Fall of the Twelve Colonies
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| Fall of the Twelve Colonies | |||||||||||||||||
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| Conflict | Second Cylon war | ||||||||||||||||
| Date | Zero Hour | ||||||||||||||||
| Place | Twelve Colonies of Kobol | ||||||||||||||||
| Result | Decisive Cylon victory, occupation of the 12 Colonies | ||||||||||||||||
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The devastating opening wave of the Second Cylon War, in which the Cylons used a programming backdoor to infiltrate and shut down Colonial Fleet systems. Almost all ships that tried to engage the forces of the Cylon surprise attack suffered immediate and total power failure, "like someone turned off a switch". As a result the Cylon fleet suffered almost no losses and effortlessly destroyed practically all opposition.
The Battlestar Galactica, helmed by Commander Adama, was the only Colonial ship unaffected by the Cylon's computer infiltration, because it's computer systems were never networked. As such, it was presumably the only ship that ever mounted any real defense against attacking Cylon ships. Though the Galactica lost all 20 of her Viper Mark VII's in their first sortie against the Cylons because theier networked computers were vulnerable to infiltration, she also had 40 Viper Mark II's board as part of it's recent decomissioning ceremony. The Viper Mark II's were an old but robust design, but most importantly never contained the Command Navigation Program that doomed other fighters and were therefore unaffected by the Cylon computer virus. The Galactica was able to re-arm and deploy its Viper Mark II's and repel several attacking squadrons of Cylon Raiders, even surviving a direct hit from a Cylon tactical nuclear warhead, but not without a loss of 85 of its ship's crew in the port flight pod and some internal damage.
The Cylons proceeded to start nuking each of the Twelve Colonies, including Caprica. After Picon was nuked, the Colonials broadcast an unconditional surrender, which was completely ignored by the Cylons. President Adar and all Colonial government officials, save for spacebound Secretary of Education Laura Roslin, were presumed killed or missing. The Case Orange contingency mechanism activated to seek out the remaining government officials, of which only Roslin apparently acknowledged. Sworn in on Colonial Heavy 798, she became the new President of the Twelve Colonies. Roslin immediately began locating other stranded Colonial civilian and miliary vessels to form a convoy. Several ships without faster-than-light ability that were located by Roslin had to be left behind without a rescue option by the other FTL ships when the Cylons located the convoy. These ships and their passengers were destroyed by Cylons while the remaining survivors joined the Galactica at her new location.
Picon Fleet Headquarters was nuked in the opening wave of the attack, as were 30 Battlestars, presumed to be "a quarter of the Fleet" according to Kara Thrace's comment to Commander Adama in the opening events of the attack. Admiral Nagala subsequently took command of the fleet aboard the Battlestar Atlantia. Soon after, the Atlantia was lost with all hands, and Commander Adama aboard the Galactica broadcast a message that he was taking command of whatever was left of the Fleet, and ordering a retreat to a rendez-vous point at Ragnar Anchorage.