Disclaimer: I don't own Battlestar Galactica. Seriously.
M324-02
1735hrs
24 June 2467 TSR
Harrison saw the torrent of threat icons speeding towards his ships, and instantly came to the conclusion that he would not survive this engagement. Those missiles had inertialess drives, and without having to worry about damaging fragile organic bodies, they had a far greater acceleration than any ship could hope to match. His flotilla, starting from a dead stop, could never hope to avoid the salvo hurtling towards it. And the fighters from his two light carriers couldn't possibly stop the tidal wave of small craft pouring towards the Terran ships.
"Enemy birds in flight! Impact in four-five seconds... mark!"
"Fighters inbound! One thousand plus!"
"Point defence free! Bring the flotilla to three-one-two by eight-five-one, flank speed. Guns, you may return fire."
"Three-one-two by eight-five-one, aye."
The flotilla began to move, arcing back towards the M-Limit at an agonisingly slow speed. The ships had been stationary, and it took time to accelerate. There were limits to the inertialess drive. Push it too far, and the internal bulkheads of the offending ships would be covered in a thin past that used to be a crew.
Only the two command cruisers, Atlantis and London mounted external missile racks, and they emptied them in the first return salvo. 40 missiles sped back towards the unknown assailants, perfectly coordinated by battlelink systems, and directed at only two targets.
---
The strength of the first return salvo was surprising. Despite the difficulty in observing these mysterious human ships, the fleet had been able to determine that they were small. The largest was barely two hundred and fifty meters long. The fifty percent drop in density on the follow up launches, however, was encouraging. The precise method by which the greater number of initial missiles had been achieved was unknown, but analysis of the wreckage would doubtless reveal the answer.
The fleet's own second salvo spat out of the launchers, but in that time, the enemy had launched two more of his own. If those ships had been larger, this would have been cause for concern, however, the ships putting out the most fire were launching only four missiles per broadside. Such a paltry weight of fire could never hope to saturate the point defence of a basestar.
---
Commodore Harrison watched the missiles move in his display. The enemy missiles had a slightly lower acceleration than his own, and the two salvoes would arrive roughly simultaneously. The enemy had only now launched a second wave of missiles, and the clear advantage in launch technology would have cheered him immensely if it would have made any difference in the eventual outcome. As it was, all the technology on these ships was being effectively handed over to this new enemy.
One look at the swarm of fighters following the missiles in made it clear that they were all dead. If those fighters mounted missiles, even just one each, it still came out to more than a thousand warheads. There were so many of the bastards that plotting still hadn't gotten a firm estimate of numbers, and the number of missiles each fighter mounted was unknown as well, but it seemed unreasonable to assume that the enemy didn't have nukes. A thousand nuclear warheads would be more than enough to finish off his command, assuming that they were at least megaton range.
His own fighters wouldn't be able to do anything about it. Sixty fighters were no match for the juggernaut racing towards them, and if he held the carriers with the rest of his units, they would only spread the protection of his point defence thinner, without fulfilling any useful role. But they had a higher acceleration than the rest of his ships. They, along with the survey vessels, could get away.
"Lieutenant Howard, tell the carriers to collect their fighters. Once al fighters are on board, I want them to head for the limit at maximum acceleration. Keep a continuous tac download active. Let their computers can carry far more information that a drone's memory. And send the bug out signal to the survey ships. Tell Admiral Archer I'm in command now."
"Aye sir."
"Sir!" Someone called. Harrison turned, and identified the speaker as the young Lieutenant, Peters, sitting at the main defence control station. "Enemy missiles have not deployed counter measures. They're coming in like they can't even see what we're doing!"
Lieutenant James Peters worked frantically at his console. There was no hope of him possibly stopping all of the missiles heading towards them, much less the far greater numbers of fighters following, but that didn't mean that he wouldn't try as hard as possible. He had projected paths for ninety percent of the incoming birds, but between keeping track of the missiles, the fighters, and the frustratingly indistinct contacts near the edge of the active sensor envelope, things were slipping through the cracks. The computers of a cruiser flotilla simply didn't have the capacity of line units, and SF 27 had been unlucky enough to stray into range of vessels that were line units.
They were obviously from a different tactical background, he thought, as he desperately punched in fire patterns and assigned defensive priority values to units in his battlegroup. A Terran fleet that size would have been able to put out far heavier missile barrages, but far fewer fighters.
His terminal beeped at him. The enemy missiles were about to cross the fifteen light second mark, inside of which they would be in range of counter missiles, and inside of which they would start to deploy ECM and drones. The red threat icons on his flatscreen display edged towards the amber line tracing a circle around the icons of the Terran ships, and crossed it, just as he finished bringing his active defences on-line. Shields still weren't active- the generators hadn't had a chance to warm up yet, and they hadn't even been on standby before the engagement.
'It was unlikely they would be active in time to play any part in the upcoming battle,' he thought, then twitched in shock. The enemy missiles had done precisely nothing. Not a single drone, no blanket of static to wash away the incoming signals. Zip. Nada. No response to his counter missiles, either, no switch to evasive attack patterns, nothing. They just continued serenely along their pre-plotted courses, as if ignorant of the defensive fire racing to meet them.
"Sir!" He called to the Commodore. "Enemy missiles have not deployed counter measures. They're coming in like they can't even see what we're doing!"
---
The fleet watched the fighters the unknown humans had deployed vanish. Two of the ships- obviously the carriers- began moving away at an extreme acceleration. No ship in the fleet, bar lightly equipped Raiders, could match that acceleration. It meant that two of their foes, at least, would escape.
The launch of individual missiles from the human ships was surprising. Surely they would have been more effective if launched in a single salvo, like the missiles currently nearing fifteen light seconds? Single missiles would easily be picked off by point defence, and... ah! So, they were counter missiles? Clever. But they couldn't posses many of them. The new drives were bulky things. The Colonials couldn't possibly have miniaturised them enough to fit a large number into vessels that small. They would have been better served devoting the space to extra launchers. Still, it would reduce the efficiency of missile and fighter attacks, while they lasted at least. No matter, the fleet had other options.
Twenty Basestars accelerated towards their tiny foes, and their point defence prepared to swat aside the puny opening salvo the humans had thrown at them.
---
40 missiles hurtled through space. They didn't care about the hopelessness of the situation. They didn't care about the impending death of their human creators. The only thing that occupied their simple electronic minds were the targets before them. They were difficult. The unknown ships radiated very little, including infra-red and radio. In any case, the seekers on the missiles weren't designed to track such things. The lack of a powerful drive signature meant they had to use active sensors. This was not desirable. Active sensors meant that enemy point defence would have an easier time tracking.
The computers controlling the missiles didn't really care about this, either, not in the way a human would. They felt no frustration or disappointment that more of them than usual would die before they reached their targets. The only reason they note the detail at all was to adjust their pre-programmed countermeasure package.
---
The intelligences in control of the fleet stuttered in shock for micro seconds- an eternity for a high speed computer. The incoming salvo had suddenly and without warning blanketed the space around it with jamming. None of the sensors on the Basestars could even see them any more. The targeting emissions of active warheads indicated that they were still there, but the number of threat sources had increased increased to 120!
---
The Cylon fleet had no idea where the incoming salvo was until it was right on top of them. The two targeted Basestars had just over a second to recognise the missiles signatures emerging from the hash of static that obscured their sensors. One of them fired it's point defence wildly, but the shots went wide. The other didn't react at all. Each received twenty 700 megaton nuclear missiles on the surface of their hulls. When the explosions dissipated, there was only drifting wreckage.
---
The fleet reeled in shock. The unexpected ECM, the close, perfect coordination of the missiles on to just two targets to overwhelm their point defence, the power of the warheads... They had all been unexpected. And two Basestars had been lost as a result. The next salvo's would, presumably, be targeted on only one Basestar each. Those ships must not be allowed to launch more missiles. The fleet would not be defeated by a mere six ships!
---
There were whoops and cheers on the bridge of Atlantis as the two alien ships vanished. Just like their missiles had seemed to lack any ECM, their ships seemed to lack any experience with it. Only one of the targeted vessels had responded, and it's point defence was late, and fire wide. The only response from the alien ships was to increase their acceleration.
'And now we die,' Commodore Harrison thought. SF 27 had gotten off better than it had any right to. The enemy missiles had seemed to lack any ECM whatsoever, and all the birds of the first wave had been picked off well short of the flotilla. The second volley had penetrated point defence, but had made it clear that the enemy had no battlelink. The fire was spread over multiple ships, and arrived piecemeal, leaving gaps for close in defences to exploit. Even with the large numbers of missiles directed at them, the point defence of SF 27 had never been saturated. Only three missiles of the second wave penetrated the Terran defensive shell, and by the end of the barrage, the Greyhound and the Excalibur had been streaming air, but had suffered no erosion of combat effectiveness.
The third wave had been a different story. It had arrived at about the same time as the fighters. No one had really expected to have to deal with them. The cruisers should have been dead long before the fighters arrived. Point defence crews had hunched over gunnery consoles grimly, determined to destroy as many fighters as possible. And had frozen in shock as the horde of fighters had spawned an even vaster wave of missiles. London's battlenet had crashed under the sudden massive influx of targeting data, leaving half the flotilla's defence in local control. Half of the units in Atlantis's battlegroup refused to engage, unable to process such massive amounts of data. The missiles had swept across the Terran formation like a vengeful hurricane. The command cruiser London and her battlegroup, the heavy cruisers Greyhound and Sherwood had been swept from the universe, as had the heavy cruiser Antelope. Excalibur was a drifting hulk with no power, and Atlantis had no drives or weapons left. It was with vengeful glee that the surviving bridge crew note the three Terran salvoes en route to their targets meant three kills.
"Comm, update the Requiem drone with all our data, and send it off. Transmit any data they don't already have to the carriers. Attach the message 'Good luck. We were proud to do our duty.'"
"Message sent, sir."
"Thank you. It's been a pleasure serving with you, ladies and gentlem..." He was interrupted by the fourth missile salvo, which finished the job the raiders started.
---
Imperial City
Sol
1st July 2467 TSR
1350hrs
"There must be some way to open a dialogue with them!" Juliet Forrester's voice echoed across the Lower House of the Royal and Imperial parliament. The immense room was packed. Every MP in Sol was present, a far cry from the usual sparse turnout at sessions that should have been no more than unimportant wrangling over very little.
News of the attack on SF 27 had changed that. The arrival of the Kira and Dragon in Wilhelm, transmitting news of the attack, had prompted an immediate courier dispatch from the station commander. Very little was known about the attack yet. The data from the carriers and the single drone recovered was still being analysed. But some members of parliament had access to information that others did not yet have.
Charles Carson winced as Forrester continued. "We have no need for another war at this moment. The Ascellians are quite bad enough. We don't want another enemy from the unexplored regions. I propose that we dispatch a diplomatic team to make contact." There was a rumble of assent. "I also propose that we not send additional military units to the region until we know more. We don't want to provoke them, after all." Her image left the large screen that allowed all in the room to see her.
"Does anyone wish to speak?" Asked the Speaker of parliament, and elderly man named Matthew Thomas. Charles depressed his attention button.
"The Honourable Member for Xona has the floor."
"Honourable Members," began Charles. "You all know the basic facts behind what occurred. You know that SF 27 left Sentinal, and arrived in M324-02 safely. You know that survey operations began, and that some point soon after the start of those operations, an unknown fleet was discovered, and a confrontation occurred, during which the escort of SF 27, barring Kira and Dragon were destroyed."
"However, you are not aware of all the facts available at the moment." He paused. "As you know, I am the only member of the Parliamentary Board of Military Oversight present here today. The other members are returning to Earth as fast as they can. As a result, I have been briefed on the most recent conclusions drawn from the data sent by Commodore Harrison. ONI has confirmed that there were in fact two groups of aliens, one of which appears to still be using some form of reaction drive. They have also confirmed that it was the unknown aliens that fired first!" There was a disapproving hiss. "I propose that we detail extra fleet units to the area, so as to guard the Empire from attack. We should, of course," he motioned towards Forrester "follow the Honourable Member's suggestion of sending a diplomatic mission. However," his face hardened. "Diplomacy is useless if they turn out to be like the Ascellians. It's better to be safe than sorry, after all."
---
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AN: Sorry about the wait. Things have been... a little hectic. Problems with uni, problems with family, and computer problems, which happen to be linked to the uni problems. As a result of the latter, I lost all the planning I'd already done, as well as all my draft chapters, which kinda sucks, really. As a result, expect a fair wait between each chapter for the foreseeable future. I'm on Easter break at the moment, so I'll try to get caught up, but I have a ton of more important work to do as well, so no promises.
As always, constructive feedback welcomed. Flames will be ignored, or responded to with flames. If anybody wants to pre-read for me, drop me an email at mdt105soton.ac.uk