"The others weren't so lucky. The Cylons had underestimated the power that the colonials, had and the weaknesses of their capital ships. That still didn't change the fact that the Cylons had killed two colonial military ships, which in this fleet hadn't happened since they had left colonial space over a month ago."

- The Untold Story: Galactica

Chapter 21: Confrontation

After the successful raid on the convoy, the resistance by the General had calmed down a little bit. The Cylons were going to be looking for them and therefore they needed to watch out for what they were doing. If they were too aggressive they might give away their position, which could result in imminent death.

With that Helo and Sharon had a week off of missions into Cylon territory, time that they used to rest and recuperate. Their raptor was a great place to not be seen, and with their growing feelings for one another, they took advantage of that.

After a week had passed the two were back in the air, conducting many recon missions trying to see if there were other survivors or supplies that they could use. As time went on they found fewer and fewer people on Caprica, which unfortunately made a lot of sense. Most people didn't have a lot of food to last more than a week, and there wasn't exactly an economy left. The few people they were found alive were already in small resistance groups or lone doomsday preppers, many of whom had extensive supplies that would be gathered later. It was funny in a sort of ironic way that they had been proven right in their claims that colonial civilization would end.

Being a senior raptor crew, the two found themselves in mission after mission with increasing danger. This came to a head when the two would be sent to Caprica City to investigate what was going on there. It had been known that the Cylons had not nuked the place, and therefore there was reason to believe that they were doing something with it. Perhaps the biological versions of the Cylons had decided to go and inhabit the now uninhabited city. It would make sense, as they wouldn't destroy something that there was no reason that they could not take intact.

The mission had started relatively well and the two were not detected as they entered the outer suburbs. Most of the recon would be with high-definition cameras as using anything more than passive sensors would cause the Cylons to notice them and shoot them out of the sky.

Unfortunately, the Cylons must have had a lot of surface-to-air missile batteries because they were soon lit up by an air search radar. Nothing could save them as missile after missile was fired against them. The raptor had towed decoys that could be fired from it, decoys that could be dropped, other electronic countermeasures, and of course chaff and flare for backup. All of these were used and fired until a lucky missile hit nearby the small craft. The proximity fuse caused enough damage to mean that the craft was disabled and going to crash but not enough to destroy it.

The Raptor crash landed near the Delphi museum of the colonies, and seeing that it is intact the two head in that direction. However, they soon saw a group of centurions, led by another version of Sharon and a blond woman.

Helo turned his gun on Sharon. "You're a Cylon." He said.

"Yes." She said matter of factly. "Look I don't mean any harm, Helo." She said, "I… I love you." She responded. The centurion's popes opened fire on them and both returned fire, the previous conversation forgotten for the moment. The two retreated into the museum building, taking down more Cylons, which was where Starbuck met them.

"Yeah I know she's a Cylon, but right now I have more important things to worry about," Helo said. "She hasn't shot me in the back."

Helo and Sharon had only been able to retrieve their handguns before the raptor had exploded on the ground, and Starbuck and her rifle soon proved to be decisive against the squad of centurions. But as they were defeated, Sharon ran in the direction that Starbuck had come. When they followed her, they saw that she had jumped into the raider and was flying it off.

"Well, Frak me," Starbuck said. At least she had gotten most of the supplies out of there.

Meanwhile, back near Kobol, the fleet was battling against the three base ships that had arrived. Over a thousand raiders began being launched towards the fleet, and missiles began streaking towards the fleet.

The civilian ships that could do so jumped out, with dozens gone in a few seconds. The military vessels activated their flak barrages as the missiles began streaking towards them. Some of them managed to impact the colonial ships, but none were nuclear ones that did far more damage than conventional ones, causing only minor damage.

Vipers were launched and formed up into their squadrons as the raiders approached. They didn't engage immediately, however, letting the raiders become disorganized in a web of flak and point defense fire before engaging.

Apollo was in his viper, having rapidly changed into his flight suit in a few minutes before the Cylons had attacked.

Two volleys of missiles were fired, one from the Cylons and one from the colonials. From the weapons that had been analyzed by captured raiders and missiles, the missiles that the Cylons used were roughly comparable to the ones that the colonials used though it appeared that some of the electronics were a bit superior, and it was observed that the Cylons had fairly effective jamming and electronic countermeasures on their craft. However, the colonials mitigated this with an interesting number of design choices in their missiles; they had multiple guidance methods and a basic computer that rotated between the versions of guidance to fool any jamming. Laser, infrared, ion, heat, DRADIS, radio, and more. Missiles fired on colonial ships or by surface-to-air missile systems could even be manually guided to their targets. Or more accurately, the flight computers on the various Vipers did almost all of the guiding, though the basic missile seeker could still do some of the work in a pinch.

This was one of the critical advantages that the MK VII had over older models of Viper, such as the MK II and IIIs that they had. Now they could accept the modern colonial missiles with a bit of jury rigging, but the computer systems that were available to both models were far less advanced. The issue has not interestingly been because of a fear of technology, this was true in the early war and it hadn't been used due to fears of Cylon hacking until later in the war. But this gradually changed as the colonials found effective technological solutions to these issues and workarounds to the Cylon cyberattacks.

The issue was that on MK IIs and MK III's the targeting computer for the missiles was simply obsolete. Now it could be upgraded which was equivalent to getting a new computer. This would make it just more worthwhile to procure something else like a new MK VII instead of the older craft. With Cylon's advances in electronic warning and defense, it would be very difficult for a missile with reduced guidance to successfully hit its target, so a lot of the MK IIs in the fleet were equipped with their guns only and not loaded with missiles in combat. There were plenty of MK VIIs, and more being produced in the Optimus.

The missile volleys took some of each of the fighters out, with the Cylons facing the brunt of the missiles and the casualties. The colonial viper however was an agile craft, able to be turned 180 degrees in a tenth of a second. With their afterburners into full blast, the Vipers sped away. While they might be fast, they wouldn't be faster than the missiles. Once there was a difference of about 10 kilometers between the Cylon missiles and the vipers, the point defense guns of the fleet shredded the missiles with the help of liberal flak usage.

Meanwhile, the Cylons were able to divert some of the missiles due to their electronic countermeasures. Ultimately more raiders were killed by missiles in the brief exchange than Vipers, even accounting for the different proportions in the numbers that were used, as there were over a thousand raiders when compared with only a few hundred vipers. Many of the Cylons had expended their missiles, and those that still had them wouldn't use them in a large coordinated volley for the rest of the battle. So the vipers began chasing after the raiders.

Apollo was leading the charge as the battle turned into a close-range gunfight. The Viper was far better in this regard, as it could maneuver far more quickly. The raiders meanwhile were more boxy with their FTL drives and ability to carry more missiles which gave them an advantage in long-range combat but not short-range.

Meanwhile, the capital ships in the fleet were beginning their formation. With three Battlestars and lots of smaller ships, the colonials had a decisive advantage. One that they advanced, closing in range with the basestars and rapidly getting into gun range. The Cylons launched nukes trying to throw everything that they had against the colonial ships.

In this, they may have succeeded, at least partially. The Bolthio IV Class Light Cruisers Sanford and Justine were each hit by a nuke in rapid succession. These small ships had little chance of fending either off, and when the blast cleared all that could be seen was a field of rubble and debris. Flak and point defense fire were accurate, and the colonials understood that they would need powerful defenses against Cylon missiles, but ultimately some would always get through.

This didn't change the outcome of the battle, however. The colonials had assumed a semicircular formation around the basestars with their ship's broadside firepower being brought to bear on the basestars. The situation was simply untenable for the Cylons, and one managed to escape with heavy damage.

The others weren't so lucky. The Cylons had underestimated the power that the colonials, had and the weaknesses of their capital ships.

That still didn't change the fact that the Cylons had killed two colonial military ships, which in this fleet hadn't happened since they had left colonial space over a month ago.

Author's note: Something that consistently bothers me in science fiction is the underutilization of missiles, particularly in fighter combat. I'd even go as far as to say it's a constant in just about every major movie TV show game or book. There are occasionally legitimate reasons for this, and I think in BSG there is a clear set of reasons. Cylon jamming is one though ultimately not the best since jamming exists in our world and that hasn't rendered beyond visual range combat obsolete. And Galactica may not have had many aboard though I'd assume there would be a fair amount at Ragnar.

The Cylons might be a bit underpowered in this story, but this battle did show that the Colonials aren't immune to losses. This lack of losses is largely due to the colonials fleeing when they can't win (or not win without serious losses) and only fighting when necessary or when they can win. And the Cylons do know that they aren't doing super well, and are going to start changing some things.