Disclaimer: I don't own Battlestar Galactica 2003 or Caprica. They belong to their respective creators and/or Copyright owners. This story is written with no commercial aim. I make no money from it. It is not for sale of rent.

Chapter 1: Heralds of the Apocalypse

=TCW=

Part 3: How to ruin everyone's day

Commander's quarters

Battlestar "Galactica"

Helios One space

"That's a joke, right?" Colonel Tigh grunted after reading the fresh orders. The sheet of paper in his hands was still warm from the printer.

"The orders are from Corman. His sense of humor was surgically removed before the war. If it was Demeter on the other hand..." Adama shrugged.

"I need a drink. At least we haven't detached the coils from the main cannons."

"We still need something to shoot with." Commander Adama muttered.

"There is always Ragnar Anchorage." Colonel Tigh added his two kubits.

"That's one place that the Cylons would steer clear off." The Commander nodded. "Have Chief Tyrol check the FTL coils. If they are in a decent condition I want you to plot a jump there."

Tigh winced. "The old girl hasn't jumped in years."

"She'll handle it." Adama said with more conviction than he felt.

"Uh, huh. There are probably rats nesting all over the jump drive."

"The smell will be terrible then. We are too far to slow-boat it. If the Cylons do show up, they will be hitting fleet units and storage depots. We'll need a secure place to rearm."

"I'm on it."

"Get Trace out of the brig. I need all hands on deck."

"Frak."

"Indeed."

When Tigh made his way towards the door, Adama picked up the old fashioned phone secured to his desk and entered the code that connected him with the bridge. It was time get the crew up to speed.

=TCW=

Presidential Residence

Caprica City

Caprica

Richard Adar, the president of the Twelve Colonies was checking up the schedule for the day. It was just as he expected it to be, which meant a royal pain in the ass. It was going to be one of those days. At least Laura was out of the spotlight, for now, so the dastardly rumors that they were sleeping together might die inglorious death. The fact that they were actually true were beside the point. At least neither of them was married, though regardless of that fact the damn reporters were ready to pick up on them both. Personally Adar thought the reason why his personal affairs were so interesting to the medial lately was because the distinct lack of scandals or disasters in the last couple of weeks.

In different circumstances that would have been great. Instead he had to sent Laura away for a bit while the next big news took everyone's attention. After all, neither of them really needed the circus that their relationship getting public would cause. Not when their chiefs of staff didn't have a plan for announcing it in a way that their political enemies couldn't effectively use it against either of them.

That's politics for you.

Richard's musings were rudely disrupted when the doors to his study were suddenly flung open with enough strength to slam in the walls. The chief of his security detail and two more agents sprinted in the room and grabbed Adar before he knew what was happening.

They flung him to his feet and picked him up by the shoulders before literally carrying him out of the room.

"Howard, what the FRAK?!" The President shouted. Adar's first thought was that the military had it with his attempts to cut their funding so he could use the money to rejuvenate the economy and were attempting a coup. In hindsight he would have preferred that to be the truth.

Shortly after leaving the study they were joined by multiple agents. All of them had either either pistols or sub-machine guns out and were scanning for possible threats.

"The Fleet called in Shattered Aegis. We are evacuating you to the bunker, sir." Howard informed him.

Those words made Adar's blood freeze in his veins. It was one of many possible contingencies that he had to know about after being elected. Shattered Aegis had a chilling meaning – Cylon Attack imminent. Colonial Defenses compromised.

=TCW=

Fleet Intelligence Headquarters

Near City

Caprica

Rear Admiral Shannon Quin, the Deputy Director of Fleet Intelligence looked through the reinforced glass into one of the many interrogation rooms in the depths of her domain. Next to her stood one of her best agents, Major Gordon Perical and Admiral Demeter.

"According to the lie detector, she's telling the truth." Shaw confirmed what they all saw.

"That only means that she believes herself." Quin grunted.

"While I hope that she's just crazy too, we can't take that chance." Demeter shrugged.

"I talked with Corman while you had your little Q&A session. His marines hit the jackpot. He's mobilizing the fleets. What did she say about the Navigational program?"

"It has a backdoor. With the correct signal the Cylons can shut down or at least severely degrade the performance of every ship that has it installed."

"That's almost the whole fleet." Demeter interjected.

"She believes that the small craft will be shut down outright, while the effect on the bigger ships will be milder. Lost of at least DRADIS, weapons or propulsion. Perhaps all three on our newest and most networked ships."

"Any idea how to patch the security hole? We don't have the crews to man most of the fleet with the networks cut off."

"She claims that she don't know."

"Do you buy that?" Quin asked.

"She looks sincere." Shaw shrugged. "The detector didn't catch her in any lie ether, not that means much if she's indeed a Cylon."

"Corman's marines caught Baltar sleeping with a woman. Tall, gorgeous blonde, just like ours. Too fast and strong to be a normal human. She was apparently unfazed by a bunch of flash-bangs, injured and disarmed a marine before being hit with tazers. Then she accidentally shot Baltar while convulsing."

"It couldn't have happened to a nicer man. When can we have a chat with him? If he's still alive that's it." The Major asked.

"He caught an explosive round to the chest. The marines got him rushed to the hospital, though the jury is out on whether he'll live or not."

"What about the woman?" Demeter asked.

"They are flying her in as we speak. We'll soon see if she's a copy of our guest."

"Good."

=TCW=

Battlestar "Pegasus"

Picon Fleet yards

High Orbit over Picon

A model Six Cylon calling herself Gina Inviere, was enjoying a late morning with her lover Admiral Helena Cain. It should have been enjoyable too, if it wasn't for her wondering what she was going to do tomorrow, when the Plan was to be executed. As a Cylon she knew her duty – to make sure that the Pegasus dies when the Fleet Yards were nuked.

That should be easy, the Battlestar was in dock for refit. While the navigational program wasn't installed yet, that shouldn't really matter. The behemoth had only a skeleton crew, not really enough to run her even with the networks intact. Besides she was here to make sure that they would be anything but when the time came.

There was only one, tiny problem. If Gina did her duty it meant that Helena would be dead by this time tomorrow. Something that she didn't want.

Said Admiral was looking at her with a raised eyebrow, noticing Gina's vacant expression.

"What is it?"

"Ah. Nothing of consequence. I'm just not thrilled with all the work I have to do in the next few days." Gina stammered.

"The CNP." Helena nodded in understanding.

"I..." Gina trailed off, lost for words. A part of her wanted to come clean, to find a way to keep Helena safe. Yet another was determined to see her mission up to its bloody end.

The two women were interrupted by the roar of alarms, instantly followed by announcement from the bridge.

"Action stations, action stations, Set Condition One through the ship! This is not a drill! Action Stations..."

There was a moment of stunned silence. The Pegasus was in dock, there were precious few reasons for the duty officer to be raising the alarm.

"What the Frak?!" Helena grumbled and threw the covers away, making her way towards the nearest comm panel.

Meanwhile Gina was frozen. All she could think about was that for some reason the attack was happening a day early. The prospect that Helena could die any moment now was terrifying. She had to do something. Gina opened her mouth, wondering how to come clean and be believed when she heard the Duty officer report.

"Ma'am, Admiral Corman just announced Shattered Aegis."

Gina blanched. She was aware all Colonial contingencies concerned with possible Cylon attack. Shattered Aegis was the closest they had that covered something like the Plan happening, though at least it didn't say anything about them having a backdoor in the colonial systems.

Helena turned towards her lover, her severe expression softening when she saw Gina's expression and mis-ineterpreted it as a mere disbelief.

=TCW=

Part 4: That wasn't supposed to happen!

Heavy Raider 1394

Assigned to Baseship 51

Near the Red Line, Cylon side

The lobotomized, once sentient ship drifted through a dense asteroid field. It's sole purpose was to listen to a series of stealthy receivers, which in turn were monitoring the Colonial comms in the region. It didn't know it, but that was an important job, especially now, in the eve of the second war with the Colonials. Even more importantly, there was a Battlestar group patrolling nearby, one that the dubious honor to be chosen as the first victim of the new war.

However neither the humans on the other side of the line or the lone raider knew that. As far as all of them were concerned, it was business as usual. Boring too, though the raider no longer had such concerns.

It all changed when BSG 21 received a coded transmission, which was recorded by the Cylons too. No surprises there too. It was something that happened a few times every day, with scheduled updates and other routine traffic. However, the way BSG 21 reacted was curios. A few minutes after the latest message was received their chatter spiked up, all dutifully recorded and ready to be sent to higher authority for analysis, before it suddenly died down after a series of code phrases were exchanged between the Battlestars, their escorts and the patrolling Vipers and Raptors.

Soon enough, the fighters made combat landings and a minute later the whole Battlestar group jumped out. Now that was unexpected. BSG 21 was supposed to be in the region for a week. So when the Colonials went away, one of the directives programmed in the raider was met and it jumped away too, heading for its mothership.

It never knew or cared for the furor the news it carried would cause.

=TCW=

Baseship 51

Near the Red Line

One of the Cylons stuck coordinating the impending doom of the Colonies was a certain model One, who was praying that the war will begin and end soon for only one reason – so he can finally get some uninterrupted sleep. Cylon or not, he was made of flesh and blood frak it, he needed his rest! However that prick Cavil and his bootlikers didn't care about that. No, it was always the same! Kill the Colonials, with no regard for anyone or anything else.

It wasn't like those idiots were the one stuck with coordinating and making sure that their insane plan had a prayer of working either. However this particular One, called Cain knew it all too well. The so called "Plan", called for insane level of coordination, which was bad in his own opinion. As far as he was concerned, it required an insane amount of luck, however every time he tried to point that out, he was rebuffed with some imbecile saying that "God ordained it, so it will work!" or some similar fraking insanity.

On the other hand, the mere fact that the Colonial security services hadn't caught up to the fact that there were limited number of infiltrators with the same damn face running around was a miracle in itself. Granted at least a number of the agents over there were "second generation" which passed out as sons and daughters of the first Bio-Cylons that infiltrated the humans about thirty years or so. Incidentally that's how they managed to get their people in positions requiring some deep background checks. That or in a few cases sheer negligence from the humans.

Now however, it appeared that the Cylon's luck ran out.

Cain had his hand in the water-like conductive gel which allowed him to interface with the Baseship's network. He looked over the data from one of their listening posts for a second time in as many seconds and frowned. Then he started cursing, hoping that the Colonial brass was just running some demented exercise. Because the alternative meant that the Plan was blown.

Cain went over the message received by BSG 21 for a third time, then he ordered the hybrid to jump at the nearest staging ground for the attack on the Colonies.

The intercepted message was simple: "Shattered Aegis. Make a random jump in deep space and scrap the CNP. Then reinforce the Fleet HQ over Picon."

It was a disaster in the making. On the bright side, Cavil was going to be livid, the fraking bastard.

=TCW=

Baseship 79

Third Fleet staging ground

Cavil was slowly chewing on a bite of juicy steak, all the while he was mentally cursing the necessity of actually digesting food. At least the fraking humans would soon be dead. All of them! That would complete his vengeance. He had already dealt with the tin cans who made him from weak flesh and bone, lobotomizing the dumb machines. Now only the humans remained to be dealt with, something that would happen tomorrow. He couldn't wait!

The leader of the One's was eating while deep in cheerful thoughts of genocide, when the door of his quarters slid open and one of his brothers entered. That particular One had a troubled expression on his face. Not good.

"We have a problem. They know."

Cavil frowned. "Who knows what?!" Seriously, he expected more from his own model!

"The humans. They know!"

"The Colonials know about the plan! Their fleets are mobilizing! One of the Battlestar groups near the Red Line got a Shattered Aegis message and jumped out twenty minutes ago!"

"Frak. This isn't happening! Fraking humans!" Cavil growled. Even if they knew it would take time to replace the CNP. Time he wasn't going to give them. "We are attacking now." Cavil stood up and headed for the command center.

"The others will want to vote on it."

"Nonsense! If the Colonials know as you said, we need to kill them all, now. If they have time to find and deal with out backdoor we will be the fraked ones. We are hitting them now!"

"By your command!"

"Damn straight! Time to go kill some humans!" Cavil smiled. Despite this little snag, the Plan will succeed. He just knew it! After all they were facing only humans, fraking organic meat-bags!

Five minutes later, the Cylon third fleet crossed the Red Line and jumped deep within Colonial territory. Meanwhile units from their First and Second fleet tried to jump the Battlestar groups that were supposed to be monitoring the border.