Children of Steel Page 44

  On the other hand members of the ship’s crew could come back into our area whenever they wanted to, but few did except for when duty brought them here, quite a few of them were afraid of us, and I can’t say that I blamed them. Dave got respect because he was part of one of the teams that flew ground support, and was therefore valued by the block members. Also pissing off the guy who’d be dropping bombs right in front of you wasn’t considered healthy.

  We went in at midnight local time several weeks later, the drop ships dumping us out at about a hundred thousand feet, approximately one hundred twenty miles up wind of the objective. Using parawings that we deployed at thirty three thousand feet, we were able to glide undetected to within ten miles of our objective.

  John was leading the full squad for this attack; we had been assigned one of the communication centers inside the installation. They weren't really expecting an attack, as Captain Johnson had said this wasn't a terribly rich operation, but it was one through which a lot of this company's personnel traveled. So what happened here would spread pretty quickly.

  It didn't take us long to form up after landing and start heading in. We reached the outskirts by three o'clock, and then spent another hour dodging from shadow to shadow and avoiding perimeter detection systems. By four A.M. we had reached the perimeter fence around the comm center that was our objective.

  There were only four guards and they were a mixed lot, two Rottweilers, a Badger and a Ram. We split up and belly crawled slowly up to them, and when John gave the signal, we either jumped, knifed or shot our target. I broke the Ram’s neck myself, as I was able to get fairly close due to the shadows. Hess and Clem each shot one with their sniping rifles, they were both excellent shots and had the guns set for sub-sonic firing, they barely made any noise at all.

  John got the remaining Rottweiler with his knife, and damn near cut his head off. After making sure they were all dead, we hid the bodies and took up the guard’s positions. It took us a while to get inside however, we couldn't use explosives, or risk setting off any alarms yet. The attack wasn't until six local time, which was still over an hour and a half away. Marko worked on the door for about twenty minutes, with Hess helping. They weren't having much success, for fear of setting off an alarm, when suddenly the door opened all by itself.

  They both jumped in quickly, surprising the tech that was coming out. Hess got a hand on her mouth and a gun to her head, so she got the idea real quick and did exactly what she was told. At that point we all quickly filed inside and locked the door.

  "Okay, how many people are inside?" John asked her quietly.

  "Only four, including Me." she whispered back staring up at him and shaking with fear. John was a real tough looking Tiger, I'll admit. Being that she was human, she'd probably never been manhandled by one before and one with a gun to her head at that!

  "What's a human doing here at this hour anyway?" John asked her as she led us through the building.

  "I'm the night supervisor; I was working later than normal, that's all. Please don't kill me okay?" She pleaded quietly.

  "Just behave, and tell your people to do what we say when we get to the control room, and I promise you nobody else will get hurt." He replied giving a slight growl when he said ‘else’. From the way she trembled I could tell she got the message.

  We got to the room about then, and John, Clem and I quickly filed in with guns drawn.

  "Surrender or else!" John said.

  They surrendered.

  We then set to work on the command circuits, and loaded a few computer viruses where we thought they would do the most good. Then we just sat there, one of us each behind an operator and told them what to say or do, whenever a call came in. Of course when the offensive started, we were able to misdirect quite a few resources and troops.

  Once they found out that we had taken over the building, it was too late to do anything about it. Also we did have hostages, and a fairly defensible position. But it didn't last too much longer at that point, they were outgunned and outnumbered as well as out maneuvered, and knew it. As this was a Corporate affair and most of the locals were animen, everything was done by the rules and they surrendered at that point without further loss of life.

  We did take all of the refined ore that was there, and destroyed some of the more expensive equipment. The goal here wasn't to take over, just make somebody lose money, and spread the word among the local population that their company had been providing support to the humanist movement. That made quite a lot of them unhappy, even the humans. I overheard a union rep. telling some of the others as we marched them over to the holding area that if it turned out to be true, they'd strike. I was surprised by that, Unions were at least ninety percent human usually and only freemen could join.

  We left about a week later. We had taken a few casualties of course, but we were still in pretty good shape. So once again we were all assembled in the hold waiting to hear our next mission.

  "Attention!" Sergeant Hamilton barked out as both Captain Johnson and Lieutenant Aruba entered the room.

  We all snapped to, and waited in silence for them to reach the front once again.

  "At ease everyone," Captain Johnson said smiling. "This next one doesn't have anything to do with the humanist movement. The Corporation feels that as long as it has an active strike team running around, they might as well settle a few old scores while they find our next target."

  A few of the Troops chuckled quietly at that, and the Captain continued on.

  "The target is a hidden processing lab that belongs to our old friends, the Masong Trading Franchise!"

  This time there was a small cheer and he just smiled waiting for it to quiet back down.

  "Well it's nice to see you're all enthused about this one too," he joked. "Especially as this hit is really going to cost them. It seems that Corporate Intelligence recently discovered the location of their biggest black market lab. They process the majority of their more expensive drugs at this facility, including most of those they distribute on Earth.

  "This lab is believed to be the source of most of the Franchise's payoff money that has been used to keep the Earth authorities off their back. Corporate Intel also thinks that the Franchise uses some of the profits to fund a lot of their more dubious projects." He looked around the assembled Troops for a minute to let that sink in. The Weasel assassin teams were the first thing that came to my mind, I don't know what the others came up with, but I suspect there was plenty.

  "So let's make them feel this one, okay? Dismissed!"

  We all gave a cheer as he left the room, there was no love lost between any of us and the Franchise.

  The lab was on an airless moon off of some gas giant in an otherwise unsettled system. Now Tri-Star really didn't care about the drugs, this was just payback for attacking several of their ships and installations. Like the Captain had said, going after this target was a sure guarantee of economic loss to the Masong people, and due to the nature of the product they wouldn't be able to use their government connections to raise a fuss.

  Due to this attack being on an airless moon I would have to be prepared to face exposure to total vacuum. This meant I had to buy some new gear. My vacuum suit wouldn't stand up to combat of course, and an armored one would be way to constricting. What I did get was a tight rubberized pressure suit with an armored helmet. They were nicknamed 'skin suits' by humans, and I could easily wear my regular armor over it.

  The only real draw back to the skin suit was they took about an hour to get into, especially if you had a tail. I had my suit made with one, most people with tails did. Not only is a tail a useful balancing tool in combat. But in low gravity or weightless conditions it could allow you to easily change directions. Monkeys of course had added benefits being able to grab things with theirs. But it was a pain to get into and the tail sock added a good ten minutes to the dressing time. They looked funny too.

  The cost of the skin suit wasn't cheap either, that was another drawback
. Thankfully it had an adjustable function that allowed you to control heat lost, which was a necessity when you had on a permanent fur coat beneath it. In my case I also had to buy a lightweight air conditioned vest, or I could overheat in twenty minutes, that was also expensive. The total cost of the whole outfit was eighty thousand credits and it was custom fit, so I wouldn't be able to resell it either.

  "Damn, I really hate putting this thing on!" I said to Aruba as she helped me get dressed, "and they make my tail look like a rat's."

  "You'll get over it," she smiled. We had both had a lot of fun putting her inside of hers.

  We were still living in the same quarters and spent a lot of our time together. She still had liaisons with other people on the crew of course, I myself had checked out a large percentage of the female population by now as well. But we still preferred each other most of the time. In her position her choices were more limited of course, I was the only person under her command that she slept with. It made one or two people suspicious at first, but as she never granted me special favors, (actually she tended to dump on me because I was in the 'trouble' squad and we did cause trouble!) nobody complained. I also had a tendency to break the skulls of anybody who insinuated otherwise.

  I think people actually got a kick out of seeing me beat up on her every once in a while, which I did only when she was off duty. Of course she beat up on me almost as often, she was one tough Leopard and could easily have given Herza a run for her money, I think everybody enjoyed that even more.

  As for the ship Championship, it had changed hands twice at this point, but it was still between John and myself. We had both become good friends, and squad five was becoming a very tight unit. Hess and Marko were still causing trouble of course; most of it was just mischief from boredom. I even covered for them a few times on some of their more amusing stunts. But about once a month they'd go a little too far and I'd have to take them to task for it. Of course I'd be in trouble too for not stopping them ahead of time, so I didn't complain when the 'Lieutenant' took me to task. Though sometimes I think she enjoyed be able to read the riot act to the biggest and meanest person in the ship, knowing that I would just stand there meekly and take my lumps.

  We finished getting me in my suit then and headed out to join the rest of the Block.

  This assault was going to be a little different on more than just the lack of air. The drop ships had been stripped of anything valuable and were going to be left behind. The plan was simple, we would come in low and fast, then brake to a controlled crash on top of the complex. The inside of the drop ships were a maze of shock webbing to protect everybody and the pilot's job was to pick a spot where there wouldn't be too much damage to the ship, but where the complex could be easily breached.

  Of course the Falcon's usual pilots wouldn't be flying this one way trip, the backups would. That meant that I would have the pleasure, and the responsibility, of not killing everyone. The Lieutenant would be up front with me of course, helping to find the best spot to 'land'.

  The drop ship itself is a fairly simple and clean design; it's nothing more than a tube with engines and a fairly stupid computer. They carry no weapons at all and have very little ECM either, their whole purpose being to make a fast pass over a target while spewing troops out the back. Or picking up said troops later on from pacified areas. They could take a couple hits without disintegrating on the spot, but that was due to the lack of anything more than special composites in the construction. They were actually fairly stealthy due to the low metal content and their shape. They also carried very little fuel on this trip so when we did crash land, we wouldn’t have to worry about explosion.

  It felt good to be flying again, the Falcon let us off and we drifted in towards the far side of the moon. Once we were below the horizon we started engines and entered an orbit that was about two hundred feet above the surface. As we came back over the horizon and neared our objective, I flipped us over and fired the engines on full throttle. Riding down on the rockets in a classic braking maneuver, we had about ten seconds to pick the best spot.

  Intelligence had provided us with some likely looking landmarks and we found one of them almost immediately, it was the dome for the hydroponics section and I landed us right on it. Or rather crashed us right through it, it buckled as we hit. We weren't exactly going slow and it was only made of a clear plastic glass compound. The ship fell in and I probably could have kept it on its tail if the fuel hadn't run out about then. We landed on our side, which wasn't too bad, and I flipped the toggles that blew all the emergency access hatches off. Within thirty seconds everybody was out of the ship.

  Everybody but me that was, the nose had ended up in a sludge vat of some kind, so I had to crawl back towards the Lieutenant's seat and use her exit. But I caught up soon enough.

  We spread out and ran roughshod through the place after that. The security detachment was fairly small; the rest had been caught with only a minute of warning before we showed up. Our tactic of exposing rooms to vacuum had a positive effect too. Much of the staff was forced to retreat to emergency airlock shelters, which could be held by one trooper with a grenade. They would quickly get the point and surrender.

  I did get into a few heavy firefights before it was all over, the security detachment may have been small, but they had all the key positions fortified and four of those they managed to get to before us. Knocking them out was a tough job, and I had several patches on my skin suit before it was all over. Those were due to my diving into one just as they were closing the door. I was lucky that there were only three of them inside, but I still got wounded before I managed to kill one and beat the other two unconscious.

  This stunt did not set well with Aruba of course, and the rest of the crew had their growing belief of both my insanity and invincibility confirmed once more. We did lose another four troopers, bringing our total number down to forty seven, but the number of seriously wounded was only two this time. My wounds were mostly superficial.

  Once the place was secured, the prisoners were escorted to their quarters and that whole wing was kept under guard. We then carefully looted all of the drugs and all of the expensive equipment as well. I even got a laser detector for myself, after finding a bunch in the armory. I pocketed a few more for my friends and directed Hess and Marko to only take three a piece, leaving the rest for another squad.

  After this was done, we set charges and blew up all the labs, leaving only enough of the structure intact for the three hundred personnel that were still alive to survive. There was some discussion about taking the most important people for ransom, but both Captain Johnson and the Falcon's Captain were afraid that if we took the most important people, nobody would come back for the rest.

  Then we piled into four of their shuttles, destroyed the rest, and flew back to the Falcon. It took us about five sleepless days all told, and when we got back to the ship everyone slept for the next two.

  "Are you off duty?" I asked Aruba several days later while we were lying in bed.

  "Of course, why?"

  "Sure now?"

  "Yes I'm sure, what are you up too?" She propped herself up on an elbow and looked at me.

  "Here, this is for you," I reached down to the floor and grabbed the box I had set there earlier.

  "Oh?" she said curious, "What's this?"

  "Open it and find out."

  She opened it up and pulled out the gear I had grabbed back at the lab. "Raj! Where did you get this? These thing's cost a fortune!"

  "Where do you think I got it?" I smiled.

  "But you're supposed to turn in any equipment you find! Personal raiding's illegal!"

  "That's why I didn't give it to the Lieutenant," I smiled. "If nobody shows them until after we come back from leave, nobody can prove a thing."

  "But it's still against the rules Raj!" she said exasperated.

  "Look, I checked it for booby traps and everything. It's safe. As for the rules, check out Captain Johnson's equipment when w
e get back from leave."

  "Why?"

  "I gave him one of the other ones I grabbed, what do you think?" I smiled craftily at her. "Nobody is going to say anything about us grabbing combat gear, especially not if we leave all the good stuff for the company, so calm down and don't worry about it."

  She thought about it a moment. "Thanks for thinking of me," she gave me a kiss then, "and I won't tell the 'Lieutenant' either!"

  Planet fall came about three weeks later at a place called Shopton on a planet called Mikarus Three. Everybody hit the planet almost immediately, not having to unload any cargo was nice, and we were all given a three week leave. Dave told me later it didn't cost them as much to keep us at a base as it did to keep us in space. So leaves would probably be long ones, until new orders came in.

  I did take up on the local fight bar scene again. I brought my half squad with me, more to keep them out of trouble of course and when I went again the next week, I dragged John along as well. It seems he had heard about it from Marko and Hess and wanted to check it out for himself.

  It was here that my gear from the Astra finally caught up with me. It was nice to have my stereo back, I hadn't seen it in over a year. I also got one of my balisong knives and a dozen of my throwing stars, as well as my old Vac suit and my extra rifle. The rest of my stuff had been destroyed back on Woodstock in the stampede. My shipboard account was transferred at this time too, along with two letters from Herza, one that had been sent to me at the Astra.

  The first letter was from over five months ago, shortly after I had signed on the Falcon. It said she was doing fine, told me where she was assigned, which was on Lyceum of all places! I wondered how she swung that? The final and most important part had to do with my children, yes plural, she had two. I was now a father and had both a male and a female kit, and she had even included pictures!