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The Setting

spacer.gif (836 bytes)The story is set approximately 30 yahrens after the Cylon attempt to destroy the Colonies was foiled when Commander Adama ignored President Adar’s orders and launched on warning, and about a yahren after the final destruction of the Cylons.

Dramatis Personae

Commander of the Fleet Adama - Commander in chief of the Colonial Fleet

Fleet Commander Aeneas - commander of the Third Fleet, his flagship is the battlestar Columbia

Captain Aglaia - a strike fighter squadron commander aboard the battlestar Columbia

Lieutenant Alcides - a pilot aboard the Galactica and commander of Galactica’s warp scout

Commander Akamas - commander of the battlestar Columbia

Lieutenant Akria - a strike fighter pilot aboard the Columbia

Amala - a graduate student of history on Caprica, the daughter of Commander Apollo and Commander Miriam, granddaughter of Fleet Commander Adama and President Diomedes

Commander Apollo - commander of the battlestar Galactica. Son of the Commander of the Fleet, father of Amala.

Lieutenant Ares - son of Commander Starbuck and Aurora. A strike fighter weapons officer assigned to the Columbia as the story begins, later assigned to Columbia’s warp scout.

Colonel Athena - executive officer of the battlecruiser Victory

Aurora - the wife of Commander Starbuck, and head of shuttle pilot training for TransStellar Spacelines

Colonel Boomer - executive officer of the battlecruiser Glory

Colonel Bryn - second officer of the battlestar Galactica

President Diomedes - President of the Council of Twelve and former Colonial military commander. Father of Commander Miriam and adoptive father of Fleet Commander Dirce.

Fleet Commander Dirce - Commander of the Battlecruiser Squadron, her flagship is the battlecruiser Orion.

Lieutenant Leah - a junior navigator aboard the Columbia, assigned to Columbia’s warp scout

Commander Miriam - commander of the battlecruiser Victory. Mother of Amala and Rhiannon.

Colonel Noday - commander’s aide aboard Victory, a former master navigator

Lieutenant Philia - a navigator aboard the Galactica, assigned to Galactica’s warp scout

Colonel Protogora - master navigator of the battlestar Columbia

Lieutenant Rhiannon - a strike fighter pilot aboard the Columbia, daughter of Commander Miriam and Prince Aleksandros of Sagitara, becomes commander of Columbia’s warp scout

Serina - a well-known Caprican newswoman

Commander Starbuck - commanding officer of the battlecruiser Glory

Colonel Xaviar - executive officer of the battlestar Galactica

The Ships

Columbia, battlestar, flagship of the Third Fleet, Fleet Commander Aeneas, Commander Akamas

Galactica, battlestar, assigned to the Third Fleet, Commander Apollo

Glory, battlecruiser, assigned to the Third Fleet, Commander Starbuck

Victory, battlecruiser, assigned to the Third Fleet, Commander Miriam

Columbia Jr, battlestar Columbia’s warp scout

Caprica, battlestar Galactica’s warp scout

And further people to be met and ships encountered as the story continues….

Glossary

BATTLECRUISER The newest type of Colonial capital warship, designed after the holocaust. Unlike the battlestar, the battlecruiser is intended primarily for ship-to-ship action and its weaponry is heavily slanted towards taking on enemy warships, preferably from ambush. Main armament includes rail guns, lasers, and missiles; small laser turrets and missile batteries are also provided for defense from small ships and missiles. Its design includes passive stealth features that enable it to effectively lie in ambush. Its extremely powerful engines require large radiators to dump all the waste heat; when the ship is stealthed and powered down the radiators are stowed in large bays under cover. It carries approximately 30 viper fighters for local defense and usually 2 small shuttle craft; crew is approximately 400. Currently there are two classes of battlecruiser in the Colonial fleet, the original Bellerophon class and the later, larger and more powerful Orion class.

BATTLESTAR The best-known type of Colonial capital ship, the battlestar combines the roles of aircraft carrier and battleship, though with the introduction of the battlecruiser the ship-to-ship combat role has been de-emphasized somewhat. Each Colonial battlestar carries an air wing of 150 viper fighters in six squadrons of 20 vipers plus 50 spares, or an air wing of 100 vipers in four squadrons of 20 plus 20 spares and two squadrons of 20 strikers plus 10 spares; in addition most battlestars carry at least one warp scout and 8 shuttles. Normal crew compliment is over 5000. Main armament centers around very powerful laser cannon called megapulsars and missile launchers; secondary armament includes multiple laser turrets for point defense from small enemy ships and missiles. Although all battlestars are similar in outward appearance, most differ in detail. Those battlestars surviving from the pre-holocaust period have been refitted to the latest specifications, including the switch from the older tylium-powered drives to antimatter drives.

FTL Faster-than-light. Starships must be fitted with two forms of propulsion, a secondary drive for traveling from place to place and a primary FTL drive for traveling through hyperspace from warp point to warp point. Although all FTL drives work in similar fashion, there are several possible power sources. Early FTL ships employed hydrogen fusion, later FTL drives centered around tylium as a power source, and now antimatter is standard for military FTL drives, although older commercial ships have mostly not yet been converted.

GRAVITIC DRIVE The usual secondary drive on Colonial spacecraft is the gravitic drive. Gravitic drive forms an independent gravity field around a spacecraft and enables it to move from place to place by the reaction of its own gravity field with the gravity field of the universe. Secondary effects include the provision of artificial gravity inside ships and cushioning of the crew from maneuvers and acceleration. Gravitic drives come in several forms; those on vipers and strikers are usually tylium-powered, while those in larger ships are variously powered by antimatter or hydrogen fusion or in older vessels, solium.

RAIL GUN An electromagnetic cannon that fires small projectiles at incredible velocities; a tiny solid object flung by such a weapon has striking power out of all proportion to its size. Rail guns can be produced in various sizes; there are small models that can be carried by ground troops, while larger models are fitted to warships.

STEALTH There are two kinds of stealth used by the Colonials; passive and active stealth. A ship fitted with passive stealth relies on its design to fool enemy scanners.; it is designed with smooth curves or facets that reflect radar away from its source, are built as much as possible from non-radar-reflective materials, and are painted with anti-radar coatings. To make full use of passive stealth, the ship must also power down to reduce its heat signature, and also must forgo gravitic drive, since a gravity field can be detected. Battlecruisers are passively stealthed, as are the present-day F-117A stealth fighter and B-2 bomber. Active stealth relies on electromagnetic fields that deflect enemy scans; it is less effective than passive stealth and also is less effective the larger the ship that uses it. However, it is cheaper than passive stealth since the ship’s design does not have to be compromised to incorporate the necessary elegant curves of passive stealth.

STRIKER or STRIKE FIGHTER The current Colonial strike fighter is the ScorpiAir Model 95 Hustler II. This is a development of earlier models and is similar in appearance to them but has been improved in several ways. The original inspiration for the development of strikers was the ability of Cylon baseships to descend so deeply into planetary gravity wells that Colonial warships could not go in to attack them (in the original BG series we see this when the Cylon baseship carrying Imperious Leader drops to low level over Carillon), so a dedicated attack aircraft was produced for the purpose. Unlike the unaerodynamic vipers, the striker or strike fighter looks like an aircraft, and in fact is similar in general appearance and size to the F-14 Tomcat although, unlike the F-14, the Model 95 seats the pilot and weapons officer side-by-side, and, in the rear part of the aircraft, between the two turbofan engines, a gravitic drive for use in space is usually fitted. Built-in weaponry consists of a laser cannon in the right wing fairing and a projectile-firing gun installed under the left side of the nose; it can carry a wide variety of weaponry either on external pylons under the fuselage and wing fairings or in its internal weapons bay.

WARP SCOUT A small spacecraft designed to seek out warp portals and map routes from system to system. Most battlestars carry one. They also frequently double as dispatch boats.

WARP POINT or PORTAL Travel at speeds faster-than-light is not possible in normal space. Astrophysicists on Kobol discovered that faster-than-light travel is possible in hyperspace, and that there are flaws in space that permit a ship using its FTL drive to drop out of normal space, into hyperspace, and drop back into normal space some distance away, all in a few microns. These spacial flaws are centered near stars, and the flaws lead from one star system to another. Some stars have only one portal, others have several, usually all leading to different systems.

WARSHIPS There are several classes of warship within the Colonial Fleet and, before the holocaust, in the Cylon Fleet. At the very top of the line are the capital ships; battlestars and battlecruisers on the Colonial side, baseships on the Cylon side. A case can also be made for considering the Gamoraen missile ships capital ships since they have a strategic role. Lower are various types of ships designated as cruisers, destroyers, frigates, and corvettes, distinguished by size with cruisers being largest and corvettes smallest. Most of these smaller ships do not carry vipers and are specialized for ship-to-ship action.

X-RAY LASER The explosion of a nuclear bomb produces very powerful X-ray emissions and if such emissions could be channeled they would make a far more lethal weapon than the bomb itself, whose destructive effects, particularly in space, are limited by range. Since X-ray lasers require the detonation of a nuclear bomb to produce their effects, they are short-lived weapons and obviously must be carried by a missile or torpedo. While X-ray lasers designed for anti-ship use are unidirectional, the Colonials have designed a special X-ray laser warhead fitted with splitters that split the beam of X-rays into dozens of beams aimed at attacked Cylon raiders, a weapon understandably inspired by the ambush at Cimtar.

PROLOGUE AND CHAPTER ONE

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