™ A novel by Jeffrey A. Carver based on the teleplay by Ronald D. Moore and Christopher Eric James based on a teleplay by Glen A. Larson TOR® A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK NEW YORK This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. BATTLESTAR GALACTICA Copyright © 2006 by Universal Studios Licensing LLLP. Battlestar Galactica © USA Cable Entertainment LLC. Licensed by Universal Studios Licensing LLLP. Teaser copyright © 2006 by Universal Studios Licensing LLLP. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form. Edited by James Frenkel A Tor Book Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC 175 Fifth Avenue New York, NY 10010 www.tor.com Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC. 0987654321 For Julia and Alexandra, hot on my heels and gaining fast ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This book took my life by storm, in a way. I had seen the SciFi Channel’s Battlestar Galactica miniseries and enjoyed it very much. But it wasn’t until the chance to write a novel based on the show came along that I became immersed in the Galactica world. The opportunity arrived just as I had completed the first draft of a long-delayed novel in my Chaos series, and it seemed the perfect way to ventilate the mind and experience a complete change of pace for a little while. Thanks go to Jim Frenkel, my editor, for intro- ducing me to the whirlwind—and to my family for welcoming the whirlwind into the house and support- ing my crazy work schedule while I tamed it. (And a special familial thanks to Julia, who helped me brain- storm it.) This novel is my interpretation of a story created by others. It’s a good story, and one I enjoyed working with. For that, I thank the creators of the show, Ron Moore and David Eick, and the marvelous actors and crew who so vividly brought the story to life on the screen. I’d also viii acknowledgments like to thank Cindy Chang at Universal for being so ready to find answers to the smallest questions. A novel is a different beast from a movie, and there are special challenges in telling a story that’s satisfy- ing to readers while remaining faithful to the original show. For help with that, I thank Craig Gardner, Richard Bowker, Victoria Bolles, and Mary Aldridge for their willingness to read many pages fast, and for their helpful and insightful comments. Finally, I’d like to thank you, my readers, for your patience and interest—especially those of you who have been waiting so long for another book from me. Here’s one I hope you’ll enjoy! ™ PROLOGUE The Cylons were created by Man. Created to make life easier on the Twelve Colonies. They began as simple robots—toys for the amusement of the wealthy and the young—but it was not long before they became useful, and then indispensable, workers. As their sophistica- tion grew, the Cylons were used for the difficult and dangerous work that humans preferred to avoid: min- ing, heavy industry, deep space construction. And finally, perhaps inevitably, they were used for war. Not against enemies from without, but by human against human, as the Twelve Colonies found reason to wage war against one another. The Cylons were the greatest soldiers in the history of warfare. They were smart, fast, and deadly. Successive models had become increasingly independent, capable of making decisions without human orders. And they were utterly without conscience. Killing, to the Cylons, was simply one of the functions for which they had been superbly designed. In hindsight, perhaps it should not have been a sur- prise that the day would come when the Cylons de- xii prologue cided to kill their masters. And when that day came, the horror of war was unleashed upon all twelve of the Colonies of Man. For ten long and bloody years, hu- manity fought—not just for freedom, but for survival. The Twelve Colonies, facing a common, implacable foe, at last came together and joined as one. Many fought, and many died, in the effort to destroy the mechanized race that humanity itself had conceived and brought into being. There would be no victory. But through valiant fight- ing, and with the mobilization of every available re- source throughout the human sphere, the Cylons were gradually driven from the immediate part of space oc- cupied by humanity. In the end, an armistice was de- clared. Humanity would live in peace, while the Cylons left to find another world to call their own. Live and let live was the philosophy...if “live” was a term that could be applied to the existence of the robots. No one knew the location of the Cylon world. But to maintain the peace, a remote space station was built in the dark emptiness between the stars, to be a place where Cylon and human would meet and maintain diplomatic rela- tions. Once a year, every year, the Colonials sent an officer for the scheduled meeting. After the first year, the Cy- lons sent no one. No one had seen or heard from the Cylons in over forty years. That was about to change. PART ONE IT BEGINS CHAPTER 1 Armistice Station The diplomatic spaceship emerged from its Jump with a momentary flash of light. Its prior inertia carried it like a boat on a river toward its destination. The only propulsion required was braking thrust. The spidery space station hung silent in the dark- ness, billions of miles from the nearest inhabited world. A row of navigational marker lights winked along its vertical spine, barely illuminating its outline. The approaching spaceship, an ungainly white trans- port, pierced the darkness with tiny flares of its ma- neuvering jets as it slowed. Nearing the docking section, it rotated and pitched upward to align itself with the station. Practice made the intricate ballet of the docking maneuver seem casual; the pilots had per- formed it so many times it was an automatic move- ment, like a hand slipping into a glove. The thrusters brought the ship to a halt a hundred meters from the station. A telescoping passageway 4 jeffrey a. carver emerged from the side of the station’s docking port and stretched out, crossing the gap with a single glid- ing movement. It drew up into place against the ship’s airlock, and with a series of thunks, the mag-locks made it fast. Another scheduled meeting was about to begin. In theory. The intercom crackled to life, and the pilot’s voice filled the departure lock. “Colonel Wakefield, we are docked. You may enter Armistice Station at your dis- cretion. If you need anything, we’ll be here. I hope you don’t get too lonely over there.” The colonel pressed the talk button on the inter- com. “Don’t worry about me, Captain. I’m used to it by now. I’ll be back soon enough, no doubt with noth- ing to show for it.” With the sigh of someone who had done this job many times already, he drew himself up straight and stepped to the airlock hatch. The latch mechanism stuck for a moment, then swung open, re- vealing the interior of the passageway. Picking up his briefcase, the colonel stepped across the threshold and began the long, deliberate walk down the passageway and into the station’s interior. There was an unavoidable grimness to the job, but he vowed not to give in to a sense of futility. If the Cy- lons did not show up—and he fully expected that they would not—he would not let that reflect on his own performance. His footsteps echoed in the silence of the station as he left the passageway and airlock and passed through the long corridor leading to the meeting chamber. He shivered a little, and wrinkled his nose at the musty smell of the place. There was dust in the air—the fil- ters must be in need of replacement—and a patina of grime everywhere. The maintenance robots must be battlestar galactica 5 breaking down, he thought. They were Cylon-built ma- chines, of course—humans no longer had robots—but really, the wonder was that they still functioned at all. He doubted they’d been serviced since the station was built. What did that say about the endurance of the Cy- lon technology? The thought caused him a little shud- der, which he did not allow to the surface. Only once a year was there any official activity in the station. And that activity consisted of the colonel arriving, waiting three days for his Cylon counterpart to show up, and then leaving. Not once in the last thirty-nine years had a Cylon representative appeared, to meet with him or with any other member of the Colonial delegation. The colonel often wondered why they bothered. But he knew the reason: Even if the Cy- lons did not honor their commitment to the armistice terms, at least the Colonials were keeping up their end of the agreement. And how else could they maintain vigilance, since they did not even know in what direc- tion to look for the Cylon world, or even if it really ex- isted? The colonel came to the massive closed doors of the meeting chamber and pulled them open. The sound re- verberated in the room as the doors slammed closed behind him.