Children of Steel (53 page)

She also spent the night, though she was a
lot more shy than Danielle had been, and a lot more timid in bed.
At first at least. It turned out I was her first, as in the first
male not of her crèche group that she had ever slept with. My ego
soared to new bounds that night, I think for the first time in my
life I was the more experienced lover and I took full advantage of
it. I almost had to peel her off when we parted company after
breakfast the next morning. I had to smile as I remembered almost
doing the same thing to Herza after our first night together. She
had really ‘rocked my world’ as someone once put it.

The Clan meeting was that night, we’d be
breaking orbit the next day, and I made sure I got there early. I
still was waiting to see the last new addition.

“Ah Raj, glad to see you’re here early. You
can help me set up.”

I nodded and helped Sharazad move a few
things around and get the pillows out for the floor. We chatted as
the others showed up. Hawkeye was there fairly early too, and
Danielle showed up after him. When a female spotted showed up that
I had never seen before I quickly rose to my feet as Sharazad made
introductions.

“This is Selenna. Selenna from left to right
you have Mist, Franz, Kate, who are too obviously a pair. Balizar
who you’ve met, Lyle, Banner, and Terease, our second pair, then
Hawkeye, Danielle, both of whom are new, and Raj.”

She went down the line exchanging greetings
until she finally came to me.

“Raj hmmmm?” She purred looking me up and
down, quiet obviously sizing me up, and not for what Hawkeye or the
others had had in mind. She was older, probably forties I’d guess,
so well past the challenge stage of leopard social life. But she
was rather fit and extremely attractive. “I’d heard you were a big
tom, guess the stories were true,” and she winked at me. “Makes me
wonder about the other stories now as well…"

Everyone laughed as I blushed and exchanged
greetings with her then laid back down on the floor, my back
propped up against the couch.

“What, no come backs?” She said walking over
and looking down at me.

“I’ve found it better to respect my elders,”
I said with a grin.

“Elders?!” She laughed, “Hardly! I ain’t dead
yet hon. Maybe we should go a few rounds.”

She dropped down on her hands and knees
straddling me, her face inches from mine as she smiled.

“Hmm, sure you can keep up?” I purred as she
settled down and got comfy there on top of me in a pleasantly and
completely distracting manner.

“If I can’t I’m sure they’ll bury me with a
smile!” she said with a smirk and everyone laughed.

I had to laugh as well.

Kyrani showed up at that point. She was
rather stiff, and formally dressed and I watched as they tripped
her and mobbed her and pretty much did to her what they’d done to
me when I had first shown up. They’d been right, only the young
ones needed to be tripped; the others had pretty much dived right
in.

It was a good meeting, the new members told
us about themselves, where they were from, what they would be doing
here, and anything else they felt like mentioning. By the end of
the night Lyle and Kyrani had paired up, and Danielle and Hawkeye
paired up as well. Selenna, had staked an obvious claim on me when
she’d gotten there and I wasn’t complaining at all.

I’d seen some sensuous leopards in the last
few years, but none of them had anything on Selenna. That night she
proved to me that old adage about age versus experience and she
definitely put me through my paces. Oh I definitely left her with a
huge smile on her face, and had a nice matching one of my own, but
I was as tired as if I’d fought a twelve round title fight.

We finally shipped out a day late, the
Captain had been trying to get a replacement for the shuttle crew
we had lost and stayed an extra day just in case. Unfortunately he
wasn't successful, so we'd be a little short handed on the shuttle
crews.

The first three weeks in drive were spent on
drills. With as many new people as we had on board, it was
important to make sure we could work together in an emergency. At
least that's what the Exec told us, I think he was just working out
a small sadistic streak of his own. Or maybe we were going to start
seeing more action, some of the rumors I heard from the new people
weren't very encouraging. It seemed that the Auntie-anns had been
more active than normal of late, and then there were our own run
ins with them as well. They also had a name for them now, they were
called the ‘Humanist movement’ and were suspected of having ties to
some of the major Auntie-ann groups on Earth, Hobson’s Choice and
some of the other settled planets.

All in all, it was a gigantic pain in the
butt. At least the available male to female Leopard ratio was
slightly more in my favor, and I took good advantage of it too.

Our first stop was Cirus, a rather plain and
humdrum world. As animen our reception was normal, and so were the
incidents. We only stayed on planet for three days, the Captain was
reportedly anxious to make up the lost day on his schedule, and we
had just come off a long leave anyway.

Our next stop was another planet survey. The
planet had been named Woodstock by the original survey team as it
was covered with dense forests. They had only made a quick stop
here however some four years ago, so we were being sent in to
finish up. The planet was suspected to have some good minerals and
the company was hoping to find some good biologicals in all those
forests for use in drug research as well.

I liked it myself. The temperature was nice
and warm, there was lots of shade, and it rained at least once a
day. They set up a survey team, got us situated and then left. This
was only going to be a four month stay and we wouldn't be doing
much geological testing. The company had supposedly already decided
to put an installation here if the biological report continued to
be favorable. We were here primarily to find a good location for
it.

The team that was left this time was myself
of course, Dave who was now my WSO since Rudy had left, Mist who
was part of the security detachment, Kate and Franz. The rest of
the group was about the same make up as last time, only we had a
few less geologists and a few more biologists. Klaus was in charge
of the show again, and Tiberious was our security chief. The only
bad part was Rasha wouldn't be there, and Marcus would.

Now I wasn't too worried about him, we had
both spent a lot of time avoiding each other since that day long
ago. Rasha who I still saw occasionally, had told me that he wasn't
holding a grudge, which was fine with me, I don't think either of
us really wanted a rematch. As he had been stuck on the shift
opposite mine on the Astra however, not running into him was fairly
easy. Now we'd probably end up working together. I resolved not to
be too paranoid.

There were about forty of us total, the rest
were primarily biologists and techs with a geologist and a few
medical staff thrown in. Most of whom I really didn’t know well yet
if at all.

Setting up didn't take too long, we were able
to use light buildings in the favorable climate and people worked
quickly in the warm weather. The hardest part had been cutting back
a clearing large enough to fit everything in. Landing the shuttle
on the first trip had been a bit tricky as the space was extremely
tight, but now we had cleared enough that we even had a decent
perimeter around our base camp.

We didn't really expect to have any trouble,
but we had no idea at all what the local animal life consisted of
yet. So far we hadn't seen a thing, but all the activity may have
just scared it away.

The first month was pretty enjoyable
actually. We did a lot of sample collecting, and even shot a few of
the larger animals after the biologists discovered that they were
edible so we even had a little fresh meat. Climbing the trees was
fun of course; they went up rather high too. As for the local wild
life, most of what we saw was fairly small, the big ones were all
herbivores, and everything was pretty much afraid of us and the
camp.

During the second month however, things began
to change some what. One of the scouts got jumped and killed by a
large catlike predator, and we began to see several other large
predators in the area of the camp occasionally. They were getting
used to us by now I guess, so everyone started being a lot more
cautious.

The animal that had killed the scout turned
out to be a lot like my ancestors, only more arboreal. It could
swivel its hind paws as well as the front, so it could hang from
the trees that much easier. It did have some obvious differences of
course, the fur was a very interesting color of greens and blacks,
and its tail was totally prehensile. It also had a double set of
fangs top and bottom. While it only weighted in at about one thirty
it was tough as nails, taking three shots to drop it unless you hit
something vital.

Over the next three months we lost five more
people, four of them off on expeditions of one sort or another. One
of those was to wildlife, three due to a climbing accident in the
mountains during a storm. But we did lose one inside the compound
to an animal attack.

It had happened very quickly, one of the
Monkey medics had been out running along the perimeter for
exercise. There was nothing strange about that, I did it myself.
Suddenly a rather large predator that none of us had seen before
charged the fence from the brush and cleared it in a single bound.
The fence was twenty feet high, this thing was big!

The alarms went off of course, and the
automated system hit it with a burst of ten millimeter bullets, but
it still lived long enough to tear her to pieces and then charge
the rest of us who came running out guns blazing. We did kill it,
but not before several of us got knocked around from its paws and
tail. I managed to dodge, those who didn't got quite a few broken
bones.

After we had it killed the Bio's came out and
gave it the once over. It was about fifty feet long, had huge hind
legs and a long heavy tail for balance. It was covered with scales
and looked partially reptilian. That it was a good jumper we could
all testify. It hadn't been too fast after that though, but Kate
thought that might have been due to the damage caused by the camp's
defenses.

We cleaned up our dead comrade and had a
quick burial. The dead lizard was another problem however, it
weighted at least two tons and the Biologists weren't going to let
us just hack it up and cart it off. So we had to wait four days
while they cut it up themselves, and then we could dump some of it.
It started to stink really bad by then though, and other predators
were starting to show up at the fence.

Everybody had been surprised by the arrival
of gigantor; nobody had seen his like in the four months we had
been here. There was a lot of heated debate about getting rid of
the carcass before all hell broke lose, but the scientist's got
permission to keep it another couple of days. The main selling
point of course was that the Astra was due back any day now, so
they'd never get the chance again.

Those of us doing security were all a little
edgy about it though; Tiberious was personally sitting up on the
night watches, and had set up an antipersonnel mine just outside
the fence.

"I wish I knew just where the hell the Astra
was," he confided to me one night as we sat watch. "They should
have been here last week!"

"I'd just by happy to get rid of that damn
lizard!" I muttered. The carcass had been with us seven days now,
and the smell was beginning to grow.

An alarm went off on the fence; I checked the
monitor and saw another predator trying to climb over. This was the
third one tonight, I guess they found the smell enticing; I flipped
off the safety on the turret and zapped him with a short burst.

"Damn things are getting to be a real
problem," Tiberious growled, "I don't care what anybody says, that
thing is going tomorrow!"

We zapped another four by daybreak and the
fence was starting to show some damage.

"Go get one of the choppers warmed up,"
Tiberious told me as he picked up the intercom handset. "I'm gonna
get a sling rigged on that thing immediately."

I got up and left the room, stopping at
Dave's on the way out.

"Yo! Wake up!" I called banging on the
door.

"It's open Raj."

I stuck my head inside, "Hi Marie," I said,
noticing Dave wasn't alone, "Get up, I'm going to need somebody to
handle the winch on the helicopter."

"Why what's up?" he said looking at the time
display, "I'm not on for another hour yet."

"We're getting rid of Gigantor, Tiberious has
finally had enough of it, and I don't think he wants to give the
scientists a chance to give him an argument."

"Fine, I'll see you there in ten." he started
to slide out of bed and I left.

The helicopter was in the hanger area, with
most of the other aircraft we had. This one was actually a cargo
job, having no passenger compartment, but rather a module rack
behind the control seats. There was no module mounted there
presently, so the midsection was just the spine of the aircraft. I
checked the winch that was located in the recess while doing my
normal checkout procedure. I was just getting ready to start
engines when Dave walked in and the Camp's alert sounded.

"What the hell is that?" I yelled to Dave and
grabbed my helmet, which I had taken off while pre-flighting the
helicopter.

He turned and ran back out the door, and I
followed grabbing my rifle as I did so. It was then that I heard
the alert message being broadcast through my helmet comm.

"We have a breach of the security fence at
sector nine by the carcass, all troops to report immediately!"