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...?