Interregnum (Children of Steel Book 2) Read online

  INTERREGNUM

  A sequel to Children of Steel

  Published by John Van Stry

  Copyright 2015 John Van Stry

  Copyright John Van Stry 2015

  Cover Credits: Amanda Rozga http://rozga.weebly.com/

  No part of this eBook may be reproduced in any form without expressed, written consent from the author.

  Any resemblance between characters in this story and people living or dead is purely coincidental. This is a work of fiction created by the author and the author retains all rights to the material in this story.

  License Notes

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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  1

  "Launch detected!" Dave said from the back, and then I heard him swear over the intercom, "Correction multiple launches detected!"

  I ran the throttles up to max, lifted them over the gates and firewalled them, watching as the engine gauges did their little dance as the afterburners both lit off without a problem.

  I pushed the 'Master Threat' button, killing the alarm in my headset and extinguishing the light, then reached up to dial the TFR down to one hundred feet, and set the ride to 'hard.'

  "Separation?" I asked.

  "Ten seconds!" Dave replied.

  I looked at the terrain ahead, as the shuttle began to buck up and down rather severely, trying to get us down to only a hundred feet over the hilly ground, there was a large hill dead ahead, and going over that would put us in clear view of the missile's radar. I pushed the stick to the left, along with a touch of left rudder to try and take us down the valley I could see to the side of the hill.

  Just at that moment the ship unloaded as the radar changed target and we rolled ninety degrees and I swore loudly as I rolled it back. Using the stick wasn't recommended when the Terrain Following Radar was engaged, but I didn't have the time to mess with the flight director and wait for it to move us around.

  Just as I got it level, the Master Caution light came on.

  "TFR channel one fail!" Dave called.

  I swore again, "Reset!"

  "Not responding!"

  I pushed the button on the throttle and dumped out some chaff, then triggered two flares after that. I could see the valley, we'd be there in a second, and the heads up showed we'd just crossed the mach barrier as one point two crossed under the needle. The missiles were probably doing mach six.

  "Bus one failure! Main computer restart!"

  I swore again and checked my backups, they all looked fine, and the main instrument panel didn't even blink as the second bus and backup computer picked up the load. The entrance to the valley flashed by, the ride line on the display showed no problems up ahead. Mach two passed by the speed indicator. I dumped some more chaff and flares.

  "Broke lock!" Dave called.

  "Bus one?" I asked.

  "Gone."

  I grumbled and pushed the 'Master Caution' button to clear it, and suddenly my hand hit my knee and my chin hit my chest.

  "Fly up!" Dave grunted, followed by a string of obscenities.

  "Shit," I swore and grabbed the stick and pulled the throttles to idle. TFR channel two had failed and the last act of the TFR was to generate a pull up when that happened to keep you from flying into anything. We were already passing ten thousand feet as I rolled us inverted and pulled hard to the deck.

  "Active Radar." David paused, "Target Radar," another pause, "Radar Lock." A moment later, "I think they just launched twenty missiles at us."

  I grunted and slammed the throttles back to mil power rolling us upright. "Hold on," I growled, we were still supersonic and I pulled hard, taking us up to ten G's in an attempt not to slam into the ground. I lost vision completely for a moment, when it came back we were now subsonic, the hard pull had burned off a lot of our speed, and we were at tree top level.

  The shuttle shuddered a moment and I raised us up a bit higher.

  "What was that?" I swore.

  "We clipped a tree."

  I swore again, "How bad is it?"

  "I think we lost about two feet of the starboard wing."

  I nodded, and banked hard to the left, feeding in enough rudder to keep us from sinking down any lower, as I dodged another hill.

  "Three seconds!" Dave called and I snap rolled us back to the right on our side and pulled so hard that I had tunnel vision. I could actually see the missiles as they went by. One of them exploded and I could hear the rattle of the shrapnel hitting the shuttle, which shook heavily in the shockwave.

  My master warning light lit up, along with my engine number two firelight as I rolled us wings level. I could see the engine gauges for number two were all running down to zero, except the temperature gauge and the EGT. I triggered the fire bottle for number two and pushed engine one back up into afterburner. Maybe not a safe move, but this wasn't a safe place.

  I looked at the engine gauges for number one. They hadn't budged; they were still at Mil and not going anywhere.

  "I've lost control of engine one," I said and looked at our speed; we were point eight mach and slowing.

  "Bingo fuel," Dave said.

  "What?" I checked the gauges again.

  "We're leaking. Must have holed a tank. Let me see if I can move it around."

  I checked the gauges for the five tanks, two looked solid.

  "Move it to two."

  "Got it."

  "Time to target?" I asked and tried to find the target guide on my helmet display.

  Just as I noticed it wasn't moving, Dave started talking, "Bus two failure, main computer failure, backup computer restart, generator one failure, generator two failure. Ah hell."

  I swore and slapped the toggles to turn off everything I didn't need, we were on batteries now. "How's the APU?" I asked.

  "Launch radar!" Dave said again.

  I looked around, we had come out onto the plains, and I could see a city off in the distance, probably our target. I pushed us down as close to the ground as I thought I could get. The backup instruments had us at point six mach, about four hundred knots.

  "Get that APU up and those jammers back online!" I growled.

  "APU is gone; it must have taken damage, batteries at fifty percent and dropping."

  "Range to target?"

  "Looks like a hundred miles."

  "Arm the missiles,"

  "Armed."

  "Full power to jammers."

  "Jammers on."

  I looked at the power gauge on the batteries, with the jammers back on; it had started to drop fast.

  I started to count down, "Launch in five, four," I pulled up hard on the stick until the nose was at thirty-five degrees, "three, two," I saw one of our missiles come off the rail and streak away, Dave had launched it early, I said "one" and then with a jerk everything froze.

  "End Mission." Came over the headset and I sighed and popped the canopy release and took off my helmet. Setting it on the canopy rail I undid my harness and stretched a bit, enjoying the cool air before climbing up out of my seat.

  "I was going to complain about that launch," I said looking back to Dave who was climbing out of the rear cockpit seat in the simulator. "How'd you know?"

  "I was watching the mirrors; I saw a flash and figured it was a missile closing on us. I was in the process of launching number two when we got tagg
ed. Wonder if it got clear?"

  I shrugged, "Let's go ask the console operators and see how they scored us."

  Dave nodded and we grabbed our helmet bags from the hooks on the outside of the simulator and put our helmets away. I stretched again; we'd been in there for over two hours.

  The platform shook slightly as the access ramp clicked into place against it, the platform itself was suspended in the middle of a thirty-foot-wide bubble, on which the simulation was displayed. Through the use of hydraulics and gravity plates it gave a very realistic recreation of flying a shuttle.

  We walked up the ramp and exited through the hatch and went out into the main access hallway. There were a dozen domes on either side of the hall, I noticed that all of them were powered down at this point, and there were two other crews exiting theirs as well.

  "Well, that looks good," Dave said.

  "Yeah, we might even be in the running," I agreed as we headed down to the far end of the hallway, and exited through the double doors into the complex's control suite.

  The control suite was a fairly large room, there were twenty-four consoles spaced equally around the perimeter of the room, with one main console on a raised circular dais in the middle. Each console had a series of screens above it, except for the main one. The three consoles corresponding to our simulator and the other two we'd seen crews exiting were still manned by one operator each. They were probably finishing up the scores.

  I looked up at the main console, a senior chief warrant officer, a silver fox by the name of Pipes, was keeping an eye on her techs.

  "Chief, how close did we get?" I asked.

  She glanced down at her board then looked up at us. "Nine miles, five hundred sixty-two feet, seven inches."

  "Did our second missile clear the rack?" Dave asked.

  "That was the second missile. The first one was over ten miles out."

  The other two crews followed us in then. I didn't know either of them, as they weren't from the Astra. Only three crews from the Astra had joined the competition, and one had gotten knocked out in the first round. I didn't see the other crew here, so they must have gotten knocked out earlier in the mission.

  "Hey, Chief," A red fox from one of the other teams called out. "Who won?"

  "Henri and Delage from the Nieuport," She said motioning to the marten and wolf that were the last into the room.

  "We won?" The marten said looking rather pleased with himself. I'd seen him around before, mainly because Dave was hitting on his WSO, a female wolf named Bristel.

  I shrugged and walked over and stuck out my hand, "Well, congratulations, how close did you get?"

  "Close?" He said looking at me with a sly smile as we shook hands.

  "Son-of-a-bitch, you nailed it, didn't you?" I said laughing.

  "Welllll, Yeah. We nailed it," he said laughing as well.

  "Who took second?" Dave asked looking up at the chief.

  "You did, by three feet, six inches."

  "Aww damn, three and a half feet?" the red fox complained.

  "How did you get past the second channel failure on the TFR?" I asked him curious.

  "Oh, when the first channel failed, I turned it off."

  I blinked looking at him impressed. "You turned it off when you still had a channel working?"

  He nodded, "Had that same damn thing happen to me once during the war, got my shuttle shot out from under me and had to eject. We," he jerked his thumb towards his WSO who was talking rather happily with Dave at this point, "almost spent the rest of the war in a prison camp, or worse. Ever since then, if I only have one channel, I turn the damn thing off. Nothing worse than becoming a popup target in a missile rich environment!"

  "Huh, I hadn't thought of that," I said nodding. "Still, it's impressive. I'll have to try that in the sim when I replay this."

  He looked around, "Well, let's see how many of our compatriots are at the bar, I believe the first round is on me."

  The red fox came over and shook the marten's hand, and then mine, "Three feet," he sighed shaking his head.

  "Three and a half feet," I corrected smiling.

  "Let's get to the bar before he starts in on jokes about it only being six inches," said the chief climbing down from her raised console and coming over to join us.

  "Well, now it's a matter of honor, Pipes!" the red fox said laughing. "But yes, I could use a drink after that!"

  We all followed the chief out to the bar as I called Cassandra to let her know the competition was over, and I'd be back in an hour or two.

  2

  We’d been in port at Hobson’s Choice for about a month, which was rather surprising. I had a pretty good idea what it cost the company to pull the Astra off of her regular scheduled route, but then the whole war really had been very costly for Tri-Star. Everyone had been warned that the bonus situation for this year wasn’t going to be good, and probably not next year either.

  The company and the captain however needed this downtime to do repairs and refits on a good deal of the ship, the war had not been easy on the Astra. The engines also needed a rebuild, so Terease was spending most of her days and nights aboard ship, which at times left her mate Banner kind of grumpy. Apparently, the engines on every ship were a custom build, so rebuilds had to be heavily supervised by the ship’s engineers. Of which Terease was now one of the senior ones.

  The rest of us were almost equally busy installing new upgraded weapon systems into the Astra, and redoing the many 'temporary' emergency repairs that the ship had picked up over the last couple of years with more permanent ones. At least the local shipyard was able to help us with a lot of that work, as that didn’t require any specialized ship knowledge. So Cassandra and I got to spend most of our evenings, as well as our Sundays, planet side.

  "Hon?" I said yawning, it was early on one of our off days, and I had been thinking of all that bonus money sitting in my account for the last several weeks. I hadn’t applied any of it toward my buyout yet. To be honest, when I went into special ops, I cut down my pay-off option percentage to only a fifth of my income. I figured I probably wouldn’t survive to the end of the war, so I’d been banking as much as I could and I’d set my children as the beneficiaries of my account if I died.

  "Yes, Raj?" Cassandra replied drowsily, turning to snuggle up under my chin. She was almost fully recovered from her years in the prison camp at this point, physically at least. She was still having nightmares, but the psychs had said that over time those would go away.

  "I’ve been thinking," I said and was surprised when she suddenly stiffened. "What?" I growled teasingly.

  "That’s when you’re your most dangerous," she grumbled. "Thinking about what?"

  "Well, I was talking with Banner the other day and he mentioned that if it hadn’t been for Terease’s being instrumental to the Astra that he would have been transferred out at the last rotation. But because she made it clear she went where he went, they kept him here."

  "So?" Cassandra asked.

  "Well, I don’t know if you realize it, but I have a lot of money built up in my account and...."

  "No," Cassandra said.

  "No?" I grumbled, "You haven’t even heard me out."

  "You’re not that hard to figure out, Raj," she grumbled back.

  "Do you even know how much I have in the bank?" I sighed.

  "Yes, actually."

  "What?" I asked surprised.

  "I’m in intelligence, dear, what, you think I don’t keep tabs on you?" she chuckled.

  "You could be bought out, completely. Free and clear."

  "No, Raj," She growled.

  "Cassy?" I said softly.

  "No, Raj. I’m serious. That’s your money. I read what you went through to earn all those rewards. Besides, your debt is huge compared to mine. You’re applying that money to your account, and that’s final."

  "Hon, with you paid off, that would almost guarantee that we’d be posted together from now on."

  "No, Raj!" She gr
owled and I could feel her claws starting to sink into my skin.

  "Cassy honey?" I purred as sweetly as I could. "What do you think will happen to me if we get split up again?"

  "You’ll be fine, Raj," she was still growling.

  "If I knew you were in a nice safe place I’d be fine. But what are the odds of that?"

  "Raj...."

  "We are doing this, Cassy, because it’s what’s best for you, and yes, it’s what’s best for me. And you’re going to stop growling, and you’re not going to complain. It’s not just your physical safety I’m worried about; it’s my mental health as well."

  Cassandra stopped growling and sighed. "You paid me off already, didn’t you?"

  I chuckled and hugged her tight, "Yesterday, just before shift end. Captain King took care of it for me."

  "I should be mad at you, I wanted to ask you to do it, but I thought that was too selfish." Cassandra grumbled releasing her grip.

  I laughed, "Well, I was being completely selfish. I want to be sure you’re safe, hon."

  "Well, maybe I should reward such devotion..." she began with a sultry purr when someone knocked at the door.

  "Raj, Cassy, you in there?" came Terease’s voice.

  I grinned as Cassandra growled, but for a different reason this time.

  "Yes, we’re here."

  "Banner and I are doing breakfast, coming?"

  Cassandra looked up at me and smiled as my stomach growled. "Sure, why not?" she said.

  We hit the shared bathroom in the dorms we were living in, quickly showered and ten minutes later joined them. Interestingly enough, Balizar and Sharazad were joining us as well; or maybe not so interestingly when I thought about it. There were only three mated pairs of leopards onboard the Astra now and that was the six of us. At the one clan meeting we’d had since I’d returned to the ship with Cassandra, when the others had left after hooking up for the night, the six of us had spent some time talking about the kinds of things that I know I hadn’t cared about at all just a few months before. Since then it seemed we spent more time with them, rather than the single members of the clan.