Children of Steel

by John Van Stry

"Speak for yourself girl," said Jemaal, "the crazy ones tend to get weeded out early. But we do tend to be more ah, determined, I guess."

  "Then keep an eye on my sister, she's definitely crazy in my book." Fran started to scratch behind my ears, and I started to relax.

  "Raj, what would Cassandra say if she saw you now?" Lisa said.

  I cracked an eye, and could see her grinning evilly.

  "She'd tell you to behave, or she'd tell everyone what you really hate!" I glanced at Jemaal, "Is she at least any good in bed? I'd hate to think she puts you through hell for nothing."

  I could see Lisa squirm a little then.

  "Oh, I haven't been to bed with your sister yet." he smiled, "I refuse to put up with her little games."

  "Yep that'll really make her mad," I smiled then made my own little dig, "especially when it's obvious she really wants you."

  "Raj!" Lisa said, and started to get up, "I refuse to take this abuse!"

  I swept her legs out from under her, with one of my own. Fran was laughing quietly.

  "Behave Lisa, you started it," I said and then I turned to Jemaal. "I know my sister, believe me, and she likes people who are wise to her little games."

  "Really? I have to admit she's very nice, except for her attempts at manipulation and the snide remarks," said Jemaal. “But she is a good soldier.”

  Lisa was looking daggers at me by now. She wouldn't try to leave again because she knew I wasn't going to let her, and she didn't want anybody else to see that.

  "She does need a strong influence; we were all agreed on that back at the crèche."

  "Humph! So they got you to beat on me!" she glared.

  "What did you expect from a bunch of children Lisa? You know I always used brute force over brains." I admitted painfully.

  "Still do too!" she retorted.

  "I stick with what works!" I grinned, "But if you and Jemaal go and have a drink, I'll let you go."

  "Do I have a choice?" she asked

  I just smiled back at her.

  "What about me?" Bristled Jemaal, "I don't wish to have your sister forced to be with me."

  "I'm just forcing her to talk to you for a while; the rest is up to you. I like you and I keep hoping somebody will teach her to be nice; especially since recently I’ve started to find out what eventually happens to people who aren't." I stared at Lisa as I said the last.

  "Still looking out for us aren't you?" she said softly, then turned to Jemaal, "He's right, I really do like you. Let’s go get a drink and talk."

  They both got up and I closed my eyes and enjoyed Fran's scratching my ears and back.

  "You really put her in her place, but she deserves it," said Fran.

  "Do you think I was too rough on her?"

  "Heck no. She's been skating on thin ice with a few of the girls. She's popular enough with the ones in your age group and younger. But some of the older hands wouldn't have anything to do with her, except she really is an excellent soldier."

  "She does have a tendency to bring out the worst in me, that's for sure. But I do worry about her."

  "Self appointed family head huh?" she started rubbing my neck.

  "Ohh that feels good. Yep, I was the head from the time I was two. I watched out for everyone and never let anybody harm my family."

  "Sounds very noble," she smiled.

  "Stupid actually, do you know how many times I got beat up? Including when I had to defend that one?"

  "That one doesn't need defending," laughed Fran quietly. "Your sister is very good at defending herself, believe me."

  "I just wish I knew more about finesse. I guess I really need experience. I always used to rely on my sister Cassandra for advice."

  "You're young yet. Heck, I'm young yet. Experience takes time."

  It was getting late, and people had been leaving for a few minutes now, I noticed that Lisa and Jemaal were talking in earnest. Lisa's anger was always a mercurial thing, gone as fast as it came.

  "Could I interest you in the comforts of my quarters tonight?"

  "I thought you'd never ask." she smiled warmly.

  "Then what would you have done?" I teased.

  "Asked you myself, what else?" she replied.

  I always liked practical people. We went back to my cabin, where all thoughts of my sister were forgotten. In the morning we spent a little while just relaxing and talking.

  "What are my WSO's chances at getting your pilot into bed?"

  "Storm? Pretty good actually, she was supposed to meet him this evening I believe."

  "I wish I knew how he did it."

  "Why? I gather you're busy enough." she grinned wickedly at me, lying on top of my stomach.

  "My sister did mention that several people had their sights set on me." I grinned back.

  "Oh?" she looked a little abashed.

  "And that you were threatening mayhem if anybody got in your way!" I laughed.

  "That little ..." she fumed.

  "Why get mad? After chasing you on the flight deck, did you think I was going to stop last night?"

  "I certainly didn't think so," she admitted, "but nobody likes to have the game given away."

  "Well for all her faults, she is my sister."

  "Okay, I'll forgive her," she smiled again.

  "But I am curious, what does Storm see in Rudy? Maybe I'm narrow minded, but I really don't see anything attractive about Possums."

  "He's got a way with words, he's a real charmer. Women like to be told nice things just as much as you men do. Anyway he's not that bad looking, though I do prefer a furry tail myself." She started playing with mine then.

  "That's the way I feel too." I started playing with hers also. "Well, I hope he's successful."

  Over the next few weeks, I had quite a few more liaisons with Fran. My fears of abandonment by the other girls were never realized, even though they weren't around as often. By the time Breakout was near, things had settled down and the mission roster had been finalized. On the first two runs I'd be piloting an assault shuttle, but as pilots got rotated, I would end up having a turn at piloting one of the regular shuttles on my third run.

  The plan was fairly simple. The assault shuttles would make two low altitude drops. During the first the regular shuttles would deploy the fighter aircraft in the upper atmosphere. On the third run, the Assault ships would start landing at the secured LZ's, and heavier armored troops would be deployed.

  I would be coming in again with the fourth wave, flying one of the regular shuttles. It would be loaded with a lot of the heavy artillery and some troops. The equipment was mostly field pieces, and two armored ground effects vehicles.

  Then it was back to the Assault shuttles to fly in the sixth and seventh waves. After that it would be ground support sorties, which would eventually be resupplied from the ground base, once it was secure. It was hoped that we could quickly overrun any defenses and make it a quick fight. But they had nearly two months to dig in and we probably wouldn't have surprise on our side, or so I thought.

  I was talking about this with Terease and Banner at Dinner.

  "We actually have a fairly decent chance at surprise Raj," said Banner.

  "But what about our breakout flash? They have to see that, and this ship isn't exactly invisible either."

  "The Captain has plotted for us to breakout with one of the system's other planets between us and them. We were fortunate in that the positions of the planets are so favorable. Furthermore, we will be able to use that planet for gravity braking and should be there in five days."

  "I thought breakout close to a planetary body was impossible." I said surprised.

  "We aren't going to be that close to the planet," said Terease. "That was the reason we picked up so much velocity before the jump, so we could close fast on the first planet. But we're still going to be too close to be totally safe."

  "Safe how?" I asked.

  "Well, The drive will probably be damaged and need repair before we can jump again. We bro
ught spares for just that reason." she said soothingly.

  "But if the Helmsman or the Captain have screwed up on the breakout point, we could have a serious problem," supplied Banner. Not helping my appetite either, I might add.

  "How long will the repairs take?" I asked Terease.

  "Several weeks at least, maybe longer. It depends on how close we are to the planet."

  "This mining operation must be pretty important, this sounds like a really expensive operation," I said to both of them. "And what's to keep them from seeing us as we approach the planet?"

  "Tri-Star feels it's bad for business to let such things happen. Also it is a pretty profitable mine, that's why someone wants it," said Banner. "As for seeing us, we're hoping that they won't be expecting us yet, and that they don't have good enough equipment. But remember, other companies have installations on the planet as well, so we hope to keep them from knowing who we really are."

  There was a little more to it than that, such as after using the ship rockets to brake us, the Captain had the ship turned so that the hot end was facing away from our objective as we came out from behind the planet. Then we would travel without navigation lights, active radar, or anything else that might give us away. We would use the gravity well of the planet, as well as the rockets, to brake into a final orbit once we arrived.

  Throughout the five days this took, everybody was nervous and anxious. There were quite a few small fights; however they broke up as quickly as they started. But when the firearm's lockers were opened and the sidearms passed out, everybody knew it was time for the real thing and settled down completely.

  I checked over all of my equipment carefully. My rifle, pistol, and armor were all in excellent condition. Probably because they had never been used. The rifle I wouldn't be needing, and the armor I couldn't wear in the assault ships, as it wouldn't fit under my vac suit, or over it for that matter. But I could wear it in the regular shuttle, and considering its lack of armor, I would.

  The side arm was completely functional, but it felt strange to be carrying it around. I checked my personal survival kit, (it served as a seat pack in the assault ships, and usually held my armor too). Then spent the last night nervous as hell, until Herza showed up and spent it with me. I was surprised to find out she was nervous too, even if only a little. I didn't mind her keeping me awake though, as I couldn't have slept anyway.

  11

  That morning I skipped breakfast and went straight to the hanger. I gave the shuttle a quick walk around and then went to get my gear. After suiting up I sat in the flight room and waited for the others to show. It didn't take long, everybody was early that day. Whether they were nervous like me, or eager, I couldn't tell and really didn't care.

  I listened carefully to the briefing. The first item was the weather. It was clear, sunny and in the eighties, no rain expected and no clouds either.

  I'd been hoping for clouds, they helped screen from long range imaging sensors. The lack of rain was good, no mud. The rest really wasn't much of a player.

  The next thing was photo intelligence gathered from the first pass over the drop points. It was going on at this very moment and we watched a live video feed from the Bridge. I was surprised to hear Katrine's voice giving the real time analysis. As I watched, two drop zones were moved and hopefully all of the anti-aircraft sights were located. Maps were printed out, and then we spent five minutes going over our part.

  That was it, we walked out to the shuttles, checked to make sure the troops were loaded, did the start engines checklist, the pre-launch checklist, the launch checklist, and suddenly, I found myself doing the post-launch checks. We were off.

  I found my leader and formed up in loose trail. When he flashed his lights, I did my countdown, fired the motors and started the re-entry. I watched the temperature gauges, my leader, and kept one eye on the Master Threat light. I glanced back at Rudy at one point and smiled when I saw the feather sticking off the side of his helmet.

  We kept radio silence all the way in of course. We finally leveled off at one thousand feet over the ocean, doing about mach 3. I moved up closer on my lead and went to fingertip formation. We then engaged the Terrain Following Radar and performed a letdown to one hundred feet and prepared for groundfall.

  As we crossed the beach I could see some of the passive systems were beginning to pick up data, but nothing was on to us yet. We had slowed to mach 1.2 at that point and would slow down to about five hundred knots when we dropped the troops. I knew from experience how that hurt, but there really wasn't much help for it. At least the parachutes were designed for it.

  My INS system started to beep as we approached the drop point; I clicked the intercom and notified the Lieutenant in the back.

  "Sixty seconds to drop, prepare to drop in sixty seconds."

  "Roger that. Drop in sixty." He sounded like he was ordering pretzels at the bar. At least I had remembered to sound calm myself.

  I could hear him ordering everybody to hook up and prepare to jump over the bleed from the intercom. The way it works is that they all hook up to each other, in a long string. You're separated by about fifty feet of rope. At the command to jump the first man tosses a drogue chute out the hatch, then one at a time everybody is literally yanked out the back. The last man is hooked to the shuttle's bulkhead, as he goes out the rope yanks free of the shuttle, setting off a light on my display, and triggering the pyrotechnic charge used to deploy each trooper's chute.

  It worked very well at high speeds and low altitudes, the lower you went the less troops were hooked into a line. You could even drop troops at supersonic speeds this way, but they had to have a lot of padding in their harnesses or else lots of bones could get broke. I moved a little further out to the side away from my leader, so our troopers wouldn't collide. Then I unlocked the rear hatch, and at twenty seconds Rudy opened it and began to countdown over the intercom.

  At three seconds I began I shallow climb, and as he hit zero I was at five hundred feet. I could feel the ship vibrate as they were pulled out into the slipstream and when the green light lit on my HUD I knew they were away. Rudy closed the hatch, as I brought it back down to one hundred feet. After forming up on my flight leader again, we turned and headed away towards the water. We still hadn't been detected.

  The first group had been dropped out just beyond what we thought was the safe detection range. We would now go back for the second group while they made their way to the edge of the enemy's defenses. As they engaged the enemy, we would drop the second wave behind the enemies' lines. This would hopefully allow them to cause enough problems that we could bring in the next couple of waves before they got organized. By that time, we hoped to have everyone on the ground.

  The flight back to the Astra was equally uneventful, and so was our next launch. As we descended over the ocean this time though we received an alert signal from the ground forces, the fighting had begun.

  Five minutes later as we crossed over the beach Rudy reported that there was search radar on active sweeps, but we were still undetected. After another two minutes we had been painted several times, but nobody had a lock on us yet. As we maneuvered in towards our objective things really began to come alive. I could see the explosions on the border of the installation, it looked like light mortar fire and I could see larger explosions in the forest, return fire.

  My own Master Threat suddenly lit up and as I silenced it I checked the Warning scope.

  "Heat Seeker, at six, Range one mile." Rudy reported.

  I broke hard left away from lead, and thumbed the flare button. After a few more maneuvers, just in case, I returned to my original course. I could see lead doing the same a half mile away. There were two more missiles fired at us, but neither of those was effective either.

  "Sixty seconds to drop. Prepare for drop." I said over the intercom.

  "Roger, ready for jump."

  At twenty seconds, Rudy again opened the door, and started the count. This time as the troops started ou
t, the Master Threat lit up again. I punched it off and glanced at the scope. It was dead ahead and emitting, that could only mean it was radar guided. I started punching the chaff button immediately and wondering when the hell the green light was going to show. I pushed the throttles forward, and suddenly it lit.

  As Rudy hit the button to close the hatch, I pulled a six G roll to the right and pushed the nose down closer to the forest below.

  "Ground station, too strong to jam." Rudy said, so I pushed it down further and engaged the TFR while dumping more chaff. It was closing fast and maybe two seconds had gone by. Fortunately the terrain wasn't flat and suddenly Rudy said, "That did it, we're blocked from the ground station!"

  I could see the indicators for our own jamming gear were all active and I pumped out a little more chaff, just in case, while continuing evasive action.

  "Broke lock!" Rudy said suddenly, and I turned to see the missile impact the ground off to our port side.

  "Let's get outta' here!" I muttered and turned towards the sea. "Where was that Radar station at?"

  "I'm not sure, but the way it was broadcasting I bet the Astra picked it up." Rudy was carefully scanning his board.

  "I don't have it mapped into the shuttle's computer," I replied. "It must have been pretty well hidden."

  "Well they blew it then. They should have waited till we were closer."

  "Probably hoped to get us with the troops still onboard."

  I looked around me again, I could see on the holographic display in my helmet that an anti-aircraft sight was ahead. Well, they all knew we were here now.

  "Let's hit that site over there."

  "Okay," replied Rudy, "low toss?"

  "Sounds good to me."

  We went through the bomb release checklist, armed it, and swept around to come in from the east side. I followed the flight path displayed on the visor, pulling up the nose about ten degrees. When the bomb release light flashed, I rolled over and got away from there fast. That was our one and only bomb, and now that we had used it I was happy to leave.

  We got away unharrassed, but we didn't catch up with lead until we had made it back to the ship. On the way back, Rudy played back the strike camera through the helmet's display. We were both pleased to see we had hit the target.