President Elizabeth Horner sat behind her desk in the renamed presidential residence. It had been a month since the start of the second Cylon war. Memories flashed as she was on a tour of the Colonies when the attack started. She watched in baffled horror as Colonial navy ships just shut off as the Cylons activated their Virus. Her escort of Marines rushed her to the bunkers as nukes began to fall. The planetary defense batteries and other defenses were silent as they had been infected as well.
The last thing she saw was a bright light before the bunker doors slammed shut on her, her marines, and a hundred other civilians. She could hear the beating of fist from those outside wanting to live, wanting their children to live. Then silence…the deafening silence as the heat from the bombs cooked people alive, those that didn't die were poisoned with the harmful doses of radiation. But she and the people with her were safe inside their bunker.
They spent the first day watching the radiation counters in the high red knowing they would most likely die of starvation before they could ever escape. The bunker was rated for ten people for a week and the supplies reflected that.
However their concern changed to confusion as the radiation started plummeting near the end of the second day followed with radio broadcast stating the cylons were repelled and decontamination was under way.
She blinked and found herself meeting with the commanding officer of the massive strange ship UNSC Artemis. She felt her shock at hearing this alien ship named after one of the goddesses of her religion. Being shown the advanced computer terminal showing thousands of years of scientific advancement, thousands of wars leaving millions of dead and then the Covenant.
She saw UNSC Cruisers and Carriers that made Battlestars look tiny. Hundreds of worlds burn. As the UNSC ships try and fail to protect the worlds they defend drift dead and burning unable to stop them. Trillions of people had died in the thirty years they had fought.
The next week passes quickly for the combined arms of the UNSC-Colonial Forces inhabiting Scorpia. As the available raw materials for ship repairs and production begin to dry up. UNSC ships escort the Fleet Tender Dream of Virgon and Battlestars their hangars emptied. Together they flew out to several fleet rally points and scooped up destroyed ships for salvage or repairs, finding a few dozen more civilian groups under escort of a few ships here or there, who were brought back to Scorpia.
Scorpia was never meant to support a population that had just passed 1.5 billion people, even before the cylons dropped nukes on them. But luckily they had ten Eden class agro ships. Each ship sporting twelve domes. The majority of them were filled with crops, four of them however held livestock, hundreds of cows, pigs, sheep, and chickens. So no one was starving.
The Colonial fleet continues to grow as ships hauled in are stripped to repair others and new ships of survivors are found, and brought into the fold. With the latest group screened for cylons and granted entry their fleet now consist of twelve Battlestars, one hundred and thirty Beserk Carriers and forty one Firestar's.
The two UNSC forces had found each other as Hawaii was escorting a convoy of Colonial freighters led by the older Manticore Corvette Scylla. After the first war and the changing of fleet doctrine to a more Battlestar heavy fleet the Scylla had been stripped of military grade weapons and sold to a freight company. It and four other civilian ships had been stripped for parts by the Battlestar Pegasus. Left unable to jump the destroyer Hawaii and the frigates Rushmore and Hyena had escorted them in normal space for almost a week until the Corvettes discovered them in orbit of a free floating asteroid in the void attempting to hollow it out for the civilians to hide inside.
Using the Dream of Virgon the ships had docked inside the massive ship and jumped straight for Scorpia. A dozen civilians had been ordered shot and nearly a thousand men, women, and children had been left to die on the orders of Rear Admiral Helena Cain. President Elizabeth Horner had immediately issued an executive order to all colonial ships if the pegasus should be found she would be executed for murder and the marines who killed the civilians would be discharged and charged with murder.
The day arrived marking a full month since the start of the attacks was started with horrendous news when a scout to the Colony of Picon returned. An experimental Longsword had its Moray Space mine panel and storage removed and a jump drive from a Colonial Raptor installed. Given time both Colonial and UNSC hope it to be proven as a reliable and well armed scout.
However this particular Longswords mission had been to check on the colony of Picon since they had heard nothing of military or civilian ships breaking free since the early days of the war and that's when they were shown a horrifying video.
The Planet Picon had once been home to Colonial fleet headquarters and as such their Spacedocks held that in clear regard. The fourteen Colonial shipyards and drydocks in orbit had apparently been captured intact. And every available berth was filled with everything from modern Valkyrie Battlestars to Ancient Manticore Corvettes and that didnt even discount the four hundred Basestars. On escort duty around the planet and its local space.
As the room watched a series of flashes mark more ships arriving and Adrial Hopkins leans forward pointing at a massive Battlestar among the new arrivals "I know that ship." he says zooming the footage in to show the word APOPHIS along one of the two massive flight pods the size of a Mercury class Battlestar "that's the Titan class Battlestar Apophis. Gods preserve us."
The entire command constellation of the Colonial military Admiral Tomas Walton, General James Parks as was Admiral Javin Hopkins of the Virgon Imperial Navy and Commodore Felicia Sanne of Leonis Republican Navy. the President Elizabeth Horner and Empress Celea Haverford of Virgon when her father and siblings were killed in the bombings.
Captain Brian Jackson UNSC highest ranking officer stood in front of the gathered military and civilian leadership.
"You know of this Apophis Admiral?" asked Brian looking at the man still transfixed on the frozen frame of the massive warship after it docked with a shipyard surrounded on all sides by various Colonial and Cylon ships.
"Yes Captain i do, it was said that was the next class of battlestar that would make every other Battlestar outdated." He pulled up a datapad and after entering his own code pulled up the files on the Titan and her sister ship Osiris: ten feet thick armor three dozen massive 16in naval cannons firing multiple types of munitions. Two hundred smaller 110mm cannons all over the ship A dozen missile batteries A embarked airwing of nearly two thousand vipers with another hundred Raptors. A crew of nearly five thousand with room to house an entire regiment of three thousand marines.
The Colonial Admiral looked around settling on Captain Brian Jackson "I'm unsure if even your MAC would punch through the Titans armor. I know for a fact nothing we have here can even dent it."
Brian looks at the information his mind racing as a smile slowly grows "Ladies and Gentlemen i know just the weapon that will guarantee to pierce Apophis or Osiris's armor."
They all looked shocked and General James Parks pulled his head from his hands. What weapon could dream of destroying that monster?"
As an answer Brian pulls up a short video file from the files computer of a planet that fell a few months before they arrived here Honor.
"This is the Planet of Honor as the war with the Covenant continued to push us back. The Admiralty wanted to fortify more planets between the front and Earth." On the video a brown desert world appeared with three space stations in orbit and the skeletal frames of eight more in various orbits. Two of the completed stations had a long barrel pointed outward away from the planet as the third seemed to be an orbital factory producing parts for the massive engineering works going on.
Brian points to the two barrel stations "This is a Orbital Defence platform it fires a three thousand ton projectile at point four the speed of light." he looks at the sheer uncomprehending looks at the numbers he had just said as their minds refused to understand the sheer weight or speed of the projectile. He continued "to better understand it the Able's MAC fires a one ton projectile at point three light."
The room's occupants are filled with memories of the UNSC destroyer obliterating Baseships with almost childish ease.
"To better help you understand why we would need a weapon like this, I have a small show and tell." he clicks a remote and a small video plays of Covenant warships fighting ships of the same class as Able, Midway, Hawaii, and other UNSC ships they knew of and had seen in combat and how easily they were destroyed while doing next to no damaged to the alien ships.
The few covenant ships that were destroyed used several MACs hitting at once to knock the shields down before pepperingthem with missiles and cannons.
And then the gunsight footage from a Super MAC platform locking on to a covenant cruiser they had seen take on fifteen UNSC warships four Destroyers and eleven Frigates and destroyed them all in almost a hour having lost shields and suffered several hits from Frigates MACs be taken out in a single shot.
"With just one of these even a Titan couldn't hope to fight us here at Scorpia." Brian finished
President Holder looks around the room and back at the Super MAC platform. "This is top priority."