Children of Steel (51 page)

I checked on the Astra while all this was
going on to see that we had gotten pretty close to it by now. I saw
my missile get tagged by one of the ones that had originally been
launched at me, and the resulting fire ball cleaned out a lot of
the others that had been giving me headaches.

"They're opening fire on the Astra," Rudy
reported. I saw several large missiles go boosting up and I even
managed to tag one with my last LRGM.

"Nice shooting Raj."

"What are those anyway?" I didn't recognize
the type.

"Hull breechers, they don't want to kill the
Astra, just cripple it."

So it went for the next minute or so, Rudy
was able to get the other ship killer within a half mile of the
target before he had to detonate it.

"Well I bet that hurt," Rudy laughed as I
brought us around and started to head back towards the Astra. All
we had left at this point was the thirty millimeter.

The Astra had been doing pretty well itself,
being armed with rail guns; expensive sure, but worth it in this
case.

"Hey Raj, swing back to this heading will
ya?"

"Sure, what's up?" I turned us to the heading
Rudy fed me.

"As long as we can't fight, we might as well
check out Klien and see if he or Buck survived."

"Good point," I headed us out that way, and
Rudy did what he could to make us invisible.

We watched the fight continue without us, we
weren't too worried at this point, Bravo flight had sent the two
remaining shuttles of the four that had gone after the Astra into
retreat. The one which had been chasing Jerry and I was too far out
of position now to be a player, and was heading back to its ship as
well. When Jerry's last ship killer went off a quarter of a mile
from the side of the ship, causing more damage, they broke off in
earnest and started to run for it.

"Think their shuttles will make it back?" I
asked Rudy. I had our engines shut down and we were coasting
ourselves, pretty low on fuel.

"Hard to say, I guess it depends on their
fuel supply. Uh oh, Captain just launched a torp, guess they
weren't running fast enough for him."

I checked the display, but couldn't see it.
"Think it'll hit?"

"Depends on how much damage Jerry did I
guess. The two ships were only one hundred miles apart at launch,
but they're both accelerating away from each other with everything
they've got."

Whoever was controlling the torp was good,
because it hit the ship right were Jerry had destroyed the surface
defenses and sensors. It blew the ship right in half, then the
engines detonated and vaporized the entire rear half of the ship,
kicking the front into a wild spin and breaking it into several
large chunks.

I checked to see where Jerry was, found that
he was well away from the explosion and heading back to the Astra.
The two shuttles that had been retreating started broadcasting
their surrender on an open channel. The other one hadn't been so
lucky, having been engulfed in the fireball.

"I guess that settles that," I turned the
radar back on to speed up the search. It took us about five
minutes, during which Rudy raised the Astra on the com laser and
told them what we were doing.

Klein was dead when we found him, having been
torn apart by the explosion. Buck, his WSO, was dead too. We went
over to the crippled enemy shuttle then, it was only a few miles
away but we still had to get back in and 'fly' over there. It
wasn't showing any lights, but we both got out and floated over
again to make sure. Nobody wants to die of suffocation in space, so
we weren't going to leave without checking.

The WSO was dead in this one, the missile had
hit the canopy and his head was gone. The pilot's seat was empty
however, and we found him, or rather her, in the small hold trying
to get the emergency power going. From the patches that had
obviously been put on her suit by herself, I was surprised she was
still able to work.

She was happy when she saw us; her suit radio
was dead so we had to touch helmets to talk. She surrendered
immediately of course, we didn't tell her about the ship
however.

We got her inside the shuttle, and while I
started heading back for the Astra, Rudy set about patching the few
holes we had gotten ourselves, so we could get an atmosphere
inside. Twenty minutes later we had air and I helped Rudy get her
out of her suit, we discovered that she was a young and very
attractive silver fox.

I had laid in a minimum fuel approach to the
Astra due to our fuel status, so we wouldn't be back for almost two
and a half hours. At least they weren't accelerating away from us
anymore, actually they were back to decelerating, which meant that
they were effectively accelerating towards us. As for our prisoner,
she wasn't too badly hurt, some depressurization burns, and a few
good cuts. But nothing we couldn't handle with the supplies at
hand.

She was so thankful that we had come back and
not left her there to suffocate, that she offered us everything she
had, namely herself. Rudy and I had the manners to politely refuse
and tell her just to calm down and relax. But I couldn't blame her;
if I was in her place I'd be pretty thankful too. It's not that
everybody doesn't check for survivors either, it's just that
sometimes they can't find you or get back to you, or worst of all,
there's nobody left.

We kept pretty quiet on the way back, after
all what do you say to someone who was trying to kill you just a
few minutes ago? Especially when you don't want to be the one to
tell them that all of their comrades are now just ionized particles
drifting on the solar wind.

When we docked with the Astra we saw that she
hadn't escaped totally unscathed, there was some damage to the
forward sensor array, and one of the pods had a few holes in it.
But all in all nothing had done any serious damage. The shuttles
were a different story of course.

My own had several fist sized holes in it,
and one of the wings had been badly damaged. Gabe's was shot full
of holes, and Dave had even picked up a little shrapnel when they
had been too close to a detonating breeching charge. Jerry's was
spotless, except for where a piece of the exploding ship had barely
clipped the tip of his vertical stabilizer. Somehow none of us were
surprised by that.

The other two of our shuttles had some damage
too, but it was a toss up between Gabe and myself for the worse.
Nobody mentioned Klien of course.

As for the two enemy shuttles, or rather our
new ones, they were both moderately damaged, but the WSO in one had
been hurt pretty bad and his station was totally trashed. They
weren't as good as ours either, less weapons capability, less ECM,
and a smaller hold in the back.

As for the prisoners, they were all sent down
to the brig, or sick bay, depending. Their employer didn't turn out
to be a surprise either, Rudy and I had figured it out as soon as
we saw the suit on the dead WSO, The Masong Trading Franchise. I
was willing to bet that was why the Captain had used a nuclear torp
instead of one of the conventional ones. Masong was a loosely
organized company and in the past they had wiped out several ground
bases rather than let the forces there surrender. One of those
bases belonged to Tri-Star, so from that moment on we had joined
the large group of corporations trying to put Masong out of
business. The fact that they had sent Weasel assassin teams to
other corps crèches during the Corporate War's had also given them
a very bad reputation as well.

The biggest problem however, was that being a
franchise, their corporate headquarters always claimed no
responsibility for those who were practicing such abhorrent
behavior, and that they would be separated from the company as soon
as possible. Sure enough, the next time you saw that ship, it had a
different name, papers, crew, etc, and everybody would claim that
it was a 'different' ship. So legally there wasn't much that could
be done, hence the ten megaton torp goodbye.

Nobody really blamed the prisoners though;
they just had the bad luck to be born into a really bad company.
Usually companies would ransom back such captured employees, there
were conventions and legalities covering such behavior. Masong
however often didn't want to spend the cash and many of their
people didn't want to go back even when they did.

What that meant was that the holding or
capturing company would assess a debt based on losses in the action
that had taken place. That became your new bill, and they could
even stick interest on that! As for the job you got, it usually
wasn't anything good, after all how do they know they can trust you
and you're not a plant? With a company like Masong, our prisoners
would probably be working in the mines we’d just come from or
something equally bad if they stayed. Not an enjoyable future to be
sure.

We all headed back into the flight room to
find out what the plan was now. The shuttle techs were working like
maniacs trying to get the three good shuttles loaded and back on
the launch rack.

"Well the first round has gone in our favor,
but don't go feeling cocky yet," the Chief started in as soon as we
entered the room. "It wasn't just chance that they were waiting for
us, we scored another four craft in the area as well. It looks like
they saturated the most likely area and we just happened to come
out on the edge of it.

"Now as for the other four, only one is in
any kind of position to give us any grief, but it changed course
after we torped the enemy ship. However, they know our course and
it'll be four days before we're inside the local defenses."

That started us all muttering among
ourselves.

"So here's the plan, the Captain is going to
start with a course change as soon as that last ship makes its
jump, the others already have. Then he'll lay a bunch of mines
behind us, and we'll have two ships on picket duty at any time.
Hopefully if anybody jumps out near us we'll be able to nail them
before they nail us.

"Now get back down there and help the techs
fix the shuttles, I'll give you your orders as I write 'em.
Dismissed."

We all went back down to the bay, and did
what we could to get the shuttles in order. Within an hour we had
two out on station, and after that the next four days was
continuous work. Either repairing shuttles, or sitting on station.
At least we could take naps during the later.

The trip finished without further incident,
and we found out later on that there had actually been ten ships
spread out in the most likely areas of our entry. If we had broke
out inside one of those groups rather than outside, we wouldn't
have lasted long at all.

I had never known that the heavy and super
dense elements were worth that much.

That they knew exactly when we left, how much
we were carrying and our exit vectors, made it obvious that there
was definitely a spy back at Osborne. I didn’t know if that was
better or worse than the one we suspected the fanatics had here at
Hobson’s Choice.

Unloading went easier than normal this time;
they left most of the stuff in orbit to be processed there. That
was fine with me, I just wanted to sack out as soon as possible,
the double shifts had really been a strain.

Once planet side we had a going away party
for all those who were leaving. It was the first thing we did
actually, as some of the people going would be leaving the next
day. It was a pretty good bash, no outsiders allowed of course, and
I got pretty stewed like most everyone else.

When I awoke however, I found myself tied
hand and foot, spread eagle outside a third story window. I threw
up, just barely missing myself, and looked around at my
predicament.

"Hello?" I asked quietly. No answer of
course. I could see that I was still on company grounds, actually
it looked like the barracks building, but I was having a hard time
moving my head as it hurt pretty bad still. My hangover was
definitely making things worse, I really needed an anti-tox pill. I
must have forgotten to take one before I went to sleep.

But then I never
had
gone to sleep,
the last I remembered was Terease handing me a drink. That woke me
up, I straightened suddenly as I realized she had finally gotten
her revenge!

"Owww" My head spun from the sudden movement.
If I wasn't so sick, it wouldn't be so hard to get out. I started
to examine the situation more closely, and slowly as my head was
really giving me a rough time.

My hands and legs were tied to rings set at
the window's edge. The bonds were padded somewhat, so I wouldn't
have to worry about a total lose of circulation. But it still hurt.
There wasn't any kind of ledge that I could get my heels on
unfortunately, and when I tried to get a claw on the ropes, I found
to my chagrin that somebody had taken the time to give me a
manicure.

"Damn!"

The window next to me suddenly slid open, "Hi
Raj!" It was Herza.

"I though everybody promised not to help
her!" I glared accusingly, but not too successfully I feared.

"Oh, she did it all by herself believe me.
She even carried you up the three flights of stairs all by
herself," she purred, "You would have been proud Raj."

"Great, how about helping me get down from
here?"

"Now Raj! That would be cheating," she
grinned.

"Then why are you here? To gloat?" My head
started to spin again for a second, whatever she had used was
really messing me up.

"A little," she smiled again, "but I wanted
to say goodbye, I'm leaving soon, and I don't think you'll be free
by then."

"Oh," I waited a sec for my head to clear a
little bit, "You wouldn't have an anti-tox pill by any chance would
you?" I pleaded, "Whatever she gave me is really making me
sick."