Chapter XII

Book II

'Tidal Wave Part I'

Basestar V718

"No!" Caspian growled. His voice carried a touch of hysteria "We can't let their conversation infect us! Destroy the ship while they're trying to communicate. Use the virus, it might work on their systems and then, we can find their home world and destroy it before they can mount a defense!"

"Shut up and use your brains," Denise yelled. "We can't start a battle here. You do realize that's not the same vessel out there. The Colonials certainly know we've tracked them. We need to talk, not shoot. The Colonials are still speaking to the other ship. We're ten light-minutes away and both sides are still speaking. We can't assume that they don't have subspace communication's capability.

"Actually, they do." Denise Three said, confirming Anita's conclusions. She was tense as she now focused on the small ship.

"They're contacting us again," Anita announced.

"The ship's energy emissions are increasing," an increasingly worried Doral added. "They're using some type of ECM I've never seen before. I can barely see them now. They are demanding that we respond or be deemed hostiles."

Ravinia snapped at Randall. "Answer the hail!"

Randall's hands immersed his hands into the electrolytic fluid and mentally connected to the comms system. He sighed. Once again all of the carefully prepared plans fell to the wayside the instant contact was made with the enemy, or in this case, the unknown aliens. "This is Cylon ship V718. I am Randall, Commander of this ship." He looked around. Not one of his fellow Cylons protested. Both Leobens were staring daggers at him but said nothing. "We are, we are peaceful explorers looking for the planet called Earth to make contact with them to establish peaceful relations." He shrugged as every eye in the room glared at hm in shock. He disconnected from the comms array for a moment. "It was all I could think of," he whispered at them. Without missing a beat, he reactivated the comms.

"I, Shiplord Straha speak for the Empire of the Race and the United Coalition of Worlds," a voice responded. It didn't sound human at all. "Our scans reveal that the ship you command and those around you are warships. Our scans also reveal that you use the Cyrannus FTL drive systems. Are you part of the Colonial Exploration fleet currently in talks with their relatives of Earth?"

"No," Randall said quickly. "We are a separate, er, faction. We have followed the Colonials trying to find Earth first to explain our side of the story before the Colonials spread their lies about my people."

"What lies would those be?" the Lizardian asked. "And why do search for Earth with warships?"

"We need these ships to protect ourselves in unknown territory," Ravinia quickly interjected, amazed that she was speaking to actual aliens. "The Colonials are our enemies and would fire on us the instant they saw us. Our warships are used for our protection. These ships are for defensive purposes only, she finished and hoped it sounded plausible.

"That response is similar in attitude of the Cyrannus Colonials. But there is a difference between your two fleets. Their fleet has non-combat males and females onboard. Your vessels are warships" Straha's eye turrets swiveled towards Ravinia and Randall and didn't stray. "Do you have intentions of colonization the home world of the UCW?"

Randall realized that this lizard-alien was no fool. "No, we seek to find a way to promote a peaceful co-existence between our people. What is the UCW?" he asked quickly, trying to deflect the aliens train of thought that hit too close to home.

"The United Coalition of Worlds," Straha told him. "That is the territory you now occupy in a time of war. If you wish to speak to the Terrans then call your ships back and be directed to a sector that will bring safety to all fleets. If you wish to speak to Earth authorities, you will do this. Otherwise, go back to where you came from, comforted with the knowledge that you still live."

"He's lying," Samnar whispered. "There's no evidence of any battles within sensor range. We haven't seen anything to indicate a current war is being waged. Those long-dead worlds we've passed don't count."

"Can we speak to a representative from Earth first?" Ravinia asked. "If it was possible, then her people would confirm that the aliens and by extension Earth did have some form of FTL communications, something they had to have as Anita was continuing to relay the Colonial dialogue with the other alien ship. Some Earther named Doctor Daniel Jackson was speaking to the ambassador in real time.

"First, are you willing to call your fleet in and be escorted to a safe world?"

"If we can speak to a representative of Earth first, we will consider it," she responded. "And, it would have to be somewhere away from the Colonial fleet in order to avoid…difficulties."

An increasingly frustrated Caspian only half-listened to the conversation between his people and those aliens that could only be God's version of abomination that existed solely to test his people's faith in the one true God. This debacle couldn't be allowed to continue any further. His line might not be the most devoted to the one true religion, but even he recognized a test of faith when he saw one. Their entire mission was now compromised and if Randall and the others acquiesced to the demands that they travel to a safe world, they would be trapped there. The aliens would swarm them and either kill them all or force them into slavery.

This could not be allowed. He would not allow it. Neither would my line. He moved away from the computer console an waved his brother over to join him. "These creatures are trying to lure us into a trap. If all of ours are there in one place, they'll gather enough forces to seriously cripple us before we were able to break free."

"I agree, but they likely have limited resources," Samnar whispered. "That's why they want all of our forces gathered in one place before they attack," he reasoned. "If we act now, we can escape and come back with sufficient forces to take them and the Earther out." He looked at Caspian with a dark gleam in his eyes. God never intended for creatures such as these to exist. This mission is a failure, but it has shown us the way and we know what we have to do. Do you agree?"

"By your command. Preparing approximate protocol strike."

"Before I agree to anything, I need to know a lot more about you and your people, and this threat you mentioned," Randall sent. "I want to know more about your relationship with Earth. "They're humans. Why would you want to associate with humans? Our experience with them has proven them to be untrustworthy, dangerous creatures. They don't respect anything…"

"Our sensors," interrupted Straha, "indicate that your males and females deviate from the human norm by zero point zero three five percent, this is significant. But you are still close enough to be identified as human. But, is this deviation the reason you do not consider yourselves the same species? Please explain this incongruity to me."

Leoben wasn't listening. His mind was focused elsewhere. "Strike package confirmed. Targeting at coordinates seven five three relative. Proximity strike. Nuke package set, thirty kilometers," Caspian announced. "Awaiting confirm code for launch."

Anita looked absolutely shocked for a moment when she overheard Caspian imputing orders without consensus. Quickly she imputed her own abort codes. Her surprise only lasted a second before she started trying to cancel the attack. "Caspian, abort!" she screamed as she tried to counter. Denise and Catherine recovered from their own stunned surprise and both plunged their hands into the liquid matrix to assist their sister.

"Confirmed. Three-two-seven-Curasta-seven-seven-two," Samnar said smiling. "Execute."

"What did you do!?" Randall screamed. He too had attempted to abort the launch order and as a One, he should have been able to, but his own codes were locked out no matter what he tried. "My codes! What did you do?"

"What needed to be done," Caspian answered matter-of-factly. There was a soft rumble that vibrated the basestar. Sixteen high-yield, city-killing nuclear missiles were launched from Basestar V718, supplemented by another thirty conventional missiles. The raiders broke from their defensive positions and headed towards the UCW warship. "John's orders were very specific. If the original plan suffered any deviation from unstable elements, I was ordered to take the initiative, cripple Earth or its defenses. If Earth was deemed to be a threat, we were to eliminate said threat, escape and report back. The fleet is to immediate retreat and if necessary, sacrificed to get the data back to the Collective. Once the resurrection ship is within transmission range, if necessary, we are to destroy this ship and sacrifice ourselves to report back to him. End of story."

"What do you mean, 'end of story'? Gregor screamed. "sacrifice our resurrection ship? Kill ourselves unnecessarily? You moron! We don't have anything to send back! John had no right to usurp our command," he yelled, meaning his command."

Denise threw her hands in the air in disgust. "This is so fracking insane I don't' know where to begin! Abort this!"

"His orders were clear. You are a One. He is the One. It's too late to stop it."

"My God, we fired on these people in their territory!" the Eight screeched. "Impact imminent."

"The ship's emissions have gone off the scale!" Doral looked panicked.

Sixteen of their ten megaton warheads were headed towards one vessel. What was worse, the other two basestars slaved to the command protocol, had followed suit and fired their missiles at the UCW warship. Doral expected that in five seconds there would be nothing left of the ship with that much firepower being sent against it. Not even a fully alert Mercury could withstand that amount of fire power from what was essentially point-blank range even with CIWS or fighter support t to shield them. "We started a war."

"We're at war already!" Caspian snarled. "We kill that ship and jump out before help, if any, comes. Humans, aliens, it's all the same. They're infestations which must be purged!"

Catherine had never seen Gregor so frightened and angry. Like his brothers, the Cavils believed themselves in charge. For him to know that John, the self-appointed leader of the Cylon Collective had gone behind their backs and had placed a 'back door' set of commands using the Leoben models as spies with overrides was enraging. Randall was just as livid. Both of them had the looks that promised a lot of pain for John when…if they got back. Randall was calling for a retreat and she agreed. They had no choice. They had to get away before the truth was known. It was only a matter of time, possibly minutes before other vessels like the one speaking with the Colonials came in to attack and try to destroy them. The Leobens' brains must have really been scrambled to even think that something like this done AT THIS TIME was feasible.

Like the Colonials, she and the others were confident enough to believe they could withstand any attack from either the Earthers, or this Race species, but that wasn't the point.

"The missile abort isn't working!"

The basestar' s DRADIS, detected the small UCW ship stunningly quick response as it began firing its defensive weapons. The ship's CIWS was impressive and more importantly it was a mixture of projectiles and… energy weapons! Were they lasers?

"The ship's killing our missiles, but they're too close!" Merceda Eight said as she focused on the attack. Quickly she realized that the strike had occurred before she could finish her report. "Impact!"

26th Emperor Jorpna

Shiplord Straha was speaking with both the male and female creatures when the alarms begin hissing. The Race-modified Daedalus' Combat Intelligence immediately detected the launch of scores of missiles both nuclear and conventional. Defensive shields increased to full power while Combat Specialist Frellist's claws flew across his threat board activating the full CIWS capabilities before Straha could issue the order.

Cylon missiles launched from their berths by mass accelerators, erupted from their silos almost immediately accelerating to twelve kilometers per second. The missiles' maximum acceleration was one hundred six kilometers per second. That acceleration potential wasn't needed as the Jorpna was thirty kilometers distant, essentially point-blank range. The computer-controlled defense system auto-defended against the first salvo. The majority of those missiles ran into the UCW's CIWS anti-missile/anti-fighter firing a combination of naquada-trinium mixed with naquada-potassium explosive ordinance fired at four hundred rounds per second from sixteen computer-controlled weapons. In the moments it took from the time of firing until the first missile struck, eighty percent of the missiles damaged or completely shredded. The entire first salvo strike lasted less than eight seconds from start to finish.

"Four nuclear missiles got through," yelled a frightened Frellist. "Second salvo intercept in three seconds."

The huge main and secondary screens polarized to keep from being burned out and the crew blinded by the three one kiloton and one ten megaton nukes impacted on the ship's shield.

Straha was in awe and more than a bit of fear for his life and the lives of his crew. The superior male was trained for this. He was a Shiplord of the Conquest fleet before he became shiplord of an UCW explorer-class warship. He was trained by Terran Naval/Air-Space Force experts for two years before he, the third most powerful shiplord of the Empire of the Race received his command of his first UCW ship. And still he was unprepared for reality of a nuclear attack, surprised but not paralyzed.

To the shiplord's pride, he crew was preforming admirably, but he swore to berate himself later for his short lapse. These treacherous, Tosevite-like aliens tried to kill him and, thanking every Emperor past, the shields held, and their attack failed. Intellectually, he knew the shields would hold but his liver had told him something else. entirely. He and his crew were in a real fight now and the enemy was slinging nuclear weapons. His own training kicked in and a second later he started issuing orders.

"Helm go evasive and give us room," he commanded. "ECM unit begin full countermeasures. Kassiak contact UCW Command and Shiplord Kirel of this situation and request from the 281st Emperor Urram. I want Shiplord Romek at my side in battle."

"Yes sir," the communications specialist affirmed again using Terran learned responses.

Straha noted that everyone was responding tow their training and using Terran words as per their training. He referred to this as the Terran battle language taught to them by the Academies. It wasn't the language that the Race would use but it was so ingrained in the crew that it seemed natural now. He didn't complain as it got the desired results. "Target the closest enemy vessel and fire main guns. Eliminate it."

"It is done, sir."

The Jorpna, to the shock and then horror of the Cylons was already going evasive at almost unbelievable speed. The small ship evaded the few remaining missiles that hadn't been destroyed or exploded against the ship shields.

The powerful Asgard-based twin main cannons fired in anger from the Jorpna for the first time. From the point of view of the basestar being fired upon, two unimaginably bright bluish-white pulses connected to the ship an instant before every Cylon witnessed an instant of pure white and then absolute black.

The beams hit the closest basestar' s center mass. Reinforced armor designed to shrug off small nuclear strikes offered no resistance to the beams which burned through the main body of the ship, through the tyllium fuel storage tanks, through the armory, and out the opposite side of the ship before continuing on into space. There was no way that the Cylon ship could withstand such a strike and possibly remain intact.

The doomed ship splintered and broke in half as the main hull simply disappeared from the sun-level heat and energy of the plasma beam. The arms, with nothing to keep them connected, flew away in different directions as they exploded. In seconds there was barely a debris field left as flaming fragments no larger than Terran cellphones continued to burn away. There was nothing left for the raiders to defend and the vessel the tried to attack moved faster than anything the Cylons had ever seen.

V718

The command crew of the V718 went silent as basestar V114 disappeared from DRADIS in less than three seconds. The sensors couldn't even find enough debris to identify any portion of the ship. Whatever the Lizards used as weapons was absolutely devastating, like nothing they'd ever seen before. That was the second most shocking thing that happened in just over a minute of battle. The first thing that shocked and terrified them was the presence of an actual energy shield powerful enough to protect their ship from multiple nuclear strikes.

The rumor the Colonials tried so hard to publicly dismiss were true.

"We have to get away from here!" yelled Caspian. The shock of his total failure to destroy the small alien vessel had thrown him. As the final embers of their sister basestar winked out of existence, he couldn't think of anything do to but to flee as quickly as possible.

As for Anita, she was livid. She also felt nauseous like nothing she ever felt before. "She attributed it to fear of a painful death. Death wasn't bad. She knew she could come back. Dying in painful ways was the problem and she didn't want to die. The moment their sister basestar ceased to exist, she knew the battle was lost. The enemy ship was faster and moved with an ease unlike anything she'd ever seen, and it was already targeting the two remaining Cylon ships. Like every one of her brothers and sisters, she did not even imagine trying to fight back.

They had to flee, flee like whipped dogs.

Now.

A wildly cursing Randall Cavil had already seen the future and was screaming that they jump as quickly as possible. There would be no fighting back. It was-just get away.

"Jump now!' Randall yelled. His face was rife with panic. The UCW warship had just fired two missiles from a much greater distance than where they were from the first attack and he knew they didn't have a prayer of stopping it as two raiders sacrificed themselves by moving in front of the missiles. Their sacrifice served to do absolutely nothing as the missiles blew right through them as if they were paper without detonating on their way to the two remaining basestar.

Unbridled relief filled his heart when he felt the glorious experience of FTL transition a moment before the missiles reached them.

"I'll kill them both!" Randall screamed as he searched for a weapon. "You two are dead and boxed!" He screamed again at both Leobens. As angry as he was, he wasn't dumb enough to say what he really planned for those two. Boxing wasn't good enough. Purging both of them from the core was what he intended for both of them.

He honestly intended to thank Anita for having the foresight of keeping the jump engines on immediate standby. That was the only thing that saved them. Like most everyone else in the command chamber, the instant the missiles encountered the energy shield–energy shield! –they knew Leoben's stupid action was a lost cause. One tiny ship ripped a fully active Centurion IV class basestar apart like it was nothing proving beyond a doubt that the UCS and these lizards packed far superior firepower that couldn't matched by the Cylons. Standing and fighting would be worse than suicide. It was hopelessly stupid.

"I've already ordered the next jump," Gregor announce. His voice was unsteady, and he was sweating and a bit nauseous, but he felt better since the jump. We rendezvous with the resurrection and support ships and get out of this region of space. As soon as we can!"

Without warning, Denise viciously hit Samnar, breaking his jaw and then proceeded to kick him. Her fellow Three, Catherine was laying into Caspian with the help of Ravinia Six.

The others didn't lift a finger to stop them. The next jump was in three minutes and the Leobens weren't needed for that. Plus, it served them right for screwing up everything when they were so close to achieving their goal or at least finding out a lot critical, need-to-know information.

"Your actions caused the destruction of one of our ships, not to mention starting a war!" Catherine hissed as she continued to kick her fellow Cylon who was desperately trying to protect his private parts, which unfortunately did nothing to protect his face from agony. "We had an opportunity and you blew it to hades!"

Between bouts of pain, Caspian managed to draw a breath. "We learned that we need more resources to take this UCW and the Earth humans out…" he moaned in pain as the kicking continued.

Not even bothering to stop the assault. Gregor threw his hands in the air and turned back to the controls. "Four minutes to the next jump."

Merceda Eight called out desperately. "We have a problem! The resurrection reports that most of the resurrections of V114 failed to successfully complete the transition. We've lost dozens of patterns!"

At that news, the command center erupted.

"What's happening? Was it that laser type weapon they used that cause it?"

"How did we lose those patters?

"Check the buffer pattern again. It must be an error in the integration matrix. They could still be there."

"We'll figure this out later," Randall yelled as his voice cut through the din. "We're jumping in one minute."

26th Emperor Jorpna

"Shiplord, two enemy ships disappeared from our screens," Senior Tactical officer Malke announced. His clawed hands were rapidly reconfiguring the sensors as he tried to reacquire the ships. He had seen this type of FTL before as it was used by the Cyrannus Exploration fleet. "I now proceed to expand the sensor sweep to discover them."

"Do it," Straha commanded. The short battle had exhilarated and terrified him. It was his first battle and he was pleased that he had not shirked from his duty. The scores of training exercises with the experienced UCW Terran space commanders had borne fruit. He was proud of his crew and their responses. Even as he watched the command crew acted professionally and efficiency as the members of the Race were expected to. Being attacked with real (instead of simulated) nuclear weapons notwithstanding, he was pleased at this first skirmish and gave him confidence for the time when they encountered the real enemies attacking UCW worlds.

"Shiplord sir, the 213th Emperor Urram is at our port side one hundred kilometers and is adding their scans in an effort to find our prey."

Straha's tail thumped in acknowledgement. "Contact UCW command and request a detained scan of this sector. Perhaps their FTL drive keeps their ships within the net's range."

"It shall be done, superior sir," Kassiak responded.

"Shiplord, the sensor net has discovered four ships at…correction the ships have disappeared and reappeared nine light-years away from their previous position. Fifteen ships, type Cylon of various configurations. The UCW is vectoring two ships to that position. ETA eight minutes"

"Maintain full battle alert. Helm plot a course to those ships. Inform the Urram and have them meet our other ships at the targeted area. Calculate our speed so that we reach our targets at the same time as the two UCW ships so that we will proceed with a coordinated strike."

"It is done, Superior sir. Eight minutes."

By the emperor," he said as he lowered his eye turrets in respect to both of them, "We shall now punish those who fired on us with nuclear weapons while we spoke of peace!" he hissed. "Engage."

Hyperspace engines powered up and two Race-crewed UCW warships disappeared onto FTL at a speed that would see the Cylons facing four UCWs ready to exact vengeance instead of one.

TBC