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 Scorpion Fleet Shipyards
Related Episode(s):
Place:	Twelve Colonies of Kobol
Result:	Decisive Cylon victory, occupation of the Twelve Colonies
Combatants Twelve Colonies of Kobol Cylons Commanders Admiral Nagala † Commander William Adama Unknown Strength Approx 120 battlestars, Vipers, Raptors, associated support cruisers Unknown number of Basestars, Raiders, Heavy Raiders Materiel Losses All but 2 Battlestars Unknown, minimal Casualties Near-total devastation of Colonial Fleet and civilian population Unknown, minimal
[[Colonial battles chronology ({{{series}}})|Battle Chronology]]
Previous Next First Cylon War Fall of the Twelve Colonies Battle of Ragnar Anchorage

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 forty years.

The Cylons softened 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, seduced the brilliant Dr. Gaius Baltar, fooling him into giving her access to the Colonial Defense Mainframe, allowing her access to crucial information such as Fleet deployments. Baltar also let Six rewrite many of the algoritms in his new Command Navigation Program, writing in many programmer backdoors. 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 "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 was destroyed in the opening wave of the attack, as were 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 took command of the Colonial Fleet aboard battlestar Atlantia. The primary Colonial effort at mounting a stand against the Cylons centered 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 ordered an full stop on hundreds of civilian vessels in the solar system, leaving them stranded in space around the various colonies.

Battlestar Galactica was 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 lost 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 was 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 when a fire caused by the nuke necessitated the venting of the pod's atmosphere, and some internal damage.

Soon after, Galactica received word that battlestar Atlantia, as well as many more battlestars, were lost in the fighting. Commander Adama assumed command of whatever was left of the Colonial military fleet, and sent 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 Jumped to Ragnar, skipping past the bulk of the Cylon fleet that stood in her way.

The Cylons proceeded to bombard each of the Twelve Colonies' population and strategic centers with nuclear bombs, including Caprica. After Picon was nuked, the Colonial Government broadcasted an unconditional surrender, which was completely ignored by the Cylons. President Richard Adar and all senior 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 any remaining government officials, a signal of which only Roslin apparently acknowledged. Sworn in on the government-chartered passenger liner Colonial Heavy 798, Roslin became the new President of the Twelve Colonies.

Roslin immediately began locating other stranded Colonial civilian and military vessels to form a convoy. Roslin's convoy efforts also retrieved at least three Viper Mark VII fighters and found Lt. Sharon Valerii and her Raptor, the only survivor of Galactica's last fighter squadron. Valerii was tasked with and successfully located additional civilian craft before a Cylon Raider scout found the convoy. Fearing imminent attack but unable to rescue any passengers from the convoy's sublight ships in time, Roslin ordered the FTL-capable ships to Jump to Ragnar and Galactica's safety. The sublight ships and their passengers were destroyed by at least six Raiders armed with nuclear missiles.

Near the colony of Scorpia, battlestar Pegasus, commanded by Admiral Helena Cain, also escaped 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 was apparently unaware of Galactica's survival and proceeded to conduct attacks on Cylon forces it encountered as it, too, left the solar system of the Colonies. However, Galactica had no knowledge of this other battlestar as the control over the Colonies disintegrated and communications between other Colonial forces fade into static.