Children of Steel (59 page)

I was treated quickly and released from the
small sickbay on board the ship, which was operating at full drive
to get us away from the two picket ships, which were now coming
after the Falcon. By the time I had finished cleaning and racking
my gear, the pursuing ships had given up the chase, realizing that
they couldn't catch us, and gone to offer what aid they could back
at the base.

Everybody was then debriefed on what happened
and who did what. I told of the slaughter that I had engaged in at
the beginning, which I found out was pretty much par for the
course. Nearly everybody here had been picked because they had a
score to settle. Then I recounted how I got inside the bunker and
received a few strange looks from both Captain Johnson and the
Lieutenant.

"Well it worked!" I said guiltily.

"I think you're going to have to get a medal
for that one," smiled Captain Johnson, "even if it was kind of
dumb."

"I'd brain you for stupidity myself," growled
the Lieutenant, "But we were running out of time so I guess the
Captain's right."

"Well in that case I think you should give
something to Marko too," I smiled nodding at him, "It
was
his idea."

They both laughed at that, and Marko visibly
preened when he saw he was going to get some of the credit.

The files we had grabbed were all encoded, so
they'd have to go to one of the company's larger installations. It
would probably be a while before we got any intelligence from the
data.

When it was all over I ran into the
Lieutenant in the corridor.

"What in the hell do you think you were doing
running into that bunker like that! Are you trying to get yourself
killed? The Captain may think it's all fine and dandy, but I have
not invested all of this time and effort in you just so you can get
yourself killed in some stupid attempt at low grade heroics!"

For the second time in my life I was
impressed at just how much anger and authority a person could
express without raising their voice above a whisper.

"It was stupid, careless, and the act of a
total idiot," I agreed. "But I think I've come to face with my
problems, and finally laid some of my personal demons to rest." I
smiled and looked down at the Lieutenant, "Now I think I'd like to
lay somebody else too!"

Then I reached down and picking up the
Lieutenant carried her off to the quarters we had been sharing for
several weeks now. But then, she had ordered me to.

"Damn it Raj, I'm not off duty yet!" she
laughed.

I set her down inside and saluted.

"Okay," she said pulling off her rank tabs
and tossing them on the desk, "
Now
I'm off! Where were
we?"

We were pretty frantic that first time, and
the second and third as well. Coming off of combat does do that to
you, and my prior celibacy just added to it I guess. When we showed
up at the mess twelve hours later for breakfast, we had our tails
tightly wrapped around each other as we ate.

"I think all of your discipline problems just
had heart attacks," I smiled at her as we walked back to the room.
Everybody was off today of course as it was the day after a strike.
So the Mess had been packed.

"Oh? And why's that?" she asked smiling
back.

"Because now that you've tamed the maniac,
they figure you'll be sending me after anyone who gets out of
line!" I chuckled.

"Why should they be afraid of you?" She asked
puzzled.

"Oh come on, I
know
you heard the
rumors about what I did to Marko and Hess when I took over. After
what I did dirtside, people are really going to talk."

"Well, people did think you were a little
strange, I admit." she giggled. "After I changed your room
assignment, they were even taking odds on whether I'd bed you, or
you'd kill me!" She laughed at the expression on my face then.

"What were the odds?"

"Dead even," she purred.

"What! Even! I'm supposed to be a homicidal
maniac!" I laughed as I open the door.

"Yes," she purred, and then quick as a wink
tripped me up and jumped me on the floor while kicking the door
closed, "but I'm one tough female!”

"See, I told you I wasn't wasting my time!"
she purred much later.

Our next stop was a deep space rendezvous
with a fast packet ship. We turned over the worthwhile stuff for
the intel people to analyze and they handed over a new set of
sealed orders. We were briefed two days later, after we entered
jump, on what our next assignment was.

"Okay people, settle down!" Aruba said taking
charge of the block while we waited in the hold. "Attention!"

Everybody immediately snapped to.

"At ease everybody," said Captain Johnson
entering the room.

We all relaxed and watched as he made his way
to the small podium at the front of the hold.

"Okay everyone," he began turning to face us,
"I've gone over our orders with the Captain and here's the scoop.
Our next stop is a planet called Darby Six." A chart appeared on
the screen behind him showing the Falcon's flight plan in, as well
as the layout of the facility.

"Darby Six is a mining installation owned and
operated by one of the smaller companies that has been helping to
fund the humanist movement and their attacks on Tri-Star. This
attack is going to be a conventional assault, so we'll be meeting
up with a Transport, which will be launching an all out invasion on
the installation. Our part will be to go in secretly and infiltrate
the outer defenses. Once we have either neutralized or taken over
key points of the installation's defenses, the main assault will
take place.

"The installation isn't a very rich one, so
it isn't heavily defended, but we will be attacking with a large
force. That combined with the element of surprise should allow us
to quickly overwhelm the local forces. Lieutenant Aruba and I will
be handing out assignments to the squad leaders later on tonight;
you can ask your questions then. Dismissed!"

Everyone waited for the Commander and
Lieutenant to leave the room, and then we filed out ourselves. The
next few weeks were fairly busy, preparing for the mission and
going over our orders. This one wouldn't be a hit and run, so
timing was going to be important.

I did get to talk with Dave a few times
during the planning sessions; he was still on the opposite shift
from mine, and living in the ship’s crew area so we didn’t get to
mingle too often. Block members were not allowed up into that area
without orders from the Ship’s Captain, Captain Avera, or the
Executive officer. The Block’s Captain, Captain Johnson, and
Lieutenant Aruba were the only exceptions to this rule.

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.