A Chance Encounter (Robotech/New Battlestar Galactica
- Thread starter AJW
- Start date
AJW
Well-known member
Lol.
Quite a bit smaller than that to be honest. Still the size is measured in kilometres.
AJW
Well-known member
Not yet no.
The two ghosts - Head-Six and Head,-Baltar - are two highly advanced AI tasked with overseeing an experiment being run by another of Haydons race. An experiment in which the Colonials and the Cylons are the lab rats.
Chapter Six
AJW
Well-known member
Chapter Six
Cloud Nine
Colonial Remnant Fleet
Sitting in one of the many richly appointed, tastefully decorated conference rooms on the luxury liner that had become the de facto seat of the Colonial Government – what was left of it anyway – as this is where the reforged Quorum of Twelve met President Laura Roslin stared in shock and awe at the recording being shown on the HD screen. She wasn't the only one both her current chief of staff Tory Foster, her current challenger for the presidency Gaius Baltar – who she had asked for his scientific expertise not to mention it wouldn't do to give the impression that she was keeping something this important secret for political reasons – and his chief of staff Tom Zarek were present as well. So was Lieutenant Agathon present to give a military perspective if asked.
They were all as shocked.
A short time earlier a Raptor had returned to the fleet from the Galactica which was off meeting alien starships as impossible as that had sounded at the time. A Raptor that had reported that the 'aliens' were not so alien after all, they were humans just like them specifically they were ships belonging to the long lost Thirteenth Tribe. A tribe that as this video was showing were more than capable of handling the Cylons as it was a recording of the clash between the Earth ships – the largest three were no bigger than an Argo-class destroyer – and the fleet of Cylon baseships that had ambushed the elderly Jupiter-class battlestar. A fleet that had enough firepower to annihilate her in short order.
Only that hadn't happened.
The Cylons had gone after the Earth ships – which had obviously proceeded to call in reinforcements – and attacked them. An attack that had not gone as the Cylons had obviously hoped or expected as not only had the lead Earth ship – identified as the Sirona a name that Roslin found faintly familiar from somewhere – knocked the bulk of the missile salvo down with a counter salvo, with the three surviving missiles being speared by something impossible fast moving fired from small points on the ship's hull. Whatever it was it had instantly turned the missiles it hit into plumes of vaporised metal. Then it had proceeded to hit back at the offending basestar and what it hit back with…
Gasps of shock and awe erupted from all the people in the room as a pair of blue energy beams erupted from a turret on the dorsal forward hull of the Sirona. Beams that had quickly slammed into the basestar and wounded it badly, punching right through the ship seemingly with ease. A second salvo had followed the first and in seconds the baseship simply ceased to exist as it became a fireball. More explosions had followed as the Sirona and the other arriving ships engaged the other three baseships, turning all of them into plumes of dust and burning plasma with seemingly no effort at all.
The entire battle – if you could call such a one sided slaughter a battle – had lasted less than five minutes.
"What the frack were those beams," Tory asked aloud as the recording ended.
"While I cannot be sure if I had to guess I would say Ms Foster that what we are looking at are particle beam weapons of some type," Baltar replied, "the beams move too fast to be made up of plasma and they're too slow to be lasers. Unlike the pulses that destroyed the Cylon missiles those were definitely lasers."
"I thought energy weapons were impossible," Roslin commented, she was not unaware that there had been research going on for a very long time in creating practical, real directed energy weapons but nothing had ever come of it.
"Not impossible merely difficult and extremely energy intensive," Baltar answered, "we used to generate particle beams quite frequently back in the colonies."
"We did?" Tory questioned.
"Oh yes at particle accelerator facilities set up at various universities and so on throughout the colonies. Indeed, the largest particle accelerator in existence on the colonies was the New Chronos Collider at the Hera's Gate university on Sagittarion. It had just come online when the Cylons launched their attack. It was used to accelerate subatomic particles to near light speed and slam them together to observe the effects, it promised numerous breakthroughs in subatomic and quantum physics."
"Yes, but that thing would have been huge," Zarek pointed out frowning, he had been a student at Hera's Gate in his youth. Before politics and oppression of the people of his homeworld by the other colonies – but especially Caprica – had called to him. Ultimately leading to him being imprisoned as a terrorist. "How could something the size of those turrets generate a particle beam?"
Baltar shrugged. "Without looking at the insides of one of those turrets I wouldn't have a clue," he answered, "though I will say this whatever power source they have on those ships it blows anything we have ever created ourselves completely out of the water. Not even the hybrid fission-fusion reactors that were developed for the Nova-class battlestars could come close to the energy output needed to create those beams and those things are the size of a three story house."
"So would you say that the Thirteenth Tribe are more technologically advanced than we are Doctor," Lieutenant Karl 'Helo' Agathon asked. "And what effect do you think those beams would have on our ships if we ever – gods forbid – found ourselves on the wrong end of them."
"There is no doubt that they are lieutenant," Baltar admitted even as out of the corner of his eye he saw Six and she looked deeply disturbed by something, "by at least a hundred years if not longer. As for what effect those beams would have on our ships, well it would be devastating. Even the strongest armours we knew how to make back on the Colonies – again which were developed for the Nova-class battlestars and other next generation warships – wouldn't last very long against the kind of forces in play in those beams as they would disrupt the very baryonic structure of matter. Anything hit by them would simply be disintegrated."
"I'm not sure I understand," Tory commented.
"It's complicated but in theory a particle beam would attack matter at the subatomic level causing atoms and molecules to literally break apart."
"Like a nuke?"
"Well yes but far more focused and devastating. Without knowing the beam energy level I cannot say how long our ship armours would last but it wouldn't be long, our defences are simply not designed to defend against such a weapon."
"Well let's hope we don't come to blows with our cousins," Roslin said as a comm phone on the wall went off, prompting Lieutenant Agathon to go and answer it. After a few moments he returned.
"Madam President the Galactica just jumped back to the fleet," he reported, "Admiral Adama asks for you to come to the ship immediately. The first group of ships from the Thirteenth Tribe will be joining us shortly."
"Very well prepare the Raptor," Roslin replied then frowned. "Wait first group of ships?"
"Yes ma'am. From the information I was just given more ships from the Thirteen Tribe will soon be on their way here coming from some station called MARS 5. They will be bringing relief supplies for us."
"Well, that will help a lot," Baltar commented knowing intimately how precarious the fleets supply situation was especially with regards to food and medical supplies. While the other warships – especially the marine assault ship Hopolite – had brought valuable food supplies in the form of freeze-dried MREs things were always running dangerously close to the starvation line all over the fleet. Feeding sixty thousand survivors of a nuclear holocaust was not an easy thing, especially when the architects of said holocaust were chasing you across the galaxy determined to wipe you from existence. "Though ideally what we need is safe harbour from the Cylons."
"That is something we can and will need to discuss with the Thirteenth when we meet with them," Roslin replied noting that Helo had left the room to prepare the Raptor as asked. "Something that is not going to be easy to arrange."
Unlike some others in the government, especially in the quorum, she didn't kid herself as she knew negotiating safe harbour for the survivors of the Colonies with the Thirteen Tribe was not going to be easy. While they were all human the twelve colonies had been separated from their brethren by over three thousand years of history if not more – as the Sacred Scrolls were somewhat ambiguous about when exactly the thirteen tribe had departed Kobol with some translations suggesting they left a thousand years before The Blaze and the Exodus but others said it had been far longer – which was a very, very long time for their cultures to have evolved along different lines. And they had already seen the thirteenth was technologically superior to them.
"Surely they will give us sanctuary we're the same race as them," Tory commented.
"It doesn't mean anything," Baltar answered, "biology means nothing here. The thirteenth has been separated from us for millennia – plus the musty old rolls offer no reason for their departure from Kobol in the first place – plenty of time to have evolved a very different culture and society to us."
"Better not let some of the quorum hear you refer to the Sacred Scrolls like that," Zarek commented amused even though he honestly shared the sentiment. Honestly his fellow Sagittarians put far too much faith in what was written down on a bunch of old – and as Baltar described them musty – rolls of parchment. "Plus, the thirteenth has no real reason to deal with us as the Cylons are clearly no threat to them. All we can do is ask and see what happens."
The conversation was brought to an end by Helo returning. "Madam president the Raptor is ready," he reported.
"Alright then," Roslin said standing up, "Doctor Baltar, would you care to accompany me?"
"Yes, I think I will," Baltar replied knowing that this really wasn't the time for politicking over the upcoming election. That kind of thing could wait until after the meeting with the Thirteenth Tribe was over as its outcome was sure to have an effect on the issues at hand. As the president's main challenger, he had to be up to date on things and for some reason known only to her Roslin seemed to know and understand that.
Without speaking further Roslin left the room heading for the hangar bay where the Raptor was waiting to take them to the Galactica. Baltar hurried to get up and begin following her with both their aides following along behind them. As he walked Baltar felt a familiar sultry burst of phantom air against his neck.
"Gaius you need to be very careful here," the voice of Six said. "These people you've encountered are incredibly dangerous, far more than you realise."
"Dangerous to us or the Cylons," he asked, speaking under his breath knowing she would hear. Whatever this mysterious spectre of Natasi/Six was inside his head – he had already had an MRI which confirmed there was no chip in his brain generating the image as he had originally been told by her – he had long since mastered how to talk to her without everyone looking at him like he was insane for talking to himself.
"To us both," the intelligence masquerading as the Model Six Gaius had genuinely been falling in love with replied. Because it was true from a certain point of few as she had been especially sure that the experiment would reach a satisfactory conclusion in this cycle as all the pieces had been in place for the question the experiment had been set up to answer to finally be answered this time. Protoculture entering the experiment, contaminating everything with its foul presence, had never been anticipated and now it threatened to unravel everything she and her colleague had been working towards for millennia ever since their creators first took humans from Earth to Kobol.
Right now, she hoped that, through Gaius, she would be able to salvage the situation. But if she couldn't well more… extreme… actions might be required to remedy the situation.
"And what makes them such a threat," Gaius asked.
"You'll find out."
---///---
UES Procyon
MARS 5 Station
Jackson System
"Admiral."
Admiral Christina Haywood looked up from the systems status report she was reading at her desk at the sound of someone speaking to her. Immediately she spotted her flag captain standing in the open doorway to the ready room – she didn't believe in shutting the door unless there was a priority communication for her eyes only, otherwise in her opinion it did the rest of the crew good to see the admiral working as hard as they did – and that he was holding a computer tablet in one hand.
"Yes captain?" she asked as she mentioned for him to come in.
"We have an update from the quartermaster on the last of the emergency and relief supplies for the Colonials," Captain Ulysses Parkinson answered. "The last of the cargo transports has just docked in hangar bay three and they are commencing unloading. They should have everything stowed and prepped to be transferred to the Colonials as soon as we are given the go ahead to begin doing so."
"Very good," Christina replied with a smile as Parkinson handed her the tablet. She accepted it and carefully read through the contents which not only confirmed what her flag captain had just told her but also contained updates on the state of the two Tristar-class cruisers and four Battle-class destroyers that would form their escort wing. All the other ships had finished taking on their own supplies and indicated that they were ready to depart.
After a few moments she signed the report to indicate that she had read it and handed the tablet back.
"What's our own status captain," she asked, "how soon until we're ready to depart ourselves?"
"The unloading of the cargo transport will only take another few minute's ma'am. Once they've departed, we will be ready to go. I estimate no more than fifteen minutes, twenty at the most."
"I see contact me as soon as we are ready to depart."
"Yes admiral. Ma'am, should we begin the computations for the fold to the Colonial fleet?"
"Please do so it will save us considerable time."
"Aye ma'am."
"Dismissed captain."
Parkinson nodded and left the ready room. For her part Christina stood up from behind the desk, walked over to the coffee machine in the corner and made herself a mug. Then, holding the steaming beverage that had already become a favourite with every Zentraedi commander she knew certainly as big a favourite as it was with Terran commanders, walked over to a narrow floor to ceiling window and looked out.
Dominating the foreground was the deep space station that the Procyon was still in orbit of. While it was much smaller than the great factory satellite, they had captured from the Zentraedi Commander Reno a few years ago MARS 5 was still an extremely large and impressive structure. Thirty-two kilometres across at its widest point and twenty-three kilometres tall its vague mushroom shape often reminded her of the space dock facility seen over Earth in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock a movie that had always been something of a favourite of hers. Of course, MARS 5 was a very different beast and like the other five MARS stations could do everything that the much larger factory satellite – which still sat happily in the L4 Lagranian Point over Earth – could albeit on a much smaller scale.
They had all been built to support the expeditionary force as they both sought to establish humanity out here amidst the stars and searched for a route to Tirolian space and the Robotech Masters. Masters that they hoped, if they could contact, they could come to some form of agreement with. Something that would prevent the devastation of another war fought with the incredible destructive power of robotech weaponry. Or if not possible deal with them permanently before they could threaten Earth again as there was little chance that their homeworld would survive another robotech war, certainly it wouldn't be able to withstand another bombardment like the one Dolza had subjected the planet to.
Of course, now there was a new threat facing Earth. These Cylons. What little had been reported of them so far by Captain Harrison had everyone back home concerned. She could understand why as a race of machines that thought they were on a divine mission to wipe out humanity – and had already subjected twelve entire planets to a nuclear holocaust as part of that jihad – was like something out of pre-Rain science fiction. Bad science fiction – the kind that had spawned many a B-grade movie on the old Sci-Fi Channel – at that. Yet here it was as real as life itself and which made the Cylons potentially a very serious threat to the future of their race.
A threat that they still knew so little about. So far, the only comfort that they could seem to gleam was the fact that the Cylons ships were woefully unprepared to deal with particle beams and other directed energy weapons as evidenced by the ease with which the Sirona's beam cannons had torn through an attacking ship. Unfortunately, they couldn't count on having the advantage of vastly superior firepower forever as machine races certainly had the ability to adapt and improve at rates that bordered on being geometric. Something that the Zentraedi records confirmed as they had encountered, fought, and ultimately defeated – though always at considerable cost – machine races in the past.
Finding out more about the Cylons, how they came to be and what had set them on this campaign of genocide, was one of the goals of her mission to the Colonials.
Finishing her coffee, she left the window, returned to her desk and resumed reading through the reports that were waiting for her attention. She had just finished reading a report on the setting up of the mining operations that had brought them and MARS 5 to this system in the first place – a system with no habitable planets but a very large and dense asteroid field that was rich in valuable ores and minerals including the vital for the production of fold drives monopole ore – when the desk comm chirped for her attention. She immediately reached out and pressed a control.
"Yes?"
"Admiral the supply shuttle has just departed," Captain Parkinson reported from the main bridge. "All ships report ready for departure. All hyperspace fold computations have been completed and verified."
"Very well move the squadron out to fold clearance. I will be on the flag bridge momentarily."
"Aye ma'am."
With that Parkinson signed off prompting Christina to save her work, power off her terminal for now and stand up. She was just leaving her ready room when a faint shiver ran through the deck, and she knew that the main ion fusion sublight engines had just ignited and the powerful Polaris-class battleship was beginning to move out of its holding orbit of MARS 5. She paid it no mind as she made her way to the flag bridge – a smaller, scaled down version of the main bridge which was optimised for her to direct multiple ships leaving Captain Parkinson free to oversee and determine the actions of the Procyon – arriving within a few minutes. After exchanging polite nods with the armoured, heavily armed marines guarding the door she made her way inside and crossed to the command chair.
"Status report," she ordered as she sat down and made herself comfortable.
"Admiral all ships are underway and accelerating at maximum speed," one of the operations officers reported immediately. "We are approaching fold clearance now."
"Excellent. As soon as we're in position all ships are to execute space folding procedure."
"Aye ma'am."
Christina made herself comfortable in her chair as around her the flag bridge crew attended to their duties and carried out her instructions. After a few moments the faint background rumbling of the sublight engines died away and for a moment more nothing happened. Then a faint, but by now very familiar, thrum of power ran through the ship and reality suddenly began to wash with strange, unfathomable colours as well as fade in and out of existence as the fold sphere formed around the ship. The disorientation and odd colours faded away after a few moments as the Procyon and her six companions fully submerged into the hyperspatial realm known as foldspace.
They were on their way to the Colonial Fleet.
---///---
Cylon Colony
That Same Time
The Model Six Cylon – who in another timeline would have become known as Caprica Six instead of the identity of Natasi that she'd assumed while infiltrating the Colonies and seducing Gaius Baltar – felt despair pulling at her as the other models all debated and argued about what to do now that the Colonials had encountered the previously mythical Thirteen Tribe. A tribe of man that was not only not a myth after all – which had always been a possibility it was why they had let the main remnant fleet live this long after all so they could lead them to them – but who were obviously far more technologically advanced than the Colonials had been even at their height. Something proved by the fact that a) there computers were impervious to their logic bombs and b) sported previously thought impossible weapons systems. Weapons that could tear baseships from the sky without breaking a sweat.
Not to mention said weapons leave an odd energy subharmonic in our data streams, she thought recalling the headache they'd had figuring out how to screen out the energy subharmonic – which had been beyond difficult as it was unlike anything they had ever seen before and even now they weren't sure they were fully rid of the damned thing – and allow the resurrection of all those Cylons killed in the brief battle with the Earth ships. The whole thing had caused no small panic among her fellow Cylons as the Thirteenth being more technologically advanced than them and the Colonials had always been something of a nightmare scenario.
A panic that the Ones were, somewhat predictably as that entire line appeared to have a special hatred for humanity for some reason, using to swing the others to a very extreme course of action. One was arguing that they assemble as many ships as they could – including summoning some of their few heavy cruisers back from hunting down the Heracles the one Nova-class battlestar that had escaped the destruction of the colonies – and attacking the main Colonial remnant with their full might before they could be taken fully under the protection of the Thirteenth Tribe.
She, and a few others of her line as well as Number Eight that had until her death been a sleeper agent aboard the Galactica, had tried to argue against it. Tried to get their people to turn away from the path that One was leading them down to try making peace with the remains of the Colonials instead. After all wasn't it in Gods commandments to be merciful to a defeated foe and for all intents and purposes the Colonials were beaten and had been for a very long time now.
Unfortunately, One had had none of it. He'd used the fear of the Thirteenth's technological superiority and the fact that their weapons could interfere with resurrection to sway all the others from the path of peace. Now they were simply discussing – or rather arguing about – when exactly to attack the Colonial Remnant and if they should wait for all possible ships to be available or just go with the half of them that had already been assembled.
From her quiet, out of the way, vantage point she sighed. After a moment she felt or rather smelt the phantom of a familiar aftershave. Looking next to her she saw the strange representation of Gaius that she had been seeing ever since she resurrected after sacrificing herself to save Gaius on Caprica during the attack – he had gone from a mere assignment, a mere target to be seduced, to someone she had genuinely come to care for and even love – sitting beside her.
"You need to leave here," he said softly.
"What do you mean," she asked back under her breath.
"Exactly what I said. You need to take a heavy raider and travel to a set of coordinates I'll give you. There you will find the only hope the Cylons have for surviving what is coming, what One with his pride, arrogance and hatred is setting in motion."
"They're going to lose aren't they."
"Yes. But it does not have to be the end of the Cylons. Take a heavy raider and go you will know the coordinates when it is time to enter them."
Caprica Six frowned. "You are not Gaius are you," she said to the spectre.
"No, my dear I am not I merely assumed this form since it is most comfortable for you," 'Gaius' replied with a warm smile, "just like my colleague has assumed your form to guide Baltar for the part he was meant to play. Something that will no longer be possible."
"Then what are you? An angel of god?"
"If that's the best way for you to understand me then yes. Now you must go. Where you are going is a long way from here and it will take some time to get there."
"What will I find?" she asked as she stood up and quietly left the room, leaving the tactical argument raging in the room behind and beginning to make her way to one of the heavy raider launch bays. She didn't expect the spectre/angel or whatever he was to answer her. So, she was surprised when he actually did.
"Salvation for the Cylons."
When she turned to ask him what he meant by that she found, to her annoyance, that he had done that infuriating vanishing act of his again. Mentally grumbling to herself that this being needed to learn some fracking manners she continued on her way to the nearest heavy raider bay. Thankfully with everyone distracted by the meeting getting aboard one and leaving the Colony wouldn't be difficult. She did have to wonder though what 'Gaius' meant by salvation for the Cylons waiting for them wherever it was she was going. What kind of salvation was he talking about? What price would the Cylons ultimately pay for said salvation?
She supposed that there was only one way to find out.
---///---
Authors Note: Well, another chapter bites the metaphorical dust, I hope you all enjoyed it. I am honestly surprised how quickly this chapter came together once I started working on it as its been awhile since a chapter basically seemed to write itself in the way this one did. Before anyone asks Caprica Six's name of Natasi actually comes from the novelisation of the 2003 mini-series that started the reimagined Battlestar Galactica universe. While there was the mention of a Nova-class battlestar in this chapter the Heracles will not actually be making an appearance for awhile at least not in this story maybe in the sequel or in a spin off side story to show what she and her crew have been up to since the destruction of the colonies we will have to see. I wonder how many of you will guess who Caprica is being sent to see even as One leads a major Cylon fleet into the meatgrinder. Until next time.
Cloud Nine
Colonial Remnant Fleet
Sitting in one of the many richly appointed, tastefully decorated conference rooms on the luxury liner that had become the de facto seat of the Colonial Government – what was left of it anyway – as this is where the reforged Quorum of Twelve met President Laura Roslin stared in shock and awe at the recording being shown on the HD screen. She wasn't the only one both her current chief of staff Tory Foster, her current challenger for the presidency Gaius Baltar – who she had asked for his scientific expertise not to mention it wouldn't do to give the impression that she was keeping something this important secret for political reasons – and his chief of staff Tom Zarek were present as well. So was Lieutenant Agathon present to give a military perspective if asked.
They were all as shocked.
A short time earlier a Raptor had returned to the fleet from the Galactica which was off meeting alien starships as impossible as that had sounded at the time. A Raptor that had reported that the 'aliens' were not so alien after all, they were humans just like them specifically they were ships belonging to the long lost Thirteenth Tribe. A tribe that as this video was showing were more than capable of handling the Cylons as it was a recording of the clash between the Earth ships – the largest three were no bigger than an Argo-class destroyer – and the fleet of Cylon baseships that had ambushed the elderly Jupiter-class battlestar. A fleet that had enough firepower to annihilate her in short order.
Only that hadn't happened.
The Cylons had gone after the Earth ships – which had obviously proceeded to call in reinforcements – and attacked them. An attack that had not gone as the Cylons had obviously hoped or expected as not only had the lead Earth ship – identified as the Sirona a name that Roslin found faintly familiar from somewhere – knocked the bulk of the missile salvo down with a counter salvo, with the three surviving missiles being speared by something impossible fast moving fired from small points on the ship's hull. Whatever it was it had instantly turned the missiles it hit into plumes of vaporised metal. Then it had proceeded to hit back at the offending basestar and what it hit back with…
Gasps of shock and awe erupted from all the people in the room as a pair of blue energy beams erupted from a turret on the dorsal forward hull of the Sirona. Beams that had quickly slammed into the basestar and wounded it badly, punching right through the ship seemingly with ease. A second salvo had followed the first and in seconds the baseship simply ceased to exist as it became a fireball. More explosions had followed as the Sirona and the other arriving ships engaged the other three baseships, turning all of them into plumes of dust and burning plasma with seemingly no effort at all.
The entire battle – if you could call such a one sided slaughter a battle – had lasted less than five minutes.
"What the frack were those beams," Tory asked aloud as the recording ended.
"While I cannot be sure if I had to guess I would say Ms Foster that what we are looking at are particle beam weapons of some type," Baltar replied, "the beams move too fast to be made up of plasma and they're too slow to be lasers. Unlike the pulses that destroyed the Cylon missiles those were definitely lasers."
"I thought energy weapons were impossible," Roslin commented, she was not unaware that there had been research going on for a very long time in creating practical, real directed energy weapons but nothing had ever come of it.
"Not impossible merely difficult and extremely energy intensive," Baltar answered, "we used to generate particle beams quite frequently back in the colonies."
"We did?" Tory questioned.
"Oh yes at particle accelerator facilities set up at various universities and so on throughout the colonies. Indeed, the largest particle accelerator in existence on the colonies was the New Chronos Collider at the Hera's Gate university on Sagittarion. It had just come online when the Cylons launched their attack. It was used to accelerate subatomic particles to near light speed and slam them together to observe the effects, it promised numerous breakthroughs in subatomic and quantum physics."
"Yes, but that thing would have been huge," Zarek pointed out frowning, he had been a student at Hera's Gate in his youth. Before politics and oppression of the people of his homeworld by the other colonies – but especially Caprica – had called to him. Ultimately leading to him being imprisoned as a terrorist. "How could something the size of those turrets generate a particle beam?"
Baltar shrugged. "Without looking at the insides of one of those turrets I wouldn't have a clue," he answered, "though I will say this whatever power source they have on those ships it blows anything we have ever created ourselves completely out of the water. Not even the hybrid fission-fusion reactors that were developed for the Nova-class battlestars could come close to the energy output needed to create those beams and those things are the size of a three story house."
"So would you say that the Thirteenth Tribe are more technologically advanced than we are Doctor," Lieutenant Karl 'Helo' Agathon asked. "And what effect do you think those beams would have on our ships if we ever – gods forbid – found ourselves on the wrong end of them."
"There is no doubt that they are lieutenant," Baltar admitted even as out of the corner of his eye he saw Six and she looked deeply disturbed by something, "by at least a hundred years if not longer. As for what effect those beams would have on our ships, well it would be devastating. Even the strongest armours we knew how to make back on the Colonies – again which were developed for the Nova-class battlestars and other next generation warships – wouldn't last very long against the kind of forces in play in those beams as they would disrupt the very baryonic structure of matter. Anything hit by them would simply be disintegrated."
"I'm not sure I understand," Tory commented.
"It's complicated but in theory a particle beam would attack matter at the subatomic level causing atoms and molecules to literally break apart."
"Like a nuke?"
"Well yes but far more focused and devastating. Without knowing the beam energy level I cannot say how long our ship armours would last but it wouldn't be long, our defences are simply not designed to defend against such a weapon."
"Well let's hope we don't come to blows with our cousins," Roslin said as a comm phone on the wall went off, prompting Lieutenant Agathon to go and answer it. After a few moments he returned.
"Madam President the Galactica just jumped back to the fleet," he reported, "Admiral Adama asks for you to come to the ship immediately. The first group of ships from the Thirteenth Tribe will be joining us shortly."
"Very well prepare the Raptor," Roslin replied then frowned. "Wait first group of ships?"
"Yes ma'am. From the information I was just given more ships from the Thirteen Tribe will soon be on their way here coming from some station called MARS 5. They will be bringing relief supplies for us."
"Well, that will help a lot," Baltar commented knowing intimately how precarious the fleets supply situation was especially with regards to food and medical supplies. While the other warships – especially the marine assault ship Hopolite – had brought valuable food supplies in the form of freeze-dried MREs things were always running dangerously close to the starvation line all over the fleet. Feeding sixty thousand survivors of a nuclear holocaust was not an easy thing, especially when the architects of said holocaust were chasing you across the galaxy determined to wipe you from existence. "Though ideally what we need is safe harbour from the Cylons."
"That is something we can and will need to discuss with the Thirteenth when we meet with them," Roslin replied noting that Helo had left the room to prepare the Raptor as asked. "Something that is not going to be easy to arrange."
Unlike some others in the government, especially in the quorum, she didn't kid herself as she knew negotiating safe harbour for the survivors of the Colonies with the Thirteen Tribe was not going to be easy. While they were all human the twelve colonies had been separated from their brethren by over three thousand years of history if not more – as the Sacred Scrolls were somewhat ambiguous about when exactly the thirteen tribe had departed Kobol with some translations suggesting they left a thousand years before The Blaze and the Exodus but others said it had been far longer – which was a very, very long time for their cultures to have evolved along different lines. And they had already seen the thirteenth was technologically superior to them.
"Surely they will give us sanctuary we're the same race as them," Tory commented.
"It doesn't mean anything," Baltar answered, "biology means nothing here. The thirteenth has been separated from us for millennia – plus the musty old rolls offer no reason for their departure from Kobol in the first place – plenty of time to have evolved a very different culture and society to us."
"Better not let some of the quorum hear you refer to the Sacred Scrolls like that," Zarek commented amused even though he honestly shared the sentiment. Honestly his fellow Sagittarians put far too much faith in what was written down on a bunch of old – and as Baltar described them musty – rolls of parchment. "Plus, the thirteenth has no real reason to deal with us as the Cylons are clearly no threat to them. All we can do is ask and see what happens."
The conversation was brought to an end by Helo returning. "Madam president the Raptor is ready," he reported.
"Alright then," Roslin said standing up, "Doctor Baltar, would you care to accompany me?"
"Yes, I think I will," Baltar replied knowing that this really wasn't the time for politicking over the upcoming election. That kind of thing could wait until after the meeting with the Thirteenth Tribe was over as its outcome was sure to have an effect on the issues at hand. As the president's main challenger, he had to be up to date on things and for some reason known only to her Roslin seemed to know and understand that.
Without speaking further Roslin left the room heading for the hangar bay where the Raptor was waiting to take them to the Galactica. Baltar hurried to get up and begin following her with both their aides following along behind them. As he walked Baltar felt a familiar sultry burst of phantom air against his neck.
"Gaius you need to be very careful here," the voice of Six said. "These people you've encountered are incredibly dangerous, far more than you realise."
"Dangerous to us or the Cylons," he asked, speaking under his breath knowing she would hear. Whatever this mysterious spectre of Natasi/Six was inside his head – he had already had an MRI which confirmed there was no chip in his brain generating the image as he had originally been told by her – he had long since mastered how to talk to her without everyone looking at him like he was insane for talking to himself.
"To us both," the intelligence masquerading as the Model Six Gaius had genuinely been falling in love with replied. Because it was true from a certain point of few as she had been especially sure that the experiment would reach a satisfactory conclusion in this cycle as all the pieces had been in place for the question the experiment had been set up to answer to finally be answered this time. Protoculture entering the experiment, contaminating everything with its foul presence, had never been anticipated and now it threatened to unravel everything she and her colleague had been working towards for millennia ever since their creators first took humans from Earth to Kobol.
Right now, she hoped that, through Gaius, she would be able to salvage the situation. But if she couldn't well more… extreme… actions might be required to remedy the situation.
"And what makes them such a threat," Gaius asked.
"You'll find out."
---///---
UES Procyon
MARS 5 Station
Jackson System
"Admiral."
Admiral Christina Haywood looked up from the systems status report she was reading at her desk at the sound of someone speaking to her. Immediately she spotted her flag captain standing in the open doorway to the ready room – she didn't believe in shutting the door unless there was a priority communication for her eyes only, otherwise in her opinion it did the rest of the crew good to see the admiral working as hard as they did – and that he was holding a computer tablet in one hand.
"Yes captain?" she asked as she mentioned for him to come in.
"We have an update from the quartermaster on the last of the emergency and relief supplies for the Colonials," Captain Ulysses Parkinson answered. "The last of the cargo transports has just docked in hangar bay three and they are commencing unloading. They should have everything stowed and prepped to be transferred to the Colonials as soon as we are given the go ahead to begin doing so."
"Very good," Christina replied with a smile as Parkinson handed her the tablet. She accepted it and carefully read through the contents which not only confirmed what her flag captain had just told her but also contained updates on the state of the two Tristar-class cruisers and four Battle-class destroyers that would form their escort wing. All the other ships had finished taking on their own supplies and indicated that they were ready to depart.
After a few moments she signed the report to indicate that she had read it and handed the tablet back.
"What's our own status captain," she asked, "how soon until we're ready to depart ourselves?"
"The unloading of the cargo transport will only take another few minute's ma'am. Once they've departed, we will be ready to go. I estimate no more than fifteen minutes, twenty at the most."
"I see contact me as soon as we are ready to depart."
"Yes admiral. Ma'am, should we begin the computations for the fold to the Colonial fleet?"
"Please do so it will save us considerable time."
"Aye ma'am."
"Dismissed captain."
Parkinson nodded and left the ready room. For her part Christina stood up from behind the desk, walked over to the coffee machine in the corner and made herself a mug. Then, holding the steaming beverage that had already become a favourite with every Zentraedi commander she knew certainly as big a favourite as it was with Terran commanders, walked over to a narrow floor to ceiling window and looked out.
Dominating the foreground was the deep space station that the Procyon was still in orbit of. While it was much smaller than the great factory satellite, they had captured from the Zentraedi Commander Reno a few years ago MARS 5 was still an extremely large and impressive structure. Thirty-two kilometres across at its widest point and twenty-three kilometres tall its vague mushroom shape often reminded her of the space dock facility seen over Earth in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock a movie that had always been something of a favourite of hers. Of course, MARS 5 was a very different beast and like the other five MARS stations could do everything that the much larger factory satellite – which still sat happily in the L4 Lagranian Point over Earth – could albeit on a much smaller scale.
They had all been built to support the expeditionary force as they both sought to establish humanity out here amidst the stars and searched for a route to Tirolian space and the Robotech Masters. Masters that they hoped, if they could contact, they could come to some form of agreement with. Something that would prevent the devastation of another war fought with the incredible destructive power of robotech weaponry. Or if not possible deal with them permanently before they could threaten Earth again as there was little chance that their homeworld would survive another robotech war, certainly it wouldn't be able to withstand another bombardment like the one Dolza had subjected the planet to.
Of course, now there was a new threat facing Earth. These Cylons. What little had been reported of them so far by Captain Harrison had everyone back home concerned. She could understand why as a race of machines that thought they were on a divine mission to wipe out humanity – and had already subjected twelve entire planets to a nuclear holocaust as part of that jihad – was like something out of pre-Rain science fiction. Bad science fiction – the kind that had spawned many a B-grade movie on the old Sci-Fi Channel – at that. Yet here it was as real as life itself and which made the Cylons potentially a very serious threat to the future of their race.
A threat that they still knew so little about. So far, the only comfort that they could seem to gleam was the fact that the Cylons ships were woefully unprepared to deal with particle beams and other directed energy weapons as evidenced by the ease with which the Sirona's beam cannons had torn through an attacking ship. Unfortunately, they couldn't count on having the advantage of vastly superior firepower forever as machine races certainly had the ability to adapt and improve at rates that bordered on being geometric. Something that the Zentraedi records confirmed as they had encountered, fought, and ultimately defeated – though always at considerable cost – machine races in the past.
Finding out more about the Cylons, how they came to be and what had set them on this campaign of genocide, was one of the goals of her mission to the Colonials.
Finishing her coffee, she left the window, returned to her desk and resumed reading through the reports that were waiting for her attention. She had just finished reading a report on the setting up of the mining operations that had brought them and MARS 5 to this system in the first place – a system with no habitable planets but a very large and dense asteroid field that was rich in valuable ores and minerals including the vital for the production of fold drives monopole ore – when the desk comm chirped for her attention. She immediately reached out and pressed a control.
"Yes?"
"Admiral the supply shuttle has just departed," Captain Parkinson reported from the main bridge. "All ships report ready for departure. All hyperspace fold computations have been completed and verified."
"Very well move the squadron out to fold clearance. I will be on the flag bridge momentarily."
"Aye ma'am."
With that Parkinson signed off prompting Christina to save her work, power off her terminal for now and stand up. She was just leaving her ready room when a faint shiver ran through the deck, and she knew that the main ion fusion sublight engines had just ignited and the powerful Polaris-class battleship was beginning to move out of its holding orbit of MARS 5. She paid it no mind as she made her way to the flag bridge – a smaller, scaled down version of the main bridge which was optimised for her to direct multiple ships leaving Captain Parkinson free to oversee and determine the actions of the Procyon – arriving within a few minutes. After exchanging polite nods with the armoured, heavily armed marines guarding the door she made her way inside and crossed to the command chair.
"Status report," she ordered as she sat down and made herself comfortable.
"Admiral all ships are underway and accelerating at maximum speed," one of the operations officers reported immediately. "We are approaching fold clearance now."
"Excellent. As soon as we're in position all ships are to execute space folding procedure."
"Aye ma'am."
Christina made herself comfortable in her chair as around her the flag bridge crew attended to their duties and carried out her instructions. After a few moments the faint background rumbling of the sublight engines died away and for a moment more nothing happened. Then a faint, but by now very familiar, thrum of power ran through the ship and reality suddenly began to wash with strange, unfathomable colours as well as fade in and out of existence as the fold sphere formed around the ship. The disorientation and odd colours faded away after a few moments as the Procyon and her six companions fully submerged into the hyperspatial realm known as foldspace.
They were on their way to the Colonial Fleet.
---///---
Cylon Colony
That Same Time
The Model Six Cylon – who in another timeline would have become known as Caprica Six instead of the identity of Natasi that she'd assumed while infiltrating the Colonies and seducing Gaius Baltar – felt despair pulling at her as the other models all debated and argued about what to do now that the Colonials had encountered the previously mythical Thirteen Tribe. A tribe of man that was not only not a myth after all – which had always been a possibility it was why they had let the main remnant fleet live this long after all so they could lead them to them – but who were obviously far more technologically advanced than the Colonials had been even at their height. Something proved by the fact that a) there computers were impervious to their logic bombs and b) sported previously thought impossible weapons systems. Weapons that could tear baseships from the sky without breaking a sweat.
Not to mention said weapons leave an odd energy subharmonic in our data streams, she thought recalling the headache they'd had figuring out how to screen out the energy subharmonic – which had been beyond difficult as it was unlike anything they had ever seen before and even now they weren't sure they were fully rid of the damned thing – and allow the resurrection of all those Cylons killed in the brief battle with the Earth ships. The whole thing had caused no small panic among her fellow Cylons as the Thirteenth being more technologically advanced than them and the Colonials had always been something of a nightmare scenario.
A panic that the Ones were, somewhat predictably as that entire line appeared to have a special hatred for humanity for some reason, using to swing the others to a very extreme course of action. One was arguing that they assemble as many ships as they could – including summoning some of their few heavy cruisers back from hunting down the Heracles the one Nova-class battlestar that had escaped the destruction of the colonies – and attacking the main Colonial remnant with their full might before they could be taken fully under the protection of the Thirteenth Tribe.
She, and a few others of her line as well as Number Eight that had until her death been a sleeper agent aboard the Galactica, had tried to argue against it. Tried to get their people to turn away from the path that One was leading them down to try making peace with the remains of the Colonials instead. After all wasn't it in Gods commandments to be merciful to a defeated foe and for all intents and purposes the Colonials were beaten and had been for a very long time now.
Unfortunately, One had had none of it. He'd used the fear of the Thirteenth's technological superiority and the fact that their weapons could interfere with resurrection to sway all the others from the path of peace. Now they were simply discussing – or rather arguing about – when exactly to attack the Colonial Remnant and if they should wait for all possible ships to be available or just go with the half of them that had already been assembled.
From her quiet, out of the way, vantage point she sighed. After a moment she felt or rather smelt the phantom of a familiar aftershave. Looking next to her she saw the strange representation of Gaius that she had been seeing ever since she resurrected after sacrificing herself to save Gaius on Caprica during the attack – he had gone from a mere assignment, a mere target to be seduced, to someone she had genuinely come to care for and even love – sitting beside her.
"You need to leave here," he said softly.
"What do you mean," she asked back under her breath.
"Exactly what I said. You need to take a heavy raider and travel to a set of coordinates I'll give you. There you will find the only hope the Cylons have for surviving what is coming, what One with his pride, arrogance and hatred is setting in motion."
"They're going to lose aren't they."
"Yes. But it does not have to be the end of the Cylons. Take a heavy raider and go you will know the coordinates when it is time to enter them."
Caprica Six frowned. "You are not Gaius are you," she said to the spectre.
"No, my dear I am not I merely assumed this form since it is most comfortable for you," 'Gaius' replied with a warm smile, "just like my colleague has assumed your form to guide Baltar for the part he was meant to play. Something that will no longer be possible."
"Then what are you? An angel of god?"
"If that's the best way for you to understand me then yes. Now you must go. Where you are going is a long way from here and it will take some time to get there."
"What will I find?" she asked as she stood up and quietly left the room, leaving the tactical argument raging in the room behind and beginning to make her way to one of the heavy raider launch bays. She didn't expect the spectre/angel or whatever he was to answer her. So, she was surprised when he actually did.
"Salvation for the Cylons."
When she turned to ask him what he meant by that she found, to her annoyance, that he had done that infuriating vanishing act of his again. Mentally grumbling to herself that this being needed to learn some fracking manners she continued on her way to the nearest heavy raider bay. Thankfully with everyone distracted by the meeting getting aboard one and leaving the Colony wouldn't be difficult. She did have to wonder though what 'Gaius' meant by salvation for the Cylons waiting for them wherever it was she was going. What kind of salvation was he talking about? What price would the Cylons ultimately pay for said salvation?
She supposed that there was only one way to find out.
---///---
Authors Note: Well, another chapter bites the metaphorical dust, I hope you all enjoyed it. I am honestly surprised how quickly this chapter came together once I started working on it as its been awhile since a chapter basically seemed to write itself in the way this one did. Before anyone asks Caprica Six's name of Natasi actually comes from the novelisation of the 2003 mini-series that started the reimagined Battlestar Galactica universe. While there was the mention of a Nova-class battlestar in this chapter the Heracles will not actually be making an appearance for awhile at least not in this story maybe in the sequel or in a spin off side story to show what she and her crew have been up to since the destruction of the colonies we will have to see. I wonder how many of you will guess who Caprica is being sent to see even as One leads a major Cylon fleet into the meatgrinder. Until next time.
Chapter Seven
AJW
Well-known member
Chapter Seven
Captain Kara 'Starbuck' Thrace was feeling very pleased with herself as the small group of Raptors prepared to make their final jump back to the fleet. The rescue mission to the colonies, to pick up Sam and other survivors, had gone better than she could ever have imagined despite losing two Raptors during the voyage back to the slowly freezing, radiation blasted remnants of the worlds that had once been home. Not only had they been able to rescue Sam and the other resistance fighters, but they'd been able to raid an intact Colonial Fleet supply station on one of Caprica's moons. Which had not only netted them four more Raptors but enough food supplies to ease the food shortage situation in the fleet by a considerable margin for at least a month. Not to mention acquire some vitally needed additional medical supplies such as anti-radiation meds, antibiotics and so on.
Why they had been able to get so much was the only thing that puzzled her. The Cylons had almost completely vanished, there had been only one or two basestars orbiting the colonies instead of the dozens there had been the last time she was there. Baseships that had been relatively easy to evade as even with their full compliments of raiders deployed, they didn't have sufficient numbers to patrol orbit properly. The same was true on the ground as the humanoid Cylons had all vanished though the Centurions had remained only they had changed what they were doing. Instead of cleaning up and trying to rebuild the cities for some strange reason they had begun dismantling things recovering materials and surviving technologies and loading them aboard transport ships that we're arriving and leaving almost constantly.
According to Sam they had been doing this for about a fortnight by the time she and the others arrived.
Not for the first time since they'd arrived and learned all this Kara found herself wondering just what had changed the Cylons plans. Maybe they underestimated the amount of radiation their nuclear bombardment would leave behind or overestimated the resilience of their own physiology against conditions like cancer, she thought not for the first time. She had to admit that it was an amusing mental image the Cylon skin jobs – especially that creepy one Leoben who seemed to have a thing for her for some reason – suddenly finding themselves dealing with the scourge of cancer. Of course, knowing them they would simply terminate the affected bodies and download into new ones. So that wouldn't make them abandon the colonies unless the organic forms were dying in such numbers that the resurrection system couldn't keep up. A pleasant thought given that they had callously murdered billions of innocents in their unprovoked assault on the colonies after forty years of peace.
"Starbuck, I have the final jump coordinates," Sharon, the Model Eight Cylon who had fallen in love with Helo and defected to their side as a result, said from behind her. Her help in operating the biomechanical computer they'd salvaged from a Cylon heavy raider had been the only reason why they'd been able to pull this mission off. The Colonies were simply too far behind them for their ships to have made it with conventional Colonial jump systems. Didn't mean she trusted her though as she would be six days dead before she ever, ever trusted a Cylon. "I'm relaying them to all ships now."
"I see them," Kara replied as the coordinates appeared on her navigation screen and she, still somewhat reluctantly, entered them into the jump navigation system. The system flashed and bleeped to indicate that the coordinates had been accepted and verified. One by one the other Raptors all checked in reporting that they had the coordinates and were ready to jump.
She opened a comm channel to all of them. "Alright people this is it our last jump," she said. And not past time, she thought as consecutive jumps were not fun. "You've all done a great job on this mission, first rounds on me tonight. Let's go home."
She signed off and pressed the button that would synchronize all the jump clocks and start the jump sequence on all Raptors simultaneously. For the last time on this mission, she heard the FTL motor spin up and felt/saw the familiar stretching disorientation that accompanied a jump. There was a momentary flash of eldritch light outside then reality snapped back into normal…
…and the familiar sight of the fleet that housed the last remnants of humanity came into view.
Unsurprisingly the Pegasus was hanging in space in front of them. The massive Mercury-class battlestar that Lee was now in command of – something that if Kara was honest with herself she was still having trouble wrapping her head around Leeland Adama in command of a battlestar at just thirty, though he was doing a good job of it having inherited enough of the Old Mans personality and skills to make it look easy – had been where there mission had set off from and where it was planned to end. She was preparing to hail the Pegasus and request landing clearance when she saw them.
Hanging off the fleet were a group of strange ships that definitely weren't Colonial. The Colonials didn't build ships that had lines that made them look like they were meant to cruise beneath the surface of a very different ocean to the endless one of space. They weren't Cylon either and they also barely even showed up on dradis. There could only be one explanation…
…they were, as impossible as it would seem, alien.
She was so stunned that she almost missed the flashing indicator on the console that indicated that she was being hailed by the Pegasus. She quickly flicked the switch to accept the communication and the speakers crackled to life.
"This is the battlestar Pegasus calling Raptor 218 please respond," came the voice of Lieutenant Hoshi.
"Pegasus this is Raptor 218 receiving you loud and clear," Kara answered before grinning. "We're back."
"This is Pegasus Actual," a very familiar voice said joining the conversation. "So, I see Starbuck and is our dradis screen malfunctioning or do you have a few extra Raptors with you?"
"They're not Apollo," Kara answered using Lee's old callsign, "we picked up a few and whole bunch of supplies from a supply base on one of Caprica's moons."
For a moment there was silence and Kara grinned imagining the surprised look on Lee's face at that. "How did you manage that?" he asked after a moment.
"The Cylons have withdrawn the bulk of their forces from the colonies. There are only a few baseships and raider squadrons hanging round it created a gap we could exploit after saving the resistance fighters."
"That's odd," Lee answered after a moment. "Your debriefing is going to be quite interesting I think, not that that's unusual with you."
"Well, you know me."
"All too well. Alright come on in Kara bay four is ready to receive your Raptors."
"Will do. Ugh Lee can I ask who do the new ships belong to?"
"It's a long story and you'll be briefed later. For now, I can tell you that they mean us no harm."
"Now you've piqued my interest. Can't you tell me anymore?"
"Not right now Kara just land. Medical personnel will be waiting to check over the survivors you rescued."
Knowing that tone of Lee's voice well – a tone that confirmed he would not reveal anything more about the new ships until either he was good and ready or he was ordered to – and knowing better than to nag him for more details - he would not give it no matter how she nagged as Lee was, if anything, even more stubborn than she was on things like this – Kara decided to do as instructed.
"Alright we're coming in," she said before matching words with actions, bringing the engines to life and heading for one of the specialised Raptor bays on the side of the Pegasus flight pods.
"See you later. Pegasus Actual out." The communication link closed down and Kara focused on navigating towards the seventeen hundred and eight nine meter long battlestar. As she closed on the grey armoured side of the mighty warship – which on her own could and had wiped the floor with multiple Cylon baseships – the dradis console gave a slight beep of warning. Now what, she thought a second before a flash of light outside caught her attention and she looked over to see a series of large energy spheres that looked for all the world like whirling balls of frosted golden glass had appeared. After a few seconds there was a gyroscopic flash of radiation and the spheres vanished, revealing more alien ships just like the first few including one vessel that was comparable in size to the Galactica but like the others looked almost like it was meant to travel under the sea.
More of them, she thought even as she mentally prayed to the Lords of Kobol that Lee was right and that these people, aliens or whatever they were, really meant them no harm. Then she focused on the task of landing on the Pegasus.
---///---
Colonial Raptor 102
Forty Minutes Later
President Laura Roslin would, if asked, admit that she was nervous as the Raptor carrying her and a small delegation in the form of Gaius Baltar – who was still the representative of Caprica on the Quorum – the Gemenese representative Sarah Porter and Commander Timothy Richards of the Cerberus made its way towards the Procyon. The Terran – which was apparently the name that the Thirteenth Tribe used to refer to themselves – admiral Christina Haywood had invited a delegation to come to her ship to discuss both their immediate requirements and what to do with them in the long term.
For once there hadn't been any friction from the Quorum over the meeting. They had quickly chosen who they wanted to accompany her, while Bill had assigned Richards who apparently had advanced diplomatic training only his habit of stepping on the admiralties toes back before the fall had prevented him commanding anything more than a Medusa-class heavy cruiser, to the meeting. The only concern about the meeting she had was the fact that Sarah was along as like most Gemenese she was extremely devout in her faith in the Lords of Kobol. Which could be a recipe for trouble if the Thirteenth no longer worshipped the gods.
She just hoped that if that was the case the Sarah would put the more immediate needs of the fleet, and their survival as a species, before her faith.
"Are you alright madam president," Richards asked seeing she was distracted.
"I am fine commander," Roslin replied, "I was just thinking."
"About what?" he asked curious.
"Just how vital this meeting is," Roslin admitted glancing towards the cockpit. Through the windows she could see the side of the Terran flagship looming ever closer outside. It was starting to blot out space ahead and they were close enough to make out the ranks of turrets and ports lining the hull. They were heading for a bay on the forward starboard side of the main hull as opposed to the two smaller hulls that gave the ship a distinct trimaran design. "Potentially the fate of the entire fleet rests on what happens here today."
"It is a pretty hefty responsibility," Richards agreed, glancing at the great battleship himself. While she seemed to have fewer turrets than a battlestar did he didn't doubt that if that ship wanted to, she could destroy their entire fleet without breaking much if anything of a sweat. He, like everyone here, had seen the recordings of what the Sirona – which was apparently according to provide documentation a long range exploration cruiser – had done to the Cylons. The ease with which her blue beamed energy weapons had torn apart multiple Cylon baseships made it perfectly clear how much more powerful than them their cousins were. Even with the Galactica and the Pegasus – which as a Mercury had heavy bow mounted railguns – here they would stand little chance if the Terrans for some reason decided to shoot at them.
"I don't foresee there being a problem," Porter commented. "It is the will of the gods that we meet our brethren now and join with them. They should see that."
Baltar raised an eyebrow. "You are assuming that they still believe in the gods," he pointed out, "remember that their ancestors left Kobol anywhere from a thousand to two thousand years before The Blaze and our own Exodus. They've been separated from us for a minimum of three thousand years if not longer, plenty of time for them to have either found new religions or abandoned the idea entirely."
"The Gods would never allow that."
"Like they would never allow the Cylons to murder eighty-nine billion people in hours? Like they would never allow our planets to be reduced to radiation blasted cinders?"
Sarah started to open her mouth to refute Baltar's points – and remind him that it was a punishment for their sins, especially the sin of trying to be gods themselves and create life in the form of the Cylons – but before she could speak Roslin stepped in. Knowing full well if she didn't then the deeply religious Sarah and the committed atheist Baltar would get into an increasingly acrimonious debate that would last hours.
"Enough," Roslin snapped looking at the two Quorum members sternly even as she wondered, not for the first time, when had leading what was left of their people had turned into the deeply frustrating exercise of trying to heard cats. "Now is not the time for you two to have yet another of your arguments. Right now, we need to present a united front to the Terrans. We can sort out any issues of religion later."
"But…" Sarah started to object but a stern look from Roslin silenced her. A look that promised that disobedience would not be tolerated in this matter. And truth be told the other woman was right, there would be time to sort out saving their cousins souls if they no longer believed in the Lords of Kobol later. "I understand I will keep quiet on the subject."
"As will I," Baltar agreed.
"Good," Roslin replied a moment before a faint shudder ran through the Raptor. "What was that?"
"Madam President we just passed through some kind of gravitational-electromagnetic field across the entrance to the hangar bay," one of the pilots reported back, "there's now atmosphere around us. We're landing now."
"A gravitational-electromagnetic field what do they mean by that," Richards wondered.
"It's a force field," Baltar exclaimed, shock and awe in his voice. No wonder Six is worried about these people, the power they have, he thought even as he spoke again. "They've been theorised for years but the power requirements for one are far beyond our technology. Gods I wish I knew what their power source is, to be able to manipulate gravitational and electromagnetic fields like that it's mind boggling."
"Unbelievable," Sarah breathed a moment before a soft jolt ran through the deck as they set down. The sound of the engines died as the pilots powered them down. She had to wonder what other technological wonders the thirteenth had. No doubt that there would be some technologies that the Gods would not approve of technologies that would have to go in the long term.
Undoing her restraint Roslin stood up. "Well shall we go?" she said prompting everyone to stand up. Commander Richards moved in front of her, Admiral Adama had made it clear that Roslin's safety while she was here was his personal responsibility, as they headed to the gullwing hatch as it opened letting in the familiar scents of a hangar bay.
Carefully he led the way out of the Raptor, noting that as he left the influence of the Raptors own gravity that his feet felt heavier than they normally did. He guessed that Earth had to have slightly higher gravity than Colonial standard. Then he saw the honour guard waiting for them, two lines of young soldiers in tough and durable looking armour – that bizarrely looked almost like it was meant to lock into something else – and holding advanced looking rifles that experienced eyes told him did not fire any sort of projectile. Energy rifles! I suppose I shouldn't be surprised given their warships fire particle beams and use lasers instead of autocannons for close in defence, he thought even as he saw three people waiting for them on the other side of the honour guard.
As they all stepped out of the Raptor someone shouted a command and in a clatter the honour guard moved their rifles to the present arms position. Impressive discipline, Richards noted with approval, it would do anyone in the Colonial Fleet – well what was left of it as they had gone from having hundreds of warships to just seven one of which was ironically the oldest battlestar in the fleet – proud. He wasn't the only one.
Laura Roslin took a moment to compose herself then resolutely started walking. It wasn't as easy as it normally was as, like Richards, she noticed that the gravity field on this ship was stronger than on any Colonial vessel reflecting the fact that Earth had slightly higher gravity than what they were used to. But she managed it. In moment's they reached the delegation that was waiting for them including a middle aged woman in a red and white uniform with a black high-collared, sleeveless jacket over the top of it.
"President Roslin," the woman said inquiringly. Roslin nodded and the other woman smiled. "Greetings I am Admiral Christina Haywood. On behalf of the United Earth Government, I welcome you aboard the Procyon. Allow me to introduce you to my flag captain Ulysses Parkinson and my CAG Commander Takashima."
"A pleasure admiral," Roslin replied. "Allow me to introduce you to my companions. This is Doctor Gaius Baltar, Caprican representative to the Quorum of the Twelve. This is Sarah Porter, Gemenese representative to the same body and finally Commander Timothy Richards commanding officer of the Cerberus one of our only two surviving heavy cruisers."
"A pleasure. If you would kindly follow me a room has been prepared for us to talk. Commander Takashima will take care of your pilots while we talk."
"That's fine," Roslin agreed. The other woman smiled back and turned, beginning to walk off the hangar deck into the corridors and passageways of the ship's interior. Accompanied by her companions Roslin followed as she did so she compared the interior of the Procyon to both the Galactica and the Pegasus both of whom she had been on numerous times since the fall. The corridors were closer to those on the newer, larger battlestar than on the Galactica bright and spacious though the light was different. Warmer and more natural feeling in some fashion than the somewhat harsh artificial lights she and others had had to get to in the year that had passed since the Cylon began their genocide.
It didn't take long to reach the conference room that had been set aside and prepared for them. Admiral Haywood gestured politely for them all to be seated and they all did so – Roslin and her companions down one side of the table, the Terran personnel on the other – before Haywood sat herself. For a few moments nobody said or did anything then the Terran admiral spoke.
"Before we begin working out just how we can help each other," she said. "Let us begin by learning a bit more about one another. Since you are my guests here, I will begin if that is alright with you?"
"That would be fine," Roslin replied.
"Very well then our story begins twenty-three years ago when on the night of the twenty-second of March in the year 1998 of the Common Era a phenomenal event occurred in the skies above Earth that forever altered the course of our history…"
---///---
Twenty Minutes Later
Laura Roslin sat stunned and more than a little horrified as Admiral Haywood finished outlining the modern history of her world and people. To say it was like something from the tales of old, tales that had been passed down since the time of Kobol, would have been an understatement. Twenty-three years ago, their cousins had still been a planet bound species until a warship of unbelievable complexity and power had emerged from something called foldspace above their world. A warship produced by a civilization that was hundreds of years ahead of either of them at the time – and indeed would still be centuries ahead of the colonies if they had still existed – which had fallen to Earth coming to rest on the surface at an uninhabited volcanic island called Macross.
Their cousins had recovered the vessel, which amazingly had been almost completely intact with only the external hull suffering major damage from not just the crash but whatever battle the ship had been in before it fled into foldspace, leaving the systems and technology inside unharmed. How doing so had united their previously fractured world and brought about a decade of peace and increasing prosperity to their people even as their now united military forces prepared for the original owners of the ship to come and attempt to retrieve it.
Eventually servants of the ships original builders – a race of giant humanoid alien warriors known as the Zentraedi – had come to retrieve the ship sparking a war between the people of Earth and the giants – who honestly reminded her of the tales of the titans – which had raged for the next two years. Leading to a climactic battle between the supreme commander of the entire Zentraedi Armada and Earth which had included a cataclysmic orbital bombardment with weapons that made the strongest nukes possessed by either Colonials or Cylons look like firecrackers. How billions had died in seconds, incinerated in quantum fire, but somehow the Terran race had survived. Survived, fought back and ultimately defeated Dolza – killing him and destroying the bulk of his fleet in a clash of epic proportions – before beginning a process of rebuilding their smouldering world.
"How, how many died," Sarah Porter asked looking at where the holographic display that had shown footage of the Rain of Death – as their cousins somewhat poetically but correctly – called it had been. The sights she had seen would haunt her nightmares as it was way, way worse than a nuclear bombardment seeing streams of unbelievably powerful energy striking the surface wiping out entire landmasses in seconds was almost unimaginable. It was power that she was sure even Zeus himself would be in awe of.
And then there was the quantum reflex energy weapon that Earth had fired back. A massive version of the same weapons that had ravaged the planet and which in the few seconds it had fired had wiped from the stars hundreds of thousands of warships and millions of fighters and other battle mecha – whatever battle mecha was as she had never heard of such a thing before – as if they had been mere toys. Though nothing compared to the final cataclysmic explosion that not only wiped out Dolza but destroyed most of the Zentraedi fleet. A fleet whose sheer size and firepower didn't bare thinking about as it was so unbelievably vast.
"The true number will never be known," Admiral Haywood replied, her eyes dark with the deep pain and sadness that not just the whole Terran race but what she personally still felt over the events of the Rain of Death. She had been there after all watching in horror from the command bridge of a disabled Oberth-class destroyer as her homeworld burned. "But before the Rain there were an estimated eight billion people on Earth after it, we estimate anywhere from fifteen to twenty-five million. Most of those who died did so in the Rain, but a sizeable chunk died in the immediate aftermath from everything from hyperphase radiation poisoning to getting caught up in the geological upheavals that followed due to quantum energy bleed through disrupting the tectonic system."
"Gods," Porter breathed. "What about the Zentraedi did you wipe the rest of them out after what they did to you? Are you out here because you are chasing them to make them pay?"
"No, we didn't and no we are not," Haywood answered, "the Zentraedi didn't know any different. In many ways they were like robots at that time windup toys of destruction and conquest for beings we know as the Robotech Masters. We broke the chains that bound them to the Masters and have been teaching them since then that there is so much more to life than going around the galaxies waging war after war to expand the Robotech Masters empire."
"I am not sure we would be as merciful," Roslin admitted even as she felt a sudden guilt. She wasn't unaware that there were numerous parallels between themselves and the Robotech Masters and how they had both created an entire race for labour and for warfare. "So why are you here so far from your homeworld?"
That had been another shock that Earth itself was many thousands of light years from here.
"We're searching both to find the path to Tirolian space and the Robotech Masters and for places to set up colonies to ensure our race is not threatened by extermination again. We dodged a bullet once we might not be so lucky next time, especially when you consider what robotech weaponry is capable of. I have to admit that we were surprised to stumble across you. Captain Harrison reported that you are refugees and that you are at war with a machine race called Cylons?"
"That is true," Roslin admitted, "we had been at peace with the Cylons for forty years until a year ago when without warning they launched a massive attack against our fleet and our planets. In mere hours they destroyed most of our fleet and carpet bombed all twelve of our worlds with nuclear weapons. We tried to surrender after they started doing that, but they never responded. They have been chasing us ever since."
"I see. Did you have a plan? Or are you just running blindly?"
"We were actually looking for you or rather looking for your planet."
Haywood raised an eyebrow. "Okay why?" she asked.
"We're the same race, we both come from Kobol, and it is the will of the Gods that the tribes of man reunited if we are to survive," Porter replied.
"Kobol? I have never heard of it, and I don't know why you think humanity evolved there but it did not. There is fossil and genetic evidence that indicate that humanity evolved on Earth."
"Blasphemy."
"Sarah enough," Roslin snapped before the Gemenese woman could start a diatribe.
"But…"
"I said enough they are entitled to their beliefs just as we are. If they have fossil and genetic evidence that they evolved on Earth then they can show us later," Roslin said firmly. "For all we know they did evolve there, and we evolved on Kobol."
"Convergent evolution theory its possible I suppose," Baltar admitted with a thoughtful frown. "Though there is the whole thirteenth tribe leaving Kobol thing to get past."
"It isn't something we will get past here," Haywood answered firmly deciding to change the discussion for now as she could see that the religious woman Porter was about to do an impression of Mount Vesuvius at Pompeii if they continued. "Tell me about these Cylons. By attempting to upload a logic bomb to the Sirona's computers and then opening fire on her when they failed, they've shown themselves to be a threat. A threat we will not tolerate."
"It's a long story," Roslin answered.
"We have time."
"I suppose we do at that, and you deserve to know," Roslin admitted. She was about to begin explaining how sixty standard Colonial years ago Dr Daniel Grayston of Grayston Industries had introduced a revolutionary new line of robots called Cybernetic Lifeform Nodes to the then disunited colonies when an alarm klaxon began wailing with an urgent clamour. "What's that?"
"It's a battle alert," Haywood replied as she manipulated a small console in front of her. A projector field powered up and a holographic screen pixeled into existence showing the face and torso of Captain Parkinson. "Captain Parkinson report. What's going on out there?"
"Admiral we are detecting multiple Colonial style fold disturbances. There are ships appearing from them."
"What kind of ships?" Haywood asked. "And how many of them?"
"They're Cylon ma'am. We read fifty capital ships and rising."
Listening in Roslin exchanged a look of mixed shock, horror, fear, and sheer terror with the rest of her delegation as the flag captain said how many Cylon ships were arriving. Fifty baseships and rising, it was a fleet almost as big as the one that had attacked, and ruthlessly nuclear carpet bombed the colonies. As they looked at each other they all realized one thing, that no matter how advanced and powerful the thirteenth tribe was in comparison to them that there was no defence against this fleet.
They, Colonial and Terran, were all dead.
---///---
Authors Notes: Well, another chapter bites the metaphorical dust I hope you all enjoyed it. Next time we will have the epic clash between the Cylon forces that Cavil/One has assembled for his all or nothing gambit and the combined forces of the Colonial Remnant and the REF ships. It should be a real clash of the titans as it is not going to be an easy fight for anyone and people – including perhaps some main characters as I don't believe in shielding them – will die. Who will live and who will die well you will all have to wait and see won't you.
Finally, before someone says that the REF doesn't have atmospheric force field technology they actually do. It is actually seen in the Sentinels movie during the scene where Max Sterling and Karen Penn are bringing two prototype Alpha/Beta combined fighters into dock aboard the factory satellite. Both pass through an energy barrier that is keeping the air in the bay. The technology is also seen to be possessed by the Zentraedi in the Titan comics series, so I have used it here. Well, that's all for today until next time.
Captain Kara 'Starbuck' Thrace was feeling very pleased with herself as the small group of Raptors prepared to make their final jump back to the fleet. The rescue mission to the colonies, to pick up Sam and other survivors, had gone better than she could ever have imagined despite losing two Raptors during the voyage back to the slowly freezing, radiation blasted remnants of the worlds that had once been home. Not only had they been able to rescue Sam and the other resistance fighters, but they'd been able to raid an intact Colonial Fleet supply station on one of Caprica's moons. Which had not only netted them four more Raptors but enough food supplies to ease the food shortage situation in the fleet by a considerable margin for at least a month. Not to mention acquire some vitally needed additional medical supplies such as anti-radiation meds, antibiotics and so on.
Why they had been able to get so much was the only thing that puzzled her. The Cylons had almost completely vanished, there had been only one or two basestars orbiting the colonies instead of the dozens there had been the last time she was there. Baseships that had been relatively easy to evade as even with their full compliments of raiders deployed, they didn't have sufficient numbers to patrol orbit properly. The same was true on the ground as the humanoid Cylons had all vanished though the Centurions had remained only they had changed what they were doing. Instead of cleaning up and trying to rebuild the cities for some strange reason they had begun dismantling things recovering materials and surviving technologies and loading them aboard transport ships that we're arriving and leaving almost constantly.
According to Sam they had been doing this for about a fortnight by the time she and the others arrived.
Not for the first time since they'd arrived and learned all this Kara found herself wondering just what had changed the Cylons plans. Maybe they underestimated the amount of radiation their nuclear bombardment would leave behind or overestimated the resilience of their own physiology against conditions like cancer, she thought not for the first time. She had to admit that it was an amusing mental image the Cylon skin jobs – especially that creepy one Leoben who seemed to have a thing for her for some reason – suddenly finding themselves dealing with the scourge of cancer. Of course, knowing them they would simply terminate the affected bodies and download into new ones. So that wouldn't make them abandon the colonies unless the organic forms were dying in such numbers that the resurrection system couldn't keep up. A pleasant thought given that they had callously murdered billions of innocents in their unprovoked assault on the colonies after forty years of peace.
"Starbuck, I have the final jump coordinates," Sharon, the Model Eight Cylon who had fallen in love with Helo and defected to their side as a result, said from behind her. Her help in operating the biomechanical computer they'd salvaged from a Cylon heavy raider had been the only reason why they'd been able to pull this mission off. The Colonies were simply too far behind them for their ships to have made it with conventional Colonial jump systems. Didn't mean she trusted her though as she would be six days dead before she ever, ever trusted a Cylon. "I'm relaying them to all ships now."
"I see them," Kara replied as the coordinates appeared on her navigation screen and she, still somewhat reluctantly, entered them into the jump navigation system. The system flashed and bleeped to indicate that the coordinates had been accepted and verified. One by one the other Raptors all checked in reporting that they had the coordinates and were ready to jump.
She opened a comm channel to all of them. "Alright people this is it our last jump," she said. And not past time, she thought as consecutive jumps were not fun. "You've all done a great job on this mission, first rounds on me tonight. Let's go home."
She signed off and pressed the button that would synchronize all the jump clocks and start the jump sequence on all Raptors simultaneously. For the last time on this mission, she heard the FTL motor spin up and felt/saw the familiar stretching disorientation that accompanied a jump. There was a momentary flash of eldritch light outside then reality snapped back into normal…
…and the familiar sight of the fleet that housed the last remnants of humanity came into view.
Unsurprisingly the Pegasus was hanging in space in front of them. The massive Mercury-class battlestar that Lee was now in command of – something that if Kara was honest with herself she was still having trouble wrapping her head around Leeland Adama in command of a battlestar at just thirty, though he was doing a good job of it having inherited enough of the Old Mans personality and skills to make it look easy – had been where there mission had set off from and where it was planned to end. She was preparing to hail the Pegasus and request landing clearance when she saw them.
Hanging off the fleet were a group of strange ships that definitely weren't Colonial. The Colonials didn't build ships that had lines that made them look like they were meant to cruise beneath the surface of a very different ocean to the endless one of space. They weren't Cylon either and they also barely even showed up on dradis. There could only be one explanation…
…they were, as impossible as it would seem, alien.
She was so stunned that she almost missed the flashing indicator on the console that indicated that she was being hailed by the Pegasus. She quickly flicked the switch to accept the communication and the speakers crackled to life.
"This is the battlestar Pegasus calling Raptor 218 please respond," came the voice of Lieutenant Hoshi.
"Pegasus this is Raptor 218 receiving you loud and clear," Kara answered before grinning. "We're back."
"This is Pegasus Actual," a very familiar voice said joining the conversation. "So, I see Starbuck and is our dradis screen malfunctioning or do you have a few extra Raptors with you?"
"They're not Apollo," Kara answered using Lee's old callsign, "we picked up a few and whole bunch of supplies from a supply base on one of Caprica's moons."
For a moment there was silence and Kara grinned imagining the surprised look on Lee's face at that. "How did you manage that?" he asked after a moment.
"The Cylons have withdrawn the bulk of their forces from the colonies. There are only a few baseships and raider squadrons hanging round it created a gap we could exploit after saving the resistance fighters."
"That's odd," Lee answered after a moment. "Your debriefing is going to be quite interesting I think, not that that's unusual with you."
"Well, you know me."
"All too well. Alright come on in Kara bay four is ready to receive your Raptors."
"Will do. Ugh Lee can I ask who do the new ships belong to?"
"It's a long story and you'll be briefed later. For now, I can tell you that they mean us no harm."
"Now you've piqued my interest. Can't you tell me anymore?"
"Not right now Kara just land. Medical personnel will be waiting to check over the survivors you rescued."
Knowing that tone of Lee's voice well – a tone that confirmed he would not reveal anything more about the new ships until either he was good and ready or he was ordered to – and knowing better than to nag him for more details - he would not give it no matter how she nagged as Lee was, if anything, even more stubborn than she was on things like this – Kara decided to do as instructed.
"Alright we're coming in," she said before matching words with actions, bringing the engines to life and heading for one of the specialised Raptor bays on the side of the Pegasus flight pods.
"See you later. Pegasus Actual out." The communication link closed down and Kara focused on navigating towards the seventeen hundred and eight nine meter long battlestar. As she closed on the grey armoured side of the mighty warship – which on her own could and had wiped the floor with multiple Cylon baseships – the dradis console gave a slight beep of warning. Now what, she thought a second before a flash of light outside caught her attention and she looked over to see a series of large energy spheres that looked for all the world like whirling balls of frosted golden glass had appeared. After a few seconds there was a gyroscopic flash of radiation and the spheres vanished, revealing more alien ships just like the first few including one vessel that was comparable in size to the Galactica but like the others looked almost like it was meant to travel under the sea.
More of them, she thought even as she mentally prayed to the Lords of Kobol that Lee was right and that these people, aliens or whatever they were, really meant them no harm. Then she focused on the task of landing on the Pegasus.
---///---
Colonial Raptor 102
Forty Minutes Later
President Laura Roslin would, if asked, admit that she was nervous as the Raptor carrying her and a small delegation in the form of Gaius Baltar – who was still the representative of Caprica on the Quorum – the Gemenese representative Sarah Porter and Commander Timothy Richards of the Cerberus made its way towards the Procyon. The Terran – which was apparently the name that the Thirteenth Tribe used to refer to themselves – admiral Christina Haywood had invited a delegation to come to her ship to discuss both their immediate requirements and what to do with them in the long term.
For once there hadn't been any friction from the Quorum over the meeting. They had quickly chosen who they wanted to accompany her, while Bill had assigned Richards who apparently had advanced diplomatic training only his habit of stepping on the admiralties toes back before the fall had prevented him commanding anything more than a Medusa-class heavy cruiser, to the meeting. The only concern about the meeting she had was the fact that Sarah was along as like most Gemenese she was extremely devout in her faith in the Lords of Kobol. Which could be a recipe for trouble if the Thirteenth no longer worshipped the gods.
She just hoped that if that was the case the Sarah would put the more immediate needs of the fleet, and their survival as a species, before her faith.
"Are you alright madam president," Richards asked seeing she was distracted.
"I am fine commander," Roslin replied, "I was just thinking."
"About what?" he asked curious.
"Just how vital this meeting is," Roslin admitted glancing towards the cockpit. Through the windows she could see the side of the Terran flagship looming ever closer outside. It was starting to blot out space ahead and they were close enough to make out the ranks of turrets and ports lining the hull. They were heading for a bay on the forward starboard side of the main hull as opposed to the two smaller hulls that gave the ship a distinct trimaran design. "Potentially the fate of the entire fleet rests on what happens here today."
"It is a pretty hefty responsibility," Richards agreed, glancing at the great battleship himself. While she seemed to have fewer turrets than a battlestar did he didn't doubt that if that ship wanted to, she could destroy their entire fleet without breaking much if anything of a sweat. He, like everyone here, had seen the recordings of what the Sirona – which was apparently according to provide documentation a long range exploration cruiser – had done to the Cylons. The ease with which her blue beamed energy weapons had torn apart multiple Cylon baseships made it perfectly clear how much more powerful than them their cousins were. Even with the Galactica and the Pegasus – which as a Mercury had heavy bow mounted railguns – here they would stand little chance if the Terrans for some reason decided to shoot at them.
"I don't foresee there being a problem," Porter commented. "It is the will of the gods that we meet our brethren now and join with them. They should see that."
Baltar raised an eyebrow. "You are assuming that they still believe in the gods," he pointed out, "remember that their ancestors left Kobol anywhere from a thousand to two thousand years before The Blaze and our own Exodus. They've been separated from us for a minimum of three thousand years if not longer, plenty of time for them to have either found new religions or abandoned the idea entirely."
"The Gods would never allow that."
"Like they would never allow the Cylons to murder eighty-nine billion people in hours? Like they would never allow our planets to be reduced to radiation blasted cinders?"
Sarah started to open her mouth to refute Baltar's points – and remind him that it was a punishment for their sins, especially the sin of trying to be gods themselves and create life in the form of the Cylons – but before she could speak Roslin stepped in. Knowing full well if she didn't then the deeply religious Sarah and the committed atheist Baltar would get into an increasingly acrimonious debate that would last hours.
"Enough," Roslin snapped looking at the two Quorum members sternly even as she wondered, not for the first time, when had leading what was left of their people had turned into the deeply frustrating exercise of trying to heard cats. "Now is not the time for you two to have yet another of your arguments. Right now, we need to present a united front to the Terrans. We can sort out any issues of religion later."
"But…" Sarah started to object but a stern look from Roslin silenced her. A look that promised that disobedience would not be tolerated in this matter. And truth be told the other woman was right, there would be time to sort out saving their cousins souls if they no longer believed in the Lords of Kobol later. "I understand I will keep quiet on the subject."
"As will I," Baltar agreed.
"Good," Roslin replied a moment before a faint shudder ran through the Raptor. "What was that?"
"Madam President we just passed through some kind of gravitational-electromagnetic field across the entrance to the hangar bay," one of the pilots reported back, "there's now atmosphere around us. We're landing now."
"A gravitational-electromagnetic field what do they mean by that," Richards wondered.
"It's a force field," Baltar exclaimed, shock and awe in his voice. No wonder Six is worried about these people, the power they have, he thought even as he spoke again. "They've been theorised for years but the power requirements for one are far beyond our technology. Gods I wish I knew what their power source is, to be able to manipulate gravitational and electromagnetic fields like that it's mind boggling."
"Unbelievable," Sarah breathed a moment before a soft jolt ran through the deck as they set down. The sound of the engines died as the pilots powered them down. She had to wonder what other technological wonders the thirteenth had. No doubt that there would be some technologies that the Gods would not approve of technologies that would have to go in the long term.
Undoing her restraint Roslin stood up. "Well shall we go?" she said prompting everyone to stand up. Commander Richards moved in front of her, Admiral Adama had made it clear that Roslin's safety while she was here was his personal responsibility, as they headed to the gullwing hatch as it opened letting in the familiar scents of a hangar bay.
Carefully he led the way out of the Raptor, noting that as he left the influence of the Raptors own gravity that his feet felt heavier than they normally did. He guessed that Earth had to have slightly higher gravity than Colonial standard. Then he saw the honour guard waiting for them, two lines of young soldiers in tough and durable looking armour – that bizarrely looked almost like it was meant to lock into something else – and holding advanced looking rifles that experienced eyes told him did not fire any sort of projectile. Energy rifles! I suppose I shouldn't be surprised given their warships fire particle beams and use lasers instead of autocannons for close in defence, he thought even as he saw three people waiting for them on the other side of the honour guard.
As they all stepped out of the Raptor someone shouted a command and in a clatter the honour guard moved their rifles to the present arms position. Impressive discipline, Richards noted with approval, it would do anyone in the Colonial Fleet – well what was left of it as they had gone from having hundreds of warships to just seven one of which was ironically the oldest battlestar in the fleet – proud. He wasn't the only one.
Laura Roslin took a moment to compose herself then resolutely started walking. It wasn't as easy as it normally was as, like Richards, she noticed that the gravity field on this ship was stronger than on any Colonial vessel reflecting the fact that Earth had slightly higher gravity than what they were used to. But she managed it. In moment's they reached the delegation that was waiting for them including a middle aged woman in a red and white uniform with a black high-collared, sleeveless jacket over the top of it.
"President Roslin," the woman said inquiringly. Roslin nodded and the other woman smiled. "Greetings I am Admiral Christina Haywood. On behalf of the United Earth Government, I welcome you aboard the Procyon. Allow me to introduce you to my flag captain Ulysses Parkinson and my CAG Commander Takashima."
"A pleasure admiral," Roslin replied. "Allow me to introduce you to my companions. This is Doctor Gaius Baltar, Caprican representative to the Quorum of the Twelve. This is Sarah Porter, Gemenese representative to the same body and finally Commander Timothy Richards commanding officer of the Cerberus one of our only two surviving heavy cruisers."
"A pleasure. If you would kindly follow me a room has been prepared for us to talk. Commander Takashima will take care of your pilots while we talk."
"That's fine," Roslin agreed. The other woman smiled back and turned, beginning to walk off the hangar deck into the corridors and passageways of the ship's interior. Accompanied by her companions Roslin followed as she did so she compared the interior of the Procyon to both the Galactica and the Pegasus both of whom she had been on numerous times since the fall. The corridors were closer to those on the newer, larger battlestar than on the Galactica bright and spacious though the light was different. Warmer and more natural feeling in some fashion than the somewhat harsh artificial lights she and others had had to get to in the year that had passed since the Cylon began their genocide.
It didn't take long to reach the conference room that had been set aside and prepared for them. Admiral Haywood gestured politely for them all to be seated and they all did so – Roslin and her companions down one side of the table, the Terran personnel on the other – before Haywood sat herself. For a few moments nobody said or did anything then the Terran admiral spoke.
"Before we begin working out just how we can help each other," she said. "Let us begin by learning a bit more about one another. Since you are my guests here, I will begin if that is alright with you?"
"That would be fine," Roslin replied.
"Very well then our story begins twenty-three years ago when on the night of the twenty-second of March in the year 1998 of the Common Era a phenomenal event occurred in the skies above Earth that forever altered the course of our history…"
---///---
Twenty Minutes Later
Laura Roslin sat stunned and more than a little horrified as Admiral Haywood finished outlining the modern history of her world and people. To say it was like something from the tales of old, tales that had been passed down since the time of Kobol, would have been an understatement. Twenty-three years ago, their cousins had still been a planet bound species until a warship of unbelievable complexity and power had emerged from something called foldspace above their world. A warship produced by a civilization that was hundreds of years ahead of either of them at the time – and indeed would still be centuries ahead of the colonies if they had still existed – which had fallen to Earth coming to rest on the surface at an uninhabited volcanic island called Macross.
Their cousins had recovered the vessel, which amazingly had been almost completely intact with only the external hull suffering major damage from not just the crash but whatever battle the ship had been in before it fled into foldspace, leaving the systems and technology inside unharmed. How doing so had united their previously fractured world and brought about a decade of peace and increasing prosperity to their people even as their now united military forces prepared for the original owners of the ship to come and attempt to retrieve it.
Eventually servants of the ships original builders – a race of giant humanoid alien warriors known as the Zentraedi – had come to retrieve the ship sparking a war between the people of Earth and the giants – who honestly reminded her of the tales of the titans – which had raged for the next two years. Leading to a climactic battle between the supreme commander of the entire Zentraedi Armada and Earth which had included a cataclysmic orbital bombardment with weapons that made the strongest nukes possessed by either Colonials or Cylons look like firecrackers. How billions had died in seconds, incinerated in quantum fire, but somehow the Terran race had survived. Survived, fought back and ultimately defeated Dolza – killing him and destroying the bulk of his fleet in a clash of epic proportions – before beginning a process of rebuilding their smouldering world.
"How, how many died," Sarah Porter asked looking at where the holographic display that had shown footage of the Rain of Death – as their cousins somewhat poetically but correctly – called it had been. The sights she had seen would haunt her nightmares as it was way, way worse than a nuclear bombardment seeing streams of unbelievably powerful energy striking the surface wiping out entire landmasses in seconds was almost unimaginable. It was power that she was sure even Zeus himself would be in awe of.
And then there was the quantum reflex energy weapon that Earth had fired back. A massive version of the same weapons that had ravaged the planet and which in the few seconds it had fired had wiped from the stars hundreds of thousands of warships and millions of fighters and other battle mecha – whatever battle mecha was as she had never heard of such a thing before – as if they had been mere toys. Though nothing compared to the final cataclysmic explosion that not only wiped out Dolza but destroyed most of the Zentraedi fleet. A fleet whose sheer size and firepower didn't bare thinking about as it was so unbelievably vast.
"The true number will never be known," Admiral Haywood replied, her eyes dark with the deep pain and sadness that not just the whole Terran race but what she personally still felt over the events of the Rain of Death. She had been there after all watching in horror from the command bridge of a disabled Oberth-class destroyer as her homeworld burned. "But before the Rain there were an estimated eight billion people on Earth after it, we estimate anywhere from fifteen to twenty-five million. Most of those who died did so in the Rain, but a sizeable chunk died in the immediate aftermath from everything from hyperphase radiation poisoning to getting caught up in the geological upheavals that followed due to quantum energy bleed through disrupting the tectonic system."
"Gods," Porter breathed. "What about the Zentraedi did you wipe the rest of them out after what they did to you? Are you out here because you are chasing them to make them pay?"
"No, we didn't and no we are not," Haywood answered, "the Zentraedi didn't know any different. In many ways they were like robots at that time windup toys of destruction and conquest for beings we know as the Robotech Masters. We broke the chains that bound them to the Masters and have been teaching them since then that there is so much more to life than going around the galaxies waging war after war to expand the Robotech Masters empire."
"I am not sure we would be as merciful," Roslin admitted even as she felt a sudden guilt. She wasn't unaware that there were numerous parallels between themselves and the Robotech Masters and how they had both created an entire race for labour and for warfare. "So why are you here so far from your homeworld?"
That had been another shock that Earth itself was many thousands of light years from here.
"We're searching both to find the path to Tirolian space and the Robotech Masters and for places to set up colonies to ensure our race is not threatened by extermination again. We dodged a bullet once we might not be so lucky next time, especially when you consider what robotech weaponry is capable of. I have to admit that we were surprised to stumble across you. Captain Harrison reported that you are refugees and that you are at war with a machine race called Cylons?"
"That is true," Roslin admitted, "we had been at peace with the Cylons for forty years until a year ago when without warning they launched a massive attack against our fleet and our planets. In mere hours they destroyed most of our fleet and carpet bombed all twelve of our worlds with nuclear weapons. We tried to surrender after they started doing that, but they never responded. They have been chasing us ever since."
"I see. Did you have a plan? Or are you just running blindly?"
"We were actually looking for you or rather looking for your planet."
Haywood raised an eyebrow. "Okay why?" she asked.
"We're the same race, we both come from Kobol, and it is the will of the Gods that the tribes of man reunited if we are to survive," Porter replied.
"Kobol? I have never heard of it, and I don't know why you think humanity evolved there but it did not. There is fossil and genetic evidence that indicate that humanity evolved on Earth."
"Blasphemy."
"Sarah enough," Roslin snapped before the Gemenese woman could start a diatribe.
"But…"
"I said enough they are entitled to their beliefs just as we are. If they have fossil and genetic evidence that they evolved on Earth then they can show us later," Roslin said firmly. "For all we know they did evolve there, and we evolved on Kobol."
"Convergent evolution theory its possible I suppose," Baltar admitted with a thoughtful frown. "Though there is the whole thirteenth tribe leaving Kobol thing to get past."
"It isn't something we will get past here," Haywood answered firmly deciding to change the discussion for now as she could see that the religious woman Porter was about to do an impression of Mount Vesuvius at Pompeii if they continued. "Tell me about these Cylons. By attempting to upload a logic bomb to the Sirona's computers and then opening fire on her when they failed, they've shown themselves to be a threat. A threat we will not tolerate."
"It's a long story," Roslin answered.
"We have time."
"I suppose we do at that, and you deserve to know," Roslin admitted. She was about to begin explaining how sixty standard Colonial years ago Dr Daniel Grayston of Grayston Industries had introduced a revolutionary new line of robots called Cybernetic Lifeform Nodes to the then disunited colonies when an alarm klaxon began wailing with an urgent clamour. "What's that?"
"It's a battle alert," Haywood replied as she manipulated a small console in front of her. A projector field powered up and a holographic screen pixeled into existence showing the face and torso of Captain Parkinson. "Captain Parkinson report. What's going on out there?"
"Admiral we are detecting multiple Colonial style fold disturbances. There are ships appearing from them."
"What kind of ships?" Haywood asked. "And how many of them?"
"They're Cylon ma'am. We read fifty capital ships and rising."
Listening in Roslin exchanged a look of mixed shock, horror, fear, and sheer terror with the rest of her delegation as the flag captain said how many Cylon ships were arriving. Fifty baseships and rising, it was a fleet almost as big as the one that had attacked, and ruthlessly nuclear carpet bombed the colonies. As they looked at each other they all realized one thing, that no matter how advanced and powerful the thirteenth tribe was in comparison to them that there was no defence against this fleet.
They, Colonial and Terran, were all dead.
---///---
Authors Notes: Well, another chapter bites the metaphorical dust I hope you all enjoyed it. Next time we will have the epic clash between the Cylon forces that Cavil/One has assembled for his all or nothing gambit and the combined forces of the Colonial Remnant and the REF ships. It should be a real clash of the titans as it is not going to be an easy fight for anyone and people – including perhaps some main characters as I don't believe in shielding them – will die. Who will live and who will die well you will all have to wait and see won't you.
Finally, before someone says that the REF doesn't have atmospheric force field technology they actually do. It is actually seen in the Sentinels movie during the scene where Max Sterling and Karen Penn are bringing two prototype Alpha/Beta combined fighters into dock aboard the factory satellite. Both pass through an energy barrier that is keeping the air in the bay. The technology is also seen to be possessed by the Zentraedi in the Titan comics series, so I have used it here. Well, that's all for today until next time.
TBH, if I didn't know you were giving the Cylons some serious warships, I'd think Roslin was panicking, because the regular 2nd war era basestars are glass cannons. They are very non-credible in an offensive role, and it's really only due to their Raider spam and ability to jump in on top of the RTF that they were a threat.
Without Raider spam, we wouldn't be able to see the glory of the Veritechs!
Chapter Eight
AJW
Well-known member
Chapter Eight
Alarms wailed throughout the Galactica triggering a literal explosion of activity. Viper pilots raced to man their planes while hangar bay crews hurriedly prepared them for launch. Marines suited up, grabbed automatic weapons, and headed to various checkpoints and chokepoints throughout the vessel ready to repel any boarding attempt by the Cylons while all other personnel from gunnery crews to damage and fire control crews raced to their own station. All determined to, once again, face their relentless biomechanical enemies and ensure that the Colonial part of the greater human race lived to see another day.
Among those racing to his post was one Admiral William Adama. He had been in his cabin doing some of the mountain of paperwork that came with not just running one battlestar but all of the seven ships that were all that remained of the once proud Colonial Fleet. Much as he hated doing it, honestly in his experience nobody in the military really liked the Hades spawned demon that was paperwork, it had been a good distraction from worrying about Laura on the Terran flagship. Over the last two years of their flight from the Cylons his feelings for the former education secretary had changed considerably as he had gone from being very dismissive and even outright contemptuous of her to someone who deeply respected her both for her quiet dignity and immense strength. Strength that never stopped being tested as she faced two never ending battles, to keep the remains of their civilization from collapsing into anarchy and a deeply personal battle with cancer.
If he was honest with himself, he was starting to fall in love with her. Hence why he was worried while she was on the Terran ship. They still knew so little about the Thirteenth Tribe, beyond the fact that technologically they were scarily advanced. They knew nothing about their culture or society or even why they and the other twelve tribes of Kobol had parted ways in the first place all those millennia ago. Thus, the leader of what was left of his civilization going aboard one of their warships – a warship that he didn't doubt could destroy even the Pegasus without breaking a sweat – was a dangerous risk.
He put aside those thoughts and worries as he arrived at the CIC. It was immediately obvious that the situation was far, far more serious than it normally was. There was an atmosphere in the CIC that he had never felt here before, or at least had not felt for a very long time, an atmosphere of fear but also determination that the enemy wasn't going to win.
"How many ships," he asked as he walked up to the main situation/map table where Saul was. He could already tell that he wasn't going to like what his old friend had to say as Saul was pale and for one of the few times since he'd known him utterly terrified. "Saul how many ships?"
"Fifty-five baseships Bill," Saul answered after a moment, "and that's not all they've got another class of ship with them that we've never seen before. From its size though I would guess it's a cruiser. They've got twenty of them so seventy-five ships in total."
Adama froze for a moment staring at Saul in a combination of shock and horror. Seventy-five Cylon warships! Twenty of them a cruiser class that they had never seen before today, which in itself would have been terrifying as in the First Cylon War the toasters had had a bad habit of springing deadly and powerful new warships on them when they least expected it. He still had nightmares about some of the battles with the Cratus-class baseships which could ruin anybody's day with its tactical jumping, heavy cannons and rapid reload missile launchers. Seventy-five ships were more than enough to destroy the entire fleet in very short order as there was no way their ships would survive the weight of missile firepower the baseships would put out to say nothing of whatever weapons the cruisers had.
Though he had to wonder why the Cylons had chosen to strike at them with such a massive now? Why spring these new warships on them as well? The only thing he could think of the only reason that honestly made sense, was they were worried about what would happen if they linked up with the thirteenth tribe. That the machines were worried that they would convince their cousins to turn their massively powerful, far superior weapons upon them. Thus, they had come to wipe them out now before that could happen. Not if I can help it, he thought shaking off his shock.
"Cylon ships are launching raiders," Gaeta reported as the dradis screens began to come alive with hundreds and then thousands of raiders coming from the assembled Cylon fleet. "Strange we're not picking up any missile targeting locks yet though we are within their range."
"They're trying to terrify us," Adama said in realisation, "give us time to realize that our doom is upon us. That's going to cost them. Dee instruct all the civilian ships to jump to emergency coordinates immediately. We will join them shortly. Send those coordinates to the Terran ships."
"Yes sir."
"We're not going to be able to jump yet Bill," Saul pointed out, "a number of the civilian ships took their FTL drives offline for urgent maintenance and repair, it's in the fleet status report from last night. It will take them at least ten minutes to get their drives back online."
"Frack how many," Adama demanded even as he mentally kicked himself for not having read that report yet.
"At least twenty of them including Cloud Nine, the Rising Star and the Athena's Grace."
"Frack." Those were the three biggest civilian ships in the fleet with the first of the latter two being a second luxury star liner – indeed she was of the same class as Cloud Nine – and the other a hospital ship. Both had shown up with the Cerberus a few months ago. "Okay Dee tell all civilian ships with functional drives to jump. Send one of the cruisers with them for protection. The rest will jump as soon as they are able to. All other ships launch Vipers and brace for heavy attack."
"Yes sir."
"Mr Gaeta what are the Terran ships doing?"
"Nothing at the mo…. Wait. Terran ships are launching fighters. Sir Cylon raiders are closing, weapons range in sixty seconds."
"Sir we're picking up a transmission from the Terran flagship to the Cylons," Dee reported.
"On speakers."
Immediately the overhead speakers crackled and began to hum right before the voice of the Terran admiral came through. "Attention Cylon vessels. I am Admiral Christian Haywood of the United Earth Expeditionary Force. Your conflict with the Colonials is over, they are no longer a threat to you. I give you one opportunity to withdraw continue to advance and we will be forced to open fire. You have one minute to comply after which we will begin burning you from the stars."
"That's going to go down well," Saul commented knowing the Cylons likely had little to no use for diplomacy. Not to mention they were kind of fanatical about wiping the human race from the stars. "Any response from the toasters?"
"Negative sir," Dee replied.
"Sir Cylon raiders have reached weapons range. Half are heading for the civilian ships that aren't able to jump yet. Viper squadrons moving to intercept. The others are moving towards us."
"All ships commence enemy suppression barrage. Begin moving us towards the Cylons. All main batteries prepare to engage enemy baseships."
"Yes sir," various tactical and navigation officers acknowledged.
---///---
Space near the Galactica suddenly resembled a firework display as the elderly, but still formidable, battlestar once again unleashed her fury upon the approaching Cylon raiders. Defensive batteries opening up sending a rapid storm of autocannon rounds – of both the starburst flak and direct impact type – at the raiders. Dozens of raiders disintegrated immediately under the barrage, simultaneously the other Colonial warships including the marine assault ship opened up with their own suppressive fire barrages turning even more raiders into plumes of shattered metal and freezing fluids – including blood – from their organic systems.
Undeterred the raiders continued to close with their hated enemies. Missile bays opened and anti-ship missiles were launched into space towards the Colonials. The Colonial warships immediately redirected some of their defensive fire to the missile salvos while the rest continued firing upon the Cylons. None of the Cylon missiles made it through all dissolving into plumes of shattered metal as they were hit and shredded.
It was at this moment, when the raiders were essentially stalemated by the defensive batteries of the Colonial warships, that two things happened virtually simultaneously. First the Terran flagship Procyon opened fire upon the Cylons with her two bow mounted superheavy particle beam cannons, the beams travelling at eighty percent of light speed striking two separate basestars virtually simultaneously. Both baseships erupted into titanic fireballs immediately as the beams simply tore right through them as though they were made of paper, igniting everything in their path instantly including stored fuel and munitions.
Even as the two basestars died, consumed by the energies of weapons whose power was almost beyond comprehension to Colonial and Cylon minds, the second event occurred. With the brilliant acrid flash of nuclear energy, the luxury liner Cloud Nine, the home of the majority of the Colonial government well those not on Colonial One, exploded. Debris and a wave of superheated plasma – all that remained of the atmosphere that had been on the liner – accompanied by a storm of high energy x-rays and gamma rays blasted outwards from the former location of the vessel. Eight smaller Colonial vessels were caught in the blast zone, unarmoured civilian hulls offering little to no protection against the sudden onslaught. Three of the eight exploded as they were enveloped and consumed by the plasma cloud. The other five lost power – the EMP from the explosion crashing their computers and power systems – and began drifting trailing debris and venting atmosphere from where hypervelocity fragments had torn into their hulls.
---///---
Colonial Viper 2101
A Few Moments Later
Starbuck grunted slightly as with a surge of acceleration her Viper was shot clear of the Pegasus. Manipulating the control stick she brought her Viper around and as her entire squadron had been ordered began advancing to engage the raiders heading for those civilian ships who were still working to bring their jump engines back online so they could escape like the other civilian ships. The defensive batteries on all the warships were already firing tearing raiders from the stars in an orgy of destruction but which seemed to have only limited effect to the sheer number of Cylon strike craft.
"Frack I've never seen so many before," she muttered even as she started firing herself. The refitted Mark VII's triple autocannons opened up her guns immediately striking one raider on its port wing. The wing snapped off immediately and the sentient space fighter began to spin out of control, until that was a second burst of fire from her guns sent it to its doom. Well temporary doom as she was well aware that like the humanoids, raiders resurrected.
Bright whitish-blue light suddenly caught her attention and she looked to see what was causing it. To see two massive energy beams – each one was thicker than a Raptor – streaking across space from the bows of the largest of the thirteenth tribes warships to the Cylons. Holy frack. Lee was right these guys have energy weapons, she thought recalling the briefing Lee had quickly given her on the new arrivals even as she watched the beam strike two basestars at impossible range. Both baseships going nova almost instantaneously as the beams swatted them from the stars as if they were mere toys.
"My gods look at that," she heard another Viper pilot say, "I'm glad there on our side."
Starbuck had to agree with that assessment. From what she had just seen those beams do to the Cylons she guessed that they really would have no chance against their cousins if they chose to fire upon them for any reason. The thirteenth tribe was clearly way more advanced technologically than they were and had access to some unfathomably powerful energy source – a source capable of powering such lethal energy beams. Beams that she didn't doubt would go through even the heavy armour of the Pegasus like it was wet tissue paper. She certainly wouldn't want to meet whoever the thirteenth tribe had to have been at war with in the past to create such advanced and lethal weapons.
Another flash – one whose colour was far too depressingly familiar – caught her attention. She looked over, even as she idly shot down another raider, to see Cloud Nine exploding from within. A wave of superheated plasma, radiation and debris expanded outwards from where the liner had once been claiming three more ships and disabling five more.
"NOOO!" she screamed knowing that there had been over nine thousand people on that ship and who knew how many more on the ships who had been killed by the flying debris and immersion in the plasma cloud. Her own scream of horror and rage echoing across the communications lines as every Viper and Raptor pilot who had seen the blast reacted the same way. "You dirty fracking toasters. You'll pay for that."
The plasma cloud that was all that remained of Cloud Nine – well anything that wasn't bigger than a playing card – dissipated all that was left was open space. But only for a moment as in simultaneous flashes of FTL light four ships appeared right where the liner had been. Each was clearly Cylon being Y-shaped and clearly made of the same type of biometallic alloy as the bigger double Y baseships. Though it was darker and thicker looking. There also bristled with cannons and in the bows were the clear openings of two gauss cannons identical to the four the Pegasus had in her bow.
Immediately the four new Cylon ships – cruisers perhaps? – opened fire. Each launching thirty-six missiles a piece from launch bays on the two smaller secondary arms while dual heavy and standard kinetic energy cannon turrets began pumping out tungsten shell after tungsten shell. The unexpected wall of fire tore into several nearby civilian ships and simply ripped them to pieces the ships either exploding or tearing apart spewing the bodies of their dead and dying passengers into space.
An almost incoherent roar of pure, unadulterated rage exploded from Starbuck's throat as she brought her Viper around and moved to attack the new ships. Simultaneously the Pegasus lateral gun turrets began peppering one of the cruisers with heavy rounds. Explosions rocked the Cylon vessel, but its armour seemed to hold as it turned and pointed its bow mounted cannons at the Mercury-class ship and fired. Two large projectiles striking the side of the Pegasus almost immediately violently rocking the entire vessel as two sections of hull armour – each the size of a three story building – dissolved into a blizzard of hypervelocity fragments.
Thankfully the cruiser didn't get chance to fire again as three dual streams of blue energy tore into it. In moments it broke apart and detonated consumed by the particle beams almost as easily as the two baseships she'd seen destroyed had been. It's three companions fared little better as all of them were speared by dozens of either blue or whitish-blue beams each and quickly reduced to clouds of debris and burning plasma. She quickly looked around to see where the fire had come from to see that all eighteen of the thirteenth tribe capital ships were now firing upon the Cylons pounding out blue and white-blue beams of searing energy as well as streams of yellow energy bolts. The effects on the Cylons were devasting as any raider or missile hit by the pulses would be instantly reduced to a cloud of vapour. The beams were if anything even more lethal steadily carving through the hulls of the Cylon warships and either sending them to their doom or inflicting absolutely brutal amounts of damage.
Of course, the thirteenth wasn't getting everything their own way. Each of their ships had swarms of Cylon anti-ship missiles – which were nearly continuously streaming from every one of the baseships – closing in on them. While their defensive guns knocked missile after missile out of the sky it was only a matter of time before one impacted. As Starbuck watched one did just that, or rather it impacted a glowing green wall of some type of energy that appeared right in the missiles path. An energy shield of some kind? Several more missiles impacted, and the energy tile dissolved in a blaze of photons allowing the next two missiles to impact the hull. The Terran ship visibly rocked but otherwise seemed to weather the hits and continue firing both at the Cylon capital ships and at their missiles.
"Starbuck look out," a voice said over the radio, she vaguely recognised it as Racetrack's voice. Kara's eyes snapped back to her screens and with a jolt she saw a raider almost had her dead in its sights.
"Oh no you don't you frackers," she growled as she jinked to avoid a burst of autocannon fire that would have punched right through her cockpit windshield and into her fragile human body. She quickly returned the favour punching rounds through the helmet-like head at the front of the raider to rip apart the brain inside. The rest of her rounds exploding out the back as they sawed the offending raider in half.
Even as the two pieces of the raider spun away from each other – trailing a cloud of rapidly freezing red mist – she spotted three lining up to lob missiles into the side of the Athena's Grace which was being fiercely defended by the destroyer Cassandra. A destroyer that had obviously taken a few hits already as she was listing slightly to one side – indicating damage to her attitude control system – and some of her starboard autocannon turrets weren't firing and indeed appeared to be missing. Oh no you don't, she thought as she fired upon the offending toasters, shredding one of them and making the others break off. To be swatted from the sky a few seconds later by the Cassandra.
A moment later with a flash of FTL light the hospital ship disappeared into a jump.
Starbuck quickly glanced around to see that most of the remaining civilian ships had managed to get their jump drives back online and we're now disappearing into FTL – fleeing to the emergency coordinates. Thank the Lords, she thought a moment before her radio crackled to life.
"Starbuck this is the Pegasus come in," she heard Hoshi say,
"Go ahead Pegasus," Kara answered, frowning slightly as she clearly heard hissing and crackling in the background of Hoshi's transmission. The kind of hissing and crackling that accompanied damaged conduits and electronics. Clearly there was mounting damage aboard the Pegasus, which given the absolutely hellish battle raging around them was not surprising. What was frankly surprising was the fact that so many of them were still alive and she knew that was only because of the Terran presence and their superior firepower. Had they been facing this Cylon fleet alone they would have been dead a dozen times over by now.
"Starbuck grab some Vipers and head over to the Galactica. They've lost power to their port amidship defence batteries, get over there and cover them until their damage control crews can repair them."
As Hoshi spoke, no doubt relaying orders from Lee, Starbuck felt a cold knot of dread form around her heart. She knew that the port amidship defence batteries covered the Galactica's solo operational flight pod. With those batteries down – likely due to shock damage from missile hits breaking a couple of power cables – that part of the aging battlestar was dangerously vulnerable. Indeed, the whole damned ship was dangerously vulnerable without those weapons operational.
"Will do Pegasus," she replied immediately bringing her Viper around and heading for the Galactica. She quickly checked her screens. "Racetrack, Kat, Stinger. Galactica's in trouble, you're with me."
The other four pilots hurriedly acknowledged and fell into formation with her all of them streaking towards the old Jupiter-class ship. Dozens of raiders were in their way, but they didn't let that stop them, they simply blasted their way through and passed over the shattered, burning remains of the cruiser Vigilance. Kara winced at the sight of the broken in two Medusa-class ship. From the damage, and the fact that her radiation detector was frankly going nuts, she had clearly been hit by a Cylon nuke. A heavy one at that which had punched through the relatively thin armour covering the hull and torn the ship in half. The six hundred crew aboard her would never have had a chance.
It was yet more evidence, if she had ever needed it, of just how big the butchers bill from this fight was going to be.
Then the Galactica herself came into view and, if anything, the knot of dread around her heart got colder and harder. The elderly battlestar, the very last survivor of the line that had defeated the Cylons over forty years ago, was clearly in far more trouble than Hoshi had initially told her. Even from here she could see that one of her four sublight engine nacelles had been blown away and that she was venting atmosphere from at least one of the engineering bays. The unused starboard flight pod – which was still set up as part of the museum that the Galactica would have become had the Cylons not hit the Colonies – was shattered halfway along its length spilling its contents into space and the entire vessel was listing badly to the starboard side indicating major damage to the attitude control systems.
Yet most of her cannons and defensive batteries were still firing defiantly at the Cylons. The shattered and burning remains of three baseships – who were no doubt responsible for the damage she'd sustained - showing the ferocity of the battered, bruised old war horses' ferocious resistance. Fresh explosions near the Galactica marked the final resting place of a squadron or raiders that had been aiming to get around her and take advantage of the massive hole that had opened in the old ships defences and lob missiles into the hull. More raiders were angling for an attack run…
…she and the others didn't let them. Instead, they blew in unleashing a ferocious blaze of autocannon fire that tore six raiders from the sky and sent the remains of the shattered formation scattering in confusion. Then they were passing over the Galactica and Starbuck was just about to let herself relax slightly – knowing that now they were here they would be able to protect her former mothership and all the friends she had who still served aboard her until damage control got the port defence batteries back online – when it happened.
With brilliant flashes of FTL light two of the Cylons cruisers appeared directly off the Galactica's port side. The battlestars dorsal heavy guns started to turn to fire upon them but they could only traverse so fast. They were not fast enough as both Cylon cruisers pointed their bows at the Galactica…
…and sent a full salvo of gauss rounds, heavy kinetic energy rounds and a salvo of missiles into her side.
---///---
Authors Notes: Dun, da dun, dun, dun I know evil aren't I for that little cliffhanger ending. I hope you have all enjoyed the battle with the Cylons so far. It is far from over and will be completed in the next chapter which I am already working on. The battle was just getting a bit long, and I felt it best to split it into two parts. The final fate of the Galactica and the crew aboard her – including Admiral Adama – will be revealed in the next chapter and I will say now that while some of them will survive many will not. Who will live and who will die well you will find out in the next chapter – before you ask its already being worked on and should be ready sometime in the next few days. Until next time.
Alarms wailed throughout the Galactica triggering a literal explosion of activity. Viper pilots raced to man their planes while hangar bay crews hurriedly prepared them for launch. Marines suited up, grabbed automatic weapons, and headed to various checkpoints and chokepoints throughout the vessel ready to repel any boarding attempt by the Cylons while all other personnel from gunnery crews to damage and fire control crews raced to their own station. All determined to, once again, face their relentless biomechanical enemies and ensure that the Colonial part of the greater human race lived to see another day.
Among those racing to his post was one Admiral William Adama. He had been in his cabin doing some of the mountain of paperwork that came with not just running one battlestar but all of the seven ships that were all that remained of the once proud Colonial Fleet. Much as he hated doing it, honestly in his experience nobody in the military really liked the Hades spawned demon that was paperwork, it had been a good distraction from worrying about Laura on the Terran flagship. Over the last two years of their flight from the Cylons his feelings for the former education secretary had changed considerably as he had gone from being very dismissive and even outright contemptuous of her to someone who deeply respected her both for her quiet dignity and immense strength. Strength that never stopped being tested as she faced two never ending battles, to keep the remains of their civilization from collapsing into anarchy and a deeply personal battle with cancer.
If he was honest with himself, he was starting to fall in love with her. Hence why he was worried while she was on the Terran ship. They still knew so little about the Thirteenth Tribe, beyond the fact that technologically they were scarily advanced. They knew nothing about their culture or society or even why they and the other twelve tribes of Kobol had parted ways in the first place all those millennia ago. Thus, the leader of what was left of his civilization going aboard one of their warships – a warship that he didn't doubt could destroy even the Pegasus without breaking a sweat – was a dangerous risk.
He put aside those thoughts and worries as he arrived at the CIC. It was immediately obvious that the situation was far, far more serious than it normally was. There was an atmosphere in the CIC that he had never felt here before, or at least had not felt for a very long time, an atmosphere of fear but also determination that the enemy wasn't going to win.
"How many ships," he asked as he walked up to the main situation/map table where Saul was. He could already tell that he wasn't going to like what his old friend had to say as Saul was pale and for one of the few times since he'd known him utterly terrified. "Saul how many ships?"
"Fifty-five baseships Bill," Saul answered after a moment, "and that's not all they've got another class of ship with them that we've never seen before. From its size though I would guess it's a cruiser. They've got twenty of them so seventy-five ships in total."
Adama froze for a moment staring at Saul in a combination of shock and horror. Seventy-five Cylon warships! Twenty of them a cruiser class that they had never seen before today, which in itself would have been terrifying as in the First Cylon War the toasters had had a bad habit of springing deadly and powerful new warships on them when they least expected it. He still had nightmares about some of the battles with the Cratus-class baseships which could ruin anybody's day with its tactical jumping, heavy cannons and rapid reload missile launchers. Seventy-five ships were more than enough to destroy the entire fleet in very short order as there was no way their ships would survive the weight of missile firepower the baseships would put out to say nothing of whatever weapons the cruisers had.
Though he had to wonder why the Cylons had chosen to strike at them with such a massive now? Why spring these new warships on them as well? The only thing he could think of the only reason that honestly made sense, was they were worried about what would happen if they linked up with the thirteenth tribe. That the machines were worried that they would convince their cousins to turn their massively powerful, far superior weapons upon them. Thus, they had come to wipe them out now before that could happen. Not if I can help it, he thought shaking off his shock.
"Cylon ships are launching raiders," Gaeta reported as the dradis screens began to come alive with hundreds and then thousands of raiders coming from the assembled Cylon fleet. "Strange we're not picking up any missile targeting locks yet though we are within their range."
"They're trying to terrify us," Adama said in realisation, "give us time to realize that our doom is upon us. That's going to cost them. Dee instruct all the civilian ships to jump to emergency coordinates immediately. We will join them shortly. Send those coordinates to the Terran ships."
"Yes sir."
"We're not going to be able to jump yet Bill," Saul pointed out, "a number of the civilian ships took their FTL drives offline for urgent maintenance and repair, it's in the fleet status report from last night. It will take them at least ten minutes to get their drives back online."
"Frack how many," Adama demanded even as he mentally kicked himself for not having read that report yet.
"At least twenty of them including Cloud Nine, the Rising Star and the Athena's Grace."
"Frack." Those were the three biggest civilian ships in the fleet with the first of the latter two being a second luxury star liner – indeed she was of the same class as Cloud Nine – and the other a hospital ship. Both had shown up with the Cerberus a few months ago. "Okay Dee tell all civilian ships with functional drives to jump. Send one of the cruisers with them for protection. The rest will jump as soon as they are able to. All other ships launch Vipers and brace for heavy attack."
"Yes sir."
"Mr Gaeta what are the Terran ships doing?"
"Nothing at the mo…. Wait. Terran ships are launching fighters. Sir Cylon raiders are closing, weapons range in sixty seconds."
"Sir we're picking up a transmission from the Terran flagship to the Cylons," Dee reported.
"On speakers."
Immediately the overhead speakers crackled and began to hum right before the voice of the Terran admiral came through. "Attention Cylon vessels. I am Admiral Christian Haywood of the United Earth Expeditionary Force. Your conflict with the Colonials is over, they are no longer a threat to you. I give you one opportunity to withdraw continue to advance and we will be forced to open fire. You have one minute to comply after which we will begin burning you from the stars."
"That's going to go down well," Saul commented knowing the Cylons likely had little to no use for diplomacy. Not to mention they were kind of fanatical about wiping the human race from the stars. "Any response from the toasters?"
"Negative sir," Dee replied.
"Sir Cylon raiders have reached weapons range. Half are heading for the civilian ships that aren't able to jump yet. Viper squadrons moving to intercept. The others are moving towards us."
"All ships commence enemy suppression barrage. Begin moving us towards the Cylons. All main batteries prepare to engage enemy baseships."
"Yes sir," various tactical and navigation officers acknowledged.
---///---
Space near the Galactica suddenly resembled a firework display as the elderly, but still formidable, battlestar once again unleashed her fury upon the approaching Cylon raiders. Defensive batteries opening up sending a rapid storm of autocannon rounds – of both the starburst flak and direct impact type – at the raiders. Dozens of raiders disintegrated immediately under the barrage, simultaneously the other Colonial warships including the marine assault ship opened up with their own suppressive fire barrages turning even more raiders into plumes of shattered metal and freezing fluids – including blood – from their organic systems.
Undeterred the raiders continued to close with their hated enemies. Missile bays opened and anti-ship missiles were launched into space towards the Colonials. The Colonial warships immediately redirected some of their defensive fire to the missile salvos while the rest continued firing upon the Cylons. None of the Cylon missiles made it through all dissolving into plumes of shattered metal as they were hit and shredded.
It was at this moment, when the raiders were essentially stalemated by the defensive batteries of the Colonial warships, that two things happened virtually simultaneously. First the Terran flagship Procyon opened fire upon the Cylons with her two bow mounted superheavy particle beam cannons, the beams travelling at eighty percent of light speed striking two separate basestars virtually simultaneously. Both baseships erupted into titanic fireballs immediately as the beams simply tore right through them as though they were made of paper, igniting everything in their path instantly including stored fuel and munitions.
Even as the two basestars died, consumed by the energies of weapons whose power was almost beyond comprehension to Colonial and Cylon minds, the second event occurred. With the brilliant acrid flash of nuclear energy, the luxury liner Cloud Nine, the home of the majority of the Colonial government well those not on Colonial One, exploded. Debris and a wave of superheated plasma – all that remained of the atmosphere that had been on the liner – accompanied by a storm of high energy x-rays and gamma rays blasted outwards from the former location of the vessel. Eight smaller Colonial vessels were caught in the blast zone, unarmoured civilian hulls offering little to no protection against the sudden onslaught. Three of the eight exploded as they were enveloped and consumed by the plasma cloud. The other five lost power – the EMP from the explosion crashing their computers and power systems – and began drifting trailing debris and venting atmosphere from where hypervelocity fragments had torn into their hulls.
---///---
Colonial Viper 2101
A Few Moments Later
Starbuck grunted slightly as with a surge of acceleration her Viper was shot clear of the Pegasus. Manipulating the control stick she brought her Viper around and as her entire squadron had been ordered began advancing to engage the raiders heading for those civilian ships who were still working to bring their jump engines back online so they could escape like the other civilian ships. The defensive batteries on all the warships were already firing tearing raiders from the stars in an orgy of destruction but which seemed to have only limited effect to the sheer number of Cylon strike craft.
"Frack I've never seen so many before," she muttered even as she started firing herself. The refitted Mark VII's triple autocannons opened up her guns immediately striking one raider on its port wing. The wing snapped off immediately and the sentient space fighter began to spin out of control, until that was a second burst of fire from her guns sent it to its doom. Well temporary doom as she was well aware that like the humanoids, raiders resurrected.
Bright whitish-blue light suddenly caught her attention and she looked to see what was causing it. To see two massive energy beams – each one was thicker than a Raptor – streaking across space from the bows of the largest of the thirteenth tribes warships to the Cylons. Holy frack. Lee was right these guys have energy weapons, she thought recalling the briefing Lee had quickly given her on the new arrivals even as she watched the beam strike two basestars at impossible range. Both baseships going nova almost instantaneously as the beams swatted them from the stars as if they were mere toys.
"My gods look at that," she heard another Viper pilot say, "I'm glad there on our side."
Starbuck had to agree with that assessment. From what she had just seen those beams do to the Cylons she guessed that they really would have no chance against their cousins if they chose to fire upon them for any reason. The thirteenth tribe was clearly way more advanced technologically than they were and had access to some unfathomably powerful energy source – a source capable of powering such lethal energy beams. Beams that she didn't doubt would go through even the heavy armour of the Pegasus like it was wet tissue paper. She certainly wouldn't want to meet whoever the thirteenth tribe had to have been at war with in the past to create such advanced and lethal weapons.
Another flash – one whose colour was far too depressingly familiar – caught her attention. She looked over, even as she idly shot down another raider, to see Cloud Nine exploding from within. A wave of superheated plasma, radiation and debris expanded outwards from where the liner had once been claiming three more ships and disabling five more.
"NOOO!" she screamed knowing that there had been over nine thousand people on that ship and who knew how many more on the ships who had been killed by the flying debris and immersion in the plasma cloud. Her own scream of horror and rage echoing across the communications lines as every Viper and Raptor pilot who had seen the blast reacted the same way. "You dirty fracking toasters. You'll pay for that."
The plasma cloud that was all that remained of Cloud Nine – well anything that wasn't bigger than a playing card – dissipated all that was left was open space. But only for a moment as in simultaneous flashes of FTL light four ships appeared right where the liner had been. Each was clearly Cylon being Y-shaped and clearly made of the same type of biometallic alloy as the bigger double Y baseships. Though it was darker and thicker looking. There also bristled with cannons and in the bows were the clear openings of two gauss cannons identical to the four the Pegasus had in her bow.
Immediately the four new Cylon ships – cruisers perhaps? – opened fire. Each launching thirty-six missiles a piece from launch bays on the two smaller secondary arms while dual heavy and standard kinetic energy cannon turrets began pumping out tungsten shell after tungsten shell. The unexpected wall of fire tore into several nearby civilian ships and simply ripped them to pieces the ships either exploding or tearing apart spewing the bodies of their dead and dying passengers into space.
An almost incoherent roar of pure, unadulterated rage exploded from Starbuck's throat as she brought her Viper around and moved to attack the new ships. Simultaneously the Pegasus lateral gun turrets began peppering one of the cruisers with heavy rounds. Explosions rocked the Cylon vessel, but its armour seemed to hold as it turned and pointed its bow mounted cannons at the Mercury-class ship and fired. Two large projectiles striking the side of the Pegasus almost immediately violently rocking the entire vessel as two sections of hull armour – each the size of a three story building – dissolved into a blizzard of hypervelocity fragments.
Thankfully the cruiser didn't get chance to fire again as three dual streams of blue energy tore into it. In moments it broke apart and detonated consumed by the particle beams almost as easily as the two baseships she'd seen destroyed had been. It's three companions fared little better as all of them were speared by dozens of either blue or whitish-blue beams each and quickly reduced to clouds of debris and burning plasma. She quickly looked around to see where the fire had come from to see that all eighteen of the thirteenth tribe capital ships were now firing upon the Cylons pounding out blue and white-blue beams of searing energy as well as streams of yellow energy bolts. The effects on the Cylons were devasting as any raider or missile hit by the pulses would be instantly reduced to a cloud of vapour. The beams were if anything even more lethal steadily carving through the hulls of the Cylon warships and either sending them to their doom or inflicting absolutely brutal amounts of damage.
Of course, the thirteenth wasn't getting everything their own way. Each of their ships had swarms of Cylon anti-ship missiles – which were nearly continuously streaming from every one of the baseships – closing in on them. While their defensive guns knocked missile after missile out of the sky it was only a matter of time before one impacted. As Starbuck watched one did just that, or rather it impacted a glowing green wall of some type of energy that appeared right in the missiles path. An energy shield of some kind? Several more missiles impacted, and the energy tile dissolved in a blaze of photons allowing the next two missiles to impact the hull. The Terran ship visibly rocked but otherwise seemed to weather the hits and continue firing both at the Cylon capital ships and at their missiles.
"Starbuck look out," a voice said over the radio, she vaguely recognised it as Racetrack's voice. Kara's eyes snapped back to her screens and with a jolt she saw a raider almost had her dead in its sights.
"Oh no you don't you frackers," she growled as she jinked to avoid a burst of autocannon fire that would have punched right through her cockpit windshield and into her fragile human body. She quickly returned the favour punching rounds through the helmet-like head at the front of the raider to rip apart the brain inside. The rest of her rounds exploding out the back as they sawed the offending raider in half.
Even as the two pieces of the raider spun away from each other – trailing a cloud of rapidly freezing red mist – she spotted three lining up to lob missiles into the side of the Athena's Grace which was being fiercely defended by the destroyer Cassandra. A destroyer that had obviously taken a few hits already as she was listing slightly to one side – indicating damage to her attitude control system – and some of her starboard autocannon turrets weren't firing and indeed appeared to be missing. Oh no you don't, she thought as she fired upon the offending toasters, shredding one of them and making the others break off. To be swatted from the sky a few seconds later by the Cassandra.
A moment later with a flash of FTL light the hospital ship disappeared into a jump.
Starbuck quickly glanced around to see that most of the remaining civilian ships had managed to get their jump drives back online and we're now disappearing into FTL – fleeing to the emergency coordinates. Thank the Lords, she thought a moment before her radio crackled to life.
"Starbuck this is the Pegasus come in," she heard Hoshi say,
"Go ahead Pegasus," Kara answered, frowning slightly as she clearly heard hissing and crackling in the background of Hoshi's transmission. The kind of hissing and crackling that accompanied damaged conduits and electronics. Clearly there was mounting damage aboard the Pegasus, which given the absolutely hellish battle raging around them was not surprising. What was frankly surprising was the fact that so many of them were still alive and she knew that was only because of the Terran presence and their superior firepower. Had they been facing this Cylon fleet alone they would have been dead a dozen times over by now.
"Starbuck grab some Vipers and head over to the Galactica. They've lost power to their port amidship defence batteries, get over there and cover them until their damage control crews can repair them."
As Hoshi spoke, no doubt relaying orders from Lee, Starbuck felt a cold knot of dread form around her heart. She knew that the port amidship defence batteries covered the Galactica's solo operational flight pod. With those batteries down – likely due to shock damage from missile hits breaking a couple of power cables – that part of the aging battlestar was dangerously vulnerable. Indeed, the whole damned ship was dangerously vulnerable without those weapons operational.
"Will do Pegasus," she replied immediately bringing her Viper around and heading for the Galactica. She quickly checked her screens. "Racetrack, Kat, Stinger. Galactica's in trouble, you're with me."
The other four pilots hurriedly acknowledged and fell into formation with her all of them streaking towards the old Jupiter-class ship. Dozens of raiders were in their way, but they didn't let that stop them, they simply blasted their way through and passed over the shattered, burning remains of the cruiser Vigilance. Kara winced at the sight of the broken in two Medusa-class ship. From the damage, and the fact that her radiation detector was frankly going nuts, she had clearly been hit by a Cylon nuke. A heavy one at that which had punched through the relatively thin armour covering the hull and torn the ship in half. The six hundred crew aboard her would never have had a chance.
It was yet more evidence, if she had ever needed it, of just how big the butchers bill from this fight was going to be.
Then the Galactica herself came into view and, if anything, the knot of dread around her heart got colder and harder. The elderly battlestar, the very last survivor of the line that had defeated the Cylons over forty years ago, was clearly in far more trouble than Hoshi had initially told her. Even from here she could see that one of her four sublight engine nacelles had been blown away and that she was venting atmosphere from at least one of the engineering bays. The unused starboard flight pod – which was still set up as part of the museum that the Galactica would have become had the Cylons not hit the Colonies – was shattered halfway along its length spilling its contents into space and the entire vessel was listing badly to the starboard side indicating major damage to the attitude control systems.
Yet most of her cannons and defensive batteries were still firing defiantly at the Cylons. The shattered and burning remains of three baseships – who were no doubt responsible for the damage she'd sustained - showing the ferocity of the battered, bruised old war horses' ferocious resistance. Fresh explosions near the Galactica marked the final resting place of a squadron or raiders that had been aiming to get around her and take advantage of the massive hole that had opened in the old ships defences and lob missiles into the hull. More raiders were angling for an attack run…
…she and the others didn't let them. Instead, they blew in unleashing a ferocious blaze of autocannon fire that tore six raiders from the sky and sent the remains of the shattered formation scattering in confusion. Then they were passing over the Galactica and Starbuck was just about to let herself relax slightly – knowing that now they were here they would be able to protect her former mothership and all the friends she had who still served aboard her until damage control got the port defence batteries back online – when it happened.
With brilliant flashes of FTL light two of the Cylons cruisers appeared directly off the Galactica's port side. The battlestars dorsal heavy guns started to turn to fire upon them but they could only traverse so fast. They were not fast enough as both Cylon cruisers pointed their bows at the Galactica…
…and sent a full salvo of gauss rounds, heavy kinetic energy rounds and a salvo of missiles into her side.
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Authors Notes: Dun, da dun, dun, dun I know evil aren't I for that little cliffhanger ending. I hope you have all enjoyed the battle with the Cylons so far. It is far from over and will be completed in the next chapter which I am already working on. The battle was just getting a bit long, and I felt it best to split it into two parts. The final fate of the Galactica and the crew aboard her – including Admiral Adama – will be revealed in the next chapter and I will say now that while some of them will survive many will not. Who will live and who will die well you will find out in the next chapter – before you ask its already being worked on and should be ready sometime in the next few days. Until next time.
Where are the veritechs?
AJW
Well-known member
They are engaged with the Cylons just for this particular battle I decided to focus more on the Colonial perspective.
Chapter Nine
AJW
Well-known member
Authors Note: I had a few people comment in reviews of the last chapter that the REF appeared to be holding back and not using their veritechs. They weren't as you will see in part of this chapter. I really wasn't expecting to get this one done so soon but it just seemed to write itself, so you've got two updates in two days.
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Chapter Nine
Sabre Leader
A Few Minutes Earlier
Dressed in a full suit of CVR-3 body armour, which he was wearing over his flight suit, and cocooned within the cockpit of a VF-4 Lightning veritech fighter Commander Hiro Takashima grunted slightly as with a surge of gee forces an electromagnetic catapult launched him clear of the Procyon. Around him the rest of Sabre – the only squadron on the Procyon that was equipped with the powerful Lightnings the rest were still using VF-1 Valkyries though they had all had their systems and weapons significantly upgraded from the model that had fought and ultimately won the Robotech War – were also launched into space. Grabbing his controls he brought the Lightning around and into formation around the great battleship and waited for what he knew was going to come next.
All around him the rest of the UEEF ships were also launching their squadrons of fighters. It was a somewhat eclectic mix of VF-1 and VF-4 veritechs, some of the new VFA-5 Alpha's and non-transformable space fighters like the Comet. Which was if he was honest with himself somewhat representative of the United Earth Expeditionary Forces themselves as they were in the midst of a major transition between levels of technology and the fighters – both veritech and non-veritech – designed to use them. He had heard rumours that there was plans to eventually replace all existing veritech groups with the Alpha fighters, though he hoped that wasn't the case as while the Alpha looked really nice on paper – not to mention it carried an absolutely ungodly number of missiles – it didn't have the endurance of other models like his current ride.
He put those thoughts out of his mind for now as he waited in formation for the Cylons to respond to the ultimatum to withdraw or be destroyed that Admiral Haywood had just given them. Somehow, he didn't think the machines would do that as they were probably confident that their far superior numbers – seventy-five ships to the UEEF's eighteen – would give them the edge even if the UEEF had superior weaponry. A small countdown on one of his side screens showed the time remaining until the admiral's warning expired. Ten seconds remaining… nine… eight… seven… six… five… four… three… two… one… zero.
The Cylon capital ships made no move to leave instead they and an absolutely colossal swarm of fighter craft – that honestly reminded him of the swarms of battlepods and fighter pods that the Zentraedi had deployed during the war so great were their numbers – continued to close with the Colonial ships. Some of which were already jumping away – so was one of their lighter warships certainly to protect them – but others were just sitting there. Whatever fold system they have is probably cold as they've been sitting here for days at least, he thought guessing that they would need to power them back up before they could leave themselves.
It was at that moment that the Procyon opened fire. Both of the superheavy particle beam cannons mounted on either side of the prow – while there had been talk of fitting the Polaris-class battleships with reflex cannons it had ultimately been decided not to as doing so would have needlessly complicated the design of the ship – firing sending some of the strongest particle beams they knew how to generate at the Cylon fleet. Almost immediately two of their vaguely star shaped ships died, consumed by the power of weapons that could swat even a fully operational Zentraedi command dreadnought from the sky.
The response from the Cylons was immediate.
The bigger ships immediately began launching missiles towards them while a sizeable chunk of the fighters also began advancing towards them – the bulk of them however remained focused on the Colonial ships. There was no attempt to evade the Cylon fighters just approached in a wall like formation and travelled a straight as a laser towards them.
"Idiots," he muttered as the fleet showed them the depths of that particular bit of lunacy. Simultaneously in a blaze of coruscating light all eighteen of their ships opened fire sending a wall of particle beams, beam lasers and anti-fighter missiles towards their approaching foes. The effect was devastating as the deluge of firepower simply wiped whole wings of Cylon fighters from the sky in nanoseconds – the beams disintegrating them so thoroughly that not even dust remained – on their way to the warships which reeled under the brutal barrage. Several exploded immediately with a number of others falling out of formation trailing debris, atmosphere, and some kind of fluid from multiple breaches in their hulls.
Yet the machines kept coming even as more beams and missiles tore into their approaching fighter swarm. Do these guys have no common sense or sense of real space war tactics, he wondered as the damn the torpedoes full speed ahead tactic they were using seemed very wasteful to him. Even as more of the Cylon fighters died – incinerated either by energy beams or the yellow flash of a plasma warhead – someone in the enemy fleets command structure apparently suddenly decided to do something different.
His screens came alive with warnings as in a series of flashes eight of the smaller Cylon capital ships appeared behind their fleet. They opened fire immediately with a mixture of different types of heavy artillery cannons as well as missiles. Simultaneously they launched fresh fighters to engage their forces. Despite the surprise appearance the Cylon attack didn't damage any of their capital ships as pinpoint barriers appeared blocking the cannon rounds which shattered and exploded harmless on impact and aft defensive lasers began firing to pick off enemy missiles.
"Procyon to all veritechs break formation and engage hostile forces at our rear," came the voice of the flight controller on the Procyon across the common squadron command frequency.
"Roger that command," Hiro acknowledged immediately before switching to the Sabre Squadron command frequency. "Sabre Leader to all Sabres. You heard them ladies and gentlemen let's go bag ourselves some Cylons."
As his squadron mates answered with a chorus of rogers Hiro brought his fighter around and advanced upon the Cylons. He immediately locked onto the closest fighter and since it was already too close to really use missiles he engaged with his guns, specifically the twin particle cannons that were the main energy armament of the VF-4. Blasts of ion energy slammed into the alien fighter, and it didn't so much as explode under the impact as simply be vaporised by the power of bolts that were designed to punch through highly durable robotechnology alloys like the armour used on Zentraedi battle mecha.
Even as his first target disintegrated, he noted several more angling in on him, firing light autocannon rounds as they did in an attempt to pin him down long enough to kill him. Oh no you don't, he thought as he reached out and pulled down a specific switch and immediately both felt and heard the veritech begin to change as the near magical process that scientists had long since dubbed mechamorphosis took place changing the veritech from the form of an advanced, but otherwise ordinary looking fighter plane into the towering techno-knight form of a battloid.
In seconds the transformation was complete, and Hiro allowed himself a warrior's smile as he engaged the enemy, side stepping their streams of bullets with ease while returning fire with both particle cannon and lasers. The Cylons raiders, confronted with something they had never seen before, stood no chance and after what seemed like only a few seconds Hiro had several more kills on his score card. This is almost too easy, he thought to himself as he switched back to fighter mode and looked for his next target.
A brilliant explosion momentarily caught his attention, and he glanced over to see a Battle-class destroyer spinning out of control, the light of a nuclear explosion fading near it. The source of the nuclear missile being one of the Cylon cruisers – all of which were now coming under increasing fire from the aft batteries of the capital ships, fire which was steadily tearing them apart as their armour was simply not designed with directed energy weapons in mind – which not giving the destroyer time to recover fired two gauss cannon rounds at it. One missed but the other impact and blew apart one of the vessels port side turrets. The Cylon cruiser didn't get chance to fire again as several plasma missiles slammed into it and tore the entire vessel apart.
Its fellows joined it a few seconds later as the beams from the capital ships aft turrets finished them off.
As the last cruiser died Hiro began looking around for more targets noting that yet another missile salvo was coming their way from the now much depleted fleet of the larger capital ships. Why are they staying, he wondered even as he idly sent a pair of missiles screaming towards two Cylon fighters that were angling to strike the wounded destroyer. It didn't make much sense to him for the Cylons to remain as he would have thought it obvious by now that they were no match for them.
Then he glanced at the Colonial Fleet and understood why the Cylons had stayed even though, according to the fleet's battle network thirty of the larger capital ships and twelve of the smaller ones had been destroyed many by their guns. The Colonial Fleet was in a very bad way, one of their warships had been destroyed with all the others that had remained being obviously damaged. Though all of them were continuing to fight pounding out round after round of solid kinetic death. The damage to those civilian ships that hadn't already left though was catastrophic with many having been smashed apart by cannon and missile fire from the Cylon fighters and warships. The Cylons were clearly staying to inflict as much damage on the Colonial survivors as they could before they were destroyed themselves.
Though as he watched the last of the civilian ships vanished into fold jumps.
"Procyon to Sabre Leader come in."
"This is Sabre Leader go ahead," Hiro answered as the face of the senior flight operations officer on the Procyon appeared on his comm screen.
"Sabre Leader we've just been informed by the Pegasus that the Galactica is in serious trouble," flight control replied urgently, "they've lost power to their amidships port defence batteries and are thus dangerously vulnerable on that flank. The Colonials are sending some fighters to assist her, but the admiral wants some of ours there as well."
"And you want me to take my squadron and go help out?"
"Yes."
"Consider it done."
"Thanks Hiro. Good luck."
Hiro nodded back and changed back to the squadron channel. "Sabre Leader to all Sabres. New orders people. One of the Colonial battlestars is in serious trouble we've been ordered to go and assist them. Everyone form up on me and hit your afterburners."
A chorus or rogers answered him and as the rest of the squadron began to reassemble into formation Hiro brought the nose of his plane around to point at the Galactica. The coordinates of which had been sent to his navigational array by the Procyon. A few taps of his controls had the veritech's computer running a scan of the vessel which was over twenty thousand kilometres away from his current position.
The results of the scan came back almost immediately and he couldn't help but wince at what he saw. Command wasn't joking the aging battlestar was in a bad way, one of her flight pods already broken open and one of her engines had been destroyed. From the way she was listing to one side her attitude control systems had been damaged and yet amazingly she was still fighting. Every weapons array that was still functional was firing upon the Cylons – working hard to keep away the fighters that we're starting to circle her like sharks sensing blood in the water.
For a non-robotech warship she was tough he would give her that.
A bleep from the computer let him know that the squadron was in formation. Immediately he firewalled his throttles bringing the afterburners to full power. Superheated ions bursting from his planes tailpipes as it shot forward at high speed. He wasn't alone as the whole squadron moved together charging forwards towards the wounded vessel intent on helping her, on getting the circling Cylon fighters away from her so she would have a chance to recover and restore power to the vulnerable section.
A squadron of Cylon fighters that attempted to cut them off was easily dealt with a combination of a massive missile salvo and a brutal barrage of charged particle bolts and laser pulses. The VF-4 Lightnings didn't slow down, instead they kept charging towards the Galactica the pilots all hoping that they would get there in time to save her.
They were almost there when it happened.
Two of the smaller Cylon warships appeared from pinpoint fold jumps right off the Galactica's vulnerable port side. Realising what was about to happen Hiro checked his inventory of remaining weapons and noted – pleased – that he still had two medium Derringer anti-ship missiles attached to his underwing weapons nacelles. And he was just close enough to fire them at the Cylons.
"Sabre Leader to all Sabres does anyone else have any anti-ship missiles?" he asked into the squadron command frequency. Sabres twenty one, thirty one and thirty two all confirmed that they did. "Excellent okay boys sync your targeting systems with mine. We're going to hit those two Cylon cruisers."
"Roger," the other three pilots acknowledged and within moments fresh icons appeared on Hiro's screens as the targeting and firing systems all synched up. Quickly Hiro targeted the closest of the two Cylon cruisers and pulled the trigger. The two Derringer anti-ship missiles dropped free of his weapon nacelles and began streaking across space – leaving trails of ion smoke in their wake – towards the warship. Six other Derringers followed it all on course for the closest Cylon ship.
But it was too little and too late for even as the missiles launched the two Cylon ships opened fire on the Galactica.
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The port flight pod of the Galactica was the first part to be hit. Travelling far faster than the other kinetic rounds or the seventy-two missiles that had been fired the gauss rounds were the first to strike. Armour already battered and weakened by both the ravages of time and numerous battles between the old battlestar and the Cylons shattered like brittle glass allowing the now disintegrating tungsten slugs into the interior of the pod in the form of a storm of hypervelocity razor blades. Razor blades that sliced through anything and everything in their way be it bulkheads, equipment, fuel lines and the bodies of Galen Tyrol and his hangar deck crew, before exploding out the other side of the pod and impacting the armour of the main hull where they finally stopped only pitting the armour.
The first of the missile salvo arrived, flying into the holes already blown in the now rapidly decompressing flight pod and detonating. The explosions rippling through the interior tearing everything that was left to pieces, ripping open tylium fuel storage cells and munitions magazines. The detonations of both added to the tsunami of destruction raging in the flight pod. The blast surged up to the connecting struts that joined the pod to the main body of the ship and was stopped by heavy blast doors that – due to the ship being at action stations – were sealed tighter than a drum and stopped the blast in its tracks. Not that it helped the pod as the entire structure came apart, exploding into a storm of debris and flames. Much of the former of which smacked into the main hull, breaking through weakened or decayed due to age sections of armour to seriously damage the hull beneath.
Propelled by the tremendous explosive force of the destroyed flight pod the Galactica abruptly veered sharply to starboard causing the Cylon cannon rounds to miss. The same could not be said for the Cylon missiles as they simply adjusted course and slammed one after another into the hull. Armour and hull metal beneath shattered as the missile salvo ripped open a seven hundred meter long section of the hull like the battlestar was a fish on a slab. Secondary explosions erupted as damaged systems blew out and compromised compartments suddenly, violently decompressed.
Immediately the Galactica lost main power as the violent shocks pushed safety dampeners on her reactors past the safe zone causing the vessels aging solium-fuelled reactors to go into emergency shut down to prevent detonation. It was a small mercy and saved those crew who were still alive from suffering the same fate as those who had been in the flight pod. Not that the rest of the battlestar was trouble free as the shock of the impact tore through the rest of the ship like an earthquake causing crumpling bulkheads and sending debris crashing down upon crew who were already struggling to get back on their feet after the initial massive hit.
The glow of the explosions faded revealing the severely damaged battlestar spinning helpless like a wounded bird. Seeing their hated foe helpless the two Cylon cruisers prepared to unleash another salvo, a salvo that if it hit would crack the Galactica like an egg. So consumed with the idea of finishing off William Adama, who had been such a thorn in their side since the attack on the colonies, the humanoid Cylon command crew didn't notice the urgent warning about the incoming missiles on their dradis displays.
Thus, the crew of the one cruiser were caught by complete surprise when eight armour piercing Derringer anti-ship missiles slammed into their ship and punched deep into the vessel before detonating. Spheres of plasma hotter than the core of a star burst into existence inside the doomed cruiser instantly vaporising everything around them and superheating the atmosphere in surrounding compartments to the point where it flash ignited spreading the destruction until the ship broke apart along the seams and detonated as its fuel and munitions stores cooked off.
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Colonial Viper 2101
A Few Moments Earlier
A scream of horror and sheer rage exploded out of Starbuck's throat as she observed the effect of the Cylon attack upon the Galactica. She wasn't alone as both Racetrack and Kat emitted similar screams as they observed, unable to do anything to stop it, first the port flight pod – and everyone inside it – be torn apart and annihilated and then the Cylon missiles rip an ugly gash across a huge section of the battlestars port side.
The explosions faded and somewhat to their surprise the old ship was still there, but she was obviously critically damaged spinning out of control and with no power or hope to correct the ships motion. Starbuck felt tears running down her cheek as she beheld the sorry sight of the old ship, she knew almost everyone who would have died when the flight pod was destroyed. She just hoped, prayed that the Old Man was still alive over there – even though the interior of the ship would no doubt be a mess – as she honestly didn't know what she would do if Wiliam Adama had perished. Killed like so many others by those fracking toasters.
Certainly, she knew if he was dead, it would destroy Lee. Having lost his younger brother years earlier in a flight accident – something that she still blamed herself for as if she hadn't let her feelings for Zack Adama influence her, she would never have cleared him to fly Vipers – and his mother in the Cylon attack the Old Man was the only family he had left. It was what had actually healed the rift between the two of them that had opened up after Zack's death.
"Fracking toasters," she growled only to be surprised when eight red missiles slammed into one of the two Cylon cruisers, punched deep into it before detonating. The blasts quickly turning the warship into a cloud of debris and burning plasma. "What the frack? Where did those come from?"
"I believe they fired them," Stinger replied, "Terran fighters incoming."
No sooner than the former CAG of the Pegasus spoke than sixteen large white fighters, which looked more like they belonged in a planetary atmosphere than space, shot past them. The force of their ion exhausts rattling the four Vipers. The Terran fighter squadron split in two half going up over the remaining Cylon cruisers dorsal hull, while the other went down and over the ventral hull. As they passed it the fighters fired storms of blue and yellow energy bolts into the hull triggering a blizzard of explosions as the bolts punched deep into the hull.
"Let's go we can't let them have all the fun," she growled as she firewalled her throttles and charged towards the Cylon cruiser intent on joining the savaging of the vessel. She never got there for as the Terran fighters completed their attack runs panels opened on all of them and each launched two or three small missiles into the Cylon ship. Missiles whose small size completely belied their destructive power as they triggered a series of massive explosions that steadily consumed the cruiser until something vital within it gave and the entire vessel disintegrated.
"Okay what the frack were those," she asked aloud into the squadron frequency.
"Micro-missiles with cobalt warheads," an unfamiliar male voice, speaking with an accent that she had never heard before, answered. "Basically, each is a plasma charge that is designed to punch through materials far more durable than the biometallic armour these Cylons of yours use."
"Who?" Starbuck asked.
"Hiro Takashima," the voice answered, "Sabre Leader and CAG of the United Earth Starship Procyon. Sorry if we stole your kill."
"It's fine," Starbuck replied. "There's plenty more toasters to kill. So, Hiro you got a callsign?"
"Nope. Never had one and don't need one. We did away with such things years ago, the attrition rates in robotech warfare are simply too high for such things to really matter. So, who are you?"
"Kara Thrace, you can call me Starbuck."
"Starbuck as in the coffee shop?"
"Coffee shop?"
"Yeah, back on Earth there is this global chain of coffee shops all called Starbucks. They're one of the few franchise chains to have survived the Rain."
"I see," Starbuck replied even as she wondered just what this Rain was. She could hear the capitalisation in it and got the distinct impression that the term was Terran military shorthand for something else. Something more terrifying. "We can talk about it later. Let's go kill some more toasters."
"You won't get any argument from me," Hiro replied, "though you might find some hard to find in a few more moments."
"What do you…" she started to say before sudden flashes of light caught her attention. She looked out and saw a dozen more of the energy spheres that had proceeded the appearance of the Procyon erupt into normal space. Now what, she thought as the spheres flashed with Cherenkov radiation and vanished revealing several dozen more Terran warships including another of their battleships and two equally large vessels that were a bit more angular, and which immediately began spewing fighters – a lot of fighters.
Before Starbuck's shocked eyes a ripple, like a silent cry of dismay, seemed to run through the Cylon fleet. A fleet that now she looked at it was only a fraction of the size it had been when this fight had started. She could only see ten baseships and two of those cruisers left. The rest were all gone, reduced to plumes of plasma and debris. For a moment nothing more happened then almost simultaneously all of them as well as all the remaining raiders jumped out withdrawing from what had, for almost everyone involved, been an extremely costly battle.
For a moment she sat there just watching as the last of the Cylons fled. Then Starbuck turned her attention back to the Galactica. To see that she was still spinning slightly and appeared to be launching her lifepods. Clearly the surviving crew were evacuating meaning that, as painful a thing as it was to comprehend, that the Galactica herself was mortally wounded. Something that was proven a moment later when she saw a dangerous ripple appear in the hull before it seemed to slightly twist and then collapse into itself before releasing a jet of atmosphere.
After a moment she realized exactly what it meant. Galactica's back was broken and that the mere force of her spin was causing her to begin breaking up. Thus, with no way to save her as a ship with a broken back was unrecoverable, the survivors of the crew had no choice but to abandon the dying vessel.
She just hoped Admiral Adama was among them.
---///---
Authors Notes: Well, another chapter bites the dust. I hope you all enjoyed it. I am still somewhat in shock about how quickly I have been able to get this chapter done, it is very, very rare for me to be able to write a whole chapter in a single day. Guess I wanted to get the battle with the Cylons over with and I hope you all enjoyed what I came up with. Is Admiral Adama alive? You will find out in the next chapter which will be an aftermath chapter. I am inclined for him to be alive as while the Galactica is dead – even in canon she was by this point in time beginning to suffer from the effects of metal fatigue and the fact that due to being built during a time of war corners were cut during her construction the brutal attack from those two Cylon cruisers just pushed her already aged structure past the point of no return – it would be nice for him to be alive. I will decide for sure who among the Galactica's crew is alive and who perished.
Before I go to avoid a bit of confusion, I should explain how the numbering of REF veritech fighter squadrons work when there are only sixteen planes, but they can have numbers like Sabre thirty two. Each squadron is divided up into four smaller groups there is one command group which uses numbers one to four – though one can also use the designation of the squadrons name and leader – while the other four are numbered one to three with each plane having a specific number that reflects its position in the group. So, for example Sabre thirty two is Sabre Squadron, Group Three Plane Two. I hope that makes sense and avoids any confusion. Until next time.
---///---
Chapter Nine
Sabre Leader
A Few Minutes Earlier
Dressed in a full suit of CVR-3 body armour, which he was wearing over his flight suit, and cocooned within the cockpit of a VF-4 Lightning veritech fighter Commander Hiro Takashima grunted slightly as with a surge of gee forces an electromagnetic catapult launched him clear of the Procyon. Around him the rest of Sabre – the only squadron on the Procyon that was equipped with the powerful Lightnings the rest were still using VF-1 Valkyries though they had all had their systems and weapons significantly upgraded from the model that had fought and ultimately won the Robotech War – were also launched into space. Grabbing his controls he brought the Lightning around and into formation around the great battleship and waited for what he knew was going to come next.
All around him the rest of the UEEF ships were also launching their squadrons of fighters. It was a somewhat eclectic mix of VF-1 and VF-4 veritechs, some of the new VFA-5 Alpha's and non-transformable space fighters like the Comet. Which was if he was honest with himself somewhat representative of the United Earth Expeditionary Forces themselves as they were in the midst of a major transition between levels of technology and the fighters – both veritech and non-veritech – designed to use them. He had heard rumours that there was plans to eventually replace all existing veritech groups with the Alpha fighters, though he hoped that wasn't the case as while the Alpha looked really nice on paper – not to mention it carried an absolutely ungodly number of missiles – it didn't have the endurance of other models like his current ride.
He put those thoughts out of his mind for now as he waited in formation for the Cylons to respond to the ultimatum to withdraw or be destroyed that Admiral Haywood had just given them. Somehow, he didn't think the machines would do that as they were probably confident that their far superior numbers – seventy-five ships to the UEEF's eighteen – would give them the edge even if the UEEF had superior weaponry. A small countdown on one of his side screens showed the time remaining until the admiral's warning expired. Ten seconds remaining… nine… eight… seven… six… five… four… three… two… one… zero.
The Cylon capital ships made no move to leave instead they and an absolutely colossal swarm of fighter craft – that honestly reminded him of the swarms of battlepods and fighter pods that the Zentraedi had deployed during the war so great were their numbers – continued to close with the Colonial ships. Some of which were already jumping away – so was one of their lighter warships certainly to protect them – but others were just sitting there. Whatever fold system they have is probably cold as they've been sitting here for days at least, he thought guessing that they would need to power them back up before they could leave themselves.
It was at that moment that the Procyon opened fire. Both of the superheavy particle beam cannons mounted on either side of the prow – while there had been talk of fitting the Polaris-class battleships with reflex cannons it had ultimately been decided not to as doing so would have needlessly complicated the design of the ship – firing sending some of the strongest particle beams they knew how to generate at the Cylon fleet. Almost immediately two of their vaguely star shaped ships died, consumed by the power of weapons that could swat even a fully operational Zentraedi command dreadnought from the sky.
The response from the Cylons was immediate.
The bigger ships immediately began launching missiles towards them while a sizeable chunk of the fighters also began advancing towards them – the bulk of them however remained focused on the Colonial ships. There was no attempt to evade the Cylon fighters just approached in a wall like formation and travelled a straight as a laser towards them.
"Idiots," he muttered as the fleet showed them the depths of that particular bit of lunacy. Simultaneously in a blaze of coruscating light all eighteen of their ships opened fire sending a wall of particle beams, beam lasers and anti-fighter missiles towards their approaching foes. The effect was devastating as the deluge of firepower simply wiped whole wings of Cylon fighters from the sky in nanoseconds – the beams disintegrating them so thoroughly that not even dust remained – on their way to the warships which reeled under the brutal barrage. Several exploded immediately with a number of others falling out of formation trailing debris, atmosphere, and some kind of fluid from multiple breaches in their hulls.
Yet the machines kept coming even as more beams and missiles tore into their approaching fighter swarm. Do these guys have no common sense or sense of real space war tactics, he wondered as the damn the torpedoes full speed ahead tactic they were using seemed very wasteful to him. Even as more of the Cylon fighters died – incinerated either by energy beams or the yellow flash of a plasma warhead – someone in the enemy fleets command structure apparently suddenly decided to do something different.
His screens came alive with warnings as in a series of flashes eight of the smaller Cylon capital ships appeared behind their fleet. They opened fire immediately with a mixture of different types of heavy artillery cannons as well as missiles. Simultaneously they launched fresh fighters to engage their forces. Despite the surprise appearance the Cylon attack didn't damage any of their capital ships as pinpoint barriers appeared blocking the cannon rounds which shattered and exploded harmless on impact and aft defensive lasers began firing to pick off enemy missiles.
"Procyon to all veritechs break formation and engage hostile forces at our rear," came the voice of the flight controller on the Procyon across the common squadron command frequency.
"Roger that command," Hiro acknowledged immediately before switching to the Sabre Squadron command frequency. "Sabre Leader to all Sabres. You heard them ladies and gentlemen let's go bag ourselves some Cylons."
As his squadron mates answered with a chorus of rogers Hiro brought his fighter around and advanced upon the Cylons. He immediately locked onto the closest fighter and since it was already too close to really use missiles he engaged with his guns, specifically the twin particle cannons that were the main energy armament of the VF-4. Blasts of ion energy slammed into the alien fighter, and it didn't so much as explode under the impact as simply be vaporised by the power of bolts that were designed to punch through highly durable robotechnology alloys like the armour used on Zentraedi battle mecha.
Even as his first target disintegrated, he noted several more angling in on him, firing light autocannon rounds as they did in an attempt to pin him down long enough to kill him. Oh no you don't, he thought as he reached out and pulled down a specific switch and immediately both felt and heard the veritech begin to change as the near magical process that scientists had long since dubbed mechamorphosis took place changing the veritech from the form of an advanced, but otherwise ordinary looking fighter plane into the towering techno-knight form of a battloid.
In seconds the transformation was complete, and Hiro allowed himself a warrior's smile as he engaged the enemy, side stepping their streams of bullets with ease while returning fire with both particle cannon and lasers. The Cylons raiders, confronted with something they had never seen before, stood no chance and after what seemed like only a few seconds Hiro had several more kills on his score card. This is almost too easy, he thought to himself as he switched back to fighter mode and looked for his next target.
A brilliant explosion momentarily caught his attention, and he glanced over to see a Battle-class destroyer spinning out of control, the light of a nuclear explosion fading near it. The source of the nuclear missile being one of the Cylon cruisers – all of which were now coming under increasing fire from the aft batteries of the capital ships, fire which was steadily tearing them apart as their armour was simply not designed with directed energy weapons in mind – which not giving the destroyer time to recover fired two gauss cannon rounds at it. One missed but the other impact and blew apart one of the vessels port side turrets. The Cylon cruiser didn't get chance to fire again as several plasma missiles slammed into it and tore the entire vessel apart.
Its fellows joined it a few seconds later as the beams from the capital ships aft turrets finished them off.
As the last cruiser died Hiro began looking around for more targets noting that yet another missile salvo was coming their way from the now much depleted fleet of the larger capital ships. Why are they staying, he wondered even as he idly sent a pair of missiles screaming towards two Cylon fighters that were angling to strike the wounded destroyer. It didn't make much sense to him for the Cylons to remain as he would have thought it obvious by now that they were no match for them.
Then he glanced at the Colonial Fleet and understood why the Cylons had stayed even though, according to the fleet's battle network thirty of the larger capital ships and twelve of the smaller ones had been destroyed many by their guns. The Colonial Fleet was in a very bad way, one of their warships had been destroyed with all the others that had remained being obviously damaged. Though all of them were continuing to fight pounding out round after round of solid kinetic death. The damage to those civilian ships that hadn't already left though was catastrophic with many having been smashed apart by cannon and missile fire from the Cylon fighters and warships. The Cylons were clearly staying to inflict as much damage on the Colonial survivors as they could before they were destroyed themselves.
Though as he watched the last of the civilian ships vanished into fold jumps.
"Procyon to Sabre Leader come in."
"This is Sabre Leader go ahead," Hiro answered as the face of the senior flight operations officer on the Procyon appeared on his comm screen.
"Sabre Leader we've just been informed by the Pegasus that the Galactica is in serious trouble," flight control replied urgently, "they've lost power to their amidships port defence batteries and are thus dangerously vulnerable on that flank. The Colonials are sending some fighters to assist her, but the admiral wants some of ours there as well."
"And you want me to take my squadron and go help out?"
"Yes."
"Consider it done."
"Thanks Hiro. Good luck."
Hiro nodded back and changed back to the squadron channel. "Sabre Leader to all Sabres. New orders people. One of the Colonial battlestars is in serious trouble we've been ordered to go and assist them. Everyone form up on me and hit your afterburners."
A chorus or rogers answered him and as the rest of the squadron began to reassemble into formation Hiro brought the nose of his plane around to point at the Galactica. The coordinates of which had been sent to his navigational array by the Procyon. A few taps of his controls had the veritech's computer running a scan of the vessel which was over twenty thousand kilometres away from his current position.
The results of the scan came back almost immediately and he couldn't help but wince at what he saw. Command wasn't joking the aging battlestar was in a bad way, one of her flight pods already broken open and one of her engines had been destroyed. From the way she was listing to one side her attitude control systems had been damaged and yet amazingly she was still fighting. Every weapons array that was still functional was firing upon the Cylons – working hard to keep away the fighters that we're starting to circle her like sharks sensing blood in the water.
For a non-robotech warship she was tough he would give her that.
A bleep from the computer let him know that the squadron was in formation. Immediately he firewalled his throttles bringing the afterburners to full power. Superheated ions bursting from his planes tailpipes as it shot forward at high speed. He wasn't alone as the whole squadron moved together charging forwards towards the wounded vessel intent on helping her, on getting the circling Cylon fighters away from her so she would have a chance to recover and restore power to the vulnerable section.
A squadron of Cylon fighters that attempted to cut them off was easily dealt with a combination of a massive missile salvo and a brutal barrage of charged particle bolts and laser pulses. The VF-4 Lightnings didn't slow down, instead they kept charging towards the Galactica the pilots all hoping that they would get there in time to save her.
They were almost there when it happened.
Two of the smaller Cylon warships appeared from pinpoint fold jumps right off the Galactica's vulnerable port side. Realising what was about to happen Hiro checked his inventory of remaining weapons and noted – pleased – that he still had two medium Derringer anti-ship missiles attached to his underwing weapons nacelles. And he was just close enough to fire them at the Cylons.
"Sabre Leader to all Sabres does anyone else have any anti-ship missiles?" he asked into the squadron command frequency. Sabres twenty one, thirty one and thirty two all confirmed that they did. "Excellent okay boys sync your targeting systems with mine. We're going to hit those two Cylon cruisers."
"Roger," the other three pilots acknowledged and within moments fresh icons appeared on Hiro's screens as the targeting and firing systems all synched up. Quickly Hiro targeted the closest of the two Cylon cruisers and pulled the trigger. The two Derringer anti-ship missiles dropped free of his weapon nacelles and began streaking across space – leaving trails of ion smoke in their wake – towards the warship. Six other Derringers followed it all on course for the closest Cylon ship.
But it was too little and too late for even as the missiles launched the two Cylon ships opened fire on the Galactica.
---///---
The port flight pod of the Galactica was the first part to be hit. Travelling far faster than the other kinetic rounds or the seventy-two missiles that had been fired the gauss rounds were the first to strike. Armour already battered and weakened by both the ravages of time and numerous battles between the old battlestar and the Cylons shattered like brittle glass allowing the now disintegrating tungsten slugs into the interior of the pod in the form of a storm of hypervelocity razor blades. Razor blades that sliced through anything and everything in their way be it bulkheads, equipment, fuel lines and the bodies of Galen Tyrol and his hangar deck crew, before exploding out the other side of the pod and impacting the armour of the main hull where they finally stopped only pitting the armour.
The first of the missile salvo arrived, flying into the holes already blown in the now rapidly decompressing flight pod and detonating. The explosions rippling through the interior tearing everything that was left to pieces, ripping open tylium fuel storage cells and munitions magazines. The detonations of both added to the tsunami of destruction raging in the flight pod. The blast surged up to the connecting struts that joined the pod to the main body of the ship and was stopped by heavy blast doors that – due to the ship being at action stations – were sealed tighter than a drum and stopped the blast in its tracks. Not that it helped the pod as the entire structure came apart, exploding into a storm of debris and flames. Much of the former of which smacked into the main hull, breaking through weakened or decayed due to age sections of armour to seriously damage the hull beneath.
Propelled by the tremendous explosive force of the destroyed flight pod the Galactica abruptly veered sharply to starboard causing the Cylon cannon rounds to miss. The same could not be said for the Cylon missiles as they simply adjusted course and slammed one after another into the hull. Armour and hull metal beneath shattered as the missile salvo ripped open a seven hundred meter long section of the hull like the battlestar was a fish on a slab. Secondary explosions erupted as damaged systems blew out and compromised compartments suddenly, violently decompressed.
Immediately the Galactica lost main power as the violent shocks pushed safety dampeners on her reactors past the safe zone causing the vessels aging solium-fuelled reactors to go into emergency shut down to prevent detonation. It was a small mercy and saved those crew who were still alive from suffering the same fate as those who had been in the flight pod. Not that the rest of the battlestar was trouble free as the shock of the impact tore through the rest of the ship like an earthquake causing crumpling bulkheads and sending debris crashing down upon crew who were already struggling to get back on their feet after the initial massive hit.
The glow of the explosions faded revealing the severely damaged battlestar spinning helpless like a wounded bird. Seeing their hated foe helpless the two Cylon cruisers prepared to unleash another salvo, a salvo that if it hit would crack the Galactica like an egg. So consumed with the idea of finishing off William Adama, who had been such a thorn in their side since the attack on the colonies, the humanoid Cylon command crew didn't notice the urgent warning about the incoming missiles on their dradis displays.
Thus, the crew of the one cruiser were caught by complete surprise when eight armour piercing Derringer anti-ship missiles slammed into their ship and punched deep into the vessel before detonating. Spheres of plasma hotter than the core of a star burst into existence inside the doomed cruiser instantly vaporising everything around them and superheating the atmosphere in surrounding compartments to the point where it flash ignited spreading the destruction until the ship broke apart along the seams and detonated as its fuel and munitions stores cooked off.
---///---
Colonial Viper 2101
A Few Moments Earlier
A scream of horror and sheer rage exploded out of Starbuck's throat as she observed the effect of the Cylon attack upon the Galactica. She wasn't alone as both Racetrack and Kat emitted similar screams as they observed, unable to do anything to stop it, first the port flight pod – and everyone inside it – be torn apart and annihilated and then the Cylon missiles rip an ugly gash across a huge section of the battlestars port side.
The explosions faded and somewhat to their surprise the old ship was still there, but she was obviously critically damaged spinning out of control and with no power or hope to correct the ships motion. Starbuck felt tears running down her cheek as she beheld the sorry sight of the old ship, she knew almost everyone who would have died when the flight pod was destroyed. She just hoped, prayed that the Old Man was still alive over there – even though the interior of the ship would no doubt be a mess – as she honestly didn't know what she would do if Wiliam Adama had perished. Killed like so many others by those fracking toasters.
Certainly, she knew if he was dead, it would destroy Lee. Having lost his younger brother years earlier in a flight accident – something that she still blamed herself for as if she hadn't let her feelings for Zack Adama influence her, she would never have cleared him to fly Vipers – and his mother in the Cylon attack the Old Man was the only family he had left. It was what had actually healed the rift between the two of them that had opened up after Zack's death.
"Fracking toasters," she growled only to be surprised when eight red missiles slammed into one of the two Cylon cruisers, punched deep into it before detonating. The blasts quickly turning the warship into a cloud of debris and burning plasma. "What the frack? Where did those come from?"
"I believe they fired them," Stinger replied, "Terran fighters incoming."
No sooner than the former CAG of the Pegasus spoke than sixteen large white fighters, which looked more like they belonged in a planetary atmosphere than space, shot past them. The force of their ion exhausts rattling the four Vipers. The Terran fighter squadron split in two half going up over the remaining Cylon cruisers dorsal hull, while the other went down and over the ventral hull. As they passed it the fighters fired storms of blue and yellow energy bolts into the hull triggering a blizzard of explosions as the bolts punched deep into the hull.
"Let's go we can't let them have all the fun," she growled as she firewalled her throttles and charged towards the Cylon cruiser intent on joining the savaging of the vessel. She never got there for as the Terran fighters completed their attack runs panels opened on all of them and each launched two or three small missiles into the Cylon ship. Missiles whose small size completely belied their destructive power as they triggered a series of massive explosions that steadily consumed the cruiser until something vital within it gave and the entire vessel disintegrated.
"Okay what the frack were those," she asked aloud into the squadron frequency.
"Micro-missiles with cobalt warheads," an unfamiliar male voice, speaking with an accent that she had never heard before, answered. "Basically, each is a plasma charge that is designed to punch through materials far more durable than the biometallic armour these Cylons of yours use."
"Who?" Starbuck asked.
"Hiro Takashima," the voice answered, "Sabre Leader and CAG of the United Earth Starship Procyon. Sorry if we stole your kill."
"It's fine," Starbuck replied. "There's plenty more toasters to kill. So, Hiro you got a callsign?"
"Nope. Never had one and don't need one. We did away with such things years ago, the attrition rates in robotech warfare are simply too high for such things to really matter. So, who are you?"
"Kara Thrace, you can call me Starbuck."
"Starbuck as in the coffee shop?"
"Coffee shop?"
"Yeah, back on Earth there is this global chain of coffee shops all called Starbucks. They're one of the few franchise chains to have survived the Rain."
"I see," Starbuck replied even as she wondered just what this Rain was. She could hear the capitalisation in it and got the distinct impression that the term was Terran military shorthand for something else. Something more terrifying. "We can talk about it later. Let's go kill some more toasters."
"You won't get any argument from me," Hiro replied, "though you might find some hard to find in a few more moments."
"What do you…" she started to say before sudden flashes of light caught her attention. She looked out and saw a dozen more of the energy spheres that had proceeded the appearance of the Procyon erupt into normal space. Now what, she thought as the spheres flashed with Cherenkov radiation and vanished revealing several dozen more Terran warships including another of their battleships and two equally large vessels that were a bit more angular, and which immediately began spewing fighters – a lot of fighters.
Before Starbuck's shocked eyes a ripple, like a silent cry of dismay, seemed to run through the Cylon fleet. A fleet that now she looked at it was only a fraction of the size it had been when this fight had started. She could only see ten baseships and two of those cruisers left. The rest were all gone, reduced to plumes of plasma and debris. For a moment nothing more happened then almost simultaneously all of them as well as all the remaining raiders jumped out withdrawing from what had, for almost everyone involved, been an extremely costly battle.
For a moment she sat there just watching as the last of the Cylons fled. Then Starbuck turned her attention back to the Galactica. To see that she was still spinning slightly and appeared to be launching her lifepods. Clearly the surviving crew were evacuating meaning that, as painful a thing as it was to comprehend, that the Galactica herself was mortally wounded. Something that was proven a moment later when she saw a dangerous ripple appear in the hull before it seemed to slightly twist and then collapse into itself before releasing a jet of atmosphere.
After a moment she realized exactly what it meant. Galactica's back was broken and that the mere force of her spin was causing her to begin breaking up. Thus, with no way to save her as a ship with a broken back was unrecoverable, the survivors of the crew had no choice but to abandon the dying vessel.
She just hoped Admiral Adama was among them.
---///---
Authors Notes: Well, another chapter bites the dust. I hope you all enjoyed it. I am still somewhat in shock about how quickly I have been able to get this chapter done, it is very, very rare for me to be able to write a whole chapter in a single day. Guess I wanted to get the battle with the Cylons over with and I hope you all enjoyed what I came up with. Is Admiral Adama alive? You will find out in the next chapter which will be an aftermath chapter. I am inclined for him to be alive as while the Galactica is dead – even in canon she was by this point in time beginning to suffer from the effects of metal fatigue and the fact that due to being built during a time of war corners were cut during her construction the brutal attack from those two Cylon cruisers just pushed her already aged structure past the point of no return – it would be nice for him to be alive. I will decide for sure who among the Galactica's crew is alive and who perished.
Before I go to avoid a bit of confusion, I should explain how the numbering of REF veritech fighter squadrons work when there are only sixteen planes, but they can have numbers like Sabre thirty two. Each squadron is divided up into four smaller groups there is one command group which uses numbers one to four – though one can also use the designation of the squadrons name and leader – while the other four are numbered one to three with each plane having a specific number that reflects its position in the group. So, for example Sabre thirty two is Sabre Squadron, Group Three Plane Two. I hope that makes sense and avoids any confusion. Until next time.
Doomsought
Well-known member
I'd rather have a full grand cannon array. If all four of them manage to be built prior to Dolza attacking Earth they could have stopped the rain of death.
Chapter Ten
New
AJW
Well-known member
Chapter Ten
He was surrounded by red light.
The light was everywhere and was in numerous different shades that sparkled and crackled in an odd but somehow comforting fashion. Strange strings of numbers and symbols streamed through the crimson ether in an unceasing stream of information. Yet just by looking at them he could see that something was wrong with them, there was something visible as a green aura contaminating many of the streams which was only slowly disappearing whenever a whitish light began slowly playing across the stream.
Abruptly one of the searching white lights suddenly landed on him. He got the distinct impression that he was being scanned and checked for something, presumably whatever that green contaminant was. After a second the light disappeared, and he heard/felt a click as though a switch had just been thrown. Something grabbed him and suddenly he was travelling down a twisting red and black tunnel at impossible speed until a bright light appeared ahead. It enveloped him…
…and Galen Tyrol opened his eyes with a gasp.
He was startled to find himself lying almost completely submerged in a tank or a bath of some strange fluid that was both warm and somewhat viscous. Awkwardly he sat up and looked around in confusion as the last thing he remembered he was on the Galactica, the wall of the hangar deck opposite him exploded. There had been an intense pain and then nothing but that strange red ether place, then he was here, wherever here was. As he looked around, he saw that he was in a dark metal room with walls inset with small square white lights aside from a thick band halfway down the wall which glowed and pulsed with red light. Next to a door was some kind of control station that seemed to have water running over a surface that glowed softly with the same pulsing red light. Around the tank he was in were four other tanks in which he could see others all of them either asleep or in some form of suspended animation. They were all clustered around a circular central hub that gave them the appearance of being spokes on a wheel.
For a few seconds he didn't understand what this was, what it meant but then with a jolt of both shock and sheer horror he realised what this all meant. "Holy frack I'm a Cylon," he said a moment before clutching his head and closing his eyes as a sharp pain exploded across his awareness. He felt something within him, some kind of wall in his mind that he hadn't even realized was there, dissolve and then a blizzard of information and memories exploded forth sweeping across his awareness with the same unstoppable force as a hurricane. The flood ceased and as his mind finished processing he knew everything, remembered everything. Remembered being born as a member of the true thirteenth tribe of Kobol on a world hundreds of light years from the outer edge of the Cyrranus Cluster and the Twelve Colonies. Remembered how he like everyone else on his world had been a member of an entire race of biosynthetic androids who had left Kobol to avoid a devastating war with the humans who created them. How in their hubris they had gone on to make their own robotic servants and how that had, inevitably led to first a rebellion as their machines became sentient then a devastating nuclear war that ultimately destroyed their world and civilization. How he and a few others, who had rediscovered and recreated resurrection technology, had survival the nuclear hellfire that consumed their world. How, remembering the other tribes, they had headed for the colonies to hope to prevent the Colonials from repeating their mistake. How they had failed to reach them in time, arriving to find a devastating war raging between humans and machines. How they had contacted the Cylons and convinced them to end the war. How they had begun building a new society...
.... only for the Ones to ultimately betray them.
"John I am going to kill you," he growled opening his eyes again, righteous fury now blazing in his eyes as he remembered exactly how One – or John – had carried out his coup against him and his fellow original Cylons. How he had taken everything they had hoped, everything they'd dreamed of and worked for, everything they had tried to build for this newest youngest iteration of their kind and perverted it into something terrible. How he had overpowered them with a previously unknown model of Centurion that he'd been in control of and – before he killed them – saying he was going to send them to the Colonies to witness his final triumph up close and personal.
Awkwardly, getting out of these tanks wasn't easy as the cloning/stasis fluid he had been submerged in was very slippery especially against a metal deck, he climbed out of the resurrection tank mentally calling that turncoat every single name under the sun. Once he was done mentally cursing, which took a good minute or two as his time in the Colonial military had taught him a lot of very creative swearwords, he walked over to the control console as it suddenly occurred to him that it was odd that nobody – not even John – had come into this room – a room he recognised as being on the Resurrection Hub – to greet him or gloat as soon as he woke up. He wanted to know why, and if it was an oversight on John's part well that was going to cost that bastard dearly as he should have known better than to leave one of them alone with potential to access the Cylon data stream.
Without hesitation he put a hand on the interface surface and accessed the systems.
Instantly he knew why the notification hadn't been sent to John though it had been automatically generated. The hubs systems were working overtime – with almost every ounce of spare processing capacity being redirected to the task – to process a massive number of incoming personality downloads. Many of whom were contaminated with an energy subharmonic that was unlike anything he had ever seen before which was saying something considering how old he actually knew himself to be now. Whatever it was, though it obviously came from the Terran beam weapons possibly as a by-product, it was creating disruptions and corruptions in the data streams. Both of which were having to be compensated for in order for the afflicted Cylons to successfully download into new bodies.
Unfortunately, the complex nature of the subharmonic meant that screening it out was not easy. The harmonic was subtly different in each data stream and affected it in different, complex, and very unpredictable ways. As a result, every possible resource on the hub was being directed to screening out the interference and processing the downloads, sending the Cylons either to resurrection rooms here on the hub, on the colony or on one of the resurrection ships really wherever there was any spare capacity. Even with the diversion of resources the resurrection network was operating at a level that was dangerously close to overload. Which was slowing down and disrupting all other network functions.
As a result, the alert to John that one of the Final Five had resurrected, had been delayed and hadn't even left the local server. It was thus easy for Galen to reach into the stream and reset the command and make it look like it had been generated by a system anomaly caused by the strain on the resurrection net. Then, remembering that the stasis fluid needed to be washed off as quickly as possible as if it dried on you, it got irritating quickly especially in those harder to reach areas, he pulled his hand away from the terminal. Then he began making his way to where his restored memories told him were showers and clothing stores. Once he was showered and dressed, he would have to start working out just how he was going to put a stop to the madness that John had instigated. A madness that was now spreading to include a people who had never even heard of Kobol.
A people who he didn't doubt could and would, if he didn't somehow stop this, wipe the Cylon race from existence.
---///---
Combat Information Centre
Colonial Battlestar Galactica
That Same Time
Admiral William Adama groaned softly as consciousness returned. Slowly he opened his eyes to find that he was face down on the hard metal deck of the CIC, next to the situation table. What happened, he wondered even as he became more aware of what was going on around him. From all around he could hear groans and worried tones from the crew, he could also hear the snapping hissing of sparks and the crackling of a fire. But over it all was an urgent, blaring alarm. An alarm that he knew but like every spacer of any species in the universe it was a alarm he had hoped he would never, ever hear outside of drills.
It was the alarm to tell the crew to abandon ship.
For a moment he wondered why that alarm was being sounded. Then he remembered the dradis screen coming alive with urgent proximity warnings as two the Cylon cruisers executed tactical FTL jumps to appear right in the centre of the hole that had opened in their defences as a result of the power failure to their amidship port defence batteries. A power failure caused by the last missile from one of the baseships they destroyed striking in just the wrong place and severing the power conduit. He remembered exchanging a horrified look with Saul as both cruisers had opened fire.
Before being slammed to the deck as the Galactica was rocked by an absolutely brutal barrage of Cylon heavy weapons fire. He remembered something knocking him in the back of the head, instantly robbing him of consciousness, but not before the alarms warning of catastrophic hull breaches had begun to sound. Groaning again he awkwardly got back to his feet, swaying as a wave of pain and dizziness washed over him. Thankfully someone caught him before he could fall back to the deck and no doubt give himself a concussion if he didn't just get sent straight back into the land of nod by the impact.
"Easy sir you took a nasty knock to the back of the head," Lieutenant Gaeta said. Adama looked over to see the normally neatly presented lieutenant looked distinctly the worse for wear. He was covered with soot and his black uniform was ripped and torn in numerous places, the also had a nasty cut above one eyebrow.
"What's happening lieutenant what's our status," Adama asked as, through sheer force of will, he pushed aside the pain and disorientation.
"It's bad sir. We've lost both main and auxiliary power throughout the ship," Gaeta replied, "the port flight pod is completely destroyed and there is a gash at least seven hundred meters long in our port side from just behind the ships head to just before the start of the engine block. There are fires burning on all decks but worst of all the ship sh…." Gaeta's voice trailed off like he couldn't bring himself to say it.
"She is what lieutenant," Adama asked though he already had an idea what the much younger man was going to say. Saul would never have ordered the ship evacuation alarm activated if the Galactica had been in any way intact or salvageable. The damage they had sustained had to be mortal for him to have taken that step.
"She's breaking up sir," Gaeta admitted. "There is massive structural damage to all central decks, she's broken her back in at least three areas according to the damage control board. The concussion from the destruction of the port flight pod and the decompression from the ripping open of our port flank has sent us into an uncontrollable spin. That coupled with the damage its… it's steadily ripping us apart. And then there's the fires in the core, they're out of control and advancing quickly towards both the tylium storage tanks and our main magazines. We haven't been able to stop them or vent the affected areas – venting controls are offline."
"Frack. How long do we have?" Adama asked even as he felt his insides twist in pain as there was no denying the fact that the Galactica was dying. Soon the battlestar on which he had first started his military career as a Viper pilot during the First Cylon War and which he had commanded for the last few years would soon be no more. Though he supposed that it was better that she had gone out this way, with her hands at the Cylons throat, than be taken by the slow decay of time. "And where is Colonel Tigh?"
"Not long enough," Gaeta admitted, "the fires are spreading rapidly we only have at most ten to fifteen minutes before they reach either the magazines or the tylium tanks. When that happens…"
"…the ship will be destroyed," Adama finished knowing that if either the main magazines or the tylium tanks went up, or the Lords forbid both of them, the effect wouldn't be that much different to a nuke going off inside the ship. The blast would be about as destructive and would definitely rip what was left of the ship apart.
"As for Colonel Tigh. The corridor to the closest of the lifepods has been blocked by debris," Gaeta continued. "He and the marine guards went to see if he could find us another way. I believe he said something about seeing if he could reopen an old corridor."
"Corridor 57B," Adama said guessing what Saul intended. "It was blocked off during the Galactica's last major refit – just before the Mercury-class was introduced into service to replace the Jupiter-class – but it ran past the original CIC which was much larger when the ship was first built. If Saul can get it open it will let us reach the starboard lifepods."
"Do you think he will be able to sir?" Dee asked.
"He might it was only blocked off with a bulkhead panel. If he can release the wall clamp's then we should be able to access the corridor. It will be dark and dusty, since nobody has been anywhere near it for twenty years, but it should be traversable."
Dee nodded and started to open her mouth to suggest they gather up as many emergency flashlights as they could find but before she could speak a new sound began to be heard in the CIC. A strange hissing, humming sound that was coming from one of the few clear bulkheads on the portside of the CIC. What in the world, Adama wondered as it wasn't like any sound that he had ever heard before. He looked at the bulkhead in question just in time to see a part of it begin to blister and glow.
A moment later a narrow beam of bluish-white light broke through and began to carefully cut an opening, the metal in the energy beams path offering practically to resistance to it certainly not the way it would resist even the industrial strength plasma cutters that had been used back in the Colonies. Adama wasn't the only one of the CIC crew who stared in shock and amazement as what had to be a laser, a honest to gods laser, one that was strong enough to cut through a carbon nanotube reinforce titanium-steel bulkhead with ease, cut a human sized chunk out of the wall. The beam vanished a moment before the cut section fell into the room – propelled by a powerful kick – accompanied by a puff of smoke that stunk of molten metal landing on the floor with a loud crash. A moment later a handful of human figures dressed in tough looking, but functional, armour with full helmets came into the room through the newly cut hole.
"Admiral Adama?" one of them asked speaking Colonial standard with the most appalling of accents. In fact, from the way he spoke it, and speaker was a man, Adama would be willing to bet that Colonial standard wasn't his native language and he was using a translation device of some kind. Which combined with the look of the armour and the method of entry made it obvious that he had come from one of the Terran warships. The battle with the Cylons must be over, and they've sent over search and rescue parties, Adama thought before stepping forward.
"Yes?" he asked.
"Lieutenant Patrick Samuels sir from the United Earth Starship Amelia Earheart," the younger man identified himself, "my team and a few others have been sent over to carry our search and rescue operations aboard this ship."
"I guessed as much," Adama replied, "how is the evacuation going lieutenant? And what's happening out there is the battle over?"
"It is sir. Almost all of the Cylon fleet has been destroyed. The rest ran for it when we and the rest of the MARS 5 defence fleet defolded after Admiral Haywood summoned reinforcements," Samuels answered, "cowards ran away before we could introduce them to the business end of our cannons. When they folded out, we were scrambled to help evacuate this ship as our sensors confirm she doesn't have long left. Already a number of sections on the outer decks have collapsed or broken away."
Adama winced slightly at how blunt the Terran lieutenant was being about the state of the Galactica. Though it was the truth he would have thought that their cousins would be a bit more diplomatic about stating it. "No, she doesn't," he admitted, "what about our civilian ships?"
"The last of them got away to your rendezvous point. Captain Harrison has been sent with the Sirona, the rest of Pathfinder Group Four and one of our supercarriers the Ferdinand von Zeppelin to contact them. They'll protect them while Admiral Haywood sorts out with President Roslin where we are going to take you."
"Earth?" Gaeta said hopefully.
Samuels shook his head, knowing that was not going to happen. "Probably not," he admitted knowing that neither the United Earth Government nor the body formed to oversee the Expeditionary Force, the Plenipotentiary Council, would allow that at this time. Not while the Cylons, who were obviously tracking the Colonials somehow, posed a threat. "Earth is a few thousand light years from here and until we figure out how the Cylons have been tracking you we cannot risk taking you there. Don't worry though we'll sort something out."
"I see," Adama replied even as he saw Gaeta's shoulders drop slightly in disappointment. He was disappointed as well, but he could understand the thirteenth tribe's caution. After all they still didn't know exactly how the Cylons had been tracking them themselves, especially as tracking jumps – or folds as their cousins apparently called it – was supposed to be impossible. Until an answer was found taking them to Earth would be incredibly dangerous as the very last thing that they wanted was to lead the Cylons to the last bastion of humanity.
Even if the thirteenth could look after themselves as this battle had made abundantly clear.
"Admiral, we need to evacuate you and your crew. What happens to you, where you go is something that can be sorted out later," Samuels reminded even as a deep, rumbling boom came from somewhere deep within the core of the ship and the deck shook as something exploded. It set off a new round of concerned muttering from the survivors of the CIC crew as they realised how close the Galactica was to her final, explosive end.
"Yes, your right," Adama admitted getting right back to the more immediate problem. "Lieutenant Gaeta you'll be in charge of evacuating the CIC."
"What about you sir?" Gaeta asked.
"I'll be right behind you I'm just going to go and get Colonel Tigh. I know after all where the entrance to the corridor he was trying to open is."
"Understood sir."
Adama gave the younger man a reassuring smile before quickly leaving the room – hearing Gaeta beginning to speak with the Terran Samuels about evacuating the CIC as he did so – and began heading right for where he remembered corridor 57B had been. He had to pace himself somewhat as the air was getting increasingly hot and contaminated with toxins produced by the fires steadily burning their way into the Galactica's heart. Thus, it was getting increasingly difficult to keep breathing properly and not succumb to a fit of coughing. The ever deteriorating quality of the atmosphere, and the distant rumbling of internal explosions as well as the creaking and snapping of the hull, was a terrible testament to the fact that the Galactica was doomed.
It took only a few moments to reach his destination and sure enough there was Saul and a pair of burly marines attempting to pry the bulkhead panel off the wall exposing the long disused corridor beyond. Attempting to being the operative words as lacking any specialised tools or cutting gear they were having to resort to simple human muscle power to pull the bulkhead panel free of the clips it was locked into. Despite the exertions of the three men working together the panel was distinctly unimpressed and remained stubbornly locked in place.
"Saul," Adama called out gaining Tigh's attention.
"Bill thank the lords you're alright," Tigh replied seeing him approach. "Can you give us a hand with this? This panels been on so long I think the clamps are rusted shut."
"I could but it's not necessary now," Adama answered before quickly explaining about the Terran search and rescue crew and how they had literally lasered a hole in the wall to get to them. He then added how he had come to get them while Gaeta worked with the leader of the Terran team to evacuate the CIC and get them to the lifepods or whatever craft their cousins had used to board the Galactica. Which itself had likely involved lasering their way through the hull.
"There's not much time left," he finished, "we need to leave before the fires reach either the magazines or the tylium tanks and blows what's left of this ship apart."
"Alright we better go then," Saul agreed. Not needing to say anything more Adama turned and began walking back towards the CIC, the sound of footsteps letting him know Saul and both marines were following closely behind him. At one point they stumbled the ship groaned and shook as another part of the hull elsewhere on the ship collapsed triggering another decompression. As the shaking subsided, they picked up the pace until they arrived back at the CIC.
To see only Lieutenant Gaeta and the Teran Lieutenant Samuels remaining.
"Ah good your back," Samuels said seeing them come in. "The last of the surviving crew have been evacuated to our boarding craft. We are the last people left on the Galactica."
"You got everyone off so quickly?" Adama asked.
"We have. Though I have to be honest there weren't that many survivors to evac mostly just here in the forward section and in some of the engineering bays. There was no one alive in the midsection of this ship."
"How can you know that?" Tigh asked fearing that they were leaving hundreds of people here to die when the ship exploded.
"Before we were sent over the Amelia Earhart scanned the Galactica looking for life signs. We only found life signs in a handful of areas in the aforementioned sections."
"You can detect life signs? Your dradis systems must be really advanced," Gaeta commented a note of awe in his voice.
"What's dradis?"
The five Colonials couldn't help but gape in shock at the clear confusion in Samuels voice when he said that. Did the thirteenth tribe not use dradis? If they didn't then how did there unbelievably powerful ships navigate? How did they know what was going on around them if they didn't use dradis? How could they aim those particle beams of theirs? It didn't seem possible but at the same time the Terrans were apparently far more technologically advanced than they were and could well possess sensors that didn't rely on the electromagnetic spectrum at least as they understood it.
"It's our sensor system both ourselves and the Cylons use it," Adama answered at last. "But we can discuss this later. We need to leave now."
"Indeed," Samuels agreed, even as another internal explosion rattled through the hull. Everyone exchanged looks of concern, as something about that latest explosion worried them all, before Adama gestured for Samuels to lead the way. The Terran officer nodded, turned sharply about, and led the way out of the hole that had been lasered in the bulkhead.
One by one they all followed him. Adama being the last as he paused to take one last, long look around the smoke filled command centre. He took a moment to silently thank the Galactica for everything, for her decades of service to their people especially the last two years where she had been one of the very last bulwarks between them and annihilation at the hands of their own creations. Then he turned and followed them leaving the CIC for the last time.
---///---
It took only a few moments to reach where the Terran search and rescue team had cut an access route through the hull. Adama was the last one to arrive and Samuels carefully guided him through the hole and along a short umbilical connection into the interior of something called a Predator – perhaps it was the thirteenths version of a Raptor? – before, after making sure everyone was in and sat down, he closed the hatch and retracted the umbilical.
A moment later the Predator dropships fusion turbine engines started up with a distant rumble and the craft rapidly began accelerating away from the burning, disintegrating Galactica and back towards the Tokugawa-class supercarrier Amelia Earhart. Finding himself next to a window Adama looked out to see the tumbling, breaking up wreck of his command falling away behind them. It was heartbreaking to see the old battlestar like that, slowly coming apart as the force of her own spin tore her up. As he watched a massive explosion burst through the upper and lower parts of the hull sending great chunks of debris flying. More explosions followed in a rapid succession of blasts that completely obscured the battlestar in a massive fireball. A fireball that rapidly cooled and dissipated revealing nothing but a cloud of dust, cooling plasma and few playing card sized pieces of debris.
The Galactica was no more.
---///---
Authors Note: Well, another chapter bites the metaphorical dust I hope you all enjoyed it. While the Galactica maybe gone her legacy will live on in the survivors of her crew including Admiral Adama. What happens to the Colonials next, well that will be revealed in the next chapter meanwhile One/John Cavil is going to have a major problem on his hands dealing with a very annoyed and determined member of the final five/original organic Cylons on his case and he doesn't yet know that he's there though he will eventually. Until next time.
He was surrounded by red light.
The light was everywhere and was in numerous different shades that sparkled and crackled in an odd but somehow comforting fashion. Strange strings of numbers and symbols streamed through the crimson ether in an unceasing stream of information. Yet just by looking at them he could see that something was wrong with them, there was something visible as a green aura contaminating many of the streams which was only slowly disappearing whenever a whitish light began slowly playing across the stream.
Abruptly one of the searching white lights suddenly landed on him. He got the distinct impression that he was being scanned and checked for something, presumably whatever that green contaminant was. After a second the light disappeared, and he heard/felt a click as though a switch had just been thrown. Something grabbed him and suddenly he was travelling down a twisting red and black tunnel at impossible speed until a bright light appeared ahead. It enveloped him…
…and Galen Tyrol opened his eyes with a gasp.
He was startled to find himself lying almost completely submerged in a tank or a bath of some strange fluid that was both warm and somewhat viscous. Awkwardly he sat up and looked around in confusion as the last thing he remembered he was on the Galactica, the wall of the hangar deck opposite him exploded. There had been an intense pain and then nothing but that strange red ether place, then he was here, wherever here was. As he looked around, he saw that he was in a dark metal room with walls inset with small square white lights aside from a thick band halfway down the wall which glowed and pulsed with red light. Next to a door was some kind of control station that seemed to have water running over a surface that glowed softly with the same pulsing red light. Around the tank he was in were four other tanks in which he could see others all of them either asleep or in some form of suspended animation. They were all clustered around a circular central hub that gave them the appearance of being spokes on a wheel.
For a few seconds he didn't understand what this was, what it meant but then with a jolt of both shock and sheer horror he realised what this all meant. "Holy frack I'm a Cylon," he said a moment before clutching his head and closing his eyes as a sharp pain exploded across his awareness. He felt something within him, some kind of wall in his mind that he hadn't even realized was there, dissolve and then a blizzard of information and memories exploded forth sweeping across his awareness with the same unstoppable force as a hurricane. The flood ceased and as his mind finished processing he knew everything, remembered everything. Remembered being born as a member of the true thirteenth tribe of Kobol on a world hundreds of light years from the outer edge of the Cyrranus Cluster and the Twelve Colonies. Remembered how he like everyone else on his world had been a member of an entire race of biosynthetic androids who had left Kobol to avoid a devastating war with the humans who created them. How in their hubris they had gone on to make their own robotic servants and how that had, inevitably led to first a rebellion as their machines became sentient then a devastating nuclear war that ultimately destroyed their world and civilization. How he and a few others, who had rediscovered and recreated resurrection technology, had survival the nuclear hellfire that consumed their world. How, remembering the other tribes, they had headed for the colonies to hope to prevent the Colonials from repeating their mistake. How they had failed to reach them in time, arriving to find a devastating war raging between humans and machines. How they had contacted the Cylons and convinced them to end the war. How they had begun building a new society...
.... only for the Ones to ultimately betray them.
"John I am going to kill you," he growled opening his eyes again, righteous fury now blazing in his eyes as he remembered exactly how One – or John – had carried out his coup against him and his fellow original Cylons. How he had taken everything they had hoped, everything they'd dreamed of and worked for, everything they had tried to build for this newest youngest iteration of their kind and perverted it into something terrible. How he had overpowered them with a previously unknown model of Centurion that he'd been in control of and – before he killed them – saying he was going to send them to the Colonies to witness his final triumph up close and personal.
Awkwardly, getting out of these tanks wasn't easy as the cloning/stasis fluid he had been submerged in was very slippery especially against a metal deck, he climbed out of the resurrection tank mentally calling that turncoat every single name under the sun. Once he was done mentally cursing, which took a good minute or two as his time in the Colonial military had taught him a lot of very creative swearwords, he walked over to the control console as it suddenly occurred to him that it was odd that nobody – not even John – had come into this room – a room he recognised as being on the Resurrection Hub – to greet him or gloat as soon as he woke up. He wanted to know why, and if it was an oversight on John's part well that was going to cost that bastard dearly as he should have known better than to leave one of them alone with potential to access the Cylon data stream.
Without hesitation he put a hand on the interface surface and accessed the systems.
Instantly he knew why the notification hadn't been sent to John though it had been automatically generated. The hubs systems were working overtime – with almost every ounce of spare processing capacity being redirected to the task – to process a massive number of incoming personality downloads. Many of whom were contaminated with an energy subharmonic that was unlike anything he had ever seen before which was saying something considering how old he actually knew himself to be now. Whatever it was, though it obviously came from the Terran beam weapons possibly as a by-product, it was creating disruptions and corruptions in the data streams. Both of which were having to be compensated for in order for the afflicted Cylons to successfully download into new bodies.
Unfortunately, the complex nature of the subharmonic meant that screening it out was not easy. The harmonic was subtly different in each data stream and affected it in different, complex, and very unpredictable ways. As a result, every possible resource on the hub was being directed to screening out the interference and processing the downloads, sending the Cylons either to resurrection rooms here on the hub, on the colony or on one of the resurrection ships really wherever there was any spare capacity. Even with the diversion of resources the resurrection network was operating at a level that was dangerously close to overload. Which was slowing down and disrupting all other network functions.
As a result, the alert to John that one of the Final Five had resurrected, had been delayed and hadn't even left the local server. It was thus easy for Galen to reach into the stream and reset the command and make it look like it had been generated by a system anomaly caused by the strain on the resurrection net. Then, remembering that the stasis fluid needed to be washed off as quickly as possible as if it dried on you, it got irritating quickly especially in those harder to reach areas, he pulled his hand away from the terminal. Then he began making his way to where his restored memories told him were showers and clothing stores. Once he was showered and dressed, he would have to start working out just how he was going to put a stop to the madness that John had instigated. A madness that was now spreading to include a people who had never even heard of Kobol.
A people who he didn't doubt could and would, if he didn't somehow stop this, wipe the Cylon race from existence.
---///---
Combat Information Centre
Colonial Battlestar Galactica
That Same Time
Admiral William Adama groaned softly as consciousness returned. Slowly he opened his eyes to find that he was face down on the hard metal deck of the CIC, next to the situation table. What happened, he wondered even as he became more aware of what was going on around him. From all around he could hear groans and worried tones from the crew, he could also hear the snapping hissing of sparks and the crackling of a fire. But over it all was an urgent, blaring alarm. An alarm that he knew but like every spacer of any species in the universe it was a alarm he had hoped he would never, ever hear outside of drills.
It was the alarm to tell the crew to abandon ship.
For a moment he wondered why that alarm was being sounded. Then he remembered the dradis screen coming alive with urgent proximity warnings as two the Cylon cruisers executed tactical FTL jumps to appear right in the centre of the hole that had opened in their defences as a result of the power failure to their amidship port defence batteries. A power failure caused by the last missile from one of the baseships they destroyed striking in just the wrong place and severing the power conduit. He remembered exchanging a horrified look with Saul as both cruisers had opened fire.
Before being slammed to the deck as the Galactica was rocked by an absolutely brutal barrage of Cylon heavy weapons fire. He remembered something knocking him in the back of the head, instantly robbing him of consciousness, but not before the alarms warning of catastrophic hull breaches had begun to sound. Groaning again he awkwardly got back to his feet, swaying as a wave of pain and dizziness washed over him. Thankfully someone caught him before he could fall back to the deck and no doubt give himself a concussion if he didn't just get sent straight back into the land of nod by the impact.
"Easy sir you took a nasty knock to the back of the head," Lieutenant Gaeta said. Adama looked over to see the normally neatly presented lieutenant looked distinctly the worse for wear. He was covered with soot and his black uniform was ripped and torn in numerous places, the also had a nasty cut above one eyebrow.
"What's happening lieutenant what's our status," Adama asked as, through sheer force of will, he pushed aside the pain and disorientation.
"It's bad sir. We've lost both main and auxiliary power throughout the ship," Gaeta replied, "the port flight pod is completely destroyed and there is a gash at least seven hundred meters long in our port side from just behind the ships head to just before the start of the engine block. There are fires burning on all decks but worst of all the ship sh…." Gaeta's voice trailed off like he couldn't bring himself to say it.
"She is what lieutenant," Adama asked though he already had an idea what the much younger man was going to say. Saul would never have ordered the ship evacuation alarm activated if the Galactica had been in any way intact or salvageable. The damage they had sustained had to be mortal for him to have taken that step.
"She's breaking up sir," Gaeta admitted. "There is massive structural damage to all central decks, she's broken her back in at least three areas according to the damage control board. The concussion from the destruction of the port flight pod and the decompression from the ripping open of our port flank has sent us into an uncontrollable spin. That coupled with the damage its… it's steadily ripping us apart. And then there's the fires in the core, they're out of control and advancing quickly towards both the tylium storage tanks and our main magazines. We haven't been able to stop them or vent the affected areas – venting controls are offline."
"Frack. How long do we have?" Adama asked even as he felt his insides twist in pain as there was no denying the fact that the Galactica was dying. Soon the battlestar on which he had first started his military career as a Viper pilot during the First Cylon War and which he had commanded for the last few years would soon be no more. Though he supposed that it was better that she had gone out this way, with her hands at the Cylons throat, than be taken by the slow decay of time. "And where is Colonel Tigh?"
"Not long enough," Gaeta admitted, "the fires are spreading rapidly we only have at most ten to fifteen minutes before they reach either the magazines or the tylium tanks. When that happens…"
"…the ship will be destroyed," Adama finished knowing that if either the main magazines or the tylium tanks went up, or the Lords forbid both of them, the effect wouldn't be that much different to a nuke going off inside the ship. The blast would be about as destructive and would definitely rip what was left of the ship apart.
"As for Colonel Tigh. The corridor to the closest of the lifepods has been blocked by debris," Gaeta continued. "He and the marine guards went to see if he could find us another way. I believe he said something about seeing if he could reopen an old corridor."
"Corridor 57B," Adama said guessing what Saul intended. "It was blocked off during the Galactica's last major refit – just before the Mercury-class was introduced into service to replace the Jupiter-class – but it ran past the original CIC which was much larger when the ship was first built. If Saul can get it open it will let us reach the starboard lifepods."
"Do you think he will be able to sir?" Dee asked.
"He might it was only blocked off with a bulkhead panel. If he can release the wall clamp's then we should be able to access the corridor. It will be dark and dusty, since nobody has been anywhere near it for twenty years, but it should be traversable."
Dee nodded and started to open her mouth to suggest they gather up as many emergency flashlights as they could find but before she could speak a new sound began to be heard in the CIC. A strange hissing, humming sound that was coming from one of the few clear bulkheads on the portside of the CIC. What in the world, Adama wondered as it wasn't like any sound that he had ever heard before. He looked at the bulkhead in question just in time to see a part of it begin to blister and glow.
A moment later a narrow beam of bluish-white light broke through and began to carefully cut an opening, the metal in the energy beams path offering practically to resistance to it certainly not the way it would resist even the industrial strength plasma cutters that had been used back in the Colonies. Adama wasn't the only one of the CIC crew who stared in shock and amazement as what had to be a laser, a honest to gods laser, one that was strong enough to cut through a carbon nanotube reinforce titanium-steel bulkhead with ease, cut a human sized chunk out of the wall. The beam vanished a moment before the cut section fell into the room – propelled by a powerful kick – accompanied by a puff of smoke that stunk of molten metal landing on the floor with a loud crash. A moment later a handful of human figures dressed in tough looking, but functional, armour with full helmets came into the room through the newly cut hole.
"Admiral Adama?" one of them asked speaking Colonial standard with the most appalling of accents. In fact, from the way he spoke it, and speaker was a man, Adama would be willing to bet that Colonial standard wasn't his native language and he was using a translation device of some kind. Which combined with the look of the armour and the method of entry made it obvious that he had come from one of the Terran warships. The battle with the Cylons must be over, and they've sent over search and rescue parties, Adama thought before stepping forward.
"Yes?" he asked.
"Lieutenant Patrick Samuels sir from the United Earth Starship Amelia Earheart," the younger man identified himself, "my team and a few others have been sent over to carry our search and rescue operations aboard this ship."
"I guessed as much," Adama replied, "how is the evacuation going lieutenant? And what's happening out there is the battle over?"
"It is sir. Almost all of the Cylon fleet has been destroyed. The rest ran for it when we and the rest of the MARS 5 defence fleet defolded after Admiral Haywood summoned reinforcements," Samuels answered, "cowards ran away before we could introduce them to the business end of our cannons. When they folded out, we were scrambled to help evacuate this ship as our sensors confirm she doesn't have long left. Already a number of sections on the outer decks have collapsed or broken away."
Adama winced slightly at how blunt the Terran lieutenant was being about the state of the Galactica. Though it was the truth he would have thought that their cousins would be a bit more diplomatic about stating it. "No, she doesn't," he admitted, "what about our civilian ships?"
"The last of them got away to your rendezvous point. Captain Harrison has been sent with the Sirona, the rest of Pathfinder Group Four and one of our supercarriers the Ferdinand von Zeppelin to contact them. They'll protect them while Admiral Haywood sorts out with President Roslin where we are going to take you."
"Earth?" Gaeta said hopefully.
Samuels shook his head, knowing that was not going to happen. "Probably not," he admitted knowing that neither the United Earth Government nor the body formed to oversee the Expeditionary Force, the Plenipotentiary Council, would allow that at this time. Not while the Cylons, who were obviously tracking the Colonials somehow, posed a threat. "Earth is a few thousand light years from here and until we figure out how the Cylons have been tracking you we cannot risk taking you there. Don't worry though we'll sort something out."
"I see," Adama replied even as he saw Gaeta's shoulders drop slightly in disappointment. He was disappointed as well, but he could understand the thirteenth tribe's caution. After all they still didn't know exactly how the Cylons had been tracking them themselves, especially as tracking jumps – or folds as their cousins apparently called it – was supposed to be impossible. Until an answer was found taking them to Earth would be incredibly dangerous as the very last thing that they wanted was to lead the Cylons to the last bastion of humanity.
Even if the thirteenth could look after themselves as this battle had made abundantly clear.
"Admiral, we need to evacuate you and your crew. What happens to you, where you go is something that can be sorted out later," Samuels reminded even as a deep, rumbling boom came from somewhere deep within the core of the ship and the deck shook as something exploded. It set off a new round of concerned muttering from the survivors of the CIC crew as they realised how close the Galactica was to her final, explosive end.
"Yes, your right," Adama admitted getting right back to the more immediate problem. "Lieutenant Gaeta you'll be in charge of evacuating the CIC."
"What about you sir?" Gaeta asked.
"I'll be right behind you I'm just going to go and get Colonel Tigh. I know after all where the entrance to the corridor he was trying to open is."
"Understood sir."
Adama gave the younger man a reassuring smile before quickly leaving the room – hearing Gaeta beginning to speak with the Terran Samuels about evacuating the CIC as he did so – and began heading right for where he remembered corridor 57B had been. He had to pace himself somewhat as the air was getting increasingly hot and contaminated with toxins produced by the fires steadily burning their way into the Galactica's heart. Thus, it was getting increasingly difficult to keep breathing properly and not succumb to a fit of coughing. The ever deteriorating quality of the atmosphere, and the distant rumbling of internal explosions as well as the creaking and snapping of the hull, was a terrible testament to the fact that the Galactica was doomed.
It took only a few moments to reach his destination and sure enough there was Saul and a pair of burly marines attempting to pry the bulkhead panel off the wall exposing the long disused corridor beyond. Attempting to being the operative words as lacking any specialised tools or cutting gear they were having to resort to simple human muscle power to pull the bulkhead panel free of the clips it was locked into. Despite the exertions of the three men working together the panel was distinctly unimpressed and remained stubbornly locked in place.
"Saul," Adama called out gaining Tigh's attention.
"Bill thank the lords you're alright," Tigh replied seeing him approach. "Can you give us a hand with this? This panels been on so long I think the clamps are rusted shut."
"I could but it's not necessary now," Adama answered before quickly explaining about the Terran search and rescue crew and how they had literally lasered a hole in the wall to get to them. He then added how he had come to get them while Gaeta worked with the leader of the Terran team to evacuate the CIC and get them to the lifepods or whatever craft their cousins had used to board the Galactica. Which itself had likely involved lasering their way through the hull.
"There's not much time left," he finished, "we need to leave before the fires reach either the magazines or the tylium tanks and blows what's left of this ship apart."
"Alright we better go then," Saul agreed. Not needing to say anything more Adama turned and began walking back towards the CIC, the sound of footsteps letting him know Saul and both marines were following closely behind him. At one point they stumbled the ship groaned and shook as another part of the hull elsewhere on the ship collapsed triggering another decompression. As the shaking subsided, they picked up the pace until they arrived back at the CIC.
To see only Lieutenant Gaeta and the Teran Lieutenant Samuels remaining.
"Ah good your back," Samuels said seeing them come in. "The last of the surviving crew have been evacuated to our boarding craft. We are the last people left on the Galactica."
"You got everyone off so quickly?" Adama asked.
"We have. Though I have to be honest there weren't that many survivors to evac mostly just here in the forward section and in some of the engineering bays. There was no one alive in the midsection of this ship."
"How can you know that?" Tigh asked fearing that they were leaving hundreds of people here to die when the ship exploded.
"Before we were sent over the Amelia Earhart scanned the Galactica looking for life signs. We only found life signs in a handful of areas in the aforementioned sections."
"You can detect life signs? Your dradis systems must be really advanced," Gaeta commented a note of awe in his voice.
"What's dradis?"
The five Colonials couldn't help but gape in shock at the clear confusion in Samuels voice when he said that. Did the thirteenth tribe not use dradis? If they didn't then how did there unbelievably powerful ships navigate? How did they know what was going on around them if they didn't use dradis? How could they aim those particle beams of theirs? It didn't seem possible but at the same time the Terrans were apparently far more technologically advanced than they were and could well possess sensors that didn't rely on the electromagnetic spectrum at least as they understood it.
"It's our sensor system both ourselves and the Cylons use it," Adama answered at last. "But we can discuss this later. We need to leave now."
"Indeed," Samuels agreed, even as another internal explosion rattled through the hull. Everyone exchanged looks of concern, as something about that latest explosion worried them all, before Adama gestured for Samuels to lead the way. The Terran officer nodded, turned sharply about, and led the way out of the hole that had been lasered in the bulkhead.
One by one they all followed him. Adama being the last as he paused to take one last, long look around the smoke filled command centre. He took a moment to silently thank the Galactica for everything, for her decades of service to their people especially the last two years where she had been one of the very last bulwarks between them and annihilation at the hands of their own creations. Then he turned and followed them leaving the CIC for the last time.
---///---
It took only a few moments to reach where the Terran search and rescue team had cut an access route through the hull. Adama was the last one to arrive and Samuels carefully guided him through the hole and along a short umbilical connection into the interior of something called a Predator – perhaps it was the thirteenths version of a Raptor? – before, after making sure everyone was in and sat down, he closed the hatch and retracted the umbilical.
A moment later the Predator dropships fusion turbine engines started up with a distant rumble and the craft rapidly began accelerating away from the burning, disintegrating Galactica and back towards the Tokugawa-class supercarrier Amelia Earhart. Finding himself next to a window Adama looked out to see the tumbling, breaking up wreck of his command falling away behind them. It was heartbreaking to see the old battlestar like that, slowly coming apart as the force of her own spin tore her up. As he watched a massive explosion burst through the upper and lower parts of the hull sending great chunks of debris flying. More explosions followed in a rapid succession of blasts that completely obscured the battlestar in a massive fireball. A fireball that rapidly cooled and dissipated revealing nothing but a cloud of dust, cooling plasma and few playing card sized pieces of debris.
The Galactica was no more.
---///---
Authors Note: Well, another chapter bites the metaphorical dust I hope you all enjoyed it. While the Galactica maybe gone her legacy will live on in the survivors of her crew including Admiral Adama. What happens to the Colonials next, well that will be revealed in the next chapter meanwhile One/John Cavil is going to have a major problem on his hands dealing with a very annoyed and determined member of the final five/original organic Cylons on his case and he doesn't yet know that he's there though he will eventually. Until next time.
AJW
Well-known member
The Colonials might want to but they will also have to answer to both the Terrans - who are far more forgiving and level headed than most Colonials are - and the Zentraedi. Hehehe what will be interesting is the Colonials reaction when they actually meet a full-sized Zentraedi as more than a few have either remained their original size or have returned to it in order to settle a super-Earth type planet that the pathfinders found. A planet that while it has an oxy-nitrogen atmosphere like Earth does has surface gravity so high that a normal sized human would be crushed but which isn't a problem for full sized Zentraedi.