[Tabitha]

CYLON CENTRAL COMMAND

Balthazar cringed as the solium bombing of Cylon Central began. The Colonials had launched their Sentinels. He had hoped that the destruction of their DRADIS would prevent them from doing so. Already reports were pouring in of nearly a trillion Cylons destroyed. He was aware that initial reports were typically highly inflated, but still, that many dead in one wave of missiles, it was unacceptable.
“Report!” He yelled down at the IL unit standing before him. Lucifer seemed unfazed by the yelling.
“By YOUR command.” Lucifer placed special emphasis on the second word of his reply. He indeed wished to remind Balthazar that this was all his idea, it was his command that began the attack on the humans, and it would ultimately be his head that rolled when the Imperious Leader asked who was responsible for this. “The defense lasers were able to track the Colonial missiles only briefly before they hit our entire infrastructure. Of the three hundred fifty thousand missiles that targeted every population and industrial center we have, we were able to destroy only seventy six thousand. The damage, I'm afraid, is quite severe. I do not think Cylon will ever be the same. By YOUR command.”
“Leave!” Balthazar commanded with a wave of his hand. He felt something like fear, dread, horror, at the thought of telling the Imperious Leader that HIS plan had failed. Still, the Imperious Leader was not likely to over look the devastation. He opened the communications line to the Imperious Leaders citadel and hoped, for all his circuits, that it had been hit and destroyed. His hopes were dashed when the Imperious Leader turned around in a crooked command chair, with smoke and fire in the background.
“Report Balthazar, tell me why my command bunker is nearly destroyed.” The Imperious Leader said mockingly. This wasn’t going well, and was already getting ugly. Balthazar could almost feel the recycle bin grinding away at his feet, for surely the Imperious Leader would feed him feet first to the recycler, without turning his systems off first. There would be no mercy.
“Our attempt to disrupt the Colonial DRADIS seems to have backfired. The Sentinels were set to launch if that contact was disrupted, a situation that we could not have predicted.” Balthazar lied. He knew damn well that he had been warned by Faust that the Sentinels would do exactly that if they destroyed the fleet DRADIS. He chose to ignore that. He chose poorly.
“Obviously.” The Imperious Leader said with what Balthazar recognized as sarcasm. “Your command is terminated, as are you, you will report to the closest recycler, or I will have you dragged to it. Summon Lucifer.”
“By your command.” Balthazar said reluctantly. He would report to the recycler, simply because there was nowhere to run, and no one left he could trust to help him escape. He was already dead.

“By your command.” Lucifer said calmly as he faced the Imperious Leaders image. Inside he was both giddy and terrified. He had waited for this stupid plan to fail, knowing that as the Imperious Leaders informant, he would be next in line for command, but also terrified that his command of Cylon would be during its most desperate hours.
“This bombing of our people, it is unacceptable. I have changed my mind. Destroy all humans, do not subjugate them, destroy them all, and bring me Baltar, I wish to see at least one human suffer as we have.”
“By your command.” Lucifer said happily.


Planet Virgon, 25,000 feet above Port Harmony
1/9/48 1405

The remaining Cylon Raiders were banking hard to her rear, trying to get in behind her, but the much more maneuverable Fantan was making that impossible. She played the tap dance game of adjusting throttles while pulling back or letting off on the stick as she began turning a large circle with the Cylon squadron. There were now only three Raiders left, but they were again forming up to work together to kill her.
The Fantan began to lose inertia so she stepped up the throttle again and felt it once again slice through the air. However, the Raiders were now beginning to get into a firing position. Shannon pulled up into a loop, knowing the Raiders couldn’t match that maneuver. They were pretty close to doing so and she was amazed to see that they were hanging tough back there. These must be the new Advanced Raiders that she heard about. The old model Raider couldn’t loop in atmosphere. Shannon banked and performed a split S maneuver, turning back towards her targets, a lightening fast maneuver that took the Cylons by surprise. They trained for space combat, not flying in a gravity well with an atmospheric fighter. This new concept of drag and lift was new to them, and their limitations began to show as she lined up on the leader and began a barrel roll, tapping the firing stud to create a cone of needles through which the Raider was forced to pass no matter what maneuver it tried.
The Raider seemed to just fall into pieces as the tiny needles devastated the ceramic and alloys of the Raiders super structure. The armor of the advanced raider was designed to protect against energy based weapons, which it would certainly do well, but was worse than useless against the high energy needles of the Fantan. The ceramic actually shattered and its fragments added to the damage caused by the hyper sonic needles.
The other two dodged the needle assault and fired back, shaking the Fantan violently as their energy blasts blew holes in the sky. Shannon felt the stick pull to the left a bit and knew she had damage to her left side control surfaces. She adjusted trim and banked around to engage the last two Raiders. They were bugging out at full speed, which was marginally faster than her Fantan was willing to go with a damaged winglet. She settled for ten kills and headed home.