Part 43 - A Tier In Their Eye
"Man, it figures that this Zoe Greystone would be in the last box in this frakking warehouse," a marine groaned from the driver's seat of his fork lift.
"We're not at the last box yet," the other marine on the floor next to him said. "We are on the last row though."
It was true though. They were at the last row of crates before hitting the rear wall of the warehouse. But row was made of stacks of crates, some three times the height of the average human being. And the row stretched off into what looked like infinity to the marines' tired eyes.
"And I'll bet this Zoe Greystone will be in the last one we open," the first marine grumbled. "By the way, Sarge, where are our pet Cylons? Shouldn't they be here for this?"
"Hey, stow that talk, marine!" the marine Sergeant snapped. "In case you haven't been paying attention, the Cylons are people, and NOT treating them like people is how the Colonies got into this mess in the first damn place."
"Sir! Yes, sir!" the other marine said quickly.
"And to answer your question, Private," the Sergeant continued, "Cylons gotta sleep too. And the First Lady got called to the Blue House for some meeting. Now enough chit chat, we have to get to work. Let's start with that top one over there."
"Can do, Sarge," the Private said as he put his forklift into gear. "But I gotta say, if I had a p... a wife that looked like the First Lady, I'd call her home as often as I could if you get my meaning."
"So say we all, Private," the Sergeant replied. "So say we all."
"Helena, this better be important," Gina said testily as she was issued into the Presidential Cabinet meeting. "We've almost found Zoe Greystone. I can feel it, and I want to be there when we reactivate her."
"I understand, Gina, but a courier from the expedition arrived with news of what the Cylons have been up to," Helena explained. "Admiral?"
Admiral Ngala launched into a quick summary of what the Expedition had learned from the Hansa trader. Gina listened intently as he quickly summarized that the Cylons had found the Thirteenth Tribe spread across over two thousand systems, and had decided to pledge themselves to the Great Work of bringing an end to nearly three centuries of strife.
"Huh, that... wasn't quite what I thought they were going to be doing when they told me they were leaving," Gina commented, impressed. If anything, the idea behind this new Great Work made her proud of her people. "But I'm not sure why you'd even want my input on this."
"Well, the Cylons have implemented something they call the 'Constellation System'," Director Thorne said. "We're not sure why they'd do such a thing, and Commander Tyrol says she doesn't know because her Cylon memories are full of holes. We thought you might be able to shed some light on the subject."
"I can't say I've ever heard of the Constellation System," Gina said honestly. "Can you describe it?"
Thorne gave Gina a quick run down on how the Cylons had reorganized their basestar fleet into mission specialized "constellations".
"Oh, I do know what the Constellation System is," Gina said thoughtfully. "I just never heard of it referred to like that before. I like the name; it's kind of poetic. And theme naming the models based on their Constellation name is pretty clever as well."
"Yes, but what is it and why did they implement it?" Thorne asked impatiently.
Gina gave the humans a quick run down on the Cylon voting system and how network bandwidth limited their population size.
"So at the bottom tier, call it Tier One, you have Cylons all of the same model," Six explained. "Inside Tier One is a pure direct democracy where our mental network allows us to take polls and vote almost instantly.
"The next Tier up, Tier Two, is the one you've seen in the show. Representatives of each model line, that is to say, each Tier One group, get together in a semi-formal council, discuss things out, and make formal votes. Each Tier One group only gets one vote, so unlike what the show would have you believe, one Cylon voting against the rest of their Tier One group won't actually change their group's vote or break any voting ties at the Tier Two level.
"What the Constellation system does is add a Tier Three on top of that. A Constellation is what the Cylons are calling a Tier Two group. And at the Tier Three level, each Constellation gets... well I'm not sure how many votes each Constellation gets," Gina admitted. "Last I heard, there was some debate on whether a Constellation should get one vote or multiple. Basically the choice is between all or nothing voting or a sliding weight scale. I don't know how many votes the Cylons decided each Constellation gets, but each Constellation gets the same voting power regardless of their actual size or population number.
"And of course, it should be possible for Tier One groups or even individual Cylons to move between Tier Two groups, which it sounds like what the Cylons are doing with the Raider models. If the Cylons really felt that a Constellation had too much or too little voting power for their given population size, they could just move whole model lines between Constellations to fix that if they felt the need for it."
"So the Cylons have basically gone from a direct democracy to an increasingly representative government in order to grow their numbers," Helena said thoughtfully. "Why didn't the Cylons do it earlier? It sounds like they could have just swamped us with pure numbers without needing the CNP or advanced weaponry from the Inner Sphere."
"Because we... they were afraid to upgrade the voting system," Gina answered. "The Constellation system by its nature isolates large groups of Cylons from each other. We were afraid that we'd break up into mutually hostile Constellations that would fight each other, kind of like what happened to the Inner Sphere. But I guess the solution the Cylons came up with was to put Centurions in every Constellation. The Centurions after all are the founders of our culture. So it'd make sense to use them as the common denominator that unites the Constellations.
"And besides, we didn't think we needed more population to destroy the Colonies and Colonial Fleet," Gina added grimly. "Even if the CNP had been a total failure, we were sure we could have destroyed you all anyway."
"Uh, how?" Ngala asked. "I thought you said the show was a fair representation of a battlestar against the basestars the Cylon had back then."
"It is," Gina admitted, "but I thought military professionals like yourself studied logistics. Our basestars are self growing and self repairing, or at least they were. And of course we have the Resurrection net to make sure our casualties are basically zero. If we had attacked, we would have held some basestars in reserve to regrow our numbers if the attack failed. And if you killed every basestar that participated in the attack, but not before the we had destroyed every shipyard and major industry, then we could have come back in ten or twenty years with a replacement fleet of equal size. How many battlestars could you have replaced by then, Admiral?"
Ngala didn't answer right away, but he did look like he had swallowed a frog.
"Gina, enough," Helena said, looking just as disturbed. Gina suddenly felt guilty at realizing what she had just done. "But I guess this answers why the Cylons adopted the Constellation system. The... strategy Gina just described wouldn't work if your goal isn't to kill everyone. But their goal is to control the Inner Sphere, which is just plain terrifying if it ever gets into their heads again that they should destroy us."
Gina frowned.
"Yes, yes, I know, Gina," Helena said. "The Cylons have changed their minds about destroying us because they found something better to do. But they can always change their mind back and I would be remiss in my duty if all I did to prevent our destruction was to accept their promise that they won't change it back. We need to disrupt their growing control over the Inner Sphere. We need to make allies in the Inner Sphere that will stand with us against the Cylons." Helena sighed and seem to deflate a bit. "And we have to do those things without starting whole new wars in the Inner Sphere or otherwise making it look like we're disrupting the Cylons' 'Great Work' or else they will come back and nuke us flat." Helena ran both hands through her hair. "Gods, I hope Adama can do all that."
"Okay, what we have here looks pretty harmless," the Sergeant said looking over the latest unboxed gizmo. "Looks like an executive office desk. Built in holographic projector and full blown server under the hood. Fancy." He looked up at the waiting security team, twelve soldiers with heavy weapons including shoulder fired anti-tank rockets flanking a tank sitting in the middle of the empty warehouse. "Okay, people, I know we've already done this a thousand times before – literally – but it bears repeating. Keep watch on everything around you, not just this device, in case a stray signal activates something else that needs putting down." He turned to the Private. "Hit it."
"Plugging in!" the Private announced as he plugged the desk's power plug into the extension cord running across the warehouse floor. A small light came on in the desk.
The marines waited in silence, looking this way and that as well as listening for any signs of remotely activated machinery. This went on for about thirty seconds before the Sergeant decided it was safe enough to proceed.
"So far so good," the Sergeant said. "Step two."
"Powering on!" the Private announced hitting the desk's power button.
Again, the procedure repeated itself, this time with the addition of the desk's holographic projector lit up while the marines looked for anything that might suddenly attack them. This time, the Private broke the silence.
"Boot sequence looks complete," the Private said. "Okay, let's see what on this..."
The Private cut himself off when the life size hologram of a plain looking girl in an unflattering purple dress appeared standing on top of the desk without him ever having touched any controls. The girl blinked, looked around in surprise as if she could see the soldiers arrayed before her, and then smirked.
"Wow, all this for little ol' me?" the girl said. She spread her hands wide as she said, "Come on then, shoot me! I dare you!"
