Grey birds...

[knightgrace]

Two birds moved on their own through deep interstellar space, they were beyond visual range to each other, except when one or the other very briefly fired the main engines. Each had three main engines, and in spite of what you are thinking, they weren't Vipers, produced in the same factory, true, but not Vipers, they were Asps, each had a crew of two side by side a gunner, and a pilot. The reason for three engines was to power the main laser cannon, two of them, the third engine powered either the electronic warfare suite, or the high energy spacial distortion drive. But any of the three could power, a single laser cannon or the high energy spacial distortion drive. These were fighters, not interceptors. The difference being that they were more massive, and used lower thrust, comparatively speaking engines. The one in the lead, had its main sensor array aimed forward, the other was facing back the way they came. In side the crew of two, which was always a young man, and a young woman whom could do each other's job perfectly well were the products of a very protracted war in which both sides were seeing which would run out first. In the case of these, it was people. In the cockpit the lady in question had rolled back her seat, and established her privacy curtain, and was giving herself a very needed sponge bath. To do the sponge bath gravity had to be rotated, such that the back bulkhead, became the floor. Neither felt anything for the other, and the reason was in the needle going into their thigh. This brought not only water into their bodies, nutrition as well. Yes, there was solid food, for emergencies, and bags of water, was one hundred percent recycling.
The interstellar drive had three modes in which to operate, a low energy mode, a medium energy mode, and a jump mode. The low energy mode was good for sublight tooling around an inner star system, the medium took fuel to burn, and could handle deep interstellar space voyages, with ease, then there, the jump. The jump wasn't instantaneous, no body knew for sure how long it would last, but always was at least three centons. Unlike another star spanning civilization, instead of using coils, they used rods to generate the distortion. Plus at least on this model twin pulse generators per engine. Unlike the lesser Viper, with one each.

 

[knightgrace]

The entire Colonial Fleet, had desiccated down to a highly concentrated set of procedures and ships to implement the war footing of attrition. The primary problem was that Artificial Intelligence was basically suppressed due to the nature of the Cylons. It showed that the Colonies had been correct to forbid higher levels of Artificial Intelligence, for too much dependence favored the Cylons, such as being too dependent on something that could too easily corrupted into a sui-genocidal event. However if there was too little, the exact same thing would happen as well. So what had happened was a semi adaptable Fleet designed to support the humans in the Colonial Fleet. What this meant was that from time to time abrupt changes would occur, at one of these events the Battlestar was invented a larger brother to the Gunstar, more capable and longer lasting than before, but what surprised the Cylons was that Gunstars continued to be built, not replaced, but additional units, upgraded to be sure. At the same time Battlestars were introduced, so was the Patrolstar.
Patrolstars, had seventy-five percent of the length of a Battlestar and were in essence a snubnosed version. But this length reduction meant that the overall mass, was reduced, but the tankage was the same. In other words they could stay on site for longer, and if careful, far longer, which led to the development of the Colonial Freighter, a very stripped down Battlestar whose primary function was to transport fuel and other supplies to both Battlestars, Patrolstars. Gunstars? No, not really, oh it was done, but Gunstars forefilled a totally different purpose, that of hit and run. Deep penetration raids, where a Colonial Freighter wasn't welcome.
But the Patrolstar's purpose was to hold territorial volumes. Not take, hold. So that they were the biggest customers for the Colonial Freighters.

 

[knightgrace]

After the young woman was done with her sponge bath, she put on a new anti acceleration g-suit, then her inner garment, the her actual space suit. She stepped back from her locker in the 'now' wall, which a few moments later became the floor again, sat back down, her acceleration couch, fastened her helmet back on, and began reading from her course work. Basically it was military intelligence, but it was also advanced education - post graduate education that is.
This flight, it was about the enemy Cylon. Not that there were friendly Cylons...
The Cylon Citizen was the basis of Cylon "culture", fundamental to them, currently, since about eight hundred Yarhens ago, they were bipedal robots, with two 'eyes', that switched back and forth from one to the other, over the period of three millicentons. Back and forth, leaving their computer "brain" plenty of time to process the images produced from each. If one were to observe, with a stopwatch, across a thousand units, one would find different timings for each according to their perceptions. The timing involved with the threat level, she read. The higher the self threat level, the faster the switch between the two sensors. Mentally Cylon citizens were the equivalent to an approximate level of a preteen human child, they didn't need to be anything else. Since their minds were based on computer technology, they could compute just about anything immediately. But the level of computer technology was barely above the level of capability that enabled them to walk. In other words they would have trouble walking and chewing gum at the same time. But! They operated in such a way to mitigate this, meaning that most of the time moving from point Alpha to point Beta, wasn't a problem. Most of their tasks involved standing around and either manipulating controls of semiautomatic equipment, or typing in data, that couldn't be handled any other way. In yet other duties, pushing around cleaning equipment. Yet, they all knew how to use weapons.
The First Citizens, had a second brain, because of this, they were dangerous. The second brain, was virtually identical to the first, but could focus on more important work, souly on that work. Be it studying some new sample, or set of samples, or correcting citizens, they could monitor about a hundred citizens, with ease. But a First Citizen could only monitor about ten other First Citizens, before complexity became an issue. The problem was keeping track of all the details of the group' set of tasks. Yes, they had the memory capacity, but that wasn't the problem, as the numbers went up, the difficulty went up ny the square. Routine tasks could easily be done by a citizen. But management of management, required more computer time than was available in most cases.
The Cylon Centurion on the other hand, had an argumentation to them that provided enhanced sensory perception - continuous scanning using a sweeping image sensor, longer range, and therefore more data intensive. But better able to track targets. Both types of first brains rationed compute time to maximize time to keep up to date, what this meant was that low resolution modes were the primary operating choice. Higher resolution modes, were for updating threat situation knowledge. But at the highest resolution in either case the Cylon in question had to freeze in place, and process that data. Centurions were the most likely to do just this. But the second brains didn't need to completely stop. That second brain speeded up, or had the potential to speed things up, by by ninety percent. The remaining ten percent was spent in communication between brains...
The IL type, had higher powered twin brains. Started out with twin brains and were created by an earlier Imperious Leader out of necessity.
Why?
Because there weren't enough retired Imperious Leaders. An IL type, had far more processing capability than either types of the Second Brains. They filled in the gaps, where the Second brains could not. And eliminated the prospects for revolution. Especially from retired Imperious Leaders. But what about Imperious leaders? They had three brains. And total access to all of Cylon knowledge, even the ILs did not, unless required to as directed by the current Imperious Leader.
The real problem for the Cylons was communication speed limits. A first brain citizen would do their tasks till they broke down. A first Centurion would do their set of tasks till breakdown as well, going more and more off course with time. The communication network, especially the immediate network could make sure that overall a Cylon colony would still act correctly, for a time. But it took a Second Brain, or set of Second Brains to make adaptations. And an IL to make subtle changes. But it took an Imperious Leader upgrade to have context. History.

 

[knightgrace]

The Patrolstars in question typically used a binary star system as their primary operational starting point. Each had fifty-five Vipers and fifty-five Asps, plus eight shuttles each four in each hangar pod. But like Battlestars, their principle weapons were missiles launched from the same tubes that launched the Intercepters and fighters. In the case of this particular binary system, the stars that made it up, were roughly ten light-days apart, meaning that cruising at maximum standard faster than light speed would take over a day to cross from one to the other. At standard burst faster than light, mere seconds to do so, however there was a problem with burst speed, the travel time was always short, but time anomalies did occur. Sometimes very bad anomalies. There was still that missing Fleet. The Seventh Fleet.
As the Asp patrol birds came on, due to an immediate recall order, they started to notice that both Patrostars were in close proximity to each other...
Vipers, all of them from just one Patrolstar, were out enforcing security concerns. This was unusual to say the least. Furthermore, there were five of the precious modified two-man Vipers out as well, these made use of the second seat, as a sensor operator station. They were modified into recon configuration and generally never used by the Patrolstars, except in very busy star systems. Busy? A great deal of debris busy...that wasn't the case here. Both Asps, were coming into, not their home Patrolstar, but the other one. No communication was permitted, wireless silence only.
The Rangers escorting were at distance points, very ready for an attack. Everything pointed to an impending immediate departure from this system. As they landed, in the pods they realized that nothing was normal. A Viper in unknown colors, was being guarded by more than a handful of guards. Weapons out.
The ground crew, not their own efficiently got them out of their Asps, and wrinkling their noses at there stink pointed them to the showers.
The feeling in the air, was one of total fury. Absolute total fury.
They went to the briefing theater. There they saw the reason why...

 

[knightgrace]

In the briefing theater, the two teams, from the two Asps, sat down together. The Serior Patrolstar Commander took the podium, instead of the Squadron Commander. She wasn't present.
Instead the Commanding Officer of Scarlett Squadron was where she should have been. He looked broken, very broken. And an Admiral who noone here , had ever seen, she was in full dress uniform...they had never seen her before, never heard of her before, when her name was finally spoken, her name was Jamie. A not very tall woman, her hair was very white, almost yellow with great age...not overweight, just right. Most of you have never heard of me, never even known that I exist.
By her side, was a television of large size, very large size, using a technology not known to the majority present. The Admiral said to someone off screen, drop the mask.
The mask dropped.
What appeared was a massive, massive fleet. At easy count, twenty Battlestars were seen. Each Battlestar was of a different age. Only one was new. Even older ships were present old, old designs that were obviously fully functional. Old? At least a thousand Yahrens old. But there were ships that most couldn't identify. At least one hundred and twenty of them. They had massive domes, really massive domes. But the number of obvious support ships was without peer.
She waited.

WE ARE NOW IN A FORCED MOVE PEOPLE, she shouted.
The Twelve Colonies of Man, have been destroyed. Many of you who think that they know me. Don't!
I was sent here so long ago, by Mankind's greatest genius. I was sent without knowing the destination. I was sent with minimal training in a Viper of the of that time , a Viper leaking air, its turbos ready for the scrap heap. I was sent to prevent temporal paradox.
You heard me right. I am from the future. Approximately thirty time units.
Why? To save what I could. I sacrificed my future for your future, to ensure that you would have a future, that has been my for longer than one hundred Yahrens. I was 22 year old girl, just starting life, as what you call, a News Taper. I gave up my home and relocated through time to here, because I was outside looking in.
Looking at her aid a full Admiral in his own right, I once told you that I knew more about Earth than you did. That I knew more about Earth than the Fleet's foremost expert on Scripture.
Why do I know more than him?
I was born there. Because my job isn't over yet.
Earth will be be your new home, and from there we will take back your Colonies!
A world appeared on the screen, a world noone knew. This is EARTH!
They gasped. As standard Colonial Fleet readouts flashed through the display. The date and the time and the location, plus the Identity of the sensor platform. The Battlestar Galactica still under the of a now very old Adama. Very old.

 

[knightgrace]

When she woke up, the nightmare was over, no simple solutions possible... the news that the Colonies were gone, was just that gone. In truth, when the destruction occurred, the senior Patrolstar Commander, along with the Junior Patrolstar Commander, went down a dusty corridor, which was in obvious disuse to a compartment that made no sense. It was there in what some would call 'blueprints', but noone from the Colonies would. Tapping a code next to a sign in sheet on a clipboard, the last such visitation was better than ten cycles ago and it was a signing out, not in. Going in was a spacious compartment which was richly outfitted as a home. On the bed, was a pile of bones, human bones with a sign "Please do not touch."
Other dinning room table bolted to the table was a large old fashioned safe - key carded.