Number Six

Number Six was a model of humanoid Cylon created by the Final Five following the Cylon War. As with all humanoid Cylons, there were millions of clones of the Number Six template, each sharing the same basic personality, and upon death the memories of any one Six were uploaded to a cloud server that other Sixes could access. The Sixes were among the most effective Cylon infiltrators, and they later stood at the center of the political upheavals that fractured the Cylon race.

Description and infiltrators#

Number Sixes took the form of a tall woman, typically blonde-haired. The Sixes who infiltrated human society ahead of the Fall of the Twelve Colonies were noted as more individualist than the other models, often customizing their appearances and inventing their own names.

Several Sixes ran notable infiltration missions. Natalie Faust posed as a Gemenese anti-corruption activist, a role that helped the Cylons gauge the human capacity to hold out. Gina Inviere gained employment with Integral Systems Engineering, a defense contractor that provided technical support during battlestar refits, a position that let her sabotage battlestars otherwise resistant to the CNP exploit. Other infiltrators included Tough Six, who worked as a prostitute, and Shelly Godfrey, who claimed to have been an aide to Dr. Amarak at the Ministry of Defense, though she may have lied. The Sixes were ultimately successful in pushing the Cylons to abandon their occupation of the Twelve Colonies, though efforts to rescue surviving humans were sabotaged by the Number Ones.

New Caprica#

Almost two years after the Fall, the Cylons located a colony of human refugees, detected by the radiation signature of a nuclear detonation that Godfrey had triggered while committing suicide. The Sixes agreed to set up their own colony on the planet, New Caprica, and to help the human population by building infrastructure. Although the occupation proved brutal, the Sixes genuinely believed they were helping. The experience left them disillusioned, and they came close to voting in favor of executing Gaius Baltar once he was recovered from the surface. Caprica-Six nonetheless aided the Colonial Fleet in the rescue of Hera Agathon and became a willing prisoner, and though offered amnesty in exchange for evidence that would allow Baltar to be executed for treason, she refused.

The Cylon Civil War#

After the Cylons confirmed that the Final Five were present within Galactica's refugee convoy, the Sixes were drawn back into political upheaval. The Sixes, Twos, and Eights believed the Final Five should be welcomed back into Cylon society and objected to the lobotomizing of the Raiders that the Ones, Fours, and Fives had deemed defective, models that held the Five to be an irrelevance. The dispute came to a head with the removal of the telencephalic inhibitors from the Centurions, who then began massacring the opposing three models. The cleansing split the Cylon fleet between basestars under Faust's faction and those under the Ones, Fours, and Fives.

Owing to poor planning on Faust's part, her faction suffered heavy losses at the start of the war, and it remains uncertain whether any Sixes outside her basestar survived. Under Natalie's leadership a truce was brokered with the Colonial Fleet, and she planned a joint strike on the Resurrection Hub that would also free a Number Three able to identify the Five. The operation succeeded, but Faust herself was murdered, and the rescued Three reluctantly agreed to continue the truce after publicly outing the Five before departing for Earth.

Settlement#

In the aftermath of finding Earth a nuclear wasteland, the rebel Cylon society faced yet another dilemma. With no world left to share and defend alongside the humans, the Sixes considered leaving the fleet entirely and finding their own destiny with Caprica-Six, who had become pregnant after a relationship with Galactica's executive officer, Colonel Saul Tigh, himself one of the Five. The Sixes were prepared to leave the Five behind if necessary, but the plan was abandoned when Caprica-Six miscarried. After this the Sixes became protected citizens of the fleet with full political representation, which drew them closer together.

During the Battle of the Colony, most of the remaining Sixes stayed aboard the basestar under the command of Admiral Hoshi while formally transferring command of their Centurion army to Galactica. Upon the discovery of a new habitable planet with a rich ecosystem, the Sixes voted in favor of settlement and lived out their days without technology.