Skirmish Over the Red Moon
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| Skirmish Over the Red Moon | |||||||||||||||||||||
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| Starbuck's damaged Viper and the Cylon Raider are caught in the Red Moon's gravity field | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Summary | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Conflict: | Second Cylon war | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Date: | Day 14 | ||||||||||||||||||||
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| Place: | An unnamed red moon | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Result: | Marginal Colonial victory | ||||||||||||||||||||
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| [[Colonial battles chronology ({{{series}}})|Battle Chronology]] | |||||||||||||||||||||
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A skirmish that occured when a scouting group of 8 Cylon Raiders surprised 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 were able to find battlestar Galactica after its escape in the Battle of Ragnar Anchorage (and subsequent chase in "33").
Starbuck ordered the trainees to return to Galactica while she engaged all eight Raiders at once. However, Cadet Hot Dog disobeyed and follows her to cover her wing. This succeeded in dividing the Raiders enough between the two Vipers that Starbuck has a chance to shoot them down. Hot Dog succeeded 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 had destroyed all but one Raider, and the two fighters made a final run at each other.
Both the Raider and Starbuck's Viper exchanged fire. The Raider's "pilot" was hit, but the ship remained intact. Starbuck's Viper experienced electrical problems which first caused her fighter's communications and transponder to go offline. Damage inflicted by the Raider disabled the Viper's flight controls. Both fighters tumbled out of control and fell into the Red Moon's gravity well. The Raider softly crash-landed onto the moon, but Starbuck had to eject from her Viper after it went into an uncontrollable flat spin towards the moon's surface. Galactica then recovered Hot Dog and his critically damaged Viper.
Starbuck landed 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 wandered on the moon looking for higher ground to await rescue. She found the crashed Cylon Raider she had fought earlier. Starbuck ws then able to find a way inside, and discovered 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 found oxygen to stay alive after she exhausted her flight suit's life support, and determined how to control the Raider by manipulating its internal organic actuators. Starbuck's strong flight instructor skills and test-pilot savvy allowed her to determine the basic mechanics of the new spacecraft quickly.
Starbuck sealed 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 flew the Raider off the moon and returned to Galactica once Apollo successfully identified her as the pilot of what would normally be an enemy target.
This is the first time Colonial forces were able to capture and examine the updated Cylon Raider. Chief Galen Tyrol and his deck crew would spend the next several weeks analyzing the fighter and eventually returning 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", "Tigh Me Up, Tigh Me Down", and "Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part II").