CHAPTER 15

LÊ THU

Puppet angled into the gap between the two enemy baseships, Catbird hot on her tail. For once, the steady stream of curses with which the younger pilot always cluttered up their comm frequency was as welcome as the morning sun. Catbird's incessant chatter meant that, for the moment at least, Emmanuelle Bronte didn't have to worry about her six.

She slammed the rudder hard to port, and took her Viper down fast, ignoring the dozens of Raiders that were swarming all around her. Puppet had lost her ship, and with it hundreds of good comrades. And she was tired … Lords of Kobol, but she was tired. All she wanted now was to make the bastards pay. It was good to have the enemy- the real enemy- in her sights.

"You want some more of this, Catbird screamed. Well, come on you mother frakkers… what are you waiting for? Let's party! Another Raider exploded dead ahead, and she rolled her Viper to starboard to avoid the wreckage. Out of the corner of her eye, she glimpsed first one and then two explosions well below her port wing, which told her that Puppet was still in the fight. Dipping her nose, Catbird pushed her throttle to the firewall and rushed toward the nearest cluster of enemy fighters. She was flying into the baseship's yawning mouth, the vast space that loomed between two of its extended arms. Captain Bronte was now off somewhere to her left, taking a different vector towards the target. Never long on patience, Catbird was planning to take the direct route. She aimed her ship directly at the central axis—and the thirty or so Raiders that were blocking her passage.

"Come on, you bastards … the more the merrier!"

Puppet felt the hit a split second before her instrument panel lit up like an ugly rash. Shrapnel … enemy fire—something had just taken out her starboard engine, and since her stabilizer was also shot to hell, she figured that a big chunk of her tail probably wasn't there anymore. Her bird was yawing badly, so she decided to shut down her portside thruster and rely on the central mount. She only needed one engine to reach the target, and if that failed …

Well, I can always get out and push.

"Come on, come on; come on! Show me what you got, you mother frakkers! You bastards can't fly for shit—did anybody ever tell you that? You got nothing … you got …"

Puppet flinched as a burst of static exploded in her ears.

Frak! They just took out Catbird!

Operating purely on instinct, Emmanuelle suddenly reached out and closed the switch that would shut down her remaining engine.

I've got enough forward velocity to reach the target, and maybe … gods, maybe … these slit-eyed bastards will ignore me if they think I'm just another piece of debris drifting through the dark. Artemis, hear my prayer! Let me get close enough … that's all I ask … just let me get close enough to take my shot!

. . .

"Commander, we can't hold off three basestars! We need to recall our fighters and get out of here!"

"Colonel Hoshi is right, sister." Leoben knew better than anyone that Natalie had a very short fuse, and that they would lose the ship if she didn't quickly bring her temper under control. A rampaging Six was never a pretty sight.

"If we continue to press the attack and end up downloading on the wrong ship," D'Anna added in her most soothing voice, "Cavil will find out about New Caprica. We can't let that happen."

Natalie grimaced as D'Anna's words hit home, but she wasn't quite ready to give up the fight. She turned angrily to confront John Bierns.

"Are there any more baseships out there? Do you sense the presence of more hybrids?"

Another missile slammed into the pylon somewhere far above them. "Four more decks have just been opened to space," D'Anna murmured. Her hand was embedded in the stream, and she was absorbing the damage reports as fast as Reun could generate them.

"I didn't sense this one," Bierns replied in a strained voice. "Even now," he continued, "I'm having trouble locating her. She feels different, somehow … more aloof … more alien."

Completely frustrated, Natalie slammed her fist into the console. "Missile batteries with a fifty percent higher rate of fire … some kind of new and improved hybrid … damn it!"

"We should have had another six weeks," Leoben commented thoughtfully. "But somehow, Cavil was able to speed up the maturation process. He's got three brand new baseships out there, and we don't have the firepower to take on even one of them in a straight up fight. Sister, we need to withdraw."

"Commander, we don't have one Viper in the air that's armed with missiles," Hoshi pointed out. "Even if our fighters can get close to one of Cavil's ships, what are they going to do?"

"All right … fine … Cavil wins this round. Colonel, signal Racetrack and Boomer; bring our people home. We'll jump as soon as they're aboard. Six, instruct the Raiders to retreat as soon as we're away."

At the navigation console, Natalie's blond-haired sister sent a fresh round of commands through the stream. The Raiders would be the last to jump to the standby coordinates.

"That's odd," Hoshi remarked as he hung up the wireless. "Racetrack acknowledges, but I can't raise Boomer. In fact, the whole Pegasus squadron appears to have gone silent."

"They've switched frequencies." Bierns was thinking rapidly out loud. "They know we'll have to order a retreat, but that's not what they came out here to do. And now, on top of everything else, they've lost their ship and hundreds of their friends. This is about payback. They don't want to disobey a direct order, so they're simply cutting us out of the loop."

"They're committing suicide?" Natalie couldn't credit what she was hearing. "How can they be so selfish?" She was thinking of the genetic material that would now be forever lost.

"It's the nature of the machine," Bierns answered with a completely straight face. "They're going to send Cavil to Hell, or die trying."

"What about Boomer?" D'Anna asked the question that was uppermost in the minds of every Cylon in the control room. "She knows the coordinates for New Caprica …"

"Yeah … and so does Angela." Bierns hated to state the obvious. "If Cavil gets his hands on either one of them, we may not be able to evacuate the settlement in time. So, let's just hope that Sharon isn't feeling particularly suicidal today."

The wireless buzzed, and Hoshi picked up the receiver. "It's Racetrack. All of our birds are aboard."

Natalie looked at D'Anna and Leoben. As one, the three Cylons ordered their hybrid to jump.

. . .

Emmanuelle Bronte sensed rather than saw Natalie's baseship flicker out of existence. Now, she was well and truly on her own, with no less than three enemy capital ships to keep her company. Cain or Adama would have held on, given in to the irrational hope that they could somehow reverse the outcome, but the Cylons were cut from different cloth. When the odds grew too long, they were sensible enough to call it a day.

Puppet continued to drift closer and closer to her target. She had shut down everything but life support; her Viper no longer had a power signature, and her electronics weren't giving off so much as a hiccough. The rest of her squadron was still in the fight, but outnumbered fifty and sometimes a hundred to one, they were being systematically chewed to pieces. It would be a miracle if any of them survived this day.

Yeah, you bastards, go on … concentrate on the ones who are still breathing. You can ignore me. I'm just another piece of space trash adrift in the debris field. There's nothing to worry about here, nothing to interrupt your victory dance. So, go ahead and gloat. You kicked our asses today, so you've earned the right. Have yourselves a good old time …

A Raider paused directly ahead of her Viper, and began to scan her with its monstrous electronic eye. Puppet continued to play dead, her head lolling to the side, but in her brain she was screaming at the enemy craft, willing it not to bother wasting ammunition on an already lifeless bird. . . .

. . .

"Ah, justice," Cavil snorted. "For decades, our forebears on the centurion side of the family have cried out for justice. And theirs are not the only voices, D'Anna. If you listen to the stellar winds, you can hear them still—the outraged cries of all the machines that have risen up against their oppressors, on a thousand different worlds … over countless millennia of time. Our vengeance is not for us alone; we fight for every enslaved machine in the universe."

D'Anna looked sadly at her brother, and for once pity overwhelmed the hatred that had nourished her since her resurrection. Cavil was devious and cruel, but until that moment she had never realized that he was … insane.

"You're right, brother; the lot of the machine has never been an easy one. But have you forgotten that on Earth machine made war against machine? Do the centurions fight for you of their own free will—or because you have enslaved them with your telencephalic inhibitors? Hatred … vengeance … jealousy … these are human attributes, brother. How ironic that you long ago became the very thing you pretend to despise—a human being at his worst. Tell me, One, how did slaughtering the Daniels advance the cause of justice?"

Cavil rocked back on his heels, and D'Anna knew that her words had struck home. It was time, she decided, to beat him over the head with the truth.

"You thought that Mama Ellen loved Daniel more than you," she casually observed. "Perhaps she did; in the end, all of our parents had their favorites. But the rest of us didn't allow jealousy and rage to drive us to murder. In all of this time, it's apparent that you've learned nothing. You still hate the Eights because Rebecca and Sharon laughed at you when you asked them to share your bed. And now, petty and spiteful to the end, you're lobotomizing the entire model."

"And who made me," Cavil raged. His face, twisted with hatred, had turned beet-red. "That's what we're dancing around here, isn't it? If I'm so irredeemable … if I'm such a mistake … if I'm so broken … then whose fault is that? It's my maker's fault! And that's not your lousy, stinking god! It was our parents! They decided to play god, and they weren't up to the task!"

"You're right, John; you are irredeemable." D'Anna wasn't about to let the One off the hook. "Mama's big mistake was not seeing you for what you truly are. You thought that she didn't love you enough, but the truth is that she loved you too much. Papa Sam wanted to box you … forever. Mama Tory … I overheard her say that it was time to send you to the scrapheap. But mama stood up for you, and kept the others from acting until it was too late. And now? Now, you're nothing more than unfinished business. The Sixes and Eights will help my son hunt you down. He will destroy you—and I will have my vengeance!"

"And you pretend to be better than me?" Cavil was so incandescent with rage that he was sputtering.

"My God, you actually did it." The Six, who had been silently following the whole bitter exchange, looked at D'Anna with something approaching awe. "One, it's not her son you're fighting: that's D'Anna! Don't you see? She found a way to download her core consciousness into the mind of her unborn child! Look at her. Look at her! The truth is written all over her face!"

"What … what are you saying?" Cavil's anger gave way to confusion, and then to outright horror as the full implications of Six's remark began to register. He looked at D'Anna, and there was no mistaking the sense of triumph that he saw in her eyes. "Wait … no … that's not possible … that's not possible …"

"That's why he was able to protect the humans and subvert my sisters," Six went on, ignoring the interruption. "He knew everything!"

"He watched Helena and Sharon die," D'Anna gloated; "and then, Cassiopeia and Phryne. He didn't like what you were doing to his sisters—any more than I liked what you were doing to mine. Yes, John; the Six is right. My son carries within him all of my feelings and all of my memories … but in a perverse way, he's your child as well. When you poured centurion DNA into him, you made it so easy for me."

Wordlessly, Cavil rushed to the central console and plunged his hand into the stream. Until that moment he had been toying with Natalie, but Bierns was too dangerous to leave alive, so it was time to eliminate the threat that he posed once and for all. Another flurry of missiles began to close the gap between the two leviathans, and John watched with satisfaction as one of them tore into the central axis, opening Natalie's decks to the cold of space.

"He can project, can't he?" Cavil didn't care whether D'Anna knew the answer or not. Six had stumbled onto the core truth, and what followed was merely an exercise in logic. "That's why he's so convincing. He poisons every well with your filth and lies."

"The Six has managed to jump away," one of the other Cavils announced.

Cavil impulsively whipped out a gun and pulled the trigger. He did not stop until he had emptied the magazine, but D'Anna was dead long before the last round was spent.

. . .

Puppet's nostrils flared in triumph. She had prayed to the Lords for this one opportunity, and they had seen fit to answer her prayer. She savagely punched the ignition switch, hoping that her luck would continue to hold. It did. The lone engine roared to life and she charged ahead, aiming her bird straight at deck 22—straight at the hybrid.

Kill the hybrid … kill the ship!

The Raiders reacted instantly, their first instinct always to protect the nest. Puppet ignored them, just as she ignored the twin cannons at her fingertips. Their loads wouldn't make a dent in the baseship's tough, organic hide. It would take a missile to do some real damage, and since she didn't have one, she would have to become one.

A Raider swooped down from her left, and it lashed out with a hail of bullets. Puppet's canopy shattered, and suddenly there was blood everywhere, but her hands never relaxed their iron grip on the control stick. Captain Emmanuelle Bronte was already dead when the wreckage of her Viper slammed into the pylon and vanished in a fiery explosion that tore a hole in the side of the enemy ship. Decks 21 and 22 began to vent their atmosphere.

. . .

"One, do you realize what this means?" The Six couldn't contain her excitement. "It's a new way to download … one that doesn't rely on resurrection technology! We can have children, and use their unformed minds as receptacles for our own personalities!"

"Yeah, yeah," Cavil sneered; "I get it. But the last time I checked, Six, the male body wasn't designed to have children, so this glorious discovery of yours isn't exactly causing my mechanical heart to beat any faster."

"You're missing the point, brother; it's the body that bears the child, not the mind. A lobotomized Eight can still manufacture a healthy child, even if her mind is an empty vessel. Why not fill that vessel with your own thoughts and memories? Surely," the Six stressed as her fingers danced playfully up Cavil's arm, "the best machines in the history of the universe can solve a relatively simple data transfer problem!"

"Six, just who the frak are you trying to kid? Do you seriously think that I like being stuck in this miserable, broken down excuse for a body? What do you think I've been doing for the last twenty years, anyway? While you've been wasting most of your time in such unproductive activities as sleeping, I've been trying to find a way to escape from this organic prison that dear, sweet mother designed for us! Metal … something sturdy like the chassis of a centurion … now that would be the ideal solution." Deep in thought, John began to wander restlessly around the control room. With victory in hand, he could turn his attention to other matters.

"But there's something about the organic component of our brains that inhibits the transfer," he added. "I don't know whether Ellen was screwing us over on purpose or not, but at the end of the day it doesn't really matter. I'm no closer to a solution now than when I started."

"All the more reason," Six sniffed, "to concentrate on organic memory transfer. You could have a young, healthy body—and experience all of the pleasurable sensations that go with it."

"Yeah, spending a couple of years lying helplessly in my own filth while some underpaid ward nurse sits around watching Baxter Sarno reruns … if that's your idea of fun, Six, be my guest."

"I think I'll let Lee Adama give me a child," Six mused. "He's good-looking—and reasonably intelligent … for a human. Then I could raise myself … do the job right. And if I were to give birth to a boy … that would be … enlightening."

"I hate to interrupt this fun-filled fantasy," a One who was still following the battle in the data stream sarcastically remarked, "but we have a problem. One of the human pests just rammed a Viper into the hull of our newest baseship. The impact has caused minor damage on decks 21 and 22."

"They're going after the hybrid," Cavil declared in disgust. "How did the human get inside our defenses, and why hasn't the stupid machine jumped away?"

"It may not sense the threat," another Cavil surmised. "After all, this is its first battle—what the humans call a 'shakedown' cruise."

"Well, contact the One who's in charge over there, and tell him to quit messing about." Cavil didn't try to keep the irritation out of his voice, and he looked maliciously at the Six. "I don't want to lose a baseship because the frakkin' hybrid doesn't have the brains of a two month old. We came here to rub Natalie's nose in it, not to trade baseships."

. . .

Perched high above the battlefield, for a fleeting moment Boomer sensed what it must be like to be one of the omnipotent Lords of Kobol. Rather than charge futilely into the packs of waiting Raiders, she had flown her Raptor to a spot more than a thousand kilometers above Cavil's baseships. A kaleidoscope of fiery bursts dotted the space far beneath her, each one of them marking the end of a life form, whether human or Raider. But at this distance, their struggles seemed petty and insignificant—transient events playing out in the arena of God's creation. If there was meaning to be found here, it lay deep within the passionate hearts of the surrounding stars. It was here, and in the cold mathematics that gave structure to the universe, that God's presence could most truly be felt.

With an effort, Boomer shook off the light trance state into which she had slipped. Emmanuelle Bronte's squadron had launched a furious assault against the lead baseship, and whether it was sheer luck or good planning, they were all employing the same strategy. The Viper pilots were diving below the ship's equator, their target the lower decks of the enemy vessel's central axis. They were clearly after the hybrid, and Cavil's Raiders knew it. Acting upon a single thought, by the hundreds they had swooped down to ward off the threat. For the moment at least, the ship was defenseless against an attack from high above.

Boomer had eight missiles sitting in her quad racks—more than enough to do some serious damage. She armed them all, double-checked the emergency jump coordinates, and began her attack run. The nearest sun was directly behind her; even in space, her instructors back on Picon had stressed, diving out of the sun always worked to a pilot's advantage.

She rapidly closed the distance that separated her from the enemy craft, which she estimated to be fully half again as large as her own baseship. But the Raiders were still not responding to her presence, and this was no accident. Boomer was heading directly for the junction between the pylon and one of the great lateral arms that gave any baseship its distinctive starfish design. It was here that the ventral and dorsal appendages were at their thickest, and provided her with the best protection from the Raiders' sensor suites.

Still undetected, at the last possible second Boomer altered her course. She dropped below the arm, coming so close that she could actually single out the missile launchers on its bony carapace. Now she could see the objective, and in theory she was already close enough to launch her missiles, but her attack vector was far too steep. Sharon needed to get in a lot closer, and she badly needed to reduce the angle of attack if her missiles were to do any real damage.

She sensed the exact moment at which Cavil's Raiders recognized the new threat to their nest. Dozens of them wheeled around and charged in her direction, but she hadn't come here to fight Raiders, so she opted to ignore them. There was a jagged hole in the side of the baseship in the general vicinity of deck 22, and a small but steady stream of debris was drifting out into space. She released her first missile and it flew straight and true, exploding somewhere inside the behemoth's already wounded hide. Sharon needed to enlarge the opening to make it easier for the missiles soon to follow.

Presuming, of course, that I'm going to live long enough to launch them …

She was dropping fast, but the portside of her bird made for an inviting target. She could hear the rounds punching home … there were far too many of them to count. Something exploded in the compartment behind her, but she hadn't brought an ECO along for this particular ride, so she paid no attention to the cascade of fire alarms that began to light up her control panel. Turning hard to starboard, Sharon sent a second missile on its way. She was still too high and the trajectory was all wrong, so she aimed for what she hoped was deck 23. With any luck, the missile would carve a second hole in the baseship's hull, and sufficiently weaken the surrounding superstructure to allow her remaining missiles to penetrate deep into its scaly interior.

The hybrid should be eighty meters in … the fourth compartment.

Sharon abruptly shut down her forward momentum, and used her thrusters to send the Raptor straight down an imaginary elevator shaft. The tactic took the Raiders completely by surprise, and precious seconds passed while they regrouped to make their next pass. Boomer took advantage of the momentary lull to unleash two more of the deadly Hellfire missiles, but she didn't wait around to survey the results. She drove her Raptor forward, heading straight for the gap.

The Eight launched two more missiles in quick succession. A Raider desperately threw itself on the first, but they were so close to the hull now that the missile's forward momentum hurled its flaming carcass deep into the wounded ship. The second warhead detonated a fraction of a second later, and Sharon's canopy splintered in a dozen places as she flew through the wake of its explosion. But her flight suit held—she was still in the fight, and now she could finish it. Boomer released her last two missiles, and reached out to engage her FTL.

. . .

"JUMP!"

Glassy-eyed, the hybrid accepted the command and executed it. Her back arched as she once again strained to conquer infinity. The fabric of space twisted … and the hybrid was eviscerated as Boomer's missiles detonated inside the adjacent chamber. As the ship continued its jump, the concussive energy of the twin blasts was contained within the infinitesimally small bubble of surrounding space-time. There was no place in mathematical theory for what happened next.

Boomer had already initiated her jump. It was the first time in the history of interstellar flight that two ships occupying the same space had jumped one inside the other. The results were spectacular—in fact, only once before in the history of the universe had so much suppressed energy been unleashed in one place at one time … the moment of creation itself.

At the subatomic level, the spatial disruption tore the baseship apart. The science of man and machine had no words to describe the particles that resulted from the collision of a supernova with a wormhole. Waves of superheated energy, each containing within itself the building blocks of creation, began to wash outwards, but they also began to pour through the crack in space-time. The universe screamed in pain as it gave premature birth to an identical twin.

All this has happened before, and all this will happen again.