Raider Type III: Cylon space superiority fighter

The Raider Type III, carrying the reporting name Sparrow, was the principal attack fighter fielded by the Cylons after the First Cylon War. Unlike a conventional machine, the Raider was a living thing: a synthetic biological organism fused to a metallic exoskeleton, weapons, and engines. It replaced the older Type II Raider, which had been crewed by Model 0005 Centurions, and it became the fighter that Colonial pilots faced across the great battles that followed the Fall of the Twelve Colonies.

First contact#

In the aftermath of the destruction of the Twelve Colonies, Galactica deployed its Vipers against the Cylon attack fighters. The enemy's presence had been detected on DRADIS, but the fighters themselves were an unknown quantity. The Viper pilots could only speculate on their design, drawing on the old Type I Raider preserved in Galactica's museum. When the new Raiders were finally seen, they revealed bird-like forms, with a helmet-shaped body set at the center.

A living machine#

Physically, a Raider was a biological organism fused to a metallic exoskeleton, weapons, and engines. The biological entity was synthetic in nature, like the humanoid Cylons, yet it functioned the same as any naturally occurring lifeform. The Raider organism carried the organs necessary for its various functions. Its brain was complex enough to make the Raider a sentient, intelligent being capable of planning and of communicating with others of its kind.

To move, electrical pulses were sent from the brain to muscles that interacted with the mechanical part of the Raider, letting it move no differently from an animal. Those same muscles worked the weapons, the thrusters, and the FTL engine. Like any living thing, the Raider needed oxygen to survive, and the organism was kept alive through a breathing tube.

Cognition and rebirth#

Sharon "Boomer" Valerii later revealed that the Raiders were more like trained animals, possessed of basic consciousness and survival instincts. Genetically designed to serve as fighters, they could think and act independently, so much so that they could even refuse to follow orders. As with the humanoid Cylons, a Raider that died was reborn into a new ship, carrying with it all its accumulated knowledge and skills. By Valerii's account, death then became a learning experience for them, although it was also a painful and traumatic ordeal.

One Raider ace, named "Scar" by the Viper pilots for the mark on its face, was reckoned the most deadly of all the Cylon fighters. Valerii warned Kara Thrace that as Scar was reborn it was filled with ever more bitter memories, and that it hated her as much as she hated it.

Kindred spirits and rebellion#

The Raiders could recognize their own kind, even in human form. During his first sortie as a Viper pilot, Samuel T. Anders found himself in the midst of a massive battle in an Ionian nebula, where Galactica was under siege and the fleet was close to destruction. Anders spun close to a Raider, whose tracking light scanned his face and illuminated his eyes. Within moments, as if in answer to an invisible order, the Cylon strike force withdrew to their ships.

This refusal to carry out orders later forced a Cylon faction to begin lobotomizing the Raiders, who would no longer fight the surviving fleet. In response, the rebel Cylons removed the higher-brain-function inhibitor from the Centurions, who were enraged by the invasive procedure done to their brothers. These actions helped ignite the Cylon Civil War.