== Part 15 - The New Girl ==
"Huh," Six said in surprise as she was reading through a children's book taken from the Deliverance. It was well worn and solid, not crumbly and falling apart like Six would have expected given that its print date predated the fall of the Star League. But that's not what caught her attention. "According to this, the theoretical maximum mass for an Inner Sphere jumpship is two point five million tons."
"Hmm, that's not surprising," Four said thoughtfully. He was using projection to pore over the latest technical details the Cylons had discovered in the Deliverance's construction.
"It is?" Six said surprised. "Why? This basestar masses more than two point five million tons. Hell, the armor belt alone on a Columbia Class Battlestar masses more than two point five million tons! But the Star League apparently built ships in the same size range and somehow they don't mass more than two and a half million tons?"
"The Inner Sphere has really strong, really lightweight materials technology," Four said with a shrug. "The Deliverance and Middle Finger are surprisingly light for their size as well. As for why the two and a half million ton limit, the problem is gravity."
"Pardon?"
"Inner Sphere KF drives are affected by gravity," Four told her. "Too much gravity and the jump field will distort catastrophically. Technically speaking, our FTL drives are the same way, but we have gravity manipulation tech so we can just outright dictate what the spacial geometry inside our jump field is. The Inner Sphere has never had that kind of gravity manipulation tech, so they can only guess what the the local spacial geometry looks like. Well, they don't bother to guess; they just assume there's zero gravity at all for all their KF Drive settings, even though they should know full well that it's not true for anywhere in the universe. That is why they jump in so far from stars; the local spacial geometry is close enough to zero gravity for them to safely jump."
"Okay, but what has that to do with the two and half million ton jump limit?" Six asked.
"At two and a half million tons, the ship's own mass is high enough to create a gravity well strong enough to destructively interfere with a KF jump," Four told her.
"Hey, guys," Eight called out excitedly. "It's starting!"
A girl's head and upper torso popped out of the resurrection pool's surface with a splash of milky white liquid as she sat up suddenly. She gasped for air and looked around frantically.
"Hey, hey, it's all right," Eight said soothingly, placing a hand on the latest Cylon model's back to help steady her and prevent her from dropping her head back under the surface. She and the others radiated love and acceptance and reassurance at the girl over the mental network. "You're safe here." The girl looked at Eight and calmed down.
"Welcome, sister," Six said, smiling down at the new girl. "We are you brothers and sisters."
The new Cylon smiled shyly, and raised a hand to give a little finger wave of hello to the others. Even sopping wet with hair slicked back, she was of course as beautiful as any of the other human models, but different in her own way.
"It's been so long since we've had a new sister among us," Three said happily. "How are you feeling?"
The girl Cylon beamed a smile at her. Oddly, the joy in the room came down a notch.
"You're feeling okay, right?" Eight asked, concern creeping into her voice.
The new girl nodded at Eight, then looked around at the others with open curiosity.
"And you know who you are, right?" Two asked.
The girl nodded again. Her happy expression started to slip as she sensed the tide of concern from the others.
"And you are?" Five asked.
The girl held up both of her hands, all fingers spread wide except for one thumb tucked into her palm.
Seven turned to the others. "We didn't make a mistake, did we?" he asked. "Did we get some part of her construction wrong?"
"Nine's vitals are all well inside acceptable parameters," Four replied, checking the feed from the medical monitors. "Brain activity shows she's fully alert and aware of her environment. There are no misformed organs or other physical defects that I can detect."
"You know what? I'm just gonna ask what we're all thinking," One growled. He turned to Nine. "Can you talk?"
Nine started to answer with a nod, then her face scrunched up in concentration. "Yeeessss," she enunciated slowly. Her face lit up with another innocently happy smile, and then repeated normally and happily with another nod, "Yes!"
Various flavors of relief and "Oh, thank God!" emerged from the other Cylons in the room and across the basestar.
"Great! That's great. Why didn't you say anything before?" One asked, just as relieved as everyone else
Nine just shrugged, not answering with words.
"Oh, come on!"
"Nine's motion limits and motor control are still inside expected parameters," Five announced.
A few Eights were running Nine through a series of exercises that tested the limits of her new body. As the other Cylons in the room - and through their eyes and other data feeds the entire Basestar's Cylon population – watched, Nine twisted, stretched, and flexed every muscle in her naked body.
"Will you stop that?" One said, annoyed. "Can't you just enjoy a thing of beauty without ruining the moment with dry status announcements?"
"We're supposed to be making sure her body is up to spec," Five replied exasperated. "If you don't want status announcements, just leave the room and shut off my voice feed."
"Why, One, if you were human, I'd think you were inappropriately ogling our poor little Nine," Three said lightly.
"Look, I'm just saying that this is an emotional moment for all of us," One said defensively. "It shouldn't be ruined by clinical sta... oh wow."
Nine was leaning backwards again, but this time she had gone back far enough for her hands to touch the floor behind her feet. And then she kept going, leaning back even further.
"Uh, did we design her to be that flexible?" One gasped, as surprise and shock were hardly the only thing going through his head at the moment.
"Uh, that's well beyond the specced design limits," Five replied. He called up a graphic of Nine's skeleton mapped to her current body pose. "It uh, it looks like when we designed her spine, we just made sure it could reach the specified max limit, but didn't actually check how far beyond that it could go."
Nine lost her balance, and her feet left the floor and flipped over the rest of her body as it straightened out. Her legs hit the mat hard enough to bounce and Nine cried out in pain. Then she began crying as the Eights rushed to comfort her.
"Is she okay?" Three asked, concerned.
"Minor bruising around the knees and toes," Five said, switching his projection to a diagnostic of Nine's body. "Nothing serious. She's just experiencing pain for the first time."
"Well, that's a relief," One said, looking at Nine as her cries trailed off into sniffles.
"Hmm, I'm sure it is," Three said. Looking at One funny.
"So, these are clothes," Six said, showing Nine a room full of wheeled racks full of clothing items on hangars. "We wear them because they're pretty. Sometimes they're functional. And when in human societies, we're expected to wear them."
Nine picked up a boot off the top of the nearest rack, and experimented by putting her hand down inside it. She held up her booted hand and looked at Six expectantly.
"Oh, no, dear, that goes on your feet," an amused Six told her patiently. "You can find the rules of how to wear clothing and what each of these are for on the Basestar's database. It holds everything the Cylon race knows. You know how to access it. Just reach out for it with your mind."
Nine concentrated, and then her face lit up with wonder. A mental projection appeared of a Colonial fashion magazine appeared floating in the air between them. Then a male clothing dummy wearing sexy lingerie appeared, quickly followed by a window showing a music concert blaring at ear splitting volume if it had been real. Then more projections started popping up one after another faster than Six could identify them and started filling up the room. If they had existed in the physical world, Six would have completely lost sight of Nine in the clutter.
"Uh, Nine," Six called as a miniature Mark I Viper flew through her head chased by an equally small Raider. "Nine, we usually consider it polite to dismiss any projections that we've stopped using!" An erupting volcano appeared upside down on the ceiling. "Nine!"
"So, that's the new girl, huh?" Gustav Argyle asked as he and his family sat around a table in what he had mentally dubbed "The Lounge". It was really no different from any of the other identical bland rooms throughout the basestar, but it was on the large side and filled with such a variety of table, chair, or sofa designs, that Gustav suspected that the Cylons had either acquired their furniture second hand, or hand built them for fun. Given the worn and sometimes ratty nature of all the furniture with not a single sign of a new one, he was betting on them being second hand. The Cylons used rooms like these to socialize in large groups, breaking up into small bands of conversation that buzzed around the room.
The new Cylon, Nine, sat by herself at a table, eating a bowl of paste that the Cylons laughingly called "food". Nine was clad in a mismatched pastiche of clothing styles as if she had no idea what color coordination was... which she probably didn't since she had literally been born yesterday. She was staring at something in the empty space above her table that only she could see and hear... or at least that only Cylons could see and hear. She was completely rapt by whatever it was she was watching. Projection bothered Gustav as it seemed unnatural, but being the father of a teenaged daughter and having had other children that were once teenagers before they had moved on to other Jumpships, Gustav completely recognized what Nine was doing.
Gustav thanked God that he wasn't having his eardrums being blown out by whatever the Cylons might consider to be "music".
"Yeah, that's Nine," the Eight at the Argyle's table said. "I don't get her though. She hasn't said a word since we asked if she could talk. It's always gestures, or nods, or charades, or even projected images sounds. But not projected words or images of words. It's so weird."
"Actually, it's normal," One told her. Ones didn't normally volunteer to socialize with the Argyles. Gustav got the impression he wasn't on board with the 'Let's make friends with humans' kick the Cylons were on. But other models would sometimes drag a One over to the Argyles, probably to try to change his mind.
"It is?" Eight asked in surprise.
"Yep," One replied. "It's only weird to you because you Eights were the newest models before Nine. We Ones are the first human model Cylon and we've been through this seven times before." He turned misty eyed, reminiscing on fond memories. "That first Eight just wouldn't shut up, always asking questions and never stopping long enough to actually listen to an answer. Now, Four and Five, they were Cylons of few words at first too. Not as few as Nine, here, but she'll grow out of it, just as you all grew out of those phases pretty fast." At Eight's disbelieving look, One added, "Hey, check the records if you don't believe me!"
"Why are you so surprised that this Nine doesn't speak?" Gustav asked Eight. "You can make whole people out of nothing, pop out whole adults in one go. That's not lostech. That's borderline magic, well beyond any medical tech that I've ever heard of. Even Canopus can't do that and they make people with animal parts. Didn't you make Nine's personality to be this way?"
"Well, we did design her exact physical appearance," One said slowly, as if unsure how much to tell the humans. "But personality? We've always randomize that, mixed genes that express different behavioral tendencies, screened out the combinations most likely to result in psychotic or insane behavior." He eyed Eight and winked at her. "Or at least the combinations we know about."
Eight stuck out her tongue at him.
"So you think Nine will grow out of this quiet phase?" Gustav asked thoughtfully.
"Oh sure," One said confidently. "She can't get by on gestures and charades forever. Eventually, she's going to speak to get stuff she wants."
"Maybe I can help with that," Gustav said as he stood up.
"What..." One began, but Gustav brushed past him and went straight to Nine's table and stopped across it from her.
"Hello!" Gustav said cheerily to Nine with a wide smile. He proffered a hand. "I'm Gustav."
"What is he doing?" Eight hissed to Marcy Argyle.
"I don't know!" Marcy replied.
Nine's eyes turned away from whatever she had been looking at and focused on Gustav. For that matter, the same happened with many other Cylons in the room, but Gustav ignored them. His attention was entirely on Nine.
Nine's face went blank, uncertainty showing. She lowered her spoon, and raised a hand in a tentative wave.
"Ah ah!" Gustav clucked, his proffered hand becoming a wagging finger. "I'm human, not Cylon. You know what a human is right?"
Nine nodded, wide eyed.
"Right, I'm human," Gustav repeated. "I can't see projections. I can't do that mind talk you Cylons do. All I can do is see with these eyes, hear sounds with my ears, and speak with my mouth. You understand?"
Nine nodded again slowly. Gustav could see the gears turning inside her head.
"Well, when a human such as myself introduces himself to you," Gustav continued, "you don't just wave back. Waving is reserved for long distance communications, when just speaking at normal volume may not be heard. But this close? Where you can hear me just fine and I can hear you? You speak if you're able, say 'hello, my name is' whatever your name is to introduce yourself right back. Or if you don't want to give away your name, you just say 'hi' or 'greetings' or whatever form of hello you like. But if you don't speak, if all you do is wave when you don't have to, you are telling the other person that you're offended by them, or at the very least you don't want to talk to them. Are you still following me?"
Nine nodded again, this time with a bit of enthusiasm and a smile creeping up her lips.
"Hi, I'm Gustav," Gustav said again, proffering his hand. Again.
"Hello, I am Nine." Nine said slowly and clearly, seeming to linger on every word.
Gustav could feel the tension in the room evaporate.
Nine didn't take Gustav's proffered hand. Instead, she examined it carefully, moving her head this way and that to get a clear look at his hand from various angles.
"Oh, right," Gustav said with a small laugh. "I forgot to explain the hand shake." Nine smiled back.
A shiver rushed through Gustav, a familiar feeling of being inside and outside of his body at the same time and even one with the universe. On his own ship, this feeling would have been mildly disorienting. On this Cylon basestar, it was so mild in comparison to his lifetime experience of KF jumps as to be almost unnoticeable.
Nine on the other hand squeaked like a mouse and dove under the table. Gustav bent over and found her clutching a table leg for dear life and shivering in fear.
"Hey, hey, it's all right," Gustav said soothingly as other concerned Cylons rushed to them. "It was just a jump through hyperspace. Nothing to be scared about. The sensation is strange at first, but it's harmless."
Nine stopped shivering, seemingly comforted by Gustav's words. Her eyes flicked away from him for a second, clearly doing that projecting thing again, before returning to him. She smiled shyly.
"Thank you," she told him as she climbed out from under the table to stand next to him.
"Okay," the One at the Argyle's table said, "I'm impressed."
Gustav led Nine back to his table, getting her to speak more with questions and conversational probes that pretty much demanded she do more than just gesture silently. She still kept her responses short, but they became increasingly more fluid and natural as time went on.
In the back of his mind, Gustav wonder where they had jumped to.
Adept Hicks walked into the Observatory control room, still groggy from sleep and with a mug of coffee in hand. The HPG Station on Langhorne didn't have the budget to keep the network of automated telescopes and radar arrays that the Observatory controlled running all the time. But since the nearest known pirate point was a little over eight hours away, and of course the standard jump points were days away, a compromise had been struck between budget and security; the Observatory would just be turned on every six hours, look to see if anyone was coming from any of the jump points, then be turned off again.
In theory, even the worst case scenario meant that the HPG Station and the people of Langhorne would have at least two hours to prepare before anyone visiting the planet could even make orbit. It was basically impossible for anyone to get here any faster than that without burning enough high gees for so long, that no raider – pirate or otherwise – would be in any condition to fight when they got to the planet.
So when the system finally finished warming up and showed Hicks what was in Langhorne's sky this morning, he got the shock of his life.