Meanwhile on the planet Virgon:
Major Catlett watched the latest reports update on his screen. The Cylons had pounded the planets civilian centers pretty badly. The antique anti aircraft/missile systems had performes excellently however, and there were not as many casulties as had been suffered on the other colonies. So far they shelters had held, and the Virgonian Self Defense Forces were holding a wavering line, falling back slowly in favor of strength over area.
He had brought up the old armored vehicles and the projectile weapons from the thousand year war. They seemed to impact the Cylons well enough. They had actually knocked a Cylon assault ship out of orbit, it burned up and crashed into the mountains to the East. The RocShasta anti-starship missle battery was far more effective than he had thought it would be, it was as if the Cylons had forgotten that item.
Other areas were reporting in that they were able to stop the Cylon troops with marginal success and were starting operations to take back some air fields. He smiled. Virgon was going to fight back, they were going to go down fighting if they failed.
Back At the Picon Belt:
Steph banked to his right, Brandy following in her dodging way. He saw a whole new set of blips comming, these were neither Cylon, nor Vipers. He took a moment to snap a gun camera shot and then had his Vipers computer send that image back to Avalon. "CAG to Avalon, we have new guests." he said nervously.
"Afirmative CAG, stand by to intercept." the communications officer replied. Steph wondered just how they were supposed to intercept more targets when they were in over their head already. He pulled back on the stick and looped back to scan his pilots. Off to his right he saw Tabitha banking harder than he thought a Viper could bank, but just as he was about to call over to her, he witnessed her Viper erupt into flames. In a few seconds, he saw the front three feet of the Vipers nose section continue on, the rest was a glowing mass of fuel and fire. He froze, suddenly this little ambush was getting far too real.
The sudden shove forward and down made Tabitha sick to her stomach. The thrust of the egress pod out of the doomed Viper caused her to black out for well into a minute. Meanwhile, the battle raged. She drifted helplessly till her body started to obey her commands. She tapped the control panel and the pods little thrusters pushed it gently away from the inferno below her.
She rotated the pod to see better, the battle below her. The cadets were doomed. There were just too many of the Cylons. They had damaged them good, taken out a large majority of them, but the cost in human lives would be told today. They had already lost over half their pilots, our of fourty seven pilots, only a humble fifteen Vipers still flitted about, chased more and more often by packs of Raiders. The egress pods of other Vipers were drifting away from the battle as well, their little thrusters pushing them out of the Picon gravity well, back towards Avalon. She joined them.
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