Commander Adama's quiet interrogation of his son was broken up barely ten words in as Reece emerged in her uniform.
"That was quick," he said after a moment.
"I've had practice."
"Shall we go?" Tigh said. "It's this way."
She nodded and eyed the corridors curiously. Adama wondered if she would get lost a lot learning her way around.
"How many crew on your ship?"
"Two thousand is the usual complement. How about yours?" He carefully avoided giving a precise answer.
"There's about a thousand military personnel on Avarin. The destroyers each carry a hundred and fifty, each orbital platform has another fifty, about a hundred and fifty people on the ground of various kinds including me, fifty-odd crew for the interceptors and the other three hundred are essentially part-time reservists that never get called up in harvest season."
"Two destroyers."
"Yeah. Soviet-class. Elderly but still sound. They're rugged old hulls."
"And the interceptors?" Lee asked.
"Our fighters. They carry a pilot and an electronic systems officer. They are divided into two wings of ten fighters each, and the wing leaders carry a communications sergeant to help coordinate things. The other eight personnel are spares, essentially, to make sure we always have a full complement of pilots and ESOs."
"Okay," Lee said. "What's the range on your interceptors? How long can they stay out?"
"If everything's working right, they can stay out and keep flying until the crews starve to death. With the supplies they usually pack - a year, tops. Take combat damage and that's usually cut down quite a bit, though."
All six of the Colonials walking with her stopped to stare. So did all the pilots and deck crew who'd been listening.
"A year," Lee said. "You're kidding."
"No, I'm not. They're designed for long-distance pursuit, among other things. Although there are damned few people who'd want to live inside a flight suit for a solid year." She shuddered. "Imagine the smell! Not to mention the monotony and claustrophobia. Are your fighters capable of independent interstellar travel?"
"No," Commander Adama said. "They're not."
"Thought not; they're too small. Our interceptors are. And one of them would fill most of your landing bay."
"How do you fly them? I mean, visuals, sensor readings only…" Lee asked. "You couldn't see all around like in a Viper. It'd be too big, too many things in the way."
"Direct linkage to the control interface circuitry."
"Direct linkage meaning…" He looked baffled.
"Cybernetic implants," she explained. "Connects the brain directly to the computers."
"You have a computer in your head," Baltar said incredulously.
"No, just the interface connections. The computers are all in the interceptors, never inside the skulls. All military personnel get the primary package once they pass basic training, but there's not much use for most of it. Computers are still mostly accessed through terminals. The interceptor crews are an exception, they get a far more extensive job. Most of my implant is aimed at interfacing with medical equipment, since I'm normally a surgeon."
"Not a diplomat?" Laura asked.
"No. We don't have any at Avarin. I'm the next best thing."
"Talk to me some more about this interface circuitry," Baltar said as they walked. He sounded nervous.
"I can't imagine…" Lee trailed off.
"It's not that bad. There's no actual computing capacity built in for most military personnel - some civilians, yes, and a few specialised services. Not the majority of us. Well, a simple calculator and a bit of electronic memory, no more than you can fit into the kind of calculator I used at high school. Nothing big."
"Why not? I mean, you could put an encyclopaedia in someone's head," Baltar said.
"Ever since we started experimenting with direct neural interfaces, the people who designed them took paranoia to an extreme and tried to think of absolutely everything that could possibly go wrong in the field - accidents, corners cut on production, sabotage, infiltration, stupidity, and of course everything the enemy could do - and figure out how to avoid it hurting the user. It's virtually impossible to control the bigger ships with it because of the software cut-outs - we only have it on the interceptors because it's faster."
"I'm sorry, I don't see the connection," William Adama said.
"Cuts down response time by better than half a second and increases situational awareness during a battle. That alone makes it worth it." She shrugged. "There's a fair bit of purpose design in the industry - the stuff Marine Corps Raiders use, for instance, to interface with weapons targeting circuitry. The kind of shots their snipers can make have to be seen to be believed." She shook her head. "If we don't want to use the 'plants, we can just shut them down."
"How about infiltration?" Tigh asked. "Ever had trouble with enemy programs?"
"A few," she admitted. "But doing that to a military net carries a compulsory death penalty, on our side, and it's never been infiltrated remotely by the enemy without enough warning for us to shut the implants down. Besides, it's a strictly one-way link, brain to exterior computer." She caught their look. "The brain controls and directs the computer. The link cannot be used to control the brain, we always build them that way. And there's a strictly finite limit to the amount of information the human brain can process - that's the kicker. We can't just create a huge information repository and hook a brain into it."
"You can't, oh, build circuitry that can think for itself? Make tactical decisions when humans are too slow?" Baltar was fumbling for coherent questions as huge new vistas opened up to him.
"No. The law makes it impossible to do that in the military. Why are you so curious about our cybernetics?"
"We've… had some bad experiences," Lee said very carefully.
"Ah. So the Cylons are synthetic."
"They're artificial intelligences," William Adama said. "How did you know?"
"Clues from the wreckage of the ship we destroyed - and the lack of body parts." Reece shrugged. "But our law doesn't require someone to be human to have rights. It just requires sentience, that's why we don't use AI software, because we'd have to accept it as a person. If these Cylons can build spaceships, they probably qualify on that alone. If they want to talk to us, we'll at least give them a hearing."
"They've tried to wipe out the human species," Roslyn said stiffly.
"Or your part of it," Reece said. "But the bottom line is that unless they go to war with us as well, then we'd need a reason to take sides. That's not just my opinion, by the way; it's the Admiral's orders, and it's the law for diplomatic contacts." She paused. "Did you make the Cylons? Create them as a race?" She had wondered, with the way they said things.
"They're not a race," Adama said.
"Yes," Tigh said tightly at the same time. "Forty-five years ago."
"And you've been at war with them ever since?"
"There was a forty-year armistice," William Adama said.
"Really? Our last war lasted five hundred and ninety-six years. We won. Let me guess - you lost, and this fleet is all that's left."
"Yeah," Roslyn said. Her throat pinched. "That's right."
"Well. I can see this is going to take a while."
Author's note: A nice long chapter, as promised. I live for reviews.