The stars hung as a dim backdrop to the grave yard of once proud ships of all sizes, from the tiny viper to the mammoth battlestars, this is was where they came to die, supposedly. Officially, this was known as The Storage Yard, where ships of the fleet go after being taken off active duty. The Yard was split over two levels, each level was split into two main piers, A through C, and each pier had births, 1 through 3, it was all connected by the main hull of the Yard where the 1200 or so personnel ate, slept and had fun when they weren't keeping the ships in fighting shape. Though they were, on paper, officially decommissioned and supposed to be left to rot, the Admiralty Board did not like the way that the President of the Twelve Colonies was decreasing the size of the fleet. At its peak the fleet was in the 800's, that was full Battlestars Groups, now after successive liberal governments, that number was barely in the 100's. So the Admiralty siphoned money off various other thing for a Black Project, where ships that were to be decommissioned, where, instead retrofitted and in some cases, fitted with experimental weaponry, armor and technology. this was achieved through a fleet R&D ship being almost permanently docked, and a fabrication ship that could reduce raw materials, mainly asteroids, down to make things.
In charge of all this activity was a man that went by Commander Robert Pax, he was a sturdy man, muscled but not massive or the body of an athlete, he was a man that had seen the dark underbelly of combat, and had scrapped through, fighting all the way. His dark brown hair was starting to turn grey around the tips and the his skin was starting to show its age. He was currently in his quarters after waking up in a cold sweat, he plunged his hands into the basin and splashed the ice cold water onto his face. Looking up, into the mirror above the basin, weary blue eyes stared back at him as water dripped from his face. He sighed, he couldn't shake the feeling that something bad was going to happen. He had had this feeling that something bad was on the horizon for a few days now, it was stupid really, but it had started to effect his work, he had loaded up the ships in his care, ammunition, food, the works, he was worried, and thinking he should go see the shrink, but was putting it off, convince himself it would be good practice for the crew.
He slipped into his uniform with the practiced ease of a serviceman. After all he had joined as soon as he could, straight out of school. That was a few years after the cylon war, and he wanted to protect his home from the cockpit of a viper if they ever came back. Such ideals where washed away the first time he shed blood, not of cylon like he wanted, but of a human. His squadron where tasked with escorting essential personnel to one of the outer colonies, but were attacked by pirates. it wasn't his biggest engagement, but it had a profound effect on him that molded him into a leader.
He strode from his cabin and onto the bridge, the nerve center of his little black operation, "Report?"
His XO, a middle aged man by the name of Al Bundy snapped a salute and replied, "good news, the R&D tech's have just ironing out all the kinks that found with that new CNP program that was ordered to be installed."
"Damn Adar, I wish he would keep out his nose out of military business, outsourcing something as important as this to a civilian without passing it through development before installing it is lunacy." spoke Robert as he looked at the clipboard that Al had just handed to him, the weapon upgrades were going well, all the battlestars had the same weapon systems as the Pegasus Class. The Battle Groups were being retrofitted with newly developed FATS, Fast Automatic Targeting System, which can track, fire and eliminate anything from a speeding mass round to missiles to fighters. They were meant to surround there Battlestars, for each, so that the behemoths can focus on taking out larger targets.
"Tell me about it, there were glitches in that program that would shut down the entire craft, but it's been dealt with and installed, as have the new style networking."
There had been tales from the War that cylons could hack any wireless system, so old battlestars like the Galactica had to have to have their systems separated but the techs had a genius thought, why not how have modern networking but have it wired? It was a massive job, hundreds upon hundreds of miles of cables had to be run on each battlestar, but it meant that they could have the benefit of networked systems, and the only way a cylon could get into it would be to do it physically.
"Good, things are going smoothly." Robert said, "What are the next . . ." he started to say, but his communications officer interrupted him.
"Priority One message from Fleet Command, message reads, Cylons have commenced attack on colonies, this is not a drill, standby for individual orders." silence hung in the air into Robert started barking orders.
"I want as many ships combat ready, put skeleton crews on the rest, we'll need them for the fight later, tell the R&D and construction ships to prepare to leave. Now MOVE!" he shouted as people started running about, "once all preparations have been made, we will transfer over to the Artimus, and i will take command of the fleet from there."
The Artimus was the most heavily armed battlestar that sat in the Yard; the techs had used her as an experiment. They had tried to see just how many weapons systems they could fit to her and for her to still function. They had to sacrifice the ability to carry and launch Vipers and Raptors favoring to permanently retract her flight pods and fill them with power generators. Her entire hull crawled with weaponry, they joked that she could crack a planet if she focused every weapon at one point. She carried enough nuclear warheads to glass Caprica herself, her flak wall was almost impenetrable and, along with the usual ship to ship missiles, she had ten twin barrel turrets. Each barrel was 55 meters in length and could propel, through the use of extremely strong magnets to a tenth of the speed of light, they didn't know the destructive power of them, but as one of the tech's said, they made Sir Isaac Newton the most deadly mother fucker in space.
"Message from fleet, battle has been lost, CNP program affecting systems, Storage Yard Fleet to commence S&R mission until discovered, then to disengage and leave the system and get as far away as possible, good luck. Line has gone dead sir." the communications officer said.
"The have probably started bombing the colonies. Right, we have our orders, have all the combat ready battlestar groups ready to depart." ordered Robert as they moved to the Artimus. 30 minutes later 4 fully armed and crewed Battlestar Groups jumped out over the colonies, while the remaining 4 groups jumped to a sector of empty space to wait for the return of the rescue fleet.
When the fleet did blink into being over the skies of Caprica, destruction reigned over the ships as they saw what the fleet had been reduced to, debris floated around cracked hulls, half ships bent at odd angles with the other halves joined by bits of metal floating in the void.
"I want search parties in that wreckage, pull anyone you can find, the rest of the raptors to ground side, rescue anyone alive down there, if you find someone that won't make it, end their suffering, we will find any and all serving vessels, if they have FTL drives, tell them the co-ordinates for the RV, if not, we will either transfer them aboard, or dock there ship in the flight pods of one of the Battlestars that has the capability, i don't know how long we have, but be prepared to drop everything and get back." Robert orders went out.
Soon raptors were flying here there and everywhere, they were at it for hours, 93 ships of all shapes, class and purpose had been saved, with about 60000 people aboard, another 5000 had been pulled from the surface.
Robert was looking over the reports, things were going well, too well, they hadn't encountered any Cylon forces other than the ground forces on the planet. He was just considering ending the mission but the decision was taken out of his hands.
"Dradis Contact, strike that, Multiple Dradis contact have just jumped in, 217 carem 108, between us and the planet, their launching fighters." The situation was shouted.
"Withdraw all raptors, deploy all available Vipers from the other battlestars, send messages to other battlestars to jump recall vipers once all civilians are aboard and jump to RV, bring us broadside to the enemy, let's see what she can do." Robert ordered as he looked at the tactical read out, watching the two contacts marked as Basestars release hundreds of fighters as the same amount were launched from the three battlestars. The Artimus maneuvered so it was side on to the base stars.
"Flak wall to full, bring the magnetic canons online, target the nearest Basestar's central axis and fire at will." The orders went through and Artimus's new guns barked into life, send 1 kilo slugs at the Basestars. They impacted with enough force to tear the hull apart and smash through the other side. Nothing could stand up to a bombardment of that magnitude, and the Basestar quickly broke up, "status of withdrawal?" Robert demanded.
"Almost complete, Sir, two BSGs are already away and the last is waiting for its last raptors to land before it jumps." Came the reply.
"Good, target that last Basestar and jump after final BSG is away."
Like the first, the second Basestar quickly broke up under the might of Artimus's guns. They managed to jump away as a large number of Basestars jumped in.
They appeared in the middle of the fleet that they had managed to pull together, and to their knowledge, the last of mankind.
Robert sighed and leaned against the tactical display with both arms, his head bowed, he didn't know what to think, his home, his race, had just had genocide committed against it, it would be along road ahead, but they would fight, and they would win.