Part 5 Battlestar Galactica: Back To The Colonies: Homecomings

Chapter 3

III

It was about six hours into the ground SAR. Captain Thomas Dalbott's Company had tracked about a mile-and-a-half in that time span. As the sun came up their movements slowed or stopped. The best defense they had was not to be noticed in the daylight and to move more swiftly under the cover of darkness. Because the days on Caprica were so long, they were forced to move during daylight, but they did so at a very slow, very deliberate pace.

They had heard only the sound of birds so far. Not even a hint of a human voice or the sound of an animal that might attack them. They had been warned such creatures were on these hills.

They had gone a few hundred feet further when Dalbott, taking the point, held his right elbow out, raised his forearm, and clenched his fist. That meant "stop". He had his helmet on, and all their helmets had radios built into them with microphones that let them talk to each other.

"Company", he said in almost a whisper, but the internal headsets were state-of-the-art, and his men and women had no trouble hearing him, "I have movement at my one-o'clock, about eight-hundred meters ahead. Stay still."

At this distance, he couldn't quite tell if it was man or beast, but he thought it was human. He got out his hi-res binoculars, and slowly brought them up...it was a man no doubt, just kind of wandering around the area. He had a weapon slung over his back and was facing away from them. "OK, people, it is a man, he is armed, facing in the other direction, slow movement forward."

Their cammo uniforms blended in nicely with the scenery, as did their camo helmets, and the green and some gray painted on their faces. If they moved slowly and stopped when this ignoramus turned, he shouldn't see them. Even their assault rifles were painted in camo, and had twigs and leaves taped across the muzzle of the weapon.

Whoever this clown was he wasn't in any hurry. They were within five hundred meters of him. He slowly turned around, and Dalbott raised his fist again. Everyone was motionless. The man was literally looking at them, but it was obvious that he didn't see a human shape anywhere in sight. He turned back around.

"OK, lads and lasses, once again, slow and easy." After about forty seconds, the guy turned around again, and again they froze. He began to walk slowly in their general direction but wasn't looking where they were, all in frozen mode. "Don't breath, people".

After about a hundred meters, he stopped and looked to the South. He then looked around in all directions, almost confused, but then Dalbott figured out what was going on. "Well, people", he whispered again, "I think Mother Nature is going to call on our friend." The Company wanted to laugh at that, but they all held back.

The man was now within three hundred meters of their position, off to the Southeast. "Rogers, Kwan, Boucher, slowly move to our rear to cover the North, I think we might have something here."

The three Marines slowly, silently moved around to The North, to cover the rear of the Company, while they concentrated on this man to the South. They made no noise as they moved.

Dalbott had been a sniper when with the Kiwi Army. He had never fired a shot in anger but knew he could hit a stone with his sniper rifle from two thousand yards. This guy was almost next door. His German-made rifle could be used for such shots but also could be dialed back to travel at slower velocities. Such velocities were useful when one didn't want to merely kill his target. Dalbott had two clips of tranquilizer bullets with him. He also had a silencer on the end of his weapons. A silencer could hurt hitting a target at very long range, but wouldn't affect such an easy shot.

The man in front of him had looked around again, then behind himself, then squatted down like a baseball catcher.

Despite the tenseness of the situation, one of his Company had to be a smart-ass. "Cap'n at least let him finish his business before putting him to sleep, for chrissake." Dalbott knew who had said that, and knew where the man was. He badly wanted to turn and stick his tongue out at his subordinate at that moment, but he knew he had to stay sharp.