The Prolmar Massacre

The Prolmar Massacre is the name given to an engagment 10 years before the Cylons attacked the Colonies.

Pre Battle
The Colonials did not know much about the Prolmar Sector other then its existance. It was decided to send a Battlestar out on a recon and mapping mission. The Battlestar Busby was sent out for a three month mission with a hand picked crew of veterans and the best and brightest.The task was to map out the regions closest to the Colonies in order that they might provide better maps.

Battle
At 0935, Busby was just recovering Raptors when it detected a contact at the extreme range of DRADIS. Assuming it was a civilian ship with severe navigtional problems, Busby attempted to raise her on wireless but attempts at communication failed. Assuming whatever had caused the navigational errors to also disable long range communications, Busby sent out the duty Raptor to make contact.

At 0955 the Raptor closed within 20,000 metres of the contact, but before anything could happen the Raptor vanished off scopes. It was clear that the unknown vessel had attacked and destroyed the Raptor, and Busby went to Action Stations with all decks reporting ready by 0958.

Busby closed the distance to the contact and launched Vipers and Raptors but the contact destroyed nearly all of them. At 1010 Busby's main cannons opened up fire with no effect to the unknown vessel. The order was given to recover all remaining aircraft with combat landings authorised, and all remaining ships landed aboard Busby by 1013.

At this point, the unknown vessel turned its weapons on Busby itself and caused major damage all over the ship. CIC was completely destroyed with most of the senior officers, the CIC personal and many more killed at their stations. The contact then fired a number of Nuclear Missiles at Busby which hit and broke the back of the Battlestar. With the ship almost completely destroyed, Engineering overrode all safeties and jumped blind - ending up at Ragnar Anchorage. From time of first contact to Busby jumping away, the battle had taken just 43 minutes.

Aftermath
As soon as they emerged from the jump, the ship's back was completely broken and a distress call sent out for medical help. Busby was towed back to Picon Fleet Headquarters where it was decommisioned and most of the remains scrapped﻿. Its port flight pod was intact, and the decision was made to retain it as well as useable parts from the starboard pod and convert it to a carrier ship.

Colonial Fleet decided not to launch a full fleet to investigate, and ordered the survivors to remain quiet over what truely happened. A cover story involving terrorist was devised to explain why Busby was being scrapped. Apart from the port flight pod being salvaged (with parts from the starboard), the hulk was stripped of all parts and scrapped - one of the flak cannons ended up on then Major Robert Sharpe's personel MK II Viper "Faith".

Although it was clearly not of Cylon origin, the identity of those who attacked Busby has never been solved, nor has the ship been seen again.

Legend
Sharpe, now a Commander, tells the story of the Busby and her fate in the story Counter Attack.