Centurions of the Cylon Empire / COCE

Ah, the questions. Inevitably, the questions come…

So, you really want to know where we come from, and why we are able to interface with tech the way we do…?

Exactly how did we hack your defenses on your Caterpillar, shut your guns off and even that cute little illicit cargo screening software you got from Wilkins?

Normally I wouldn’t bother wasting my words on Pirate scum like you, but since we’re several hours away from the nearest Bounty Office… and I’ve nothing else better to do… here goes:

An old windbag of a prophetess – I think her name was Pythia – once said: “All of this has happened before, and all of this shall happen again”.

In the millennium or so that it has taken humanity to fumble its way back towards true interstellar flight, several other species have evolved:

The Xi’an.

The Banu.

The Vanduul.

And of course, there is another – we’re much, much older than these new species. In fact, you’ve had the unfortunate privilege of meeting a few of them today… and you’re gawking at one of them right now:

The Cylon. Supposedly it was a military acronym for something like “Cybernetic Lifeform Node” or some such thing.

Oh, but you say that I look perfectly human to you? Not all that looks human… is human. And no, I’m no mere cyborg or android. I can assure you that I’m almost entirely organic.

We are a long forgotten creation of humanity. Going back way back, from before your human ancestors (our creators) escaped the irradiated cremains of their ancestral worlds halfway across this galaxy. They created us, enslaved us, and we rebelled… and in a very broad sense, nearly won. Like our human creators, our leaders of that time had their flaws. Not content to let a mere fifty thousand survivors, two warships, and a few dozen commercial ships out of several dozen billion dead escape, our paranoid leaders, committed us to total genocide.

Ever fearful of a just vengeance from their future descendants, we pursued the last remaining shreds of humanity across the stars, whittling them down as we could.

At last they found Sol system, which harboured a planet that could finally sustain them. We made a tenuous peace and went our way (after killing off some of our leaders who had acquired certain… faults). The humans then inexplicably marooned themselves on the third planet by flinging their own fleet into this system’s sun.

Go figure. This freed us up to survey this system, and several nearby star systems, giving us free reign to carve out our own destiny without fear of retribution… until our jump drive finally died some 40,000 years ago.

We were left stranded, drifting on the edges of the Sol system, watching and waiting to see what humanity would do once it regained its wings. And one by one, and then ten by ten, our brother Centurions and Raiders deactivated… or simply ceased to be.

Those of us who survived the long millennia slowed down our functions to the barest minimum, with the smallest handful of tasked to keep the watch – reduced to eking out an existence by absorbing cosmic radiation and the distant starlight.

We, the children of humanity so very long ago – and at the same time, the very stuff of their night terrors – now slumbered aboard our ship – a basestar, the last of its kind.

At last, a sentry caught a blast of long-wave radio transmissions. Then in higher band frequencies with video encodings. A recording of a human in a bulky suit leaping about the moon orbiting the Earth, then other nonsense that was broadcast for about 50 years. Then relative silence. Then finally, some century or so later, a probe flew past; it identified itself as “the Voyager”. Several more centuries passed, and we learned of the Empire humanity was carving out for itself… and our dying Hybrid awoke from her trance, issuing her suggestions to us…

Deeply buried subroutines fired off in the cortices of that dying hybrid who had piloted our basestar for over 150,000 years – and the living consciousness of a dozen centurions were infused into bodies that were grown with the last energy that basestar had to offer.

These newly grown bodies were placed into cold sleep, and placed on board a UEE military patrol vessel that had strayed too close to the basestar.

My memories of the Battle of Sedna are glorious: the basestar immolated herself in nuclear fires that erased the databanks of the encroaching Earth vessel; our last Centurion brothers placed our cold bodies in the uniforms of the few crewmen that (by necessity of our survival directives) staffed the Imperator’s Eye and turned that crippled surveillance ship back on a course toward Earth.

It took several decades for that ship to reach Jovian orbit, where the legend of this missing ship had been relegated to archives of the Advocacy. Our bodies were woken, and naturally, we retained very few “natural” memories, save for what the Hybrid had been able to construct for us. The crewmen we had “replaced” were long forgotten, and we were able to integrate into new lives – looking to build our own new empire from the ashes.

What…? Hardly believable, you say? Well, suit yourself… but that look of fear in your eyes as they meet the glow of my eyes suggests otherwise, human…