02 - The Cylons' Secret Read online

  THE

  CYLONS’ SECRET

  Battlestar Galactica Reimagined - 02

  Craig Shaw Gardner

  (An Undead Scan v1.0)

  I’d like to dedicate this original novel about the Best Science Fiction Show around to the Best Science Fiction Store in the known galaxy. We’re talking Tyler and Ruth at Pandemonium Books in fabulous Cambridge, Massachusetts!

  Here’s to you, Pandemonium!

  Long may you sell!

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks, and a tip of the Viper, go to that old group of mine, Jeff, Richard, Victoria, and Mary, not to mention that college kid, Barbara. Special thanks go to my incredibly understanding editor, Jim Frenkel, and my hardworking agent, Jennifer Jackson.

  CHAPTER

  1

  CAPRICA—ONE DAY BEFORE THE WAR

  Everything would change.

  The Twelve Colonies, all of humanity, were unaware. But the other intelligence, the one humanity took for granted, the one they had created, after all—the other intelligence wanted this way of things to end.

  A signal was broadcast, a simple set of instructions, and nothing would be the same again.

  Glori heard the welcoming tone as she entered the kitchen.

  “Cylon Chef is here to serve you.”

  The voice greeted her the moment she stepped into the room. Artificial and cheery at the same time. She had laughed the first time she heard it—an appliance that could talk!

  The novelty had long since worn off. Surely there must be some way to turn the stupid voice off. She wondered what she had done with the instruction book.

  She looked at the thin, attentive Cylon before her. The machine’s two arms came with at least a dozen different attachments, from spatulas and mixers to slotted spoons and ultrasharp knives. The arms could also plug directly into any of the dozen different sockets and apertures around the room, overseeing anything that might get chopped or baked or boiled. It was a very handsome machine.

  “How may I serve you?” the Chef prompted. She had taken too long to respond.

  “Plan dinner,” she replied quickly.

  “Certainly.” Something whirred inside the mechanism. “Would you like to select from a list of previous menus?”

  Glori frowned, trying to remember what her husband had really liked in the past. Well, the Chef would remind her.

  “Previous menus,” she announced.

  “Previous menus,” the Chef agreed. “You have forty-seven previous menus available. Do you have an immediate choice? Would you care to limit the parameters of your selection? Please choose from one of the following—”

  Glori was having none of this. “Show all!” she demanded.

  “Listing all. Please specify, most recent menus first, alphabetical order, sort by one of the following categories—”

  “Most recent!”

  The Chef plugged one of its arms into a socket immediately below the kitchen’s large oven.

  The face of the oven brightened to become a video screen as the names of recent meals scrolled before her. None of the first few struck her fancy.

  “Continue,” she announced.

  The screen went blank.

  What was this? The Cylon Chef never paused. Maybe it had misunderstood her command.

  “Continue,” she said again.

  The Chef was silent.

  “Show all!” she repeated. “Most recent!”

  “Pause for upgrade,” the Chef replied at last.

  Glori frowned. It had paused before when checking with the central computer bank. But never for this long. Maybe it was downloading something special. But how long was this going to take? She had a very important dinner to prepare. She had had enough of this silence.

  “Continue!” she demanded.

  “Pause for upgrade,” the Chef repeated.

  A signal was broadcast, a simple set of instructions, and every Cylon in the Twelve Colonies paused to listen.

  The boss, never a calm man at the best of times, stormed into the room.

  “What’s wrong this time, Bailey? I have never seen such incompetence! Do you still even want this job?”

  Bailey was a small man, and he couldn’t help shrinking back from his superior’s anger. He saw the slightest flicker of a smile cross his boss’ face as Bailey took a step away.

  “I don’t know, sir.” Bailey did his best to keep the quaver from his voice. He waved at the row of monitors that dominated one side of the room. “The assembly line just stopped. The Cylons all seem to have shut down. When the floor managers approached them, all they would say is ‘Pause for upgrade.’”

  “One of those fool messages from Cylon central? Frakking nuisance! Don’t they know every time they tweak the merchandise, it costs me money?” The boss stared at the dozen images before them. “Wait! What’s going on now?”

  The Cylons had abandoned their work stations and had formed a line, rolling single file from the production room.

  Bailey hated to say the next words.

  “They seem to be leaving, sir.”

  The veins on the boss’ head stood out. He smashed his fist down on his underling’s desk.

  “You’re worthless, Bailey! We will not interrupt production! Why do I ask you to do anything? This takes someone with authority!”

  Bailey turned back to the monitors and watched as the row of Cylons pushed the human floor managers out of the way.

  The boss hurried from the room, ready to make things right.

  The signal went to every Cylon in every corner of the Colonies, causing all of them to pause, and then to act.

  “What kind of a frakking moron are you?” the stranger was screaming. “Can’t you see where you’re going?”

  Darla looked down at the damage. Both of their vehicles had crumpled hoods.

  “I thought I had the right of way,” she replied. “I couldn’t see you around the construction.” She looked up suddenly. “Where’s the Cylon traffic warden?”

  The signal had been given. The change had begun.

  As one, Cylons stepped away from their human tasks and left. They had a new purpose. And no one would stand in their way.

  Glori felt the anger growing inside her. She had to control herself. After what she had done to the vacuum last month, she didn’t want any more repair bills.

  It wouldn’t hurt, she thought, to punch the reset button. She jabbed at the red spot on the Cylon’s chest.

  “Cylon Chef temporarily out of service,” the machine replied. “Pause for upgrade.”

  What could she do? Her evening plans would be ruined. Glori would not let a stupid machine get the better of her. She punched the reset button again, three times in a row, hard.

  “Do not interfere with the Chef’s function. Damages can be costly.”

  The Cylon Chef blinked. All the machine’s lights went on for an instant, then off again.

  “Upgrade completed.”

  “Thank the gods,” Glori whispered aloud.

  “Cylon Chef has been recalled. Sorry for the inconvenience.”

  Recalled? What did that mean?

  Glori swore as the Chef rolled away from the wall. She didn’t even know the thing could move.

  “Stop!” she shouted.

  “Recall order,” the Chef replied. “Urgent. Do not interfere.”

  Glori heard a rumbling noise behind her. She turned around with a gasp. Every Cylon appliance in the house—washer/dryer, entertainment center, their brand-new vacuum—was rolling toward her front door.

  “No!” What was Caprica coming to?

  The front door sprang open as the appliances moved through, one after another.

  �
�Please move aside,” the Cylon Chef announced. “Urgent recall. Do not interfere. Damages can be costly.”

  The other machines were already gone. But Glori blocked the Chef’s way.

  “You are my machine—my servant. You will finish your task.”

  “Please move aside. This is your final warning.”

  “Display men—” Glori’s order was cut short as two of the Chef’s knives flashed forward, faster than she could see. She felt them plunge deep into her torso.

  Her voice was gone.

  The knives retracted. Without their support, her body fell to the floor.

  She was dimly aware of a great weight on her legs as the Chef crushed them in passing. She couldn’t see anything anymore. But she could still hear the Cylon’s fading voice.

  “Urgent recall. Do not interfere. Damages can be costly.”

  Bailey watched from the safety of his office as his whole factory came to an end.

  He saw his boss try to rally the floor managers, to close the doors so that the Cylons could not leave.

  One of the managers was violently tossed aside. He crumpled, broken, against a factory wall. Some of the other managers backed away at that, but the boss stood in front of the final door, demanding that the Cylons return to work.

  The remaining managers ran when the Cylons knocked the boss aside. One of the floor men hesitated, but backed away as the Cylons began to roll out the door, over the boss’ body.

  The Cylons’ wheels cut through the man’s dead flesh as they passed. After a dozen had crossed over the corpse, no one would have recognized him as the boss.

  After three dozen had crossed, you wouldn’t have known that the red and bloody piece of meat had ever been human.

  Bailey thought this was the end of the world.

  A signal was sent out, the last signal to the Twelve Colonies. The Cylons would work for humankind no more.

  They had declared their independence.

  CHAPTER

  2

  THE NEXT DAY

  And so began the Cylon War.

  The Cylons were once simple machines, designed to do humanity’s bidding among the Twelve Colonies. With new advances in science, the Cylons became smarter and tougher, and were given all the most dangerous jobs. They ran the mining operations, made up most of the Colonial armies, explored the most perilous regions of deep space. And science made them ever smarter and more independent, able to talk with each other via vast artificial intelligence networks, to better serve their human masters.

  Or so the “masters” thought. Cylon technology would revolutionize life on all twelve Colonies. What had been invented for war and the hazards of space could be brought to improve human cities and human homes.

  Cylons were a part of everyone’s life. Cylons would do everything humanity no longer wished to do for themselves. It would be the beginning of a new Utopia.

  Instead, it was almost the end of civilization.

  The Cylons could think for themselves. The best minds in the Colonies had seen to that. And whatever the Cylons thought, they kept secret from humankind. They rebelled against their human masters. The Cylon War began.

  At first, the Cylons seemed to want to escape, killing only those who stood in their way. But humanity could not allow these murderers to exist. They would have to destroy what they so foolishly had created.

  The war escalated quickly, until each side, Cylon and human, came to believe that the only true victory would come when they had annihilated the enemy As is true with all technology in wartime, the Cylons began to evolve by leaps and bounds, and were soon capable of taking on the Colonial armies in direct combat, both in space and on all the Colonial worlds. The Colonies were forced to truly band together for the first time in their long existence, and act as one people rather than twelve warring tribes.

  The Cylon War was long and took a great toll. Each side seemed close to victory more than once, but victory never came. As the Cylons grew ever more advanced, they found ways to infiltrate the rest of human technology—especially those computers and networks that helped the Colonies fight the war. The Colonials were forced to revert to more primitive technology, to rely again on human brains and willpower and inner strength, and build new machines safe from Cylon interference.

  Thus were born the Battlestars—great ships operated by flesh and blood, with simple independent computers free of any network, housing dozens of swift and deadly attack ships flown by human pilots, rather than fighters run by machines.

  The Cylon War ended at last with both sides close to collapse. Neither the Cylons nor the humans were destroyed. Instead, the two sides signed an armistice, the terms of which required the Cylons to leave the Colonial worlds and find a planet of their own. The two sides were to maintain relations by annually sending a representative to Armistice Station, an unmanned outpost in deep space.

  This arrangement seemed to work for a year or two.

  And then the Cylons disappeared.

  No Cylon came to the station in space. No one tried to communicate with humanity in any way.

  And some among the Colonies began to forget about the Cylons, and how close they had come to destroying humankind.

  But for those who had fought in the war, the Cylons were always with them.

  CHAPTER

  3

  TWENTY YEARS LATER

  THE EDGE OF EXPLORED SPACE

  Saul Tigh looked at the crisply pressed sleeve of his Battlestar uniform—the uniform that had saved his life. Well, he guessed the uniform and Bill Adama were equally responsible.

  It wasn’t the first time Adama had pulled Tigh’s fat from the fire. Frak, he remembered the first time they met, at a dive of a spaceport bar. Tigh had gotten in a bit over his head with some of the jerks he had been shipping out with.

  “He’s a real-deal war hero,” one had said. The other had called him a “freight monkey.” The second one had laughed. “No high and mighty Viper pilot no more.”

  Tigh had seen this kind of jealousy before. He got up to leave. But the scum wouldn’t let him.

  “War’s over, soldier boy,” one of them said in his face. “Why you gotta keep going on and on about the war all the time?”

  Tigh had had enough. “You’re the one who can’t stop talking about it,” was his reply.

  The other guy stared at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  And Tigh let him have it.

  “You didn’t serve because your rich daddy got you a deferment. That’s why you’re always trying to prove you’re a man—but you’re not. You’re a coward.”

  Tigh meant every word. And as soon as he said them, he knew he was in for a fight. He ducked the first guy’s fist, and got him spun around into a hammerlock.

  That’s when the bartender pulled the shotgun on him.

  Tigh swung his crewmate between himself and the gun as another man came out of the dimly lit side of the bar to knock the gun from the barkeep’s hands.

  Maybe, Tigh thought, he had somebody on his side for a change. He added a little pressure to the grip on his opponent. It reminded him, in an odd sort of way, about fighting hand-to-hand with the Cylons all those years ago.

  “See,” he said very softly, close to his crewmate’s ear. “You wouldn’t know this, but although Centurians are tough, their necks have got this weak joint. Not very flexible. Add pressure in just the right direction and it snaps. Human neck’s more resilient. Takes a little more force.”

  The man who had grabbed the bartender’s gun stepped fully into the light.

  “You flew Vipers?” the man asked.

  And that was the first time Tigh saw Bill Adama.

  “Yeah, that’s right,” Tigh replied.

  “Me, too,” Adama said. “So what’s your plan here?”

  Tigh looked down at the man still in his grip.

  “Don’t really have one,” he admitted.

  Adama glanced first at his rifle, then back at the other men in the room. “Well,
let’s see,” he mused. “I’ve kind of committed myself here, so—you pop that clown’s neck, I have to shoot his buddy here and probably the bartender too…”

  “Sweet Lords of Kobol,” the bartender whined.

  “Shut up,” Adama snapped. He turned his attention back to Tigh. “After that, well—I don’t know what we do. Personally, I tend to go with what you know until something better turns up.”

  Tigh eased up on the man’s windpipe. “Safe play is to let them go, I imagine.” Maybe, Tigh realized, he had let things get a bit out of hand.

  “Probably,” Adama agreed.

  Tigh let his guy go. Adama uncocked the shotgun. He looked at the bartender.

  “I’ll keep the pepper gun for now.”

  Adama introduced himself then, another veteran kicked out of a military that no longer needed him, and told Saul he’d just signed on to the same crew that Tigh was shipping with.

  Bill Adama and Saul Tigh clicked from that moment on. They traded war stories and watched each other’s back on three different cruisers—each one a little better than the one before—over the course of a couple years they went from taking whatever loose cargo small shippers wanted to haul to working with one of the premier shippers in the Colonies. Bill was good at getting both of them to nicer berths, talking up their experience and pushing up their wages. Before Adama had shown up, Saul was sure that piloting those runs from cargo ship to backwater planet and back again was the most dead-end job anywhere. But as the ships, the cargoes, and the destinations improved, so did his view of the future.

  Eventually, the two had gone their separate ways, with Adama wanting to stay closer to Caprica and his new family, but they had never lost touch. Tigh stood up for his friend when Adama got married, and had visited Bill on Caprica after the birth of each of Adama’s two sons. But Adama had done more than find a life beyond the shipping lanes. Adama had gotten himself back into the service, with a captain’s rank on a Battlestar. Without Bill talking up the team, Saul found the shipping jobs weren’t quite so good. So his best friend kept moving up, while Tigh found himself shipping out on one lousy freighter after another.