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 5: Hades, it's about time!

Battlestar "Persephone"

BSG 12 Flagship

Near the Red Line

"We are so fraked." Colonel Quin Kollman grunted quietly.

Only his CO, Commander Felix Torren heard him. He shared the sentiment too. Their FTL drive was down, stranding the Battlestar on the edge of enemy territory. Apparently the Fates didn't like them at all for some reason, because that had happened just a few minutes before Fleet Command transmitted a Shattered Aegis code and ordered them to pull out and start scrubbing the trice damned CNP.

That was no longer a practical option for his ship. Given their position, Torren was ready to bet that the Cylons had intercepted the message. Which followed to its logical conclusion meant that they were going to be attacking anytime now.

Commander Torren took a deep breath, while his mind was spinning, making up plans and discarding them. Unless the toasters ignored them for some reasons he and his crew were fraked. That still left him with some tactical options. One of which meant that the rest of the Fleet might actually get something useful from their impending meeting with the gods.

"I want a Raptor shell around us. They are to monitor our status and record the Cylon attack on our position that I'm expecting. They are to jump out the moment the toasters look in their direction. The rest of the Battlestar group are to spin their jump drives. I want them out the moment it get's clear we are going to be overwhelmed. XO, make it happen. Weapons, load nuclear missiles in all tubes, fire pattern Gamma 3. Look alive people. Launch all Vipers too."

Five minutes later, his orders were already executed. That was one of the last things that went all right for BSG 12.

"DRADIS contacts!" The Sensor operator shouted.

The Commander looked over her shoulder. There they were, three large fighter sized blips.

"Sent the 96th Viper squadron to intercept. All other units hold position."

He could see said vipers moving in a wedge formation, boosting towards the Cylons. Then they continued moving forward under their inertia, obviously no longer accelerating.

"Sir we just lost contact with the 96th. Vector in a couple of birds for 71st squadron. All other Vipers are to pull back." Torren's voice was deceptively calm.

He saw on DRADIS how missiles detached from the trio of toaster craft before merging with the fighters of 96th squadron, which promptly vanished from the plot. The two additional Vipers he sent to intercept had the same fate – contact was lost and they were blown up without offering any resistance.

"Frak. All Viper squadrons, combat landing on any available ship but Persephone. Comms, give me a line to Commander Solas of the Athena."

"Commander Solas here, sir." A gruff voice came over the wireless.

"You are taking command over the Battlestar group, Jeff. I want you to jump out the moment the last viper lands."

"What about you?"

"The FTL drive is a mess. We won't be able to jump for at least half an hour or more."

"We can buy you that time."

"Not if the toasters can shut down our capital ships too. Jump out. I'll see you on the other side."

"Gods speed, old friend."

The tree Cylon fighters drew closer and closer. Unknown to the Colonials, they had a red eye flashing, sending intangible siren song towards the human ships. The closest Colonial unit, an old heavy cruiser was the first to be hit.

"Commander, the Hoplit is reporting multiple malfunctions. Weapons, navigation and engines are offline."

"It makes sense." Colonel Kollman noted. The Hoplit was an older design, which was run with a very small crew thanks to the networking she got during her latest refit. On the down side, there weren't enough bodies in that hull to make her useful as anything but a target practice if the network was cut.

Persephone on the other hand… The Commander smiled coldly. The network on his girl was physically cut. An axe to the cables would do that. The price to pay was that all three shifts were barely able to cover everything that needed to be done. In the long or even medium turn, that state of affairs was unsustainable.

It didn't really matter. The last viper landed on the Athena. The rest of the Colonial heavies started jumping out.

"Multiple DRADIS contacts! Capital ship grade!"

Torren watched calmly as six distinctive dots appeared on the DRADIS. The sensor suite soon had a better image.

"Huh. New designs." The XO interjected.

"Creepy looking too."

"We are receiving some kind of signal. DRADIS is being degraded, navigation too."

The former was obvious. The screen became fuzzy, with the enemy ships barely visible amid the static.

"Weapons free. I want the closes enemy capital ship bracketed by a rolling barrage. Once it's location is pinned down launch all nukes at it."

"We have incoming fighters and missiles I think. It's hard to tell in this mess."

"Defense guns, give us a flak wall."

The Battlestar shuddered and Commander Torren could physically feel her going off course.

"Helm, why aren't you compensating?"

"It's a bit tricky to do so without a direct feed between the weapons and engines, sir. I'll do my best."

"Kids these days, they are so spoiled." Torren muttered, causing his XO to chuckle.

"Radiological alarm, we have nukes incoming."

"Not much we can do. Brace for impact. Launch our own nukes while we still can." The Commander and his XO went to a certain console which had their keys already plugged in and they rotated them to the right in the same time.

Twelve nuclear tipped missiles left their launch tubes flying behind a barrage from the main guns of the Persephone.

Ten seconds later a veritable shower of missiles rained upon the heavy armored behemoth. The Battlestar's flak screen was degraded a lot by the lack of precise targeting information on the incoming hostiles. The fact that she was bracketed from three sides didn't help either. So it wasn't a big surprise that in the span of five seconds, eight nuclear missiles hit her. Her armor shrugged off six of them, however the last two were something else – fat city killers that under normal circumstances stood no chance of actually connecting with a ship like the Persephone. They slammed in the dorsal side of the Battlestar, cracking her open with the fury of short lived stars. The next two barrages merely finished the wreck.

Nevertheless, Persephone didn't go quietly in the night.

While her DRADIS was severely degraded, the enemy had jumped close, expecting an easy kill. The first two salvos from the main guns missed, and the third and final managed only a single hit, shattering one of he "arms" of the targeted Baseship.

The missiles were a different matter. As per fire plan Gamma 3, they approached in a staggered pattern. Their seekers were hardened and more importantly, there was no backdoor allowing a virus to scramble their software.

Two of the three missiles in the first wave were shot down by diligent Raiders, then the third detonated, clearing the immediate space. Next group passed through the cloud of plasma moments after the shock-wave dissipated. They detonated ten seconds later, on the edge of the Raider swarm protecting their target.

Then the third wave hit, gutting the fighter cover of the Basestar and momentarily blinding her sensors.

There was nothing left to stop the last three modern ship-killers from striking their target where her two identical halves met. Nuclear fire burned out the thin layer of living armor and proceeded to shatter the Cylon ship. Secondary explosions saw to the rest, further tearing her apart.

Baseship 04 had the notable distinction of being the first Cylon capital ship to die in the Second War. It will be far from the last.

=TCW=

Part 6: The forbidden fruits of Mad Science

The "Pit"

Task Force "Hephaestus" HQ

Fleet Base "Poseidon"

Picon

"You know, if what we are doing here get's public anytime soon we are likely to be lynched." Rear Admiral Joanna Stark quipped.

"What gave you that idea, Ma'am?" Her aide, Major Stephen Grant snorted.

They were on the other side of an armored and reinforced with steel mesh glass from one of the labs in the depths of their domain. Beyond that thin barrier laid one of the deepest secrets that the Colonial Fleet had. It was the mauled frame of a Cylon. That by itself wasn't particularly surprised. You could find a lot just like it hanging as either trophies or object lessons that humanity's hubris was almost their undoing.

This one was different. He was active, plugged into a closed network providing him and a handful of others with a virtual world to inhabit. Which they did most of the time. The reason for that otherwise unbelievable arrangement was simple. That Cylon, and a few of his brethren, all of whom were contained in this facility were the only ones left from their kind. Which was something special. When the war started all those years ago, they were among those who chose to remain loyal. For their trouble most of them were hunted down either by the paranoid Colonial military or the other Cylons that hated them with almost unrivaled passion.

A handful were luckier. They did survive the war. Which posed a problem for those in the know. Both the civilian leadership and most of Fleet Command in the time wanted them "retired" just to be on the safe side. A few others high ranking officers had different idea. They were the same people who were against the apparent drive that was present among both civilians and military to abandon certain technologies and fields of research as too dangerous.

So a compromise was reached and Task Force "Hephaestus" was born. While the Colonies as a whole plunged headfirst into an age of technophobia, the members of that military outfit took another approach. The fact that they had a few friendly Cylons helped their efforts tremendously.

It was just too bad that even the new generations weren't yet ready to embrace the fruits of their labors. Not yet at any rate. The new trend among the fleet to rely on high end networked systems was a step in the right direction. Done properly, that would be a major force multiplier. The extensive firewalls and network security protocols created by a division of the Task Force sure helped in that regard, the fact that they did have Cylons to test their cyber defenses against was a great boon too.

What no one thought to look in for was a backdoor that was skillfully weaved in the coding.

Well, that was before a Priority One message from Admiral Demeter came in ten minutes ago. It was the reason most of the Pit was a madhouse with personnel busy backing up their research to secure off site servers, while the base around their HQ was mobilizing.

For the last five minutes, Hadrian, the leader of their contingent of Cylons and his synthetic friends were busy searching for any irregularities in the CNP code.

The door of the observation room slid open and a fully geared marine Captain strode in.

"Ma'am, we have a Raptor and Viper escort waiting for you. Battlestar "Trident" and her escorts just jumped in low orbit above us and are waiting for you."

"In a moment." The Admiral pressed a button so she could speak with their long time guest. "Hadrian, we are evacuating this facility. When practical transfer yourselves to the Beta site."

"We will. We've gone over ten percent of the software. No suspicious code so far."

"Don't be tardy again. You might not get out with just a missing leg and arm this time."

"I'm aware that the others are likely to just nuke this location. We won't be here for the fireworks. You should go before the good Captain over there loses his cool and decides to drag you to the transport."

"You should know, you had to drag her from that mess outside Caprica." Major Grant smirked. He had been a brand new private at the time, part of a marine platoon sent to extract a bunch of fleet boffins who were way over their heads. The fact that a squad of Cylons got to their rescue when they ran in a bit of trouble was shocking to say the least.

"Fraking jokers." The Admiral shook her head, though she had a small, amused smile on her face.

"We should go, Ma'am."

"Lead the way."

On the way to the surface they were joined by a squad of heavy infantry wearing the products of thirty years of research – the first practical combat exoskeletons the Colonial military was able to produce.

They passed by half-empty labs which showed pieces of the achievements and breakthroughs Task Force "Hephaestus" had made. A lot of them would have made a significant difference in the war that was upon them if only the Fleet had the budged or the willingness to incorporate them in their newest designs. Other breakthroughs would have revolutionized the Colonial society as a whole, though most of them would be unacceptable even a few decades after the war. The cybernetic prosthetics which were successfully tested just a couple of weeks ago, were just one of the advancements that were un-likely to see the light of day anytime soon. Hades, some of the brass that saw them were on the opinion that they made crippled people look too "Cylon" for comfort. It was a good thing that those particular officers knew nothing about the special long term guests of the Pit…

She didn't even want to think about the furor if even a whiff of project "Ascension" got to the public. The religious fringe would explode if they knew about it and wouldn't care that the creator of the Cylons had been working on the same technology just before the war started.