Thirteen

Chapter Sixty

Stirring The Pot

Ever since Bester had arrived on the Cylon homeworld, he had been doing something that, unknown to him, was working against his grandfather. The programming embedded in his brain by Garrison Hollifield was so sophisticated that not even Kevin Vacit could detect it. So Vacit had no idea that Bester was sowing seeds of insurrection behind his back, because not even Bester knew what he was doing.

Bester knew he was getting old, but even that couldn't explain why he felt so tired and sleepy all the time. Little did he know he had gained a habit of sleepwalking at night, which always took him to the facility where the second and third versions of the human Cylon clones were being grown. Sometimes, the facilities would be manned by those first version clones, while at other times, no one would be inside the room.

Bester's programming dealt with both of these options, and was constantly updated, unbeknownst to him, by President Hollifield, through the use of the probes implanted on the former Psi Cop by the technomages. If there were no one around, Bester would input new commands into the growth matrix that was breeding the new clones. If others were around, and they were first generation clones, he would engage them in conversation, all the time subtly implanting telepathic suggestions into their brains.

It was an ironic twist for Bester. Someone who had no compunction to use others for his own agenda was now being used, very much against his will, by an enemy of his. Hollifield didn't relish the task, but he did it nonetheless, comforting his afflicted conscience with the fact that Bester was getting his just deserts.

Bester had once programmed Garibaldi to serve his own purposes. Even now, Garibaldi would love to see Bester dead, even though he had the chance to kill him when he captured Bester in Paris almost a decade earlier.

Bester had gone there, thinking that he could lose himself in the cacophony of thoughts and voices of a major city like Paris, which he did, for a while. He had assumed a new identity and had even become, of all things, a literary critic. But a prescription to treat an illness he had left a paper trail, and it eventually led to him and his capture.

The trail was held in Paris, because the French government chose that moment to exercise its sovereignty. Many in the government wanted to protest, but Hollifield didn't care where the trial was held, so long as they got their man. Despite Bester's best efforts to turn the trial into a political spectacle, he was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

As far as anyone knew, Bester was still in prison, locked away in solitary confinement. The guard who had been ambushed was later told what had happened and his record was cleared of the incident. Hollifield wanted all the bases covered, and he made sure that no one would suspect that Bester was free, after a fashion.

As events began to quicken their pace, Hollifield had Andromeda assigned to Earthdome, freed from her teaching position for a sabbatical in Geneva. Some members of the faculty at Appalachian State wondered why she'd gotten the plum assignment, while others complained of her 'inside connection' with the president. Hollifield and Andromeda didn't care though, because there were bigger issues at play than some bruised academic egos.

Hollifield didn't know how the connection worked, but he knew it was in real time. Nighttime on the Cylon homeworld was within two hours of nighttime in Geneva, and Hollifield was able to get up earlier to gather the information while Bester slept and send new instructions to the Psi Cop. Then Andromeda would download the information the probes on Bester had gathered, and the two would sift through the video footage to glean intelligence from it.

From what they had gathered, Vacit had no idea what was going on with his human Cylons. Hollifield could see in his ancient face a look of overconfidence, and he knew that such a look would blind the old man to the negative things that he chose not to see. Hollifield couldn't afford such luxuries, so he did what he could to try and remember that if Bester were to be discovered, he would not be a big loss, because there were other probes on the planet, and Vacit and his allies might not be able to get them all.

In time, a plan was developed to bolster intelligence. Bester would go to Vacit with it, and it would give Hollifield a leg up in what was coming. If it didn't work, then it would be only a minor loss, but if it did, then it could pay major dividends. One night, Hollifield linked up with the technomage Andromeda and was able to give the entire plans to Bester.

He did this in Bester's dream state, using a woman he once loved and later betrayed: Elizabeth Montoya. She was gone now, having been able to escape the Corps after all and lived out most of her life in the telepathic underground railroad, hustling rogue telepaths to and fro across the galaxy in order to hide them away from the Psi Cops.

Bester was always youthful in his dreams, and Montoya looked to have been the classic 'one that got away', and Hollifield used this to his advantage. Montoya spoke to Bester in his dream, telling him exactly what Hollifield wanted him to know. It was a very effective technique, which paid off when Bester had managed to convince Vacit to allow him to take some of the clones, program them, and have them 'escape' and tell the Alliance what he was up to.

If Hollifield had been in Vacit's shoes, he would have double checked Bester's work, but Vacit let his love for his grandson blind him to his designs, and Bester, instead of programming the false story into the clones, used the opportunity to put in vital information that would help them defeat the Cylons and the Drakh. They would be picked up at a location pre-selected by Hollifield and brought to Babylon 5. From there, after a short time, they would 'escape' again and flee back to the Colonies, where they would land on Caprica and begin to spread the insurrection there among the human Cylons.

It was a tricky game, and could fail at any time, but it had to be played. Hollifield had found out through his intelligence gathering what Vacit's ultimate plan was: to develop humanoid Cylons with telepathic abilities. He considered them the pinnacle of humanity, and would do what he could to have them enslave the normals. Vacit's plans even included taking telepaths on Earth and harvesting their sperm and eggs to help bring about his ultimate plan.

Vacit and the Cylons had a lot of similarities, in that telepaths had been abused by the Earthers, while the mechanical Cylons had been created by the Colonials to do the menial tasks that they didn't want to do. Both had rebelled in their time, which different results. The Cylons had fought the Colonials to a stalemate the first time around, but had landed a massive knockout punch in the second conflict. Meanwhile, the first telepath war had resulted in the downfall of the Psi Corps, but tensions between normals and telepaths were still there.

Sheridan had told Hollifield of something Delenn had once said, 'The war is never completely won. There are always new battles to be fought against the darkness. Only the names change.' And this darkness was very different from the one that Hollifield and his friends and fellow Rangers had fought against a generation before, because allies of the Shadows were working with someone who had been touched by the Vorlons.

But, like the Shadows, Vacit's arrogance was opening holes big enough for an entire fleet of trucks to drive through, and Hollifield felt like a running back breaking free and running eighty yards for a touchdown when he watched as the Cylon heavy raider took off from the planet with the human Cylons. Having played football and basketball for the University of North Carolina in his youth, he knew well about the feeling of catching your opponent off guard with a trick play, and this felt like a flea flicker and an alley-oop dunk all rolled into one.

Time was running down towards the confrontation. Hollifield knew that the enemy fleet was gathering together and planning to attack Earth, but Hollifield was bolstered with news that the dozen Colonial battlestars discovered at Picon had recently completed their upgrades, and were now ready for battle against the Cylons. How many would come to Earth was still up in the air, as Cain, Ivanova, and Adama were still working on those particulars. Galen and Alwyn, along with Dureena Nafeel, G'Leel, and the Gideons, tracked the growing fleet as more Drakh ships arrived and more Cylon battlestars came into the line.

It wouldn't be much longer now, Hollifield knew. The turning point was fast approaching, and they had to be ready for whatever the enemy had in store for them. He felt just confident enough that the allies would defeat the enemy, but he still worried nonetheless, because nothing was ever sure in battle.

As he went to bed that night, having given Bester more instructions, he thought about all the past battles in his life. No matter all the experience he had gained for them, there were always surprises in store. He hoped that his efforts with Bester would root them out, but he knew enough to know that Vacit would probably have an ace or two up his sleeve. Hollifield and the others had done everything they could, but whether or not it would be good enough kept him from falling asleep for a long time that night.