Children of Steel Read online

  I did Herza proud by winning all my fights, but then I was beating her regularly nowadays, so I didn't expect to find anybody who could beat me in a place like this anymore.

  On Tuesday the Clan went to the resort we had been at last time, and spent a whole week there. I really enjoyed just being away from everything and even spent two days alone in the forest. There's something to be said for occasional solitude after living years on a ship where there wasn’t any.

  It was Wednesday when we got back into town and I just basically enjoyed the sights and spent the remaining few days seeing Kathy. We even doubled once with her roommate Meg and her boyfriend Charley. He brought along some sparring gear and managed to talk me into going a few rounds, during which I taught him not to do so ever again. When I wanted to quit after only a couple of minutes he quickly agreed.

  "I told him about the bar fight, but he didn't believe me," whispered Kathy.

  "He will next time," I whispered back, "I just hope I didn't leave him with an axe to grind."

  "He'll get over it," she smiled.

  That Sunday we started reloading, and five days later we broke orbit.

  We had loaded another troop module at Hobson’s Choice only this time they hadn’t made any secret of it. The attack at Arboral hadn’t been the only one since then, though it was the only successful invasion and occupation of any of Tri-Star’s holdings. A few other places had been raided, and one other Corporation suffered as severe a hit as our Timpleton complex had. So we were bringing security reinforcements to a number of places that were considered to be at risk. It was hoped an obvious display of strength would make them consider other targets.

  “It’s not going to work,” Dave said as we sat around playing cards.

  “Why not?” Gabe asked upping the bid.

  “They’re not operating on a profit motive, more like a revenge based one. If a target gets harder to hit that they want, they’ll just bring in a bigger force.”

  I nodded and folded a lousy pair of twos. “Balizar said about the same thing last night.”

  “But what about hitting someone less defended instead?” Gabe asked.

  “I don’t think they’re picking their targets based solely on monetary impact,” Dave said matching the bid. “Rudy?”

  “I’m in,” he anted up. “And I agree with Dave, things are going to get a lot worse before they get better. This is just the testing phase.”

  I dealt the next round of cards, besides Dave, Gabe, and Rudy, Thomas and Jeb were playing as well.

  “Kind of like sparring with a new opponent,” I put in, “Still your bet Jeb.”

  “Still five creds, and yeah I agree too.”

  “So why are the Corps not going after these guys?” Gabe asked raising the bet again.

  “Because it still hasn’t hit them just what they’re dealing with,” Dave said seeing the bet once again. “I don’t think the corps have ever had a common foe before, usually they’re fighting each other.”

  “And then they’re used to playing by the rules,” Rudy said upping the bet.

  Thomas folded and leaned back as Jeb matched the bet followed by Dave.

  “And these guys definitely are not.” Gabe said as he matched the bet. “Read them and weep!” he said and turned his cards over.

  “I’ll cry later,” Rudy chuckled and showed a full house to Gabe’s three of a kind.

  “Damn, what next?” Gabe grumbled and General Quarters sounded.

  We scrambled for our shuttles running like madmen, hoping into the cockpits and firing up the systems. I plugged into the bridge and called for a status report.

  “We have multiple hostiles incoming at four hundred miles,” Katrine’s voice started. “Radar makes it as ten inbound shuttles, bearing and state data uploading now.”

  I looked at my threat display and watched as it came to life.

  “All shuttles, clear to start engines!”

  I watched as the bay door opened, the air boiling out of the bay immediately in a great gust taking a few playing cards with it.

  I started my engines and prepared for launch.

  “One ready!” I called.

  “Two ready!” I heard Gabe on the radio.

  “Three ready!” Jeb called next.

  “Launching!” Came the reply and I ran the throttles on the rockets up to fifty percent as we got kicked out into space.

  “Damn, I can’t believe this, we’re only a day out of Hobson’s!” I said to Rudy as we armed our missiles.

  “Yeah, worse yet Jeb and Gabe are slinging ship killers and only four LRGM’s a piece.”

  “Damn, I hadn’t thought about that. I wonder where the hell these guys popped out of?”

  “Probably floated in from that asteroid belt back there. Must have fired their engines when the Astra’s radar locked on them.”

  I nodded and checked in with my wingmen.

  “Alpha flight, report!”

  “Two’s in.” Gabe called.

  “Three’s in.” Jeb called right after.

  “Profile Foxtrot X-ray,”

  “Two copies.”

  “Three copies.”

  “Kind of risky, isn’t it?” Rudy asked, “Leading with the ship killers.”

  “They’re worthless in a dogfight, might as well burn them up right away and just hope to get lucky.”

  “Good point. I hope Bravo flight gets out here quick.”

  I nodded, of course with the shuttle bay now a vacuum Bravo flight would have to suit up before they could man their shuttles and launch. It would be a good ten minutes at least.

  I keyed the radio, “Alpha flight, launch!”

  “Two!”

  “Three!”

  A moment later four SK’s streaked by me under maximum thrust.

  “Let’s see how they respond to twenty megatons of fun,” Rudy chuckled from behind me.

  We were twenty miles from them when Dave and Thomas detonated their missiles.

  “Nice shooting!” Rudy commented over the radio to our wingmen as the front four shuttles were destroyed in the blast.

  “Guess they didn’t think about that?” I chuckled as the remaining six split into two groups of three.

  “Amateurs,” Rudy chuckled.

  “Alpha flight,” I said keying the mike, “Lead will take the first element, you have the second.”

  “Two, roger!”

  “Three, roger!”

  “Good hunting Raj!” I heard Gabe call over the radio as he pealed off to my starboard side and I turned to port. Now came the tricky part, if we didn’t want to just fly past them in a flash we had to change course and vector, so in effect they’d be coming up at us from behind. By splitting to either side we’d have them between us unless they split up. This gave the advantage to them as we traded our velocity advantage to a lower potential versus theirs. I didn’t like it, but we were only a hundred and twenty miles from the Astra and that was way too close for comfort.

  I ran the throttles to Max to lower my relative velocity as much as possible.

  “They’re not splitting to engage,” Rudy said.

  “That’s odd,” I said keeping the throttle at full mil, “staying bunched up like that just gives us an advantage.”

  “Missile Launch!” Rudy called then so I flipped us back over and fired two myself and started evasive maneuvers.

  “Jamming…” He called and I watched as he took control of one of the LRGM’s I had launched and curved it around to nail one of the shuttles as it came into range. I fired another two at each of the survivors then.

  “Missile launch!” he called again, then “Multiples!”

  I did my best at evading holding the throttles to max and turned the nose at the two survivors as they each tried to vector away from the incoming missiles, telling the computer to re-task the last three missiles to defense, as Rudy cranked the actives to max power. Two of the defensive LRGM’s took out enemy missiles, the third missed.

  “Jamming!”
He called just as the enemy shuttles took hits and broke up.

  “Damn, they both flushed their SK’s!” Rudy swore as I pitched around to fire another LRGM at one in the group Gabe was tangling with. I pointed the nose back towards the Astra and fired the last missile I had after them instead.

  “No use, they’re too far ahead.” He groaned.

  “Where the hell is Bravo flight?” I swore and hit the high power radio. “Astra you have incoming!”

  “Roger Alpha leader, we see them. Stand clear of Point Defenses.”

  I turned the nose up and saw on my tactical display that Gabe and Jeb had done the same as the Astra opened up with its rail guns and point defense lasers on the two missiles. I watched as they picked off each ship killer, one then the other. Without anyone to fly them they were a lot easier to take out as their onboard evasive programs weren’t that evolved. They got the second one when it was only ten miles out. I exhaled then, and checked the position of the destroyed shuttles on my radar, if I took the time to chase after any of them I wouldn’t be able to catch up with the Astra which was still accelerating. With a shake of my head I turned the nose around and headed back for the ship before it moved out of range of the shuttle.

  “That was too close…” I said as we walked in to the flight room, pealing off my suit. I was soaked inside.

  “You’re telling me,” Rudy sighed. We collapsed into our chairs as the rest of the group staggered in.

  Chief Shandour came into the room then and sat on the desk in front. “Good shooting men. Hobson’s Navy told us they’ll have a frigate in the area in about six hours, they’ll check the wreckage and tell us what they find.”

  We all just nodded.

  “Apparently they were launched from an asteroid on the edge of the belt, the Captain suspects they may have a base of some sort around there so he doesn’t want to stick around, and it’s the Navy’s problem now anyway.”

  “I can’t believe someone would try that this close in.” Gabe said shaking his head.

  “Yeah and they weren’t going for a swipe, they were going for a kill,” Dave added. “All those ships looked like they were carrying SK’s.”

  “Well, let’s be happy that they didn’t seem too experienced,” the Chief continued, “Otherwise you might not have had a ship to come back to.”

  We all nodded to that one.

  “What took Bravo flight so long?” I asked.

  “The Captain ordered them held in, he didn’t think the SK’s would be a problem for the ship’s defenses and he was concerned that there could be a second wave, so he ordered them rearmed with complete LRGM packages.”

  I thought about that for a moment. In the heat of combat seeing anything streaking towards the Astra didn’t make me happy, but once we had taken out the enemy shuttles I could see his point.

  “How’d they even manage to match velocities with us Chief?” Rudy asked, “Coming off of any of those asteroids they should have been in a tail chase, or only capable of a quick head on pass.”

  “Boosters. That was when we picked them up. They were staged on top of boosters apparently.”

  “That means there has to be a ship out there someplace to pick them up. Otherwise they’d be stuck out here at the mercy of Hobson’s Navy afterwards.”

  The Chief nodded, “That’s what the Captain figures, which is why he held Bravo flight back.”

  I shook my head, “Sounds pretty desperate to me.”

  “Yeah, but think of the effect this will have on the shipping lanes here,” Jeb pointed out. “If they had gotten away with it, no one would know who was next. As it is, people will still wonder if there will be another attempt.”

  We all thought about that.

  “Looks like this war just might be heating up,” Dave said and we all just nodded.

  The next four days passed very slowly, the ship’s crew wasn’t too keyed up, but those of us on the shuttles were. If you get left behind on an outbound jump, the further out the ship is, the more the chances of rescue diminish. Chances of returning to any planet in the system are non-existent.

  The last day before jump the flight room was like a death watch. All the shuttle crews were there, no one could sleep at that point anyway. Outbound attacks were rare, and attempts at total destruction of a ship were even rarer still. Hobson’s Navy had found no survivors, those that weren’t killed had suicided, and they were all humans. They hadn’t found the base yet either, or the ship that must have dropped them off. Companies didn’t apply these tactics, only fanatics did.

  When the ship finally made jump I dragged myself to my room and locked the door. I was so keyed up I was afraid I’d jump out of my skin, all I wanted to do was sleep.

  After that life did settle back into a more enjoyable routine. The soldiers onboard this time were a light assault unit made up of wolves, foxes, other canines, and cougars. We were going to drop half of them at our first stop, the rest at the second. The nearly two months we spent going to the first drop was fairly normal, except for once again having all the troops on board.

  Breakout however wasn’t. Twenty seconds after we came out I heard the bridge come over the intercom.

  “Contact detected dead ahead, range three point seven million miles, heading identical, status unknown.”

  I looked back at the tactical board in my cockpit and transferred the ships imaging to my visor as more data came in.

  I was tail end Charlie today, last in the rack so I had time if we were going to launch.

  “Bridge this is shuttle control, do you want us to secure stations?”

  “Stand-bye shuttle control,” came the reply. We all waited.

  Ten seconds later we heard, “Shuttle control, secure the launch rack, but remain on alert. We are accelerating to intercept.”

  I looked at the information and sure enough our state was changing dramatically. The Astra was under full throttle the unidentified ship was still in a deceleration profile. I turned on the radio receivers to see what I could pick up.

  “What do you think it is?” I asked Rudy.

  “Beats the hell out of me. Looks like a small freighter. According to the data link they’ve not responded to the company transponder, so they’re not one of ours.”

  I nodded, “can you find anything else interesting on your link back there?” Rudy’s link to the Astra's computer was much more extensive than mine; I had to fly the shuttle after all.

  “Not yet. They’re still trying to get a good enough look at it to match it with a known type.”

  “Oops, they’re they go!” I said as the ship suddenly started to turn end for end, changing course to accelerate as well. “Looks like they’re changing to an outbound course.”

  “Hold on a sec,” Rudy said, “something’s coming in from the base.”

  I waited.

  “The base is under attack!” he said shocked.

  “You’re kidding!"

  “Nope, and apparently our unknown friend there is broadcasting something in code. Probably a warning that we’re on the way.”

  “Any word on the make up of the attack?”

  “Not yet, it’s just a general distress signal on the company’s standard frequency. It’ll be a couple of hours before we get a response.”

  I nodded in my helmet.

  “Shuttle control, this is the bridge, secure from alert.”

  “Roger that.”

  I watched as they sealed the hatch and re-pressurized the launch bay. Then headed back to the flight room with everyone else. It was a four day trip into the system, I wondered what would be there when we got there?

  “Okay everyone listen up,” the Chief said as we came into the room. “The Captain’s going to address the crew in a minute, so grab a seat.”

  Rudy and I grabbed a seat with Dave and Gabe and pealed the top of our vac suits off.

  “Attention all hands, Attention all hands. This is the Captain speaking. The Samia installation is being attacked. From the data we ha
ve received so far the attack started approximately eight hours ago. The ship we just ran off was either reinforcements, or the same people who tried to destroy us now come to warn the attackers. At this point they are accelerating back up to jump and will most likely be gone soon. In either case they are no longer an issue.

  “However what is an issue is that Samia base can probably not hold out four days for us to arrive in a standard orbit. Therefore as Captain I am going to proceed in system at maximum thrust. This will allow us to attack their support space craft in only twenty four hours.

  I heard all of the other crews gasp. My own jaw dropped.

  “However we will be getting only one pass at them, and one shot. So we’ll have to make it count as it will then take us six days to perform a braking maneuver around the sun to be able to enter orbit. All sections will get their orders shortly. That is all.”

  “Woah,” I think that was Dave.

  “I’ll say this, the Captain sure has balls,” said the Chief. “Well you heard him. So I suspect that means we’ll be having a full launch, with a complete stock of SK’s on each of you. I don’t know how many ships they have in orbit, but if we can nail them, the attacking force will find itself in a world of hurt.”

  “Yessir!” We all said and looked at each other, a mixture of shock and anticipation. Sure enough thirty minutes later we got those orders and were all sent to our bunks while the tech’s swapped out the missiles. They wanted us rested and awake when we crossed, speeds would be such that a lot of skill and quite a bit of luck would be required. It was a long shot.

  It was not to be however, six hours later they started to withdraw and by the time we were halfway there they broke orbit in full retreat. Six days later we made orbit, and got to check out the damage.

  Surprisingly it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. They hadn’t gotten the benefit of surprise, and once they figured out what we were doing they started to pull out immediately. They did do some damage, and got some of our cargo as they pulled out, destroying one of the warehouses when one of their shuttles crashed after being shot down. So spirits were good and we were welcomed heartily for showing up and saving the day.