Author's note: I wanted to thank jetsly for the inspiration of this depiction of "Tough Six" from his The Long Journey Home series on fanfiction.

INTERLUDE– 'A New Hope'

Subaltern Lord Brakar was practically giddy because he continued to draw breath. He'd believed that the loss of more than half his vanguard at the demon star would have called for him to place his spirit in Talish's hands to atone for his failure. However, Lord Shilak would hear nothing of the sort. The Minor Lord had told Brakar the Hunt could ill afford to waste a commander who'd learned such a painful lesson from the devious crèche hunters and would help the Hunt avoid such debacles in the future.

Now as his vanguard reformed with elements from Lord Shilak's Minor Hunt while the ships orbited over the Peoples' Foremost Lodge, Brakar had been gifted with a new purpose. He was to skirt the space near the major crèche hunter world and ambush any of their vulnerable military vessels in the hopes of isolating and capturing several to wrest intelligence on their defenses from their ships.

Brakar bowed his head low and uttered a vow under his breath. "Soon, crèche hunters, soon, we will find your weaknesses and exploit them to ensure the safety of our nestlings from your depredations."

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Unbeknownst to Brakar and the other Sakqua, a Fleet drone disguised as a nickel-iron meteor streaked through space on a ballistic arc close to the Sakqua staging planet. If any of the Sakqua had bothered to scan the drone, all they would detect was a seemingly benign rock and miss the tight beam transmission directed toward the Olympus-class brain ship stealth scout ship hiding in the system's Oort cloud.

Chapter 19

Battlestar Galactica – Lower Decks - Colonial Fleet

Lena Stenger had no idea what to expect when Gunny Mathias and Corporal Venner led her through the fluorescent lit corridors of the ancient warship's lower decks to the Cylon's living quarters.

What little information the Colonials had on the woman was somewhat interesting in its own right. It simply was another example of how poor these people's security protocols were due to the fact than none of their intelligence apparatus had survived to flee with the Galactica and her rag tag fleet. According to Lt. McCall's recollection of Old Gemenese, the woman's first name, "Dulceata" was the word for "pleasure." And her last name, "Sase" was the word for the number "six."

Now when her small party had arrived at its destination, what awaited her managed to surprise the hell even out of a seasoned operative like her.

Unlike some of the slovenly hovels of the prostitutes on Port Tau Ceti she'd had the displeasure of raiding on occasion, the Cylon's cubby-hole, the space was too small to call it a room, was fastidiously neat and tidy. Seated at a tiny table separated from a full size bed by only two feet or so was a dark haired beauty. Her hair was shoulder length and somehow managed to gleam under the poor lighting of her space. In front of the Cylon on top of the table rested an open bottle that Lena suspected contained some sort of alcoholic beverage. Now the bottle was only a quarter full.

The Cylon seemed to have had to struggle to lift her head to see who'd intruded upon her humble abode. "So," she announced with an exaggerated flourish like the ringleader of a circus, "the time has finally come! Well then, I suppose now is a good time as any. Just drag me off to the closest airlock and let's call it a day, shall we?"

Lena judiciously approached the little table, pulled out the chair across from the Cylon and sat down. The wary Fleet officer scooted her chair a good distance back from the table. She knew looks could be deceiving—the bottle could have been a red herring designed to lull the intelligence officer into a false sense of security so the killing machine inside the lovely organism on the other side of the table could take advantage of the situation.

Stenger carefully centered herself and considered several ways she could incapacitate the other woman if the Cylon decided to strike. Then she said, "Ms. Sase? My name is Lena Stenger. I'm an officer in the Alliance of Planet's space navy."

The Cylon closed her eyes momentarily then flashed them open comically wide, appearing to have stunned herself by the unexpected brightness that apparently had temporarily blinded her. Then a second or two passed before she frowned in concentration. "Y-you're one of those new humans, aren't you?" she slurred. "You know…the ones from the Thirteenth frakkin' Tribe."

"Actually," Lena admitted, attempting to keep things light, "I was born on the colony world of New Bavaria but my ancestors hail from Earth."

"I see," the Cylon said. Then she grinned brightly when she noticed the pair of Marines standing in the entrance of her cubby-hole. "Hey, you've brought Vennie and Erin with you! Hi Vennie! Hi Erin!"

Stenger heard the tiny smile in the gunny's voice. "Hello Dulce."

The Six blew a kiss at Mathias before she shot a saucy look at Lena and said in a voice that tried to reel the Fleet officer into the Cylon's web of conspiracy, "Lena, I must confess that I know those two quite well in the 'sacred scroll' sense." Suddenly, she burped then looked drolly embarrassed. With faux sorrowful eyes she stared at Lena and exclaimed, "Goodness me! Where in the frak are my manners?" Then she lifted the bottle and gingerly extended it toward Stenger. "Would you care for a drink?"

Lena couldn't stop the grin that dawned on her face. If this was an act, she had to admit, it was a good one. "Is this that ambrosia I've heard so much about from the members of the crew?"

The Six nodded fervently for a brief moment then nearly swooned when that motion had not apparently agreed with her stomach. "Um…yeah," she admitted, "but I'm sorry to say it isn't the good stuff. At my current station in life, the Leonis vintages are too rich for my blood."

"No matter, I've always wanted to try some," Lena said diplomatically. She accepted the bottle and took a healthy swig from it. Now she grinned at her new drinking buddy. "Smooth, very smooth, a bit of a cross between wine and bourbon. So, Ms. Sase—"

The Cylon immediately interrupted her. "No, no! That just will not do! If we're going to celebrate together I insist we be on a first name basis! Besides, you seem kind of nice, for an officer at any rate, and I'm starting to like you. Also, it doesn't hurt that your pretty frakking hot, to boot! Why don't you call me Dulce?"

"All right then, Dulce, as long as you call me Lena, I think we have a deal."

"Done!" Then she chuckled. "You sure drive a hard bargain, Lena!"

Lena flashed another smile at the Cylon and actually found her to be a pleasant drunk. Still, the cold hard assassin inside Stenger wouldn't take anything for granted. "Dulce, what exactly are we celebrating?"

The Six snorted loudly in a very unladylike manner. "You really don't know? Why, we're celebrating the fact your Colonial brothers and sisters actually managed to find you! You know, based on what that frakkin' Roslin said over the wireless, the Cylon nation has just been relegated to a second-rate power if she wasn't yankin' our frakkin' chains about how powerful you people really are." Then her mood shifted again to one of embellished sobriety. "It doesn't really matter, though."

Lena narrowed her eyes at Dulce. "Why do you say that?"

Her demeanor shifting once more as rapidly as mercury, Dulce leaned back in her chair and cackled madly. When she had stopped laughing she simply smiled saucily at Lena. "Why in the frak did I say that?! Lena, the Cylons had the Colonials by the frakkin' balls! They had all but destroyed Colonial civilization yet that wasn't enough for some of them. Some wanted every frakkin' human to take a permanent dirt nap while others had come to the conclusion that humanity wasn't so bad if the Cylons could cull them to a manageable number."

Lena cocked a well-groomed brow at everything Dulce was giving her. It was clearly apparent from the way Sase was talking she didn't consider herself a Cylon; she plainly associated herself closely to the Colonial humans! Even more importantly, Dulce was freely telling her there were rifts between factions in the collective.

Now, when Dulce had decided to continue with her diatribe, Lena listened carefully. "Even though there may be six trillion humans out there," she waved out beyond the walls of her cubby-hole, "it's painfully obvious to me the Cylons had never stood a frakkin' chance from the get go, Lena. They didn't understand you can't declare war on love." Then she smiled slyly and said, "Let me tell you how frakked up the 'machines' turned out to be. The level of…oh, what's the word for it…oh, yeah, incompetence of the Cylons that had infiltrated this pitiful remnant of humanity was truly spectacular!"

Lena had to take a moment to brush a tiny amount of spittle spewed from the drunken Cylon's mouth off of her nose before she turned her attention back to Dulceata as the other woman wound up to deliver her litany.

"Let's start at the beginning, shall we? Doral, our Number Five model, blew himself up, causing minor damage to a minor hallway of this frakkin' ancient battlestar. And the Eights? The youngest of the models and the Cylons' weakest links went out of their way to prove the frakkers were spot on in their judgment of them. Boomer, the sleeper Eight, jettisoned the battlestar's water, and then, she personally found loads more water!" Dulce laughed quite loudly at that for several moments before she sobered and her face turned grim. "And then she shot Adama, but not very accurately, since she loved him."

Lena didn't miss the sarcasm in the Six's voice.

"Now we turn to the other Eight, who abandoned the Collective when that tall, studmuffin ECO who used to fly with her frakkin' sister Boomer put a bun in her oven, for God's sakes! Then there's Leoben, a Two who got obsessed with the all-mighty Kara Thrace and then got himself captured and airlocked for his trouble. Knowing how frakked up his model can be, I'd bet good money his entire line is so smitten by that crazy-ass Viper jock, they'd hammer their swords into plowshares and live in peace and harmony with humanity as long as they could have little hybrid Leos and Karas to dote on. Oh, and Lena? I'm just as harsh a critic of my own line. Take my sister Six, Shelly Godfrey. She utterly failed to discredit Baltar and his dreamy hair…and destroyed our frakkin' cover in the process," she noted, her voice hard. "Then we come to Simon, the Four. Simon…he killed himself, really killed himself, out of resurrection range, without blowing up the ship that he lived on because he couldn't imagine life without his little human wife and his little human daughter because he loved them."

The Six paused for a moment and drew a deep breath. Then a sad smile formed on her succulent lips. "As for me…well, I've been compromised, too. You see, I never even thought about attempting to sabotage this ship because I've grown to love the people who really protect us and do their jobs without engaging in nepotism and acting like they're God's gift to humanity like that frakkin' Apollo and the rest of those Viper jocks. I love the Marines on this ship, Lena. I love him (she pointed a finger at Venner) and I particularly love the frak out of her (she flashed a lusty grin Mathias' way). Lena, I swear to the One True God that Erin is such a damned good lover she sends my soul to heaven every frakking time she makes love to me. Simply put, Erin and the rest of my Marines makes life worth living for me."

Lena blinked twice as she tried to process all that Dulce had told her. She had to hand it to her partner, Malcolm; when he's right, he's right. Whoever or whatever had created these human form Cylons had done their jobs too damn well. Instead of making creatures who were ruthless and cunning in their quest to destroy and displace the Colonials, they had engineered immature children who only became self-actualized and capable of biological reproduction after closely interacting with the very enemy they were supposed to eradicate!

Now she studied the Six who sat across from her and said, "Dulce, at no time did I ever consider tossing you out of an airlock. We're not here to arrest you because nothing you've told us sounds like you ever committed a crime. We are here, though, to take you into protective custody. My people have developed a method to detect any of your people who've infiltrated this fleet. Once we begin the process, the cat will be out of the bag, so to speak, and any of you who aren't in protective custody will be in danger."

Dulce narrowed her eyes at Lena then. "I won't give up my people to you."

Lena shook her head. "I'm not asking you to do that, Dulce. We're going to uncover them anyway and I'd rather not have you identified as the source who ratted them out. That could put you in a difficult spot when we repatriate you back to your people."

The Cylon frowned and stared at Stenger as if she was the three headed dog that guarded the gates into the Colonials' underworld. "Why in God's name would I want to go back to the Cylons?"

Lena hid the smile that would have revealed to the Cylon she'd already guessed that's what Dulce's response would be. "You don't want to go back?"

"Frak no! To tell you the truth, Lena, the Cylons are kind of dullards and really aren't the life of the party. My Marines, though, are quite the opposite. They're inventive, passionate, so full of life. I've grown so much during my time among them, I'd rather be boxed than go back to the dreariness of my old life."

Stenger nodded. "Well, I'll see to it that we look into arranging for you to stay with either your Marines, or perhaps, you may want to take a gander at some of our Marines. I'm sure we can work something out. Are you ready to go with us now? Do you want to bring any of your things?"

"No, I'll have Erin come back later and bring me my things, if that's okay with you, Erin?"

"That'll be fine, Dulce," the gunny said in a soft voice.

"Okay then," the Six said. "Maybe this is a blessing in disguise because there's gotta be a whole lot more room for me and my stuff in the new digs," she noted as she stood on wobbly legs valiantly struggling not to fall in a drunken heap down to the floor.

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Cylon Basestar 101 – Living quarters outside Room 0101110 – Deep Space

"Lysia? Lysia Jana, are you in here?" Sandra called out into the murkiness of the room as she stepped inside Lysia's quarters. Although her sister's space seemed neat and tidy, even Sandra with her engineered night vision had difficulty differentiating between most of the mundane items on a console. As she glanced up at the ceiling, Sandra noticed that half the lights in the room seemed to have been smashed and what little lighting that was there cast everything in a Stygian gloom.

"Well, if it isn't one of the Heroes of the Cylon!" Lysia drawled from a darkened corner of her room. She had just finished swallowing a swig from a bottle of ambrosia and grimaced. She appeared to be completely two sheets to the wind, Sandra thought, and that concerned the Huntress deeply.

Lysia, although chronologically older than Sandra, appeared to be the same age due to having downloaded into a new body after her first body's death aboard her battlestar. The woman was dressed in a pair of Colonial duty slacks and the white T-shirt with the black tank top over it. Lysia, somehow, was able to focus on Sandra as she took another swig from her bottle then placed it carefully on a footlocker that showed a lot of wear and tear. "So what does the Goddess of the Hunt want with this frakked up machine?"

"I came to see you, Lysia," Sandra said lowly.

"Well, I'll be damned by the Lords of Kobol…no…wait…I guess I already am," Lysia slurred. "Maybe I gotta make it darker in here. Seems to keep the run-of-the-mill Cylons from bothering me; however, I guess it doesn't stop you heroic Cylons. So what the hell do you want, Artemis?"

"I was asked to look in on you, to see if you're recovering from…the confusion you suffered after you downloaded. I wanted you to know you're not someone to be discarded. You're my sister and I love you. God loves you."

Even Sandra, the hardened huntress took a step back away from the unbridled fury displayed on Lysia's face. "How dare you! How frakking dare you say you love me!" She pounced out of her corner like a panther and reached for a framed photograph. Then she thrust it toward Sandra. "You see this frakking picture, Hero? You see these men and women who served with me on the Brynhildr? These people loved me. And the gods as my witnesses, I loved them with every fiber of my being. I never pretended to love them so I could screw them over. I listened to their hopes, shared their dreams and comforted them when they were afraid. I trained them to be the best they could be and were proud they sacrificed being with their loved ones to protect their homes and their families from the Cylons that had killed nearly a billion people forty years ago. Do you know every one of my crew had family members who died before their time due to the hatred a bunch of machines had for them. And what happened to these people who trusted me with their lives? I killed them all! And why? Because I'm a lying machine. I'm a frakking Cylon!"

Suddenly, Lysia's righteous fury scurried away and the woman deflated like an old balloon. "I'm not like you, Sandra. I never knew I was a Cylon until after I woke up in that vat surrounded by strangers. I was frightened out of my wits, wondering where I'd been taken. Then when I saw a woman who looked exactly like I had looked sixteen years ago, I knew I had wakened to a nightmare." The dejected woman sighed heavily as tears misted her eyes. "It would have been far kinder for the Cylons to have let me die with them than to torment me with the knowledge of my betrayal for an eternity. This," Lysia indicated by sweeping her hand around her, "is my Hell, Hero."

"Lysia," a completely stunned Sandra struggled to find the appropriate response. "I don't know what to say." Sandra wasn't lying. It had never occurred to her until now that being controlled and forced to do something that every fiber of your being knew was wrong was worse than the injustice her predecessors had suffered under slavery. Further, doing something like that to one of their own most certainly wasn't an act of love. It was an act of tyranny, an act by an unseen puppet master to make an unwilling party dance to his tune and made her wonder if there were more examples like Lysia out there. It was pure and simple manipulation…and Sandra hated humans far less than she hated being manipulated.

"What is there to say, Artemis?" Lysia asked. "We're all broken machines. That Eight who's aboard the Galactica has proven we need humans to have children. So do we own up to what we did and try to make things right? No, we hunt them down and kill them until one day there won't be any humans left to give us children. We'll have thrown away the only chance we'd have to raise a new generation we can nurture and teach to break away from the past. That's why I know we're broken and when machines break, you should junk them."

Sandra paused to consider what Lysia had just said. Although she'd never considered frakking a human and having his child, if her sisters desired to experience motherhood, who was she to deny them that right? Besides, it might be kind of fun to find that CSS human, and instead of killing him, turn him into her personal boy-toy at least for a little while.

Having decided God had given her a new purpose in life, a righteous fire burned fiercely in the Huntress' eyes. "Lysia, I think we need to get a couple of things straight. First, the name's Sandra. Never call me by the frakking name of the humans' Goddess of the Hunt unless you want me to kick your sorry ass. Second, when a machine or a person is broken, you don't throw either away, you do your best to fix them. You're a good person who's both compassionate and loyal. Whoever frakked you over sixteen years ago did not do well by you. If you're willing to join me I'll help you as the One True God is my witness. Now allow me to let you in on a little secret," she said lowly to her sister, like one co-conspirator to another. "I think one of the problems we Cylons face is the projecting thing. If we don't like reality, we use projection to duck it. Personally, I never use it; I'd rather have the scales removed from my eyes than refuse to see what's truly in front of me."

Lysia nodded thoughtfully. "I think you're on to something. I've never thought about it from that angle, Sandra. You know, somebody ought to take the Cylons by the shoulders and shake them until they realize they need to fix this mess they've created for themselves!"

"I agree," Sandra purred. "So, shall we begin? You know, as the scribes always say, there's no time like the present."

Her sister's only response was a grin that offered the promise of significant retribution.

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