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From seemingly out of nowhere, USS Canaberra and USS Fafnir joined the assault on the basestar from above and to aft of the besieged Klingon
squadron. Phaser beams from both ships played across the Cylon's armored hide,
causing numerous minor explosions and tossing blasted armor debris into space.
USS Canaberra fired a spread of four photon torpedoes which impacted on the
lower saucer section, blasting a gaping hole in the structure of the baseship, but with apparently no discernible effect. The baseship's CPAWS cannon fired, the
antiproton beam impacted on Fafnir' starboard nacelle. The Fafnir's nacelle
erupted in a sun-bright flash as its starboard warp engine destroyed itself
emitting a spray of gamma rays and subatomic particles. Fafnir's main hull began
to spin end over end as the crippled starship's crew fought to contain the
battle damage and regain maneuvering control. Fafnir pinwheeled past the
basestar and continued on a wobbling trajectory out of the battle area.
Canaberra fired the last of its photon torpedoes at point blank range and began
to chase after Fafnir.

Onboard his basestar, which was under attack by numerous alien ships, Baltar,
Imperious Leader's Lord High Executioner cowered on his command throne. The
intraship vidacon monitors shows chaos and blast damage throughout the volume of the basestar. Fires raged out of control in the lower saucer and were burning perilously close to the tylium storage facility. If the fire reached that ...

Baltar did not wish to think of that. A deafening "WHOONG!" echoed through the
control center. Another impact and explosion rocked the basestar. Alarms sounded throughout the three cubic cubits of the upper saucer as one by one the
basestar's damage control units wereoverwhelmed and went off line. Electrical
arcing and a shower of sparks from control consoles briefly illuminated Baltar's
redoubt, but then the basestar's core control area went completely dark. Baltar
no longer had command and control functions. From somewhere outside the
basestar's control room, and much too close, the wail of emergency alarms
sounded. The blast door from the central corridor slid open and Lucifer came
into the command center.

"By your leave, Baltar," the IL-series Cylon intoned. "The aliens have inflicted
fatal damage to the basestar. It is time to give the abandon ship command."

"Is my personal fighter prepared?" Baltar asked.

"Yes, eminence."

"Then give the appropriate orders. The humans have won this round."

"By YOUR Command, Baltar," Lucifer said and Baltar was sure that he detected a note of pleased sarcasm in the IL-Cylon's electronic voice.





The spread of four photon torpedoes raced across the 70,000 kilometers
separating the Enterprise from the Cylon Basestar and impacted on the unshielded hull of the enemy vessel. Instead of complete disintegration of
the target -- as would have been the case of an unshielded vessel hit by photon
torpedoes in Worf's past experience, all the antimatter charges did was blast
off chunks of the base star and cause some ancillary explosions and fires deep
within the body of the basestar.

"Direct hit on the lower saucer of the basestar," Worf reported. "MINIMAL
damage, recommend we return to phaser attack, Captain."

Captain Picard leaned forward in his command chair and studied the telescopic
view of the third Cylon Basestar. It was wounded, but my no means out of the
fight. "Yes, Mr. Worf, I concur. Return to phaser bombardment." The Basestar had
moved off somewhat, but it could not outrun the phaser beams that chased it
down.

Picard watched the main screen as a half dozen more of the pancake shaped Cylon raiders dived in on the main hull of the Enterprise, firing their turbo-laser
cannons. The laser energy splashed across the Enterprise's shields with virtually zero effect as the shield greedily soaked up the photons of coherent light and transferred the energy to Enterprise's main power grid. One of the attacking Cylons either misjudged its trajectory or engaged in a suicide run against the ship's outer defense shields, crashing headlong into the top shield and dissolving into a hell flower of flame and metallic debris.

Two others veered off but were immediately detected and eliminated by two
Colonial Viper interceptors which had been lurking around the Enterprise's
shields and happened upon the two Cylon fugitives. The surviving raiders turned and fled for the suspossed safety of their basestar.





On board the Imperial Klingon Ship Krolk it's commander, Kudomi, studied the
receding image of the basestar as Krolk rolled away from its last target attack
run. Fekk-lar's beard! the warrior swore under his breath, These alien pah'TOKs are tougher to kill than a Kardasian voll. The basestar was obviously mortally wounded, it's lower saucer was now only twisted wreckage. Fires raged consuming the giant ship's meager supply of oxygen. Black and gray smoke shrouded the optical view of the basestar, but not the sensors. There had to be a way to finish off this wounded targ of an enemy, if only Kudomi could
find it.

"Helmsman, bring us about, reset for another target run," Kudomi ordered. "Weapons officer, bring all torpedo tubes to combat ready, charge disrupters to maximum power, set beam divergence to zero." Krolk's crew
efficiently carried out their commander's orders. Kudomi intended to make a high
speed attack run, focusing all his forward weapons on the juncture between the
central column, where Colonial intelligence reported that the main power
reactors were located.

They would fire at minimal range and get out fast, firing their rear torpedo as
they left. The maneuver would exhaust Krolk's supply of plasma torpedoes, but if
it worked there would be glory and honor for all.

"All torpedo tubes loaded and armed," the weapons officer reported. "Disrupters
set for maximum discharge, emitters are hot and ready."

"Ree'CHARga!" Kudomi snarled in battlespeak. "ATTACK!"

Krolk's navigational sensors locked on to the basestar, and the K-42's impulse
exhaust ports glowed hot blue-white as the Klingon corvette's ion drives began
to accelerate the warship toward its target, 20,000 kellikams away.

Kudomi watched the view screen as the cloud of smoke, dust and debris that
marked the location of the wounded basestar grew ever closer. "Tactical," he
growled and the forward view screen became a large target designator. Kudomi
centered all three of the forward torpedoes' target designators on the spot he
wanted to hit, then also placed the disrupter target designator over them. He
targeted the rear torpedo dead center of one of the basestar's flight bays.

"Accelerate to point eight, stand by warp drive."

The Krolk swooped in to within 300 kellikams of the target. At the moment of
exact closest pass, Kudomi gave the order to fire. "Fire rear torpedo, warp drive to maximum, engage cloak." Krolk sped away from the basestar at super luminal velocity. Behind, the torpedoes impacted on a weakened section of the central core's fuselage. The first torpedo arrived a few milliseconds before the other two, and vaporized the remainder of the local armored hull. The two behind it flew through the cloud of subatomic particles and impacted on the main power ransfer relays to the upper saucer and exploded, generating a large feedback pulse which traveled both ways along the power conduits, upward into the saucer and downward to the basestar's main reactor.

For a few milliseconds, the reactor's safety equipment fought the feedback charge, but was ultimately unsuccessful in shielding the reaction core, which
promptly imploded, creating a miniature supernova in the basestar's fusion
reactor. The remaining wreckage of the basestar devolved into a flash of quarks
and high energy photons.





Serina, Captain of the Pegasus Silver-spar Squadron, pulled her viper up and
over into a twisted yo-yo maneuver which put her directly astern of the Cylon
raider that seconds ago had been firing on her. This battle was one of the most
intense she had ever fought in since the olden days when her father, Commander Cain had led his battlestar's crew deep into the soft underbelly
of the Cylon Alliance. There they had routinely faced Cylon task forces of two and three basestars and hundreds of fighters, but none of those battles had been as fierce nor as long as this one. Serena had been in the cockpit for eleven sentars, only pausing to land on Pegasus for brief interludes to refuel and rearm. Silver-spar Squadron had lost a lot of good warriors today, including her executive officer, Lt. Hipparcus.

"This is for Huey, you metal bastards!" Serina growled and launched her last two
serpent-asp missiles at the Cylon. The missiles raced across the space separating Serina from her prey and struck the raider at the most vulnerable
places, just as they were programmed to do. Serina jerked the cyclic around and
pulled her viper into a long sweeping arc calculated to take her out of the
battle area and back to the Pegasus for another reload of serpent-asp missiles.


TO BE CONTINUED.