Metal and Meat
Disclaimer: I own nothing. Nothing!
Author's Note: I am aware of the fact that nBSG is technologically inferior to nearly every other sci-fi series out there, including Stargate. Just recently, I was thinking of a feasible way of how something from BSG might defeat an enemy from another franchise. And here's what I came up with.
The Wraith Hive ship was silent as it drifted through the greenish-blue hue of hyperspace. Their destination was one of the many human worlds the Ancients had scattered throughout the Pegasus galaxy before they had been forced to abandon the galaxy. The name that its inhabitants had given to it did not matter. To the Wraith, the world had no name. It was just one of many pastures for the Wraith to visit and cull their human herds.
The Queen sat in her usual throne in the dark, cobwebbed bridge. Several other high-ranking Wraith were there as well, hunched over control boards. One of them looked up.
"Exiting hyperspace now."
The colourful backdrop of hyperspace dropped away as the Hive Ship entered the more mundane dimension of space.
The Hive Ship coasted forward towards the blue-green planet. A Dart had scouted it out from its space gate a few weeks ago. The culture was primitive. It had agriculture and towns but that was about as far as they went. In other words, a typical human world, limited by the Wraith. Easy prey.
The Queen was about to give the order that would unleash the massive swam of Darts that was within the Hive Ship when two unfamiliar ships appeared from behind one of the planet's moons.
The Wraith had not seen anything like them before. The design of the ships was alien to them. Each ship appeared to be two Y-shaped hulls connected to each other at their centres by a single, large pylon. They were surrounded by swarms of small sickle-shaped fighters.
The strange ships didn't react to the sudden presence of the Hive Ship. They carried on moving towards the planet, seemingly oblivious to the Wraith.
After picking up on a few of the energy readings left by the ships, they realised that the starfish shaped ships were using a primitive scanning technology which did not have a long enough range to pick up the Wraith ship.
Further scans picked up on human life-signs in both ships. The Queen frowned. How had a group of humans developed space travel? One of the purposes of the culling was to limit their technological advance.
It certainly wasn't the humans on the planet. For a moment, she wondered if they were ships belonging to the mysterious Atlantean humans that she had heard about from other Hives. This notion was quickly discarded.
The Atlantean humans used ships that were superior to even the Ancient Aurora-class warships in power. These ships were incredibly primitive.
The ships appeared to only have kinetic weapons and missiles, no energy weapons at all. Their hulls, while fairly thick, were completely unshielded and could be compromised by even the weakest of the weapons available to the Hive Ship. She sneered.
Not even the Travellers had ships this pathetic. It was hard to believe that these ships were even space-worthy at all. Even more puzzling was the ships lack of hyperdrives. How had the ships even got there at all?
Primitive or not, however, they were still ships manned with humans and all human ships were to be put down as aggressively as possible before the technology spread too far.
"Take us into firing range and destroy them."
At that moment, the groups of fighters around the starfish ships began to move aggressively towards the Hive Ship, with even more fighters exiting the ships. An outlying Raider had sighted the Hive Ship and the Basestars were alerted to its presence.
In response, the Hive Ship disgorged it's own fighters, a seemingly countless swarm of Darts.
The two groups of fighters engaged seconds after. That section of space was filled with discharges from Dart energy cannons and tracer rounds from Raider guns. Both sides of ships were all fast and manoeuvrable in a way that few others could match. Casualties quickly heaped up for the Cylon fighters as Raiders were blown to pieces by the lightning-fast blue energy bolts.
But the fight was far from one-sided. For every Raider destroyed, a Dart was taken to pieces by the surprisingly powerful high-calibre rounds as Wraith technological sophistication met the Cylon's sheer brute force.
One of the Wraith in the control room raised his voice.
"The two ships are launching low-yield primitive nuclear weapons," he reported. "The hull's regeneration factor is operating at 100%. Minimal damage is expected."
A ghoulish grin lit up his face as he continued. "Their mother-ships are now in range."
The Queen nodded. "Good. Destroy them."
The Hive Ship opened fire while the missiles had only crossed half of the distance between the Basestars and the Hive Ship. The Wraith energy shots crossed that distance in less than a second to collide with one of the Basestars.
The results were spectacular.
The Basestar's hull boiled away to nothing as the energy bolts tore straight through it. The entire Cylon ship exploded less than a second afterwards, becoming nothing more than a field of floating wreckage.
"Target the other ship."
The energy cannons fired yet again, only this time the shots simply passed through the empty space where the Basestar used to be. The ship had vanished in a flash of light just moments before.
The Queen had just enough time to wonder what had just happened before the nukes hit.
The bridge rumbled slightly as the nuclear weapons struck the Hive Ship. Its thick, regenerating hull absorbed most of the force. The explosions tore a few holes in the hull but that was all. The Hive Ship had suffered worse in its time.
The Hive Queen was still thinking about how the other ship had disappeared. She rounded on the Wraith who was monitoring the scans.
"You told me they had no hyper-drive!"
"They don't," the Wraith said, trying not to show his fear. He was high ranked in the hierarchy but no position could protect him if the Queen was to order him killed or worse, to be fed upon by other Wraith. She had handed out similar punishments for failure before.
"Whatever that was, it wasn't hyperspace travel. It is nothing like we have seen before."
The Queen was apparently satisfied with this answer and gave a curt nod.
The dogfight continued on between the Darts and seemingly abandoned Raiders. But the Raiders had not been abandoned. One by one, they began to disappear in flashes of light. The Queen frowned even harder.
FTL drives that could be equipped to fighter sized spacecraft? Not even the Ancients had that technology, thought they were close. How could such primitive ships have such sophisticated technology? It was an anachronism and it didn't make sense.
But not all of the Raiders left. Several stayed behind and continued their engagement with the Darts. But why did they do that? It almost looked as if they were laying down cover fire, or they were a distraction of some sort.
What they were doing it for became apparent when several flashes of light heralded a group of Cylon Raiders jumping in behind the swarm of Darts. Many of the Raider's hadn't jumped away; they had merely jumped to a position behind the Darts, right next to the Hive Ship's hull.
Before the Dart's could do anything, they attacked, firing ineffective missiles. The true danger was in the large group of Heavy Raiders that slipped through the various holes left in the hull by the missile attack earlier. Some even had the audacity to land directly in the Dart landing bay. Several of them were shot down by Darts. Many more breached the hull and landed inside the Hive Ship.
After landing, their hatches opened and Centurions piled out of each one. The many bands of Centurions began to advance into the ship. It wasn't long before Wraith patrols responded.
Normally, Wraith loved getting boarded. It usually meant food easily delivered straight to them to feed their everlasting hunger. These boarders were different. The scans had shown up human life-signs on the ships. Nobody had even mentioned tall armour-plated robots with machine guns and bladed hands.
The first Wraiths to confront the boarders were quickly gunned down before they were even able to do anything. After that the Wraith were more prepared and the Centurions were struck with a barrage of energy bolts.
Which had no effect on them. The astonished Wraith soldiers were then slaughtered in a hail of machine gun fire.
The Centurion boarding parties continued to make their way through the Hive Ship, the Wraith weapons proving as ineffective as before against them. Wraith soldiers were dying in the dozens. Several Wraith attempted to fight the Cylons close up, relying on their superior strength and speed to defeat them.
To their horror they discovered that their physical strength was not as superior as they thought and they perished from point blank gunfire or from the blades that sprouted from the robot's hands.
Their situations were completely reversed. Before, the Wraith had had an overwhelming advantage, the destroyed Basestar told you that. But here, in close combat down long narrow dark corridors, the Cylons hadn't even taken a single casualty.
It was the stunners that doomed the Wraith really. Wraith had spent the last few millennia preying on weak humans that were meant to be fed on later. All their handheld weapons had been developed to target the enemy's nervous system and stun them, so they could be fed upon.
So when faced with an enemy with no nervous system to speak of, the Wraith were surprisingly helpless in combat. They were dying in droves, firing their weapons to absolutely no effect on the impassive machines.
Another flaw of the Wraith when it came to combat was that they had no communicators for soldiers to talk to each other. None at all. So the Hive Queen was taken completely by surprise when a stream of machine gun fire ripped one of the guards open and a Centurion stepped onto the bridge.
Stun-bolts hit it repeatedly as it advanced forward, unconcerned with such things. The rest of the guards soon met the same fate as the previous one had as the roar of the Centurion's guns filled the bridge.
Stepping over the body of the last Wraith, it walked towards the Queen. Centurions are intelligent to a degree. It could tell that the Queen was the leader. Leaders could be interrogated.
The Queen screamed as she leapt forward. She was the strongest of the Wraith on this ship and her fists actually managed to break holes through the Centurions outer armour. It's blades slashed down her midsection before she ripped its head off.
She basked in the glorious feeling of triumph and victory, even if she couldn't feed on this thing. Those feelings were cut short as ten more Centurions marched onto the bridge.
The following fight was brutally short.
The Centurions took their place on the bridge by the body of the dead Queen and waited. It would only be a matter of time before the Basestar returned to see what had happened, if the last ditch plan worked. Upon getting confirmation, they would send humanoid models aboard.
The Centurions were not smart enough to understand the controls and the technology of the Hive Ship but they knew it was advanced. They also knew that its biotechnology was similar to Cylon biotech. It seemed to them that a smarter Cylon, like their humanoid masters, would be able to unlock the secrets of the Wraith biotech given enough time.
And then the Cylons would reign supreme and the human race would be shown the error of their ways.
All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again.