Children of Steel (21 page)

It worked very well at high speeds and low
altitudes, the lower you went the less troops were hooked into a
line. You could even drop troops at supersonic speeds this way, but
they had to have a lot of padding in their harnesses or else lots
of bones could get broke. I moved a little further out to the side
away from my leader, so our troopers wouldn't collide. Then I
unlocked the rear hatch, and at twenty seconds Rudy opened it and
began to countdown over the intercom.

At three seconds I began I shallow climb, and
as he hit zero I was at five hundred feet. I could feel the ship
vibrate as they were pulled out into the slipstream and when the
green light lit on my HUD I knew they were away. Rudy closed the
hatch, as I brought it back down to one hundred feet. After forming
up on my flight leader again, we turned and headed away towards the
water. We still hadn't been detected.

The first group had been dropped out just
beyond what we thought was the safe detection range. We would now
go back for the second group while they made their way to the edge
of the enemy's defenses. As they engaged the enemy, we would drop
the second wave behind the enemies' lines. This would hopefully
allow them to cause enough problems that we could bring in the next
couple of waves before they got organized. By that time, we hoped
to have everyone on the ground.

The flight back to the Astra was equally
uneventful, and so was our next launch. As we descended over the
ocean this time though we received an alert signal from the ground
forces, the fighting had begun.

Five minutes later as we crossed over the
beach Rudy reported that there was search radar on active sweeps,
but we were still undetected. After another two minutes we had been
painted several times, but nobody had a lock on us yet. As we
maneuvered in towards our objective things really began to come
alive. I could see the explosions on the border of the
installation, it looked like light mortar fire and I could see
larger explosions in the forest, return fire.

My own Master Threat suddenly lit up and as I
silenced it I checked the Warning scope.

"Heat Seeker, at six, Range one mile." Rudy
reported.

I broke hard left away from lead, and thumbed
the flare button. After a few more maneuvers, just in case, I
returned to my original course. I could see lead doing the same a
half mile away. There were two more missiles fired at us, but
neither of those was effective either.

"Sixty seconds to drop. Prepare for drop." I
said over the intercom.

"Roger, ready for jump."

At twenty seconds, Rudy again opened the
door, and started the count. This time as the troops started out,
the Master Threat lit up again. I punched it off and glanced at the
scope. It was dead ahead and emitting, that could only mean it was
radar guided. I started punching the chaff button immediately and
wondering when the hell the green light was going to show. I pushed
the throttles forward, and suddenly it lit.

As Rudy hit the button to close the hatch, I
pulled a six G roll to the right and pushed the nose down closer to
the forest below.

"Ground station, too strong to jam." Rudy
said, so I pushed it down further and engaged the TFR while dumping
more chaff. It was closing fast and maybe two seconds had gone by.
Fortunately the terrain wasn't flat and suddenly Rudy said, "That
did it, we're blocked from the ground station!"

I could see the indicators for our own
jamming gear were all active and I pumped out a little more chaff,
just in case, while continuing evasive action.

"Broke lock!" Rudy said suddenly, and I
turned to see the missile impact the ground off to our port
side.

"Let's get outta' here!" I muttered and
turned towards the sea. "Where was that Radar station at?"

"I'm not sure, but the way it was
broadcasting I bet the Astra picked it up." Rudy was carefully
scanning his board.

"I don't have it mapped into the shuttle's
computer," I replied. "It must have been pretty well hidden."

"Well they blew it then. They should have
waited till we were closer."

"Probably hoped to get us with the troops
still onboard."

I looked around me again, I could see on the
holographic display in my helmet that an anti-aircraft sight was
ahead. Well, they all knew we were here now.

"Let's hit that site over there."

"Okay," replied Rudy, "low toss?"

"Sounds good to me."

We went through the bomb release checklist,
armed it, and swept around to come in from the east side. I
followed the flight path displayed on the visor, pulling up the
nose about ten degrees. When the bomb release light flashed, I
rolled over and got away from there fast. That was our one and only
bomb, and now that we had used it I was happy to leave.

We got away unharrassed, but we didn't catch
up with lead until we had made it back to the ship. On the way
back, Rudy played back the strike camera through the helmet's
display. We were both pleased to see we had hit the target.

I docked in the shuttle bay and the two of us
left the shuttle while the techs refueled it and started hanging
armament's pods off the wings. The next mission, the one I wasn't
going on, was going to be ground support. From this point on, at
least two of the eight assault shuttles would be performing that
mission.

We walked into the flight room and started to
shuck our gear.

"Hey, how's it look so far?" I asked the
Sergeant who was updating the mission roster.

"Pretty good actually. Nobody's been hit yet,
and we're still pretty close to the game plan."

"I think they're gonna' start getting their
act together real quick," put in Rudy. "The next couple of waves
are probably going to be tough. They know we're here now!"

I made a quick trip to the bathroom, and when
I got back the crew of the other shuttle was there. I started to
put on my armor.

"Anybody know how the ground war's going?" I
asked.

"Pretty good so far. The third wave left a
couple of minutes ago, and the group of specialists from the first
wave reported your LZ is ready," answered the Sergeant.

"Well that's good, how are the bridge guys
working out?" The bridge guys were the three junior Helmsmen.
Usually the helm was manned by one senior and one junior helmsman.
Most helmsmen were shuttle pilots at the very least, two of ours
were even assault qualified, and they were using members of the
ships weapon's unit who had previous shuttle experience as their
WSO’s.

"They're doing pretty good. They did the
fighter deployment without a hitch and now we're holding them in
reserve. The Captain doesn't like to risk them unless he has
to."

"Then why am I going?" Put in the pilot of
the other shuttle with a smile. He was the one who wasn't assault
qualified.

"Because," and the sergeant smiled, "He'd
rather lose someone who's not assault qualified, if we should take
casualties!"

He groaned about that, and Rudy and I went
over each other’s armor. The armor is basically a set of graphite
kevlar plates layered with titanium and a rubber shock absorbing
polymer. The plates are held in place by the one piece jump suit
which is semi-permeable, so you don't bake in them. It makes gas
attacks a problem, but at least we're inoculated against the more
common biologicals. My flight helmet wouldn't work with the cargo
shuttle's more primitive systems, so I was going to take my regular
combat helmet instead.

"Is the gear loaded yet?" I asked the
Sergeant as I finished strapping on my sidearm.

"Gear's in, and the troops are in too." he
looked at his watch, "Third wave's hitting right about now, so
you've got about twenty minutes till launch."

"Okay," I turned to Rudy, "Meet you down
there; don't forget your 'chute!" I walked in to the equipment room
and checked out a parachute myself; unfortunately cargo shuttles
don't have ejection seats.

I then went down to the Cargo shuttle bay. It
was in a separate section, and farther back in the ship. The hold
was still pressurized, so I did a quick walk around and got in. I
was running through the checklist when Rudy got there. He took the
Engineer/Navigator position and nodded towards the empty copilot's
seat.

"They could have at least strapped a coffee
pot in there for us."

I smiled back at him and pointed to the
thermos, which was strapped behind my seat.

"Ahh good, somebody remembered." He opened it
up and poured two cups out, passing me one.

"Thanks," I took a sip and turned on the
intercom, "Unn, Captain," I took a quick look at the crew list,
"Hanes. Your people settled back there?"

"Yes sir, everybody's ready."

"Sergeant Rysan," I called the
loadmaster.

"Yes Sir?"

"Everything done to your satisfaction?"

"I wouldn't quite say to my satisfaction, but
good enough for this boat." I remembered that Rysan was even less
thrilled to be on this flight than I was.

"Okay everyone," I checked my watch, "Launch
in five. Sergeant, seal the hatch."

"Roger sir, hatch sealed." I watched the
indicator lights confirm this.

I called shuttle control, and four minutes
later the bay was evacuated, the door open, and the engines ready.
I maneuvered out, and took the shuttle a thousand meters away from
the ship. I ran through the reentry checklist and checked my
timetable with the ship. The cargo shuttle could only fly a slow
re-entry, so we had to leave before the fourth wave if we wanted to
get there at the same time.

"We've got the bare minimum in threat
detection and jamming gear," Rudy sighed forlornly, "and now we
have to fly into a combat zone with it."

"At least we've got flare and chaff
dispensers." I replied, but I didn't like it either.

I fired the retros then and we started down.
The third wave was arriving back at the ship now. Everything went
as normal, which helped both our nerves I'm sure. We were
decelerating over the ocean and Rudy was giving me headings from
the map. This was supposed to be the latest and greatest, with all
of the dangerous spots marked. The LZ was about fifty miles inland,
a short hop. I started looking for the elements of the fourth wave
we were supposed to join up with.

One of the bigger shortcomings of the cargo
shuttle was the radar system. It had no passive mode and was
primarily for checking the weather, so it was easily fooled. I
discovered the last part when suddenly a warning alarm sounded and
the Master Warning lit up.

"Shit!" yelled Rudy, "MOVE!"

"Which way?" I started pressing the flare and
chaff buttons for all I was worth, and put us into a steep right
bank.

"I can't tell dammit! Wait, its closing fast.
Left, left bank, LEFT!" he was screaming by now.

I threw us over, hard. I could hear the
shuttle's structure groaning in response, and saw the thermos
shatter against a bulkhead. I suddenly saw the missile and its
contrail. I could even trace it back to the patrol boat that had
launched it. It was close, too close.

"Damn, it's got us in lock!" Rudy said.

I was still punching out dispensables as fast
as my thumb would allow as I watched the missile draw closer. I
figured it had a pretty good sized warhead coming off a boat, and
it would probably go on proximity if it missed. I tried another
maneuver, no luck. So I waited as long as I could stand, and then
threw it over on its other side as hard as I could.

It went off with a loud boom and the ship
shook like a rattle. We lost all cabin pressure, and there was
debris swirling all through the cabin as it leaked out. While I
grabbed my oxygen mask and fought for control I noticed I could see
daylight through the floor. The Master Caution light came on then,
one of the rockets was on fire and so was the jet on the same side.
I hit the fire bottles, pulled the jettison on the rockets and blew
them clear. There was no way we'd make it back into space
anyway.

Rudy was on the radio, yelling for somebody
to get that damn patrol boat before he wrote an end to us. I
checked the fuel gauges, all the wing tanks were leaking fuel like
a sieve, and after a quick calculation I figured we had maybe ten
minutes worth of fuel. My port side jet was out, the starboard was
still with me though.

I got on the intercom, "Rysan, report!"

"We got holed pretty bad back here sir! One
dead, three wounded and half the rear door got blown off. Better
shut down any power back here too. There's fuel dripping around and
I can see a lot of bare wires."

"Captain, better tell your guys to get their
chutes on." I started pulling circuit breakers to shut down the
circuits to the back; Rudy was pulling everything on his board
too.

"Way ahead of you there, we’re ready to jump
if we have to." At least he sounded calm.

"You're going to have to. I'm pretty sure the
landing gear got ruined in the explosion, and even if it didn't
this thing isn't going to hold together well when we hit." I
replied, trying to talk slow and sound calm myself.

I saw a flash out the window, and turned to
look. Somebody had finally taken care of the patrol boat, a little
too late for us though. I checked our airspeed; it was at four
twenty and still decreasing. I pushed the engine up to mil, and our
speed steadied at three fifty, about one hundred knots below what
one engine in mil power should hold. I revised my estimate to maybe
five minutes, the damage must be worse than I thought. At least we
were over land now, but our altitude was down to twenty
thousand.

"Okay everybody, at five thousand feet
everyone jumps. If I should lose control anytime before that,
bailout immediately." I looked at Rudy, "How's that hatch look?"
there were two hatches out of the cockpit, one led to the back, the
other outside. I gestured to the latter.