Fall of the Twelve Colonies
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- 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 | |||||||||||||||||
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| Conflict | Second Cylon war | ||||||||||||||||
| Date | Zero Hour | ||||||||||||||||
| Place | Twelve Colonies of Kobol | ||||||||||||||||
| Result | Decisive Cylon victory, occupation of the Twelve Colonies | ||||||||||||||||
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The Fall of the Twelve Colonies (also called the Cylon Attack or Cylon Holocaust) was the devastating, genocidal attack which marked 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 forthy years.
After Baltar's CNP was sufficiently distributed throughout the Colonial Fleet, the Cylons returned from their forty-year exile with a vengeance. The backdoors installed in the CNP enabled the Cylons to use various electronic attacks that improved Colonial electronic security had prevented in the past. Entire Viper squadrons lost power upon engaging the enemy, while the Cylons were able to virtually shut down the Colonial Defense network (presumably referring to either military communications or planetary defenses) "without firing a shot." The great battlestars suffered 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 had achieved, enabled them to sweep the Colonial Fleet aside with minimal losses and devastate the Twelve Colonies.
The attack succeeded beyond even the Cylons' most optimistic projections (Downloaded).
Picon Fleet Headquarters is destroyed in the opening wave of the attack, as are 30 battlestars, noted to be "a quarter of the Fleet" according to Kara Thrace's comment to Commander William Adama in the opening minutes of the attack. Admiral Nagala subsequently takes command of the Colonial Fleet aboard battlestar Atlantia. The primary Colonial effort at mounting a stand against the Cylons centers around the orbit of Virgon, according to a tactical plot of all ships in the solar system by Lieutenant Felix Gaeta while Galactica prepared for possible incoming enemies.
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 the solar system, leaving them stranded in space around the various colonies.
Battlestar Galactica is the only Colonial ship unaffected by the Cylon's computer infiltration, because its computer systems were never networked--an anti-infiltration tactic used in the First Cylon War that Adama adhered to on Galactica, even in peacetime and despite the advances in Colonial technology. Although Galactica loses her last squadron of Viper Mark VII's in their first sortie against two Cylon Raiders because their networked computers were vulnerable to infiltration, the battlestar also held 40 Viper Mark II's board as part of its recent decommissioning ceremony. The Viper Mark II's were an old but robust design that were resistant to infiltration and were never equipped to use the Command Navigation Program that doomed other Colonial fighters. Unaffected by the Cylon computer infiltation and the backdoor commands or viruses they could spread, Galactica is able to re-arm and deploy its Mark II's, repelling 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.
Soon after, Galactica receives word that battlestar Atlantia, as well as many more battlestars, are lost in the fighting. Commander Adama assumes command of whatever is left of the Colonial military fleet, and sends a wireless transmission to any surviving Colonial forces to rendezvous at Ragnar Anchorage to prepare for a counterattack. Ragnar Station also held desperately needed munitions for the battlestar's gun batteries and her fighters. Galactica had destroyed its own munitions as part of its decommissioning earlier. Galactica successfully Jumps to Ragnar, skipping past the bulk of the Cylon fleet that stands in her way.
The Cylons bombard each of the Twelve Colonies' population and strategic centers with nuclear bombs, including Caprica. After Picon is nuked, the Colonial Government broadcasts an unconditional surrender, which is completely ignored by the Cylons. President Richard 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 to form a convoy. Roslin's convoy efforts also retrieve at least three Viper Mark VII fighters and finds Lt. Sharon 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 Galactica's safety. The sublight ships and their passengers are destroyed by at least six Raiders armed with nuclear missiles.
Near the colony of Scorpia, battlestar Pegasus, commanded by Admiral Helena Cain, also escapes certain destruction by the Cylons at the Scorpion Fleet Shipyards by making a blind jump into space. Most of the battlestar's networked computer systems were offline for an overhaul except for her navigation computer, which fortunately could execute a Jump. With the "fog of war" and the desperate manner of their escape, Pegasus is apparently unaware of Galactica's survival and proceeds to conduct attacks on Cylon forces it encounters as it, too, leaves the solar system of the Colonies. Galactica has no knowledge of this other battlestar as the Colonies disintegrate and communications between other Colonial forces fade into static.