Author: Cyclone
Feedback: Please be gentle.
Distribution: Gimme credit and a link.
Rating: Nothing worse than on the shows, except maybe language.
Spoilers: Up to Symphony of Light for Robotech, with a few ideas picked here and there from other sources. For the other... you'll see.
Disclaimer: The characters depicted herein belong to other people. I'm just borrowing them for a while.
Summary: A navigational error throws the SDF-3 into the middle of another war.
Author's Note: Beware the vorpal plot bunny.
Cylon Raiders were equipped with a wide variety of sensors, and unlike a human pilot, they had no need to look at a sensor screen to access that data. It was much a part of them as sight or hearing was to a human.
The Shadow Legiosses they were fighting was invisible to those sensors. Only the Raiders' forward camera could detect them, and even then, it was difficult to see the black and grey fighters against the backdrop of space. The Raiders were like humans fighting an invisible army, forced to rely on hearing... in the middle of a busy metropolitan intersection.
The Pioneer had disgorged over five hundred Shadow Legiosses to assault the tylium refinery. There were only sixty Cylon Raiders assigned to its garrison.
The Cylons didn't stand a chance.
Unlike the current generation of Centurions, the current generation of Cylon Raiders were sentient. It was a primitive sentience, more bestial than human, but sentience nonetheless. Like the human models, they were downloaded when they died, giving them a degree of immortality.
But that immortality came with a price, a price that caused them to value their current bodies just as much as they would if they were as mortal as their human adversaries.
Dying hurt. A lot.
It was for this reason -- as well as more practical manufacturing limits -- that the fleet of Colonial refugees had not been destroyed months ago. Kamikaze attacks -- though that particular term would be foreign to Cylon and Colonial alike -- were simply impractical.
The pain of death was something that Cylon Raider 4711-38 was intimately familiar with. One of its deaths had been particularly painful: damaged, lying in the desert for hours, waiting for death to grant him release, only to have it arrive in the form of a human. A human who climbed inside him and ripped out his innards.
It was then that 4711-38 experienced another interesting facet of sentience, a new emotion: hate.
Hate is a powerful thing. Left unchecked, it can easily consume someone, overriding common sense, logic, and even self-preservation. This is something humans had learned time and time again throughout their histories, no matter their planet of origin. Even the Zentraedi -- emotionally stunted as they were -- knew the power of hate, even before encountering the people of Earth; within a warrior culture, hate is an emotion that comes easy to the unwary.
The Cylons were a young race. They were still learning.
And so it was that, high above the tylium refinery, Cylon Raider 4711-38 dove through the swarm of veritech fighters, firing his cannons and heedlessly weaving through them, taking risks no sane being would. It was that recklessness that would earn the Cylons a much needed victory.
A small victory, insignificant on the face of it, but a victory nonetheless.
When a particle beam grazed 4711-38's wing, he ignored it, focusing on his target. He had no reason to hate his target, save for the fact that it most assuredly was being piloted by a human. Suddenly, his focus broke as a cluster of missiles detonated nearby, sending shrapnel into his outer skin.
Fueled with rage at the insult and at the deaths -- however temporary -- of his brethren, 4711-38 poured more fuel into his thrusters, leaping toward his target. He knew he would die, but as God as his witness, he would take at least one of these humans with him to the other side.
After all, he'd be back.
Sergeant Jack "Piggy" Parker was in trouble. He couldn't shake the Cylon that was on his tail, and somehow, the slippery little tin can was able to evade the other REF pilots' shots, defying both the technological and ten-to-one numerical advantage they had.
Just my luck to be stuck with the damn Igloo of Cylons, he thought sourly.
His Legioss's armor had already been perforated with a handful of shots, and the brass -- in their infinite wisdom -- had forbidden them from converting to guardian or battloid mode. He hadn't taken any life-threatening damage yet, but the Raider just kept coming.
"Piggy here. Can't any of you dumb f---s hit that tin can?" Just as he said that, his veritech shuddered as something -- the Cylon Raider that was tailing him -- rammed into it from behind.
"Shit!" he swore as warning lights flashed. "Control, Piggy. Beta's been wrecked. Gonna have to disengage to hold her together."
"Copy that, Piggy."
Dispassionately from his seat in the Pioneer's captain's chair, Wade Anderson watched the... no, this wasn't a battle. It was a massacre.
"Anything, Sparks?" he asked.
The communications officer shook his head, "The airwaves are flooded. They're just throwing signals at us, hoping something will stick. Whatever software they're using, it isn't even compatible with our OS. They might as well be throwing feathers at us."
"Keep monitoring," Wade replied. "No time to get complacent. They can still get lucky."
Elsewhere, another battle was unfolding. With the arrival of the Earthers, the Cylons had suddenly found themselves losing the initiative. Initially, they had halted their attacks out of caution and a need to analyze the new ships. Then, a battle that should have been simple -- the obliteration of a single understaffed battlestar that had already lost most of its Vipers -- had been foiled, their prey slipping through their grip right doing exactly what the Cylons had been trying to keep them from doing: uniting with the rest of the fleet. They had lost four basestars in that fiasco.
So when they detected the two largest Earth warships and four of the smaller ones jumping away, they had to take the opportunity. They did not know where the smaller warships went, but the largest -- their flagship, the Pioneer -- had been observed making a critical strategic error: It had launched over five hundred fighters to assault the comparatively-lightly defended tylium refinery.
It would take time to recover all those fighters before they could jump out, and one tylium refinery was certainly a small price to pay when compared to the opportunity this represented. At the moment, the civilian fleet was guarded only by the Galactica, the crippled Pegasus and the Earth tender that was tending to it, and the much smaller Earth ships.
In response to the growing threat, the Resurrection's escort had been increased. Eight basestars against one outdated battlestar, one crippled battlestar, one non-combat military vessel, and a handful of smaller ships.
It should have been easy.
The Cylons were a young race. They still had not yet theorized an equivalent of Murphy's Law.
And Murphy was about to kick them in the face.
The REF Marine Corps dropship Wolf was a shadow-equipped Horizon-T-class transatmospheric dropship. While a Horizon-class shuttle -- even the -T variant -- normally required a crew of eight, marine dropships were typically stowed within larger naval vessels, rather than being deployed for extended periods of time. This meant that five of the eight crewmembers were largely unnecessary, as their jobs included command duties, navigation, engineering, and so forth. Considering that the on-board marine platoon's lieutenant usually handled communications, they were able to cut down the crew to a mere two: pilot and copilot.
The Wolf's pilot was Corporal Colette Ferro. Her copilot was Private First Class Daniel Spunkmeyer. The senior officer on board the Wolf -- and the only commissioned officer -- was Lieutenant William Gorman, who was monitoring the comm station, just in case.
Meanwhile, the squadron's technical adviser -- Tech Sergeant Lance Bishop, a half-Zentraedi -- was monitoring the sensor readout. They were relying on his experience to time this right.
"Wait for it..." Bishop muttered. "Wait for it..."
The other ships dropped into place. The first beams of light lanced out from the Wright.
"Wait for it!" Bishop warned again, waiting for the right moment.
"Pioneer is reporting site secure." That was the Wright's communications officer.
"Understood," Admiral Hunter nodded.
Rick had temporarily transferred his flag to the Wright. This was where he was needed. Even though the Wright was not a warship, it had to be maneuvered like one. The Pegasus -- clutched to its belly like a nursing dolphin -- was relying on the Wright for its combat maneuvering.
It showed a level of trust that Rick was not about to break, and however good the Wright's captain, Commander Tankersley, was, he was not used to maneuvering to engage the enemy. This end of the plan had been deceptively simple. They had some of the fleet's ships begin mining operations, and when the Cylons made their move, most of the fleet bugged out. The Wright remained, pretending to have problems with their fold drive, luring in the Cylon Raiders.
Then, a squadron of shadow fighters swooped in and blew apart the Cylon flagship's FTL drive. The explosion was the signal for the rest of the fleet's warships to jump into position.
The Galactica had jumped in on one flank, while the Garfishes had folded in on the other three, boxing the fleet in as the Wright opened fire. By that point, the Wright, pretending to be a sitting duck trying to flee with sublight engines, had lured the target fleet well within the range of her guns.
Three-gigajoule particle beams lanced out and slashed across the nearest basestar, searing armor with power equivalent to over half a ton of TNT. Compared to the nuclear warheads that were the standard anti-ship missiles used by the by both Colonial and Cylon forces, it was not very powerful, but against the Cylon basestars -- which had been designed as dedicated mobile fighter carriers and only armored enough to withstand the rigors of space rather than ship to ship combat -- it was more than enough. The basestar's exterior hull crumpled and blackened, melted to slag by the particle beams as subsequent shots penetrated ever deeper before the Wright's gunners moved on to the next.
Meanwhile, the defensive turrets that dotted the Wright and Pegasus opened up, and the two mated ships began reversing thrust. Slowly but surely, the momentum of the two ships was halted, then reversed. Still, the Cylons were not idle. While the basestars remained helpless, lacking weapons designed to engage capital ships, their Raiders were not, and they began their attack.
A lone squadron of Vipers launched from the Pegasus, flying out to challenge the incoming Cylons. Twenty fighters in all, it was a pitiful defense.
Or it would have been, had they not been accompanied by over a hundred and fifty veritechs -- half of them older models that lacked shadow cloaking devices, but were still quite formidable -- and the point defense weapons of a Mercury-class battlestar, which far outclassed the Wright's own point defense network.
Still, there were literally hundreds of Cylon Raiders in the assault force.
"That's a lot of fighters," muttered Second Lieutenant Rachel "Mercy" Torres as she flew her Lightning III toward the cloud of incoming Raiders.
The Wright's veritech complement was a fairly even mix of VF-4D Lightning IIIs, VF/A-6 Alphas, and VF/B-9 Betas. While the Lightning III -- easily distinguished by its distinctive wing/arm beam cannons -- was an older fighter, in many ways, it was superior to the more specialized Alphas and Betas. It could fill mission roles that would otherwise require a Legioss.
"Cut the chatter, Mercy," that was Lieutenant Commander Hiller, the Wright's CAG and Mercy's squadron leader. "Let's light 'em up, Knights!"
"Admiral, we have nukes inbound!"
"Request Pegasus to cease fire and raise the barrier," Rick ordered. "Order all fighters to minimum safe range."
"Pegasus has ceased fire."
"Omnidirectional barrier system is up."
"Nuclear weapons impact in five... four... three... two... one... impact."
A series of brilliant flashes of light polarized the bridge viewports.
"Capacitors holding. Barrier system is stable."
Rick nodded. He hadn't been entirely sure whether the Cylon nuclear volley would have overloaded the barrier system or not. The yield calculations had indicated the barrier system could handle it, but nothing beat a field test, and considering how the barrier system inverted when overloaded, it was a minimal risk.
"Drop the barrier and resume suppressive fire. Inform Pegasus weapons clear. Signal the Pioneer. It's time to drop the hammer."
The Cylons had taken heavy losses, and several of their basestars had been very heavily damaged; some would not be salvageable. It was a neat little trap that the humans had laid, but the Cylons remained confident in their victory. Through sheer numbers alone, they knew they would emerge victorious.
Two things caused them to rapidly reassess the odds.
The first was when the unseen Earth ship rammed the side of the resurrection ship and disgorged about a dozen humans in unfamiliar body armor. This was, however, a very minor detail compared to the other.
The other was the Earth flagship appearing behind the fleet, blocking the resurrection ship's only possible escape route.
With over five hundred virtually invisible fighters already deployed.
Not that the Cylons knew about the fighters before they started blowing things up.
On board the resurrection ship, one of the Cavil models had only one thing to say about this.
"I told you."
Author's Postscript:
Well, we finally get some veritech vs. Raider action, and... it's not pretty. Those shadow cloaking devices just make things manifestly unfair.
Don't expect this string of victories to keep going. The Cylons were totally unprepared to face either robotechnology or shadow technology. Now, they've actually got some idea of what they're actually up against.