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The Battlestar Pegasus is a ship featured in the Battlestar Galactica television programs, both the original 1978 series and 2003 revival.

Battlestar Galactica (1978)

In the 1978 series, the Battlestar Pegasus spent her earlier life patroling the edges of Colonial space under Commander Cain. Cain was a renowned Colonial warrior and was referred to often as "the living legend." Later, the Pegasus took part in the battle of Jol'Trata in which she was badly damaged. After the battle she was found by the Battlestar Athenia and towed back to Caprica for repair and re-fitting. Two years before the destruction of the Twelve Colonies the Pegasus was involved in the battle of Molokai with the Cylon forces. The battle was a complete disaster for the Colonial forces and the entire fifth fleet, except the Pegasus, was destroyed. The Pegasus managed to slip away from the battle and, realising that the route back home would be crawling with Cylons, made its way into deep space.

After the destruction of the Twelve Colonies, two of the Galactica's vipers were discovered while on patrol by the Pegasus, the two battlestars met and took part in a fierce battle against the Cylons. Toward the end of the battle, the Pegasus moved into point-blank range of two Cylon base ships and managed to destroy them. After the dust had settled from the attack there was no sign of the Pegasus.

Commander Cain's daughter, Lieutenant Sheba, was a pilot on the Pegasus and remained with the Galactica after the Pegasus disappeared.

There was once a widespread fan assumption that the wrecked spaceship in War of the Gods (that the mysterious Count Iblis had brought to its destruction) was the remains of the Pegasus. Nothing about the appearance of the wreckage indicates this. The dialogue in the episode has Apollo commenting only that the wreck was "as big as a Batllestar". However, Apollo and Starbuck's reluctance (and Iblis's absolute refusal) to allow Sheba to see the remains of the dead crewmembers that they found led many fans to believe that they found Cain's body. The reports concerning the footage deleted from this scene (which showed a cloven hoof as part of the dead bodies) clearly reveals that it was never the scriptwriters intention that the wrecked ship was the Pegasus. Dead or alive, the fate of Commander Cain and the Pegasus remains an unsolved mystery.

Battlestar Galactica (2003)

The Battlestar Pegasus is a Mercury Class Battlestar assigned to Battlestar Group 62 of the Colonial Fleet, and originally commanded by Admiral Helena Cain. Thought to have been destroyed during the Cylon attack on the Twelve Colonies, Pegasus encountered the Battlestar Galactica and the last surviors of the colonies about six months after their escape from Ragnar Anchorage.

Before the fall of the Twelve Colonies, the Pegasus had just docked at the Scorpion Fleet Shipyards where it was due for a three-month overhaul. Many of her systems were offline, including the command navigation program that the Cylons used to disable Colonial defenses during their attack. The Cylons' opening wave hit the shipyard with several nuclear warheads, destroying five ships, including two battlestars. The Pegasus lost 700 crew members. Pegasus only survived the attack on the shipyards because she performed a blind FTL jump, a jump in which the ship's FTL drive was activated without inputting any coordinates. This blind jump resulted in the ship escaping immediate destruction, but risked the battlestar's reappearance inside a star or planetary atmosphere at the end of the jump.

As a result of the Cylon's devastating attack on the Twelve Colonies, Admiral Cain became increasingly iron-fisted. Pegasus' executive officer, Colonel Jack Fisk, once told his Galactica counterpart, Colonel Tigh, of an incident in which Admiral Cain shot the original XO in the head in front of the entire crew for refusing to implement her order to attack a heavily-defended Cylon base.

It was later revealed that Pegasus had acquired her own small civilian fleet, which Cain subsequently cannibalized for spare parts. She also impressed civilians into her crew at gunpoint, which lead to two families being murdered under Cain's orders. Eventually, she abandoned the fifteen-ship fleet to fend for itself.

After her escape from the shipyards and before meeting the Galactica, the Pegasus had been performing repeated hit-and-run attacks upon Cylon forces. Pegasus had trailed a large Cylon fleet which jumped between systems with natural resources. In one of these jumps, Pegasus discovered the escaping fleet of Colonial ships protected by the Galactica. The ship is more powerful than the Galactica and has four landing bays, two per nacelle pod. It uses artificial gravity to allow the Vipers to land both in the "upper" pod "upside-up" or in the "lower" pod "upside-down", even though up and down have little meaning in space. In addition, the Pegasus has on-board Viper production facilities and manages to acquire enough resources to construct two Viper squadrons.

The initial rejoicing in the rag-tag fleet following the Pegasus meeting with the Galactica did not last long. As the senior surviving Colonial officer, Admiral Cain assumed command of the fleet, replacing Galactica's Commander William Adama. While at first assuring Adama that she would not interfere with Galactica's operations, Cain soon ordered crew reassignments, withheld the delivery of supplies to the civilian fleet and sent her so-called "Cylon interrogator", Lieutenant Thorne, to question Galactica's Cylon prisoner. Lt. Thorne's interrogation and attempted rape of the Cylon known as Sharon "Boomer" Valerii resulted in his accidental death after he was interrupted and attacked by two of the Galactica's crew, Chief Petty Officer Galen Tyrol and Lieutenant Karl "Helo" Agathon, both of whom had had relations with Cylon copies of Boomer.

Tyrol and Agathon were arrested by Pegasus Marines and charged with killing Lt. Thorne. Cain sentenced both to death after a summary trial. After receiving the news of his men's death sentences, Commander Adama ordered a strike team of Colonial Marines to be sent to the Pegasus to retrieve his crew. An armed standoff between Pegasus and her Mark VII Vipers against Galactica and her own Mark II and Mark VII Vipers ended when Lieutenant Starbuck reappeared from her recon mission aboard the stealth Blackbird with photos of a mysterious Cylon ship being guarded by two basestars. Interrogation of the Pegasus' Cylon prisoner (a Number Six model named Gina) revealed that the mysterious ship was a "resurrection ship", with the role of giving dead Cylons new bodies, giving the Cylons a lack of fear of death. Although Adama and Cain declared a truce in order to coordinate an attack on the Cylons, they made plans to assassinate each other, which were called off after the resurrection ship was destroyed. The Cylon Gina, however, escaped with the help of Baltar and assassinated Cain before escaping Pegasus.

Colonel Jack Fisk was named Commander of the Pegasus after Cain's death; he was murdered himself by members of a black market mafia shortly thereafter. Engineering chief Barry Garner replaced Colonel Fisk as Commander of the Pegasus. Commander Garner allowed the Pegasus to be drawn into an ambush by three Cylon Basestars. The Pegasus suffered damage to her jump drive cooling system, thus preventing her from making an FTL jump to safety. Commander Garner sacrificed his life to repair the damage, allowing the Pegasus to escape to safety.

Admiral Adama promoted his son and Garner's Executive Officer, Major Lee Adama, to the rank of Commander, and gave him command of the Pegasus. Soon after, the fleet discovered a habitable world and began to colonize it, naming their new home New Caprica. The Pegasus and the Galactica, with skeleton crews, formed an orbital defense network over the new colony, but when the colony was discovered and attacked by a superior Cylon force, they were forced to abandon the colony and jump to safety.

External links

Battlestar Galactica vehicles

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Battlestar Pegasus".

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