Children of Steel (43 page)

After finishing that chore, I went to see
what, if any, flying jobs were coming up. It turned out that there
was nothing set for at least a week; they wanted to finish the
local tests first, and complete setting up.

I ended up alternating my duties between
security, and helping to assemble equipment. By the end of the
first week, they had gotten most of the data they wanted on the
local site and it looked good. Another site was then selected and
we began the arduous task of loading the shuttle for its trip.

It took about three trips to shuttle all of
the necessary equipment and personnel to the new site. After a week
working there it was on to the next one.

That was the way it went more or less for the
next three months, go to a site, set up, test, break down, and move
again. Sleeping at the remote sites wasn't much fun, the shelters
being even less insulated than the main camp, but I did get my
winter coat after a couple of weeks, so it wasn't too bad. I also
had to make a lot of side trips for the scientist's, collecting
biological and mineral samples from the different areas that we
encamped at.

The hardest part were the long watches, as
our small security team often got divided in half and sometimes
even in thirds. By the time all of the preliminary tests had been
completed, the geologists had identified four sites for further
testing. The biologists had also determined that there were no
harmful micro-organisms, and we couldn't live off of the local
plant or animal life.

The first casualty was one of the wolf
technicians and it happened out on a test site, she was killed by
an explosive charge that detonated prematurely. The second, a
Rottweiler scout, was lost in the mountains when an ice bridge
collapsed during a sensor planting expedition. These kinds of
things were expected, accidents happen.

The third death was a little more upsetting.
Sure people do get killed by the local wildlife occasionally, but
this was totally unexpected. The biologists had only identified
several smaller sea mammals prior to then, things that were like
penguins and seals and such. They had also found a small land
carnivore, and a few small land omnivores. There wasn't much plant
life on the land, so there wasn't a lot of animal life either.

Then this big one turned up, and it was
big
, about thirteen feet when it reared, and weighing in at
eleven hundred pounds. Anyway the first we saw it, it was attacking
one of the geologists, a Bear, on one of our remote trips. By the
time Tiberius and I had our rifles unslung, and started firing, his
head and chest had already disappeared down the thing's throat. You
could hear the bones cracking, it wasn't a pretty sight.

We closed as fast as we could, I was on my
second clip when I got there, and it had just finished off the
Bear. I just stood there and put about thirty rounds into the head,
while Tiberius put a whole clip in the chest of the thing. We must
have been annoying it, because it charged and took a swipe at me. I
managed to dodge most of it, but still got knocked a good ten feet
back. It fell dead then, at Tiberius' feet, and we quickly cut it
open with our knives, but it was pretty hopeless.

It hadn't swallowed without chewing.

I then had to fly back to get the biologists
to look at it of course. They wanted me to load it in the shuttle
and bring it to them, but I refused, even when Klaus threatened to
fine me fifty grand. Good thing too, Tiberius had to put forty more
rounds into it a half hour later when it started moving again!

When they finally got there, it was really
quite a mess. But due to the cold, at least it had frozen quick. It
turned out that it had a very interesting nervous system, with the
brain spread out in six different areas. It also had at least
twenty separate hearts. Kate told me later that she suspected that
it could regrow lost body parts quite easily.

We packed up and went back to camp for a few
days after that, most of the team being rather demoralized. I also
needed to have my armor repaired, the 'swipe' had torn three long
gashes in the jumpsuit that held it together, and broke one of the
plates as well.

After that we were a lot more careful about
setting up camp. We did see a few more of them, but managed to keep
our distance. For the most part they weren't terribly bright, just
tough. Why they were so tough was the question that worried
Kate.

The fourth month was just a lot of hard work,
except for my seventeenth birthday, which I celebrated with Rudy,
Sheen, Kate, Franz and the Tigers of our security detachment. The
biologist's came up with a poison for the Yeti, the new name of our
nasty little snowman, and went out searching for one using one of
the helicopters. It took two weeks to find one, then another couple
of days to get it to eat the poison, but they got their specimen
without it getting them.

In the fifth month, disaster stuck again. The
marine biologists had gone with a Rottie scout and one of the
Tigers from security, to study the sea life in one of the
helicopter's. They had set up a station on the ice shelf about
sixty miles away, and when they didn't come back to camp that
evening, I flew out in the other heli with two of the Tiger's.

What we found was a forty foot hole in the
ice where the station had been. Nothing else, not even the copter.
I landed us about a quarter of a mile away, and we all went back to
search. We found a set of track's leading away, so while I went
back to get the heli, the rest tracked them down. We found one of
the Otter's wandering around in a daze about an hour later and we
all went back to the camp.

Well the biologists finally found out why the
Yeti’s were built so tough, the seas held something tougher. When
Toiuson finally came around she told us that the ice just started
crumbling beneath them. She was able to scramble to safety with the
scout; the other two got sucked down. A moment latter, tentacles
came up and sliced the Rottweiler in half, as he was crawling from
the edge. She had run at that point and just missed being killed
herself.

That night, everybody was pretty quiet; I was
a bit moody myself. The earlier deaths hadn't been as upsetting
because I was just getting to know the people here. But now I was
pretty good friends with a few of them, and Shaw, the tiger that
had been killed, was one of those. Sheen was upset as well, she
also had been close to Shaw, and it goes without saying how the
other Tigers felt.

Sheen and I were on the first watch that
night, and had volunteered to go straight through, so the Tigers
could mourn their loss. Watch was a pretty easy affair now with the
sensor fence set up and running anyway. Kate and Franz showed up
early on, they knew we were both upset, so they kept us company.
About eleven the Tigers came in, still upset and feeling the lack
of numbers, so we all ended up sleeping in a pile on the floor,
using the cushions from the couches and chairs.

It was about an hour later when Toiuson, the
surviving otter came in. She was supposed to be under light
sedation in her room, but when she had called the security office
asking if we could get the doctor to get her something heavier, we
asked her to join us. Being the only one of your kind is a lonely
thing sometimes. So the morning found the room packed with more
bodies than it was meant for, but at least it was warm.

The next day nobody really felt like doing
anything, so Klaus gave everybody the day off. We only had about a
week’s work left on the geological surveys anyway, but it would be
maybe a month before the Astra came back.

The final piece of work involved setting off
several large explosions and then recording the results through the
several thousand sensor probes that had been buried in the planet.
The first three explosions were set off a day apart, two were on
the other side of the planet, about sixty degrees of latitude
apart. The third was at the north pole.

After these results were analyzed for a few
days it was decided to set off two more blasts as well. They were
both placed a third of the way around the planet from us, in
opposite directions of course, about twenty degrees north of the
Equator. On all of the flights to deliver the bombs it had been
just Rudy and me flying, with Tiberius baby sitting the bombs. He
was the only one on the base with the detonation codes, other than
Klaus maybe.

The bombs weren't that big of an affair
really, about eight inches in diameter and two feet long, with a
yield of maybe one megaton. Small stuff really, but I still didn't
want to be near them when they went off! I really wasn't sure of
the need for all of this seismic work, or the explosives, but the
geologist had told me that this was the 'quick and dirty' method of
doing the work.

It took the three of us two days to set the
charges. Fortunately, we were able to use drill holes that had been
sunk in the previous months work, but it still took all day to
lower them down to the bottom of the bore holes. It all went
without incident, I'm happy to say, and we didn't run into any of
the Yeti's either fortunately.

By the end of the week, the remaining
geologist had analyzed the findings with the engineers and
geo-techs. They all agreed they had enough data for the company's
supercomputers back at Hobson. The biologists had determined that
they had all the samples they wanted, having decided to let the
next group deal with the sea life. So we started to pack the gear
up for removal. That took about three days of relatively easy
work.

Then we waited. We didn't have that much to
do at this point, the Astra was due in about two weeks, but could
show up any time now. We all hoped it was soon, as we had all
gotten fairly sick of the place, and wanted off. Our hopes were
answered five days later when the Astra came in system.

A week and a half later, we were all back on
board ship and bidding a happy, if not so fond, farewell to the
planet. We had left six of our comrades behind, but I was still
surprised to hear Franz say that our losses had been 'light'.

"If that's light, then what's heavy?" I asked
sarcastically.

"Oh, anything over half the survey team," he
answered non-plussed, "and if you work long enough, you'll probably
see it happen at least once too!" he said giving me a sad smile.
"That is of course, assuming you survive it!"

"Ugh, I knew it was dangerous work, but isn't
there anything we can do to make it a little safer?"

"That's why the send us, my boy!" he laughed,
"To make it safer, for them! To make it safer for us would cost a
fortune, probably more then we do."

"It ain't fair!" grumbled Terease from the
couch; we were all at the monthly clan meeting.

"Who ever said life was fair?" Asked Herza,
lying comfortably across my chest.

"Yeah," put in Banner, "It even treats humans
bad sometimes, that's why they don't like to come out here and give
it any extra chances!"

"Just remember this, if it wasn't such a
dangerous job, they may not have ever created us to do it," said
Balizar quietly from the couch.

"Word's to live by!" replied Herza.

"And it's not all that tough when you're
built like we are!" I added smiling. After all it could be worse, I
could have been stuck in a weak human body and expected to survive
the same things. I felt pretty lucky over all.

We were on the final run in to Pharaoh a few
months later, yet another planet I had never been to, or even heard
of, but one on the ship's occasional route. We had a four week run
in, as the Astra was loaded down with two full cargo pods. They
were full of a lot of heavy construction equipment that we had
picked up at our previous stop. It seemed that the people on
Pharaoh liked to build things, very large things at that. I really
had no idea why, somebody said it had to do with the local
religion.

Since Samia things had returned to the
standard routine as always, which was a welcome change after the
reception we had gotten back there. The ship had made two more
stops before retrieving us from Winterland and after this one the
rumor was we’d be back at Hobson once more.

When we got to Pharaoh and started the
unloading job, I was surprised to find that most of the heavy
equipment was for mining and transporting rock.

"Hey, what gives?" I asked Winston, the
Quartermaster, he was the same Fox who had originally outfitted me
when I had come onboard.

"Whadda ya mean?" He asked looking up from
the manifest.

"I thought this equipment was for building.
This is all mining and transport stuff."

"Whadda ya know about Pharaoh's inhabitants?"
He asked me looking back at his scan board.

"That they build things, supposedly very big
things, why?"

"They build using rock, mined rock, in
blocks."

"You're kidding!" I said surprised.

"Nope, ever hear of a place on earth called
Egypt?"

"Can't say that I have," I admitted
embarrassed. They didn't teach us a lot about earth and its
countries at the crèche.

"It’s the place with the pyramids in the
Middle East."

"Oh, the place where they fought all those
classic tank battles in the late twentieth century!" I remembered
those, it was the place where the two classic schools of tank
combat first met, and in relatively equal equipment.

"Geez, is that all you kids are taught
nowadays? Where the big battles were fought?" he grumbled, and
marked another piece off his list. "But yeah, that’s the
place."

"Well I remember it, so what does it have to
do with this place and what they build?"

"They're mostly from the same region, and
they're building their own pyramids now, that's all."

"But using modern equipment. Not bad I
guess."