Pegasus

Pegasus was a Mercury-class battlestar, one of the most advanced warships in the Colonial Fleet. Along with Galactica, it was one of only two Colonial capital ships to survive the Fall of the Twelve Colonies, serving under the command of Rear Admiral Helena Cain. It was destroyed two years later during the exodus from New Caprica.

Construction and the Fall#

Pegasus was constructed roughly two decades before the Fall, and little is recorded of its earlier service. In the years preceding the Cylon attack it was commanded by Rear Admiral Helena Cain, with Galen Tyrol serving aboard as a deckhand.

When the Cylons struck, Pegasus was docked at the Scorpia Fleet Shipyards for a refit, its Command Navigation Program disabled and nonessential crew on extended shore leave. A heavily armed Cylon squadron jumped into range and fired nuclear missiles, destroying two battlestars and three other ships within minutes. Cain rushed to the CIC and ordered an immediate decoupling and a blind jump, which carried Pegasus four or five jumps past the red line. A subsequent assessment counted some 723 crew dead, twelve Vipers and two Raptors destroyed, and seventeen more craft beyond repair.

Cain's guerrilla campaign#

After a Raptor reconnaissance confirmed the colonies were lost, Pegasus began a campaign of hit-and-run strikes, jumping wherever Cylon forces massed and engaging them before withdrawing. The Cylon agent Gina Inviere manipulated Cain into jumping the ship against what appeared to be a lightly defended communications relay but was in fact a Cylon staging post. Pegasus's Vipers were overwhelmed by fifteen squadrons of Raiders. When the executive officer, Colonel Belzen, refused to launch the reserve Vipers as a suicide run, Cain executed him on the spot and made Colonel Fisk her new XO.

Soon after, Pegasus detected a small fleet of civilian refugees. Regarding them as a tactical liability, Cain had the ships stripped for parts and their engineers impressed under threat of their families' lives, then abandoned the fifteen vessels, which lacked the FTL drives to flee any passing Raiders.

Reunion with the Fleet#

Several months after the Fall, Pegasus prepared to ambush a Cylon fleet it had been shadowing, but instead jumped into contact with the large civilian convoy protected by Galactica, an older battlestar that had survived because it was never networked. Initial rejoicing soured quickly. To the anger of President Laura Roslin and the civilians, Cain repeatedly diverted equipment to Galactica rather than the refugee ships. Friction grew between Cain and William Adama over command style and the reassignment of senior officers, and between the two crews over revelations that Pegasus personnel had tortured and raped the Cylon prisoner Gina.

The dispute boiled over when Lieutenant Karl Agathon and Deck Chief Tyrol killed Lieutenant Alastair Thorne as he prepared to assault a Cylon prisoner aboard Galactica. The two men were arrested and transferred to Pegasus for execution. When Adama failed to persuade Cain to spare them and scrambled his pilots for a rescue, Pegasus launched its own Vipers in response. The standoff broke only when Kara Thrace returned from an unauthorized recon flight aboard the stealth Blackbird with photographs of a mysterious Cylon ship guarded by two basestars. Interrogation identified it as a Resurrection Ship, where Raiders and Humanoid Cylons were downloaded into new bodies. Adama and Cain declared an uneasy truce to attack it, even as each secretly plotted to assassinate the other. The plans came to nothing after the Resurrection Ship was destroyed, and Cain was soon murdered by Gina, who had escaped her cell.

A succession of commanders#

In the aftermath, Roslin promoted Adama to Admiral and Fisk to Commander of Pegasus. Under Fisk the ship's officers became entangled in the black market, and Fisk used his position to gain influence, even bribing Colonel Saul Tigh and Vice President Gaius Baltar with supplies, until rival black marketeers murdered him in his quarters.

Chief Engineer Barry Garner took command next, his paranoid and domineering style terrorizing the crew. Against the advice of his XO, Major Lee Adama, and the Admiral's orders, Garner jumped Pegasus to a binary star system to search for a missing Raptor crew. It proved a Cylon ambush; Pegasus took heavy damage and Garner died performing maintenance only he was skilled enough to do. Lee Adama was then promoted to Commander. On his first mission, Pegasus searched for a missing Raptor science team and came under attack by Cylon War era fighters; it freed itself once its FTL fault was repaired, with Thrace downing an enemy fighter inside the landing pod. Learning of the Guardians, Admiral Adama joined Pegasus on a rescue mission that destroyed the Guardian basestar and the First Hybrid but cost the life of its XO, Major Kendra Shaw.

New Caprica and destruction#

When the fleet found and settled New Caprica, Pegasus and Galactica formed a skeleton-crewed orbital defense network above the colony. After a Cylon fleet rediscovered it a year later, both battlestars were forced to abandon the planet and jump away.

In the months that followed, Pegasus transferred personnel to Galactica so the older ship could be fully crewed for the rescue. When the liberation came, Commander Lee Adama launched Pegasus's remaining Viper pilots and jumped to New Caprica to help, opening fire on the basestars assaulting Galactica and critically damaging one with its forward cannons. Lacking the crew to keep fighting, the decision was made to put Pegasus on a collision course under computer-automated fire while its remaining crew escaped aboard Raptors. The diversion let Galactica break away. Pegasus collided head-on with one basestar, destroying it within seconds through internal explosions, then its starboard flight pod struck and destroyed a second.