Battlestar Galactica, Currently In Deep Space, That Same Time

Adama stood in the centre of the CIC by himself, Colonel Tigh was down in the rec room and the rest of the CIC staff were going about their daily routines as if nothing had changed. Everything had changed in the last few hours, they just didn't know it yet. In his hand, the Admiral held a message that he would have considered to be some kind of prank were he retiring, unfortunately though he was sure it was no prank and it seemed that some of his darkest fears regarding bulldog's discovery were now realised.

TO HUSKER, COMMANDING OFFICER BSG-75

COLONIAL FORCES IN ORBIT OF THE OBJECT ENGAGED BY UNKNOWN ALIEN SPECIES, ENEMY ATTACK FORCE DETECTED EN ROUTE TO PICON, HOME FLEETS MOVING TO ENGAGE

ALL VESSELS ARE TO PREPARE FOR WARTIME OPERATIONS, CONDITION OMEGA

BEADVISED, ENEMY VESSELS POSSES CONSIDERABLE BOW WEAPONRY BUT MINIMAL BROADSIDE AND STERN CAPABILITY ENEMY VESSELS ALSO POSSES SOME KIND OF SHIELD AND A LASER BASED POINT DEFENSE SYSTEM USED AGAINST SINGLE SHIPS AND MISSILES

ADVISE USE OF NUCLEAR ORDINANCE AND MASSED SHELL FIRE IN ALL ENGAGEMENTS

BSG-75 ARE TO GATHER AT HUSKER'S DISCRETION AND RENDEZVOUS WITH BSG-9 AT HOPE'SFOLLY FOR COUNTER ATTACK UNDER FARMBOY WITHIN 100 HOURS OF RECEIVING THIS MESSAGE

ALL DETAILS REGARDING THE OBJECT ARE NOW CONSIDERED NON-CLASSIFIED

ALL NONHUMANVESSELS CONSIDERED FREETARGETS AT THIS TIME

ALL CIVILIAN VESSELS ENCOUNTERED ARE TO BE ADVISED TO RETURN TO HOME PORTS

FLEETCOM SENDS

Hope's Folly, was a codename for one of several gathering points that had been designated throughout explored space. Their names and coordinates were known only to the fleet's admirals and a few trusted others so that rather then transmitting rendezvous coordinates across potentially monitored communications channels, battlegroups could organise gatherings at predetermined locations by just transmitting a word. Hope's Folly had been designated when serious study of the Object began and the location was roughly three quarters along the route from the Colonies to the Object. Farmboy was the call sign of Admiral James Dertan, the CO of BSG-9 and it appeared the Nagala had chosen to give him overall command over the counterattack. Dertan was a good appointment, being one of the few Cylon war veterans in the fleet who were still around due to their skills in battle as opposed to political manoeuvring, he'd also been in command of BSG-9 for almost four years now and had a wealth of experience at the fleet command level that Bill lacked.

Only one other person had seen the message and Dee was at her station, waiting for him to make some kind of announcement before she made any kind of comment to her shipmates, bless her.

After rereading the message he asked her "Dee, how far out are Leviathan and Roslin"

After rifling through some papers on her workstation for a moment, she replied "They should be approximately thirty three minutes out Sir, the Secretary's transport is being carried inside Leviathan's flight pod to take advantage of Leviathan's greater speed, they also reported that Apollo had run into them on his way out and is also aboard Leviathan"

"Very well then, inform Leviathan that I am authorising a tactical jump to our position, the Secretary's ship can come with us for now until she can safely return to Caprica, get the current positions of all our ships throughout the Colonies then get me ship wide, people will want to know what's going on" he then turned to Lieutenant Gaeta "Mr Gaeta, order the XO and the CAG to report to the bride and sound condition one throughout the ship"

"Aye sir" Gaeta replied as he grabbed a phone

"ActionStations,ActionStations,SetConditionOneThroughoutTheShip,ThisIsNotADrill,XOAndCAGPleaseReportToCIC,RepeatActionStations,ActionStations…" Gaeta's voice rang through the old vessel.

Moments after the announcement, the recently promoted Major Novacek entered through the starboard hatch. Weaving through the command crew to the centre of the CIC he asked Adama "What's going on sir"

Bill handed him the message "Looks like we may have let the Chimera off its chain"

"Frak" he muttered as he scanned through the message "Guess they won't be naming anything after me after this, will they"

The Admiral smiled "No they probably won't"

"Sir" Dee interrupted "Privateer, Prometheus and Warhammer say they can reach us within six hours at sublight, however Pulsar is eighteen hours away and Regent and Protector are out at the Armistice Line, at sub light it will take them days to get hear, Commander Lorin requests permission to jump to our position"

"Hold on a moment Dee" Adama replied before he turned back to Bulldog "Bulldog, grab the books and work with Saul to find the closest depot where we can load up all of Galactica's magazines and anything Leviathan might not have. Dee" he turned back to her "send a message to all our ships, head to Hope's Folly, we'll meet them there once we've loaded up on munitions, hyperlight jumps are authorised to get there at best speed"

"Aye sir" Dee replied before turning back to her station

"You know Bill it's not just munitions we need, its planes" Bulldog told him while flipping through the book "We only have to light squadrons aboard and two and a half squadrons worth of pilot's, the best of whom is in the brig"

"I seem to recall a full squadron of viper's in the starboard flight pod" the Admiral replied

A look of realisation crossed Bulldog's face "Yeah we do, Okay I'll get Kara out of the brig and onto that with the Chief"

Battlestar Atlantia, Orbiting Picon, That Same Time

Admiral Nagala was standing in the midst of the chaotic maelstrom of the Atlantia on the eve of battle. Fleet officers ran back and forth, distributing manoeuvring orders too and from ships and fighter squadrons, others were calculating possible tactical FTL jumps, others yelled across the command ship's colossal CIC trying to get a number on just how many fighters they had up in the air and what they were loaded with.

In his mind, it was glorious. At his fingertips was the most powerful fleet ever assembled in the history of humankind, forty eight Valkyries, a dozen Mercuries, five Columbia IIs, twenty five escortstars and Atlantia, his own three kilometre long flagship. On top of that were over ten thousand vipers, from both the ships and Picon's ground bases and almost three thousand raptors loaded with enough nukes to turn every planet in the Colonies into slag.

His will was the fleet's will, his wish their command and from the Atlantia's CIC he would lead the Colonial Fleet in its first proper fleet engagement since the Cylon war. This would be one for the history books, a battle that would be remembered for all time. This battle would make him immortal, for better or worse though he didn't know.

"Hopefully better" Nagala muttered to himself

As officers ran back and forth, every now and again one would give him a report, "Admiral, Pegasus reports that they won't have their network back online in time to join us", "Admiral Nagala all the reserve squadrons are now in the air", "Sir, fleet link is now ready for coordinated barrages", "Sir Galactica reports that they're headed to Ragnar to resupply"

Above the din of it though, one message reach the Admiral's ears that caused him to smile "Sir, the Scipio just jumped in from its picket. Turians are fifteen minutes out and closing"

Nagala turned to the Atlantia's communications officer and said "Get me fleet wide"

"Go ahead sir" the Captain replied as Nagala picked up a phone

"Now hear this. As you all know, we stand on a precipice. Our actions today will most likely shape the human race for centuries to come, whether we seize a great victory or fall to the jaws of defeat" He paused then continued, his voice calm and low "We now know that we are not alone in the universe and our enemy knows we're here, we don't know why they have chosen to attack us, but that doesn't matter right now"

He raised his voice and said "Becausewe'regoingtokillthemall"

The crew in the CIC cheered and Nagala was quite sure that similar scenes would be found on the other ships in throughout the fleet.

"Good luck to everyone and I'll see you afterwards"

Turian Cruiser Renix, En Route To The Citadel Shipyards, That Same Time

Although the damage done to the Renix had at first appeared superficial, closer inspection had revealed the true extent of the damage. The main superconductors for the cruiser's main gun had been burnt out by an energy surge and due to the damage done to the bow, rather then simply removing the components with a tug and inserting new ones, the conducters would have to be cut out with large industrial lasers, which would entail removing large sections of the ship situated around the gun, installing new coils and then rebuilding the removed sections, the work would confine the cruiser to the shipyards at the Citadel for almost two months.

However it was for that reason that Captain Vakarian had been chosen to transport the forty two POWs to the Citadel for interrogation by Fleet Intelligence officers. He had also been ordered to attempt an initial discussion with the prisoners. Most of them had been locked up in the hold since they were brought aboard several hours ago and hidden microphones had captured everything they said. Several minutes ago, his techs had informed him that they had a bare-bones translation system.

The hoomen that had been brought to the Renix's interrogation room was a male of its species. Like the rest of the Hoomens his body was covered in fur with thicker patches of a slightly darker colour around its armpits, genitalia and on top of its head. This one's head fur was a black colour and it was longer then most of the other's.

On the table next to the door to the interrogation room were the hoomen's personal effects, some kind of primitive computer pad and a bag containing a large number of pictures and writing printed on paper of all things. Although a voice translator had been worked out, one for written language was going to take a bit longer, so for now the informational contents of the bag remained a mystery.

Attaching the translator to his ear, Vakarian opened the door to the interrogation room and sat down at the table. This one was the third interrogation, the previous two hoomens had merely stated what the techs monitoring the microphones in the hold had identified as their names and some kind of identification code. They had selected this one because he was a civilian apparently while the others had been soldiers, some kind of ship board troopers akin to Quarian Marines, hopefully this prisoner would be willing to at least talk to him.

"So, what should I call you?" he asked the hoomen.

"Hmm, you can understand me" the hoomen replied, perhaps confused or curious, due to the imperfect translator rather then an organic voice laced with emotion, Vakarian heard what called a robotic Elcor "How is that"

Vakarian tapped his translator "A little translator the techies whipped up based on your people's speech patterns. It's not perfect but it will do for now"

"Incredible, your computer systems must be quite advanced, is that all raw processing power or did you use an AI"

"I'm no expert in computers but we didn't use an AI, the technology is illegal in Citadel Space, the things are far to dangerous to even research"

"Oh, great so humanities first contact is with more technophobes like… wait what's Citadel Space"

"The Citadel is an intergalactic government, Citadel space refers to the territory of the member species" Vakarian sighed, these people really were new to all this.

"Member species, so it's made up of several people under the one government"

"Almost, each species keeps their original government but defers to the Citadel council's authority, however you can also find governments outside of Citadel space that are made up of member species, however these tend to be criminals looking to escape the law"

The hoomen nodded at this. The hoomens lived on more then one planet, maybe they had a similar situation in some ways, one thing that never failed to surprise Vakarian was the way species reacted when faced with arrest, it was almost always the same. Stand and deny everything, or run to a star system where the law can't reach them, the latter were the ones who tended to get away.

"So if I may ask why did you attack us?" the hoomen asked him

"I'm sorry what did you say" Vakarian replied

"Why did you attack us, it's a simple question and one that I think is excellent in this situation"

"Well my vessel was on patrol when we detected a newly activated mass relay…"

"Wait, mass relay" the hoomen interrupted "Is that what you call the object we discovered"

"You mean the large object orbiting the planet we captured you over, yes we call them mass relays" Vakrian replied, annoyed at the hoomen's interruption "I assumed your people were pirates attempting to set up some kind of secret, off the books base, so we gathered the rest of our fleet and my flotilla engaged in a reconnaissance mission, when you attempted to jam our communications my commander took that as a hostile act and he ordered an attack on your forces, of course though now we know you are not pirates"

"Interesting" the human replied "so what's your next move then, seeing as we're not what you originally expected"

"Defeat your military, disband your government and safely integrate your people into the galactic community in a controlled manner to prevent abuse of technology that could prove disastrous for both your people and the Citadel in the long run" Vakarian replied matter of factly.

The hoomen who had been nodding his head in thought a moment before, jolted, stared straight at the Captain and asked "What, what makes you so confident that we'll just roll over and let you take over"

"Actually we fully intend for you to fight against us, my commander's plan is to overwhelm your primitive space fleet and bombard military installations giving your government an incentive to surrender"

"And what makes you think my people's fleet will just roll over and let you take over our worlds, for all it's failings my species has a tendency to fiercely resist occupation, even if the fleet fails I can say with some certainty that you could be looking at a full blown insurgency"

"Well, despite the unexpected deployment of nuclear weapons my battlegroup did handle your mini dreadnought rather well, considering the hundreds of ships we're about to jam down your fleet's throats I think my people's victory is almost assured, even if civilians resort to guerrilla tactics"

"Mini dreadnaught?" the hoomen replied, again with a look of what could be confusion on his face "That was an escortstar, the smallest, least armoured and least heavily armed ship in our fleet, the fleet's commanders didn't want to build them because they thought they were to weak"

A chill ran down Vakarian's spine, if what the hoomen said was true then the General could be walking into a far more dangerous situation then he had originally predicted and he was taking most of the sector fleet with him. Of course though he could be lying to try and force them to halt their attack, on the other hand though it didn't hurt to just send out a warning, he was just relaying intelligence, what the General chose to do with it was his own decision.

Abruptly standing and walking to the door Vakarian activated his radio link to the bridge "Comms, send a message out to the General, warn him that the enemy's military capabilities may be far greater then originally aniticipated, the heavy cruiser destroyed near the relay was one of their smaller vessels"

Vakarian then turned back to the hoomen and said "I'll be back in a minute"

Onboard A Stealth Raider, In Orbit Of Picon 10 Minutes Later

The One, known as Cavil rarely had any enjoyable moments these days, once on a mission to the colonies a colleague of his fake identity's had said that he looked stressed and while he had at times told himself that it was the fault of his creators, giving him this old worn out body, he could not deny that one day his deceptions and the results would catch up with him, either in the form of his current body suffering a heart attack or his siblings catching on to his activities. Although if the latter occurred it probably would be better to be boxed as his siblings realized that they could easily work around their precious democracy.

This situation was an example, he hadn't even had a proper plan until he saw the emergency news broadcast. He'd rushed off with the thought of using the virus against the colonies when they were attacked. But by the time he was hiding on Gemenon's largest moon he realised that he really hadn't thought things through, especially if the aliens attempted to help the colonials after he launched the virus and then the Cylons would have tipped their hand and final victory would be impossible.

But then like a sign from God, another One monitoring colonial communications showed him the broadcast and immediately Cavil plan formed. Even now their stealth raider, based on stolen Colonial technology, was floating near the Colonial fleet preparing to engage these aliens.

Placing his hand on the interface panel Cavil sent the order. The Cylons would have their vengeance in one form or another and better yet he would be here to watch.

Turning to the raider's window he watched as the engines of dozens of colossal warships and tiny fighters, flickered and died. Although he had always been an advocate that the human models should act more like machines, Cavil couldn't help but feel a deep sense of satisfaction, the only thing that would make this better was a bowl of popcorn.

Battlestar Leviathan, Preparing To Jump To Ragnar Anchorage, That Same Time

Commander Adrian Vex had been sent to take over the Galactica from Admiral Adama after he handed over Leviathan to the old man, it was a job normally reserved for Commanders at the end of their careers and those about to take command of their own battlestars. Vex was part of the latter category, in a few months, probably sooner now, with wartime production ramp ups, he'd be getting his own Valkyrie, for now though he was stuck ferrying ships around the Colonies, having spent weeks commanding everything from new escortstars to old Columbias he felt that he was quickly becoming an expert on all the ships in the fleet.

"So you think we'll find everything we'll need here Major" he asked the pilot who had come across from Galactica.

"Yes sir, Ragnar was constructed in the days before FTL and modern artificial gravity. The anchorage has enough supplies onboard to support two dozen ships for months, stored in spinning sections according to the book" the Major replied.

Vex nodded, at first he had been annoyed with Bulldog being sent over. But the man had quickly proven his worth, Vex would have bet that the pilot knew even more about running a battlestar in combat conditions then he did and the Major had given him a quick rundown in combined battlestar-fighter operations during the trip to Ragnar, if they ran into trouble and Galactica bought it, he'd need it.

"Sir, Galactica reports they have our jump coordinates ready, we can follow them at our leisure" the comms officer reported. Normally a battlestar like Leviathan would have generated it's own coordinates but with their skeleton crew they had no one capable of plotting the coordinates for a Mercury class battlestar, even with computer assistance.

The DRADIS console beeped, Glactica had just jumped. Walking over to the Navigators console, Vex opened the sealed container and removed the glowing jump key.

"Well Major" Vex said to Bulldog as he inserted the key "Let's go find some bullets"

Boar Lead, In Orbit Of Picon, That Same Time

"All Boars this is Lead, form up on me, we're going to go cover Olympia and stay ready for action, watch your corners for frak's sake keep your guns hot" Captain Delton ordered.

Captain Marcus Delton was a weekend flyer, a reservist. He'd served five years in the fleet as a viper pilot, flying the old Mk5s, before being forced out during the last decade of military cutbacks. Unlike most in his position though, he'd been able to score a reserve posting, something highly coveted among ex-fleet pilots who enjoyed their jobs.

Due to his rank when he left the service he had been given command of the 134th "Boar" Fighter Squadron, a collection of Mk5 Vipers and Mk3 Raptors. During his time running the motley group of Lawyers, Farmhands and Doctors on their training days, he had seen more then one bad situation, but this one was definitely the worst. An enemy fleet was closing in on Picon and somehow they'd managed to shut down the fleet like flicking a switch, just like the Cylons had done at the start of their little revolution forty years ago. Nobody was even communicating, eighty three ships, almost the entire defensive arm of the fleet, were just floating in space like old junk, Lieutenant Quin had summed up the sight best muttering "It's like the boneyard".

The only birds still running were a few of the reserve squadrons from Picon and a small number of scattered viper jocks, many of whom reported that they could see their fellow pilots wrestling with unresponsive controls, that had been ordered to form up on the Chimera, one of three battlestars still operational, the other two were the battlestars Olympia and Victory.

The first two were Columbia II class battlestars, the precursor to the newer Mercuries and the second class of battlestars built following the Cylon war, although well past their prime and nearing their decommissioning dates, and hence not carrying the newest fleet equipment, they could still give your average baseship a serious run for its money. Delton had no doubt that they could give a few frakkers from beyond known stars a bit of a migraine. The Victory was a Valkyrie, normally part of BSG 62 under Admiral Cain, and it had been about to go into drydock (some terms never died) over Scorpio alongside her flagship when all this happened, apparently they didn't even their entire computer system up and running, lucky for them.

Commander Neros, the Chimera's CO, had immediately taken charge of the situation and had ordered all the functioning squadrons to rendezvous with whichever of the three battlstars was closest and to switch over to their tactical communications frequencies, they would be their homes for this battle, however short it was.

"Boars, Olympia. We're deploying raptors to head over to some of the non-functional ships, they're heading out on pilot plotted vectors, so watch your DRADIS, the last thing we need right now is a collision. " the Olympia's Air Controller radioed.

"Roger AC. How many birds are combat ready" Delton asked

"Only 234 vipers and 41 raptors, including our reserves, but most of them are scattered to Hades and back. At this point the alien's will be on top of us by the time we have a combat formation"

"Okay then" Delton replied before he switched to his squadron frequency "Boars let's go show these frakkers the problem with trying to take our skies"

Gunning the turbo, Delton brought his viper under the Olympia's bow head before settling into a holding pattern just forward of the ships bow. It was hard, but he could see the faint shapes of the enemy vessels in the distance as they closed in on the helpless Colonials.

Battlestar Chimera, In Orbit Of Picon, That Same Time

"Weapons grid to full power, standby fighter suppression barrage" Colonel Ellis, the Chimera's XO, ordered

"Raise our bow 18 digress, sound standby for combat acceleration and shell impacts" Commander Neros told the helmsman,

"Sir" the Comms officer chimed in "Two dozen heavy freighters are being gathered on Caprica with an escort from Battlestar Maleficent"

"What's their ETA"

"Forty minutes with their jump drives sir"

Neros grimaced, with over a hundred enemy vessels closing in on his three, they'd probably be dead by the time reinforcements and evacuation arrived. Even if they did manage to hold out for that long though it would still take several hours to get everyone off every single ship, during which it would be easy for the aliens to crush them.

"Enemy's firmly in detection sphere now, and they're packed tight enough that if we throw some shells their way at the very least they'll be forced to break formation even if we don't do to much damage" Ellis told the Commander

"True, let's warm up the guns and give them a warm welcome" Neros turned to the Comms officer "Copy a message to the Olympia and the Victory, form up on us and prepare for a disruption barrage, helm shift us ninety degrees to port. Captain Palleon ready our heavy guns, hold off on using the nukes, I want sure hits when we use them"

"Aye sir" the Captain replied

As he felt the colossal bulk of his ship shift to present it's business end to the enemy, Neros had a terrible feeling about the coming battle.

He had a feeling that the fall of the Colonies had begun.

Author's Notes

Well here's the latest chapter, I'm sorry about leaving this as a bit of a cliffhanger but with the length of this chapter and the fact that I hadn't updated in a while I thought it would be better to just split this chapter into two parts, as it is this is currently the longest chapter so far. Still, seeing as so many of you were reviewing with messages of "The Turians are going to get their arses kicked" I'm going to assume I took you all by surprise.

Twilight Dragon God-Yes their is a bit of a lack of view from the Turians beyond General Septimus and Captain Vakarian but that will change in the chapter after the next when the discovery of the humans is reported to the council.

Undying Hunter-No I'm afraid there won't be an Adama maneuver over Palveran, but I do have a scenario planned that would involve it.

Now I'm in the midst of my end of year exams but expect the next chapter soon. Until then then though there are three things you can do.

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