"Antebellum" Battlestar Galactica #7 (Dynamite) Writer: Greg Pak Art: Nigel Raynor Colors: David Curiel Letters: Simon Bowland Cover B: Stjepan Sejic 2007

New and old model Cylons battle it out for control for control of the rag-tag fleet.

Story Summary

The Cylon Centurions that were hidden in the debris field in which the fleet was hiding rise up and begin attacking Captain Valerii's escape pod. She is about to shoot herself to prevent herself from being activated as part of the Cylon plan when the antebellum centurions begin attacking the new centurions from their Raiders. Valerii's pod is struck by laser fire, but she manages to eject and grab a hold of a passing Raider. Yanking open the cockpit, she climbs in with the centurion pilot, who puts up a struggle until her blood winds up smeared on its head and it recognizes her as a superior Cylon, intoning, "By your command."

Via commlink, Captain Valerii tells Commander Adama aboard Colonial One he should blow all the Cylons away now before she is activated to perform whatever she may be unknowingly programmed to do. But Adama and Caprica-Valerii have suddenly been taken hostage by space pirate survivors Captain Valerii brought back with her and herd the two towards an airlock to be spaced as Cylons. Adama sprays the pirate band with a vial of the Returner virus, leaving them immediately incapacitated. This also frees President Roslin and Starbuck who were also hostages of the pirates.

A small fleet of Cylon boarding ships is detected on DRADIS, heading for the fleet. Captain Valerii takes out some of them, but one crashed itself into the side of Colonial One, admitting a Cylon boarding party. Communicating with Captain Valerii, Adama maneuvers the centurion boarders into seeing the flight of antebellum Raiders outside the ship's viewport and the centurions shoot through the viewport, out into space, on the attack against them. Adama tells Captain Valerii to have her antebellum centurions eject from their Raiders into space and the two factions begin to fight each other in the vacuum. Her command power gets both factions to stop fighting with each other and she indicates to Adama to push the button that will blow up the antebellum centurions, to destroy both factions and herself for the good of the fleet.

CONTINUED IN BATTLESTAR GALACTICA #8

Didja Know?

The issues of this series were untitled. I assigned the title "Antebellum" for the prominent role played by the old style Cylon centurions in this issue. 

Characters appearing or mentioned in this story

Captain Valerii

President Roslin

Commander Adama

Caprica-Valerii

Lt. Gaeta

Helo

Baltar

Starbuck

Didja Notice?

Cover B of this issue, by Stjepan Sejic, depicts a symbolic image of Number Six with half her face made translucent to show a robotic, metal skull beneath the skin. Of course, the humanoid Cylons have entirely human-looking skulls, skeletons, and organs.

The refugees Captain Valerii has rescued from Colonial space are said to be survivors of the Graydon-Essi satellite module. It's not stated what planet or moon it was a satellite of.

On page 11, Captain Valerii refers to the approaching Cylon ship as a boarding ship. It appears to essentially be a Heavy Raider, though slightly off-looking. Note that Heavy Raiders were used by the Cylons to board the Galactica in "Scattered" and the Pegasus in "Razor".
Cylon boarding ship in this issue	Cylon Heavy Raider