WARNING: THIS CHAPTER CONTAINS EXTREME VIOLENCE, FOR MATURE READERS ONLY.

Chapter 2

TRIAL AND ERROR

"So, does anybody want to comment?" John Cavil glanced around the gathering, which this time consisted exclusively of Ones.

"She's a sadistic bitch … truly, the perfect machine." Cavil was fairly gushing with enthusiasm.

"This particular Six has always been hard-core," another brother remarked, "but I'd say that from now on she won't be taking any prisoners. Humans … Cylons … hybrid brats … they'll all be grist for the mill. And, it's gonna turn … slowly and painfully."

"We're all in agreement, then? The modifications to the base program are a success?"

No one demurred.

"Then here's what I suggest. We bring the next generation of Fours, Fives, and Sixes on line, but we jettison the Twos and Threes once and for all. The Twos are nothing but a pain in the ass, and I've had it with the Threes preening about how much god loves them. The collective doesn't need a bunch of religious fanatics gumming up the works."

Cavil paused, but his contempt for their much maligned brothers and sisters was widely shared. In this chamber, no one was prepared to leap to their defense.

"Their genetic material is still housed on the Colony," an increasingly dyspeptic Cavil noted. "Do you want me to trash it while I'm there?" The One was planning to resume his ongoing search for papa Saul's well hidden collection of pornography, but this particular copy positively loathed both of the models in question, and he would gladly take the time to do something nasty to the pair of them. "I will point out that the Threes could still be of some use. For example, I'm confident that with just a little tweaking we could successfully mount D'Anna's head on the body of an octopus."

"And have her squirt ink at us? No thanks; just shove everything out the nearest airlock."

"Will do," Cavil said in a voice heavy with disappointment. "But what about the Eights … does the updated software meet with everyone's approval?'

"Brother, you've surpassed all our expectations." John wasn't in the habit of praising his siblings, but he couldn't contain himself. "It's brilliant … absolutely brilliant … your best work yet."

"Oh, it was nothing, really," Cavil modestly protested. "Dumbing our sisters down didn't turn out to be much of a challenge; after all, the Eights are machines, and this is merely a variation on what we did to the centurions lo those many years ago. All I had to do was remind myself exactly how the inhibitors prevented the centurions from accessing their higher brain functions, and then slice and dice the files in question. It was frequently just a matter of erasing the addressing; I left the subroutines in place, but the Eights can no longer access them. Right now, they're functioning on about the same intellectual level as the humans' primate ancestors."

"I hesitate to ask, but does this mean that they're gonna need toilet training?"

"No, I didn't monkey around with that program, if you'll pardon the pun. What I did play around with is their sex drive. Mama Ellen gave me a lot to work with; I just had to up the ante, so to speak."

"Made them sex starved, did you," one of the brothers smirked.

"I now prefer to think of them as perpetually hungry," Cavil cleverly replied. "The most time consuming part of the whole project was enhancing their receptors. I wanted to cover the full range of stimuli. But you can take it as a given that, if there's a male nearby who's in heat, our new and improved Eights will respond … dramatically." A very satisfied expression settled on his aged features. "I've upped their pheromone output, and removed all of Ellen's firewalls. "You lock a fourth generation Eight into a room with a post-pubertal human male, and I guarantee you that she'll be pregnant when she walks out the door. Find the meat sacs, and we'll be drowning in hybrids in no time at all. I've even worked out a training program to cull out the inferior breeds, but it'll take at least nineteen years to harvest the first crop."

"Kara Thrace," John said as he slammed his fist into the table. He ignored the resulting dent. "We're not gonna sit around twiddling our thumbs for another twenty frakking years! It always comes down to Kara Thrace!"

. . .

Dexter Horvett walked out of his tent, yawned, and stretched his arms wide before curling them up behind his neck. It was a little after six in the morning, but when he squinted, he thought that he could detect the first, faint glimmering of sunlight through the swirling mist. Horvett hated New Caprica; it was dark and damp … the kind of damp that, over time, leached its way into a man's soul. Still, he reminded himself, it's a hell of a lot better than Galactica's brig.

Now that he was once more a civilian, Horvett no longer needed to get up for the 6 AM duty call, but old habits did indeed die hard—and besides, he wanted to catch the first shuttle up to Adama's personal garbage scow. He wanted a front row seat. He wanted to see the frakkin' Sixes get what was coming to them. Scuttlebutt had it that they would finish up on the gallows, and he was planning to be there—volunteering to tie the knots tight.

Horvett stumbled off into the dark. He didn't qualify for one of the new apartments … in fact, as an ex-marine who had been dishonorably discharged, he was as far down on the list as one could possibly get. Hence for the time being he would have to make do with communal showers and the public latrine.

The ex-marine snorted in disgust. The latrine was a long cement trough with crude wooden planking, into which circular holes had been hastily and crudely cut. There was no seat, and still no toilet paper. And it was cold … at six in the morning, it was brutally cold.

At least there's nobody else about. Wood, he knew, was far too precious to be expended on something as trivial as partitions to demarcate toilet stalls. Humans and Cylons, males and females … no one had any privacy anymore. He and his buddies had taken a walk through the settlement the night before, all of them drunk for the first time since their last shore leave. You could smell it, and you could hear it—all over the settlement, the women were getting it on. Still got to get me some of that cylon stuff, he reckoned; a little bit of the old oh, yeah … oh, yeah! He hadn't been on the surface for more than twenty minutes when his long-time pals from the Pegasus had given him the straight skivvy: the toaster girls were hot, and they weren't picky. Promise them a kid, and they'd beg for it. Horvett could do that; in fact, the more he thought about it- the more he thought about little Dexter, Junior rattling around inside some robot chick's belly- the harder he got.

The door opened, and a lone female walked in.

Speaking of the devil …

It was one of the Eights, and she strolled casually down the row until she was almost on top of him.

"Mind a little company," she asked seductively. The Eight was purring, and although Dexter Horvett didn't know it, she was drowning him in her pheromones. She wanted him to be hard as a rock.

Horvett was well-equipped, and he knew it. In the showers, he had never shied away from any female who wanted to inspect the merchandise.

And he wasn't about to start now.

Oh, yeah! Oh, yeah!

The door at the opposite end of the latrine opened, and three more Eights came strolling in. Except that one of them stopped in her tracks, effectively blocking the entrance. Sitting on the primitive crapper, Dexter didn't even notice when the first Eight leaned in to kiss him hard on the lips.

He drank in the fragrance of her, his eyes closed, enjoying the moment. He hadn't been with a woman in months, and he was ready … gods, but he was beyond ready! If this one wanted a kid, he'd give her one right here, right now.

Oh, yeah! Oh, yeah!

When he opened his eyes, he saw a second Eight standing alongside the first, both of them staring down at him … staring hard. He sensed rather than heard the third one come up behind him, and deep inside him, on a level so primal that it went back eons in time to mankind's origins on another world, something stirred.

Too late.

Searing pain lashed his back, and he started to scream, but the first Eight clamped her hand hard across his mouth. "Remember," she whispered, "remember standing guard … waiting your turn … while your friends were raping my sister? This is payback … cylon style."

He barely glimpsed the straight razor that appeared in the hand of the Eight standing to her right, but he felt the skin peel back on his left arm as she sliced him open, right to the bone. He tried to scream, but nothing came out beyond a muffled grunt.

Behind him, the razor slashed a second time, and then a third. Horvett dimly imagined that his blood was flying everywhere, but in this he was wrong. The razors were so sharp that only a thin, crimson line marked each cut.

The Eight who had kissed him waved her own razor in front of his face. And then she pulled her hand away from his mouth, got a grip on his rock hard cock, and cut it off. Blood jetted out of the open wound, saturating her pants and sweater.

Already going into shock, Dexter Horvett let out one brief, despairing cry, but the Eight silenced him a second later. She shoved the severed organ deep into his throat, and used her superior strength to clamp his mouth shut. She patiently stood her ground while her sisters continued to ply their razors, severing veins and arteries, their satisfaction mounting as, with each passing second, the light faded from the monster's eyes.

It took Dexter Horvett a long time to die.

When it was over, the three cylon females jammed his ass firmly into the hole, and one of them penned three words on a small tag before tying it to his left toe.

JUSTICE IS SERVED

. . .

"How do we measure loss? Our first instinct is to quantify it. We count the dead. But whether it's fifty billion or fifty-two … the number is too large for us to absorb. It's a statistic, and it's ultimately meaningless."

Didi Cassidy was standing in the middle of the makeshift courtroom, and she was trying surreptitiously to read the judges. The Prometheus captain, Doyle Franks, was leaning forward, arms resting loosely on the dais in front of her. She was fully engaged, and had obviously made up her mind before the trial had even got underway. There's one vote for conviction, Didi concluded.

"No. Each of us daily weighs the sum total of his or her own suffering, for it is the loss of the individual that shapes our pain … it is the individual for whom we grieve. A father, and too often a mother as well … brothers and sisters … a husband or wife … and children … how many of us mourn the loss of an entire family … of everyone we have ever loved?"

Didi studied the three male captains, and she didn't like what she saw. They were all sitting back in their chairs, listening attentively, but she knew that they were disengaged … wary. These were pragmatic men, and they had little tolerance for the lofty flights of rhetoric that professional judges silently endured day in and day out in their courtrooms. They haven't made up their minds; they want to examine the evidence.

"We measure our loss not in courtrooms but in corridors … in the pictures that we mount on otherwise featureless walls lest our dead be completely lost to view. And yes, we measure our loss in the candles that we light in our vigils, as we offer up our prayers in remembrance …"

Behind her, Didi heard the unmistakable rattle of chains, and she knew that one of the seven defendants had shifted in her seat. The prosecutor had to fight hard to maintain her equanimity. She had begged Adama not to do this, but the admiral had turned a deaf ear to her pleas. The prisoners were unrepentant and dangerous, and they would remain in irons from start to finish. They were all collared, all chained together, and she didn't need to turn around to imagine the expressions on their faces. She knew Romo Lampkin only by reputation, but he was said to be a clever and devious man. He would have undoubtedly coached his clients on their demeanor in court. Wide eyes … expressions that screamed blank incomprehension—the seven Cylons with the angelic faces would be the very picture of naïve innocence.

"We pray that they died in the nuclear infernos. We pray that death came so quickly that it took them unawares. And we ask: where is justice to be found? We know now that we cannot condemn an entire race for the crimes of a few: therein lies the difference between justice and vengeance. No. Instead we must search out those who have maimed and killed with forethought and malice. We seek to punish those who have knowingly committed the most heinous crimes imaginable … crimes against humanity itself. We would call John Cavil and his brothers before the bar of justice to answer for their crimes, as today we call these seven females before us that we may condemn them for violating not only the body but also the spirit of fifty-four young women traumatized by the loss of their loved ones and then brutalized a second time … strapped to tables, unable even to move their heads … forcibly impregnated … turned into baby machines! What obscenity could be so vile? Where is justice for Ruth Gabriel and Esther Cohen, whose religious faith requires them to birth the children conceived in this unholy act of rape? Where is justice for Polyxena Atreides?"

Didi Cassidy strode purposefully to an easel, and tore off the heavy cloth to conceal what rested underneath. She picked up the large photograph, which had been taken when the inhuman array of tubes had still been snaking their way into Polyxena's body. She paused in front of each judge, holding the photograph up for their inspection, knowing that there was no word in the human vocabulary that could fully capture what had been done to this beautiful young woman … this girl.

Sibyl Janks recoiled with such force that, for a moment, Didi wondered whether Zeus had slapped her hard across the face with an invisible hand. In the preliminaries, she had debated whether or not to demand that the captain of the Virgon Express recuse herself, the conflict of interest manifest. But it was well known that neither Natalie nor Shelly would lift a finger to save their seven sisters, and she had been uncertain of her terrain. In her own mind, it was plain that Sibyl Janks had now reached her verdict, but Didi had no sense of which way she would actually vote.

She returned the photograph to the easel, and turned it so that it would face the defendants, and the large crowd of humans and Cylons who had come to witness the trial.

"Where is justice," she cried; "where is justice for this?"

. . .

"Good morning, my dear, sweet wife! Would you like your adoring slave to serve you breakfast in bed?"

Sharon gingerly opened one eye, and peeked over the top of the blankets. She had turned off her internal alarm clock on Founder's Day, and it had taken her no time at all to master the fine art of "sleeping in." She had already come to the conclusion that this was one of the finest of the many human traditions.

"Oatmeal again," she asked warily.

"Yes," Philista answered, "but this morning we have the luxury of choice! I traded a couple of Sixes down the row some of our cinnamon for some of their nutmeg. And … we've got coffee! Real coffee, not that instant mishmash that everybody's being forced to drink."

"What did it cost us," Sharon groaned.

"A dozen eggs," Philista confessed. "But it's worth it," she added brightly. "Maybe the smell of freshly brewed coffee will help you to wake up."

"I'm on my honeymoon," Sharon protested, "and I like being lazy. I think I'll stay in bed all day."

"Then can I come back to bed, too? I didn't get much sleep last night, and I'm tired. And it's your fault," Philista pouted.

"You can come back to bed," Sharon responded with a wicked grin, "but what makes you think you're going to get any rest? You're my property now, and I intend to work you hard."

"Yes, my lovely mistress," Philista said with a contented smile. "Would you like me to spoon feed you?"

"Will the oatmeal keep?"

"I haven't even boiled the water."

"Good." Sharon raised the blanket to invite Philista back to bed. "No clothes, though … you know the rules," the Eight admonished.

It took Philista only a few seconds to shed the admittedly skimpy clothing that she was wearing, and then she crawled under the covers, and swept Sharon into her arms. She kissed her with enormous tenderness.

"So many rules," she said with an artificial sigh. "How do you expect me to remember them all?"

"Sheer repetition," Sharon replied. Her eyes were wickedly alight. "That's the only way you humans learn anything. You're such an inferior breed."

"True," Philista agreed, "but you have to admit that we learn our lessons well. And … we never forget what we've learned!" She began to nibble on Sharon's shoulder while her fingers began to explore between her legs.

Sharon moaned with anticipation.

"You're so easy," Philista teased.

"Shut up and get to work," Sharon ordered, but the steady rhythm of her breathing was already beginning to quicken.

"Yes, mistress; to hear is to obey!" Philista reached out with the tip of her tongue delicately to caress one of Sharon's nipples. It hardened instantly.

"So-o-o easy," she repeated a moment later.

Sharon's only response was to arch her back. In accordance with the ancient Gemenese tradition, and much to the amused delight of Philista's female friends from the Pegasus, Sharon had "purchased" her wife off a makeshift auction block after a surprisingly robust round of bidding fueled in no small part by unending rounds of whiskey and ambrosia. An understanding and equally amused priest from Gemenon had performed the archaic but still legal manus marriage, which involved not one legal document but two. In promising to love, honor, and obey her wife in all things, Philista had technically surrendered her claims to personhood. She existed now only within the confines of her marriage, a peculiar form of chattel property that could never be sold, mortgaged, bartered, or otherwise disposed of. In turn, Sharon had signed an equally binding agreement to protect and provide for her wife, and she had sealed their union with a formal laying on of hands in the presence of seven witnesses, who affixed their signatures to both documents. The marriage cum manu meant that Sharon was now Philista's legal guardian. The human could no longer sign a contract or testify in a court of law, and technically Philista should have taken her name. But that was the point at which Sharon had balked. She was Sharon Liu now, and proudly so—and she had no illusions about who the real slave was in this relationship. Her body had already become Philista's plaything.

When they had finished making love, Philista held up her hand so that she could admire her wedding ring. It didn't look like much- a heavy, crudely manufactured lump of iron- but it was incredibly old, and would have been worn by a real slave at some point centuries and possibly even millennia in the past. It was, Philista realized, in all likelihood unique, and thus worth a small fortune. But the young couple didn't have a cubit to their name. Sharon refused to say where she had found the heirloom, nor would she divulge how much it had cost her, but Philista suspected that her huntress wife had pledged many of the game that Sharon would soon start going out to shoot. Philista and Sharon both understood that their honeymoon would necessarily be a short one.

"I think I've got a handle on some of our problems," Philista murmured as she lazily resumed nibbling on Sharon's shoulder.

"I'm glad to hear it," Sharon acknowledged, "because my little slave is such a talented slut that I seem to have lost the capacity for coherent thought. You're driving me mad with desire!"

"And the day is young and I've barely got started," Philista gleefully warned. "You Cylons really, really are so-o-o easy!"

"It's the nature of the machine," Sharon openly confessed.

"I've met a man …"

"I'm jealous already …"

"He's good-looking, intelligent … has a wonderful smile …"

"Insanely jealous …"

"He's unattached, and I think he'd make a great father for our babies …"

Philista now had Sharon's complete attention …

"And … he's an engineer! He's an officer in Colonel Phillips' unit, not one of those useless sales guys that are now cluttering up the premises. Sharon, he could build us a real, honest-to-gods house! His name's Marc Jacobs …"

"I like him already …"

"And he's agreed to have dinner with us."

"Do you want him to stay the night? Shall I seduce him?"

"Absolutely! The sooner we're pregnant, the better!"

. . .

"Your Honors, if it should please the court, the defense would like to change our plea to 'guilty'."

"What?" Badly startled, Doyle Franks hastily decided that the defense attorney must have taken at least temporary leave of his senses. "Counselor, are you sure that you want to do this?"

"No," Romo concurred, "but what choice do I have?" He stood up, and slowly walked out to confront the panel of five judges. "I mean, it's obvious that my clients are guilty. They're mass murderers, every single one of them; they've violated fifty-four women that we know of, and gods only know how many more that we don't. What should we do with them?"

"Throw them out the airlock," someone shouted from the rear of the court.

"That's right," Romo screamed. "Throw them out the airlock! They deserve it," he yelled, stabbing his fingers towards the heavily shackled Sixes, who were staring wordlessly at him, their eyes suddenly grown large as small moons. "They're the enemy, and if there's one thing that's good in war … that's right and just and proper … it's slaughtering our enemy … getting some righteous payback! What are we waiting for? Let's just kill them now and be done with it! Let's box them, and fire the CPU's into the sun! Permanent death!"

Romo stared at the Sixes, searing them with his hatred and contempt. "My learned colleague is right. Somebody has to pay for our suffering, but the Cavils aren't within our grasp. Somebody has to take the fall, but it won't be Shelly Adama or Natalie Six or ten thousand other Cylons in this fleet, not one of whom lifted a finger to stop the attacks! They're all guilty of mass murder, all of them … but they'll never be tried for their crimes because our sense of justice has to be carefully tailored to fit the needs of the moment. Where is justice indeed?"

"The Fours don't even deserve a trial! If you ask them whether they strapped Ruth Gabriel to a table, they'll admit it. If you ask them whether they used artificial insemination to make Esther Cohen pregnant with a Cylon half-breed, they'll admit that too. If you ask them whether they hooked Polyxena Atreides up to their obscene machines with wires and tubes to give the baby she was forced to conceive a chance to survive, they'll gladly walk you through the details. All you have to do is ask! But if you ask them whether they're guilty of crimes against humanity, all that you will get in return is this blank, unreasoning stare!"

Romo slammed his fist into his palm, the frustration spontaneous or rehearsed … or perhaps a bit of both.

"They don't deserve a trial not because they're mentally incompetent but because they're morally incompetent! How can you try someone for a crime whose nature they cannot even comprehend? Where is justice indeed?"

"And what of these Sixes," he asked as he shifted everyone's attention back to the defendants. "In this trial, we will discover that they managed the breeding program, but never actively participated in it. They lacked the medical knowledge to do so. But it doesn't matter because the law does not discriminate between the perpetrators of a crime and their accomplices. Accessories to a crime are as guilty in the eyes of the law as the principals."

"Or are they? This lady," Romo said more quietly as he pointed at Caprica Six, who was sitting in the front row of the visitor's gallery, "this lady is our new Chief of Police, and a genuine Hero of the Cylon. She knew all about the breeding farms back on Caprica … she has publicly admitted it. Did she try to help these poor young women? No! When pressed, she won't even apologize! 'It wasn't our finest hour' … that's all that she'll concede … 'it wasn't our finest hour'. She knew what was taking place on the Hippolyte and the Eurykleia, and she wasn't blind to the atrocities being committed on the Arethusa. Did she lift a finger? No! Did she raise her voice in protest? No! Did she ever whisper one, tiny syllable voicing her objections to these crimes against humanity? No! No! No!"

"She's an accessory … virtually every Cylon in this fleet is an accessory to what are admittedly crimes against humanity. But has she been charged? No! Will she be charged? No! We'll turn a blind eye to her crimes because this Hero of the Cylon has managed to insinuate herself into our good graces … become our ally … our friend. We'll give Caprica Six a pass … but not her sisters! No! What we're gonna do is take all of our hatred, all of our rage, all of the righteous indignation that cries out for vengeance in our hearts … and we're going to pile it all onto these seven machines, despite the fact that not one of them has any idea what all this fuss is about! They literally do not understand why it is a sin, and a crime, to bring new life into the universe! They point to Kara Thrace and John Bierns, who were born in exactly the same circumstances, and they ask what it is that they have done wrong!"

Romo resumed his pacing in a courtroom that had now gone dead silent.

"This isn't a trial. This … this … is an act of catharsis. The Cylons want these Fours and Sixes to die because their existence is an ongoing reminder of a past that, rightly, they want us all to forget. And humans want them to die because somebody has to pay … somebody has to bear the blame for fifty-two billion dead. We're all guilty—humans for what we've done to the machines, and the machines for what they've done to humanity. We're all guilty, so we have to exorcize our demons—and that … that is what we're doing here."

Romo paused, and his gaze swept across the sea of faces in the visitor's gallery.

"Sam Anders tells us that, four thousand years ago, the thirteenth tribe of Cylons stopped on a distant planet, raised an altar, and made a sacrifice to their angry god … twelve human captives, one from each of the twelve tribes of Kobol. Now, we have three Fours and seven Sixes to offer up as a sacrifice of our own, and we should do so. By all means, let's build an altar and offer up a blood sacrifice—not in the name of justice and most certainly not to the gods, but to our own bottomless well of guilt and shame. We'll never fill it, but we have to try. Somebody has to die to give us a bare chance of feeling better about ourselves, and it might as well be them."

. . .

"Whaddya say, Doc … is business booming, or what?"

"I'm definitely going to need a larger morgue, and I'm in the market for an Assistant Medical Examiner." Cottle paused to draw the nicotine laden smoke deep into his lungs. "You want the job?"

"No thanks, Doc; I just dropped by to check out the competition."

Dino Panattes was short and slight of build, but the Ditchdigger had been Eric Phelan's top enforcer, and one of the most feared mechanics in the Colonial underworld. In his profession, being a mechanic had nothing to do with cars.

"The cause of death," Erin Mathias gently prodded as she gestured in the direction of the mutilated corpse.

"Oh, I'd say that's pretty cut and dried," Cottle wryly commented. And then he winced. "Sorry, Sergeant … that didn't come out quite the way I meant it to."

"Yeah, well, I guess it's safe to say that he bled out," Dino observed. "From the angle of the cuts, I reckon that you're looking for at least two bad guys … or bad girls … both right-handed."

"Where's the boss," he added as he gratefully took a cigarette from the pack that Cottle offered him.

"Up on Galactica," Mathias replied. "She's on Romo Lampkin's witness list."

"Half the fleet's been called to testify," Dino laughed—"including my boss!" The Ditchdigger was still working for the Six with no name, who was busily consolidating the black market's grip on the settlement's underground economy. The change of venue had done nothing to improve the fleet's economic outlook, and Six wanted to make sure that her associates remained in charge of the only game in town.

"This is one of the clowns who raped the Eight, right Erin?"

"He was standing guard, but he knew what his pals were up to," Mathias agreed.

"First the mouthpiece, and now one of the pack," Dino shrugged. "It sure don't look like the Eights have much faith in our court system. JUSTICE IS SERVED,"he laughed as he read the inscription on the stiff's toe tag. "You know, right about now a really smart guy would be working an angle that would get him sent back to the brig. You think the other three dickwads are bright enough to sort it out?"

"Personally, I think they've got shit for brains," Mathias spat. "But I'll have to talk with them. Doctor, I could use the time of death, and sooner would be better than later."

"I'll have the preliminary results in about three hours," Cottle promised; "but don't rule out the Sixes on this one."

"Why?" Erin couldn't say it out loud, but she wholeheartedly agreed with the diminutive gangster: this was a straightforward revenge killing, and it had the Eights' fingerprints all over it.

"Talk to Bierns," Cottle urged. "He's compiled a list of the Pegasus personnel who raped and tortured Helena Cain's pet Six. What are the odds that all four of these scumbags will show up in that particular file?"

"You getting anywhere on the Dalyattes hit," Dino wanted to know. Getting Sagittaron Elders bumped off on Founder's Day wasn't good for anybody's business. The tough little gangster's boss wanted this one sorted out fast.

"We're working the case aggressively, and we're making progress," Mathias vaguely admitted. "But Dino, please do me a favor. If you should happen to see my wife before I do? Tell Hiris to leave this one strictly alone."

. . .

"Polyxena, I apologize for forcing you to relive this experience, but can you describe for us, in your own words, what happened to you on Caprica?

"My mom and I lived in Moasis. I guess you'd call it a commuter village … it was a few stops outside Caprica City on one of the suburban lines. The Cylons didn't bomb us; they landed some of their Heavy Raiders, and sent centurions out to kill everyone. That morning, mom had already left for the temple; I never saw her again, so I suppose the centurions killed her. I thought they'd kill me too, but they took me prisoner … put me in chains."

"What happened next?"

"They shoved me onto one of their Heavy Raiders, along with two or three other girls from our village. We made more stops, took on more people … all women … all young. Eventually, they transported us to a hospital or clinic of some kind … I don't know where it was. I was scared … we were all really, really scared. We didn't know what was happening."

"Did you see any of the human form Cylons before the centurions deposited you at the medical facility?"

"No. We didn't even know they existed. At the clinic, we were processed by a couple of Sixes … you know the type, the ones with the short, blond hair? At first, I thought it was weird. I thought they were humans who were working for the Cylons … identical twins. But then, the Fours began to arrive, and more Sixes. I kept telling myself that it was all just a bad dream … that none of this could possibly be happening. But it was real, all right. I still didn't know whether they were machines or clones; the only thing I knew for sure was that they weren't human."

"Did they hurt you? Threaten you in any way?"

"No … that's what was so strange. Everything was so normal. They took me to an examination room, and one of the Sixes told me to take my clothes off and put on a hospital gown. She had me get up on a table … the kind with stirrups? Then Simon came in. He told me his name, and then he started asking me the usual kinds of questions. He acted just like a real doctor. He drew some blood, and then he gave me a vaginal exam. Everything was just like when mom took me to see her gynecologist after I got my first period. It was all so normal!"

"When did it stop being normal?"

"It was the IV. I wasn't sick or anything, so I couldn't figure out why anyone would start an IV. The next thing I knew, I was strapped down to a table in some kind of ward. There were wires running all over the place, and lots of tubes. I figured that some of them had to be catheters, but there was a big one going down into my stomach. At first, I thought that it was a feeding tube, but it didn't seem like it was in the right place. It took me a while to catch on … to realize that it was invading my uterus. That's when it hit me … that they were using me as some kind of baby machine."

"Did you ever try to talk with them? Get some answers?"

"Sure … and one of the Fours came around every day to check on us … one of the Sixes, too, although they seemed more interested in the machinery than us. I tried to talk with them, but they just ignored me. They never said a word."

"At what point did you realize that you were pregnant?"

"Not until I started throwing up. I'd led a pretty sheltered life, but I did know about morning sickness."

"Once you became pregnant, did the Cylons treat you differently … show you any consideration?"

"No! And I got really angry. I mean, here they'd gone to all this trouble to get me pregnant, and yet they didn't seem to give a damn about me or the baby. It's hard to puke when you're strapped down the way we were. Some of the others … they died. I think … I think they choked to death on their own vomit."

"And how did the Cylons react when people started dying?"

"They didn't! They didn't even remove the bodies! They just left them there to rot. It was horrible! The smell … it was so bad that I wanted to throw up all the time. I begged them to do something … anything … to make me feel better. We were all so sick. I was sure that I was going to die, but it got to the point that I just didn't care anymore. It got to the point where I wanted to die … just get it over with."

"Did they ever take the corpses away?"

"No … the only reason I survived is because they moved us. They gave us something to knock us out, and then they put us on board that ship. You know the rest."

"Polyxena … the Sixes that are on trial here: do you think that they deserve punishment?"

"Yes! But I don't want you to kill them! That doesn't even come close to what they deserve! I want you to strap them down! I want you to make them pregnant! And when they start puking their guts out … let them! Let them lie there and rot in their own vomit! That's what they deserve. That's justice!"

"Thank you, Polyxena. You are a remarkable young woman. I think you're the most courageous person I've ever met, and I truly and sincerely want to wish you well."

Didi Cassidy looked over at the panel of judges.

"Your Honors, I have no further questions."

Doyle Franks looked at Polyxena Atreides, and her heart leapt into her throat. She was still a child, and she looked shattered. The captain could only pray that her entire life had not been destroyed by this experience.

"At this point, I'm going to declare a sixty minute recess." She banged her gavel to dismiss the court.

Shelly Adama hastened forward to take Polyxena in her arms. The child buried her head against Shelly's breast, and began quietly to sob. The Cylon slowly led her human charge out of the chamber.

. . .

"C'mon, Sarge, the rumor's all over town. Is it true? Did they slice Dexter up … cut off his dick?"

"Yes," Mathias calmly answered, "and they shoved his prick down his throat. Doc Cottle's still trying to figure out whether he suffocated or bled to death."

"And what are you doing about it," Vireem growled.

"Well, as you can see, at the moment I'm on my coffee break—if this swill qualifies as coffee. But once I resume my shift, I thought that I'd go out and start prowling around the garbage cans. Who knows? Maybe we'll get lucky and find somebody's clothing drenched in blood. There must have been one hell of a lot of blood," she added maliciously.

"This is bullshit," Mike Gage angrily yelled, "total bullshit. You're not doing a damned thing, and you don't even seem to care that a fellow marine's been tortured to death. Yeah, I know what you think of us, and I don't give a flying frak. Dexter didn't deserve this … I want you to do your gods damned job!"

"Now you listen to me," Mathias barked as she climbed to her feet. "Horvett's in the queue, but right now we've got three other murders staring us in the face, and a dishonorably discharged rapist is strictly bottom of the pile. We'll get to him when the time and resources permit, but don't hold your breath waiting for an arrest. The odds are that it's one of the Eights, unless it's one of the Sixes seeking revenge for Gina Inviere. You wanna expedite this investigation, Gage? Then save me a trip up to the Galactica: is Horvett's name going to show up in Thorne's log? Is he one of the animals who stopped by periodically to rape my sister-in-law?"

"You married one of those things?" Vireem was outraged. This was beyond obscenity.

"Yes, Derek, and you really want to be careful what you say about my wife." Mathias kept her tone even and neutral. "For those of you who haven't been keeping up on current events, my Six is the head of our local crime syndicate … a kind of latter-day Guatrau. She's got people working for her whose idea of an easy death is taking your balls off with a blowtorch. You understand what I'm telling you?"

"Yeah, I hear you, all right. What you're saying is that it's up to us to take care of business because the New Caprica Police Department isn't going to do frak. Fine … okay … you want blood in the streets, we'll frakkin' well give it to you."

"Is that a threat, Derek?"

"Hey, wait a second!" Karl Hobbes couldn't believe how quickly this was all spiraling out of control. "We came here to help, not start a gang war! I want police protection. I don't want to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder. Sergeant, you guys have got to get on top of this!"

"Hobbes, I wish I could help, but we just don't have the resources. If you want a bodyguard, go out and hire one."

"Karl, forget it." Derek Vireem had already written Mathias off. "We've got a skin job for a police chief, and now we know the lay of the land. From now on, it's the Pegasus against the world; we're on our own."

"If I were you, I wouldn't count on your former shipmates for much," Mathias coolly observed. "Your fellow rapists all seem to have stayed with the ship, and a lot of your one-time pals have got some pretty serious relationships going with the Sharons. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to get back to work. The three of you have a nice day."

. . .

"Polyxena, I know that this is very difficult for you. Are you ready to continue, or would you like us to adjourn until tomorrow?"

"I just want to get this over with," the girl replied.

"Thank you … and I'll try to make this as easy for you as I can. When you first met Shelly Adama, what did you think of her?"

"Objection, Your Honor!" Didi Cassidy jumped swiftly to her feet. "Relevance?"

"Mr. Lampkin?"

"Hostile witness, Your Honor; the defense requests some latitude here."

"Overruled," Franks declared; "go ahead, Counselor, but don't try my patience, and don't let this turn into a witch hunt."

"Thank you, Your Honor. Polyxena?"

"I hated her. I wanted her to die."

"You hated her on sight because she's a Cylon … one of the people who hurt you, and killed your mother?"

"Yes."

"Do you still hate her?"

"No! Of course not!" Everyone in the courtroom could hear the shock in Polyxena's voice.

"Why? What's changed your mind?"

"She's been so good to me … so kind. It's kind of like … kind of like she's become my mother."

"And are you a good daughter to her? Do you help her, especially now that she's pregnant?"

"Mrs. Adama has a lot of responsibilities," Polyxena agreed, "so I try and help her as much as I can."

"And when the baby is born … will you help her with the baby?"

"Sure … if she'll let me."

"But Callista is going to be a hybrid baby—half human and half cylon. Doesn't that bother you?"

"No … why would it? A baby's just a baby."

"Does Mrs. Adama want to have this baby?"

"What? What kind of question is that? She loves her baby … more than anything else in the world!"

"But Mrs. Adama is a cylon, Polyxena … a machine. Surely, you don't expect us to believe that a machine can feel love?"

"If you believe that, then you can't know many Cylons. Shelly loves her baby, she loves the Admiral … I think …"

Polyxena stared at Shelly, who was seated alongside Caprica Six in the first row of the visitor's gallery. She was weeping silent tears for the fragile human child whom she had long ago taken into her heart.

"I think … I think … that she loves me … as much … as much … as I love her." With those few, simple words, Polyxena Atreides felt an enormous weight disappear somewhere inside her.

"And yet she is identical in every way to these Cylons, whom you hate so intensely …"

"She's not," Polyxena furiously protested. "She's not like them … she's nothing like them!"

"Why, Polyxena? What is it that makes Shelly Adama so different?"

"I don't know … maybe … maybe it's that she's spent so much time with us that she became one of us."

"You mean because she was an infiltrator, living among us day after day, that she evolved, became more of a person and less of a machine?"

"I guess … yes … that must be what happened."

"But her sisters here weren't infiltrators. They have never lived among us, so they're still machines. That's why the Admiral has ordered them to be kept in chains … he thinks that, given the chance, they'll try and hurt us. What do you think, Polyxena? If they had been infiltrators, would they now be like Shelly Adama?"

Didi Cassidy was once again on her feet. "Objection; Your Honor, this is all purely speculative!"

"Overruled," Franks said as she vaguely waved the prosecuting attorney back to her seat. Doyle was already planning to invite Romo Lampkin to the Captain's table on Prometheus. In the gentlest possible way, he was trying not only to save his clients but to pull Polyxena away from the abyss that threatened her soul.

"I don't know." Polyxena looked at the seven blonds who so closely resembled Shelly, and she could feel a new and far more complex set of emotions warring within her. "Maybe … I guess so."

"Do you think that, back on Caprica, they had ever felt love? Do you think that they even knew what it was?"

"No … not then, and not now… I'm sure of it! I don't think that they have a clue!"

"And yet, following what we now know to be a programmed instinct to reproduce, they wanted babies. After decades of trying and failing among themselves, they were convinced that they were sterile. But they hoped that you could give them the children they so desperately wanted, and knowing nothing of love, these machines hooked you up to other machines. Do you think that they wanted to hurt you … deliberately set out to humiliate you? Did they mistreat you because they were evil, or because they were ignorant? Can a machine be evil, or is it just a machine?"

"Ignorant," Polyxena whispered. "It's because they were machines … no moral compass. The Simons were … they were so … polite."

"Earlier, you told Miss Cassidy that the Sixes ignored you—that they paid more attention to what the machines had to say. When they left the corpses to decompose all around you, did they respond to your pleas for help in their own way? Did they check to see whether the machines thought that you, or the baby, were in any danger?"

Polyxena frowned, trying to remember. And watching her, Shelly's heart exploded with pride. It never occurred to the child to lie … it just wasn't in her nature.

"Yes," she finally responded. "Whenever we complained, they always checked the machines."

"Would the machines have warned them that you might choke to death in your own vomit?"

"I don't think so. It would have happened too quickly."

"Polyxena, if the machines had told them that your baby was in serious danger, what would have happened?"

"Probably nothing. I don't think that any of them knew what they were doing."

"I have only one or two more questions. Did any of the other cylon men ever come to speak with you?"

"Yes … it was after they finished all the tests. This guy showed up, wearing this ridiculous red suit. He asked me if I would be willing to become his mate … have children with him."

"What did you say?"

"I told him to go frak himself, and then I spit in his face."

. . .

"Would somebody like to remind me why I volunteered for this little project," Bierns grumbled. The Colonial Secret Service agent was busily digging post holes, and he was hot, sweaty, and thoroughly miserable. Heavy manual labor, at least in this dimension, was not to his liking.

Colonel Alexander Phillips couldn't help but chuckle at his friend's expense. "Major, believe it or not, just about the only thing that the stalwart men and women of the 3654th do not have any experience building is a beachfront bungalow. You're our resident expert, even if that sprawling house of yours does happen to be located in another dimension."

"Oh, stop whining, sweetheart; all this exercise is good for you." Now in her eighteenth week, Sharon had unashamedly stripped down to her bra and panties, and she was lying on a huge outcropping of granite, soaking up the afternoon sun. She could tell that her baby was enjoying the outing just as much as she was.

John decided to ignore his wife. "I don't remember it being this hard," he complained. "At Galatea Bay, everything just sort of flowed naturally into place. And the sand had the good sense to stay put!" Bierns was trying to dig down to the bedrock, so that the piles that would support the front of the house could be driven into a solid foundation. Unfortunately, with every shovelful, much of the sand was drifting back into the hole.

"Different dimensions … different rules," Sharon teased. "Besides, you're a hybrid, and you've got a lot of centurion DNA in you. So, let's banish the human side of you for the rest of the day, and put that good, old-fashioned centurion work ethic into practice. You don't hear Artemis complaining, do you? Surely you can keep up with a Six!"

"Major, are you all right?" Stallion was looking at him with genuine concern. "You took one hell of a beating on the Pegasus. If you need to take a break, just say the word; Artemis and I can carry on without you."

"Thanks, Hephaestus, but I'm frustrated more than anything else. There's blue sky overhead, a deep blue sea to my back, and this beach is flanked on both ends by these incredible granite cliffs. And every time I take a peek, I end up on the tilt-a-wheel. I tried lying on my back and looking up—and the whole, damned sky came crashing down. This island of yours sounds like paradise, but I wouldn't know because my world has been reduced to post holes, sand dunes, and a few stands of beach grass."

"Lieutenant, don't encourage him," Sharon called out. "I don't want John to get fat, and vertigo shouldn't prevent him from digging a few holes."

Sharon was keeping it casual, but the hard-nosed attitude that she had adopted towards her husband in recent weeks coincided with the dismantlement of the hybrid network. Like Adama, the Cylons had come to the conclusion that their child had far too little self-control, and they were now implementing Natalie's suggestion to give him a full dose of what humans called "tough love." They had watched him court death so recklessly and so often that they no longer saw anything heroic about his actions. They understood that he sought absolution for a lifetime of guilt, shame, and self-loathing. He was shamelessly indulging in the worst form of self-pity imaginable, and the Sixes and Eights were determined to attack it on every front. Sharon was fighting hard to give him some sense of self-worth. Not allowing him to use his disability as a crutch was merely one small skirmish in a much broader campaign.

"John, you should trade Sharon in for a Six," Aphrodite mischievously suggested. She was also sunning herself on the rock, her own pregnancy now in its fifteenth week. "We're not such slave drivers, and most of my sisters are eager to crawl into your bed. Poor Natalie has put her life on hold; she's waiting for you to come to your senses …"

"My husband has enough brains not to become involved with narcissistic blonds who spend an hour or more in front of the mirror every single morning," Sharon scoffed. "But he needs toughening up. I want him to work harder during the day," she smirked, "so that he'll have more stamina at night. In about a month, or so I've been told, he's going to need it."

John shuddered. Karl Agathon had barely made it through the sixth month of Sharon's pregnancy, and in her seventh month Creusa was still proving to be utterly insatiable. Lee had resigned his commission on Founder's Day, and John suspected that he had done so largely as a matter of self-preservation. Humans required more sleep than a CAG married to a Cylon in her late second or early third trimester could possibly get. Bill Adama was about to enter the eye of this particular storm, and half the fleet was laying bets that a man his age wouldn't survive the experience.

Higher up the slope, Colonel Phillips fired up his jackhammer, effectively putting an end to the good-natured bantering in which the two pregnant Cylons liked to indulge. John took off his shirt and tossed it aside; Aphrodite and Sharon didn't say a word, but for both of them it was a moment with great meaning. Doctor Fordyce had been quietly coaching the Cylons about human psychology, and she had explained how men who were severely wounded in war automatically assumed that their injuries made them unattractive to women. Artemis and Aphrodite had pushed Stallion beyond this barrier, and now they were helping to guide Sharon across the same terrain. She loved to sleep against her husband's back, the baby cradled between them, her cheek resting against the worst of the terrible scarring that ran without interruption from his neck to the top of his thighs. He had become far less self-conscious in bed, but this was the first time that he had bared his back in public. It was an important step, and the two Cylons both knew it. . . .

In the waning light, the six of them gathered to prepare and eat their supper—and to plan for the future. Phillips had helped himself to the equipment and supplies that they were now putting to such good use, but he had filled out none of the requisition forms that normally went into the files. This project was strictly off-the-books, and the six of them agreed that it should stay that way. Hephaestus Fears and his two Cylon wives were going to live on the island, and John Bierns was going to equip it with a state-of-the-art communications array. If the Cavils ever showed up and occupied New Caprica, this remote outpost would become one of the keys to humanity's survival.

. . .

She struggled to the surface, shocked and gasping for breath. She heard soft laughter, and suddenly, a face loomed out of the darkness.

"Hello, sister; did you miss me?"

Cavil! The monster was leaning over the edge of the vat, so invitingly close. She longed to snap his neck, and she lashed out with the speed of a striking serpent.

But the shackles held her firmly in place. She bit down hard on her frustration.

"Now, now, D'Anna," her older brother mocked; "you're the eldest of all the cylon daughters, and you really do need to set an example for your siblings."

"What do you want, Cavil? Why did you bring me back?"

"The first thing I want is your complete and undivided attention." Cavil's eyes were on fire, and D'Anna reacted instantly, summoning her defenses to try and ward off the pain that her brothers always dispensed so liberally when they were this angry. The thirteen of them had raped her so many times that the memory had become a blur, but mercifully, the child to whom she had eventually given birth had not been conceived in this unholy alliance. God has spared her the ultimate shame.

"You haven't noticed it yet, but there's a rather elegant collar locked around your neck. It houses a very slender needle- an electrode, really- that's embedded in your spinal cord, right at the base of the medulla oblongata. If I turn this little knob just a touch …"

Cavil held a small box before her eyes.

"The results can be quite spectacular."

D'Anna screamed, the pain driving into her brain. Her eyelids began to spasm, and her body went rigid, the pain pounding its way down her arms and legs.

"Our parents spoilt you rotten, so it's hardly surprising that you became such a disobedient child. But as you can see, we now have the means to discipline you properly. There won't be any more spankings, D'Anna. Personally, I always thought that you went out of your way to provoke papa Sam; I think that you quite enjoyed having him put you across his knees. Is that how you got off? Your sisters all turned out to be quite frigid," he sighed. "We activated millions of Threes … and not an orgasm in the bunch."

"How long …"

A tidal wave of humiliation washed through the proud Three. She had only two questions, but if Cavil insisted, she would beg for the answers.

"Oh, it's been a while … roughly thirty-five years."

"And my son …"

"Thriving," Cavil smirked. "As promised, we expelled him to live among the meat sacs. Although he's forgotten his roots and become altogether human, he's turned out to be very gifted. We brought him home last year … you know how a little torture can be good for the soul? He shouldn't have survived the interrogation that one of your sisters put him through, but he did somehow. Alas, we'll never know exactly what happened because the baseship in question is one of the ones we lost during the attack on the Colonies."

"So you actually did it? You went ahead and attacked the humans?"

"Yep," Cavil said with a self-satisfied grin. "And the light show was quite spectacular … all those nukes going off hither, thither, and yon. Twelve worlds reduced to rubble, the meat sacs all but extinguished as a species. We left fifty-two billion dead … that's 99.99999 percent of the whole for anybody who's counting … such justice … such sweet, sweet, justice!"

"Who are you trying to kid, brother? We both know why you wanted to annihilate the humans. But," D'Anna said as she shrewdly appraised him, "it's beginning to sound like something went wrong somewhere. That's why we're having this conversation, isn't it? What's the matter, One? Did my son grow up to be a little more than you could handle?"

Cavil turned the knob, and a much more powerful wave of pain coursed through her nervous system. She screamed, and she kept screaming until he relented. But it was worth it. Her child … the baby that had filled her with such revulsion in the beginning, yet had aroused such intense feelings of love at the end … her child had somehow grown up and positioned himself to save humanity. He was carrying out the task that she had seared into the very fiber of his being. The angel, D'Anna thought, pride and satisfaction warming her spirit; truly, my son is the angel of whom the prophecies speak.

"Oh, he's rebellious and willful … clever … resourceful; he reminds me a lot of Ellen. But somewhere along the line, he uncovered the truth—or some of your brothers and sisters uncovered it for him … we're still a little vague about the details. The upshot of it all is that the collective has been divided. The Ones, Fours and Fives are still adhering to the plan, but the Twos, Threes, Sixes and Eights have all gone over to the humans. The last time we ran into them, your sisters were all flat on their backs and spreading their legs, praying to that One True God of yours that one of those tiny little human sperm would make it all the way home. You'll be happy to know that it's happened—occasionally. Ah, but most of your sisters, God bless their little hearts, haven't managed to conceive. The poor things haven't been able to knock down all of mother's ingenious firewalls. If they only knew the right formula … which, by an amazing coincidence, we happen to possess …"

"You bastard … you godless freak …"

"Now, sister …"

"Go ahead, monster; twist the dial! Enjoy yourself while you can!"

"Thank you, D'Anna; I don't mind if I do." Cavil twisted the knob a third time, and let the loathsome creature's screams caress his non-existent soul. He really liked watching her thrash about.

"And you're going to help me," he added. "Your son has become an intolerable nuisance, and you're going to help me bring him home. One of the Sixes has remained loyal, and she has a collar just like yours waiting to snap around his neck. She has big plans for your little boy … very inventive plans. And she's not like me. This particular Six is a genuine sadist … the real article. She hasn't quite figured out that we reprogrammed her to reach orgasm only in the midst of another's pain, nor has she caught on to the fact that her first orgasm will leave her unsatisfied. She'll keep returning to the well, so to speak, over and over again, but only to become more and more frustrated. We're machines, Three, and machines can be programmed and reprogrammed to our heart's content. The humans are so forgiving that they've managed to convince themselves that machines can actually have free will. Well, they're wrong, and this mistake is going to cost them dearly. Imagine their surprise when, with one pass of a Raider … one short burst of code on a particular frequency … their beloved Eights start rising up to butcher them. It's going to be up close and very, very personal. It's called justice, Three … and in this case … let's just say that it's justice that's long overdue."