Fall of the Twelve Colonies

This article details the destruction of the Twelve Colonies in the Re-imagined Series. For information on the fall of the Twelve Colonies in the Original Series, see Battle of Cimtar.

Fall of the Twelve Colonies
Cylon nuclear bombs detonating on Caprica
Cylon nuclear bombs detonating on Caprica
Summary
Conflict:	Second Cylon war
Date:	Zero Hour, concurrent with Fall of the Scorpian Fleet Shipyards
Related Episode(s):
Place:	Twelve Colonies of Kobol
Result:	Total Cylon victory, destruction of the Twelve Colonies
Combatants Twelve Colonies of Kobol Cylons Commanders Admiral Nagala † Commander William Adama Many other commanders Basestar command Strength Approx. 120 battlestars, Vipers, Raptors, associated support cruisers Massive number of basestars, Raiders, Heavy Raiders Materiel Losses Virtual destruction of the Colonial Fleet Unknown, minimal Casualties Destruction of major Colonial cities, almost all of the civilian population and military forces Unknown, minimal
[[Colonial battles chronology ({{{series}}})|Battle Chronology]]
Previous Next First Cylon War Fall of the Twelve Colonies Fall of the Scorpian Fleet Shipyards

The Fall of the Twelve Colonies (also called the Cylon Attack or Cylon Holocaust) is a devastating, genocidal attack which marks renewed conflict between the humans of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol and their robotic Cylon creations, after a cessation of contact between the two, for forty years.

The Cylons soften up the Twelve Colonies for attack by infiltrating their military and civilian society with new human-appearing models of Cylon. One such copy, Number Six, seduces the brilliant Dr. Gaius Baltar, fooling him into contract work that gives her access to the Colonial Defense Mainframe. Six's work compromises Baltar's Command Navigation Program, writing in many programmer backdoors.

After Baltar's CNP is sufficiently distributed throughout the Colonial Fleet, the Cylons return from their forty-year exile with a vengeance. The backdoors in the CNP enable the Cylons to use various electronic attacks that completely bypass Colonial electronic defenses.

Entire Viper squadrons lose power upon engaging the enemy, while the Cylons are able to virtually shut down the Colonial Defense network "without firing a shot." The great battlestars suffer an abnormally-high number of "equipment malfunctions," up to and including total power loss. Cylon infiltration of Colonial systems, when combined with the "complete surprise" they achieve, enable them to sweep the Colonial Fleet aside with minimal losses.

The battlestar Galactica, approximately 300 million miles from Caprica is the only Colonial ship unaffected by the Cylon's computer infiltration as its computer systems were never networked or updated with the compromised CNP. This anti-infiltration policy, used in the First Cylon War, was maintained by all of Galactica's commanders, including William Adama, through peacetime and despite the advances in Colonial technology.

The Cylons proceed to bombard each of the Twelve Colonies' population and strategic centers with nuclear bombs, including Caprica. The attack succeeds beyond even the Cylons' most optimistic projections (Downloaded).

Picon Fleet Headquarters is destroyed in the opening wave of the attack, as are 30 battlestars. Admiral Nagala is reported to have taken command of the Colonial Fleet aboard the battlestar Atlantia.

On news of the attack, to protect its people as well as for military readiness, the Colonial Government orders an full stop on hundreds of civilian vessels in Colonial space, leaving them stranded in space around the various colonies.

While the primary fight against the Cylons centers around the orbit of Virgon, according to a tactical plot of all ships in the solar system by Lieutenant Gaeta, Galactica itself prepares for possible incoming enemies, despite two major problems. First, Galactica had earlier destroyed its own large munitions as part of its decommissioning ceremony. Second, the battlestar had plenty of pilots, but practically no Vipers left to fly. Its last Viper Mark VII squadron left the battlestar after the decommissioning ceremonies and are soon destroyed in a Cylon attack.

Fortunately, the battlestar held 40 Viper Mark IIs onboard as part of its recent decommissioning ceremony and expected conversion into a museum. These Vipers were an old but robust design that were resistant to infiltration and were never equipped to use the Command Navigation Program that dooms other Colonial fighters.

Galactica re-arms, deploys the fighters and repels several attacking squadrons of Cylon Raiders in her first sortie of the new war. The battlestar survives 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 when damage to the fire suppression system necessitated the venting of the pod's atmosphere to prevent the battlestar's fuel lines from igniting and destroying the ship.

Galactica soon receives word that Atlantia, as well as many more battlestars, are lost in the fighting. Commander Adama assumes command of whatever is left of the Colonial Fleet, and sends a wireless transmission to any surviving Colonial forces to rendezvous at Ragnar Anchorage to prepare for counterattack.

Ragnar Station holds desperately needed munitions for the battlestar's point-defense batteries and more ammo for her fighters. Galactica successfully jumps to Ragnar, skipping past the bulk of the Cylon fleet that stood in her way near Virgon.

After Picon was nuked, the Colonial Government, headed by President Richard Adar, broadcast an unconditional surrender, which the Cylons completely ignore. President Adar and all senior Colonial government officials, save for spacebound Secretary of Education Laura Roslin, are presumed killed or missing. The Case Orange contingency mechanism activates to seek out any remaining government officials, a signal of which only Roslin apparently acknowledges. Sworn in on the government-chartered passenger liner Colonial Heavy 798, Roslin becomes the new President of the Twelve Colonies.

Roslin immediately begins locating other stranded Colonial civilian and military vessels and forms a caravan. Roslin's caravan efforts also retrieve at least three Viper Mark VII fighters and finds Lt. Sharon "Boomer" Valerii and her Raptor, the only survivor of Galactica's last fighter squadron. Valerii is tasked with and successfully locates additional civilian craft before a Cylon Raider scout finds the convoy.

Fearing imminent attack but unable to rescue any passengers from the convoy's sublight ships in time, Roslin orders the FTL-capable ships to Jump to Ragnar and to Galactica's safety. The sublight ships and their passengers are destroyed by at least six Raiders armed with nuclear missiles.

Galactica is not the only battlestar to escape the attacks. An attack at the Fleet Shipyards at Scorpia destroys two battlestars, but Pegasus, only partially operational at the time, manages to escape but doesn't know of Galactica's fate until months later.