Here's the next chapter folks. The last part is taken directly from previous story. Not too long chapter this one, next one will be longer.

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Chapter 2 – Into the Fire

Officer Cadet Henry O'Connell couldn't believe his eyes. Right in front of him was a giant ship, shaped like two Mercedes Benz symbols one hundred and eighty degrees offset from each other, and lain down on top of each other. He and the rest of Red Squadron were in the middle of performing advanced training in their new F/S-601 Falcon space superiority fighters, and had launched out of the Poseidonclass ship called the Boreas. The Boreas and Chu-Jung were the only capital ships in Earth orbit. The Boreas was Australia and New Zealand's contribution to the new and up-coming space fleet which was being developed. Ever since the linguists discovered that the names of the other twelve tribes were similar to the twelve constellations of the Zodiac on Earth, twelve large military satellites with large telescopes had been put into orbit to further investigate the constellations. For the last forty years there had been a rumour going around within the community involved with the discovery of the ship that the military satellites had detected signs of activity within the various constellations of the Zodiac; that they had detected large releases of energy upon objects recognisable as planets within the constellations, which indicated large scale military activity. It was known to everyone involved that ever since that rumour had started flying around, the governments of the various countries involved had almost simultaneously began more intensive research into reverse-engineering the technology from the crashed ship, and that a large emphasis had been put on manufacturing military class space ships.

At that point in time, Henry O'Connell didn't doubt the decision of his government to start to produce warships, as he was flying towards hundreds of smaller objects which he guessed were fighters, which had launched from the large ship in front of them.

"Red Squadron, form up on me," Red Squadron Leader, a Bruce Anders said into the radio. Henry O'Connell was Red Two, and he was second in command of the wing, if something were to happen to Anders. Almost instantaneously, the rest of the wing were flying in formation with Anders. Henry saw something moving out of the corner of his eye, and turned his head to look. Five large missiles were screaming towards the large ship in front of him, from Earth. He guessed that one of the countries on the ground had launched their planetary defence missiles at the large ship. He watched as a small group of enemy fighters detached themselves from the main group and moved in and shot down the missiles with amazing accuracy and speed. Officer Cadet O'Connell was scared out of his mind. They were one wing, against what must have been over one hundred fighters, which they didn't' know anything about. It was then that he noticed something above him, and he quickly glanced a look upwards, and felt relief. He saw the profile of a F/S-602 – Tiger above him, and with a couple more quick glances, he saw at least a wing coming into support them. He looked straight ahead again, and they were approaching weapons range of the enemy fighters.

That was when all hell broke loose, two wings of Tigers had been descending on a perpendicular course towards the oncoming enemy fighters, and they opened up with their four rail-guns mounted on each fighter. He saw a stream of missiles going towards the fighters, and before they knew what had happened, over thirty fighters must have been destroyed. Henry put the fact in the back of his mind that they must have been using some kind of radar, similar to theirs, and that's why the Tigers weren't detected, as they were based on the slim profile of the stealth bomber and were made of the same materials.

Their success didn't last long though, as the enemy fighters turned and opened up with their rail guns on the Tiger squadrons which had attacked them. That's when the order came through the communications for Red Squadron to engage the series of smaller engines located on the back of their fighter, and to engage the enemy fighters. O'Connell instantly saw the manoeuvrability of the enemy fighters as they quickly avoided his rail gun fire. Soon enough, he was in the thick of it, and there were explosions occurring all around his fighter. He saw a lone fighter which was away from the main 'pack', and hit the throttle to maximum and surged towards it, away from the battle. Suddenly, all of his systems on the fighter shut down, and he was sent careening towards Earth, with no power, no manoeuvrability, no weapons, no radar, nothing.

Bruce Anders, the Red Falcon Squadron Leader saw the manoeuvre by Red Two, Henry O'Connell and saw his ship shut down. He knew that there were at least a couple of Baleen class cargo ships out there.

"Red Leader, requesting emergency pickup for Red Two. Location 0564,6631,9235. No Power, repeat, No Power," he said into radio, hoping that one of the Baleen cargo ships would be able to reach O'Connell in time. He pulled his fighter around in a very steep one hundred and eighty degree turn, just in time for it to be torn apart by enemy fire.

Henry O'Connell couldn't help but feel extremely frustrated and scared as his fighter drifted towards Earth. With every passing minute, it's features were becoming closer, and there was nothing that he could do about it. There was no method for ejecting from his fighter, although that wouldn't do much anyway, as he'd then be sitting in space with a limited amount of oxygen, still drifting towards Earth. He saw additional wings of fighters coming out of Earth's atmosphere as he looked towards the horizon, but they couldn't do anything for him. Suddenly, a large flash came from the surface of the Earth, and Henry realised what it was – a nuclear weapon had been detonated. Another flash quickly followed, and then another, and then another. He looked as far backwards in his cockpit as he could and he saw that the capital ship was firing large missiles towards Earth, and he knew that they must have been the nukes. Thankfully, he saw a couple explode as fighters chased them down.

His view of the battlefield quickly turned to horror as he saw entire wings of fighters getting slaughtered, and they weren't manoeuvring out of the way or trying to defend themselves in the least. Henry O'Connell then realised what must have been happening, the enemy had a method to shut down their fighters.

It was at that time that two Poseidon class vessels appeared out of Hyperspace in close proximity to the enemy capital ship. Immediately, he saw two flashes from the other side of his ship, and he began to turn his head, but then realised that they must have been nuclear explosions in space. He waited for the flash to die down, and he saw the shape of a Poseidon class cruiser, with a sphere of pulsating energy surrounding the ship. He knew that that was the Boreas, the ship that he had been based out of. Spot fires were apparent on secluded parts of the ship, and he doubted that the ship could take another hit.

A shape passed above him, blocking out the light getting into his cockpit. He looked up and saw the shape of a Baleen class cargo ship looming above him, using it's manoeuvring thrusters to come up along side his Falcon and line up the electromagnetic plates. They had just completed this part of their training a week ago. What seemed to be five minutes, was only thirty seconds as the Baleen cargo ship had lined it's left side electromagnet up with the bottom of Henry O'Connell's Falcon. Suddenly, he felt the ship being violently pulled and heard a loud clang as the bottom of his ship impacted the electromagnet on the side of the Baleen. He saw out of his cockpit as they immediately rotated ninety degrees vertically, and the Baleen hit full throttle. Ahead, was another Poseidon class ship, obviously the Chu-Jung, the other capital ship that had been in orbit at the time of the attacks. He could see three other Baleen cargo ships going towards it, and he surmised that it was acting as a rescue and recover platform.

Combat Information Centre – Colonial Battlestar Galactica

They had to leave the system that they were occupying, which seemed to be relatively safe fro the Cylons, a week ago. Since then, they had been doing much of the same thing that they'd been doing much of the same thing that they'd been doing for the past two years, jumping between systems and praying that they wouldn't encounter Cylons. This time however, they had encountered Cylons in the system, but the situation represented a unique possibility.

After an initial reconnaissance mission with the blackbird, it was revealed that there were very few ships in the system, and a Tylium mining facility on a moon orbiting the only habitable planet in the system. After a raptor was sent in to photograph the facility, it was exactly the same as the facility that the Galactica's vipers had attacked almost two years ago, with one exception. There seemed to be a large structure which looked like some kind of communications hub. The mission had been planned, and the Galactica was getting ready to jump in as close to the moon as possible, to destroy the facility. Unlike the last time, they weren't relying on deception to overcome the Cylons; they were relying on brute strength. The plan was for the Galactica to jump in, and use it's broadside cannons to destroy most of the raiders. Then, the vipers would launch and destroy the facility. Once the facility was destroyed, four raptors full of marines would be dispatched to the communications structure, infiltrate it, and obtain all information they could. Adama and Tigh were hoping that the structure would contain information on Cylon deployments in the area, and that they could then use that information to avoid the Cylons.

The plan had gone off without a hitch, and only minimal damage done to Galactica. There was one thing that the Colonials didn't count on however, and that was the information contained inside the communications structure. Instead of deployments of the entire area, they found a map. On the map were a series of red dots and the Colonials couldn't conceive of their meaning. Also on the map there was one large red dot, with a label: Earth