himself wondering about that, though, despite himself. If she hadn't been alive when it happened, how could she be guilty of such a crime? Did she have a soul? If so, how could it be stained with the blood of a crime she hadn't been alive to participate in? Part of it didn't matter to him, though. She was a Cylon. Cylons were guilty. That's the way it was, right? Frank had always considered himself to be a man of the Gods, even if he had generally frakked up his own life. Few ended up on Dreadnought because they made good life choices, after all.

But he tried, and that had to be worth something. He wondered briefly if it was the same for Cylons. How much was machine, and how much was a person?

Or was he thinking with his other brain just because the Cylon assembly line had been set to "smoking hot" when she rolled off the line?

"At least you're honest," she said. "What's your name?"

"Frank," he said. "Yours?"

"I don't have a name." She said. "Some of us have names. Most of us don't bother. We just are."

He thought about that for a moment, and felt a brief glimmer of sympathy, despite it all.

"Guess we'll have to change that."

The Six appeared to contemplate that a moment. "I'd like that."

… … …

The General's Strike Force

Deep Space, a few weeks later

The General paced back and forth across the command deck, his patience running thin. "They were here. They were frakking here." Residue from fuel leakage was everywhere. And the remains of a beacon had been found nearby. Ellison's old basestar had definitely limped at least this far. "From the damage they took, they can't be far away. The jump range will be short. Find them!"

The order was irrational, and he knew it. The rest of his crew – old model 005s, and a few humanform Fives, since all the remaining Sixes aboard had been liquidated – were working on possible jump destinations nearby. There was nothing more to do. Hundreds of raiders were out on random jump courses along Ellison's last probable vectors.

And he did not even have anyone to frak, now, to pass the time. What a frakked up universe.

But there could be no survivors. Out of the rebel basestars, only two were unaccounted for. One of the newer models that managed to jump away to who-knows-where after one hell of a firefight in deep space, and Ellison's obsolete ship. Not that mine is any better. He had planned to put this older ship back into mothballs, but now with the Cylon fleet down to a skeleton force, he found he needed every ship he had left.

To make matters worse, one of the rebellious Sixes had managed to detonate the jump drives on the rest of the mothball fleet before another One could put a bullet in her head. The entire Cylon armada was down to six baseships, one of them obsolete, the Hub, and the Colony.

The Colony was reasonably safe, and absurdly well-armed. But the Hub, he had to keep three of his baseships guarding that in case Galactica came calling. Or the other missing baseship. They might want to reclaim it and deny me resurrection.

Everything had gone to hell. But he was going to find them, and this time, a split-second raider sacrifice was not going to save them. With Dreadnought probably dead in the depths of deep space, for nothing of them had been seen in over a year, all he had to do was find Galactica and destroy her fleet. Then he could figure out how to bring the Six line back. Maybe even the Threes. But with some more alterations to the programming matrix first.

A lot less free will. An inhibitor of some kind, he thought, after all, I just want enough of the body for a good time. And less of the troublesome sentience part.

"I think we found something…" One of the Fives said. "Look…"

He smiled.