Chapter 10 – The Civil War

“Alright men, this is the day of search and rescue. Find Dr. Baltar, and move out.”
Thunder was standing in front of the briefing room with all the military personnel present and accounted for. As he spoke the screens of intel scrolled by of the mission plan. Maps, rosters, what to expect…30 minutes, in and out. Simple.
“…Expect no to minimal resistance, as recon groups spot a small group of creatures…however stone and rock barriers prevented from any further information. Team Alpha and Gamma, you are to take postions at the north-eastern gate…” Thunder switched slides again, this time a map with the locations of the teams and arrows of their movement. “…Team bravo and echo take the south-western gate, with Teams Sierra and Tango patrolling the paramenter. Team Delta…” He looked at me at the delta section. “…will be here coordinating the search and rescue teams to make sure our little operation go as smoothly as possible. I softly hit the tabletop with my fist, though I’d rather made it so the whole room would hear. Total BS, everyone else was going to have fun while we did all the work. Besides, we were the best snipers on the planet, just a chance to prove it on the field would make thunder think twice about his descion.

An hour later the units left for the mission out of PA. Meanwhile we were doing our own task in the war room that was in the landing area of PA, had a few tents with people running in and out with reports and documents and whatnot. I turned on a few moniters that were hooked up to each of the team leader's rifles, so we could see for ourselves what was going down. Me and the rest of the team just sort of sat back while the outgoing teams checked and re-checked their equiptment and supplies.
"This is team Alpha, prepared for mission..." One by one the teams got ready. When they were we gave the green light and it was go time. I punched a few buttons on my watch just to see how long this would take. "30 minutes...simple" I kept muttering to myself.
So every five minutes when I wasn't throwing a waded up paper ball to the other three I checked in with the teams. They seemed rather joyed that I wasn't out there with them, which made the entire situation seem worse and worse. After about twenty minutes the radio crackled to life, and not on my side...
"This is team Alpha, we have reached the site of interest...taking a look around..." I pushed up my chair to get a better view of the moniters. Man, that place is a wreck. The outer walls of the facility were severly damaged with large holes on all sides, the gound around the place was dark and overtuned, and the security systems were offline. Whoever...or whatever...did quite the number on this place. Begain to doubt there was anything left of our fellow rescuie left. Even Sean and Hans stopped what they were doing to look up.
Looked around for about another 15 minutes or so, was about to call them back since I figured there was nothing left to salvage. Suddenly the Beta Team's camera hit the floor as a red laser shot out of the building and hit the captain. "Man down, man down, need backup!" As orders begain to race through the radios. Thunder came through the tent entrence. "What in the @%# blazes is going on?!" He stared at the montiners himself and slowly began to have his mouth open, as if even he was in shock. As I watched guns fired, ammo casings hitting the ground, orders, calls for backup and help, then soon after Team Gamma's radio went silent. Damnit! I couldn't take anymore of this, not today.
"All teams, fall back to green zone! Repeat, all teams fall back!" I ordered. Not only was I not present on the field but those lives who were lost were on my head now. This wasn't a game. Now it's for real.
As we briefed over what happened I took one last look at Team Gammas camera. What I saw made me grab Thunder away from his duties. While he seemed as angry and peeved as I was, I just pointed to the screen, and even he looked surpised. What came out from the walls weren't creatures, but the robots that we sent five years ahead of us to build the colony. Why were they shooting...?

Chapter 9 - The discovery

Life on this planet was getting to be...almost normal, which is hard to say that when we arrived on this barren land a few weeks ago. Buildings were bursting with new life, gardens were in full bloom, and our days consisted of doing the usual routine of working our butts off and keeping security in check.

However, it didn't have the fine silver lining...good supplies were coming short, backup items became full-time, and reserves for extra metals were drying up fast. Pretty soon Thunder ordered us to go with a group of experienced miners that were doing some prospecting of the land areas to the north and doing test that showed there might be some minerals in the ground. Great, nothing like babysitting other people while they have all the fun...

BOOM!
Dirt and debris shoot thirty feet in the air as a charge detonates the place where it was. The guy I was with, Gary, took out his mining tool and flipped up the lid. "Come on, turn green..." He whispered. A small yellow light was flashing on the top of the tool. Kept flashing for a few seconds more, then turned red. "Dam, nothing." he growled. I looked on.
"Now what?" I had already been out of a half hour or so beforehand waiting for this guy to get ready. It was about 88 degrees out, so the sun wasn't helping the temp go lower any faster. Sucks when there’s a sun shining every minute of every day.
"We go 100 footsteps to thz north, and try again." So we did, about half way through we spotted a young (but still ugly) snablenot creature just grazing on some grass. "Can I see one of those charges?" I asked, hoping he would give me one. Gary gave a puzzled look. "What for?" I looked at the snable, then he looked at the snable. Then we both looked at the snable again. He grinned. "Are ye thinking what ye is thinkin!" I grabbed one from his bag, then going against the wind I took a charge and planted it right beneath the beastie. What it couldn't smell, it couldn't find, love that. I half tip-toed half ran back to where Gary was, then as soon as it was set we detonated the charge. Needless to say, we never had this kind of entertainment back at home. As soon as the charge went the snable let out a sort of loud whistle before being put inside out and a mist of green goo fell around the ground. I high fived Gary for the cool trick and sat for a few seconds staring at the mess. We had completely forgotten that the charge also was searching for minerals, so we both jumped up when the ore finder lit up and vibrated a bit, as if it was happy itself. Quickly opening it up the green light was on and we had found a nice size one too. So I stood watching out for anything out of the ordinary while Gary went to work constructing a mini drill tower to extract the ore from the ground. Quite loud it was, as gary picked up the stones that were coming out of the tower, until there was a louder *THUNK* as the drill bit snapped in half and the machine came to a halt. "Now what" I told him. The last thing I needed was to report back with a broken drill bit, which were hard to replace at the time. Would have my head for dinner for this, I dreaded.
"Come look at this, and see for yeself" Gary said. As I stepped toward where the drill bit was a large metal container with lights and computer monitors displaying characters that I couldn't begin to figure out what they were saying. There were also wires sort of hanging out of it, as if it was damaged in someway. "What is it?"
"I dunno...but I'm going to call it in." I radioed to base that we had found some metal, as well as a large 'metal sphere' that would be an interesting find.
Later on that day the scientist who studied it said it was a sort of beacon that was used in the colonization process, but nothing like we used...where we alone?