Children of Steel (54 page)

I could hear the gun on the tower opening up
on full auto. I followed Dave around the corner and was shocked by
what I saw, it was a whole herd of those lizards! They were going
after the carcass and getting shot up in the process. Rather than
retreat though they just continued to advance, and even started to
pick up speed!

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.

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 finding 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.