The Thirteenth Tribe (nBSG/SG Crossover)

[fnord]

Fair enough, isn't the first of my suggestions that haven't made it in (Admiral J. Jones, frinstance). Think you'd prefer it if it wasn't the last.

We can haz next bit?

[Eternal_Freedom]

Next bit is in progress, should be up in a couple of days.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Angels Fall First
Above Lemuria, Terran Orbital Space

The first Cylon nuclear weapon detonated in Terra’s atmosphere ninety seconds after the Basestars jumped into position.

The blast was a brilliant point of light followed moments later by a deep crimson fireball that was oddly shaped. A crashing shockwave came next, spreading outwards, consuming the air and everything else in its path, including three more Cylon missiles accidentally launched too close together.

The city below, Lemuria, was a vast metropolis, capital of the Terran Commonwealth and home to twenty nine million inhabitants, the seat of government, the ground-based military headquarters, and several of the oldest and best-preserved relics of the Lords of Kobol. The city had been warned, the residents were taking shelter in newly-created bunkers beneath the surface. As soon as the Cylon threat had been discovered when they encountered the Warspite, the Terrans had been preparing.

It was another of these preparations that ensured that the vast and deadly nuclear fireball directly above the city centre did absolutely nothing to damage it. The huge city-shields had been raised hours ago at the orders of Admiral Lethbridge-Stewart; the nuclear weapon, despite being powerful enough to rip an unshielded Battlestar in half, did not even scratch the shield’s strength.

It was not the only missile that had been fired however. A hundred more had been fired in that opening salvo, and whilst a number had been immolated in the first fireball and many more were damaged enough not to detonate, twelve did explode, venting their nuclear fury upon the invisible barrier between them and their targets.

These shields were the strongest the Terran’s had ever built, powered by huge naquada reactors nearly as large as a destroyer and buried deep below the planet’s surface for additional protection. They could withstand one or twelve or even a hundred such warheads, but they were not invincible.

The Cylons fired another salvo which raced down towards the planet. Before those missiles had covered even a fraction of the distance, another ship jumped into position. The Galactica, recently restored to full fighting condition at Olympus Base, appeared in a flash of light between the Cylons and the planet. Her armour, fully covering her venerable hull once again, gleamed in the sunlight; her engines flared with blue plasma as they held her in place and her guns swung to new bearings to target the enemy.

There was a moment’s pause, as if the universe and all in it had paused to marvel at the sight, before her guns fired. The countless dozens of point-defence mounts erupted with clouds of shells, flying out to blast the incoming missiles from the sky. Her main battery also spoke; plumes of orange fire launching heavy anti-ship rounds at the malevolent hovering Cylon ships.

This was an extremely dangerous and foolish place to fight a battle for both sides, and both sides knew it. The ships were too low to be in a true orbit so they had to use their main engines to overcome the inexorable tug of gravity. Any debris or wreckage would inevitably plunge down into the atmosphere, causing even more damage below. Any ship that had its engines damaged would similarly fall to its doom.

Both sides knew this and did not care. For the Cylons, this was their divine duty; obliterating the humans as their God commanded. They would stay here firing until they could not continue. For the crew of the Galactica, be it the Colonial veterans or the new Terran recruits brought in to bring the crew up to full strength, it was an even easier choice: they were warriors and below them were nearly thirty million innocent civilians depending on them. It was a choice that no-one aboard the huge ship needed to think about for more than a tenth of a second.

For the Colonial veterans, this was a chance to avert a cataclysm like the one that claimed their own worlds months ago. This time they could act, they could prevent it. For the new Terran recruits, it was even easier; many had family in Lemuria.

The Cylons kept firing. The Battlestar kept firing back. The shells from the heavy guns began to rip into the Cylon ship’s structures. The old ship hadn’t been able to mount the turbolasers that her newer sisters had received but her guns and their shells had been improved nevertheless. The rounds tore gaping wounds in the thin skins of the Basestars and vital systems deep within began to suffer. But there were only twenty-four gun mounts, spread over the Battlestar’s hull, and nine widely-scattered Cylon targets, it would take time.

Two more flashes of jump-drives heralded the arrival of meagre reinforcements. The damaged destroyers Resolute and Champion appeared on the Battlestar’s flanks, their own gaping wounds visible for all to see. Despite that, their shields snapped into place and their own remaining guns began to fire.

Further away were the two hundred Vipers of the Galactica’s Air Wing and the other squadrons detailed to assist. They flew with their throttles jammed forward, burning fuel at a painfully fast rate, the pilots left with a grandstand view of the action and the knowledge that they could do nothing to help for at least another five minutes. None of the pilots were happy with this fact; Starbuck in particular was nearly incandescent with rage.

The Cylons finally began to shift their fire. The tenth and final salvo had been launched towards the planet before the Cylons in command decided to eliminate the Battlestar and escorts first. The humans below could wait; in front of them was the ship that had infuriated them for eight long and bloody months. All but a mere handful of the missiles fired had been intercepted by the humans, and the city-shields had easily absorbed the energies released by the one that slipped through.

Missiles began flying at the human ships, giving them much less time to react and also limiting the number of point-defence guns that could act; when firing against the missiles aimed at Lemuria the guns on the flanks and the stern had a chance to fire as well, now only the bow guns could act.
It was not a one-sided match however. In a spectacular double-detonation, the first Cylon missile detonated against Galactica’s shields at the same moment the first Basestar erupted into flame and wreckage.

The Battlestar’s CIC was a study in measured, professional calm, despite the repeated warning pings from the DRADIS and the rhythmic thump of the main guns firing. Adama and Tigh stood resolute at the plot table as they so often had, calmly directing the gun crews and making slight course corrections to keep them firmly between the Cylons and the planet. This was what the ship had been built to do, her crew trained to do; stand between the enemy and the defenceless. On the wall of the CIC, just below the ship’s crest, was her motto, one that had been coined during a similar engagement over Picon in the first Cylon War; I Will Not Be Moved.

The report that one enemy ship was dead and another heavily damaged cheered the CIC crew. Gaeta however was growing increasingly concerned about the shields; they were retrofits and would never be as strong as the Terran-built ships. Their strength was dropping rapidly.

“Shield strength at 60% and falling sir!”

Adama nodded, knowing full well that losing the shields would be a death sentence given the yield of those warheads. “Very well. All dorsal batteries, shift fire to target three, all ventral batteries shift to target five. We need to cut down the odds.”

Before the order could be processed, the Resolute fired her remaining mega-laser, spearing one of the Basestar’s dead-centre with red fire. The ship was shattered, debris flying in all directions. Then, over the wireless, came a triumphant cheer as the Vipers reached the engagement.

The tiny craft raced in among the Cylon formation, their new laser cannons blazing as the pilots vented their pent-up rage. The guns were anti-fighter weapons and would usually be next to useless against capital ships. But with no enemy fighters around and with the Cylon ships being unarmoured carriers and missile platforms, the laser cannons could make the enemy bleed.

And that’s exactly what the Vipers were doing. Strings of small explosions traced lines of fire across Cylon hulls as the tiny human planes duck and wove to avoid the Cylon’s counter-fire. The occasional larger explosion came as a lucky laser burst struck a missile launcher or something equally vulnerable.

The Cylons were being swarmed and bled dry. But they still fired and they still struck home. The Champion, already damaged in the earlier destroyer run, had been keeping her topside towards the Galactica, shielding it as much as possible from the Cylon attacks. Her own shields were glowing red almost continuously as their strength was drained.

Finally, two minutes after the Vipers arrived and nine minutes after entering the fray, the destroyer’s shields collapsed. A lone missile, sole survivor of a larger volley, slammed into her belly amidships. The detonation was brief and brutal. The energy tore into the ships central hull, the armour insufficient to hold it back. The dorsal hull had already been stripped away, so the blast cut the ship in half. The stern section began to fall towards the planet, the engines already shut down. The bow section, propelled briefly upwards by the blast, tumbled in a graceful arc before it too succumbed to gravity and began the long, final fall.

In the Battlestar’s CIC, the crew could see none of this. Only the flare of the detonation on DRADIS, the loss of the ship’s IFF beacon, and two new contacts falling towards the planet.

“Champion is gone” Tigh breathed, pain leaking into his voice. Five hundred men and women gone in a second. For Adama, he remembered the old Columbia; she went down in much the same way. He was very glad he was in CIC not his Viper; it was easier when he couldn’t see it. He was especially glad he couldn’t hear the surviving crew screaming over the wireless as he had back then.

The ship shook violently as another Cylon warhead slammed into their shields, forcing them back to the present. The shields were weakening drastically, it seemed like Galactica herself would soon share the destroyer’s fate.

The Cylons were hurting too of course. Even while the Champion died, the other ships and the Vipers kept firing. First one and then a second Basestar finally succumbed; their hulls shattered, their graceful spires shot away, their inner structures awash in flame before the magazines erupted. The warheads themselves didn’t explode of course, no mere fire could make the nuclear devices detonate, but the solid-fuelled missiles had no such restrictions. Six Basestars remained, their surfaces pitted and scarred, but the Galactica was about to receive her fate.

First, her shields finally failed. They had done as well as could be expected from new technology retrofitted into an old and obsolete hull but they had reached their limit. The point-defence weapons continued to do sterling work, shooting down countless missiles before they reached the ship. But two missiles got through, thirty seconds apart.

The first detonated approximately two hundred metres below the ships stern, the energy shredded the hull covering the bottom of the main sublight engines and wrecked the engines themselves. The momentum imparted had another effect; it sent the ship’s tern flying upwards, causing the ship to pivot in place, presenting her topside to the enemy rather than her bow. This was the hit that sealed the old ship’s fate.

The second hit looked much more devastating than the first. It struck the newly-restored starboard flight pod on its upper surface, just forwards of the after pylon linking the pod to the main hull. The crew in the rear sections did not even have time to scream as the hull was ripped apart around them and the atmosphere and fuel ignited. The pylon itself was torn apart, depriving the entire starboard flight pod of one of its two structural links to the main ship.

The landing bay’s upper hull was shredded and blasted away as far as the forward pylon. The hanger decks below became a sea of fire and death as the fuel lines for the Vipers, as well as ordnance in ready-use lockers cooked off. Those crew who hadn’t died instantly in the blast had seconds at most to live as the oxygen was rapidly consumed. Further forward there was chaos as well; the blast had thrown many things around the decks causing yet more damage and casualties.

The ship took on a broken, lopsided appearance. What remained of the starboard pod hung from the forward pylon, twisted a full ten degrees downwards. The damaged stern section leaked fire, fuel and oxygen; the ship was bleeding to death.

Worse still for those still alive, four of the six main engines were either destroyed or disabled, and the ship began sliding downwards towards the planet. For the Viper pilots, many of whom called Galactica home, it was a devastating sight.

For Starbuck, the situation was almost unreal. She had just finished another strafing run over a now-dying Basestar when there was a brilliant flash in her peripheral vision. A panicked cry over the wireless came moments later:

“Galacticais hit! She’s hit!” Kat screamed in rage. Starbuck hauled her Viper around to see her home, crippled and burning, beginning a rapid, uncontrollable fall towards the planet. Another Cylon missile detonated near her bows, blasting away a chunk of the forward-most hull and three of the forward batteries. The ship began to tumble as she hit the upper edges of the atmosphere.

In CIC there was chaos. The hits had caused the damage control board to light up with red warning lights, signs of structural members torn asunder. Tigh had barely returned to his feet after the shock of the impact when he realised just how bad the situation was.

“Admiral, starboard pod is basically gone, lower main engines gone, we’re in freefall and-“ he was rudely interrupted by the third Cylon missile impact, causing the DC board to glow even redder “-and we’re pretty much frakked here Bill.”

Adama grimaced. His ship was finally meeting her fate. But they still had options. “Time to impact?”

Gaeta, who was nursing a broken arm and a nasty head wound, checked his console before answering, pain and fear lacing his voice: “six…six minutes sir. We’ll hit about thirty kilometres outside Lemuria’s shields.”

Bill thought hard, his mind racing through possible options. He focussed on the two systems he thought could save them and still hurt the enemy.

“Is the FTL still online? The missile pods?”

Gaeta shook himself before answering. “FTL…uh, FTL drive one is functional, drive two is gone, missiles…yes sir!”

Tigh shouted across from his station: “With this structural damage we’ll be torn apart by a jump!”

Adama shot back: “Maybe, but some of us will survive, no one will survive a ground impact! Open the missile silos, ready all birds for launch, targeting: I want an even spread against all five remaining Cylon ships! Mr Gaeta, plot a jump to anywhere in free space that isn’t full of toasters!”

The crew took a moment to stare at the audacity and insanity of the plan before moving to obey. With only one FTL drive active, they’d need every drop of power left available to get far enough from the planet to avoid an impact.

Adama braced against the plot table as the ship began to shake and rumble as she skipped the atmosphere. “All hands should get as far away from the outer hull as possible. Where’s that missile salvo?”

The tactical crew were working frantically. “Ready to launch in one minute sir!”

Adama nodded. “Good. Dee! Order all Vipers to clear the area!”

Out in space, the Vipers, and the damaged but still fighting Resolute, were desperately trying to keep the Cylon missiles away from the dying Battlestar. With the big ship clearly out of the fight, several Basestars had resumed firing on the planet. Half the Vipers had formed a picket line to shoot them down, but there were so many targets and so few Vipers that some began to leak through once again.

Starbuck was in her element; she and her Viper flew as if they were one being, They darted back and forth, pulling turns and manoeuvres that would have astonished the other pilots if they had time to observe them, the lasers blazing repeatedly as missile after missile exploded under their fury. She had lost all track of time, the fight had become one endless series of moments; turn, target a missile, fire, see it burst into flame, then turn again and fire again. Suddenly, she heard Dee’s voice break through the usual pilot chatter:

”All Vipers, nuclear launch warning! Repeat, nuclear launch warning! Clear Cylon airspace immediately!”

She gave a feral grin, evidently the dying Battlestar had one last punch in her. She spared a momentary thought for the Old Man, the person who had been as close to a father as she had ever had, the one who had nurtured her as a pilot, overlooked her brazen attitude and helped her career survive. Now he was trapped on a dying ship, falling towards a planet and certain death. She blinked away a momentary tear; she would mourn him when the fight was over.

On the Galactica’s dorsal hull, armour panels opened up, revealing the ship’s missile launchers. Originally intended to launch up to twenty ground-strike missiles, the Terrans had replaced them with a cluster of VLS cells for anti-ship rounds. As the ship tumbled through the atmosphere, she turned just enough to bring them to bear. The missiles launched as one, propelled out of the silos by inert gasses, before their engines ignited together and flung them towards the Cylons.

The range was great, almost at the edge of what the missiles could handle. The engines burned at full thrust, their Terran design allowing them to fly faster than anything in the Colonial arsenal. They closed the range steadily.

As with the bomber strike hours before, the Cylons effective missile defence went to work. However, this was no mere twenty missiles as they had expected. This was a salvo of two hundred, closing on them fast. The damaged Resolute, her starboard weapon pod gone, her hull pitted and her shields depleted, her after section leaking fire, threw herself forward as a final distraction, firing every gun she had left at the Basestars to keep them from firing on the missiles.

With ten seconds to run, half the missiles had already been shot down and more still were being taken out. But this was a numbers game, and the Cylon ships were already damaged. They simply couldn’t fire enough interceptor missiles in the time they had left.

The Resolute would pay dearly for their distraction however. Her engines were strained to the breaking point and her after section was already damaged from an earlier near-miss detonation. A single valve failed and a main fuel line burst, flooding a compartment that was already burning. Fire raced through the engineering hull, consuming crew and equipment with equal voracity. The engines shut down and the ship was left adrift, heading towards a Basestar and within the blast radius of Galactica’s missiles.

The Battlestar’s missile strike arrived on target. Barely thirty survived of the original two hundred, but it was more than enough. Thirty new suns appeared in the sky, each one boosted by naquada to a yield of two hundred megatons. The five remaining Basestars evaporated in the harsh flood of radiation. When the flashes faded, not even debris remained.

The Resolute was gone too; she had been far enough away to not be vaporised outright, but her hull could not withstand such punishment. The forward hull plating flashed away, the inner bulkheads melting and warping. The shock shattered every structural element in the hull, the atmosphere ignited and the crew died in one blazing inferno.

Starbuck blinked away the spots in her vision left from the blasts. Even with her plane turned away from them, there was enough light reflected off of nearby Vipers to dazzle her. She pulled herself together and examined the DRADIS screen; there was nothing left but Vipers and the falling Galactica.

She looked down at her home as it fell, flames licking around her hull as friction slowed her down somewhat. She looked on in horror as the hull buckled, plates of armour being torn away. Then the starboard-forward pylon finally gave in to the extreme stress it was under. The remains of the starboard flight pod, its rear section gutted by nuclear fire and its forward area ablaze, ripped free from the Battlestar and span off on its own ballistic course. She desperately hoped that anyone left alive in those sections was unconscious already so they would be spared their final, terrible moments.

And then there was a brilliant flash and the Galactica was gone.

===========

Yes, I killed Galactica. I'm evil, unless my avatar didn't already tell you this. Also, Galactica's motto shamelessly stolen from "The Hunted" By masterarminas, a truly excellent BSG fanfic available elsewhere in User Fiction.

[fnord]

Wow. Old warhorses can still kick ass.

[fnord]

Is Adama Senior's nickname "Hold My Beer" now?

An FTL jump that low (assuming Galactica pulled it off, instead of ka-fricking-boom) would be damn near (if not actually) suicidal.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Is Adama Senior's nickname "Hold My Beer" now?

An FTL jump that low (assuming Galactica pulled it off, instead of ka-fricking-boom) would be damn near (if not actually) suicidal.

In fairness, Galactica did exactly that in the series, from an even lower altitude, in Exodus part 2. I think she was only about a thousand feet up when she jumped.

But yeah, with her current structural damage, the Big G is finished as far as fighting battles goes.

[Tandrax218]

is the whole Galactica crew dead or will there be survivors ?

[Eternal_Freedom]

You'll have to wait and see...but you know that Starbuck and Kat and (most) of the pilots made it

Unfortunately, anyone in the starboard pod is definitely gone, as are anyone in the bow sections that took a hit or near the lower-aft engines.

[Tandrax218]

CIC ?

[Eternal_Freedom]

Like I said, wait and see

[Crazedwraith]

Wow, you are really hard on canon characters.

When you said the attacking basestars were distributed I imagined there above entirely different part of the planets. Different cities. But Galactica can engage all the attackers at once?

And I guess saturation nuking was not option one as the fresh basestar's pd would have been too tough to crack?

[Eternal_Freedom]

Wow, you are really hard on canon characters.

When you said the attacking basestars were distributed I imagined there above entirely different part of the planets. Different cities. But Galactica can engage all the attackers at once?

And I guess saturation nuking was not option one as the fresh basestar's pd would have been too tough to crack?

Nah they're all above Lemuria - it's the biggest city so the best target. Plus, the Cylons can see it's shielded, so one ship wouldn't have much luck. Also, nine distributed targets would have been easy for Galactica and the destroyers to engage in series; jump in, fire, destroy them, move on. En masse they have a chance to actually hurt the human forces sent to engage them. Plus, nine ships means the humans have to send a larger group of forces away from the main fight.

And yes, an immediate saturation nuking would have been ineffective - 200 warheads against nine targets gives each fresh Basestar only ~22 targets to engage. Plus, it would have forced the Battlestar to be oriented so her engines weren't keeping her in place against gravity. And she wouldn't be in place to intercept the missiles already fired.

As for canon characters, well in fairness I'm being pretty hard on all the characters - just look at what meanness I perpetrated against Captain North and Commander Shtarker. And this is kinda the point - I said ages back that the Cylons have enough ships and technology of their own that the humans don't have an easy "I win" button.

[fnord]

Still makes for a damn good story - only one side dishing out the shoeings is a lot more difficult to write than when both sides get their damage in. E_F is probably good enough to write such a situation well, but I don't blame him for wanting to make his job easier.

As far as the humans are concerned (Terrans and surviving Colonials, not the Tau'ri), the Cylon murderfleet is an existential threat. As The Moustache (Lethbridge-Stewart for those of us in the cheap sets) might well put it (say in a letter to Frankie's widow), "An enemy not only capable of genocide, but gleefully willing to commit more." Even mere total war inflicts a lot of wear and tear on people and kit.

[LadyTevar]

Is Adama Senior's nickname "Hold My Beer" now?

An FTL jump that low (assuming Galactica pulled it off, instead of ka-fricking-boom) would be damn near (if not actually) suicidal.

In fairness, Galactica did exactly that in the series, from an even lower altitude, in Exodus part 2. I think she was only about a thousand feet up when she jumped.

But yeah, with her current structural damage, the Big G is finished as far as fighting battles goes.

Yes. The Galactica did a in-atmosphere jump, and very literally 'fell like a rock'. The commentary on this board nicknamed the manuever the "Combat Insertion from Hell", among other things. When she jumped out, the thundering in-rush of air whipped up strong gusts of wind at ground level. She survived that.

However, I think this might be "The Bucket's" last jump. I remember in the show's finale how the Galactica rippled and shook like a dying animal after her last jump, the one that broke her spine. I can even hear the groaning metal from that scene. I think that had me crying as much as Roslin's last minutes.

[fnord]

I guess a question is, will all the awards to Galactica starmen and booties resulting from the BoT be posthumous - they didn't have time to evacuate like Barham's non-essential crew - or only some?

Even best case, I can't see Galactica being much better off than a constructive total loss - cheaper to build a new Lionheart hull, lift up Galactica's nameplate, and slide new hull in underneath. Husker's Wild Ride, anyone?

It doesn't look like the TCN goes in for non-starship system defence craft, or similarly non-starship battlewagons carried aboard a tender (a la Traveller battle riders), either. Of course, E_F could go and make a liar out of me with next bit posted.

[Borgholio]

Am I the only one who is thinking that EF is going to do something similar to the series where a random, last-ditch, "let's get the frak out of here" jump happens to land them in Lunar orbit?

[Eternal_Freedom]

Am I the only one who is thinking that EF is going to do something similar to the series where a random, last-ditch, "let's get the frak out of here" jump happens to land them in Lunar orbit?

Others might think it, but I assure you this will not be happening - I prefer to think that series finale never bloody happened, no matter how awesome Galactica's final fight is.

The friendly Tau'ri and Friends (TM) will be appearing very soon however.

Also, more readers, yay!

And yeah, it's not revealing much to say that Galactica is a near-total loss now - if she survived the jump fromt he atmosphere (and I ain't telling you a damn thing on that yet) she is totally wrecked. SHe will never jump again, or launch fighters, or fire her guns. This was her last fight.

[Steve]

But it was quite a fight indeed...

[Eternal_Freedom]

Since I'm feeling kind, here's the next part. In crossover terms, this shit's about to get real:

Hearts of Iron
Terran Orbital Space

While Galactica and her escorts were fighting their defiant last stand over Lemuria, the main Cylon force began their push towards Olympus Base and the badly depleted human forces. Their shields were at full strength, their missile launchers primed with full salvos and the energy weapons on the three First War Basestars charged and ready.

Or rather, most of the ships were ready. On the two refitted relics controlled by Cavil and his sympathisers things were not as simple. They knew they had to give the appearance of fighting lest the much more numerous loyal ships would turn on them. Yet they also knew they could not risk doing too much damage to the humans, lest their eventual plea for a ceasefire go unheeded.

Cavil had therefore come up with a rather subtle plan. He ordered his gunners to shoot to miss: plasma bolts would come close, even graze the shields, but not actually impact and vent their full force. Likewise, the missiles were dumbed down; their nav systems disabled to make them much easier to shoot down. And the nuclear warheads were not armed either. He fervently hoped that the Cylons loyal to God would not notice this deception amidst the fire and chaos.

The Cylon ships closed in a wall formation, the three refit Basestars at the heart with the nine shielded new models above, below and on either flank. The battle plan proceeded as before; a massive missile barrage accompanied by the remaining Raider forces swarming forwards.

The human forces realised they would need every available weapon to survive, so the eight defence platforms that had surrounded Olympus Base had been brought forwards to join the Battlestars. The seven surviving destroyers formed up around their larger charges. Kate Stewart and her deputy, Captain Garrett of the Aurora, had seen how easily their light ships could perish in this lethal new environment. Both were less than certain they would survive, but both were also determined to make the Cylons bleed.

The Cylon missiles raced in, only to be met by the massed point-defence fire of the four Battlestars, the destroyers and the weapon platforms. The computers controlling the systems were among the most powerful the humans mounted aboard starships and they quickly reached a conclusion – there were simply too many missiles to be shot down completely despite their best efforts. Some, even many, leakers were inevitable. Every hit would further weaken the defence grid: power would need to be diverted from the guns to shore up the shields, and when those failed, each further hit would remove guns and ships. The computers ran the numbers in a fraction of a second and announced to the various tactical officers the results.

With the Vipers engaging the Raiders and not able to help, the point-defence grid would reach saturation failure point in four minutes. Estimated survival for the entire fleet was fifteen minutes beyond this point.

The Cylons, being equally advanced computers, could calculate this as well; they had gathered enough data on the new Terran weaponry to make reasonably accurate estimates. Their estimates matched the human computers to within a handful of seconds. They also reported the fact that at present rates of expenditure the Cylon magazines would be depleted in sixteen and a half minutes.

The battle had become a race, hours of waiting and tension and various thrusts and parries degraded to less than twenty minutes of brutal attrition – the humans trying to survive and reduce the Cylon numbers without taking losses, the Cylons trying to focus on weaker targets to disproportionately weaken the human defences before their missiles were all expended. The computers on both sides ran simulations with every possible variable and gave the same result: the odds of success for either side were no better than fifty percent.

For the Viper pilots numbers and data and estimates were totally irrelevant and blissfully ignored. There was nothing but enemies to hunt and kill. The two side’s fighter forces were evenly matched in numbers and power – the remaining Cylon fighters being the old War-model Raiders that had been refitted with twin light plasma cannons, firing the same vivid blue bolts of their larger cousins on the Basestars. The Vipers were a mixture of rebuilt Colonial Mark VIII’s, mounting three laser cannons and a basic shield system, and the slightly more capable Terran Cobras.

For the veteran Colonial pilots, it was business as usual – hundreds of Raiders to kill and ships to protect behind them. They moved around in an endless ballet of turns, loops and spins, their wireless chatter a frantic mix of action calls, victory yells and desperate warnings to wingmates. For the Terrans, it was a nightmarish baptism of fire. They had been well-trained and remorselessly drilled by Starbuck, Kat, Hot Dog and others, but training and simulator runs were a far cry from reality.

The larger fleet battle was well underway by the time Champion and Galactica received their fatal hits. The officers and crew could spare no thoughts for their dying comrades – saturation failure point had been reached, and flares of nuclear fire began battering at their shields. The senior commanders could only watch in horror as that small force was overwhelmed.

Lethbridge-Stewart in particular grimaced at the news as the tactical display showed the old ship’s fate in a cold, dispassionate fashion. He knew he’d sent them to their deaths but he also knew he hadn’t had a choice and Adama had known this as well. He whispered a quiet prayer to the Lords that those lost crews would be looked after. And then he staggered as a whole volley of missiles slipped through the defences and detonated against Lionheart’s dorsal shields.

The Cylons had spent some time analysing the host of wireless signals flying around. They were, naturally, heavily encrypted – not even Cylon computers could crack such codes quickly enough to be of use. But as is often the case, messages can reveal a great deal even when unreadable; simply knowing who is talking to whom is very informative.

They had identified Lionheart as the human flagship and thus were practically ignoring her sister Excalibur in their targeting solutions. As their third, now lost, sister Barham had shown, even their shields would not hold for long.

Three destroyers recognised this threat and moved forward, forming a picket line ahead of the huge Battlestar. At the centre was Ranger, flanked on either side by Daring and Centurion. Their commanders knew the danger, knew they were inviting a quick and fiery death, but they decided that destroyers were easier to replace than Battlestars, especially if the Battlestar in question carried the fleet commander.

That quick and fiery death was not long in coming. Daring was bracketed by exploding warheads, her shields held back the radiation but failed from the effort. Another warhead slammed into her bows, shattering the ship’s forward hull. Her chief engineer, in command of the remnants of the ship and taking inspiration from Barham’s fate, opened his throttles and the ship shot forwards.

She closed rapidly with one of the new model Basestars. Her mega-lasers fired, the red beams speared the Cylon ship’s shields, depleting them rapidly. A volley of missiles managed to intercept the destroyer but the warheads had not had time to arm properly; only one detonated properly and that explosion was premature. It did little to the savaged human ship beyond peel away a few more layers of bulkheads and compartments from the forward hull, certainly nothing to stop the engines.

The premature explosion also drained the last of the Basestar’s shield strength, and seconds later the ruined destroyer rammed into the Basestar’s central core at full thrust. The engines detonated half a second later, consuming both ships.

The two other destroyers were doing all they could to thin out the missile fire aimed at the flagship, but all they could was not enough. Missile detonations were coming with increasing regularity, the shields glowed an angry red as they valiantly warded off the radiation. Internally, the repeated shocks from the close nuclear blasts were beginning to cause damage of their own. The huge shield generators showed the most strain, their compartments had already been sealed and decompressed to minimise the risk of fires.

While this was happening, two events occurred that went almost completely unnoticed by the combatants but would have profound effects on the futures of all involved. The first was quite simple; a wounded Cylon aboard one of the dying Basestars above Lemuria triggered a data burst to God, telling Him of the murderous losses and, most importantly, the exact coordinates of Terra.

The second event was much more dramatic, at least initially. The ruined stern section of the Champion finished its terminal descent through Terra’s atmosphere in a spectacular impact two kilometres outside Lemuria’s shield perimeter. The blast did not damage the shields any more than the Cylon nuclear bombardment had, but it did create a moderately powerful ground tremor. This tremor was enough to shake every building in the city, adding to the terror felt by the inhabitants.

In a large hall in the base of the city’s central citadel, the tremor was aligned just right and just powerful enough to cause a large circular stone to overbalance and fall away from what it had been covering; a large metal ring with seven red devices spread around the outer surface and strange symbols covering the inner surface. It was a relic of the Lords of Kobol, known to the city’s residents as the Astria Porta, the Gateway of the Gods. It had been ordered sealed away by Prometheus himself millennia ago. Now, for the first time since the Lords last walked among mankind, the Astria Porta was exposed.

Back in space things were deteriorating rapidly. Lethbridge-Stewart had concluded the only remaining option was for his ten surviving vessels to close to energy range, ensuring that they could at least take some of the Cylons with them. He was approaching the grim conclusion that this would be the Terran Commonwealth Navy’s first and last battle, a thought reinforced when first one, then a second and finally a third defence platform was overwhelmed by Cylon missile fire and incinerated.

Their fighter strength was barely 60% of what they’d started with and whilst the Cylons had lost more fighters the human pilots were getting tired. The order went out: all ships would close to energy range. Ten against eleven, it was an even match. Almost immediately, Challenger and Aurora leaped forward, firing their mega-lasers and shattering a new model Basestar. Ten against ten, even numbers for the first time.

But then things went wrong. In Lionheart’s forward hull, the shield generator covering the bow sections was strained to the limit, far more so than the other generators. The coolant system was running at 130 percent of rated capacity, something that could not be sustained. The coolant pumps jammed and in seconds the generator temperature spiked five hundred degrees above safe levels.

Hundreds of tonnes of metal, crystal and other materials warped and twisted in the heat, the immense energy they normally channelled suddenly had nowhere to go, except out into the ship. The compartment had been vented of atmosphere but that did little to help. The generator exploded, pieces of the outer shell shattering the nearby bulkheads and allowing the ship’s atmosphere to flood back into the generator room. Fire ignited quickly, spreading out into the rest of the ship.

Lethbridge-Stewart didn’t feel the explosion. He was slammed into the plot table and knocked out. In CIC, Captain Davies knew his ship was badly hurt. He watched in detached horror as the forward shields collapsed completely, the remaining generators unable to compensate quickly enough. He decided quickly that the Admiral needed to transfer his flag before the ship became too damaged to function as a flagship.

He turned from the tactical display to the Marines guarding the CIC hatch.

“Sergeant Benton, to me!”

The Marine in question, a tall fellow with dark hair, kind eyes and an open, friendly face immediately raced over. “Sir?”

“Sergeant, this is a priority-one order. You and your men are to go to Fleet Ops, get the Admiral and get his ass to the port hanger bay. We’re transferring the flag to Excalibur and I don’t give a damn what he says, he needs to get off this ship!”

His point was punctuated by a pair of Cylon missiles that leaked through their weakening defence screen. The superconductive armour did its work, protecting the hull, but as had happened to Barham, it had consequences. His Ops officer called out the news:

“Captain, sublight drives offline, fire control for the main battery is also down!”

Davies swore viciously. “Benton, go!” The Marine did not even salute, he simply turned and raced for the aft hatch. The Captain turned to his comms officer “Signal White Knight and tell him we’re transferring Battleaxe to his ship.”

The officer nodded and sent out the signal. Davies turned back to the tactical display just in time to see Ranger intercept a volley of plasma bolts from a war-era Basestar and explode violently. She was avenged however; off on his ship’s starboard flank the Excalibur and the Pegasus had the offending Basestar bracketed, whilst to port the Warspite was working with Centurion to reduce a pair of new Basestars to scrap; as he watched one of them vanished in a bright fireball. A call came over the wireless.

”Captain, Sergeant Benton, Battleaxe is unconscious, we’re moving him the staff to the port bay now.”

Wayne swore again. His XO, Commander von Erich, snorted in wry amusement at his friend’s surprisingly eloquent method of expressing his anger. The Admiral’s designated second was Adama, but he was nowhere to be found; Galactica had vanished from the tactical display shortly after plunging into the atmosphere.

“Get me a priority channel to Iron Duke.”

Battlestar Warspite CIC

Jellicoe was having a hell of a day. His ship was on the left flank of the Battlestars and heavily engaged. His guns were firing as rapidly as possible, his shields tanking the hits that got through. He was working with Centurion and Avenger to thin out the Cylon lines and having some success; he grinned as one of his targets was destroyed and the second began listing badly.

“Sir, priority signal from Sharpshooter for you.”

Jellicoe tore his eyes from the DRADIS screen and grabbed the phone.

“Sharpshooter, Iron Duke, go ahead.” He was somewhat confused as to why Davies was calling, rather than the Admiral.

”Iron Duke, my ship has lost forward shields and sublights. Battleaxe is unconscious; we’re transferring him and the flag to Excalibur. Husker is MIA, you’re the next senior officer so you’re in command.”

The words, delivered in a remarkably calm tone, came as a gut-shot to the Commander. Not so much the reality of him taking command; that was something he’d known might happen in a close action. What really hurt was that Adama, and presumably Galactica, was gone. He’d been so focused on his ship’s actions he hadn’t even thought about the older Battlestar’s fight against impossible odds over Lemuria.

“Understood Sharpshooter. Iron Duke, out.”

He slammed the phone back into its cradle just in time to grab the plot table as another hit rocked the ship. He turned to his own comms officer.

“Send to all ships and stations: Battleaxe disabled, Husker MIA, Iron Duke assuming command. Close in and kill those frakkers.” The officer nodded and sent out the signal. Colonel Beatty looked at him with concern from his post.

“Bill will be alright John. He’s too stubborn to die. So’s his ship.”

“I know that David. At least, I hope so. Anyway…” he was once again interrupted by a violent tremor through the deck. He regained his balance and turned to the tactical officer. “Smythe, coordinate with our destroyers, I want a staggered mega-laser salvo on targets four and five, burn those frakkers from my sky.”

“Aye sir!”

The three ships turned, still shrugging off occasional nuclear hits, before eight mega-lasers fired in sequence. The beams struck the shields of two hitherto untouched Basestars, slashing their shields with the first two hits, allowing the final two shots on each target to obliterate the Cylon vessels.

The grin had barely formed when he saw the DRADIS signal from the Avenger flash briefly and then vanish as the destroyer was torn into three pieces by a volley of missiles that finally brought down her shields. Worse still, the icon for Lionheart flashed red, indicating she was taking heavy damage.

Out in space there was fire and death everywhere. The Viper pilots were reaching their limits in more ways than one; they were riding high on adrenaline but that edge was quickly fading, and whilst their new fighter’s didn’t need ammunition their fuel tanks were quickly running dry. The Cylons were capitalising on this and the Raiders were evening the score in fighter kills. The fighter engagement was at once both terrible and irrelevant; this fight would be settled by the big guns.

The Lionheart was taking a beating. Her armour was holding superbly, but interior damage was still mounting. Captain Davies stood in his CIC with a grim expression as the forward sections died piece by piece. Another hit came, this one wrecking the mega-laser battery completely. He’d already ordered the crew evacuated from those forward sections to spare as many as possible. He thought about pulling back, but with the ship’s main drives offline that was impossible. His ship still had teeth though; the port turbolasers ripped into the Basestar that Warspite had already hurt, completing its destruction in two volleys of bright crimson plasma fire.

Just seven Cylon ships remained. With three intact Battlestars and four destroyers, the humans now held the advantage and were quick to seize it. Captain Pendragon of the Excalibur and Commander Adama of the Pegasus moved with perfect synchronisation: their ships turned and their mega-lasers fired. Eight beams of crimson death all struck out at the war-era Basestar they had been engaging. With its shields already weakened, the old ship stood no chance. The first three beams took down the shields, the next five tore the ship apart. One beam burned clean through the ship’s ventral hull, erupted from the lower hanger’s upper surface before penetrating the dorsal hanger as well. A second gutted the lower disc, penetrating laterally along half the hanger deck. The final three shots converged on the central core, immolating the reactors and breaking the ship up into fragments.

The battle continued, the human ships pressed the advantage. By now it had been noticed that the two remaining war-era Basestars seemed to have trouble targeting them, so they were being treated as lower-priority targets. The four remaining new model vessels were still fighting fiercely however.

A hundred kilometres beyond the battle, away from Terra, space itself ripped open. A vast area of blue-purple distortion was visible, surrounding a central region of the most impenetrable blackness. From this blackness a huge ship emerged at great speed before rapidly slowing. At its core was a huge golden tetrahedron, surrounding that was a huge framework of dull grey metal.

Its appearance was a complete shock to both sides. The Cylons recovered first, their ships and Raiders immediately turned and fled towards this new ship, heedless of the fact that the Battlestars were still firing. One of the four surviving Basestars broke apart into flaming wreckage as it turned, but the Cylons did not care. They were not fleeing, they were regrouping.

Their God had arrived at the battle and He would surely bring them victory.

Below this surprising vista, in that large hall in the Citadel in Lemuria, the Astria Porta, dormant for two millennia, suddenly came to life. The seven red devices lit up in sequence before a blue vortex erupted outwards from the ring. It reached into the room, consuming part of the fallen stone covering before collapsing back into the ring, forming what appeared to be a vertical puddle of bright blue water. It rippled quietly for a moment, before something emerged from it.

A mechanical device, mounted on a six-wheeled chassis, rolled into the room. Its various sensors looked around in apparent curiosity before it began transmitting its data back into the Astria Porta.

===========

Ooooo, cliffhanger ending, and I still haven't told you about poor Galactica. Well, I'm an evil bastard, this has already been established.

Also, we learn a couple new callsigns: Captain Davies/Sharpshooter, he's based on a RL friend of mine who's a semi-pro wrestler, and the Sharpshooter was his finishing move for a while. Captain Pendragon/White Knight...what the hell else would I call a captain called that with a ship called Excalibur?

And finally, Commander John Jellicoe/Iron Duke. Well duh

[Tandrax218]

The part when Jelico orders "Blast those frakkers out of my skies" reminded me of that show "Space above and beyond" i na scene where the humans are attacking an alien home world / beachhead

[Steve]

The plot thickens...

[Crazedwraith]

Nitpick: Stargates have nine chevrons not seven albeit only seven are used in normal operations. The physical description of the device would note nine.

Red chevrons and the closeness of a Ha'tak suggests SG-1 rather than an Atlantis team. I wonder how a puddlejumper would war against vipers or raiders. An Sg team isn't going to be of immediate help to the battle.

Rather a coincidence, or should we call it fate that Earth dials in shortly after the gateblocker is removed. XD

[LadyTevar]

Nitpick: Stargates have nine chevrons not seven albeit only seven are used in normal operations. The physical description of the device would note nine.

Red chevrons and the closeness of a Ha'tak suggests SG-1 rather than an Atlantis team. I wonder how a puddlejumper would war against vipers or raiders. An Sg team isn't going to be of immediate help to the battle.

Rather a coincidence, or should we call it fate that Earth dials in shortly after the gateblocker is removed. XD

Call it Fate. After all, the Ascended don't Interfere with lesser races.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Nitpick: Stargates have nine chevrons not seven albeit only seven are used in normal operations. The physical description of the device would note nine.

Red chevrons and the closeness of a Ha'tak suggests SG-1 rather than an Atlantis team. I wonder how a puddlejumper would war against vipers or raiders. An Sg team isn't going to be of immediate help to the battle.

Rather a coincidence, or should we call it fate that Earth dials in shortly after the gateblocker is removed. XD

Call it Fate. After all, the Ascended don't Interfere with lesser races.

All will be revealed. Not quite fate, but, well, since I've established that the Lords were the Ancients who fled Atlantis, well, were else would Season 8 SGC get Ancient gate addresses from? Oh yes, that list that O'Neill entered in season 2

As for the nine/seven chevron thing, most times the last two are hidden out of sight in whatever mounting the gate has, even for gates specifically able to dial eight-symbol addresses (like Atlantis). So a physical description would show seven. So there

The part when Jelico orders "Blast those frakkers out of my skies" reminded me of that show "Space above and beyond" i na scene where the humans are attacking an alien home world / beachhead

Yeah I freely admit I borrowed that "clear my sky" line from Commodore Ross, it's too good not to use.

Speaking of borrowed lines, I'm amazed no-one has commented on Lethbridge-Stewart paraphrasing Nelson...

[fnord]

Not sure what's thrown around more gratuitiously, nuclear weapons in-story or cliffhangers out-of-story.

I suppose Sergeant Benton better fits the source material than WO1 Benton.

What will the stone ring going KAWOOSH do to Roslin's faith?

Ba'al turning up right as Cavil et al are setting up for Sod This, We're Outta Here - sparks are going to fly.

As for Battleaxe going switchoff, wouldn't Captain Mace take over?