Children of Steel (22 page)

He went over to it and gave it a quick
check.

"Buckled, and I don't think it'd be safe to
blow it. Too much damage already."

"Damn, okay as we pass ten thousand you go
join the rest and jump with them."

"What about you?" He asked concerned.

"I don't know," it was taking both hands and
a lot of strength to control the shuttle. "The autopilot's dead,
the trim control seems to be gone too. I don't see too many options
at this point. So if you got any ideas better give now!"

"Not a one," he admitted quietly.

He checked the map; we were about twenty five
miles from our objective as we passed ten thousand, which was when
the fuel ran out. I triggered all the fire bottles then, so the
fumes in the tanks wouldn't explode later.

"See ya' Rudy" I said.

"You sure you don't want any help?" he didn't
look at all happy.

"Go, there's nothing you can do," I wasn't
happy either.

He went down into the back, with the rest of
the crew. I passed five grand a minute later.

"Bailout, bailout, bailout!" I called over
the intercom. Then I got on the radio, I could see one of the
fighters circling overhead.

"Cargo shuttle two to fighter, over."

"Fighter to shuttle I read, and your crew is
clear. When are you jumping? Over."

"Unable to jump, see any large clearings?" I
had been scanning for the last two minutes and hadn't seen a
one.

"Negative on that, but there is a small one
straight ahead on your present heading. That you Raj?"

I suddenly recognized the voice; it was
Jerry, the Eagle who had nearly cleaned me out.

"Yeah Jerry, it's me." I was down to about
two thousand feet now.

"Try to pancake it; with all the heavy
equipment behind you, if you let it slide in you'll be crushed.
Good luck."

"Thanks, out." I meant it too, I hadn't
thought about that.

I leveled it out at five hundred feet and let
the airspeed bleed off. I could see the clearing now, and I really
didn't know if I'd make it.

The shuttle started to shudder really bad, as
it approached stall. I let it down slowly, and topped the trees on
the edge of the clearing. I was down to about one hundred and
eighty knots, and maybe fifty feet. So I pulled back on the yoke as
hard as I could, even though I was only fighting the trim weights.
The shuddering was so bad I started wondering if the ship was going
to break up before I hit. At least the control system had held
out.

The shuttle stalled completely then, and
dropped into the clearing. I watched the ground come up fast as the
shuttle fell that last fifty, and suddenly felt a lot of pain and
blacked out.

I came to hanging upside down. Something warm
was running up, or should I say down? My face and into my eyes. I
realized it was blood and that one of my fangs had gone through my
lip. I looked around then and checked out my situation. I was sore
as hell, my back hurt something fierce, but nothing seemed
broken.

The cockpit had broken free of the rest of
the shuttle and had rolled into the trees. I released my harness
and carefully climbed out of the padded seat. I stumbled down onto
the ground, and looked around. The wings had come off when I hit,
and the cargo section was in two separate pieces. I walked over to
check them out.

I was surprised to see that most of the cargo
was still intact. But then it was supposed to take a lot of
punishment anyway. One of the ground effect vehicles was totaled,
but the other looked salvageable. I looked around a little more and
found the dead soldier.

I took his rifle, grenades and ammo belt. I
didn't think he'd mind. I checked my com gear then and tried to
raise somebody. It was pretty low powered, but I should be able to
reach Jerry in the fighter. After I failed to reach him I looked
up, even though it hurt my neck like hell, I couldn't see him.

I checked my watch and noticed it was two
hours later than when I had hit. Good thing there hadn't been a
fire, or I'd have been toast. It was about noon local time, so I
went back to the cockpit, dug out the survival gear and had
lunch.

While I was eating I pulled out the survival
radio and decided to see who I could raise.

"Cargo two calling, anybody read? Over," I
said, no response.

I tried again, and on the third try I got a
response.

"Cargo two, this is LZ one, please
authenticate."

What they wanted was a code number, then
they'd come back with something to which I would again have to
respond. Just so they'd know it was really me.

"Three, eight, eight, two." I responded.

"Standby Cargo two." came the reply, I tried
to figure out whose voice it was.

"Sausage, Cargo two." I thought I had the
voice now.

"Pizza, LZ one. Katrine what the hell are you
doing here?"

"Trying not to cry for your dead ass! Raj, we
thought for sure you had bought it, you okay?" I thought I detected
a sigh of relief, but the sound quality on the survival radio
wasn't too good.

"Sore as hell. I just came too a few minutes
ago."

"You're lucky to be alive!"

"Listen, a lot of this stuff is okay." I was
getting antsy talking on the radio, they're scrambled and such, but
I still didn't want anybody unfriendly zeroing in on me.

"Okay that's great. We have your location
from Jerry, and the folks you dropped should be there in the next
hour. Hold tight."

"Roger that, out." I turned off the radio,
and looked for a spot to wait.

I looked for a good vantage point, but really
couldn't spot any. I did find a nice clump of bushes just inside
the forest and thinking of my aching back, I crawled inside and lay
down. I had a good view of the clearing and could see the wreckage.
Not perfect, but good enough.

I checked the rifle to make sure it was
loaded, it was a high quality three millimeter gas rifle and it was
loaded with armor piercing rounds. It had a thermal imaging scope
and an infrared laser sight, a nice piece of hardware actually. I
checked the bandoleer, and it had another ten clips in it, six
armor piercing, and four explosive. That made eleven hundred rounds
total and combined with the six fragmentation grenades I guess I
felt fairly secure.

It was only about a half hour later when I
got a call on my helmet com. Ten minutes later, they came into the
clearing and we all exchanged a hearty handshake. I threatened to
kill anybody who pounded me on the back.

Out of the twenty of them there, seven were
responsible for the equipment I had been carrying. They started
crawling over the wreckage, obviously happy that a lot of their
gear was still intact.

"Let me have a look at you Warrant." Said a
Leopard with a medic patch on his shoulder.

I sat down on the ground and he got out his
gear.

"Does this hurt?" he asked as he poked and
prodded me in a few places.

"Oww!" I nearly bit him when he touched my
back.

"About what I expected," he said quickly
snatching his hand back. "Stress fractures, some slightly
compressed disks I'd bet too. When did you have your spleen
removed?"

"When I was two, how'd you know?" I said
surprised. "And how bad is my back?" I added quickly.

"Your back will be fine; I'll give you a shot
of something to help speed up the healing. Sorry about the pain,
but I don't think you want to be dopey right now." He took out an
injector and prepared a shot while he was talking. "As for the
spleen, if you had one, it would have ruptured, and you'd be dead
or dying by now."

He gave me the shot and then packed up his
gear; Captain Haines came over at that point and sat down next to
me.

"You gonna be okay?" He asked.

"Yeah, I'll live. When are we moving
out?"

"I'm gonna leave the specialists here with
their equipment, and another two to do guard duty." Rudy walked up
at that moment and joined us. "The rest of us are going to the LZ
to join up with what equipment's there and get into the fight."

Rudy pulled out the map he had been using to
navigate before we crashed.

"We're about ten miles away from the LZ.
It'll probably be at least an hour before they can send out
anything to pick us up. Losing the shuttle set the timetable back
about an hour and a half. I think they might have lost an assault
ship too."

"Then I guess we're walking with you sir," I
said standing up. I pulled Rudy aside, "Any idea on how things are
going?"

"From what little I could pick up," he said
quietly. "It looks pretty good but," He shrugged. "Who can
tell?"

The Captain got his people sorted out, had
them pick up the lighter of the equipment and we left. My back hurt
like hell and I was still sore in a lot of spots. I was glad I
didn't have a pack to carry as we moved through the woods.

We were approaching the Landing Zone from the
east. It was on the edge of the attack zone, in the area that had
been first secured. The mining camp was spread out over a hundred
square mile area. The plan was to take the operations and
processing center first, as well as the mine heads. Then freeing
prisoners, and doing cleanup. Of course major pockets of resistance
would be handled as the situation dictated, but it was expected
those would be at the primary objectives.

We hit a road after about an hour and got on
that. It led straight to our goal, which had been picked as it was
at a crossroads. Another ten minutes later we all jumped into the
brush, when the point man reported a truck coming. It turned out to
be one of our people, sent to bring us in. This area was all
considered secure, so it was a pretty quick ride.

When we got there, Katrine walked up and gave
the Captain a copy of his new orders and pointed out the equipment
he had available. She then gave me and Rudy a big hug.

"Ouch!" I yelled, "My back, please!"

"Don't be such a wimp," she winked, "come on,
they just secured the Spaceport and we're moving our operations
there." She started walking back to a tent on the side of the
clearing. We all followed.

"How is the operation going?" Asked Rudy.

"Pretty good actually," we walked inside the
tent. "Here grab these," she handed us some cases. "And take this
comm unit too." she passed me a long range radio, I hung it around
my neck and grimaced. I still hurt.

"Is this all?"

"Most of it, everybody else left already. I
was left here to wait for you guys and the Captain. Go put that in
the truck and come back for another load."

I did as she asked, there really wasn't much
left, and by the time we had it all loaded the Captain was moving
out his people, so we just joined the end of the column.

"I talked with the specialists at the crash
site just before you guys arrived," she told us, "They got one of
the ground effects vehicles working and are taking that with a few
of the lighter artillery pieces. We're going to have to divert an
Assault shuttle if we want to get anymore out of there."

"That was pretty quick," I replied lying down
in the back of the truck, "I thought they'd be there for a long
time yet. Ahhh"

"That stuff can take a lot of punishment,"
put in Rysan, who had just been following along until now, "And you
only gave it one good shock, didn't roll it or burn it."

"It's nice to know I did something right." I
smiled, feeling a lot better now that I was flat on my back.

"How's the back?" Asked Rudy.

"Better now that I can rest."

"How bad is it?" asked Katrine concerned.

"Hurts like hell, but the medic said it
should be better in a few days. If I can see a real doctor maybe
they can fix it sooner, I don't know."

The ride to the spaceport went pretty quick.
It was only about twenty miles down the road, and there were no
obstacles along the way. We pulled in and headed for the main
terminal building. It wasn't much really, just a two story building
with an observation tower next to it. There were a few hangers
there too, one of which was pretty well blasted.

We all followed Katrine inside, the sergeant
grabbing a couch in the lobby and crashing.

"I'll wait here if you don't mind sirs," he
said.

"Suit yourself," I said.

We followed Katrine further inside and found
ourselves in the ground command center.

"Ah Raj, glad to see you're still alive,"
said Balizar, coming over to shake my hand. "I was afraid we might
have lost you there!"

"Thanks sir," was about all I could think of
to say. I was surprised to see him down here; I guess it
was
going well.

Rudy and I sat in a corner and watched.
Katrine had a couple of soldiers carry in the equipment and sat
down at the radio and started working on the map that was spread on
the table. Rudy and I looked at each other and shrugged, then just
watched the map.

We could see the battle lines quite clearly.
The mine heads were secured already and it appeared that a prison
camp had been liberated too. The big battle was going on at the
central complex, or at least it would be.

"Why don't they just give up and negotiate
terms?" I asked Balizar. That was pretty much the way these things
went, once somebody had a definite advantage and was going to win
anyway, they surrendered. After all, we were all just doing our
jobs and they had clearly lost. Why lose anymore than you had
too?

"Probably because they don't want to have
anything to do with animals!" He spit the last word out
distastefully, but continued nastily, "Or maybe it's that we're not
taking prisoners."

"What do you mean by that?" I asked
alarmed.

"It seems that the occupying force is made up
totally of humans," answered Katrine, "and they seem to be very
anti morph too."