It is the eve of the Cylon holocaust.

Above Tauron, the Battlestar Myriad languishes in planetary caretaking duties; her best crew are being rotated off for plusher assignments on other vessels. The Myriad’s Commander, Thaddeus Laert, promotes Alexander Darius to be his Executive Officer and Krysten Furik to be his CAG, anticipating the arrival of Eddard Stanton, his new Second Officer. On the planet below, Stanton waits with Jena Dorian, the Myriad’s new Chief Engineer, and Ivor Nereus, soon to be Chief Medical Officer.

None of them are aware that blood is boiling on the icy planet below. Althea Ward, deputy to Stan Ramix, the leader of the planet’s main workers’ Union, is at the head of an escalating furore over working conditions. Tauron, the technological capital of the Colonies, is implementing upgrades for the Command Navigation Program; now the work has fallen behind, the Taurese government is twisting arms to get the job done.

Even as Nicholai Crane, a negotiator from Caprica sent by the President to help resolve the problem, arrives at Tauron, the situation escalates; the government denies workers access to municipal facilities and the workers begin occupying government installations. The Police stand idly by, so the government calls on the military to intervene. But while Commander Laert’s task force, led by Major Darius, try to diffuse the row, a remarkable development changes the dynamic.

Ward’s team find an ancient vessel buried under Tauron’s surface; it is the Galleon, the long-lost vessel that brought the ancestors of the Colonials from Kobol. The workers hope to use it as leverage but a team from the Myriad follow them to the dig site. Darius and Ward enter the ship to find Stan Ramix half-mad with fear and clutching a cracked and crumbling book retrieved from within. Stan suffers a heart attack and the team evacuates as the vessel begins to shake around them.

Galvanised by these events and each with much face to save, the government, workers and military re-enter negotiations, arranging an apparent compromise. Captain Stanton is to escort Althea Ward and Nicholai Crane to Caprica for a formal hearing before the Quorum, while the Union returns to work and the government rescinds its punitive legislation. Even as the trio leave aboard the shuttle Caprican Dawn, the Myriad is ordered to accompany the Battlestar Hydra to investigate loss of contact with Armistice Station.

En route to Armistice Station, the Battlestars Myriad and Hydra encounter two Cylon Basestars. Strangely, both enemy vessels are travelling at sublight speeds, one some distance in front of the other. The Battlestars, both of which had received the CNP upgrade, are shut down instantly. The Hydra is destroyed by nukes while the Myriad, unable to change course, crashes into the lead Basestar. Miraculously, it survives, though the front third of the ship is little more than a fireball. Even more amazingly, as the launched Vipers are effortlessly eliminated by Raiders, Furik’s fighter alone survives the onslaught; he manoeuvres it back to the Myriad by manually firing his cannons, but not before he sees the Battlestar’s course: straight towards the uninhabited planet Minos.

Aboard the blazing wreck of the Myriad, Darius, Dorian and the deck chief, Tyler, lead a desperate attempt to regain control of the ship from Cylon Centurions. Commander Laert is dead, so once the ship is reclaimed, Darius must choose whether to attempt a landing on Minos or take his chances in the cold depths of space. And so the Battlestar Myriad crash lands on the silent and barren planet Minos. After the CNP, along with everything else, is wiped from the data core, the long, arduous repairs begin.

Meanwhile, word reaches Ward, Stanton and Crane aboard the Caprican Dawn that the colonies are under attack. As distress calls signal in front and behind, they link up with a fleeing liner, the Dionysius Burden, Captain Catteus Malo at the helm. The two ships flee to part of the Colonial system’s asteroid belt, locating there a defunct Tylium refinery and the rogue trader Nestra Duvali, aboard her ship, the Crazy Ace. After great initial mistrust, the three ships resolve to hide in the belt with the Crazy Ace making sorties to find other survivors. Nestra returns with the hydroponics array Accretion Disk, captained by Priam Teucer, the Augea, a recycling ship under Nicteus Philemon, and the Virgon Haulier, a transport commanded by Katsuga Morran.

The assembled authority figures form a fleet Council to vote on important matters. Stanton is appointed commander of military situations, Ward as production co-ordinator, Crane as head of security and Morran as the Chair of the Council. They are faced with crisis after crisis, as food and medicines run desperately short. Work begins on retrofitting the defunct Tylium refinery, Origin 12, to support part of the population, when it is discovered that the Cylons held the base during the first war. Moreover, they left something behind: one of their lethal Foxbat fighters.

With every moment bringing the threat of discovery by the Cylons, both groups of survivors hide and prepare for flight. Little do any of them yet suspect that the enemy is already among them...