Children of Steel Page 40

  I unloaded a whole clip into the first one I saw, and two more clips as well before it went down. It was then that I realized that the tower gun had stopped firing. As the creatures were still coming on, I realized that it could only mean it was out of ammo. The previous night's firings had put a serious dent in its supply.

  There were about six of the things down and dead, another five looked wounded and I had no idea how many more were left. They had risen up quite a bit of dust, and were literally rampaging around the camp. I saw several troops and a few other members of the expedition trampled and torn to pieces. Two right before my eyes.

  I was out of ammo by now, and started to worry about my own survival. Those of us who had comm units on did what we could to get everybody away from the slaughter. I was helping Kate and Franz carry off some supplies when Kate, who was ahead of us, was attacked by one of the lizards. She never saw it coming, and was ripped in half immediately. Franz went absolutely insane then, and clubbed me when I tried to stop him.

  "She's dead damn it!" I yelled, but he just ran straight at the thing and tried to kill it with his knife. He did manage to hack an eye out before it trampled him down into the ground. I grabbed the two monkeys who were still with me, and got us the hell out of there quick. It was only a few minutes later that the hanger area caught fire and exploded, taking the shuttle with it in a secondary explosion that touched off the fuel tanks and killed everything in a hundred yard radius.

  "Damn," I said to no one in particular, "Anybody still in camp is dead now."

  "At this point, it would be a mercy killing," said the male, and older chimp with graying hair. He looked back at me, "I suggest we take to the trees until things calm down. Then we can see who survived."

  "Good idea," I found the idea of taking to the high places strangely comforting, probably a hold over from my ancestors. We managed to get ourselves up into the canopy with only one incident, I had to run off one of those catlike predators with my combat knife. I was in no mood to mess around, and even managed to cut it twice before it realized it was in danger of becoming lunch and ran off.

  We settled down into the crotch of one of the larger trees. I could still hear the screams of some of the others, some through the air, most through my radio. I yelled out to those that could hear me to climb into the trees, but I don't know if it had any effect. After a while, it started to die down some and the screaming and yelling stopped. I set my beacon then, and being totally exhausted, stretched out on a branch and went to sleep.

  I awoke a couple of hours later and had a drink from my canteen. I offered the rest to the other two, then started calling on my helmet radio to see who else was out there. It didn't have a lot of range and we eventually climbed down and trudged back to camp.

  Camp turned out to be a scene of total carnage. There were dead bodies, or rather pieces of dead bodies, everywhere. At least a lot of them were either Lizard's or some other local life that had joined in the fray. But I counted at least twenty of our own in the wreckage. I found Tiberious in the remains of the tower, he had been reloading the gun when it was toppled by the Lizards. He was partially eaten, but I did manage to rescue his rifle and two clips of ammo, which I used to drive off the scavengers.

  Six hours later the rest of the survivors had shown up. Dave was there, and strangely enough Marie had made it too. I guess having been woken up early she had a head start on surviving. I was happy to see Mist had made it, so had four of the Tigers in the group. One of the Bears and two of the Badgers had survived as well, Klaus was not one of them. Adding the two Chimps, and myself that made twelve of us total, out of thirty six that were alive this morning.

  We gathered up what we could find, about two weeks emergency rations, three rifles, one pistol, and a hundred rounds total ammo. Almost everybody had managed to grab their survival gear and armor, but what ammo that hadn't been used in the firefight was destroyed in the explosions and fire, along with almost all of our equipment.

  Tiberious' second in command was his mate, she had survived and was now the highest ranking member we had. She decided that we'd make camp in the trees, even though as a Tiger she wasn't thrilled with the idea. So we went back into the woods, and managed to find a place not too far from the Camps remains by nightfall.

  We consoled ourselves that night with the thought that at least the Astra would be here any day now, and we'd soon be home again.

  23

  I watched the groat carefully as it moved further away from the herd. I was still downwind from it, and I crawled slowly closer into a better position. I had been stalking this group for nearly two hours now, Mist was somewhere off on my right flank doing the same.

  I continued to move slowly in a belly crawl towards the one groat cow that was continually moving to the very edges of the herd. The male had come after her several times making that coughing noise that had earned them their name. This time however he didn't seem to notice her straying once again. My stomach tightened at the thought of food, yesterday had been very unproductive.

  I tightened my grip on my knife, and as she closed to within two meters, I broke from the cover in a leap and drove my knife into her throat. Digging the claws of my other hand into her eyes I also grabbed the back of her head with my teeth and bit down hard. I wasn't taking any chances with this one! Last week I had lost a sure kill by not getting a good secure hold.

  I worked the knife around and felt her fall to her knees. I braced my feet on the ground and flipped her over, slitting her throat as I did so. I was reward with a stream of hot blood on my legs and she stopped kicking and lay still.

  The male Groat had seen this of course and had started forward, head down, intent on goring me with his horns. Mist charged him from the side then and he veered off, deciding to save the rest of his harem instead and they all thundered off.

  "Need a hand there?" she asked coming over.

  "No, I'm okay," I started dressing out the carcass, cutting off a few choice pieces in the process. Half I stuck in my mouth, the other half a handed to Mist.

  "Thanks, I'm starved," she quickly ate what I gave her.

  I finished pretty quickly, and she helped me sling the body over my shoulders. We then headed towards Camp.

  That was our present Camp, not the old one. We were living in a cave now, it being easier to defend than the camp we had originally made in the trees. Also the Tigers and Badgers found it much more comfortable. The Bear had been killed over a month ago while hunting.

  It had been over two months since the destruction of the Base camp and there was still no sign of the Astra. We were now living off the local livestock, Mist and myself being one of the hunting teams, Marcus, Borus and Star, all tigers, making up the second, Dave and Marie making up the third. With twelve people to feed it wasn't exactly easy. What we had just caught was probably enough for today, if one of the others was successful we'd dine well for sure. More often than not however, we didn't.

  We had used the guns for hunting at first, but after an attack on our camp in the trees we decided to save our ammo for defense only. We were presently down to maybe ten rounds total.

  What made it tough was that since the camp’s destruction, a lot of the native life was avoiding the area. What had drawn so many of the big Lizards there in the first place was a mystery, but at least we hadn't seen a single one since. Hunting was also tough work, and having to do it everyday, for such large game, was exhausting.

  Tiberious' mate Shalana however refused to move camp more than a mile from the site of the destroyed base. If help didn't show up soon, I was going to have to challenge her on it. I had talked with Dave and Marcus, and they both agreed that the hunting was getting tougher in this area. We'd have to move soon, or starve.

  Marcus' group had done well that day too, so we were all able to eat well for the first time in a week. Everybody was pretty tired however, Mist and I having gone six miles before finding the herd. And Marcus and his group had gone roughly twice that, before f
inding anything. So we all just collapsed in a heap in the back of the cave, leaving the others to keep watch.

  I was awakened quite suddenly, when a gun went off. We all untangled ourselves quickly, and as we headed to the front of the cave, we could see it was almost daylight.

  "What's going on?" Dave asked George, the chimp holding the rifle.

  "A ship just flew over!" he pointed excitedly towards the old base camp.

  "What did it look like?" I asked quickly, "A shuttle or a jet?"

  "A shuttle, it was definitely a shuttle!"

  By now everybody was standing around, "What's going on here?" asked Shalana.

  "A shuttle, I saw a shuttle!"

  We watched the horizon, but with the false dawn starting it was hard to see anything.

  "It'll be light in a little while," she said, "and who ever it is won't leave right away. Especially if they see our message."

  We had left a large marker placed there, for when help did come.

  "I'd like to start heading over there now if you don't mind," I said turning towards her. "I'll take Marcus, we haven't seen any of the big predators around in nearly a month now and everything else is afraid of us."

  She looked around at the group, "Sure why not, I want to get the hell out of here too." She sighed then and sat down on one of the rocks by the cave's entrance.

  I grabbed what was left of my armor and after putting it on, I headed out with Marcus as quickly as possible. It was about a twenty minute walk at night normally, the ground being pretty rough and you had to keep an eye out for trouble. We both ran the whole way, not really caring, getting there in about ten.

  We burst into the clearing while they were still looking at the wreckage. My heart sunk almost immediately as I realized that they weren't from the Astra, but at least they were from Tri-star.

  "What in the hell happened here?" asked the Wolf in charge. I could see by his stripes he was a Chief in rank.

  I told him the highlights, and then led them back to where everybody else was holed up.

  "What happened to the Astra?" I asked as we walked back through the woods.

  "She happened to be in orbit around Ceti-bon two when an invasion fleet showed up," he told me. "They managed to drive it off fortunately. Ceti-bon two is a pretty small installation, so the attack force that had been sent wasn't too large."

  "So where are they now?"

  "They took a beating, and the Astra had to be dry-docked. That was five months ago, they probably are just getting into Earth by now, that being the closest one."

  "If that was so long ago, then where the hell were you guys?" growled Marcus, "This hasn't been no picnic, believe you me!"

  "Take it easy soldier," he growled back. "That wasn't the only attack on Tri-Star's interests. It seems those people you ran into on Arboral have decided it was time to pay us back. We were hit in a dozen places at the same time. With the Astra out, it was only now that we could spare somebody to do a back up retrieval. We're at war now for sure."

  "Do we know who we're fighting?" I asked him, hoping that my friends on the Astra were all right.

  "They haven't found the location of the group's headquarters, but we've already attacked one of their staging facilities, and we recently found out about one of the companies that have been helping them. So we have a few targets!" He smiled then and said, "It's going to be nice to be able to strike back for a change!"

  It took us about two hours to get packed up and leave. The computer files from the Base camp had to be dug up. Until then I had always wondered why the storage units were buried, but there was nothing else worth taking.

  The ship that had arrived to pick us up was the Falcon. It was a frigate, one of six that the company maintained. There were also a few destroyers, but they were a lot more expensive to operate due to their size, so they were usually held in reserve somewhere.

  The Falcon was a lot smaller than what I was used to after being on the Astra. It was one hundred fifty yards in length and just twenty five yards across at its widest point. It had only one bay, and that was only large enough to fit a shuttle. The ship's two shuttles usually rode on external mounts, access being through the shuttle's dorsal hatch.

  There were another four external mounts, which made six total, that were normally for drop ships, but the Falcon wasn't carrying any troops, just the ship's normal complement of twenty. So it was pretty roomy inside, everybody got their own quarters and we had a comfortable ride. It only took two weeks to make our destination, which turned out to be Tau Delta thirty-eight. Without the four drop ships and the extra weight of the troops, the Falcon could make fifteen lights. With all that extra stuff added on it could still make twelve, a pretty fast ship no matter how you looked at it. Only the packet ships went faster at twenty, but then they only had a crew of five or six and carried no weapons or cargo at all.

  I was sitting in the small shuttle bay, which doubled as a gym among other things, on our last day aboard when the Exec walked in. She was human and looked to be in her early thirties. Of course with age treatments she could have been seventy, telling age among humans was never easy.

  "Good morning Mamm," I stood up as she entered, just to be safe.

  "At ease Raj, I'm off duty," she went over to one of the machines and started her own daily routine. I had noticed that everybody on board the Falcon exercised regularly, even Captain Avera.

  "What do you think will happen next Mamm?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "Well, the Astra is going to be out of it for a while I guess and it is pretty far away from here. And now there's all this talk of the Company finally knowing who's responsible, I'd just like to know what's going to happen now." I started on my next set of reps while she thought about that a minute.

  "I guess you'll probably be assigned to another ship or group," she looked over at me, "If you've got a good record, I suggest you see what options they'll give you as soon as you can. We're going to be taking on troops once we dock and I'd guess that the company is going to switch a lot of it's people over to combat for the next few years, at least until things settle down."

  "Will they?" I asked curious. "Settle down that is."

  "Oh eventually they will," she smiled at some thought then. "The big rush will be on at first to grab as much of the enemy's assets as possible before somebody else does. And as for the fanatics, well Tri-Star isn't the only company they pissed off, just the biggest."

  I thought about B Company, where my sister Lisa was. Something like that would be worth looking into. "They pissed me off too. Thanks for the advice Mamm, I'll look into it after we dock."

  I spent another two hours in the gym working out after she had left, there wasn't much else to do on board and I wanted to be sure I was in peak condition.

  I didn't get to look into anything right away once we docked. The first thing that happened was we were all debriefed on the mission and that took a whole day. Once they had finished with us there, I spent another day getting outfitted. The only thing that had survived was a uniform and my armor, they were both totally trashed and had to be replaced anyway. I did have extra gear on the Astra, but I found out that it could be years before it caught up with me.

  So I ended up spending a hundred and thirty eight thousand dollars on a full set of gear, uniforms and weapons. I had grown to like the rifle that I had lost so much, that I bought another just like it. I was shocked that it cost twice as much as a normal one.

  After taking care of all that I went back to my room with Mist. We were all staying in the same place, nobody having yet decided what to do with us. We were talking about our options then, Mist wanted to go back to the Astra and was trying to figure out how to swing it. I wouldn't have minded going back either, but I couldn't see them paying my way and I sure couldn't afford it!

  Suddenly somebody rang at the door and I got up and answered it. It was a company messenger and he handed me an envelope, after checking my ID, and then split. I looked it over and w
alking back towards Mist I opened it and read the letter inside. It was a standard company notification, I started to feel dread before I had even made it past the gobbly gook at the top.

  Company notifications were always bad news. If something important happened, as in bad, then the company would distribute a notification to all of its installations. The first one you showed up at would cross index your current file and if it wasn't in it, you got handed it at the first possible instance. The only reason I hadn't gotten one on Nepal's death was because I was at the scene of the incident before one went out.

  It said quite simply that 'We regret to inform you that the corporation's installation on Trundle was raided on,' and it gave some date four months ago. It continued, 'When company forces arrived there were no survivors found. Your sister Cassandra Rakir was among the personnel. No remains were recovered.'

  I stood there in shock, Cassandra was gone.

  I dropped the letter and just stood there. I could hear a loud growling that I realized was me. Cassandra was dead. My control disappeared with a snap, I roared. I looked around for something, anything, and started to tear everything in the room to pieces. Something moved behind me, and I whirled to see somebody leave the room. I threw the couch at the door after them and felt a surge of satisfaction as it splintered against the door.

  It didn't take long for me to run out of things to destroy in the room. But it wasn't enough, I needed more, I needed to kill. I grabbed the door and tried to yank it open, but it wouldn't budge. In my rage I couldn't work the lock so I went over to the wet bar and ripped the sink off the wall, so I could just bash it down. When I turned back to the door there were four shapes there now.