- While suffering from a fuel shortage, The Galactica finds the supposedly lost Battlestar Pegasus, led by the legendary Commander Cain.
- A year has elapsed since the Galactica began the voyage of the fugitive Colonial Fleet on their quest for the mythical planet Earth, and fleet wide supplies of fuel are now critically low, to the point where the civilian fleet must shut down ship thrusters and coast through space. Patrolling well ahead of the Fleet, Captain Apollo and Lieutenant Starbuck come under fire - but after a prolonged pursuit their attackers turn out to be Colonial Vipers! These Vipers are flown by Lieutenants Sheba and Bojay, ace pilots from the battlestar Pegasus, a battlestar thought destroyed two years earlier in the Cylon empire's conquest of the allied human world Molecay. Apollo and Starbuck are flown to the Pegasus and meet its legendary commander, Cain. Eventually, the Pegasus reaches a rendezvous with the Galactica and Cain, greeted as a conquering hero for returning from the dead as well as for returning Apollo and Starbuck alive and well, informs Commander Adama about Gomoray, the capital planet of the empire of Delphia, a civilization that has been utterly exterminated by the Cylons. Gomoray is now a Cylon outer capital and contains a vast store of Tylium fuel that will restock the Fleet perfectly, but Cain is more concerned with using the Galactica to help him conquer the planet, an attack plan Adama adamantly vetoes because two battlestars cannot conquer the heavily-armed Gomoray garrison, and it will expose the civilian fleet to Cylon basestars. Cain accedes to a plan to intercept and capture a pair of Cylon Tylium tankers for the civilian fleet, but insists that a squadron from the Pegasus be involved. The reason why becomes evident when the combined phalanx from the Galactica and Pegasus finds the two tankers and take on its escorting force of Cylon Raiders - while Apollo leads the fight against the Cylons, Cain uses that as cover to blast both tankers out of the universe, thus forcing the Galactica to go along with an invasion of Gomoray to capture its fuel stocks. However, Adama orders some of the Pegasus' fuel supply siphoned off and transfered to the civilian fleet, and forces Cain to confess to sabotaging the tanker mission; Cain is thus relieved of all command and Colonel Tigh placed in command of the Pegasus. This leads to a confrontation between Galactica officers led by Apollo and Pegasus officers led by Sheba, Cain's daughter, and Bojay - a confrontation aborted when a gigantic armada of Cylon Raiders under the personal command of Baltar finds the Fleet and attacks the Galactica, landing telling fire into the Galactica's port flight bay and strafing civilian ships throughout the fleet, overwhelming the Galactica's badly outnumbered Viper phalanx. But the besieged Galactica has one last trump to play, as Cain is immediately reinstalled as commander of the Pegasus.—Michael Daly
- A year has passed since the exodus from the Colonies, and the Fleet under the command of the Galactica is facing dire fuel shortages and must be brought to dead stop. On a long-range recon, Apollo and Starbuck are jumped by enemy fighters - except these are not Cylons, they are Colonial vipers. These other vipers are manned by Lieutenants Sheba and Bojay, ace pilots from the battlestar Pegasus, and when the two pairings realize who they are, they remember what happened to the Pegasus - some two years ago the Pegasus was assigned to the Colonial Fifth Fleet to help defend the allied world Molecay; Molecay and the Fifth Fleet were annihilated by the Cylons, so every survivor possible was hoarded aboard the Pegasus and the fugitive battlestar, rather than attempt to return to the Colonies with the Cylons aligning base stars precisely to stop them, instead sortied to the distant world of Gomoray, the capital world of another human ally, the Delphian Empire - except the Cylons have annihilated Gomoray as well and it now stands as the Empire's outer capital.
The commander of the Pegasus is a living legend, Commander Cain, the most aggressive warrior in the history of the Colonies, and when he meets Apollo and Starbuck he remembers Apollo's father, Adama, a former wingmate of his from their youth aboard the battlestar Cerberus. Shocked upon learning of the Final Destruction, Cain mournfully notes a woman who was close to him - Cassiopeia. He also introduces his daughter - Sheba.
Cain surprises Adama by appearing and returning Apollo and Starbuck, but their celebration is short-lived with the reality that Gomoray is in Cylon hands, not to mention the Fleet's need for fuel. Cain has long obsessed with conquering Gomoray, and the Fleet's need for fuel he believes gives him added opportunity, but Adama wants nothing to do with conquering a planet given the enormity of lives possibly lost should such an endeavor be launched. Adama vetoes an attack on Gomoray and instead orders Cain to plan the seizure of several Cylon tankers.
The relationship between Apollo and his viper phalanx counterpart Sheba immediately becomes cold when Cain learns that Cassiopeia is alive, and serving as head med-tech on the Galactica; Sheba doesn't respect that her father is so close to a woman like her; also torn is Starbuck, fearing he is losing the one woman he can truly love.
Cain leads two squadrons - one each from the Galactica and Pegasus - and intercepts two Cylon tankers, but Cylon escort fighters counterattack; in the ensuing melee Cain (observed by only Sheba) fires on the Cylon tankers and blows them out of existence; Apollo sharply asks if he was firing on a Cylon fighter, and Cain lies. Apollo's suspicion escalates on the Galactica in the after-action report to Adama where Cain again recommends an invasion of Gomoray.
The next day Adama vetoes Cain's proposal, but Cain's lobbying becomes angrier, especially when Adama orders that some of the Pegasus' ready reserve of fuel be distributed to the civilian fleet. Cain makes the fatal mistake of openly refusing to obey the order, and when he starts lecturing Adama that he and his crew spent two years surviving without help, Adama turns furiously and openly states what is painfully obvious - Cain sabotaged the tanker mission; forced to confess, Cain is further humiliated when Adama, his superior, relieves him of command and assigns Colonel Tigh to command the Pegasus.
While sadly sipping away his sorrows in drink, Cain is approached by his daughter and Bojay, but when they infer they will lead a mutiny, Cain sharply vetoes that. Even with Cain's angry disapproval, Sheba and Bojay lead a coterie of Pegasus warriors attempting to block transfer of fuel. The confrontation threatens to become violent when Apollo and Boomer must draw sidearms on their Pegasus counterparts.
The attempted mutiny, however, disappears when both battlestars pick up the approach of a gigantic legion of Cylon raiders aimed at the Galactica; they are unaware that the phalanx is under the personal command of Baltar, who aspires to rule Gomoray as the capital of his own empire within the Cylon empire. The phalanx is composed of three base star contingents, more than enough to slaughter the entire Fleet, but Adama and Cain realize the Cylons are unaware of the Pegasus' presence. Cain immediately concedes that he was wrong and would have doomed the refugee fleet if his attack was carried out. Satisfied with that act of humility and respect for his own authority, Adama returns command of the Pegasus to Cain. Together, the Commanders plan a pincer movement where the Galactica occupies the attention of the Cylons while the Pegasus performs a flanking maneuver to strike them. With that plan Cain immediately returns to his battlestar, to the delight of his crew. Cain's executive officer Tolen apologizes to Tigh, but Tigh recognizes the reality that "Who can fight a living legend?"
Baltar's attack legion opens fire as the Galactica's vipers launch to intercept. Baltar focuses his attack on the Galactica's flight bays and one raider rams the entrance to the landing portion of Alpha Bay, exploding and detonating a raging fire that disables the bay. The bridge begins to detonate amid escalating Cylon strafing and the civilian fleet now comes under full scale attack from Baltar's second wave, this despite the heroic resistance of the fleet's vipers.
Meanwhile, the Pegasus completes its flanking maneuver and begins its attack run on the Cylon armada's rear echelon, thus Baltar receives a gigantic surprise when his own command raider, closing on the Galactica to deliver the fatal final laser burst, is suddenly in the crosshairs of another battlestar..........
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