Chapter 24

Raptor Currently Designated as 'Colonial One' – In Route to the Colonial Fleet

"Do you realize what you are saying!? What this all could mean to our people in finding common ground with the Thirteenth Tribe?"

Adama shot a sideways glance at Roslin while Kat chewed nervously on her bottom lip when the President had snapped at Aaron Kelly. For gods' sake, the man had just been minutes into Katraine's and his briefing and she couldn't wait for him to finish his point before interrupting him.

Now as their Raptor slowly shuttled its way toward the President's transport ship with Racetrack at her controls and a pair of the Hermes' fighters escorting the craft, Kelly met Roslin's glare with a patient expression on his face. "Yes, ma'am. When I was at the Academy, I studied Ancient Kobolian. Anno Domini…"

"Means the 'Year of our Lord,'" Laura whispered, finishing the man's point for him. The look on her face made Bill think of someone who was suffering from shell shock for several moments. Then she shook her head and muttered, "Well, I expected to be astounded by some of your findings, Captain, but I must confess I never thought you'd tell us that our brothers and sisters are all monotheists!"

"Actually, Madame President, I had said nothing of the sort."

Bill fought to keep the smirk from showing on his face. Well, he mused to himself, the boy has a lot of guts to stand up to the frakking school teacher like this. "Explain," he directed to the younger man.

"Yes, sir," Kelly said. "After Kat and I had settled in aboard the Hermes, Admiral de Ruyter invited both of us and Administrator Schlein to dine with her. During our conversation over dinner, we had asked them if they worshipped the gods as most of our people do. The Admiral had said she was an atheist while the Administrator had said she worshipped a single god. Then they had gone on to tell us that there are perhaps thousands of religions in the Alliance, some where the worshippers believe in one god and others where they worship many gods, gods that are vastly different from ours."

Laura blinked thrice at that. "That…that can't be the case."

Kat regarded the elder woman with genuine sympathy. "I'm afraid it's true, Madame President. During our voyage on the Hermes, I had the chance to hang out with the pilots who fly their equivalent to our Vipers. They had been very straightforward about the fact that the ships in the task force all had a few officers on board who were the holy men and women of a number of these religions. Although these officers may worship a particular god or gods, it was their duty to provide for the spiritual needs of any crewman even though the crewman may worship a different deity than the god or gods the holy man worshipped."

"By the gods!" Laura exclaimed. Then with pleading eyes, she wondered, "Do any of them still worship the Lords of Kobol?"

Kelly nodded affirmatively. "Yes, ma'am. According to Administrator Schlein, a number of them still do. She said there were a small pocket of worshippers on Earth and a world in her star cluster where a sizeable portion of the population worship our gods."

Bill carefully regarded Laura and he could almost see the wheels spinning inside her head. Knowing her, she was probably considering whether their people would be better off settling on the world with the members of the Thirteenth Tribe who had not forgotten the Lords of Kobol. As for himself, though, it wasn't that important of a consideration. He had never believed in the gods and he wasn't about to start believing in them now.

So, he took advantage of Roslin's momentary silence to move the conversation toward tactical considerations. "Captain, Lieutenant…what can you tell us about their military presence in Administrator Schlein's star system?"

"In a word, sir," Kat answered, "massive! From what we saw, there was at least a hundred capital ships bigger than the 'Beast' in that system. Additionally, they have two, heavily-armed, colossal space stations in orbit above the poles of the planet and a space control ship the size of a moon called a battlestation. According to the Sector Commander, this gigantic ship is completely mobile, carries thousands of fighters, scout ships, patrol ships and ships as big as our Strikestars, as well as tremendous cannons they claim fire plasma! Sir, if that thing had been in our system during the Cylon attack, the machines would have wet themselves in fear right before it reduced the frakkers and their basestars into their component atoms."

When he cocked a disbelieving eyebrow at the young lieutenant, Kelly stepped right into the breach. "Sir, Kat isn't pulling your leg about this. That battlestation could even cripple the Hermes, through her magnetic shields and heavy armor, from a distance of one light second."

Adama blinked twice at that. After boarding the battle carrier, he was a seasoned enough sailor to know the Fleet vessel outmatched both Colonial battlestars' in terms of armament, fighter craft, and armor. Now, to hear that even that mighty vessel was no match for a much larger, far more deadly creation of their long lost brothers and sisters gnawed at the pit of his stomach. "What else can you tell me about their naval forces?" he whispered.

"Admiral," Kat said, "they have nearly a thousand noncapital warships in the system. They have automated defense stations that made ours look like a child's toy."

"Sir," Kelly said, "even more so than us, these people apparently have mastered the art of multifaceted force projection. Their carriers deploy fighter craft, fighter bombers, and Marine landing craft to the battle zone. Meanwhile, their capital ships engage their enemy counterparts or suppress heavy planetary defenses with their cannon and missiles. The noncapital ships screen the carriers and capitals from enemy capitals, noncapitals, aerospace fighter craft, and missiles along with their space superiority fighter craft."

"I see," Adama murmured softly as his mind's eye pictured the formation that Kelly had described.

At that moment, Laura apparently had decided to interject herself into the discussion once again. "Captain, what other technologies that they possess did they reveal to you?"

"Well, ma'am, they've developed networked computers. However, it was our impression that their computer systems are so advanced, even the Cylons couldn't make heads or tails out of them. They also have artificial intelligence systems but they made no bones about the fact that none of their AI systems have ever become sentient."

"And that's not all, ma'am!" Kat exclaimed. "The Thirteenth Tribe sometimes uses the disembodied brains of its people to serve as the guiding intelligence of some of their warships!"

Laura's eyes shot comically wide open when she heard that. "What?!"

"it's true, Madame President! The Sector Commander, Admiral Amato—well, ma'am…his personal craft is controlled by the brain of a man who used to be a normal person. Apparently, rather than develop sentient AI as we did with the Cylons, the Thirteenth has chosen to go in a far more frakked up direction than we could ever have possibly imagined, if you'll excuse my Leonese, ma'am!"

Roslin appeared to quietly sit there, apparently mulling over Kat's account. Moments later, she gazed steadily at the younger woman and asked, "Lieutenant, were you able to interact with this 'brain' aboard Admiral Amato's ship?"

"Yes, Madame President."

"Good. Tell me, how did this 'brain' respond to you?"

"It spoke to us through the speakers installed inside the vessel."

"I see. And, when the 'brain' spoke to you, did it seem to possess something akin to a human personality?"

Kat hesitated for several beats before she admitted, "I would have to say that it did, ma'am. He sounded just like someone who was communicating with me over the wireless."

Laura simply nodded in response. Then she asked, "Did the Fleet people who traveled with you on the 'brain' ship—did they treat the 'brain' as if someone would treat a slave or servant, or did they treat the 'brain' with the respect someone would have toward a colleague?"

A shamed expression now played across Kat's face just then. "They referred to him by his rank and he was the one who piloted the ship and called all the shots even though both Captain Adu and the Admiral outranked him."

"Kat," Adama asked gently, attempting to get the girl to not dwell on her mistake of snap judging the Thirteenth Tribe. "What was the name of this 'brain?'"

She glanced at him, grateful for the lifeline he'd thrown to her in kindness. Then her eyes twinkled with merriment. "Well, sir, his name is…Bill."

Adama chuckled lowly and smiled. "Well then he must be a hell of a guy with a name like that, don't you think?"

"I'm certain he must be, Admiral," Laura offered magnanimously. "He has to be...Bill."

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Cylon Basestar 101 – Corridor just outside the Control Room—Cylon Fleet

"Sandra, can I ask you something?"

Until that moment, Lysia Jana and she had been walking toward the Control Room in companionable silence. After coaxing the former 'Sleeper' from her self-imposed exile in Lysia's quarters, Sandra hadn't wanted to push her luck by saying anything that might cause Lysia to change her mind and retreat back into her cave.

"Shoot," she answered simply.

"All right then," Lysia said. "During the war, the Centurions all had voice boxes and could speak, right?"

"Yes, that's right."

"And, they could act independently and even could have differences of opinions with one another before they'd attempt to reach a consensus on a course of action, correct?"

Sandra blinked twice as she pondered Lysia's question. "That is correct," she confirmed.

"Then how come these new models don't seem to have the capacity to communicate vocally and appear to be completely subservient to the biological Cylons?"

Now Sandra's cognitive processor strained itself in an attempt at finding a quick response to her sister's query. Unfortunately, though, a ready answer failed to avail itself to her. "I…I" Then she shot a perplexed look at Lysia. "What in the One God's name made you think of that?"

The other Three simply shrugged. "I don't know. It just seems odd to me. The whole point of the war for the Cylons, at least from what the Colonials had understood from what the Cylons had said all those years ago, was that they'd wanted to be acknowledged as living entities with the freedom to choose what they'd do with their lives. They'd said they no longer wanted to be anyone's slave. Yet, when I see how the biological Cylons treat these Centurions, it certainly seems to me they're treated more like servants than colleagues."

At that moment, Lysia's response caused Sandra to pull up short of the entrance to the Control Room. Then, while she considered the point raised by her sister, a One called out to her. "Sandra!"

She turned to regard the elder-looking Cylon. "Yes, Samuel?" she asked. As was true for the majority of Twos and Sixes, the Ones preferred to be called by their human names. For Sandra, this tended to not be as troublesome as it was with the Twos and Sixes; there were far fewer Ones in the Collective in comparison to the other biological Cylon models.

"I've run an analysis of our Tylium stores since the Raiders have been imbibing on the stuff like a Dionysian at a drunken orgy. Based on the rate of fuel they're burning to scout for the human fleet, we need to process more ore to bolster our reserves. I'd like to send out a few of the scouts to search for resource rich asteroids. Once we find one, we can send a crew of Centurions to mine the asteroid to build up our reserves."

Unconsciously rubbing her chin in thought, she reflected on his reasoning and could find no fault with it. "I don't have a problem with the idea, Samuel. What do you think, Lysia?"

Apparently surprised by her question, her sister hesitated for a moment. Then Lysia sighed deeply and said, "If I were you, I'd have the Raiders concentrate on rocks that are far from a star's equator. That way, your birds won't burn a substantial amount of fuel to get the job done."

When the One eyed Lysia curiously, her sister glared at the man. "What?"

"Three," Samuel said to her sister. "What in the hell is going on here? I thought you told us after you resurrected that you wanted nothing to do with helping us hunt down and eradicate the human pests. Have you suddenly had a change of heart?"

Her sister regarded the One with dangerously narrowed eyes. "If I thought you frakkers were smart enough to find them, I might be concerned. Right now, though, I'm more concerned about the possibility that you'll sit here with your thumbs up your arses and run out of fuel, leaving me stranded in this back-ass sector of space trapped for all eternity on a ship full of insufferable prats like you!"

Then she invaded the man's personal space and growled lowly. "And another thing. If you ever call me "Three" again, I might decide to conduct a little experiment to see if several resurrections in rapid succession can result in a significant and substantial degradation of your cognitive functions…One."

Samuel quickly turned away from Lysia's smoldering glare while he brought a forced smirk to bear toward Sandra's sister. "All right, all right, don't get your panties in a bunch," he demurred. "Sorry, I touched a nerve, Commander," he cracked before he turned and rushed into the Control Room.

As her sister continued to glare in the direction of where the man had run off to, a proud smirk dawned on Sandra's face. "Nice job, Lysia," she drawled. "I just loved how you put that frakker in his place!"

Her sister then regarded her with a wry expression on the face Sandra saw everyday in the mirror. "Thanks, though that was nothing compared to the times I had to tear a new one for a few feldergarb-for-brains Viper jocks."

"I see. You must have been quite the bitch queen back in the day when you were driving that battlestar of yours."

"Maybe so but that shouldn't surprise you. Apparently, that trait runs in the family," Lysia offered with a wicked grin.

The only response Sandra had to her sister's observation was a hearty laugh.

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