Battlestar Invictus

Ch I. First contact

With a great flash the 3 kilometer long, slender vessel appeared out of nowhere. It's bow could remind some of an alligator head. On the dorsal hull many large cannons mounted on turrets were coming out of their support nests and started to rotate around, looking for a now non-existent enemy. A few small fighters emerged from the external flight pods on both the port and starboard side and started a patrol.

Some parts of the hull were smoking from what appears to be a recent ship-to-ship battle.

Slowly and gracefully it slid forward through the void. For an outsider it might look as if not much was happening.

But inside the massive ship this was certainly not the case.

Inside the ship's Combat Information Center, CIC, the activity was comparable to a beehive.

Officers and operators were walking around talking to their peers while simultaneously talking into the comm horns dotted around the room.

'Report!'

'Weapons online and ready, light damage only. Propulsion is online. Medium damage to the inner port engine.'

'Flight deck reports minimal losses. 6 planes lost and 20 more damaged, 3 severely. All launch tubes are operational, minimal damage to the flight pods.'

'DRADIS sensors are clear sir. No sign of pursuing Cylons. There is an asteroid field on our present course.'

'Very well. Navigation?'

'The Navigation computer is making no sense sir. It can't find any known constellations out here. Until I get some reliable data out of this, I have no clue where we are.'

Frack, just what he needed. Jumping straight into the unknown ending up who knows where, he knew this was a risk. Commander John Price had just ordered a blind FTL jump to escape an incoming fleet of Cylon basestars. He was not one to run away from a fight, but taking on twelve basestars in a single battlestar was suicide.

The past two weeks were an absolute nightmare. Just before he could get his ship in space dock for an upgrade, the enemy attacked.

Out of nowhere basestars jumped in from all around and hammering the fleet and the nearby colony with nukes.

For some reason all the defences went offline the moment those damned toasters arrived. By now he knew why.

The damn Command Navigation Program upgrade in fleet use was faulty.

Through a backdoor in the software the Cylons hacked every fleet computer and caused chaos.

Ships powering down just before a fight, or turning their weapons against one another, blowing each other to pieces while the crew stood helpless.

It was a massacre, thank the gods his ship didn't have those upgrades.

As soon as he realised what the CNP did, he ordered his crew to break any computer networks present on his ship.

He remembered the stories of his old time friend and First Cylon War veteran, William Adama, and acted on his advice to break the computer networks.

It gave him an edge, but an edge is not worth much when faced against twelve Basestars launching every fighter and missile they had at his ship.

The Battlestar Invictus was a powerful ship. It could take on multiple basestars at once, but twelve? That, Price and his ship could not do.

And now he was here, wherever 'here' was. Probably way beyond the red line, uncharted territory.

The only thing he could do now was get his ship back in order and move from there.

However the relative calm would be short lived.