Operation Exodus

4:1 Begining of the End

Day 605 Since the Fall

Admiral's Log

It's been about a month since Adama's fleet returned from Picon, signaling the end of our place at the colonies, the final exodus as it were since we're not going to leave Avalon.

Who would've thought there'd be so much trouble and work to do when I received my rank of Admiral, or better to say Fleet Admiral now? I've doubted myself many times since I was put in command by Torres and Nagala, but I've succeeded each time. Doing so not only by myself; most of the credit goes to the people that I command. Every one of my decisions was important and could cause our victory or defeat. Hm, I may not have been completely ready for all of it, but I've gotten used to it as much as I could, and things are going well, but sending young men and woman to their deaths has definitely been the hardest part of this job.

The mission to save all those that were trapped on Picon and the other colonies was a success; a little over two million people in two trips. On the main fleet's trip to Avalon many thousands of births were recorded, with even more ever since, especially with more expected now with the newest additions of survivors from the colonies. In total we have a little over seven million survivors here on Avalon. Many of the civilians have started their families with at least 2 to 3 children, and given all we've gone through studies have shown that many families could grow quite a bit larger, greatly increasing our population growth rate. Unfortunately many of our own fleet personnel have also been a part of the recent baby boom, so we've had little choice but to be more lax on regulations for officer fraternizations and lenient to allow time off a number of personnel have had or will have to take for maternity time. With those numbers though, we can rebuild our civilization. It may take time but we will succeed, we must.

But the mission to Picon was a costly victory; I would almost call it pyrrhic. We lost so many ships and personnel, more than we expected, but there was much more resistance than we expected as well. While much of the mission was originally supposed to be simple smash and grab or other guerrilla tactics to distract the Cylons until the evac fleet returned for a second load of survivors, apparently several fights became more costly than expected, particularly with a few moments of the Cylons giving Adama a few surprises like what happened to the Sciron. Admiral Adama certainly lived up to his reputation and delivered some crushing losses to the Cylons with unique tactics in some cases. From Admiral Adama's report, the Cylons counterattacked much sooner than we thought they would at Picon though. Most of the defense platforms in orbit of Picon were destroyed in the fighting, thankfully buying the time needed for evacuations to complete though the Cylons seemed to have planned for that as well. The few remaining stations from the defense grid will be reincorporated to the defenses around Avalon soon enough.

However, even with such high losses, the Cylons had even greater losses than we did. Much of their fleet was lost, and with the Colony destroyed they can't build new baseships without the hybrids the Colony alone had the capability to create, except for a few more baseships with remaining hybrids they might've had outside the Colony, perhaps at their shipyards, when the Colony was destroyed. We did get a report from Kathy that the Cylons could be building a new class of ship without hybrids now, though Kathy also made it clear Jack Cavil as the Cylons de facto leader has become paranoid from the defection of Cylons to our side and hid critical information, such as about the possible new type of baseship.

I was very impressed by the performance of the Battlestars Nike and Galactica from the reports, although they were taking damage, particularly during the last battle, from their constant activity. Both ships performed excellently, though of course there is always room for upgrades and improvement. Audacious also worked well, beyond our hopes even, justifying my hunch when I ordered three additional ships to be built as fast as possible when the evacuation fleet left for Picon, and with some last minute upgrades they'll be done shortly. More ships of the class will be under construction soon as well. I will present the Quorum and the president with my five year plan for fleet rebuilding. Of course my five year plan is just a basis for what we hope to have built and depends greatly on advancements we could make over time, along with the effect the new shipyards under construction will have on producing new ships in the future. Most definitely the civilian government won't like it since heavy fleet construction mostly takes precedence over the civilians getting cities across the planet, but without the fleet we would lose everything, so they won't have much choice but to see reason and allow us to do what we have to. And with Nike and Audacious classes, classes that proved themselves well in combat, we may have what is needed to defeat the Cylons once and for all.