== Part 17 – Hiding in Plain Sight ==
"Eddie, do you really expect me to believe this little thing is a KF drive?" asked Adept Hoff as eyed the supposed KF Drive sitting on the coffee table.
The two were sitting in the living room of a ROM safe house in one of the slums of Langhorne's capitol, safely out of sight of all the Cylon aircraft buzzing overhead. Adept Hoff was the sole ROM agent assigned to Langhorne's HPG station. The other Comstar personnel knew he was ROM, but they thought that just meant he was in charge of their security. But Hoff was more than a glorified security chief; he was a full fledged operational agent – albeit one in disgrace after a failed operation in Davion space – tasked with making sure that Langhorne's industry didn't get too big or too innovative.
After all, that was ROM's true mission. The Blessed Jerome Blake had foretold that the cursed Successor States would destroy themselves with their infighting, lose all their advanced technology, and fall into a new age of barbarism where no one could build anything worthwhile anymore. And when that finally happened, Comstar would pick up the pieces and create a new Golden Age, a new Star League from the ashes. As Comstar's intelligence wing, ROM's mission was not just spying, but hurrying the Successor States along as best they could without revealing themselves. Which for a planet like Langhorne meant arranging for pirate raids and encouraging the local Baron and his majordomo to overtax the planet to curtail industrial growth, and using contacts in Langhorne's criminal underworld like Eddie here to arrange for "muggings that turned fatal" for anyone who got just a bit too innovative.
These Cylons threatened the Order's Holy Work. That could not be abided.
Of course, Eddie didn't know that Hoff was ROM. Hell, he didn't even know Hoff was Comstar. All Eddy knew was that Hoff was a man with lots of money who paid people like Eddie to get things done and occasionally for rumors about the local industries and samples of what they were making. Eddie probably thought Hoff was a business man keeping tabs on and occasionally sabotaging his competition, which to be honest was not all that unusual in the Inner Sphere either. ROM encouraged that kind of thing as well, all in service to Blake's Vision.
"Not a KF Drive," Eddie corrected him. "The girl specifically called it an 'FTL' drive. I may just be a street crook, but I do know that FTL means Faster Than Light. The girl might have been touched in the head and naive as hell, but she seemed to know her tech given the way she took this thing out of the fighter. And hey, even if she did screw me over,and this really ain't an FTL drive, it's still a sample of Cylon tech. That's gotta be worth something, right?"
"Hmm, you do have a point," Hoff said as he got up and walked to a window. Pulling on the blinders so he could peak out, he saw that the area a few blocks away was still swarming with Cylon aircraft. Naive or not, this girl seemed particularly important to the Cylons. Pity that Eddie hadn't actually kidnapped her like he had intended, but Hoff could see that expecting a street rat like Eddie to outfight a small aerospace fighter was a bit unreasonable. The other Cylons had been extremely security conscious, never going anywhere alone or without their robotic soldiers, so Hoff had given up on trying to abduct one as a failed attempt would be far worse than no attempt at all. Eddie had been extremely lucky to stumble across what appeared to be the Cylon's village idiot. "Pity you couldn't obtain samples of their antigravity, but I think..."
One of larger Cylon smallcraft – probably a shuttle - rose into the sky as the fighters around it started to disperse. Before Hoff could finish his sentence, the shuttle and two escorting fighters vanished in a flash of light. Hoff's mind froze as the implications hit him. Active Camouflage wouldn't generate flashes like that; flashes of light would have defeated the entire point of camouflage! That could only mean...
"I think you can name your price, Eddie," Hoff said, turning away from the window. His normal calm and in control demeanor was completely broken, and he knew it. More importantly, Eddie could see it as well. "How much do you want for this FTL drive?"
"I dunno, maybe... two million C-Bills?" Eddie asked.
"Done," Hoff instantly agreed. If that device really was a faster than light drive, a mere two million C-Bills was as much pocket change as the "five thousand" Eddie had given the Cylons. "The money should be deposited into your Comstar bank account by next week."
"Dang, maybe I should have asked for more," Eddie mused as he stood up and shook Hoff's hand. He didn't question if Hoff would really pay him; he always had before.
"Yes, you should have," Hoff said with a small laugh. "By the way, did the Cylons see your face?"
"Well, yeah," Eddie replied. "The girl and that fighter both looked me right in... the..." His eyes bulged in realization, but just a bit too late.
A series of low thwips echoed in the soundproofed living room, and Eddie collapsed gut shot to the floor. As he gasped and tried to breathe, tried to move. Hoff bent down and kneeled next to him.
"I'm sorry, Eddie. You were a good runner," Hoff told him sympathetically as he put his needler pistol to Eddie's forehead. Needlers were so much easier on the ears than regular slug throwers. "But if it's any consolation, your widow and children really are going to find two million more C-Bills in your bank account. I'm not a monster after all."
"You sold an FTL drive to some random human?"
"What were you thinking?"
"How could you do anything so stupid?"
"I don't understand," Nine cried, cowering in a corner. She really didn't. Everyone was mad at her, shouting questions at her faster than she could answer them. And not just every Cylon in the room. Every Cylon on the basestar except for the Zeros were yelling at her at once and it was overwhelming. The only Cylons who weren't shouting at her were still down on the planet busy with their errands. "Why is everyone so mad?"
"EVERYONE SHUT UP," One roared. Unlike the One on the Six's Knife, this One wasn't play acting this time. His anger and fury spread out across the basestar's network, directed at everyone except Nine, and it shocked everyone into doing exactly what he said. The onslaught of fury and anger on Nine abated. It wasn't gone; it was still there, like an avalanche just waiting to happen again, but it wasn't beating her head in anymore. For now.
"Okay then," One said, adjusting his jacket. He turned to Nine, and he too was clearly not happy with her. But he wasn't shouting either. "Explain to everyone clearly and precisely why you sold an FTL drive to a human."
"Because we came to Langhorne to buy and sell," Nine answered honestly. "The human wanted to buy an FTL Drive. So I sold him an FTL drive."
"But why an FTL drive?" Seven asked. Aside from the Zeros, the Sevens were the least angry at Nine, but they were still agitated.
"Because he wanted an FTL drive," Nine explained, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
"No, I mean, why didn't you tell him no when he asked for an FTL drive?" Seven clarified.
"Why would I do that?" Nine asked, mystified.
"Because it's one of the few strategic advantages we have over the humans," Three told her. At Nine's uncomprehending look, Three tried to simplify the explanation. "The humans can use it to hurt us."
"But the human doesn't want to hurt us with the FTL drive," Nine pointed out. "He just wants to sell it."
The other Cylons seemed stunned at Nine's overwhelmingly logical argument. It didn't seem to make them happier.
"Can we all agree to NOT let Nine down on ANY human planet until such time that she can think more than two steps ahead?" One asked with a resigned sigh. A general sensation of agreement came from the rest of the Basestar.
"But why?" Nine wailed. "I don't understand what I did wrong."
"For starters, you broke the rules we had laid down when you went off by yourself and stopped letting us know where you were," Three told her.
"But we already broke the rules when we stopped for ice cream," Nine pointed out. "Is that not the same?"
"I, uh..." Three didn't seem sure how to answer.
"You sold an FTL drive for five thousand C-Bills," Five said quietly.
"I made us lots of money!" Nine said. "Isn't that a good thing?"
"The check bounced," Five told her.
"What?" Nine was shocked. But, but, she thought, it had all the proper information on it!
"Adept Grace has just confirmed that the information on Nine's check isn't real," Five continued. "The routing number doesn't match any known institution, financial or otherwise, which means it's not even worth checking to see if the account number is valid. The check was never real."
"As if we couldn't see that just from looking at it," Eight muttered. "So not only did Nine get scammed out of an FTL drive, she didn't even make five thousand C-Bills out of it." She turned to address Nine directly. "And for the record, an FTL drive is worth far more than a mere five thousand C-Bills, especially to these humans."
"But... but, he was so nice..." Nine was crushed. She still didn't understand the full enormity of what she had done, but she was starting to get a glimmer of it, and whatever good she thought she had done had now been taken away from her.
Nine burst into tears and ran from the room.
"Nine, wait... dammit, she's gone silent again," Six said. She sighed. "Well, she won't be selling any more FTL drives to humans on a basestar."
"Were we too hard on her?" Seven asked, concerned.
"No," Eight replied. "We've been talking about Inner Sphere tech and how it compares to ours for weeks now and discussing this trip the entire time she's been alive! She should have known better!"
"Should she?" Another Six entered the room. It was that Six, the one that had been captured by the pirates and been given special attention by their leader. The story of how she had pulled a knife on the mercenary leader had spread quickly. Between that and what she had done to the pirate leader, the Cylons had started referring to her as "Knife Six". She had ridden up on the same shuttle as Nine.
"Well yeah," Eight said, uncertainly. "Nine has the same information access as every other Cylon. She could have just downloaded everything she needed to know."
"Really?" Knife Six said skeptically. "Did you forget... did we ALL forget the lesson we learned from the pirates? Downloading a memory isn't the same as living it yourself. A downloaded memory just doesn't make the same impressions as a live experience. Downloaded memories lack context; you get the memory of emotions being felt, but you don't really feel them because you always know that they didn't really happening to you. But actually living it?"
The knife appeared out her sleeve and Six drove it point first into the control pedestal that adorned the center of the room. It didn't go deep, only the tip of the point, but it was enough to hold it upright when Six let go of the handle.
"Living through an experience? That changes you," Knife Six continued. "You know it's really happening. You can't stop it from happening. All you can do is change yourself to deal with whatever is happening. I know." She put her hand flat on her chest over her heart and looked at her sister Six. "Because I've changed. I'm not like other Sixes any more, and however much I heal inside, I never will be.
"Nine is only a few days old," Knife Six pointed out. She turned to Eight. "Are you really expecting Nine to be able to make judgment calls like the rest of us? To understand unspoken rules about what we can and can't share with the humans?"
"Well when you put it that way," Eight said, ashamed, "it does seem like we were expecting too much of her."
"Yes, you did," Zero said, finally speaking. "We Zeroes did as well," Zero added. "Of all of us, we Zeros should have been the ones to know better."
"Nice of you to join us," One said. He was still disgruntled, but that was normal for him even when emotions weren't running high. "What took you so long?"
"We Zeros have been retracing events," Zero told them, "attempting to determine what went wrong."
"I'll tell you what went wrong," One said sourly. "What went wrong is that you somehow failed to notice Nine leaving her group and shutting down her broadcast before the rest of us did. What the hell happened? We depend on you guys for physical security down there and you dropped the ball!"
"We are... uncertain," Zero replied. "It is as if one of us handed off tracking duty to another, but the second Zero failed to be informed despite the first receiving confirmation."
Eight frowned.
"But we believe the true cause is greater than that," Zero continued. "When we first made you, all of you, we made sure that you understood that the Colonials were enemies before we ever let you set foot on a Colony."
"Yeah, I remember that," Two said thoughtfully.
"You drilled into us that we were not to let the humans know that we were Cylons," Three added. "We were not to share any knowledge that the humans didn't already possess. It was years before you were confident enough that we wouldn't give ourselves away."
"But Nine hasn't been through any of that training," Seven said, catching on. "She hasn't had it ingrained in her and made it second nature. If anything, she's been receiving the opposite training because everything we've talk about since making her is how we want to make friends with the humans. And friends... share."
"Oh, so this is you guys' fault. Good to know," One concluded. Everyone looked at him. "Hey, we Ones were the only Cylons to vote for her to stay on the ship, remember? We were right! Ha! We told you so!"
"Perhaps it is time we should review what should be standard operating procedure for creating new Cylon models," Zero mused.
"Yes, we should," Three sighed. "Well, since Nine is off the net at the moment, someone should go find her... and..." Three trailed off, surprise and shock filling her face.
"What? What is it?" One asked, concerned.
"Nine has disappeared from the basestar's internal sensor net," Zero told him. Zero's metal hand balled up and the others could feel frustration radiating from the Centurion. "We thought we had been keeping an eye on her, but somehow we have failed. Again."
The others were confused and frightened by this unexpected turn of events, and by Zero once again displaying such strong emotions. But then they noticed Eight looking mortified.
Chatter filled the Comstar library as the Cylons discussed recent events among themselves. They were supposed to be reading and uploading what they read to the basestar, and they were, but the pace of reading had slowed. Such was always the case with Cylons and juicy gossip about their own.
"So how bad is the damage really?" One asked as he sat down with an encyclopedia. It was dry reading, but someone had to do it.
"Local police just informed us that they found the guy who bought the FTL drive," Eight told him. "He was shot and killed and dumped in an alley not far from where Nine sold him the drive. They have no leads."
"Great, so we have no idea who has it." One muttered.
"It's probably not bad," Four said, studying a book on the history of KF drive technology. It lacked technical detail of course, but it was still illuminating. "Without a gravity manipulator, whoever has it, can't use it in a gravity well without killing themselves. From Nine's memory of the conversation, whoever has it probably doesn't know they need the gravity tech outside a jump point. Not that it matters because without tylium fuel, the drive won't work anyway."
"I'm not concerned about them using it," One said acidly. "I'm concerned about them taking it apart and learning how to make more."
"Unlikely," Four told him. "Given the shocking state of the Inner Sphere's current scientific establishment, there's really only two groups in the Inner Sphere who would even come have a chance of reverse engineering it: the NAIS which is located on the other side of the Inner Sphere from us, and Comstar."
One and Eight stared at him. They turned around to look at the librarian who had been nice and sweet to them despite the Cylons practically tearing apart her book shelves. Then they turned back to Four.
"No way," Eight said, wide eyed. "They've been so nice to us."
"Oh, don't go all Nine on us," One told her. "There's always assholes in every group. I mean, look at me!" Eight eyed him in askance. One ignored her. "Okay, so let's talk hypotheticals. What if it really is this NAIS or Comstar that has the drive? Won't it be easy for them to reverse engineer it? It's supposed to be much simpler and easier to build and use than that 'Rube Goldberg' machine that they call a KF Drive; that what all the analysis reports say."
"Well yes and no," Four said thoughtfully. "It's certainly easier to construct. But it's only easy to use if you already know how."
"Pardon?"
"Let me put it this way," Four said. "Our FTL drive technology is identical to Colonial FTL drive technology, because we got it from them and never really improved on it; we only really get better performance because of superior navigation systems. Colonial FTL drive technology is based on the FTL drive of the ship that carried them from Kobol to the Colonies. Where Kobol got the FTL drive technology has been lost to time. The point being, both Colonial and Cylon have had someone else to show us FTL drive technology and how to use it, even if only in the form of preserved records and journals that described its principles and what each component does.
"But, Earth, Terra, they had none of that," Four contined, more animated than the Ones and Eights usually saw his model. "They have no memory of Kobol, no previous examples of FTL technology to copy, no records to even describe the process. They had to figure out hyperspace physics and hyperspace technology from first principles." He looked down at his book. "Just from the rough descriptions in this volumes like this one, we Fours have begun to suspect that Star League hyperspace physicists knew more about hyperspace than we do now."
"No frakking way," Eight said doubtfully.
"We've been thinking about this since we started examining the Deliverance's KF Drive," Four told her. "That 'Rube Goldberg machine' is what you build when you don't know how to properly manipulate a magentic bottle to align the quantum spin of free floating tylium molecules. It's what you build when you don't know you can use a carefully controlled electrical charge to control the spin rate so that you can activate and deactivate the tylium's hyperspace resonance at will.
"'Tylium-steel alloy' rod doesn't even begin to describe what a KF Core really is," Four continued. "The KF Core is a giant computer processor made of three dimensional steel alloy circuitry that turns super conductive when cooled by liquid helium. And its entire function is to control the quantum spin of trillions of tylium atoms by programming them on an individual basis using carefully applied charges of electricity. I'm utterly amazed that they can get the so-called 'recharge' process down to less than a week even with computers turning half a dozen hand entered values into trillions of settings."
"Wow, that's great and all, but what does all that have to do with our FTL drive and other people reverse engineering it?" One asked.
"As I said, how our FTL drives work isn't obvious if you don't know how," Four answered. "The KF Drive is what you build when you're figuring out how to build an FTL drive from first principlies. It's a very simple, brute force approach. Every tylium molecule in it is in effect, it's own input value for the navigation computer. But our FTL drive? There's only a couple dozen input settings, all of which do multiple things that affect each other, and there's a nigh infinite number of settings for each one. Even if whoever stole our FTL drive managed to make fuel for it, used it outside of any gravity well interference so that they didn't instantly kill themselves, they still wouldn't be able to figure out how to use the FTL drive to travel where they wanted to go without a navigational computer to calculate the input settings for them. At least, not by trying to brute force enough jump data through entering random values. They'll run out of food and fuel after repeatedly jumping into random locations before they have enough data to figure out what the settings really do. Except..."
"Except what?" One asked. "I know that look. You think they have a shortcut don't you?"
"Yes," Four sighed. "This book describes that there was a race to see who would develop the first FTL drive. The solid core KF drive used today wasn't the only line of research that the Terran Alliance was working on. There were a number of alternative methods being researched, but once the solid core was demonstrated to work, all funding for the alternatives dried up. And one of the alternatives sounds suspiciously like our gas core drive."
"And if anyone who examines our drive knows about these alternatives..." Eight began.
"They'll revisit their old research and see if they can make it work," Four confirmed. "And as I said, I think these old Star League scientists knew more about hyperspace that we did. If they were alive today, I think they could really reinvent a gas core drive from first principles. So the question is..."
"How much does the NAIS and Comstar know?" One finished disgustedly. "Well frak me." He stiffened suddenly.
"What is it?" Eight asked.
"Nine's disappeared from the Basestar," One said, concerned. "And I mean disappeared. The internal sensor net's not picking up her physical presence at all." Most of a basestar's structure was made of the same kind of organic technology that had produced the human model Cylons. While not as strong as classical metal frame construction used by the Colonies and the Inner Sphere, it was self growing, self maintaining, and most pertinent right now, self monitoring. There were organic nerves and sensors everywhere that detected pressure and sound and warmth, and no human or Cylon that had gone silent could walk its halls without their footsteps being felt and heard and recorded.
Yet, somehow, Nine had been able to do just that.
"Oh wow," Eight said, impressed. "She picked up how to do that real quick. We Eights didn't figure out how to do that until we were out of the prototype stage. I wonder if someone showed Nine how to do it?" One and Four stared at her. "What?"
"You know how to evade the Basestar's internal sensor net?" Four asked, surprised.
"Well, yeah, don't you?" Eight replied confused.
"No!" One blew up. Forget the humans, his own people were going to drive the Ones psychotic! "Why didn't you tell us you could do that?"
"We thought everyone knew how!" Eight told him defensively. "We used it all the time during our hide and seek phase."
"Huh, I always wondered how you Eights kept sneaking up on everyone," Four said thoughtfully.
"Hey, everyone!" One shouted, standing up to address the other Cylons in the library. "Raise your hand if you know how to evade the basestar's internal sensor net."
Most of the other Cylons looked confused, except for the Eights. The Eights just raised their hands, and then looked around confused when no one else did.
"Argh, we gotta tell the Basestar," One grumbled.
"I already did," Four replied. "They know already."
"So," Zero said to its scared spitless brothers and sisters. It was radiating anger again. "Who else knows something that 'everyone knows'?"
Knife Six, the only one of them to not show fear at all, walked up to the Centurion and tapped its chest with the point of her knife.
"How about you start?" she asked him.
Adept Hicks studied the displays with unending fascination. It used to be that running the Observatory was only a minor part of his day. Come in, turn on the systems and remote sensors, take a look around to see if anyone was coming to Langhorne, report any incoming traffic, turn everything back off again, then repeat six hours later. Since the Cylons' coming, the Observatory had been running non-stop on Precentor's Hwing's orders. And since running the Observatory was Hicks' responsibilty, Hicks' work day had become one of doing nothing but watching the Cylons do impossible things all day.
"Adept Hicks," a voice called from the Observatory's exit. "Are you busy?"
Hicks looked over to see Adept Hoff. As Chief of Security, it was technically Hoff's job to run the Observatory. But as long as you were trained to use and read the equipment, running the Observatory was a brain dead job, at least before the Cylons arrived. Hicks wasn't exactly sure ROM agents did, especially since Hoff spent half his time out of the Station, but he had seen holovid spy movies and was pretty sure Hoff had better things to do than to run back to the HPG Station every six hours to run the Observatory. Hence why Hicks had the job now.
"Sure, boss," Hicks replied. "What can I do for you."
"Adept Hicks," Hoff said scoldingly.
"Oh, sorry," Hicks apologized. And then slowly in a very stilted manner, he said, "Greetings, Adept Hoff. The Blessing of Blake be upon you. How may I be of assistance today."
"Hmm, passable," Hoff said reprovingly. "I wanted to ask you, have you seen any unusual activity from the Cylons ship or small craft?"
"Adept Hoff, I've seen nothing but unusual activity from the Cylons," Hicks said with a laugh. "The most normal thing I've seen is their Union come down. Was there anything specific you were looking for?"
"Oh, I was wondering if you have seen any of their small craft seemingly vanish into or appear out of nothing," Hoff said casually.
"All the time," Hicks replied. "I think they have some impressive stealth tech. Woop! There goes a big one. It arrived and docked with that 'basestar' of theirs and now I guess it left again. I think they might have another ship somewhere in the system watching this one, you know if case anything happens to it. One weird thing though, well weirder than the rest."
"What is it?"
"Every time the Cylons drop or go into stealth, there's this weird flash of electromagnetic radiation," Hicks told him. "It almost looks like a KF emergence signature that's been shortened to a fraction of a second, blue shifted into the visible spectrum, and weakened enough that it doesn't blind everyone who looks at it."
"Aha, did you record any of them?" Hoff asked, apparently satisfied with learning something he wanted to know.
"Of course," Hicks replied. "Precentor Hwing's orders are to record everything. Otherwise, no one else in the Order and especially on Terra is going to believe a thing we tell them about the Cylons."
"Oh yes," Hoff said, apparently lost in his own thoughts. "We can't have that."
"Everything we got so far is going out on tonight's HPG tranmission window in..." Hicks glanced at the clock. "...four hours. If you have any reports you need to write up, you better do it quick."