Children of Steel Page 16

  I docked in the shuttle bay and the two of us left the shuttle while the techs refueled it and started hanging armament's pods off the wings. The next mission, the one I wasn't going on, was going to be ground support. From this point on, at least two of the eight assault shuttles would be performing that mission.

  We walked into the flight room and started to shuck our gear.

  "Hey, how's it look so far?" I asked the Sergeant who was updating the mission roster.

  "Pretty good actually. Nobody's been hit yet, and we're still pretty close to the game plan."

  "I think they're gonna' start getting their act together real quick," put in Rudy. "The next couple of waves are probably going to be tough. They know we're here now!"

  I made a quick trip to the bathroom, and when I got back the crew of the other shuttle was there. I started to put on my armor.

  "Anybody know how the ground war's going?" I asked.

  "Pretty good so far. The third wave left a couple of minutes ago, and the group of specialists from the first wave reported your LZ is ready," answered the Sergeant.

  "Well that's good, how are the bridge guys working out?" The bridge guys were the three junior Helmsmen. Usually the helm was manned by one senior and one junior helmsman. Most helmsmen were shuttle pilots at the very least, two of ours were even assault qualified, and they were using members of the ships weapon's unit who had previous shuttle experience as their WSO’s.

  "They're doing pretty good. They did the fighter deployment without a hitch and now we're holding them in reserve. The Captain doesn't like to risk them unless he has to."

  "Then why am I going?" Put in the pilot of the other shuttle with a smile. He was the one who wasn't assault qualified.

  "Because," and the sergeant smiled, "He'd rather lose someone who's not assault qualified, if we should take casualties!"

  He groaned about that, and Rudy and I went over each other’s armor. The armor is basically a set of graphite kevlar plates layered with titanium and a rubber shock absorbing polymer. The plates are held in place by the one piece jump suit which is semi-permeable, so you don't bake in them. It makes gas attacks a problem, but at least we're inoculated against the more common biologicals. My flight helmet wouldn't work with the cargo shuttle's more primitive systems, so I was going to take my regular combat helmet instead.

  "Is the gear loaded yet?" I asked the Sergeant as I finished strapping on my sidearm.

  "Gear's in, and the troops are in too." he looked at his watch, "Third wave's hitting right about now, so you've got about twenty minutes till launch."

  "Okay," I turned to Rudy, "Meet you down there; don't forget your 'chute!" I walked in to the equipment room and checked out a parachute myself; unfortunately cargo shuttles don't have ejection seats.

  I then went down to the Cargo shuttle bay. It was in a separate section, and farther back in the ship. The hold was still pressurized, so I did a quick walk around and got in. I was running through the checklist when Rudy got there. He took the Engineer/Navigator position and nodded towards the empty copilot's seat.

  "They could have at least strapped a coffee pot in there for us."

  I smiled back at him and pointed to the thermos, which was strapped behind my seat.

  "Ahh good, somebody remembered." He opened it up and poured two cups out, passing me one.

  "Thanks," I took a sip and turned on the intercom, "Unn, Captain," I took a quick look at the crew list, "Hanes. Your people settled back there?"

  "Yes sir, everybody's ready."

  "Sergeant Rysan," I called the loadmaster.

  "Yes Sir?"

  "Everything done to your satisfaction?"

  "I wouldn't quite say to my satisfaction, but good enough for this boat." I remembered that Rysan was even less thrilled to be on this flight than I was.

  "Okay everyone," I checked my watch, "Launch in five. Sergeant, seal the hatch."

  "Roger sir, hatch sealed." I watched the indicator lights confirm this.

  I called shuttle control, and four minutes later the bay was evacuated, the door open, and the engines ready. I maneuvered out, and took the shuttle a thousand meters away from the ship. I ran through the reentry checklist and checked my timetable with the ship. The cargo shuttle could only fly a slow re-entry, so we had to leave before the fourth wave if we wanted to get there at the same time.

  "We've got the bare minimum in threat detection and jamming gear," Rudy sighed forlornly, "and now we have to fly into a combat zone with it."

  "At least we've got flare and chaff dispensers." I replied, but I didn't like it either.

  I fired the retros then and we started down. The third wave was arriving back at the ship now. Everything went as normal, which helped both our nerves I'm sure. We were decelerating over the ocean and Rudy was giving me headings from the map. This was supposed to be the latest and greatest, with all of the dangerous spots marked. The LZ was about fifty miles inland, a short hop. I started looking for the elements of the fourth wave we were supposed to join up with.

  One of the bigger shortcomings of the cargo shuttle was the radar system. It had no passive mode and was primarily for checking the weather, so it was easily fooled. I discovered the last part when suddenly a warning alarm sounded and the Master Warning lit up.

  "Shit!" yelled Rudy, "MOVE!"

  "Which way?" I started pressing the flare and chaff buttons for all I was worth, and put us into a steep right bank.

  "I can't tell dammit! Wait, its closing fast. Left, left bank, LEFT!" he was screaming by now.

  I threw us over, hard. I could hear the shuttle's structure groaning in response, and saw the thermos shatter against a bulkhead. I suddenly saw the missile and its contrail. I could even trace it back to the patrol boat that had launched it. It was close, too close.

  "Damn, it's got us in lock!" Rudy said.

  I was still punching out dispensables as fast as my thumb would allow as I watched the missile draw closer. I figured it had a pretty good sized warhead coming off a boat, and it would probably go on proximity if it missed. I tried another maneuver, no luck. So I waited as long as I could stand, and then threw it over on its other side as hard as I could.

  It went off with a loud boom and the ship shook like a rattle. We lost all cabin pressure, and there was debris swirling all through the cabin as it leaked out. While I grabbed my oxygen mask and fought for control I noticed I could see daylight through the floor. The Master Caution light came on then, one of the rockets was on fire and so was the jet on the same side. I hit the fire bottles, pulled the jettison on the rockets and blew them clear. There was no way we'd make it back into space anyway.

  Rudy was on the radio, yelling for somebody to get that damn patrol boat before he wrote an end to us. I checked the fuel gauges, all the wing tanks were leaking fuel like a sieve, and after a quick calculation I figured we had maybe ten minutes worth of fuel. My port side jet was out, the starboard was still with me though.

  I got on the intercom, "Rysan, report!"

  "We got holed pretty bad back here sir! One dead, three wounded and half the rear door got blown off. Better shut down any power back here too. There's fuel dripping around and I can see a lot of bare wires."

  "Captain, better tell your guys to get their chutes on." I started pulling circuit breakers to shut down the circuits to the back; Rudy was pulling everything on his board too.

  "Way ahead of you there, we’re ready to jump if we have to." At least he sounded calm.

  "You're going to have to. I'm pretty sure the landing gear got ruined in the explosion, and even if it didn't this thing isn't going to hold together well when we hit." I replied, trying to talk slow and sound calm myself.

  I saw a flash out the window, and turned to look. Somebody had finally taken care of the patrol boat, a little too late for us though. I checked our airspeed; it was at four twenty and still decreasing. I pushed the engine up to mil, and our speed steadied at three fifty, about one hundred knots bel
ow what one engine in mil power should hold. I revised my estimate to maybe five minutes, the damage must be worse than I thought. At least we were over land now, but our altitude was down to twenty thousand.

  "Okay everybody, at five thousand feet everyone jumps. If I should lose control anytime before that, bailout immediately." I looked at Rudy, "How's that hatch look?" there were two hatches out of the cockpit, one led to the back, the other outside. I gestured to the latter.

  He went over to it and gave it a quick check.

  "Buckled, and I don't think it'd be safe to blow it. Too much damage already."

  "Damn, okay as we pass ten thousand you go join the rest and jump with them."

  "What about you?" He asked concerned.

  "I don't know," it was taking both hands and a lot of strength to control the shuttle. "The autopilot's dead, the trim control seems to be gone too. I don't see too many options at this point. So if you got any ideas better give now!"

  "Not a one," he admitted quietly.

  He checked the map; we were about twenty five miles from our objective as we passed ten thousand, which was when the fuel ran out. I triggered all the fire bottles then, so the fumes in the tanks wouldn't explode later.

  "See ya' Rudy" I said.

  "You sure you don't want any help?" he didn't look at all happy.

  "Go, there's nothing you can do," I wasn't happy either.

  He went down into the back, with the rest of the crew. I passed five grand a minute later.

  "Bailout, bailout, bailout!" I called over the intercom. Then I got on the radio, I could see one of the fighters circling overhead.

  "Cargo shuttle two to fighter, over."

  "Fighter to shuttle I read, and your crew is clear. When are you jumping? Over."

  "Unable to jump, see any large clearings?" I had been scanning for the last two minutes and hadn't seen a one.

  "Negative on that, but there is a small one straight ahead on your present heading. That you Raj?"

  I suddenly recognized the voice; it was Jerry, the Eagle who had nearly cleaned me out.

  "Yeah Jerry, it's me." I was down to about two thousand feet now.

  "Try to pancake it; with all the heavy equipment behind you, if you let it slide in you'll be crushed. Good luck."

  "Thanks, out." I meant it too, I hadn't thought about that.

  I leveled it out at five hundred feet and let the airspeed bleed off. I could see the clearing now, and I really didn't know if I'd make it.

  The shuttle started to shudder really bad, as it approached stall. I let it down slowly, and topped the trees on the edge of the clearing. I was down to about one hundred and eighty knots, and maybe fifty feet. So I pulled back on the yoke as hard as I could, even though I was only fighting the trim weights. The shuddering was so bad I started wondering if the ship was going to break up before I hit. At least the control system had held out.

  The shuttle stalled completely then, and dropped into the clearing. I watched the ground come up fast as the shuttle fell that last fifty, and suddenly felt a lot of pain and blacked out.

  I came to hanging upside down. Something warm was running up, or should I say down? My face and into my eyes. I realized it was blood and that one of my fangs had gone through my lip. I looked around then and checked out my situation. I was sore as hell, my back hurt something fierce, but nothing seemed broken.

  The cockpit had broken free of the rest of the shuttle and had rolled into the trees. I released my harness and carefully climbed out of the padded seat. I stumbled down onto the ground, and looked around. The wings had come off when I hit, and the cargo section was in two separate pieces. I walked over to check them out.

  I was surprised to see that most of the cargo was still intact. But then it was supposed to take a lot of punishment anyway. One of the ground effect vehicles was totaled, but the other looked salvageable. I looked around a little more and found the dead soldier.

  I took his rifle, grenades and ammo belt. I didn't think he'd mind. I checked my com gear then and tried to raise somebody. It was pretty low powered, but I should be able to reach Jerry in the fighter. After I failed to reach him I looked up, even though it hurt my neck like hell, I couldn't see him.

  I checked my watch and noticed it was two hours later than when I had hit. Good thing there hadn't been a fire, or I'd have been toast. It was about noon local time, so I went back to the cockpit, dug out the survival gear and had lunch.

  While I was eating I pulled out the survival radio and decided to see who I could raise.

  "Cargo two calling, anybody read? Over," I said, no response.

  I tried again, and on the third try I got a response.

  "Cargo two, this is LZ one, please authenticate."

  What they wanted was a code number, then they'd come back with something to which I would again have to respond. Just so they'd know it was really me.

  "Three, eight, eight, two." I responded.

  "Standby Cargo two." came the reply, I tried to figure out whose voice it was.

  "Sausage, Cargo two." I thought I had the voice now.

  "Pizza, LZ one. Katrine what the hell are you doing here?"

  "Trying not to cry for your dead ass! Raj, we thought for sure you had bought it, you okay?" I thought I detected a sigh of relief, but the sound quality on the survival radio wasn't too good.

  "Sore as hell. I just came too a few minutes ago."

  "You're lucky to be alive!"

  "Listen, a lot of this stuff is okay." I was getting antsy talking on the radio, they're scrambled and such, but I still didn't want anybody unfriendly zeroing in on me.

  "Okay that's great. We have your location from Jerry, and the folks you dropped should be there in the next hour. Hold tight."

  "Roger that, out." I turned off the radio, and looked for a spot to wait.

  I looked for a good vantage point, but really couldn't spot any. I did find a nice clump of bushes just inside the forest and thinking of my aching back, I crawled inside and lay down. I had a good view of the clearing and could see the wreckage. Not perfect, but good enough.

  I checked the rifle to make sure it was loaded, it was a high quality three millimeter gas rifle and it was loaded with armor piercing rounds. It had a thermal imaging scope and an infrared laser sight, a nice piece of hardware actually. I checked the bandoleer, and it had another ten clips in it, six armor piercing, and four explosive. That made eleven hundred rounds total and combined with the six fragmentation grenades I guess I felt fairly secure.

  It was only about a half hour later when I got a call on my helmet com. Ten minutes later, they came into the clearing and we all exchanged a hearty handshake. I threatened to kill anybody who pounded me on the back.

  Out of the twenty of them there, seven were responsible for the equipment I had been carrying. They started crawling over the wreckage, obviously happy that a lot of their gear was still intact.

  "Let me have a look at you Warrant." Said a Leopard with a medic patch on his shoulder.

  I sat down on the ground and he got out his gear.

  "Does this hurt?" he asked as he poked and prodded me in a few places.

  "Oww!" I nearly bit him when he touched my back.

  "About what I expected," he said quickly snatching his hand back. "Stress fractures, some slightly compressed disks I'd bet too. When did you have your spleen removed?"

  "When I was two, how'd you know?" I said surprised. "And how bad is my back?" I added quickly.

  "Your back will be fine; I'll give you a shot of something to help speed up the healing. Sorry about the pain, but I don't think you want to be dopey right now." He took out an injector and prepared a shot while he was talking. "As for the spleen, if you had one, it would have ruptured, and you'd be dead or dying by now."

  He gave me the shot and then packed up his gear; Captain Haines came over at that point and sat down next to me.

  "You gonna be okay?" He asked.

  "Yeah, I'll live. When a
re we moving out?"

  "I'm gonna leave the specialists here with their equipment, and another two to do guard duty." Rudy walked up at that moment and joined us. "The rest of us are going to the LZ to join up with what equipment's there and get into the fight."

  Rudy pulled out the map he had been using to navigate before we crashed.

  "We're about ten miles away from the LZ. It'll probably be at least an hour before they can send out anything to pick us up. Losing the shuttle set the timetable back about an hour and a half. I think they might have lost an assault ship too."

  "Then I guess we're walking with you sir," I said standing up. I pulled Rudy aside, "Any idea on how things are going?"

  "From what little I could pick up," he said quietly. "It looks pretty good but," He shrugged. "Who can tell?"

  The Captain got his people sorted out, had them pick up the lighter of the equipment and we left. My back hurt like hell and I was still sore in a lot of spots. I was glad I didn't have a pack to carry as we moved through the woods.

  We were approaching the Landing Zone from the east. It was on the edge of the attack zone, in the area that had been first secured. The mining camp was spread out over a hundred square mile area. The plan was to take the operations and processing center first, as well as the mine heads. Then freeing prisoners, and doing cleanup. Of course major pockets of resistance would be handled as the situation dictated, but it was expected those would be at the primary objectives.

  We hit a road after about an hour and got on that. It led straight to our goal, which had been picked as it was at a crossroads. Another ten minutes later we all jumped into the brush, when the point man reported a truck coming. It turned out to be one of our people, sent to bring us in. This area was all considered secure, so it was a pretty quick ride.

  When we got there, Katrine walked up and gave the Captain a copy of his new orders and pointed out the equipment he had available. She then gave me and Rudy a big hug.

  "Ouch!" I yelled, "My back, please!"