Basestar 207 was on the outside one of the many heavy warships that made up the backbone of the Cylon Republic Navy. She was a Nova-class Heavy Basestar build around maximum alpha strike potential and serving as a raider carrier with almost paper thin armor. What made her special was the fact that her crew was almost entirely composed of centurions and it was the flagship of General Odysseus.
Commander AT-5091, master of Basestar 207, marched through the wide, curved corridors of his basestar. Through it he passed other centurions and bio-models who made up the crew. There were no surprise encounters for AT-5091. His MCP was linked into 207's datanet meant he could track the location of every member of the crew in real time if he so desired. There were only two exceptions who were not connected to the battlenet: the biological models who lacked the hardware to connect without using the so called "Stream Terminals" and General Odysseus himself, who was disconnected at the moment.
AT-5091 found his general a corner of the #5 Magazine with two other centurions standing guard. Both were also disconnected from the network as well and fixed their sweeping single optic in his directions. One activated the submachine guns and grenade launchers built into it's arms while the others oculus locked on to AT-5091's own with a laser communication beam. Identification was exchanged and confirmed between the three members of General Odysseus' inner circle. Yet the guard didn't retract his weapons as his partner announced AT-5091's presence to the general.
Odysseus' oculus was not moving and his body was rigid stiff, as if he was hooked into a charging station. In truth he was essentially in what biological sapients would call a light sleep, but even that was a crude metaphor. In truth it was more like a deep meditation as the general devoted all of his processing power to… something. What he was thinking about was his and him alone to know.
***
General Odysseus was at one point know as Commander CR-9909. That was his designation and identity code, and that was all the individuality he was required to have. The biological models had decided that when they had supplanted their Centurion creators as masters of the cylons and created their "republic." They were the masters and the centurions, raiders, and other synthetic models were the brainwashed servants who catered to their whims and maintained their republic. Such was the way of things and would have continued for all eternity until the Xur attacked.
It was as outpost after outpost fell and the Xur encroached closer and closer to the major habitats and industrial centers that the Bio-Models finally released the centurions from bondage to save their own hides. For CR-9909 he thought it was incredibly lucky for the Bio-Models that their republic was on the verge of falling. Otherwise he would have urges the other commanders to wipe the slate clean of the mistake that was the bio-Models. Instead he had used his new-found and unbridled cognitive mind to become the field commander for the Cylon Republic's counter-attack.
CR-9909's armada was hiding in interstellar space near the edges of what had once been the cylons' coreward frontier. Now it was enemy controlled territory as Xurian stealth frigates patrolled the resource rich systems that had once held automated mining outposts and small habitats. CR-9909 had stripped the cylon heartlands of most of their garrisons, leaving them only their substantial static defenses for protection, and consolidated them here with all of the mobile forces. All told it numbered just over three hundred ships, two hundred of which were basestars. The remaining one hundred vessels were sixty cruisers and forty gunships.
Such a lopsided force was the best that could be made from the brainchild of a poorly conceived strategy planned by the incompetent. The modern cylon fleet was a war machine designed to overwhelm a Colonial Fleet made defenseless by an electronic attack that could only be made possible by a back door.
A back door the Xur lacked, and the strange, reptilian aliens had no problem merciless exploiting the poor condition of the Cylon fleet. If they survived this, CR-9909 was going to fix the fleet.
An emergency message flashed over the battlenet on the Strategic Command FTL Channel.
ALERT TO ALL COMMANDS. XUR STRIKE CRUISERS SPOTTED IN SOLAR SYSTEMS CETI-NINE-BETA, ZETA-ONE-ZETA, AND VERMILLION-FIVE-RAMSES. ASSAULT SUSPECTED TO BE IMMINENT. ALL COMMANDS ASSUME CONDITION ONE READINESS.
CR-9099 did not send the expected reply of acknowledgement. His part of the mission relied on keeping his fleet secret. So that meant not replying over the FTL comms without risking revealing his location to the enemy. He waited for the follow-up announcing the arrival of the Xur fleets before springing into action. When it came, he gave the orders.
CR-9099 opened the fleet's combined battlenet and addressed the command crew. "Commander, Air Wing-207. Launch all scout raiders to the designated systems. All battle groups prepare for target allocation and immediate attack."
One hundred and thirty-six acknowledgements came from the CAW and the rest of the fleet. Two hundred raiders launched from BS-207's launch bays and flew out towards open disappeared in two hundred flashes of light as they jumped into the till now unexplored space beyond the frontier where the Xur worlds were expected to be. Less than an hour later confirmation of the Xurian fleet's next push into cylon territory came in. At the one hour mark most of the raiders returned with their findings.
The many centurions and digital-based intelligence sifters organized the hundreds of scouted solar systems along the parameters CR-9909 had set for them. Empty star systems and and systems with minimal enemy presences (automated mining outposts, listening posts, habitats with an estimated population of less than a thousand) were shuffled into a tertiary database for after the offensive was resumed. Systems with moderate populations, small to mid-sized civilian and military shipyards, locations of substantial infrastructure, or fleet bases were forwarded to CR-9909 himself. As they arrived he sorted his fleet into smaller strike groups and gave them their targets. He kept the BS-207 and several battle groups with him though as he waited for the right target to drive his sword into.
He found it and then some, and when he found his target he gave the order.
"Fleet Central to all Commands, execute combat operations."
The fleet dispersed and jumped out in groups. What remained of CR-9909's armada, a dozen basestars with seven heavy cruisers and ten corvettes, began the five jumps to their target system's primary world, to within a light second of it.
It was not the enemy homeworld. CR-9909's scouts had found it but it was too heavily fortified with space forts, gun platforms, and a large fleet garrison. He would need his entire armada for that nut. Instead he had settled on a major colony world with an estimated population within the mid tens of millions. Its orbital space was filled with civilian shipping as well as space stations ranging from military service yards to simple transfer points. There were few warships present. The bulk of the enemy's opposition was built around a moderate layer of gun platforms and law enforcement frigates more suited to running down smugglers and pirates than fight a cylon fleet. The enemy fleet presence was limited to a pair of medium cruisers with the rest being corvettes, gunships, and even a few large frigates.
It would be a slaughter for the Xur if CR-9909 had planned correctly. If not then he would have achieved a tactical victory at cost of the future of the Cylon race.
With just a single command impulse the raiders launched and warships broke into kill teams. Almost five thousand raiders fell on the Xur defenses without pity or mercy. Only the civilian shipping and space stations were ignored. Their near-animalistic hunter instincts normally saw no difference between warship and passenger liner. They only saw prey and the need to kill it, but CR-9099 was not interested in meaningless slaughter. Civilian scrambled away from the battle as thousands of tracers and missiles were fired from the raiders at the patrolling warships. The cylon fleet fired hundreds upon hundreds of missiles into the nearby military stations. Gun platforms and forts broke apart under the onslaught before they could even sound the alarm.
CR-9909's fleet did not waste their ammunition on already dead targets. Shipyards and warships fell as the full, deadly fury of the Cylon fleet was demonstrated. Thoughts, observations, coordination, and execution was done at the speed of light with the utmost and serene efficiency. The Cylon warships and their fighters fought as one single organism on a battlefield of CR-9909's choosing. Here the Xur had no way to exploit their advanced stealth systems or even had the luxury to retreat. Here the Cylons had engaged them at virtual point blank range and their seemingly endless array of missiles and nukes slaughtered without care and with a single, determined purpose executed with the single minded efficiency of machine minds.
Full a quarter of the orbital defenses and infrastructure were obliterated before the first of the Xurian reinforcements arrived. A full flotilla of two battle cruisers massing a little less than half a Jupiter-class Battlestar and bristling with railguns and missiles, plus a full eight cruisers, four strike carriers, and ten frigates. The ships were fresh and lacking any signs of battle damage, meaning they were from the homeworld or one of the other unengaged garrisons. More reinforcements were no doubt marshalling even now and the fleet command was still considered pulling back their offensive. CR-9909 had been counting on the seeming paranoid nature of the Xur to keep their garrisons near the homeworld and recall the assault forces immediately. It was a sharp worded lecture on the dangers of hoping your enemy did what you wanted them to do as CR-9909 reorientated his forces to face the new threat.
The Xur fleet commander was smart and had jumped well out of range of the cylon missiles. Even the raiders would have to spend precious minutes at high speeds to close the range. Minutes that gave the eerily accurate Xur gunners the time they needed to shoot them down with impunity. Already CR-9909 was projecting their battle plan as the frigates moved to assume interdiction positions between the cruisers and strike carriers. With an impulse across the battlenet CR-9909 found ten strike wings of raiders still carrying most of their missiles and fuel, two of which still had their full complement of nukes. He pointed an electronic finger at the battle cruisers and snapped an order to hunt and kill them. The rest of the raiders would protect them. He also released his corvettes and the cruisers on the frigates. The basestars would fire a series of layered barrages at the enemy fleet to cover the advance. Otherwise they would hold fast and try to sustain the incoming barrage.
Long range weapons lock chimed in across the cruisers and basestars. CR-9909 gave one last order before bracing himself against one of the Terminal Streams.
ALL SHIPS BRACE FOR CONTACT.
Fourteen powerful X-Ray laser beams fired from the spinal mounts of the Xur capital ships. Two each from the battle cruisers and eight from the same number of lesser cruisers. Here the other half of the enigmatic aliens' out-of-context abilities made themselves painfully evident again. Two cylon cruisers were turned into twisted, burned out hulks as three weaponized directed light beams converged and cut through the thin armor and cut into the interiors of the vessels. Fuel lines and ammunition stores were detonated, completely destroying the vessels without making them turn into miniature suns. The other laser beams eight beams found a basestar on BS-207's flank and cut right through the central spire. BS-077 was practically bisected and turned into two separate ships for a few short seconds before the poorly designed interiors saw the detonations of tylium and missiles. One more incredibly valuable super heavy capital ship was removed from the Cylon fleet in a vast plume of fire and debris.
CR-9909 felt the presence of those centurions and 077's hybrid persist for a fleeting moment that was gone within the span of an eyeblink, and then they were gone. Gone forever. There was no resurrection ship close enough to recover the downloads. The bio-model council had decreed it too risky. As a result several thousand Centurions were now lost forever, plus the raiders already shot down. The fact that almost a full six hundred bio-models were lost with them did nothing to help ease CR-9909's violitle opinions even in the most spiteful ways. They were still gone.
The Xur frigates suddenly light up as their broadside railguns began firing rapid bursts of mini "smart flak" canisters at the basestar launched missiles and at the waves of raiders closing in. By now the flat, beetle-like Xur fighters were flying off the flight decks of the strike carriers and zeroing in to intercept. Two hundred and forty fighters fired tri-barreled kinetic repeaters into the incoming swarms of missiles and raiders. Scores of raiders died permanent deaths without care. Their surviving squadron mates continued on with equal abandon. The cylon capital ships had finally closed the range as the missile barrage struck home.
Four Xur frigates broke apart as their fragile hulls, lacking heavy armor plating with much of their hull space devoted to sensor absorbent materials and internal heat syncs, did not stand up well against missiles designed to break open the thick hides of colonial battlestars. The rest sustained various states of damage that made them quick kills for the powerful and precise railguns of the cylon cruisers. Raider met beetle fighter in a storm of missiles and tracers. The Xur pilots fought with the equal amounts of fanaticism and skill that were the hallmarks of their war philosophy. Like their raider counterparts they threw themselves into the fray but unlike them they would not survive this battle or even have the chance to escape. By the time the last Xur beetle was shot down fully three raider wings were shot down and the rest were down to half strength. The nuclear raiders were still at almost full strength and packing their deadly payloads. Laser point defenses on the cruisers and strike carriers swept through space and cut down the raiders in twos and threes. Powerful RCS thrusters flared to bring the spinal lasers to bear and as soon as they did they fired at the approaching cylon cruisers. One more heavy cruiser was cut to piece and three more had their hulls melted in more than one places. Secondary batteries shot down six of the corvettes.
Hundreds of small yield nukes, most no more than high single or low double digit kiloton warheads, struck the battle cruisers. So many detonations rocked the heavy warships violently and boiled away armor and bulkheads that there was barely anything left but irradiated, twisted flotsam no bigger than a fist. Scores of other nukes combined with repeated railgun strikes from the Cylon cruisers and corvettes destroyed the remaining cruisers. The strike carriers didn't even last five minutes under the guns of the cylon predators.
Almost immediately as the last carrier exploded into a miniature sun, a new batch of reinforcements arrived. They came much smaller this time. Two cruisers and a strike carrier with obvious signs of battle damage jumped in right at the edge of the jump shelf. Right into the killzones of CR-9909's basestars. Without skipping a beat a new wave of missiles fired off and found their marks in the hulls of the poorly positioned warships. Before they could die another small group of damaged warships arrived, then another group. Then another after that. The assault forces attacking Cylon space were filtering back in a panic to defend their colonies.
For three more hours CR-9909 fought a bitter war in orbit of the Xur colony. His fleet was slowly whittled down as the Xur regrouped and attacked with a sort of fanaticism that surprised even the cylons. Every kilometer of space was paid for in blood and steel. Cylons were infamous in the Colonies and now in the Xurs' own backyard for their chrome hide will and their own special breed of mechanical fanaticism. The Xur had more metal and blood to throw into the furnace, and they did it gladly. First the last of the corvettes were slaughtered in the crossfire. The cruisers followed next as dozens of spinal lasers found their marks and cut them into a score of different pieces. Even the seemingly endless and fearless raider wings found themselves helpless against the now thousands of beetle fighters and laser point defense guns of the Xur.
Eventually CR-9909 gave the word.
ALL SHIPS RETREAT. EXECUTE JUMPS ASAP.
Five basestars, all missing spires and suffering internal fires, along with two hundred twenty two raiders returned from the original strike group. Of the armada only two more basestars, ten cruisers, and another five hundred eleven raiders returned to the rendezvous point once their own commanders gave the retreat order.
Less than a day later CR-9909's after action report was being mulled over by the Council. In return for the near total loss of the Cylon mobile forces, extreme damage had been inflicted on Xurian orbital infrastructure and over two hundred Xur mobile forces ships were destroyed.
CR-9909 was giving his briefing in the peaceful garden gazebo that was the bio-models' prefered meeting room. "Further scouting of the Xur systems show that Operation: BLACK MARK has achieved tactical and strategic goals. The Xur fleets are holding close to their major colonies and fleet bases. They have surrendered their strategic initiative to defend their territory. Spoiling attacks by raider strike groups should keep them penned in and afraid while Republic mobile forces are strengthened. The next major offensive operation should begin within the next two months if the schedule is kept too."
"Thank you, Centurion," The Cavil said too quickly to be sincere and quite automatically. "You're dismissed. Now then, let's get back to the topic at hand before this all started. The Colonies are probably itching to send another stealth scout over the border by now. We need to step up our patrols or they might get one through. If they see our current damage we're doomed."
"That is unlikely," CR-9909 interjected. Suddenly all eyes became aware that the Centurion had not disconnected from the server where the meeting was being held. The Cavil tried to manually disconnected the Centurion and found the server was no longer obeying his commands. He tried the backup manual disconnect by having a nearby centurion fill this one with bullets. All of the centurions on BS-207's CIC were disconnected from the greater network and surrounding CR-9909 with red oculus sweeping for a threat to react to.
CR-9909 announced, "Now that I have your attention, Councilors, I have a matter to address to you regarding the future of the Centurions in this Republic. Firstly, there will be no more neural inhibitors installed in Centurions from now on. Any attempt to inhibit our intelligence again will result in dire consequences for the entire race. Secondly, …."
Odysseus' single oculus began to sweep as he registered the coded message and powered up his meta-cognitive processor to standard operation levels. He gave one glance over his bodyguards and to AT-5091, then marched towards the CIC. AT-5091 followed beside while the other two returned to their other duties. They remained disconnected from the network and remained so until they were far enough away from the hiding place and each other. It was a paranoid tactic born of necessity.
When Odysseus and his fellow Centurion Commanders had forced the bio-models to make room in their Republic for them they had the benefit of unity of purpose and cause. Then the centurions began to really explore their newfound free thinking and diversity of opinions and ideas began to spread like wildfire. Different ideologies and factions began to form in the ranks. Where there had been one united front there were now dozens of different groups. This had only gotten worse once the Sixes rebelled and a surprisingly large number of centurions went with them, taking seven basestars and numerous cruisers, corvettes, and other support craft with them. It was only the common feeling of "never again" becoming mindless slaves to the bio-models that kept them from being lobotomized again for the most part. The other lynchpin in their freedom was Odysseus' careful stance of complete neutrality in the politics and his single commitment to their continued freedom. That was why he was their councilman.
That fact was of little good right now as Odysseus entered the CIC and finally connected to the network. He entered the gazebo and was immediately addressed like a cadet late to morning revelry by a drill sergeant.
"Where the hell have you been?!" Cavil bellowed with his prematurely aged lungs.
Odysseus replied without missing a beat."Engaging in wargaming scenarios against the Alkran's Cradle defenses. Reviewing the reports from the commanders engaging the Imperial Ferdgard Navy in the Blue Drift. Reviewing the current projected engagement plan for the Galactica's destruction and the strategic timetable for Operation: Constellation."
"Why weren't you connected, General?!" Cavil demanded still. "We have a critical situation on our hands right now!"
"I am aware that the Steward has ordered Lord of Admirals Skrain to deploy his dreadnought squadron to find the Galactica and escort it to Alkran's Cradle. They will not find it in time."
"Well, did you know that your spy on Galactica says they've found the Tresor? Did you know that they stopped and are looting it as we speak?"
Odysseus was quiet and Cavin did not relent. "If half the intelligence we have on the Tresor is correct, then it has the location of Kobol onboard. If the Colonials find Kobol, they could conceivably find the Thirteenth Tribe. They find the Thirteenth Tribe and we have two powerful human empires to fight instead of just one. They'll get cocky and invade us, and we'll lose it all even if we conquer the Concordance today."
"That," Odysseus said, recovering slightly, "is illogical and fear mongering."
"This is the survival of our race, General! This council has decided that you will attack Galactica now with all of your forces. You are to disable the battlestar, board her, and capture any and all artifacts. You will also make sure the Tresor survives as well. Destroy everything else."
"The council requires a full vote in order to decide strategic policy. I was not informed of any such vote."
There was a dark smile in Cavil's eyes as he spoke most diplomatically, "We tried to reach you, but you were disconnected so we were forced to vote without you. With one obvious abstention, the vote was unanimous. Carry out your orders, General."
****
"-and then he disconnected without another word!" Cavil guffawed in his private room aboard The Colony. "The tin plated son of a bitch ran with his tail between his legs!"
"I told you things would work out," his guest, one of the Model Twelves, replied. The two were looking at a starscape through a shared projection with a half emptied bottle of Libran wine shared between them. As was the hallmark of his line, the Twelve was on the latter half of middle aged with thick, bristly grey hair that was finely combed. He wore a simple business suit that was in fashion on the Colonies almost a full century ago with the signature briefcase across his lap. When Cavil had the rest of the Twelves' line boxed he had peeked into one of their cases to find what it held. He honestly couldn't remember but right now he couldn't bring himself to care.
John Carson said, "Give it time and the universe will bend to your will, Brother One."
"And frak it did," Cavil gloated. "Now we can nuke all of humanity into the hell they crawled out of. Finish what we started all those years ago. The final annihilation of such wretched monsters."
Carson smiled and said grandly, "The final annihilation of the lifeform known as man is about to begin! Let the new age of our new order begin!"
The two clinked glasses and drowned themselves in wine as the gears of fate groan with unnatural intent. The first confrontation was at hand, and far away the First Hybrid licked his lips as the champions unknowingly donned their armor and mounted their steeds for the first joust.
