The detonation of a nuclear device against the hull of a spaceship is always a dangerous prospect. In the five hundred years since the Colonies of Kobol rediscovered spaceflight, and perhaps even on Kobol itself, nuclear weapons had remained a mainstay of all arsenals. Despite advances in armor and other types of weaponry, predominantly kinetics and for a time directed energy, the nuke has kept pace by a few simple factors. For one, conventional warheads will never be able match a nuke for raw power unless by some miracle of science anti-matter warheads were made a possibility or plasma bombs could be made into something other than a Fleet R&D money pit. By the same token, the required bore and barrel size necessary for a railgun to match a nuke was something within Colonial capabilities to make but only something the size of a large cruiser (or a small battlestar) could use. It would have to be fixed in a spinal mount that would be woefully unwieldy in the close-ranged fights favored by both Colonial and Cylon ships. The few spinal gun cruisers used in both navies were reserved for besieging orbital defenses and taking down space fortresses.

A nuke could also be scaled down to fit on a standard fighter based anti-shipping missile, giving the mass produced cylon raiders a relatively cheap and dirty way to strip a warship of weapons and armor in massive patches, or destroy critical systems if precisely targeted. The fact that Cylon basestars were also pure missile boats meant that a barrage of nuclear weapons could destroy almost any vessel with insufficient defenses or fighter coverage.

A battlestar could never be accused of lacking those. So General Odysseus didn't intend on letting the Colonials use them before he can deliver the first punch.

In a blaze of flashes Basestar 207 and its escorts jumped into effective missile range of the Galactica and her escorts. In a moment that lasted in such a microscopic scale of time that humans could never imagine except in deep mathematics the Cylons reorientated themselves from the jump, targeted the Colonial ships, and fired. One hundred and ninety-seven missiles tipped with nuclear warheads launched from 207 and its escorts towards the Colonial battlestar group. The defenses of the Colonials were not sloppy or slow. The Combat Air Patrol, a whopping seven Mk. 7 Vipers launched from the Galactica, immediately vectored in to intercept those missiles that they could. The gunners of the Galactica, Heracles, and the seven cruisers who served as escort recognized the incoming threat and flak barrages were thrown up as a bulwark against the bombardment.

It was a textbook response carried out to the letter. The only problems were the fact that these orders were carried out by humans. Shock, processing of information, form a decision, and act on it. This cost precious seconds and was compounded by the fact that the Colonials were still slaves to their incredibly well founded fears of automated systems and the potential of Cylons hacking through their firewalls in seconds. The foibles of the human mind also added priceless seconds to the reaction times on the Galactica. While the massive battlestar was a tried and true design that had yet to be truly eclipsed as a "medium weight" super capital ship and was commanded by a veteran of the Cylon War, her commander was not in the CIC when the attack came. Her XO, a drunken and damaged man whose senses were dampened by Tauron whiskey and haunted by nightmares, froze up in fear as those nightmares suddenly became living. His crew, all loyal and bright eyed youths, were not used to these kind of surprise attacks or having a massive barrage of nuclear weapons thrown at them.

In the end a quarter of the nukes made it through the surprised colonial light cruiser Marathon disappeared as seven nukes just obliterated it. Once the miniature suns faded away all that remained of the Marathon was a broke skeleton of a ship that had most of its mass boiled away by the nuclear hellfire with what remained being a twisted and irradiated mess of useless wreckage. The medium cruiser Valiant took several direct hits but seemed to shrug through it up until the nuclear detonations did enough internal damage to rupture the tylium tanks and a thick stream of starship fuel connected to an electrical fire. The Valiant didn't so much explode so much as burst apart like an overfilled balloon.

The remaining three medium cruisers Nergal, Persephone, and the Xanadu suffered single or two hits from a nuke that their armor was able to absorb with only mildly cataclysmic internal damage and boiling away of sizeable patched of their battle steel plating. The heavy cruisers and the strikestar Heracles were able to shrug off the the nuclear strikes with the stoic resilience of brawling ships meant to serve on the line, using their guns to soften targets and their armor to absorb blows meant for lesser ships or more valuable capital ships. Ships like the Galactica.

The Galactica received the brunt of the assault. The biggest nukes in the cylon strike force's arsenal were thrown at her. Her several hundred point defense guns blunted almost the entire assault except for one nuke. A fifty kiloton contact nuke made it through the flak fields and struck the mid-section of the Galactica. The nuke boiled away her dorsal railgun batteries and her outer armor. The shockwaves of such a powerful detonation rattled through the empty bulkheads and compartments that buffered the armored belts of battle steel and the interior where the crew worked and resided. These chambers shattered and crumbled as they absorbed the shockwaves that would have turned the crew into masses of broken bones and jellied flesh, but it didn't stop the humans from being thrown about like they were caught in a violent earthquake. Glass shattered and piping burst. Machinery bolted to the deck was rattled into near uselessness as the vibrations destroyed delicate mechanisms and parts.

In the CIC of Basestar 207 Odysseus reviewed this information as one of the many semi-sapient info-morphs who served as his support staff highlighted it and forward it to his immediate attention. He cross referenced the data with the projected scenario results he had wargamed thousands of times over the weeks leading up to this moment. The real world results of the actual attack currently matched the results of the upper percentile of the most optimistic outcomes and continued to follow that trend as the Colonial responded in a disjointed and dazed manner.

Odysseus sent a confirmation of acknowledgement. For Centurions, this was the closest they got for a smile.

Abruptly a series of new radio bursts came from the Galactica to the Heracles and the remaining strikestars. The bulk of the Galactica's airwing glided out of their launch tubes. One hundred twenty Vipers with thirty Raptor gunships and seven Anaconda SWACs ships launching from the flight decks. Their formations were tight and the remaining colonial cruisers closed ranks to tighten their flak screens.

Adama had returned to the CIC.

***
Adama stormed into the CIC at a furious pace. An eye scanned over the command center and took everything in within a moment. Tigh was already almost on his feet, his cup and its contents spilled over the deck. The drunken, irritable look was wiped off his face and his eyes were surprisingly alert and clear. Lt. Gaeta was flat on his back and dazed, along with the rest of the command crew. Adama unceremoniously grabbed the young man by the hand and hauled him to his feet, holding him stead as Adama looked into Gaeta's unfocused brown eyes with his own piercing blues.

"On your feet, Mr. Gaeta," Commander Adama not quite growled. Gaeta finally seemed to "wake up" and focused on his CO. Adama released the man and snapped, "Status?"

Gaeta's mouth gaped open for a moment, and only a moment, as he refocused and immediately set about accomplishing his duties as tactical officer, calling out information as it came to him, which was fast and precise.

"Cylon flotilla just jumped into weapons range and nuked the fleet! Marathon and Valiant are down! Can't find the Loki! All other ships present! Massive damage to dorsal hull and multiple hull breaches! Gun batteries two and three are gone! FTL is offline! Large cylon raider group closing in with support ships!"

Adama was already looking up at the DRADIS as Gaeta spoke. He saw the many angry red blips representing whole squadrons of raiders pressing down on his battlestar group. Interlaced with them was four capital ships: three heavy cruiser weight and one super heavy that had no entry in the warbooks. They were closing fast, pumping out missiles as fast as their launchers could cycle as they closed to gun range. Two basestars were rapidly creating distance between the battlestar group and themselves even as they continued to bombard conventional warheads and nukes at his fleet. With no FTL drive on Galactica his flotilla was effectively dead in the water, which was probably why she'd been targeted with the majority of the nukes. Even if it hadn't had been disabled there were still people on the Tresor who needed evacuating.

With running not an option, the only choice left was to fight.

"Helm!" Adama barked, "Bring our ventral hull to bear and keep it between the Cylons and our damaged sections. Mr. Gaeta, launch the alert fighters! Half protect our damaged side and the support ships! The rest engage the raiders! Dee, tell the rest of the fleet to engage those heavy cruisers! Have the CAG prep the raptors for bomber work! Nuclear weapons authorized!"

Petty Officer Dualla and Gaeta looked at Adama in shock. Release of nuclear ordinance was something only the president could authorize outside of war time. Even during the worst of the post-Cylon War civil conflicts nukes hadn't been thrown around.

"Did he frakking stutter?" Colonel Tigh snarled, all of the drunken stupor gone from his voice aside from a slight slur and replaced with a whip made of razor wire. "Move your frakking asses, people!"

The two young officers lost their stupor and snapped back to their tasks. The rest of the CIC followed suite. Tigh stepped up to Adama and whispered, "So we're at war now, Bill?"

"Looks like," Adama replied, his face the same stoney mask as ever.

Tigh did not have such skill. His disgust and worry were as plain as day. "We need to get out of here. We can't fight all that."

"Better hope that Engineering fixes the FTL drive soon," Adama stated as the first wave of the alert fighters were flung out into space.

Kara tried to ignore the blood on her hands as she slid her gloves on. She tried to pretend she hadn't seen the limp bodies being lined up at the back of the launch bay as she and Callie hauled Colonel Ali to join then. She tried to ignore the bloody bootprints she left on the deck as she boarded her viper. She tried to ignore the disgusting wet feeling that coated her fingers as she gripped the control stick and throttle.

She was moderately successful in that she didn't end up curled up on the floor puking her guts out. She was dimly aware of Chief Tyrol snapping her helmet's airtight seal and giving it a "good to go" slap as the canopy was shoved into place. It was almost a blessing as she was taxied into the mag-pult tube and went through the motions with Shooter.

Starbuck came back to herself as her Mk. 7 Viper blitzed out of the tube and into open space. She glanced around and found her wingman. Her viper came alongside and they joined the horde of other fighters as they formed up from the two launch bays.

"All Vipers, this is CAG," Colonel Spencer "Dipper" Jackson called out. "Objective is to protect Galactica until her FTL drive is fixed. "Jolly, take Yellow Team and protect Galactica and the support ships. Starbuck you take Blue and escort the Heracles in. Everyone else with me, we're going straight up the gut. Keep your wingman close and watch your vectors, people! Don't stray past the recovery line!"

Starbuck gave her affirmation and she veered off with twenty vipers in tow. As they sped off to join the Heracle and the heavy cruisers they got a good sidelong view of the Galactica's ruined dorsal hull. The gaping wound were the contact nuke had gone off had smoke and air bleeding from it in ragged streams. It was like someone had cut a major artery in zero gravity and was just letting the victim bleed out.

She shook the sight from her eyes as Galactica left her canopy and she focused her eyes on the lights before her. Hundreds of kilometers ahead of her she saw the faintest hint of the cylon fleet. Solar radiation caused the shimmering metallic hulls of the baseships and their cruisers to have the slightest twinkle that betrayed their presence to the naked eye. More noticeable was the many hundred motes of blue-white light that was the exhaust of plasma engines from the raider swarms and the CAG's vipers. Dipper and his squadrons engaged the enemy first. Without needing to listen to their comms she knew it because the light motes stopped staying constant and began to flitter about with streams of red and blue tracers flowing in between and the bright red blotch of light that existed for a short second to denote the destruction of a fighter.

When Starbuck flew her first sortie as part of a major action she had seen something similar. As part of the second wave of vipers as a Colonial Fleet task force destroyed a large pirate base situated in an asteroid fort left over from the Cylon War. The pirates had managed to assemble a large if motley and threadbare fleet of fighters, and as the first wave of vipers engaged it had seemed like two swarms of fireflies. It had seemed beautiful at first, but such naive notions had left her after she entered the fray. Pirate or Colonial, there was nothing beautiful in the loss of life; much less in the chaotic, remorseless brawl of battle.

She keyed her mic as the leviathan form of the Heracles took up most of her canopy. "Heracles, this is Blue Squadron. On station to provide fighter support."

"Heracles, Blue Leader. Acknowledge," the strikestar's CommO replied. "Remain on station and protect the battle group from any Cylon fighter incursion. Fighters from Heracles, Berserk, and Furious will be on station to support and will comply with your orders."

Starbuck felt her blood chill at that. Not just a squadron lead but effectively a battle group's CAG all in one day. "Acknowledged, Heracles," was her reply, and she focused on her DRADIS screen as the range between the colonial and cylon cruisers ticked down far, far too fast for her preferences.

The pirates that Starbuck had helped take down were the largest concentration of NGO firepower in the Colonies. That translated into a lot of soft power via blackmail, bribes, and connections. In terms of hard power and warship tonnage they had a handful of freighters outfitted with missile launchers and small caliber flak guns, a pair of ancient Manticore-class Corvettes left over from the Cylon War, and a single Adamant-class carrier-frigate that was all pomp and glamour meant to show the employed thuggery and ambitious underlings that their bosses were powerful and wealthy. The Colonial Fleet had sent in a heavy cruiser with a squadron of modern combat frigates to take them out with support from the Valkyrie-class Battlestar Chairon. The deployment of said battlestar was something of a scandal and seen as a misallocation of resources by an Admiralty eager to demonstrate that their lobbying for a one hundred twenty ship strong battlestar fleet was justified. Right now Starbuck wished that she had the Chairon and a dozen more battlestars were here right now.

The different between Colonial and Cylon warships is something that every human knew on a gut feeling. Not because of propaganda or different naval warfare doctrines, but because the Cylons of the Cylon War had made the decision to utterly divorce themselves from their creators in every meaningful way. It was disturbingly evident and common during the war. Today, after two generations, the difference was almost utterly alien. The most meaningful and apparent demonstration for this was as they closed to weapons range.

The two cruiser groups fired off hundreds of missiles at the other. The cylons point defenses, relying on computer precision than volume of fire, swatted scores of missiles out of space with bursts from their quad-cannon turrets. Any nuclear weapons were zapped by point defense laser weaponry developed by Cylon research minds and enhanced by salvaged Alkrani and Xurian warships. The perfect chromium color hulls of the cylon warships were marred black and vulnerable hardpoints ranging from DRADIS arrays to weapon batteries were blown or boiled off by the strikes. The Colonial cruisers, still slaves to their paranoia and reliant on their flak walls, suffered worse. The medium cruiser Nergal broke apart as her nuclear weakened hull was battered past the breaking point. The Persephone merely lost control of her navigation and artificial gravity. As the two groups maneuvered she drifted in a straight line and was blasted apart almost contemptuously by the basestars.

The surviving Colonials drastically cut their speed to decrease the torque pressure on their frames when they turned to bring their broadsides to bear. The cylons kept their noses pointed at their foe. The Colonial ships were uniformly wide and flat to allow better turret allocation and fire pits for their broadside cannonade. The Cylons were thin and needle like with very few turrets with a greater effort put towards missile tubes and what seemed like spinal cannon mounts.

The Cylons fired first. More missiles flared out of launch tubes and invisible, violent energy lashed out at the Colonials. Beams of accelerated charged particles boiled away armor and cut into hull The effect was devastating and immediate. The Xanadu was speared straight through the hull and the slightest turn of the Cylon heavy cruiser striking her neatly severed her superstructure and detonated the fuel store, causing her to break in half. The Heracles lost an entire bank of heavy cannons on her flank and the Furious suffered catastrophic damage to her engines as half of her plasma drive clusters just fizzled out as emergency systems cut tylium feeds to prevent complete loss of the ship via wildcat explosion of her central tylium tanks.

The Colonials replied with equal candor. The main batteries of the Heracles, Furious, and Berserk unleashed a fusillade of tungsten-depleted uranium rounds on the Cylons. The Cylon cruisers, though a breed born of the new doctrine that didn't rely on handicapping the enemy into helplessness, was still a cylon design. They were fast and deadly but thin skinned. Two of the beam cruisers broke apart as volley after volley of bullets the size of large trucks ripped through their armor and into their innards. The last of the trio didn't seem far behind, but the massive battleship was made of sterner stuff. Its armor shrugged off most of the fusilade with only the heavy artillery cannonade that was Heracles' striking power.

As the cruisers and the strikestars clashed two of the basestars circumvented the battle to press their assault on the wounded battlestar. Their plan was disgustingly simple and effective. They would both attempt to attack Galactica along her top and bottom, forcing her to orientate to keep her wounded dorsal hull out of the line of fire, throwing off her firing solutions as she tried protect the gaping wound that opened her up to a death knell strike.

Then one of the basestars abruptly ceased to exist as twin stars were born in the fusion reaction of two nuclear tipped torpedoes striking the mid-section.

"Yes!" Adama snarled as the Loki became briefly detectable then disappeared into the background of space. "Mr. Gaeta, reassign raptor strike group two to the battleship."

"Yes, sir!" the young officer replied.

"FTL status?"

"Almost done, sir!"

"That FTL better come back soon," Saul muttered to him. "We can't keep this up."

Adama didn't say anything. That proved to his credit when a massive nuclear explosion destroyed both the Cylon battleship and the Heracles.

"What happened?" he demanded. "Someone get me Starbuck!"

"Sir," Starbuck replied, her voice warbled and cracked by nuclear emissions, "the Cylons rammed the Heracles and nuked themselves to assure the kill. Requesting new orders."

Frak! This wasn't good. It was most definitely not good as a dozen new cruisers jumped in next to the Cylon baseship that remained along with a hundred raiders.

"FTL?" he barked.

"Ready, sir!"

"Recall the fighters! Let's get out of here!"

Galactica went into a defensive posture as a new wave of nukes launched. Gaeta had just finished the last of the prep when they hit. Only a few did but they rippled through the Galactica and suddenly there was no more gravity. Everyone scrambled to get themselves strapped in as the last of the fighters landed and the Cylon cruisers closed in.

"Jump us out!" Adama ordered, clinging on to the tactical plot. No jump feeling of inside-out came. He looked over and saw that the FTL computer specialist had brained herself and Gaeta was too far to help or do anythin. Acting on instinct along he push himself towards the DRADIS display, then pushed off of it towards the jump computer.

Someone must have seen what he was doing and helped him land. Adama thought it was trust, reliable Gaeta at first but the skin tone was wrong. In fact there were a great many things wrong He followed the arm up and saw it was-

"Zack?!"

The youngest of the Adama family looked young and vital but with some sadness in him. He said to his father, "eleven twenty-three, sixty-five thirty-six, five three two."

"What?" Bill asked.

"Just do it dad!" Zack pleaded. "Now! The pods are closed!"

***

Lord of Admirals Skrain's dreadnought squadron jumped into the battle space at full combat readiness. Strike fighters were launched and particle accelerator cannons were charged up for maximum damage for an alpha strike.

"Stand down," the Lord of Admiral declared. "We're too late."

On the view screen was only the wreckage of battle. The Galactica battlestar group was gone with only the corpses of cylon ships to show the perpetrators.