"Commander, sensors read negative. We are maintaining position."

Hanging in space, the Fist of Superiority XI, one of the Empire's unstoppable Imperial-class star destroyer, sat in a cold patch of space, with nothing around for hundreds of millions of miles. The 1600-meter long starship, armed with rows of turbolasers, ion cannons, and missile tubes, was capable of obliterating an entire planetary surface if it focused its power output to weapons. It was loaded with squadrons of nimble TIE fighters and enough armor and infantry battalions to keep a small planetoid under check. As most in the galaxy would agree, it was not to be kriffed with.

This did not explain to captain Rammstein, however, why the Empire had assigned him to this godforsaken patch of space in the Outer Rim. Supposedly, there had been several gravitational space-time anomalies, or some other technobabble that they had spouted at him to keep him confused. He had heard from the previous captain that some strange vessels had been sighted in the area—once, a strange ship with saucer elements that had been easily destroyed when it had refused to answer hails—but quite frankly, given the level of smuggling in this region, he doubted it.

"Continue sweeps." He sighed. Everyone in the bridge was bored out of their minds, and the fact that the coffee machine had broken down wasn't helping. Gazing out of the viewports, at the infinite expanse of stars and nebulae, he just wondered what sort of contribution he'd make to this life.

"Sir!" One of the crewmen sat up. "Picking up heavy concentration of tachyons and dark matter, 3 kilometers straight ahead!"

Rammstein tensed. "Raise shields! Full alert!" He loved saying that. Finally, something was happening. Would this turn out to be worth a medal? Promotion to Moff, maybe even?

Up ahead, a purple cloud was materializing. He stood alert as rows of dark shapes emerged—ships of some kind, clearly. So the guys back at briefing hadn't been messing with him after all.

"We have incoming vessels, sir. I count a few dozen so far."

"Wow, I never guessed. Type? Capabilities?"

"Unidentified type, although the lead one is clearly designed for combat of some kind. I'm not detecting any evidence of shields, turbolasers, or hyperdrive of any kind."

"Curious. Hail them."

"Affirmative."

He watched as more ugly vessels emerged from the purple cloud. God, those things looked Corellian bulk cruisers look like works of art. He could visibly see the lead ship, which vaguely resembled a blockade runner—but streamlined, and in its way, more sexier. Not a bad-looking thing, despite clearly being a piece of junk technologically.

"Sir, they're not responding, though we are picking up scrambled radio signals." Reported a crewman at the comms console.

"Fire two ion bursts across their bow. Show them we're serious." Snapped Rammstein.

The crew complied. There was a flash as two bolts of energy streaked past the lead vessel of this mysterious fleet, with the cloud now fading away. Still the ships came on coming. Then, incoming alerts began beeping as the lead vessel fired off a volley of missiles.

"Incoming weapons!" cried a crewman.

"Identify type!"

"Primitive nuclear weapons, sir. They won't even dent our shields." Rammstein relaxed, and stood calmly as the ship juddered slightly as the missiles harmlessly impacted against their shields. The ship continued firing desperately, letting off primitive projectiles of all kinds, all of which merely caused the shield to weaken by a small percentage.

"So, they wanna play rough?" he smiled. "Forward batteries, maximum power. Aim, and let rip." Two turbolaser batteries swivelled in the direction of the main ship. Rammstein felt a brief feeling of regret. He'd have liked to have known where it came from, and who built it. But, it had just committed a hostile act against the Empire, and nobody was getting away with that.

The two turbolasers fired. Each shot had a power in the hundreds of gigatons. The other vessel didn't even have shields. He smiled with satisfaction as they impacted into the vessel, instantly pulverizing it. The other bolts carried on, slamming into the other vessels which blew apart with similar ease.

Rammstein chuckled. "Continue firing. Destroy them all."

"Affirmative." All guns of the Star Destroyer opened fire, tearing apart the vessels of the fleet with impunity. Torpedoes and ion cannons were added into the mix, with identical destructive effects. Within moments, the fleet was reduced to a cloud of scorched debris.

"Inform base." He called. "Enemy fleet of unknown origin has been located and destroyed. We're coming home for debriefing." Soon afterwards, the huge vessel was swivelling around and heading into hyperspace, leaving the atomized remnants of the fleet behind.

**

Flying away from the cloud of debris that had been their home, six people had crammed into one Raptor, jetting away into unknown and empty space. What was left of the Colonials had been wiped out. Adama, Starbuck, Roslin...all dead. Just like that. That demon ship, that huge frakking death-bringing chunk of metal, had wiped them all out. They had nowhere to go to. They had nothing left to hope or dream about. Most of them were crying. One was vomiting. And the guns in their holsters were looking real tempting.

Then, up ahead, came one sliver of hope. A orange, desert world—with a satellite of some kind hovering over it—evidence of intelligent life. They had no idea where they were going. They had no idea what to expect. But they had no choice.

Streaking forward, the Raptor approached the orange world, with its occupants having no idea of what the future held for them.

Authors Note: No, I wasn't making shit up with that ISD weapons output. Just type in Acclamator-class cruiser into Wookieepedia to see that even light ships in SW throw around literal gigaton firepower. Just mean this as a little take that against those who think that BSG ships could stand up to SW ones. ;)