While Commander Adama leads the rag-tag fleet of ships to the planet Kobol, where he hopes to find clues of Earth's location, the Viper pilots contract a disease, making it necessary for the women to take on fighter patrol duties. But the traitor Baltar leads the Cylons in an attack on the Galactica.

Starbuck is assigned to test a new ultra-fast, but unarmed, Viper with a talking computer named CORA; but when he meets a bootlegger, who steals the Viper, Starbuck finds himself arrested by the Galactic Police of a prison planet.

Starbuck crashes on the planet Trillion, where the Cylons have destroyed all the humans except for a band of children, who have become warriors to save their enslaved father.

An old con man known as Chameleon meets Starbuck and convinces him that he may be Starbuck's father, to gain Starbuck's help in evading a trio of bloodthirsty Borellians who are after him in revenge for another con.

When Baltar plans his escape with the help of the three Borellians and the Eastern Alliance Enforcers, members of the Council of Twelve are taken hostage, and Adama must give in to the escapees' demands.

Rather than continue fleeing from their enemies, the crew of the Galactica commences an all-out attack on a Cylon base.