Children of Steel (30 page)

"Put him down Raj," she said laughing
hysterically. "Gently, don't just drop him either!" she added as I
started to toss him.

"Just tell him to behave and leave me alone!"
I said as I put him down.

"Claude what happened here?" she asked him,
Jemaal was just standing there sniggering.

"I told him I didn't think he should be here,
that's all." he glared at me, "The next thing I know, he's beating
my head against the wall." He started gingerly touching his head to
emphasize his point.

Lisa and Jemaal both looked at me
questioningly.

"Hey, I gave him fair warning." I said
holding up my hands. "He shouldn't have grabbed my arm that's all.
Now why don't you run along while you still can?" I said the last
to him.

"I'm ready for you now," he said growling,
"You won't beat me so quickly this time."

"Claude out!" said Lisa standing up, "He
could probably beat us all if he wanted to, and you were an idiot
to grab him and not expect a fight."

Claude left grumbling, giving me a dirty look
on the way out. I just smiled back.

"Should I leave too?" asked Jemaal.

"No, you can stay." I said, then turning to
Lisa, "I wasn't going to leave without saying goodbye, especially
after our umm, disagreement yesterday."

"I knew you wouldn't," she replied smiling,
"and I'm sorry I baited you yesterday. And I didn't have anything
to do with that idiot in the hall just now."

"I'm sorry too," I said humbly, "and I didn't
think you had anything to do with that either. There would have
been more of them then."

We all laughed a little at that.

"You have recovered alright, brother mine.
I'm still sore from yesterday. Have you said goodbye to Kali yet?"
she asked changing the subject.

"Yes, I just left there." I looked up at her
again, "She's still got a lot of hard time ahead of her you know,
and I'm not going to be here to help. So it's all going to be up to
you."

"Don't worry Raj," she looked right back at
me, "I'll take care of her."

"Lisa, I
always
worry," I admitted. "I
just wanted to make sure you were aware of your responsibility, and
I want you to know that if it was you in that bed, I'd be bugging
Kali about this too."

"I know that, I'm still a Rakir you know. So
don't worry about it anymore, she's my sister too!"

"Thanks, it really is a load off my mind
knowing you're going to be here." I admitted.

"Really? Why's that?" she looked
surprised.

"You won't let the Doctor talk you into
anything stupid," I grinned, "You're just as stubborn as I am!"

She smiled at that and stood up so I could
give her a hug.

"Goodbye Sis, take care and good luck. Till
we meet again I guess."

"Goodbye Raj," she hugged me back, "Good luck
yourself."

"Take care of yourself too Jemaal," I said
shaking his hand on my way out the door. "You two can go back to
what you were doing now!" I gave him a wink as I left.

That taken care of I went in search of Fran.
She wasn't in her room, which was a relief I guess. I didn't want
to find her involved with someone else. I finally found her in the
mess area.

"Raj, I didn't expect to see you for a couple
of hours yet." she said looking up from her seat.

"I've nothing to do until my shuttle lifts at
six." I said sitting down next to her.

"That's a good eight hours away yet," she
replied looking at her watch, "what time do you have to
report?"

"Five thirty, which gives me about seven
hours to kill." I looked down at her with a smile, "Any ideas?"

"Oh, I can think of a few." she said smiling
back.

We got up and headed back to her room, where
we spent the rest of my time saying a very long and enjoyable
goodbye. I ended up reporting ten minutes late. I wasn't the only
one who was late either, but we still got off on time.

The trip out was pretty uneventful, we had
stored the prisoners in the aft shuttle hold which was empty now
anyway. It also made them behave, because we could blow the hatch
in an instant if they should start acting up. They didn't though,
and arrived alive with the rest of us.

For me the trip back was a lot of practicing,
exercise, and all of the normal duties that I hadn't really been
doing since landing. It felt nice to be back in the old routine of
things, and back living onboard the ship, it was my home now. We
spent seven weeks in drive on this trip, mostly because the drive
was not functioning at full capacity. By the last week we were
almost down to short rations when we broke out having been unable
to restock any foodstuffs at Arboral.

We were at a system called Tau Delta
thirty-eight, or something like that. It had no inhabitable planets
to speak of, just a couple of gas giants and some uninhabitable
rocks. But it did have a very large asteroid belt, which was very
rich in minerals. The company had one of its most profitable
operations here, and the location was a closely guarded secret.

It took us only a couple of days to dock
inside one of the larger asteroids. They had a pretty extensive
repair yard, and our ship was in need of some more drive repairs
and needed to have a lot of missing equipment replaced.

I kind of felt sorry for our prisoners
though. They were all staying here until they worked off their debt
to the company and some of the mines here were pretty dangerous.
Balizar confided in me that the worst offenders probably wouldn't
survive.

As for the ones who had tried to minimize
their bosses' excesses, and there weren't many, they would be given
a chance to earn their way back home in safer jobs. One of them had
been responsible for saving my sister's life and I had a long talk
with the Badger he would be working for, who agreed to watch out
for her.

The entire ship's crew was then transferred
to one of the main asteroids to await the ship's repair. I had
never been on, or I should say in, an asteroid before. This one was
known as Tiber base and was the control center for this section of
the Belt.

It was a good fifty miles across and had a
lot of natural caverns inside. Unlike most company installations
however, the human population was roughly equal to that of the
animen. The reason for the large human presence turned out to be
the large number of company research labs here. Somebody said that
the company had about thirty thousand employees in the belt, and
after seeing Tiber base, I had to believe it.

We were shown to our quarters, which were the
largest I had ever stayed in. I had a complete apartment to
myself.

"Why are these places all so big?" I asked
the human female who was showing us our billets.

"Two reasons actually, the first is that
nobody can go outside so the company Psychs though the extra space
would be healthy for everybody."

"What's the second?" I asked.

"The second one is that this was originally a
mine anyway," she smiled, "and the more they cleared out during
building, the more material they had to process."

"I'm surprised they didn't just take it all."
Gabe said looking at the veins of minerals in the wall.

"It's kind of like a bank," she replied. "We
know it's here and can get it out whenever times are hard. Until
then the company would rather find and mine all of the other
deposits out there. Eventually this place won't be a secret
anymore, but by then the company hopes to have some kind of
installation on all of the major finds like this."

"And have mined out all of the smaller ones,"
finished Dave. "Smart thinking alright, I wonder how long Tri-Star
will be able to keep it a secret though?"

"Who knows?" she replied, "But by the time
it's out it probably won't be profitable for anybody else to try
and move in."

"Well that is the name of the game, isn't
it?" I said.

We moved into our rooms without mishap. We'd
be staying here for the two weeks it was estimated that the repairs
would take. During that time we would be expected to help in those
repairs, so we would be putting in eight hour shifts on the Astra,
followed by four hour training sessions.

But the fact still remained that we'd have
twelve hours to ourselves each day and only a half shift on
Saturday, none on Sunday. Everybody was pretty happy about the
whole thing, and morale was really pretty high.

Tiber base was a very interesting place too.
The company ran all of the businesses there, so you didn't need to
carry cash, you could just sign for everything. They had
restaurants, bars, theaters, and shops of several different sorts.
The prices weren't too bad either, considering that the company had
a total monopoly on everything.

There was even a thriving black market with
some very interesting items for sale; you did need cash for that
however. The company ignored the black market, as there probably
wasn't much they could have done about it anyhow. I found out about
it a little quicker than most as Herza set up some fights for me
through it.

I did pretty well, winning all five of the
fights I was set up with. I got to see Herza do some fighting
herself too. They had it set up here with a bunch of different
classes; my training put me automatically into the second class, my
low time on the job kept me from being forced into the first class.
I was glad about that when I saw Herza, who was in the first class,
take on a tiger in one of her fights.

He was a pretty good size, standing a little
taller than me and a good thirty pounds or so heavier. They went at
it with a vengeance, I noticed that he started out cautiously, even
with his greater size. Herza had a tough time of it, and took a
pretty good beating. I was surprised that she was able to win it
though; it made me realize that size and strength were not the most
important factors in a fight.

Afterwards, I collected our winnings and
helped a battered Herza back to our rooms.

"I really was worried about you there," I
told her on the way back.

"He was pretty tough, and a lot more
experienced than I originally thought," she admitted. "But I still
had the advantage in experience and determination."

"I don't think I would have wanted to fight
him."

"Oh?" she stopped than and looked me square
in the eye, "Raj, determination is the most important part of
fighting. Sure experience and strength are important, but it's the
will to not give an inch that really counts."

"I can see that, nobody expected you to win
that fight, I was even worried there for a while."

"You could beat him." she said looking at me
closely, "If you really wanted to that is."

"What me? I don't have half your experience
Herza, I have yet to beat either you or Banner in a fight too."

"You could, if you'd just let yourself.
You've got a lot of natural talent, you train hard, and you're
bigger, stronger, and possibly faster than either of us."

"I still don't think I could, yet." I said
honestly.

"But you do think so eventually?" she asked,
and we started walking again.

"Well yeah, I kind of think so."

"Well at least that's a start," she
replied.

That was on our first Saturday night there. I
spent the next morning recovering from my fights, and helping Herza
recover from hers. The betting hadn't been as heavy here as on
Hobson's, but then it was a lot safer fighting here than there too.
We had managed to make about six hundred apiece from all of our
fights. Added to the ten percent of my salary that I actually got,
(the rest I put automatically towards my buyout, I could have used
less but everybody advised against it), and I was beginning to
accrue a nice amount of money in the ship's bank.

I spent a good part of the day thinking about
the remarks Herza had made the night before. I had been in some
pretty good fights in training on the ship. I had also been beaten
up pretty well by both Herza and Banner, as well as a few others.
Maybe she was correct, maybe my attitude wasn't right. The fights I
had lost on the ship were to people who I didn't think I could beat
in the first place, and those fights were a lot tamer then what
went on in the bars.

"Herza," I asked, "did you really mean what
you said last night about my beating that guy?"

"Of course," she replied. She was lying face
down on her bunk; I was giving her a massage to ease some of her
sore muscles. "You were a better fighter when you showed up here
than anybody expected. You've improved even more since then
too."

"Do you really think I'm better than you or
Banner though?"

"Maybe not better Raj, you do need more
experience, but you should be able to beat us at least half the
time. You practice and work out more than we do and your
determination should be able to make up for your lack of
experience.

"I've also noticed you're working harder now
than before we went to Arboral. But I think I can guess why that
is. You've got better work habits than most leopards, and if you
can apply some of that determination to your fighting, I think
you'll really be something."

"But I wonder if I'm too young yet
sometimes."

"You're approaching your peak physically,
experience is good for making up when you lack in that department.
Or when your opponent has more than you, and in your case that's
not going to happen very often Raj, believe me." She chuckled at
that.

The rest of our time at Tiber base passed
pretty quickly, I didn't do any fighting the next weekend and spent
it with Katrine one day and Mist the next instead. I wanted to
spend a little quality time with each of them, between working on
the ship and going to fight bars in my spare time with Herza, which
was her idea of a great date I guess, I didn’t get to do more than
spend time in bed with them. Yeah, I’m sure for some people that’s
a perfect relationship, but not me.