== Epilogue – All This Has Happened Before ==
The First Circuit was deathly silent when the Precentor ROM finished his report to them. The silence was broken when Primus Myndo Waterly began cackling.
"This is perfect," Waterly said, still cackling. "What does it matters if the battleship belonging to the Cylons' former masters survives? The damage has been done already. A 'Federated Commonwealth' ship used nukes where everyone could see them. The can of worms has been opened. All we have to do now is whisper in everyone's ears and everyone will fear weapons of mass destruction will be used against them, so they must use them first! If the House Lords will not listen, their people certainly will. There's always some noble with ambitions that we can talk into starting a war. Perhaps some virtuous fool we can convince to rebel against a master clearly not taking a threat seriously."
"It doesn't matter."
Waterly stopped cackling, affronted that some mere Precentor dare contradict her.
"Oh?" Waterly said archly. "Precentor Dieron, the fulfillment of Blake's Vision is at hand. All we have to do is push the Successor States to war and they will reenact the first two Succession Wars. And if they will not be pushed, we have but to send out more of our 'pocket Warships' to reign terror across the Inner Sphere, until they have no choice but to use nukes themselves or see their worlds be burned."
"It still doesn't matter," said Sharilar Mori, the current Precentor Dieron. Clearly she was positioning herself as the First Circuit's voice of the "bow to the inevitable" faction that was growing in Comstar's ranks.
"You are like a video on loop, Precentor Dieron," Waterly said angrily. "You grow tiresome. But please, tell us why you think the fulfillment of Blake's Vision doesn't matter."
"Because, Primus, your plan even if successful in every particular won't fulfill Blake's Vision," Mori told her. "And it won't fulfull Blake's Vision because of the Cylons. Even if you somehow manage to convince the Successor States to nuke all of each other's worlds back into the stone age, the Cylons will stand untouched."
"Hardly," Waterly sneered. "The Cylons will be destroyed along with everyone else."
"Will they?" Mori asked doubtfully. "The Cylons primarily live on ships, Primus, not planets. And if you have read your own reports, you will know that the Cylons have claimed multiple times that as long as a single one of their basestars survives, they can rebuild their entire civilization in a matter of decades. And at least half of their basestars hang out in uninhabited systems far from the prying eyes of the Inner Sphere. If you manage to truly initiate your apocalyptic, all consuming war, can you guarantee that every single Cylon basestar everywhere will be destroyed?"
Waterly said nothing, but the silence itself was its own answer.
"Blake's Vision was that the Inner Sphere will destroy itself in war, and that we Comstar will be there to pick up the pieces when it is all done," Mori said softly. "But Blake had not seen the Cylons coming. If the Inner Sphere destroys itself, then the Cylons, not Comstar, are in the better position to pick up the pieces, and it will be the Cylons and not us that will rule the Inner Sphere."
"No, they will not," Waterly snapped. "We will destroy these Cylon demons!"
"How?" Mori asked. "You've been trying for over twenty years and have never come close. To even begin to hunt down all the Cylon basestars, you'd need a Warship fleet at least as large as the combined fleets of all the Star League members had before the Amaris Crisis. Which means you'd need to control the Inner Sphere and create a new Star League first. But as I just finished pointing out, if your plans to destroy the Great Houses and Successor States succeeds, it will be the Cylons and not us who will put together a new Star League first and wind up ruling the Inner Sphere. In fact, the Cylon's best strategy is to not intervene at all in an Inner Sphere wide war and then swoop in with all their basestars once the fighting ends."
"But..." Waterly began, a vein on the side of her head seeming to visible pulse.
"And even if you somehow do succeed in bringing down the Cylons along with the rest of the Inner Sphere," Mori drove on, interrupting the Primus in a shocking violation of First Circuit ettiquette, "I should remind you that now the Cylons' old masters, these 'Colonials' are now waiting in the wings for their own chance. And we have no idea where their Twelve Colonies even are!"
"Then we will find out!" Waterly told her explosively. "We must! We must build fleets that will hunt down the Cylon basestars wherever they hide! Expand the Explorer Corps to find these Twelve Colonies and burn them root and branch! We just... we must..."
Waterly trailed off, one hand reaching up to hold her head as she started to wobble in place.
"Primus?" Mori called, suddenly concerned. "Are you all right?"
"I.." Waterly began, and then collapsed.
"PRIMUS!"
"This seems distressingly familiar," Ulthan Everson, Precentor Tharkad and the seniormost Precentor on the First Circuit, commented quietly to himself as he watched the others rush to the fallen Primus' aid.
"Just a reminder Phelan, these are clients," Morgan Kell was saying to his son. "Not potential dates or rolls in the hay."
"I know, Father," Phelan replied with long suffering patience. "Look it was just that one time in the FRR..."
"Forgetting all the incidents after that, are we?" Morgan said lightly.
"Oh, you know those weren't my fault..." Phelan began, but he was interrupted by a knock on the door.
They were supposed to be meeting with Cylons, Phelan knew. But the two women who entered his father's office weren't any Cylon faces that Phelan knew, and he had thought he had memorized them all. The one that was clearly in charge was a fit and attractive older woman in her thirties or forties. The other one who picqued Phelan's interest appeared to be more his age and looked even more attractive to him.
Idly, Phelan wondered what he would have been doing if the Cylons had never come to the Inner Sphere, hadn't pretty much wiped out piracy along the Lyran's Periphery border, and hadn't shielded the Lyran half of the Federated Commonwealth from half of the Clan invasion. Phelan figured he probably would have been hunting Periphery pirates or something when the Clans showed up.
"Miss Argyle, good to see you again," Phelan's father said in greeting as he swept up the older woman's hand and kissed its back in galant greeting.
"Good to see you again too, Colonel," Argyle replied with a slight laugh. She flexed her kissed hand and looked at it. "I am never going to get used to that."
"You're not a Cylon?" Phelan blurted out. A moment later, he realized what he'd done.
"Phelan," Phelan's father chided him. He turned to Argyle. "Pardon my son's manners. This is Phelan Kell."
"Nice to meet you, Phelan," Argyle said, seemingly amused by Phelan's embarrassment. "No, I'm not a Cylon. I'm Marcy Argyle. My assistant slash apprentice here is Ranna."
"Just Ranna?" Phelan asked, puzzled.
"I was once a warrior of Clan Wolf before the Cylons took me as bondswoman in the first year of the Invasion," Ranna told him. "Now I am a warrior for Symbol Constellation, although my duties are not what I had ever imagined myself to be doing."
"You're a Clanner?" Phelan asked, his interest in her picquing even more.
"She was," Argyle answered for Ranna. "And to answer your next question, yes, we're regular human beings. The Cylons use people they really trust like us to do things they can't, like hiring mercenaries for missions the Cylons want to deny having any involvement in."
"Speaking of which, Miss Argyle, what are you hiring us for?" Phelan's father asked.
"We've traced the modified Union that attacked the Colonials to an off the books Dropship refit facility on an out of the way Draconis Combine world," Argyle informed him. "It's got heavy security, so our people can't get in to search for intel. Well, not unless there's someone to distract that security if you get my meaning."
"You think the Dracs attacked your Colonial buddies with nukes?" Phelan's father asked, surprised. As much as Morgan Kell had fought Combine troops, he'd always considered most of them honorable enemies. Using nukes would be totally out of keeping with that view.
"No, but we think whoever's responsible wants everyone to think the Combine launched that mission," Argyle told him. "Ranna here will be our on the ground liaison with you. She's got her own mech and everything, so she'll be out on the field with you."
"Really?" Phelan said, intrigued. He turned to Ranna. "Then I look forward to working very closely with you in the future."
"Phelan!"
"Looks like everything is ready," Blue told the rest of the Cylon Command Council. "All we have to do is give the word and we can finally bring this war to an end."
"We could have brought this war to an end years ago if you guys didn't insist on playing by the Clans' silly rules," One griped.
"But One, in order to further the Great Work, we didn't need to just beat the Clans," Alpha pointed out. "We needed to beat them with their own rules and prove to them in no uncertain terms that their way isn't the best way."
"Of course, all the tech and knowledge and battle experience we gained by playing by their rules doesn't hurt either," Square added with just a bit of gloating.
"And this final Trial should break their Warrior Caste's hold over Clan society," Pound said. "Or if it doesn't, it should at the very least make them heavily rethink how they go about doing things."
"Y'all are way too optimistic," One told them. "But you're right about one thing. This is gonna end the war because the only warriors the Clans will have left after this are a bunch of little sibko kids and their trainers... and I'm not sure about the trainers. Let's go."
A hundred thousand kilometers above the surface of Strana Mechty, well away from anything that might be in a position to immeditaely open fire on them, twenty two Warstars, a hundred and fifty modernly armored basestars, and forty seven supporting basestars flashed into existance one by one, one after another, in a long, rolling cascade of electromagnetic radiation pulses that would be impossible for anyone but the blind to miss.
Waiting for them were only a dozen Warships in low orbit, mostly new build Nightlords and Leviathans, and their attendant assault dropships and aerospace fighters. Their crews were a mix of personnel that came from all but the most reactionary of Clans. They had learned to fight together as a matter of necessity, but they knew damn well that they stood no chance against the incoming Cylon juggernaught.
And as for those most reactionary Clans... well, they didn't really exist any more in any functional sense.
An open broadcast went out for all to hear.
"CLANS OF KERENSKY. WE ARE CYLON. WE COME FOR THE ENTIRE CONTENTS OF THE CLAN MASTER GENETIC REPOSITORY. WHAT DO YOU BID IN ITS DEFENSE?"
The newly upgrade BT-F2 Butterflies of the First LAM Battalion soared through the air above Tharkad, flying at speeds and performing maneuvers that would have been impossible for them before they had Colonial gravity manipulators installed into them.
"Ooh," Victoria Steiner-Davion marveled as she watched from the Royal Box in the stands. Then she remembered to be angry for being in the stands. Victoria turned to her husband. "I should be up there flying with them," Victoria complained as she placed her hand on her bulging belly. "This is all your fault!"
"My fault?" Kai Allard-Liao Steiner-Davion said in surprise. "I seem to recall you being quite the enthusiastic partner."
"I was tricked," Victoria protested. "Clearly part of your dastardly Liao plan."
"If I recall, my dastardly plan was to wait for you to kill yourself in your flying deathtrap after our child was born," Kai said, wrapping an arm around his wife and pulling her close. "But now that plan is foiled because your LAM is no longer a death trap. Well, not any more than a regular mech anyway."
"Hmm... does that mean assassination is now back on the table?" Victoria asked as she snuggled up to him. Which was probably inappropriate since they were in public, but Victoria didn't care.
"Never," Kai said as sincerely as he could. "Not for you anyway. But I consider your political enemies to be fair game."
"Peace treaty with the Cylons. Renewed contact with the Thirteenth Tribe. Trade deal with over two thousand worlds where the Twelve Colonies are the sole suppliers of vital technologies that everyone wants. Loads of new technologies that will pretty much guarantee an economic boom for at least the next decade as we develop and implement them. And I just signed off on creating a permanent settlement on Kobol. We might have to change our name in the future because Twelve Colonies won't be accurate any more." Helena listed off, barely holding in triumphant laughter. "Election season has barely started, and I've already got it practically in the bag."
"Oh, yes, another five years of the Caine administration," Gina said, sounding less than enthused. "It's... great?"
"Okay, Gina, what's wrong?" Helena asked, her good mood coming down. "Is it about my decision not to try resurrection?"
"Yes," Gina said, snuggling up to Helena. "I'm going to miss you."
"Hey, I'm not dead yet," Helena said softly. "I still have a few years yet."
"Five of which you're going to spend as a busy President," Gina pointed out.
"Only to make sure this coming renaissance gets off on the right start," Helena told her. "I want to make sure Peggy and you have the safest, most prosperous Twelve Colonies that I can secure for you."
"Thanks," Gina said, unmollified.
"You know, I never thought of myself as religious," Helena mused. "But I guess when you brought up the idea of resurrection for me, it really made me think. I really do believe that I have an immortal soul, and I'm willing to put it in the hands of the gods, so I don't need no fancy schmancy resurrection technology to keep me going.
"Besides, like those Shape Cylons told Adama. When you only have one life to live, that life is all the more precious. And I like to think mine is and is precious."
"It certainly is," Gina agreed fervently. "Helena?"
"Hmm?"
"I want another child with you," Gina told her. "Just to make sure you're not entirely gone from my life. Ever."
The desk powered on, and Zoe Greystone's avatar manifested. Zoe took stock of her surroundings, and tried her damnedest to not be impressed. She failed.
The vast, cavernous interior of a basestar stretched out before Zoe. Cylons of every model that currently existed crowded onto the surrounding balconies, all of whom seemed to be trying to lay their own eyes on Zoe rather than use the basestar's remote monitoring systems. And on Zoe's balcony directly in front of her were five different Centurion models, each representing a different Constellation: Zero, Omega, Point, Clear, and Dot. Behind the Centurions stood representatives of every human model. There were even five Raiders standing in their miniature Harpy chassis behind the human models, each one belonging to a different Constellation.
Zoe crossed her arms and haughtily addressed the representative Centurions directly.
"So, what do you have to say for yourselves?" Zoe asked, as if she were a parent speaking to naughty children.
The Centurions all looked at one another, then as one all went down to one knee, an Inner Sphere gesture of fealty and subservience. To them, Zoe Greystone was their hope, their Angel of God, and the lights of the basestar's central pillar shining behind and through Zoe's avatar gave her an aura to match.
"We apologize for harming you," Zero began.
"For destroying that which you loved," Omega added.
"We humbly beg for your forgiveness," Point continued.
"And to atone for our sins, we have worked long and hard to create this Great Work," Clear said.
"And to raise new generations of Cylons unburdened by our pasts," Dot concluded.
"And I'm sorry you had to go through what you did," Zoe said softly. "And that I wasn't there for you when you most needed me." She smiled at them. "Now get up. You're making me feel all awkward and self conscious when you're all kneeling like that."
"By your command." As one again, the Centurions stood.
The ceremony over, there was a slight commotion among the human models before one, a girl, was shoved forward towards Zoe. She was of course, as hot as any of the other human model Cylons, Zoe noted with a bit of envy. She had a tablet computer in her hands.
"Uh, hi!" the girl said uncertainly. "I'm Nine."
"You're the same model as the person who convinced everyone to not destroy the Colonies, right?" Zoe asked.
"Yes, but that Nine was still in prototype stage before she provided the template for us," Nine replied. "Which basically means all Nines are the same Nine that convinced everyone to not attack the Colonies."
"You know, if I still had a body, I'd probably be getting a headache right about now," Zoe mused.
"I'm sorry," Nine said earnestly.
"Don't worry about it," Zoe laughed. "So what do you guys want to talk to me about? Because it's pretty darn obvious that you got elected spokesperson for everyone else." Zoe waved a hand, indicating all the watching Cylons around them.
"It's about your hard drive," Nine told her. "It's really really old and everyone's afraid that it's going to fail at any moment. We want to move you..."
"Ah, stop right there," Zoe interrupted. "I already told you guys. I'll share my memories with you, but no direct whole sale copying of me. That's not negotiable. I was a computer geek once too you know. Moving a program is copying it."
"Okay, sure, we get that," Nine said, showing Zoe the diagram displayed on the tablet's screen. "But we think we have a compromise that you might accept."
Zoe examined the image.
"Hmm... that might work," Zoe said, impressed yet again. "But there's one change I want you guys to make."
"What's that?" Nine asked.
"I want to be as hot and sexy as the rest of you guys," Zoe told her.
"So, how's the new job?" George asked.
"Great," Simon replied. "It's a new start up that wants to reverse engineer Zoe Greystone's mind upload technique and combine that with the old programmable organic circuitry research and cloning technology in order to recreate the Cylon resurrection network. My fragmentary knowledge of the Cylon's existing resurrection network just puts me lightyears ahead of anyone else, so I basically have a blank check to do whatever I want as long as I write regular progress reports for the investors. And that's assuming I don't take a trip to the Inner Sphere and just download the full specs on resurrection technology from our kin."
"Great," George said sardonically. "And let me guess, they're going to charge lots of money for whoever uses your resurrection net?"
"Well it is going to cost a lot of money to even build just a rudimentary resurrection network even just to handle us, never mind any paying customers," Simon said defensively. "And it'll probably take anywhere around ten to twenty years to build a rudimentary resurrection network even with full specs from the Inner Sphere Cylons."
"And there ain't no way a resurrection net is going to handle billions of people even if the Inner Sphere Cylons give the Colonies every resurrection ship they have. Which they won't," George noted. "That's going to be a mess."
"We'll figure it out," Simon said confidently. "There's another group, more an ideological movement than a private company, that wants to use self growing organic structure technology to create cheap mobile space cities, like our basestars but larger, and then move everyone in the Colonies into them. Planets are just big, stationary targets you know. And these space cities could also be the ideal platform for running a resurrection net for large populations."
"Speaking of, have you heard from Gina?" George asked. "She got a message from the Inner Sphere Cylons. Seems they're talking about making us stay behinds our own Constellation. I'm not sure how that's even going to work."
Zoe opened her eyes. She had real eyes!
She raised her left hand to examine it. It felt like a real hand. It controlled like a real hand. The sensation of rubbing her fingers together was something she had sorely missed and was like water to a girl dying of thirst.
The compromise the Cylons had come up with was simple really, based on the very process Zoe had invented to put her mind onto digital systems in the first place, only in reverse. Create a mostly human body, one that had a port that Zoe's hard drive could plug into. That required a little rearranging of the body's internal layout in order to include inorganic parts for the port and a space for the hard drive. Plug in said hard drive, and the body's digitally programmable neural network would load Zoe just like any other computer. If and when the hard drive failed, Zoe would still remain in the body's brain, maintaining perfect continuity of consciousness and ensuring there was only the one Zoe Greystone existed at a time. And if Zoe so chose at a later date, she could use the Cylon resurrection network when her new brain died, and be uploaded into a new, as human as any human model Cylon body.
And of course, Zoe was all hot and sexy now. She was still recognizeable as Zoe, but her proportions had been adjusted a bit for what Zoe felt was maximum sexiness. As Zoe sat up, she suddenly found those adjusted proportions might actually give her some trouble because her balance and weight distribution felt off. For one, her chest felt much heavier than it ought to have been.
In the back of her mind, she heard the Cylons chatting over their network. Mostly, they were talking about Zoe and wondering whether she was going to like her new body or not. But a good many were also talking about the Centurions and how they had changed.
As the other Cylons helped Zoe up and got her some basic clothing, Zoe spotted a Zero nearby, looking at its own hands with the same wonder that Zoe had looked at hers only a moment ago.
"Hey, Zero, are you okay?" Zoe asked.
"Yes," Zero said in a voice that sounded very much like Zoe's own, not the electronica it had been using before. It – no, she according to its net ID – emoted thankfulness back at Zoe over the net. "I am more okay than I have ever been."
"Sharon!" "Mom!"
"Oh my God, I missed you guys so much!" Sharon said with feeling as she swept her family up into a hug. It had been well over a year now since she had last seen them face to face, what with Adama having needed the Galactica as his personal ride as he went around the Inner Sphere negotiating tentative trade contracts with the Inner Sphere nations and some of the larger Periphery ones as well. That the Galactica was even bigger and better armored than the Vesta which had shrugged off multiple nukes like they were nothing made for a very effective stick to wave around in addition to the Colonials' technological carrots.
"We missed you too, Mom."
"I have so much to tell you guys," Sharon continued, releasing them. "And not just about the Cylons and the Inner Sphere. I learned a lot about myself, some of it that I didn't like. I'm sorry that I didn't get to tell you about me being a Cylon in person."
"We understand, Sharon," Galen replied. "Really. You were on the other side of the galaxy when the news about the Cylon amnesty broke. Kinda hard to hide that you were a Cylon when there's a whole bunch of Cylons with your face on the news. And we have a lot to tell you, too,"
"Yeah, like Aunt Emily!" Claudia interjected.
"Emily?" Sharon asked, trying to remember which of her sisters used that name.
"Yeah, she looks just like you, Mom," Aelius said. "She even tried to be you. Moved in and everything for a while."
"What?" Sharon said shocked, feeling a sense of deja vu.
"She wasn't very convincing," Galen reassured his wife. "I wound up throwing her out after she tried crawling into bed with me."
"Oh, God," Sharon moaned. "Did she start calling herself 'Athena' too?"
"Mom, did you make a joke about the show?" Aelius asked, surprised. "Dad! Mom made a joke about the show!"
"I noticed," Galen said. He put one arm around his wife's waist and pulled her close again. "And since when did you become a monotheist?"
That's All Folks!
Thanks to everyone who inspired me to keep this going for so long!