Thirteen

Chapter Eighty-Four

Apollo's Rising

Apollo ducked behind the building and loaded a new energy cap into his rifle, checking his vest to be sure he had plenty more on him. Once satisfied he had plenty, he turned his rifle to its highest setting, ducked down, and swung around the wall, blasting one of the Centurions coming down the street towards him. He scored a head shot and the Centurion toppled over like a domino, and Apollo lucked out as the robot's body spun around, with the guns on its hands blazing, and shot down two other Centurions.

Others were coming down the street as well, so Apollo scrambled out of his position and headed down the alleyway towards the fortified position where Angle was stationed at. They had managed to get three hundred yards inside the city before they met heavy resistance. "They're coming down Astra and heading east!" Apollo called, and Angle nodded, reaching for the communications link to call in artillery fire onto where the Centurions were located.

They ducked down inside the subway station where they were held up and listened as the plasma pulses started landing onto Astra Avenue. Chunks of building, asphalt, and Centurion started landing around their position shortly thereafter. When the barrage ended roughly five minutes later, Angle sent some of his troops up to check to see how many Centurions had survived.

When Corporal Sven "Spike" Johansen returned to the subway stop, he reported, "We didn't take any fire when we went onto Astra, so it looks like we got all of them."

Angle grunted and called out to the others, "Let's move!", then picked up his rifle and lead the way. Apollo followed behind him, keeping his head on a swivel in order to react should a Centurion surprise them and open fire.

As luck would have it, they made it all the way to the building where one of the major talk wireless stations was formerly housed before taking fire again. Leonis Wireless Network was an empty building now, but it served the purpose of giving them cover from a half-dozen Centurions that had surrounded the building. Thus began a complicated game of hide and seek, with the rules being quite different from the childhood variety on Earth.

Angle and Apollo split up the team and scattered throughout the building to set up firing positions. Apollo shot out a window without aiming at anything, then ducked down behind some file cabinets as his shot was soon followed by a torrent of bullets hitting and shattering the same windows. The Centurions were joined by a dozen others and tried to move on the building, but were beaten back by Angle's forces remaining on the ground floor.

Apollo scattered out his forces throughout the building, instructing them to set up sniper positions throughout the building. He assigned two of them to a room and let them construct the blinds where they would pick off the Centurions. One would draw fire while the other would line up the target and take it out.

Whether it was arrogance, stupidity, or both, the Centurions stubbornly stayed in the street, trying to scope out where the GROPOS were in the building. One by one, they were taken out by Apollo's troops. When they had eliminated them all, they sent out a scouting party to make sure. After they returned and reported that the coast was clear, Angle moved the troops out towards the center of the city, where the main government building was located.

Day turned into night, but the fight continued nevertheless. Sniper positions were set up to protect their defensive positions, while raiding parties ventured out to scout out and hinder any possible ambushes in the darkness. Apollo caught some sleep, but he wasn't sure just how long it had been that he had dozed off. Not worrying about it too much, he got up from where he had lay down to sleep, grabbed a quick bite to eat from his ration pack, and made his way over to Angle.

As morning dawned, they met up with other troops who were, like them, converging on the enormous government building in the center of the city. Troops were already engaging the enemy there, so it was tricky business getting close to the building, because the Centurions had gun emplacements on the roof as well as in several windows.

"Damn! It's gonna be a bitch to smoke those tin men out!" Angle called over to his communications officer and got his troops to pull back and let the artillery troops have at it. It wouldn't completely take care of the problem, but it would force the Centurions to keep their heads down long enough to allow the closest troops to storm the lower level of the building once the barrage ceased.

The toll had been heavy, as they had lost fifty people in this operation already, with another seventy-three wounded. Apollo knew that they had lost more in the outlying areas, but he thanked the Lords of Kobol that it hadn't been nearly as bad as he had feared it would. Urban warfare of any kind was the worst kind of combat, but it was made all the more difficult when the enemy you faced wasn't flesh and bone but made up of metal and circuitry.

The storming of the building was expensive anyway, with five grunts going down as they entered it. Through his headset, Apollo could hear the combat taking place, and his mind sent images of what his ears were picking up. He knew soon enough that he would be entering the building with his own troops, and it would be long odds if he would be able to get out.

Angle's men entered the building through the back entrance and made their way down a stairwell towards the basement, while Apollo's did the same from the front entrance. Intelligence had determined that the main operations took place below ground, so that had been where Apollo and Angle had decided to lead their part of the attack. Special ops forces, using some top-secret equipment, searched out booby traps and sensors and deactivated them as they found them. The equipment that they Cylons used was sophisticated for Colonial tech, but the stuff the Earthforce troops and Rangers used beat the Cylon gear hands down.

Just because they had superior gear did not guarantee perfection, as Angle found out when he was surprised by a Centurion who had cleverly concealed himself inside a closet and fired at him from point blank range. Angle managed to swing his rifle around and take out the Centurion, but he was unable to prevent the mortal wounds from being inflicted upon him. He staggered back and slumped to the floor. Apollo called out for a medic, but he knew it was too late. He had no time to mourn his friend as he took command and lead the troops deeper into the base.

Some time later, they had managed to take the building. Apollo was so far down inside that he didn't know if it was day or night topside, but he did know that the fight was over here. They rounded up the IL Cylons and took them away, while the special ops scoured the computer systems for any and all bits of intelligence they could find.

None of the farms were inside the city, but they did find out the locations of several in the rural areas of the planet. Apollo dispatched forces to liberate them and bring back any survivors as well as those who hadn't made it. Once that was done, he called up to his father on Galactica to tell him of their success.

Finally, Apollo managed to collapse into a corner of the building after grabbing some grub to fill his belly. Relief troops were coming in to take over, so he would be departing as soon as the sun rose up. In his slumber, he dreamt of Dee on their wedding day, and how lovely she would look in her wedding dress.

He was just about to kiss his new bride when Corporal Shon Dinsmore shook him awake. She told him that he was needed at the medical facility immediately, and he got to his feet and followed her out through the quiet streets of Leopylae towards the hospital where they had set up a medical center.

His jaw dropped when he saw Angle lying on the bed, very much alive. "Who would've thought I'd survive something like that?" he said weakly.

"How…?" Apollo asked.

"Don't ask me! Ask God or the Lord of Kobol or Valen or whoever runs this bloody universe! All I know is that I'm here and breathing, so I'm not going to complain about how they managed to keep me alive!" Angle said.

The medical officer, a Tunisian named Dr. Nafid Najeed, spoke to Apollo, "Sergeant Angle needs his rest, sir. We'll have him transported to the Galactica with the other wounded as soon as we can stabilize the remaining patients."

Apollo turned back and said, "See you on the ship, Sarge!"

"Damn straight you will, sir!" Angle saluted him and Apollo reciprocated the gesture. Apollo managed to get through the rest of the day without thinking of it much, but when he lay down to sleep in a room of an abandoned hotel that night, he wondered how the gritty Texan had managed to survive.

Such thoughts were put aside the next day when Admiral Adama landed on the planet and looked over the battered city. "Good work, son! You and Sergeant Angle will be commended for your efforts, as well as all the troops!"

Apollo nodded, not really moved by the commendation, and said, "We lost a lot of good men and women here, though. We did the best we could, but we paid a high price."

"War's hell, as an Earth general once said. But their deaths won't be in vain, not if I have anything to say about it! We've still got a lot of work to do, though."

"That we have, dad. That we have!" Apollo replied.