Cylon Raider

The Raider was the Cylon space superiority fighter and the counterpart to the Colonial Viper, deployed in successive types across both Cylon wars and launched in great numbers from the basestars. Far from a simple machine, the modern Raider was a living organism fused to a metallic exoskeleton, sentient enough to plan, communicate, and resurrect into a new body when killed.

The Type II Raider#

The Type II Raider was crewed by Model 0005 Centurions rather than being a living craft in its own right. At the Battle of Djerba, a Type II basestar deployed over 140 Type II Raiders against the Battlestar Osiris and its complement of roughly twenty Mark III Vipers. After the battlestar took heavy damage, Commander Ozar manually activated its nuclear warhead complement, destroying both capital ships and their fighters together.

The Type III Raider#

The Type III Raider, reporting name Sparrow, entered production at some point after the First Cylon War and replaced the Type II. Where the Type II had been a vessel crewed by Centurions, the Type III was itself a species of Cylon, with its higher brain functions suppressed by the Humanoid Cylons so that, like the Centurions, it was regarded as little more than an animal by the rest of Cylon society.

When Galactica first deployed its Vipers against Cylon fighters after the Fall of the Twelve Colonies, the Raiders were an unknown quantity, detected on DRADIS but with their appearance only guessed at from the old Type I Raider preserved in Galactica's museum.

Design#

The first sightings revealed bird-like forms with a helmet-shaped body set in the center. Physically, the Raider was a biological organism fused to a metallic exoskeleton, weapons, and engines. The biological entity was synthetic, like the Humanoid Cylons, but functioned the same as a naturally occurring lifeform, with organs serving various functions and a brain complex enough for the Raider to be a sentient, intelligent being capable of planning and communicating with others of its kind. Electrical pulses from the brain drove muscles that interacted with the mechanical body, allowing the Raider to move as an animal would, while those same muscles operated its weapons, thrusters, and FTL engine. As with other biological entities, the Raider needed oxygen and was kept alive through a breathing tube.

Resurrection and the Cylon Civil War#

Sharon "Boomer" Valerii later revealed that the Raiders were more like trained animals, with basic consciousness and survival instincts. Genetically designed as fighters, they could think and act so independently that they could refuse orders. Like other Cylons, a Raider that died was reborn into a new ship, carrying its accumulated knowledge and skills with it, so that, in Valerii's words, "death then becomes a learning experience," though death was also a painful and traumatic ordeal. A Raider ace the Viper pilots named "Scar," for the mark on its face, was considered the deadliest of all the Cylon fighters; as Valerii warned Kara Thrace, each rebirth filled it with more bitter memories.

Raiders could recognize their own kind even in human form. During the Battle of the Ionian Nebula, as Galactica and the fleet neared destruction, a Raider's tracking light scanned the face of the newly flying Samuel T. Anders and illuminated his eyes; moments later, as if in response to an unseen order, the entire Cylon strike force withdrew. This growing refusal to fight the Refugee Fleet forced a Cylon Loyalist faction to begin lobotomizing the Raiders. In response, the Cylon Rebels removed the higher-brain-function inhibitor from the Centurions, who were enraged by the procedure done to their "brothers." These actions helped trigger the Cylon Civil War and the near-extermination of the Number Two, Six, and Eight models.