Children of Steel (66 page)

“Hess, Marko, see if you can’t flank them.
Everyone else pin them down!” I called over my com and popped up to
start taking pot shots at the two closest to me. They put up a
stiff resistance, and had the advantage of position on us. We
weren’t making any progress and the ship was almost clear of the
doors.

“I need results Raj! I need them
now!
”
Aruba ordered.

“Charge on three!” I called on my comm. “One,
two,
three
!” And I burst from cover firing my grenade
launcher then opening up with the gun in short bursts on one of the
positions. The other four moved as well, Aruba taking up the
position I had just left.

I took several hits as I moved forward, one
actually penetrating my armor and taking me in the left arm. I dove
then going up in a high arc to shoot down at the enemy. He followed
me up with his gun, but missed as I swung my tail and tumbled
sideways. As I revolved the second time however I got him, and then
hit the wall behind him, sliding to the floor momentarily
dazed.

I heard Marko call out in pain over the comm,
so I started crawling around towards the next guy and shot him in
the back, the next guy was already dead and Hess was trying to give
first aid to Marko, who had been shot in the head, his helmet
cracked.

I looked around for the other two defenders,
Aruba and her half were finishing them off so I looked for an
emergency shelter.

“Take Marko in there,” I pointed out what I
found to Hess, there was a control room that looked airtight, “and
get that helmet off.”

He nodded and went; I turned to Aruba who was
calling the ship again. The Frigate was had cleared the hanger and
was picking up speed.

“Pan, Pan, Pan, we have a frigate launching
from the base. Do you copy?”

“Shuttle One copies, relying.”

“Marko’s hit bad,” I told Aruba, “I’m going
to check on him.”

She nodded and I went to follow Hess, the
control room had an airlock and it took me a minute to cycle
through it.

“Anything interesting in there?” Riala
radioed as I moved over to Hess.

“Just looks like the hanger controls, and an
Aid station.” I called back, going over to where Hess had Marko’s
helmet off and was trying to use a medkit on him. I grabbed one
from the Aid station and did what I could to help, but without a
medic there wasn’t much we could do. Marko died about a minute
later.

“Shit.” I growled.

“Damn, always thought I’d be the one to go
first,” Hess said leaning back against the wall.

“I thought you both said I’d go first?” I
sighed and shook my head.

“No, you’re too crazy to die… Hey, you’re
hit!”

I noticed I was bleeding pretty well and sat
down hard as Hess patched me up, berating myself for stupidity. If
I had patched myself first and then gone in there, things wouldn’t
have been any worse for Marko.

“Give me a stim,” I said feeling a little
dizzy.

He handed me a preloaded needle from his
medkit and I stuck it through the skin suit and injected myself. My
head cleared quickly and we stripped Marko’s corpse of anything
worthwhile, leaving his body behind.

“What’s the situation Lieutenant?” I asked as
we headed back towards the first hanger.

“I got a relay back from the ship while you
were trying to save Marko, all hell has broken loose, they need us
ASAP.”

I nodded.

She looked at my arm and switched to the NCO
channel that the others couldn’t hear and asked if I was okay.

“Yeah, I’ve had worse. Anyone else hurt?”

“Kim got winged in the leg, she’s okay.”

We caught up with John about ten minutes
later; they were pinned down in the hallway, unable to move
forward, unable to move back. He’d already lost two of his people
and had one wounded, plus himself. We poured supporting fire down
the hallway over his head and they were finally able to crawl close
enough to toss a few grenades in to the next room. The defenders
retreated at that point and we made it into the room taking up a
defensive position at the other exit.

“These don’t look like regular station
personnel,” John said nudging one of the bodies with a boot.

“Let me look,” Riala said moving up.

“Are you able to raise Captain Johnson yet?”
I asked Aruba on the NCO channel.

“No, and it worries me. They should be a lot
closer to here by now. The shuttle said they were meeting stiff
resistance.”

“These aren’t station personnel,” Riala said.
“They’re combat troops, part of a company.”

“A company?” Aruba asked incredulous.

“Apparently. Second Assault according to the
unit patches.”

“Oh great,” one of the others mumbled.

“Now what?” John asked and just then the
ground shook heavily and the lights went out.

“They attacking?” Aruba asked the two
stationed at the door.

“No Mamm!”

“Then what the hell was that?”

Suddenly the ground shook again, and a blast
of dirt, rocks and gasses blew in from the hallway knocking as all
to the ground.

“Sound off!” John called on the comm as the
room filled with dust, we still had atmosphere apparently.

As everyone sounded off I looked at the
hallway back to the hanger. “That’s no longer an option.”

“Damn,” Aruba sworn, “Only one way out, lets
get going while there’s still an option.

I switched to infrared and moved to the
doorway,

“They still holding up ahead?” I asked
Hess.

“Two are. Don’t know how may others.”

“Okay, Let’s get ‘em,” I growled and started
into the next room opening fire right after Hess did.

Twenty minutes later we had made it to an
airlock that led back out to the surface. We were having to fight
every foot down the hallway, and I’d picked up another wound, and
Hess had been hit as well.

“Raj, you and Hess come up last,” Aruba said,
“John come with me to check it out. Everyone else sit tight until I
signal.”

We all nodded as she went into the airlock.
Five minutes later she was back.

“It’s clear, everyone out now, go!”

She waited till it was just Hess and me, then
started up. I let Hess go next then tossed a few grenades down the
hall and followed, leaving a timed charge at the door as I went
through last.

Coming out of the airlock I saw I was at the
bottom of a long ladder. Using my hands only I quickly pulled my
way up it. I was almost to the top when two grenades flew back down
past me, and then John grabbed me and yanked me out.

“Lock’s cycling.” He said over the comm.

I nodded, then tossed my last grenade down as
well.

“Just in case,” I chuckled.

“Now what Lieutenant?” John asked.

“I just got the Captain on the command
channel. We’re pulling out. They’ve gotten pretty badly chewed up
and the Corporal was right, there’s a full company here. The
Falcon’s been hit, but it’s still effective, the drop ships that
landed us are gone, one of the two reserves was destroyed, the last
one is going to land and pick up the Captain’s group once they get
clear. We’re to head south and the remaining shuttle will get us
once we’re clear.”

“Remaining shuttle?” I asked.

“Yes, they lost the other one as well.
Apparently there were more defenses here than we were led to
believe.”

I took a mirror and peaked down over into the
hole, the grenades had collapsed the walls, no one would be
following us that way.

“Let’s move out,” Aruba said, “before we get
anymore company.”

We nodded and got going.

When we finally made the Falcon the Captain
ordered the Shuttle to be scuttled, the drop ship had already been
jettisoned. I didn’t see how the ship looked from outside, but Dave
told me it wasn’t good. He’d survived fortunately. The Falcon
however had been hit pretty badly, the base had launched the
frigate and four shuttles. The frigate had been one that had
escaped from the same planet we had come from, fortunately it had
been damaged there, but the two ships had slugged it out at close
range and low speeds. The shaking we had felt was its crashing and
then exploding.

The attack shuttles had made short work of
the drop ships, and the Falcon had already been holed by then, it
got beat up some more before the attacking shuttles were destroyed,
but we lost the other attack shuttle in the process. As we broke
orbit from the moon the Captain launched two nuclear tipped
torpedoes back at the base, though it was pretty deep underground
so most likely it would only slow them down for a little while.

We spent the next two days patching the ship
so we could get an atmosphere inside it. The only places that had
one when we docked were the ship’s small medical area and the
engine room. We patched the large assembly room first, we had too
many wounded to fit into the medical bay, and leaving them in their
vacuum suits wasn’t an option for some of the more seriously
injured. And we had a lot of injured. Of the thirty three survivors
in the block, only five were unhurt. Of the four intel specialists,
three made it back.

The Captain ran the Falcon at full throttle
to get us back into jump as soon as possible, having expended much
of the ship’s weaponry in the fight, and with the damage we had
taken the Falcon was now only to make half normal speed. It took us
four days to make jump, and an enemy ship jumped in a day before we
left, though fortunately for us it was too far off to make an
intercept.

Once we were in jump word was passed that we
were heading to our home base, Tau Delta thirty-eight. The trip
only took two weeks, we were running fairly light and the jump
drives hadn’t been damaged. Those of us who weren’t seriously
injured spent our time either caring for those who were injured or
fixing the ship.

“We got our asses whipped,” I sighed a week
later when Aruba and I managed to actually get to bed together. Two
more had died from their wounds, everyone was in a very somber
mood, and morale was getting lower every day.

“Yes, we did.” She said pushing back against
me as we lay in bed together; I squeezed her tight in my arms until
I heard her give a little grunt.

“How long do you think it will take them to
fix all this and turn us around?”

“I’ve no idea. The ship probably a few weeks,
as a warship it’ll be a priority job. But I wonder about the block.
We lost a lot of people in one shot. It’s been hard on unit
morale.”

“How did a company end up there anyway?
Anyone figure that one out?”

“The intel types guess that one of those
outgoing ships brought them, and with our taking that planet they
had no place to go, so they just left them there.”

“And with that frigate there, they knew where
they couldn’t go.” I sighed.

“Exactly. Fortunes of war.”

“I don’t want them to break us up,” I
growled. “We may have gotten our asses handed to us, but we’re
still a good team. We took on that company and we survived.”

“I don’t know if it will be up to us,” she
said. “Unless maybe we can turn the morale around.”

I thought about that as I rubbed my chin over
the back of her head thinking.

“You’re always most dangerous when you’re
quiet,” she said yawning.

I rumbled and yawned myself, “uh-huh."

As I fell asleep I thought about motivation,
I knew what motivated me.

The next day Captain Johnson called a meeting
for the Block, or what was left of it. I looked around at the faces
of the rest of the people there, the all looked beat, defeated.
Even the Captain didn’t seem as optimistic as I remembered him to
be.

“As you all know,” he began, “we’ll be making
Tau Delta thirty-eight in a week. Several have asked about the
future of this unit, of Falcon Block, after our losses.”

I had a pretty good idea where he was going;
I could almost see it in his eyes. I raised my hand and stood.

“Yes Raj?” He asked.

“I’d like permission to address everyone
before you continue Sir,” I said quietly. He looked at me, then at
Lieutenant Aruba who just nodded.

“Permission granted.”

I nodded and walked to the front of the room
and turned to face everyone.

“I don’t know how many of you know the reason
why I’m here, or even care. I’m here because those people hurt my
family, my friends. They were executed, raped, tortured, murdered,
and I didn’t just hear it in an official notice, I saw it, I was
there when we retook Timpleton. I got to see the kind of people
that drive them, the ones that make the decisions, the ones that
we’re fighting.

“We’re a good team, those of us here in
Falcon block, those of the crew of the Falcon. We’ve had a lot of
successes, and we’ve kicked a lot of ass.

“A lot of ass.” I growled, “Including on this
last mission which you all mistake as a defeat. And it burns me to
see you acting like a cub running with its tail between its
legs.”

I noticed everyone’s heads had come up, they
were all looking at me, and many were glaring. They were mad.

“Yes we got nailed; yes we lost a lot of our
friends and comrades, good people, good soldiers. But we didn’t
lose. We came up against a company. An
entire
company of
well trained fresh assault troops. Probably veterans like
ourselves, and we not
only
survived those twenty to one
odds, but we gave far better than we got!” I growled louder.

“We
destroyed
a frigate! We shot down
four of their attack shuttles. We trashed an entire complex!
And
we killed at least a hundred of their men, probably
more! We went down into their rabbit hole and grabbed them by the
ears, and we kicked them in the ass!

“And now what? You’re feeling beat? You think
we lost? You want to break up the block and crawl home to lick your
wounds? What would the rest of the Block say? The ones we left
behind? Do you think they’d approve? HELL No! Of course not!” I
almost yelled staring back at each of them, meeting their glares
one by one.