Thirteen

Chapter Eighty-Nine

Starbuck's March

The distance between Delphi Union High School and the downtown area of Delphi City was only six miles, but it seemed like sixty thousand light years with the kind of fight the Centurions were putting up. As soon as they got out of the suburbs and into the outskirts of the heart of the city, they were hit by an intense barrage of fire from a least four dozen Centurions holed up in a variety of buildings alongside the main route into the downtown area.

Starbuck was crouched beside the remains of a wall. From the sign on the ground, it had been a mom-and-pop restaurant that she thought she might have ate at a time or two. The proprietors were long since dead, of course, and the place apparently had been leveled by the nukes used in the attacks eight years before. Thinking of that, she checked her radiation monitor and was relieved that her patch was still working.

It wasn't completely safe to be on these worlds, even without the Centurions shooting at them and wanting to turn them into fleshy versions of Swiss cheese. The radiation levels were much more intense here than on the other worlds because the Cylons had used more nukes here because of the dense population of the world. Two billion people had lived on Caprica, a full sixth of the Colonial population, so the Cylons had to use more bombs on the place.

She still had about three more days before she had to slap on another anti-radiation patch, so she forgot all about it as she loaded up a thermal grenade into the launcher attached to her PPG rifle. She waited until the Centurions' arc of fire went away from her before popping up quickly and firing her grenade. She ducked back down before she could see it hit one of the shiny metallic robots in the upper chest, blowing it to pieces.

The line of fire came back to her with much greater intensity, and she curled up into a ball to make herself as small a target as she could. Bullets skittered a little too close in front of her, and small chunks of the brickwork of the former restaurant fell onto her. Soon, though, the others under her command used their grenade launchers to do unto the enemy as she had, and the rain of bullets ceased abruptly.

Silenced slammed down upon them, and Starbuck stood up slowly and looked around. Others poked their heads up tepidly as well, but once they realized that the enemy wasn't around to shoot at them anymore, they stood up and moved out, heading down the road towards the downtown area. They didn't get more than two hundred yards before Centurions opened up on them again.

Starbuck managed to duck around a corner before the stream of bullets could ventilate her, but it didn't prevent a piece of asphalt shot off from the street from jumping up and scraping itself against her forehead, barely missing her left eye. She reflexively clutched the wound, then realized that it was what it was. Saying a quick silent prayer to her gods, she took out a bandage and applied it to her forehead to stem the bleeding, then grabbed her rifle and checked her charge before peaking round the corner and firing off several quick bursts.

Meanwhile, in another part of town, Helo and Boomer were with their unit, approaching the downtown area from a road that was one hundred and twenty degrees to the left of Starbuck. Their unit had driven around in some trucks at the compound before abandoning them when confronted by some Centurions on patrol. As luck would have it, Helo had driven the very truck that Starbuck and Helo had used to escape Delphi City.

They had just stormed a storefront where some Centurions had been held up, taking them out without having any of their unit taken out. Helo threw out some of the smaller remains of the robots as Boomer covered him. He used the bigger ones to make their defensive position a bit better. They wouldn't stay here long, only long enough to cover another group advancing on the enemy, which were in a tall office building that had an outstanding position to which to attack their unity.

Both of them were scraped up and bloodied already, and the heat of the Caprican summer made them smell like they'd been out in the field much longer than they actually had. They didn't care though, because the smell of old sweat was much better than the stench of dead bodies. They had smelled it already, though, as a few of their unit had already been killed in this battle.

"How's your charge?" Helo asked Boomer.

Boomer checked the PPG charge in her rifle and found it to be at seventy-five percent charge, and she relayed the info to her lover as she patted herself down to be sure of how many energy caps she had on her. "I'm good with energy caps. How about you?"

"Got about six left. Should be okay." Helo said before ducking down when he heard a stream of bullets coming his way. A couple of Centurions had come out in the open and were heading their way. Helo checked and found he had no grenades on him. Boomer saw what he was doing and tossed him one of hers, then took a position to cover him as he got ready to fire it from his launcher. He snuck a few feet away from Boomer and aimed carefully at the rear of one of the Centurions, hoping to take both of them out with one shot.

He fired and struck the one in the back, blowing him apart and having the explosion knock the second one flat. Boomer jammed a grenade into her launcher and fired at the machine, blowing it up just to be safe. Helo saw some movement and swung his rifle around to cover it, but lowered it when he saw it was Sgt. Macafee from his unit. "You guys okay in there?" the tall, muscular black male asked of Helo and Boomer.

"Yeah, we're good. Took out a couple of toasters who wanted to take us down." Boomer said, which perked up the eyebrows of Helo.

Macafee looked down and analyzed the damage, adding, "I'll say you did! Perkinson just radioed in and said that the way's clear up to Delphi Pharmacy on Tholius Street."

"Let's go. I want to get there before the sun goes down!" Helo said. Macafee nodded and they all headed down the street at a walking pace, making sure to check all around them just in case the way wasn't as clear as Perkinson had said it was. Before heading out of the storefront, he said to Boomer, "Toasters?"

Boomer shrugged and said, "Well, that's what they are. I'm not one of their kind anymore!" Helo smiled and hugged his love, giving her a quick kiss before heading out with the others.

They made it safely to the pharmacy and settled in for the night. Centurions tried a couple of times to ambush them, but they were half-hearted attempts at best, which led Boomer to speculate that there may not be as many Centurions around as they had thought. Helo wasn't so sure about that, but, as he started to doze off, he figured that Boomer might be right about that, knowing her.

"Looks like your suspicion might be right, Sergeant! Not as many Centurions as we had expected." Starbuck asked of the Earthforce Marine assigned to her unit. They were sitting inside a heavily damaged house, approximately three miles from the center of Delphi City.

"Doesn't make me happy, to be honest with you. It just means things will be a real bitch when we enter Caprica City." Sergeant Martha Alley said in her Carolinian drawl. She was descended from a long line of Marines, having grown up in Fayetteville, North Carolina, which was close to Fort Bragg, a longtime military base for Marines. She had flaming red hair and was burly, looking like an Olympic shot putter, which was a contrast to Starbuck blond hair and skinny body. Alley continued, "From the reports we've been getting, they've started retreating there for a last stand. What's left here is a rearguard action, meant to slow us up and weaken us."

"They've not succeeded so far, and I doubt they will. Not with the kind of people we have on this mission. Damned good fighters if I do say so myself!" Starbuck said.

Alley simply nodded at the praise, replying, "Better be. I trained these bastards and bitches myself. Marine's gotta be mean when they go into battle or they're no damned good. Like my daddy used to say, 'I may be a son of a bitch, but I'll live a lot longer in wartime than some gentleman would'."

"I wouldn't doubt that!" Starbuck said, laughing as she started to break out her water bottle. She was just starting to unscrew the cap when more bullet started coming in. With long hued instincts, Alley flattened to the ground, and Starbuck was just a quarter of a beat behind her.

"Looks like those tinheads aren't going to go away as easily as I'd hoped! Got any grenades on you, Starbuck? I'm fresh out!" Alley asked.

Starbuck handed her one and said, "I'll go this way and cover you!" She gestured with her head that she would go to her right to cover, while Alley should to her left. Alley nodded and the two women began the process of knocking out their attackers. This one was a lone Centurion, apparently out walking solo. Starbuck put a dent into it with a shot to its left shoulder, which spun him around and made him a perfect target to get a thermal grenade right in what would have been its groin area if it were a man. Despite the low aim, the grenade did its work and took out the metal attacker.

"I'm glad none of the guys were around to see that. They'd give me hell for shooting even one of those things in the family jewels!" Alley said, which made even the hardened veteran Starbuck burst out in laughter like a teenager. Alley did likewise and they were still laughing as they cautiously made their way to another position, where their forces were located.

"What's so funny?" asked Corporal Geber in his Israeli accent.

"One of those 'you had to be there moments', Steven. Don't worry about it. What's up?" Alley replied. Starbuck had to swallow a laugh to avoid having to let the Jewish male in on the joke.

"Koenig reports that his group are about two hundred yards from a local hospital. They're taking heavy fire from that direction, which leads them to believe that it could be one of those farms." Geber replied.

That sobered up Starbuck, as well as Alley, who had seen action on Tauron before having her unit assigned to Starbuck's forces. "That's our objective for tomorrow then. It may or may not be a farm, but we'll damn well know for sure tomorrow. The more of those we can liberate, the more people we might be able to save!" Alley said.

Starbuck was in command of the force, and could have countermanded the order, but she was going to do the same thing anyway, so why not let the veteran ground pounder have her way? Alley pulled watch as Starbuck slept, which wasn't surprising, as the big woman seemed to have boundless energy inside her. When the morning dawned, they moved out, heading to see if the hospital was indeed yet another farm.