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Unity (Battlestar Galactica)

Unity (Battlestar Galactica)
By Steven Harper

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Product Description

A prophecy is fulfilled when Peter Attis is rescued from the Cylons in order to save humanity with “the plague of the tongue.” Or so it seems…
 
While harvesting algae for conversion into food, the beleaguered human/refugee fleet is discovered by a small group of Cylon raiders. A brief battle ends with the destruction of a Cylon heavy raider. A colonial issue escape pod found floating among the debris reveals two survivors inside: Singer Peter Attis . . . and his captor, a Cylon Number Eight.
 
Soon after Peter’s liberation, people begin babbling incoherently and dropping into comas. Unwittingly, Peter has been spreading a highly contagious, nerve-deteriorating Cylon biological weapon -- and he just performed for half the fleet. As Dr. Gaius Baltar begins work on a cure, word starts to spread that a fanatical sect believes that Peter is the religious leader who will save humanity and that this virus is their path to salvation. They are willing to do anything to keep Baltar’s vaccine from being distributed.
 
While the fleet is in chaos, a larger Cylon force appears. A weakened humankind, now threatened on two fronts, may be unable to defend itself…

Product Details

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #537105 in Books
  • Published on: 2007-10-02
  • Released on: 2007-10-02
  • Original language: English
  • Number of items: 1
  • Binding: Mass Market Paperback
  • 320 pages

Features

Editorial Reviews

Review

“It's all been said before, but I'll say it again: Battlestar Galactica is much, much better than you can possibly imagine.” --Salon.com on the Battlestar Galactica TV Series
 
“This story of enemies within is dead serious, and seriously good.” --James Poniewozik, Time Magazine on the Battlestar Galactica TV Series
 
"Serious and sexy, Battlestar Galactica is the best sci fi on TV." --CFQ (Cinefantastique) on the Battlestar Galactica TV Series
 
“Either way, if the Battlestar Galactica books continue to encapsulate the spirit of the series, I will have found another series of books to read.”-- Fantasybookspot.com on the Battlestar Galactica Books

About the Author

Steven Harper is a two-time Spectrum Award finalist who has published more than a dozen novels, as well as many short stories. He lives in Michigan.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter One
 
A trio of Cylon raiders dipped and swooped through space like silent bats on razor wings. Kara Thrace clenched her toes—the only part of her that wasn’t occupied with flying her Viper—and tried to keep her eye on all three at once. Two of them split off and swooped around to her left and her right in a pincer move while the third one came straight at her. Kara’s eyes darted back and forth and her heart pounded hard.
 
Come on, she thought, and goosed her thrusters so the Viper jolted upward. You on the left—a little higher.
 
“Watch yourself, Starbuck,” Lee Adama said in her earpiece. His voice was heavily distorted by the radio, but Kara understood him perfectly well. You learned to sort out the words through the distortion, almost like learning a foreign language.
 
“I know what I’m doing, Apollo,” she snapped. “Watch your own ass, not mine.”
 
“Apollo’s watching Starbuck’s ass?” Brandon “Hot Dog” Constanza said over his own radio. “Can I make a comment about that? Please?”
 
“Just do your frakking job, Lieutenant,” Lee warned.
 
All around them, other Vipers rushed at the flock of raiders. The deadly little Cylon ships were sleek, flat, and black, with a protrusion in the front that resembled a head. A single red “eye” cruised restlessly back and forth, hunting, scanning. Aiming. In stark contrast, the Vipers were battered and battle-worn. Kara’s had once been white, but scorch marks, scrapes, and other damage had weathered it to an uneven gray. It looked like a miniature fighter jet that had crashed once or twice and been knocked back together in a mechanic’s back yard. Behind Kara and the other Vipers cruised the immense bulk of the Battlestar Galactica. Surrounding it like chicks near a mother hen were the disparate shapes of some seventy-odd ships—passenger ships, cruise ships, work ships. They were all that remained of human civilization. Behind the fleet spun an honest-to-gods blue planet. It had water, it had plant life, and it was the reason why the fleet hadn’t simply hit their faster-than-light drives and Jumped out the moment the Cylons Jumped in.
 
The two Cylon raiders rushed inward for their pincer move, one to port, one to starboard. Kara caught a gleam of starlight off their forward guns. They fired. With a whoop, Kara yanked the control lever at the side of her seat. Auxiliary jets flashed, and the little fighter blasted straight upward. Bullets crossed the intervening space and both Cylon raiders exploded, torn to pieces by friendly fire. Kara wondered if they felt any pain. The Cylon ships were actually living beings, or as alive as Cylons got, anyway. Not that this fact kept Kara from pressing the trigger. She flicked another lever and her maneuverable little Viper whipped around in time to fire on the third Cylon. It exploded as well, close enough that the blast knocked her sideways a little bit, wrenching her around in her seat.
 
“I can’t believe you frakkin’ did that!” Kat shouted as her own guns raked the raider in front of her.
 
Kara grinned without answering. Ahead of her, two more Cylons exploded in bright fireballs beneath her guns. A piece of debris rushed straight at her, and she dived beneath it as if the Viper were an extension of her body. Two raiders skimmed into view ahead of her, straight into her cross-hairs, and she wiped both of them out before they even noticed she was there. Beyond the flock of raiders hovered the malignant, spiky form of a Cylon basestar. The frakking thing had popped into existence a few minutes ago and spat out a swarm of raiders, forcing Kara Thrace, Lee Adama, and the other Viper pilots to scramble into their ships to defend the fleet.
 
Kara brought her Viper up and around again. In the distance, the brilliant yellow star showered golden light in all directions and Kara made an automatic mental note—keep her tail to the sun and force the raiders to look into it whenever possible. She had no idea if the Cylons would be blinded by the solar radiation, or even affected by it at all. For all she knew, they had Cylon sunglasses, but it didn’t hurt to try. An image of a raider donning a set of goggles with a single giant lens in the middle popped into her head and a giggle bubbled at the back of her throat. At that moment, yet another raider bore down on her, guns blazing. Kara yelped and whipped her Viper hard to port. She heard pops and pings as the raider’s ammo ricocheted off her wings and tail, though her instruments stayed in the green. No real damage. Chief Tyrol would probably chew her out anyway.
 
Concentrate, she snarled to herself. She spun the Viper around, ignoring the stomach-wrenching vertigo, and fired on the raider with both guns. The barrels mounted on either side of the tiny flight cabin flashed, and Kara felt the familiar breathy thump of her own gunfire. The raider shredded, and Kara moved on to new targets before the debris had a chance to scatter.
 
“Starbuck,” Lee said. “Check your ten o’clock. A pack of raiders heading for Planet Goop.”
 
Kara glanced to port and saw them. Nine raiders had broken away from the rest of the flock, clearly intent on skirting the Galactica so they could dive-bomb the little blue planet—and the Monarch on its surface.
 
“Moving to intercept, Apollo,” she shot back. “You with me?”
 
“All the way. And can the response, Hot Dog.”
 
“Did I say anything?” Hot Dog protested. “One word?”
 
The raiders swooped and dove in perfect unison. Kara, glad the sun was behind her, hit her thrusters hard. The extra g-force pressed her back into her seat and gave her the unnerving feeling that she was flying straight up instead of forward. Space gave few visual cues, and her inner ear was shouting that gravity—down—was directly behind her. She ignored her inner ear and focused on the fleeing Cylons instead. Hatred flared hot inside her head. These were the frakking bastards who had destroyed her entire world and chased her across countless star systems. How many months had it been since she’d felt safe? How many months had it been since she’d had a night’s uninterrupted sleep? How many months since the Cylon attack? She had lost count.
 
The stupid part was that humans had created the Cylons, robots designed for labor too difficult or dangerous for people. And then somewhere along the line the robots had become so sophisticated that they thought they were people too, and they started a rebellion. The resulting war had nearly destroyed the Twelve Colonies and all but wiped out both humans and Cylons. In the end, the Cylons had agreed to take themselves off to another part of space. Peace reigned, and humanity let itself breathe again. Forty-odd years later, the Cylons had reappeared, smarter, angrier, and deadlier than before. They fell on the startled Twelve Colonies and killed billions of humans. Fewer than fifty thousand had survived on various ships that had somehow escaped the carnage. Those ships were now informally known as the Fleet, under the command of Commander William Adama and the governorship of President Laura Roslin. The Fleet was looking for Earth, the fabled thirteenth colony, and Kara was sure they̵

Customer Reviews

A Welcome Read4
I've read all four of Tor's BATTLESTAR GALACTICA novels so far. The first two novels left me decidedly unimpressed; the miniseries novelization didn't really bring anything new to the table, and The Cylons' Secret had little to do with the series. Peter David's Sagittarius Is Bleeding was enjoyable, but was expected given the author; it wasn't until UNITY that I finally had some hope for the long-term future of the line.

Taking place midway through the second season of the show, UNITY takes an opportunity to explore aspects of Colonial culture not really seen on the show. Author Steven Harper takes a closer look at the fleet than the show has to date, taking the chance to look at minorities who must populate the fleet, but that there's not time in a weekly television schedule to necessarily show. His counterpoints to the majorities presented in the show offer interesting alternatives, as well as adding versimilitude to the show.

This is all in service of the plot of the book itself, though. Harper tells the tale of a scientific crisis in the fleet, one that quickly spirals out of control and into a military and political situation as things in the Fleet are wont to do. Throughout all this, Harper shows his mastery of the characters and setting (especially Baltar and Starbuck, the highlights of the book), treating them as the show would and offering tantalizing hints of their futures and pasts. His prion-based crisis is certainly believable and plausible, and one which couldn't easily be explored in the show without reams of exposition that could be far more gracefully integrated into a narrative as Harper did.

UNITY doesn't offer any world-shattering revelations, or fundamental changes to the BATTLESTAR GALACTICA universe. But then, such isn't expected; it is, after all, a tie-in subservient to the ongoing show. But what UNITY does is it fleshes out the universe of the show, letting us seem some of what we can't in a 42-minute timeslot. Author Steven Harper's book does this, and does it quite well. I recommend it to any fan of the show.

If you enjoy the show, you'll enjoy the book.4
I wouldn't pay attention to pretentious nay-sayers on this book.


I admit, it's no literary masterpiece, and there are holes in the story's construction. But if you have no ability to suspend disbelief, I wonder what you are doing watching Battlestar Galactica in the first place.


I enjoyed it. It was fun. It starts off in an intense dog-fight between Raiders and Vipers, the Galactica and a Basestar....Then it gets a bit dry. However, once you're at the halfway mark, it's hard to put down.

Nothing ground breaking3
Steven Harper's writing ability is clean and easy to follow. He paints a clear picture with short descriptions, taking you into the story and placing you beside the characters as they interact. The storyline for "Unity" is very basic, but good. My only complaint is we don't learn anything "new" about the characters or the battlestar universe. Only for can't-do-without fans of the series.