Children of Steel

by John Van Stry

  I was still sharing the room with Aruba, and she was still the Lieutenant in charge of the second platoon. I was still her second in command and had been promoted again bringing me up to Senior Warrant officer after a continuing string of outstanding performances. I wasn't taking insane risks anymore, but I was still taking a lot of calculated ones.

  Falcon block had done exceptionally well during this time too, earning numerous company citations and a lot of bonuses. Since our low spot after that moon base attack, were we had lost so many, our morale had never sagged again and our determination had reminded solid. As a group we were gaining a name for ourselves and getting the harder assignments, which further served to bolster our reputation and pride. Unfortunately this didn’t come cheap, out of my original squad only John, Clem, and Hess were still alive. From the time the unit had been formed nearly sixty percent of the original members had died, and of the replacements we had received, probably another eighty percent of them hadn't made it this far. That was a lot people, some of whom I'd known quite well.

  We were now leaving Tau Delta thirty-eight once more, having taken on troops and supplies. We had taken on an additional sixty, besides the ten replacements we had needed. And had strapped on two more drop ships, the shuttles having been removed. With a hundred and twenty troops on board it was crammed. Troops were sharing eight to a room, and even Aruba had to share with the Lieutenant from the other block. At least we were on opposing shifts, so it wasn't too bad. I was glad I wasn't in a regular room however, the idea of hot bunking was never one I really enjoyed.

  It was obvious of course that we were going somewhere big this time. Everyone was so keyed up that even having to spend three weeks in jump didn't seem to matter much. I managed to find out that we were going well outside of settled space and rendezvousing with a lot of other ships, I told Aruba as much later one night.

  "How'd you find out that?" she asked, "Even Captain Johnson hasn't opened his orders yet."

  "Simple, I held one of the ship's crew up against the ceiling and wouldn't let them down until they talked."

  "If the Captain hears about that, he'll fine you for sure!" she laughed.

  "I don't think the other person will talk," I smiled craftily.

  "Oh? Why not?"

  "Because the Exec probably doesn't want to admit to the Captain just what I was doing in her quarters." I smirked.

  "Raj! You put the arm on the Exec!" she laughed again, "She's going to be out for revenge you know!"

  "Hey, I told her a long time ago that I was going to get even with her for that joke she played on us last year. I just collected, that's all."

  "I guess this mean's that they probably tracked down another big target," she sighed, "I hope it's the last one too. The fighting’s been a lot tougher this last year."

  "Yeah, we've got their backs up against the wall at last."

  Several days later we broke out of jump. We were in deep space all right; I snuck into one of the drop ships and looked out of the pilot's canopy to see for myself. I could also pick out the lights of six other ships; this was going to be a big one for sure. Later that shift both blocks were assembled in the hold. It was a pretty tight fit and quite a few ended up in the halls.

  "Okay everyone," began Captain Avera, the Ship's Captain, "As you probably guessed already, this is it, the final assault."

  There was quite a bit of applause and cheering at that, especially from the old timers in Falcon block. A lot of us were really starting to get tired of the constant fighting. We'd been through thirty separate actions since I'd joined.

  He waited until everybody had quieted down. "We will be part of a force of thirty two ships," he began, "twelve of which are ours. The other five frigates as well as the two destroyers are here. Plus two troop transports carrying fifteen hundred a piece. That make's roughly over thirty seven hundred troops, and that's just from Tri-Star. The other two ships are the company's new cruisers; they'll be protecting the rest of us as we go in."

  I hadn't heard that the company was building any cruisers! And from the looks on the faces of those around me, neither had anyone else.

  "That's right the company built two heavies just for today," he smiled at the assembled troops who were beginning to like the idea. "Also there’s our two allies who are here as well, they are also contributing over three thousand troops each, and a lot of heavy artillery of their own."

  Our two allies were The Lartansys Digital conglomerate, and the Hudson Trinity Corporation. Neither was in direct competition with the other, or us; the main thrust of each Corporation's business being in a different area. But all had extensive operations covering large amounts of space, and each had been hit pretty hard. So it was an alliance that worked out well. There were even rumors of a possible merger floating about of course, but I doubted it. The Earth government probably wouldn't let three of the larger corporations like that merge; they could end up being stronger than them.

  Hell, the only reason they had allowed us to ally for this war was that while they didn't like humanists, it was too politically hot a subject for the Earth government to get involved in and deal with it themselves with the much larger Earth Fleet. That and the distance from Earth, they didn't like the idea of getting involved in a war that was primarily on the fringes of settled space. That was fine by us, it meant we got to keep what we took, plus I got the added pleasure of personally making the bastards pay for what they did to Cassandra and Nepal!

  "So here's the scoop," the Captain continued bringing me back from my revery, "We are two days jump from the system and tomorrow, we will all enter jump together. We will come out three days drive from the target, with the other two groups coming out at approximately the same time in separate areas.

  "This ship will then drive in with the Cruisers and the other Frigates and Destroyers. The Falcon and the Marconi will both make close passes to the planet, at which time both ships will drop four blocks of troops. We will then retreat as the others continue to soften up space based defenses. Your jobs will be to help soften up key ground targets so that the Main body of troops will be able to land three days later."

  "Now your individual Commander's will be handing out your objectives and your orders. I don't need to tell you that you will be performing a key mission in the attack, but I will tell you that I have every confidence in you. Good luck!" He stepped down then, and Captain Johnson took his place.

  "Okay everybody, as the Captain said, this is it. I will be distributing orders to the squad leaders after this briefing is over and Commander Thero will be doing the same for Eagle block. This action is going to be a squad action, and everybody will be carrying a lot of explosives. The primary Goal is Ground to Air defenses; the secondary is their command and control network. Once the main vanguard of troops has landed, you will be allowed to decide on your own targets. But don't go crazy okay? Let the other guys have a little glory, they haven't had all the opportunities we have, and I know they'll be upset if we don't leave something for them!"

  Everybody laughed, only eight of the attacks in the War so far had required large troop actions.

  He continued on then, and showed us the intelligence they had on the target planet on the screen behind him. It was a pretty well established settlement. According to our intel, it had been settled over a hundred years ago by the movement's founders and had been heavily fortified over the last five. It was definitely going to be a tough nut to crack.

  After the primary briefing was over, I got my orders and went to a meeting with the other squad leaders and our two officers. I learned where we would all be dropped, and what my squad's target would be, a sensor installation used for both Ground to Air defenses and Orbital tracking. There was some kind of town nearby with what looked like a small military installation and some factories as well. They were my second and third targets.

  We were going to be spread out pretty thin it seemed. Forty squads over a continent, with the next nearest being a hundred miles away. It c
ould have been worse however, John's squad was being dumped four hundred miles from number five, which was itself two hundred away from the rest!

  One of the other companies was also sending in an advance team, but their troops would be hitting targets on the planet's other major continent, which had some settlements as well.

  I spent the next several days drilling my squad and going over our objectives. They were all experienced veterans, even my 'newb' had already been on two missions, and so I knew I could count on them. I helped the Lieutenant organize the platoon's signals for the raid, there wouldn't be too many, we would be spread too far apart to give each other any aid. Then I helped her inspect and check the troops, after which we retreated to her cabin for a long goodbye.

  We boarded our drop ships when the Falcon was still six hours out. If she got hit anytime during the pass, all of the drop ships would be immediately jettisoned to save as many of the troops as possible. Of course the chances of a drop ship surviving without the Falcon were fairly small, but it was better than nothing.

  The ride in was pretty rough, we got tossed around a lot, and pinned to the bulkheads a few times as the Captain made evasive maneuvers. But both the Falcon and the Marconi made it in to the upper atmosphere where they kicked us loose and then ran like the dickens. The drop ships then made their runs, dropping us at ten miles up, so nobody on the ground could tell exactly where we were dropped or where we were going. Once out of the ship, we were almost impossible to track with the large amounts of decoys dropping as well.

  The only thing I wondered about the whole way down was where were the drop ships going after they dumped us? Both the Falcon and the Marconi would be passing the orbit of the outer moon by the time they finished the unloading. And I knew they didn't carry that much fuel.

  During free fall I gathered my squad together; we formed a chain and headed for the area I had picked off of the intel maps. We made our landing without incident and after burying our parachutes and pressure gear, started the forty mile trek to our objective. We planned to get there by tomorrow, spend another day reconnoitering the installation, and then attack that night. We would then go after the military installation while the troop ships where still a half day away.

  The trek in was very interesting, several times we had to take cover as patrols flew by overhead. I guess they knew we were out here somewhere, I just hope they didn't know where we were going. I found that kind of hard to believe however.

  We would have to skirt the town to get to the sensor station, and as we neared it the over flights increased dramatically. I was forced to skirt the area about ten miles further out than I wanted to. Once we started heading away however, I noticed the flights didn't follow us. It seemed they were more worried about the town's environs.

  I brought my squad up on the hill closest to the installation at midnight, and we set out to do our reconnaissance. That morning we found shelter and compared notes. It was pretty well guarded all right; there were two layers of sentries around the place. Both my second in command and myself had managed to get by the first of these without being noticed. The second line was a lot tougher however. We finally worked out a plan, and then went to sleep for eight hours so we'd be fresh that night.

  We stashed our extra gear in the bushes where we had slept, taking most of the explosives. It took us about an hour to work our way around to the spot where my corporal had crawled through last night, we had both agreed this was the better of the two places. When we came up on the guards on the second line, we waited for a good fifteen minutes until there were only two. Then I put three throwing stars into the throat of one, while Brasile my corporal, threw his knife and got the other.

  After moving up and retrieving our weapons, we hid the bodies and waited for the other two sentries to return. Ten minutes later they were dead and no alarms had been sounded. I had my squad take up the sentry's positions then, it was dark and unlit, so nobody should notice the difference unless they looked closely. As we were in the inner ring now, everybody else would hopefully be looking the other way.

  While Brasile and the other three kept watch, Hess and I went to work on one of the ventilation shafts that led into the underground building. I worked on the welds with acid, while he bypassed the security systems.

  After about fifteen minutes of paranoia, the vent came open and four of us went down inside. We split up and started carefully looking for places to put our charges. Each explosive weighted one pound and had a timer, they were all preset for later tonight, so we just had to find them a home.

  I crawled quietly through the vent work, occasionally climbing out into an empty room to hide a charge or two. When I found the room that contained the emergency fuel cells, I hid six of them just in case. My other major coup came when the vent led to a room that was next door to the armory. I left five charges in there; hopefully it would set off a chain reaction.

  Almost an hour later we crawled back out; that nobody had discovered the missing sentries was a testament to the skill of the two I had left behind. They had killed the two officers that had come out to check up on them ten minutes ago. We left immediately then, our luck wasn't going to hold much longer.

  I looked over at Brasile as we worked our way out through the outer perimeter, I could see he was covered with blood.

  "Are you okay?" I whispered once we were through.

  "Yeah, I'm fine, this isn't mine."

  "What happened?"

  "I lucked out and found the main computer room. While I was placing charges some Tech came in. I had to hide his body in the vent, so I got covered with his blood," he smiled.

  We spread out then on the perimeter, and when the charges went off, the whole outer line turned to watch in surprise. Four hundred pounds of high explosives does make a nice display. We took advantage of their distraction to open up on the group of sentries nearest to us, cutting down quite a few before they took cover. We then used the added confusion to take off for the hills, and made it back to our impromptu camp without incident. Gathering up the rest of our gear we headed off for the military installation in town. I secretly hoped it was as small as it looked on the map we had been given, we had been terribly lucky so far, but it was only four hours till dawn. I wasn't sure we'd be able to continue with our plans once it was daylight now that they knew we were here.

  It was fifteen miles to our next target and we constantly had to hide as copters flew overhead looking for us, this was slowing our movement considerably. We finally headed down by the road, as we noticed they weren't concentrating as heavily on that. We made better time there, even though we had to stay off of it and in the bushes most of the time. At least you could keep walking in the brush, the trucks going by made so much noise that being heard was the least of our worries.

  We figured we were passed by about a hundred troops as we headed in. They must have been pulling everybody out to look for us. I wondered if they had any idea how few we were? Probably not, at least that station was going to be out for a long time. We had left the dishes and the grids intact of course. It was easier to go after the people and the machinery that ran it. But even if they were ready for this, it would still take a few days to connect all that stuff to new equipment. I hoped they'd waste the personnel trying myself.

  Our luck not only continued to hold, but got better as the night went on. We came across what appeared to be a lone staff car coming down the road in our direction. I quickly shouldered my rifle and put a single round in the rear tire from the bushes. I had the rifle set for subsonic, so it didn't make enough noise for them to hear.

  After the driver had stopped and got out to look at the tire, I used hand signals to get my squad in position. When he bent over to look, I put a round in the side of his throat and he went all the way down. When the back door opened a second later to check on what happened to the driver, three knives flew in and the two people inside quickly stopped moving.

  It turned out to be one of the local military and I think the m
ayor. We dragged the bodies into the brush and quickly changed the tire. I let corporal Brasile drive then, while looking over the equipment in the car.

  "You guys see anything of interest in the back?" I asked as I examined the comm unit and rummaged through the map compartment.

  "Just a thermos of coffee and a few sandwiches. Want some?"

  “Sure.”

  I had a drink, but left the food to them. The comm was a pretty simple affair, really just a basic radio, so I turned it up and we listened. It wasn't too hard to tell that they were looking for us, but they were keeping the talk to a minimum. I guess they were smart enough to know that we might be listening.

  I directed Brasile to turn off on a side road as we got near our destination, when we got close enough we found a place to hide the car, then started walking again. When we finally made it to the installation, we had less then two hours before sunrise, the car had made up for a lot of lost time.

  "Something look strange to you?" I asked Hess as we looked at the place through Binoculars.

  "Yeah, it's too close to the town, and the town's surrounded by a fence with lights facing in instead of out."

  "Prison camp?" I asked looking at the towers spaced around the 'town'.

  "Looks like, I don't see anybody on the streets though, so I wonder whose inside?" he continued looking at the streets.