Battlestar Vanguard (D26)

The Battlestar Vanguard was a Series Three Mercury Class Heavy Battlestar that was in service at the time of the Fall of the Twelve Colonies.

In her final active service configuration, Vanguard had a complement of 30 Dual-Barrel Heavy Kinetic Energy Cannon Batteries, 6 fixed bow-mounted Heavy Kinetic Energy Cannon emplacements, imbedded launch silos for variable yield tactical nuclear ordnance, and a standard peacetime cruising complement of 200 Vipers divided into 10 squadrons of 20 each. As with other Mercury Class Battlestars, Vanguard also carried light refinery and precision machining equipment that allowed vessels of this type to engage in limited onboard fabrication of replacement Vipers or Raptors to replace combat losses.

 Fall of the Twelve Colonies 

At the time of the Cylon attack, Vanguard was under the command of Commander Depoch Sadir. While conducting a standard deterrence patrol near Sagittaron, the first indication to the crew of the Vanguard and her escorts that a shooting war with the Cylons had begun was the sudden appearance of a Raider Hunter-Killer group near their patrol sector. Before any of the Colonial warships had an opportunity to launch a defensive sortie or prep weapons for a counter-action to the intrusion, every vessel in the Vanguard’s battlegroup suffered a near complete loss of computer control. With their combat and propulsion systems completely unresponsive, the doomed crews aboard the Colonial vessels could only watch in horror as the Cylon Raiders launched a punishing volley of tactical nuclear missiles that tore into the Colonial flotilla. With her escorts being pummeled into debris and his ship’s engineering sections sustaining heavy damage, all Commander Sadir was able to do was order the vessel’s aft ammunition stores dumped in order to prevent fires raging near that section from setting off the Vanguard’s own weapon stores. This would also prove to be his last command. With all the ship’s computer systems compromised, the environmental computer controlling CIC erroneously detected a leak in that section and very quickly raised the internal atmospheric pressure in CIC to above one hundred and ten pounds per square inch in a matter of minutes, literally crushing the entire command staff.

With the Vanguard’s group now little more than shattered debris, the Cylon Raiders jumped away, leaving any survivors aboard the Vanguard to a slow death. But before they were claimed by such a fate, the former Battlestar Pacifica and her civilian refugee group arrived, the accompanying Combatstar Proteus very quickly coming alongside the mortally crippled Vanguard and retrieving all accessible survivors. After the evacuation of the Vanguard was completed, former Commander Adrian Kelso ordered that scuttle charges be detonated aboard the hulk of the Vanguard in order to cover all evidence of the rescue of survivors from the dead Battlestar. With the vessel and any evidence of their presence destroyed, the Pacifica and the rest of the accompanying civilian flotilla departed the area.

See: Battlestar Vanguard

See: WSG 1