Skirmish Over the Red Moon
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| Skirmish over the Red Moon | |||||||||||||||||
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| Conflict | Second Cylon war | ||||||||||||||||
| Date | Day 14 | ||||||||||||||||
| Place | An unnamed red moon | ||||||||||||||||
| Result | Marginal Colonial victory | ||||||||||||||||
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A skirmish that occurs when a scouting group of 8 Cylon Raiders surprises a group of nugget Viper pilots under instruction by Lt. Kara "Starbuck" Thrace in the orbit of an unnamed Red Moon orbiting a gas giant. It was the first time the Cylons are able to find battlestar Galactica after it's escape in the Battle of Ragnar Anchorage (and subsequent chase in "33").
Starbuck orders the trainees to return to Galactica while she engages all eight Raiders at once. However, Cadet Hot Dog disobeys and follows her to cover her wing. This succeeds in dividing the Raiders enough between the two Vipers that Starbuck has a chance to shoot them down. Hot Dog succeeds in destroying one Raider (his first kill in a Viper) before suffering damage from incoming fire, pulling back from the engagement. By this point Starbuck destroys all but one Raider, and the two fighters make a final run at each other.
Both the Raider and Starbuck's Viper exchange fire. The Raider's pilot is hit, but its ship remained intact. Starbuck's Viper experiences electrical problems which first causes her fighter's communications and transponder to go offline. Damage inflicted by the Raider disables the Viper's flying controls. Both fighters tumble out of control and fall into the Red Moon's gravity well. The Raider softly crash-lands onto the moon, but Starbuck must eject from her Viper after it goes into an uncontrollable flat spin towards the moon's surface. Galactica recovers Hot Dog and his critically damaged Viper.
Starbuck lands by parachute on the moon, severely injuring her knee after being dragged by her parachute toward boulders and a cliff on the moon's surface. With a broken radio and unable to contact for rescue She wanders on the moon looking for higher ground to await rescue. She finds the crashed Cylon Raider she fought earlier. Starbuck is able to find a way inside, and discovers for the first time the bio-mechanical nature of the new generation of Raiders. Starbuck's attack of the Raider had left the "pilot" of the Raider shot in its "head", leaving it brain-dead.
Inside, Starbuck finds oxygen to stay alive after she exhausts her flight suit's life support, and determines how to control the Raider by manipulating its internal organic actuators. Starbuck's strong flight instructor skills and test-pilot savvy allows her to determine the basic mechanics of new spacecraft quickly.
Starbuck seals up the damage that the Raider received after Starbuck's Viper shot it by using a portion of her flight suit to seal the damage and repressurize the interior of the fighter. Starbuck flies the Raider off the moon and returns to Galactica once Apollo successfully identifies her as the pilot of what would normally be an enemy target.
This is the first time Colonial forces are able to capture and examine the updated Cylon Raider. Chief Galen Tyrol and his deck crew spend the next several weeks analyzing the fighter and eventually returns it to flight status with significant internal modifications for effective human control ("Act of Contrition", "You Can't Go Home Again", "Six Degrees of Separation", and "Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part II").