== Part 34 – Moving Pieces ==
"When we Cylons first came to the Inner Sphere, we had no idea what we would find," the man being interviewed was saying. He had been introduced as simply Seven. "We came from twelve worlds that thought they were the only humans in the universe, imaginatively called the 'Twelve Colonies'. They knew they had come from somewhere else, but that somewhere else had been lost to history. They did have a legend that there was a Thirteenth Colony, Terra, but most people back home dismissed Terra as myth. After we Cylons had won our freedom from the Twelve Colonies, we decided to follow up on the old legends, following a trail of old stories and scraps of physical evidence that led us here to the Inner Sphere.
"And what we found shocked us," Seven continued solemnly. "We had thought the Twelve Colonies that we had left behind were bad, but the Inner Sphere is many ways worse. Pirates running rampant in the Periphery. Abject poverty on a scale we could barely comprehend. All of it driven by the Succession Wars where even the most benign rulers have to spend ungodly amounts of resources on military defense just to protect their own people with little to nothing left over to fix their own nations. So we Cylons have decided that if the rulers of the Inner Sphere can't or won't provide safety and prosperity, then we'll fill in the gaps.
"Don't get me wrong," Seven added. "We Cylons have no wish to conquer the Inner Sphere, we don't want to fight the Great Houses, and we don't want to participate in the Succession Wars. Having been slave soldiers for the Twelve Colonies, the last thing we want to do is fight for this or that lord's petty power. But we also think it's long past time that someone fixes what has been broken, and we Cylons are volunteering to do just that.
"Now we're just one basestar, one capital ship with some support ships like the tugs that put that asteroid on Langhorne's surface," Seven admitted. "My people back home may yet reject the course we've chosen here in the Inner Sphere, in which case our help may well go no further than Langhorne and a few other worlds in the Periphery that we've already started on. But I will tell you this..."
The video playback paused.
"Fellow Precentors of the First Circuit," Primus Julian Tiepolo began, "I do believe we have our solution to the Cylon problem."
"Oh do you now, Primus?" sneered Myndo Waterly, Precentor Dieron. "These Cylons are the purest antithesis of Blake's vision and you've been letting them run rampant on this Langhorne for two, almost three months now. And you think you have a solution?"
"Why yes I do, Precentor Dieron," Tiepolo said confidently. He pointed at the paused interview. "You heard it right from the Cylon's mouth. The Cylons as a whole have not yet decided to commit to this... this abomination against Blake's Vision. It is only this one ship that has decided that. So if we destroy this one ship, or even just damage it enough, the bloody nose might well cause the rest of the Cylons to rethink their 'Great Work' and leave the Inner Sphere well enough alone."
"And how exactly do you intend to accomplish that, Primus?" Waterly asked doubtfully. "I seem to recall a dropship full of mercenaries running at the first sight of their 'basestar'. That's a Warship, Primus, no matter what the Cylons choose to call it. No one in the Inner Sphere has any more Warships of their own to contest it."
"Except us," Tiepolo reminded her. "I have already given the order to pull several Warships at the Saturn yards out of mothballs. But I don't believe they will be necessary."
"Oh? Do tell."
"As magically advanced as the Cylons appear to be, their weapons and armor appear to be primitive," Tiepolo explained. "For all their high minded rhetoric, the Cylons are upgrading Langhorne's industries to make up for that lack, but they've barely started and certainly haven't upgraded their forces to Inner Sphere standards outside of a few experimental fighters. Our military experts believe that just one Jumpship with enough assault Dropships and aerospace fighters will be able to destroy their basestar."
"What if the basestar just runs away?" Waterly asked, considering this new information.
"What if they do?" Tiepolo said with a shrug. "Then they will clearly demonstrate to all to see that they don't have the courage to support their convictions, especially when the aerospace force they ran away from lays waste to everything they're building on Langhorne and then some. I'm sure our news programs will emphasize that to anyone and everyone who is thinking the Cylons will 'protect' them."
"And if the Cylons defeat the aerospace force sent to destroy them?" Waterly pressed.
"Then the damage done may still be enough of a bloody nose for them to quit the Inner Sphere," Tiepolo answered. "But even if it's not, the attack will certainly spark a war between the Cylons and the Lyran Commonwealth."
"I'm sorry, Primus," Ulthan Everson, Precentor Tharkad, said quickly. "What was that?"
"According to ROM, it seems our dear Archon Katrina is as worried about the Cylons as we are," Tiepolo replied with mock concern. "It seems a couple of very rare Achilles class assault Dropships as well as a Vengeance class carrier fully loaded with heavy aerospace fighters have disappeared from their deployed positions along the Free Worlds League borders. Now ROM doesn't know where they went, but they do know they're not in the Langhorne system. So if those Dropships – or at least identical Dropships sporting the same colors and unit insignia - show up in the Langhorne system and attack the Cylons, then clearly the Lyran Commonwealth is responsible for the attack."
Waterly didn't even bother to ask what would happen if the real Lyran aerospace forces showed up. Comstar controlled all faster than light interstellar communications after all. No call for help from Langhorne to wherever the Lyran aerospace forces were stashed would reach them until it was far too late.
Tiepolo paused in smug victory, looking directly at Waterly as if daring her to find fault in his plan. Waterly's mind worked furiously to do just that. But she failed, largely because Waterly knew it was exactly the kind of plan she would have concocted if she were in Tiepolo's position. It was a false flag operation straight out of Comstar's secret playbook, and the only thing that surprised her was that it was Julian Tiepolo of all people planning it given his past liberal policies.
His liberal policies...
"Wait a minute, Primus," Waterly said as a thought occurred to her. "Hasn't your policy all this time been to carefully balance one set of Successor States against the other set? If the Cylons go to war with the Lyrans, wouldn't this vastly weaken the Lyrans and throw the balance of power well into the Concord of Kapteyn's favor?"
"Yes, it will," Tiepolo replied, his air of smug victory evaporating. What he said next seemed as pleasant to him as pulling teeth without anesthetic. "My original policies did not take into account that forces from outside the Inner Sphere would weigh in with enough economic and military might to disrupt the careful balance I have arranged among the Successor States. But the Cylon's 'Great Work' is as you said the antithesis of Blake's Vision, so if I must sacrifice all the carefully laid plans I have made to stymie their Great Work, then so be it."
Waterly's eyebrows involuntarily rose towards her hairline. She would never have expected such a thing from this old man, and she found her respect for him going up a notch. But only a notch. Waterly still had her own ambitions to replace him after all.
Katrina couldn't sleep. She needed to sleep as she would be leaving Tharkad in the morning for her daughter's wedding on Terra. But staring at the report Simon had delivered today, Katrina found sleep eluding her.
Even with her ambassador only securing a non-aggression pact instead of an alliance, the Cylons worried Katrina deeply. She had watched the interview with Seven and she could read between the lines. Even if the Cylons were being completely honest with their intentions – something which Katrina was still in doubt about – what the Cylons wanted to do would basically require them conquering the entire Inner Sphere whether they realized it or not. They might – MIGHT – allow worlds or even whole Successor States self rule, but it would be them dictating the terms of whatever peace they wanted.
The stunt with the asteroid did little to put Katrina's mind at ease. In fact, it worried her even more.
Of course, the Cylons might prove wholly incapable of establishing their Inner Sphere wide peace, perhaps through lack of numbers or sheer ineptitude. But they had already demonstrated enough amazing feats with their technology, that a failed attempt at their Great Work would cause untold carnage and suffering, and the Cylons were starting in Katrina's backyard.
And today, Simon had delivered to her the latest tracking report from the Black Box network. Orders had gone out and the Black Box stations were reporting data to Tharkad via HPG network a series of seemingly nonsense numbers that meant nothing to any reader except Simon's analysts here on Tharkad.
The Cylons still didn't seem to notice the Lyran's use of Black Box technology. Or at least they had said nothing that hinted they noticed to Eve Steiner. Simon's people had refined their tracking enough that they could follow individual Cylon ships – likely scouts - as they moved from system to system. The black box network didn't have the precision to track Cylon movements inside a system, but jumps of lightyears were obvious. And they had noticed that for some reason, no ship ever jumped beyond a one hundred lightyear radius from the second most powerful source of Cylon Black Box emissions. Simon's people thought this source was likely a comm relay of some kind, especially since it was sitting in the middle of interstellar space just outside the Lyran's Periphery Border and far from any star system.
And today's report stated that four probable basestars and two more probable relays had just appeared in the Deep Periphery. They were heading straight for Langhorne.
