Children of Steel (68 page)

"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 could 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 mayor. 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.

"Too bad there isn't any breeze tonight or
we'd probably be able to smell it." I stopped scanning the camp and
turned my attention to the military compound, "You know, those
towers are all automated, I bet it really doesn't take a big force
to hold this place."

He looked at me thoughtfully, and then
smiled, "and we've seen a lot of troops heading in the opposite
direction."

"I bet once the shooting starts, they won't
even think about trying to take back a place like this either." I
said thoughtfully. I motioned the others up then and gave them a
quick summery of my ideas.

"Well," said Brasile, "The main installation
isn't fortified against any kind of outside attack, it should be
pretty easy."

"Okay, let’s do it then!" I smiled at them
and everybody smiled back. The idea of rescuing prisoners was
always a popular one, unfortunately in this conflict there had been
too few to be saved.

We took all of the remaining explosives,
about fifty pounds worth, and started out by placing charges on the
six towers closest to us. That would open up an escape hole for the
prisoners should our efforts fall short. Next we circled around to
the far side of the installation, sunrise was now only thirty
minutes away and the false dawn was already beginning to rob us of
cover.

There were only four sentries on duty in the
compound, two at the front gate, and another two at the gate to the
camp inside. We were able to find and identify all of the external
sensors pretty quickly. Finding an area that was covered by only
one camera, we started in, the other sensors were easily bypassed
or avoided. On my signal one of my troops shot the camera out with
her silenced rifle, and the rest of us then charged down to the
fence and in less than twenty seconds had bypassed the sensor
strands and cut a hole. I then sent Hess and Jan to take out the
two at the front and Brasile to get the two at the back. Grabbing
my last troop I started sneaking around the buildings and we placed
the last of our charges on the most likely looking ones.

Hess and Jan caught up with us then, and we
took cover as the charges on the towers started blowing.