Interregnum (Children of Steel Book 2)

by John Van Stry

"Herza talked," I sighed.

  "Actually no. Nice to see you did talk to someone about it. Let's just say that when I found out they had paid someone to hack our systems, that I returned the favor."

  I nodded, "I'm almost afraid to ask what else you know about."

  "Well, I did have a rather long conversation with Mist, after she got back to the Astra after you'd all been marooned on that forest planet, but anything you did on the Falcon, if it's not in your records, I wouldn't worry too much about it. People tend to get carried away in a war, so lots of stuff doesn't get reported on."

  "I'm still worried about Cassy," I told him.

  "Well, she's told us the worst of it, so now we can deal with it. She's got you to lean on too, so I'm sure she'll be okay."

  "So what is going to happen to the human prisoners?" I asked after a few minutes of silence.

  "The union workers have almost all elected to stay, seems they have no problems with the change in management. Some of the non-union supervisors have asked to stay as well, but we're still looking at having to send about three thousand back to earth."

  "That's a lot. How many will we be taking?"

  "I'm not sure. King and Sheryl are still discussing it."

  "Sheryl?" I asked curious. I knew King was our captain.

  "Sheryl Clark is the Captain of the Natal, she and King are the two senior company representatives here, so they'll decide what's going to happen."

  "So, Earth next?"

  "It's a possibility," Balizar agreed.

  I nodded and considered that as we flew back, I hadn't been to Earth since I left it.

  When we landed I parked the shuttle and we went our separate ways. I had been assigned to work with one of the crews repairing one of the larger dormitories. Apparently a magnesium flare had set it on fire.

  We spent the next five days repairing the more critical systems and buildings that had been damaged or destroyed in the fight. Once that was done, we loaded more ore into the Astra's cargo containers, filling them up. Next we moved the survivors from Tualatin out of the transport module, and into the main hold, which we converted half of into a barracks of sorts. The troop modules were then loaded up with human prisoners that we were taking back to earth, seven hundred per module, which was probably a little crowded, but they really didn't have a voice in the matter.

  It took us eight days to make it into jump, once in we were told that the trip would take twelve weeks. We already knew that we were going to Earth of course. With all the stuff we were carrying, no one was surprised really, at how long it would take.

  I stumbled into the shuttle bay and yawned, we had been doing a lot of training since we got back into jump. Chief Shandour wasn't exactly happy with our performance at Triste.

  "Damn, what's up with you, Raj?" Dave said laughing, "That's two days in a row now! I thought you gave up dating?"

  "Oh hush, you," I growled.

  "I thought it was all supposed to stop once you got married," Hawse teased.

  "Oh they're new yet, they'll settle down!" Carol laughed.

  "You're all just jealous," I said smiling, and then I stretched while yawning again.

  "Poor Cassandra," Dave laughed.

  "Poor Cassandra? Who do you think is the one keeping me up all night," I snickered.

  "No more nightmares then?" Dave asked looking happy.

  "Eh, a few, but I think she's finally over the worse of it. It just took some time to talk it all out and come to terms with it."

  "So, what are everyone's plans when we get to Earth?" Jeb asked. He'd been released from the infirmary yesterday, and was going through the standard check flights and checkouts after losing an aircraft.

  "Avoiding it," I said and a few of the others laughed.

  "Why would you want to do that?" Hawse asked curious.

  "You've never been to Earth before?" Dave asked him.

  "No, this will be my first time."

  "We're not very popular there overall," Dave said, "and his type," he jerked a thumb at me, "is among the least popular."

  "Yeah, leopards have a bad reputation," I nodded. "But I was raised there, so I don't know that there's a lot I want to see. Not that I ever got to see much of it when I was there."

  "So what, stay on the ship then?"

  "I hear the moon is pretty nice, and I only really got to see a little of it during my advanced class," I said and shrugged.

  "How long do you think we'll be there?" Hawse asked.

  "Not very, less than a week I'm sure," Chief Shandour said coming out of his office, "We need to get back onto the paying routes, and get the ship earning again. Dave, Raj, you two are first up," he said pointing to the door to the simulator room.

  Dave and I grabbed our helmets and headed to the door.

  "The rest of you, tactics quiz."

  They all groaned as we left the room and the door closed behind us. The Astra only had two simulator bays, and they weren't as advanced as the ground based ones, being only a partial motion system and having a much simpler external display due to the constriction on available space.

  We climbed in, got set up, and then flew the Triste assault all over again, only this time we flew it as the enemy. They had all of our flight data of course, and when we joined the battle over the complex, I was rather shocked to see my shuttle blasting around on the deck like a mad man.

  And just how many of the enemy was following it!

  "What the hell?" I said to Dave, "We had that many following us?"

  I broke away from the spectacle and looked at the rest of the field, and picked the nearest one and attacked.

  "Yeah, I guess so," Dave said and launched one of the radar guided missiles at our target, nailing it.

  "Keep an eye out for Jerry and his group," I warned Dave.

  "Will do!"

  I spent the next minute trying to shoot down another shuttle, not an easy task with some many of 'ours' and so few of the targets.

  We were lining up for another shot when suddenly Dave called out "incoming" and I banked down hard to get closer in among the terrain. The ECM gear was going crazy and I saw four fighters, come through and take out eight of 'my' team in an instant, and then they were gone.

  At that moment the shuttle that had been flying on the deck popped up and fired four missiles in quick succession; I remembered then how Dave had done that when I'd pulled us up.

  The six remaining fighters on my side panicked, and three of them became easy pickings for the four remaining shuttles and all of the sudden it was four to three, and my side didn't have the advantage anymore.

  I did manage to tag one more before the simulation ended, but when the fighters blew through a second time, they tagged all of the remaining shuttles on 'my' side.

  "Wow, that was different," I said shaking my head.

  "The chief thought you'd appreciate it," The voice of the simulator operator came over my headset. "

  "I can't believe I did that," I said and started to reset the cockpit switches and climb out of the cockpit.

  "Neither can anyone else," I heard the tech say while laughing, just before I pulled my helmet off.

  "Hey, it worked," Dave said to me as we grabbed our gear and left, "that's all that matters, right?"

  "Yeah, it did, not like I had a lot of options until Jerry's group came down and softened them up. How many shots did they take at us anyway?"

  "Too many!" Dave growled.

  "Yeah, and how many missiles do you think they wasted? That guy who turned and ran at the end, his racks were empty, he had no choice. They should have pasted us all; there were six of us and fifteen of them! But instead they wasted their resources trying to tag you and me.

  "The chief's right, we need to work on our teamwork more. Otherwise we'll end up looking like those min wagers."

  "Can't say I disagree with you, Raj," Dave said nodding. "If Jerry's mates hadn't come through there, we would have all gotten pasted."

  The next day we started flying tw
o team missions, with one crew in each simulator, and each mission stressed teamwork between lead and the wingman. There was a rather large emphasis on flying on the deck as well. The chief noted that what I had done, had worked against the larger numbers, but we needed to work it into a teamwork strategy.

  Normally air-to-air combat started off pretty high up in the atmosphere, and slowly went lower and lower, as you traded altitude for airspeed and energy in the maneuvering that took place during combat. But for us assault types, we were already down near the deck because we were either dropping troops, or supporting troops. This meant we were more accustomed to flying the terrain, so we were used to taking advantage of it, whenever possible.

  Now the chief wanted us to work it into a more viable strategy.

  Some of the others complained about it, when the chief wasn't there of course. Because the odds of us seeing another combat like the one we had just seen were small. With the war over everyone expected to go back to the small-scale operations that were common before it. I agreed that we'd probably never see a large operation like this again as well.

  But I agreed with the chief that we should do it, because I felt that anything that improved our teamwork as a whole, improved our effectiveness, and increased our survivability was a worthwhile investment. I'd seen enough of that in my time as a grunt in Falcon block.

  Dave's only comment about it was that 'you always train for the last war you fought'. Which I guess made sense in a strange sort of way.

  We had a clan meeting about two weeks after we went into jump, and when I walked into Balizar's and Sharazad’s quarters with Cassandra I paused and looked around a moment.

  "Anything wrong?" Cassandra asked me.

  I shook my head, "No, it's just, this is the first time since I left the Astra back before the war started, that it's just us, just the crew of the Astra, and we're meeting here in Bal and Shar's quarters again."

  Sharazad nodded, "It has been a while since we met in here, hasn't it?"

  I steered Cassandra over to what had been my favorite spot, sat her down on the couch, then I sat on the floor in front of her, leaning back against the couch as she put her legs over my shoulders. I just smiled and rubbed her feet as she purred.

  "It's like coming home," I sighed happily.

  Sharazad laughed and Balizar nodded.

  I looked around at the others, it was just the Astra's leopard clan: Sharazad, Balizar, Hawkeye, Banner, Terease, Mist, Lyle, Selenna, Kyrani, Danielle, who I all knew from my last time here, and the four who had joined as part of the increased security onboard: Trig, Shepherd, Thaksin, and Midnight. Midnight's and Shepherd's names were actually based on their looks, Shepherd's spotting pattern on his face did look a bit like that of the dog by the same name, while Midnight had the blackest fur I'd ever seen, and if she had a spotting pattern, I couldn't see it.

  "I'm just happy to have the numbers down again," Kyrani sighed.

  Several all turned to look at her; she blushed at our surprised expressions.

  "What? Some people might like having a dozen males following them around on a leash," and she looked at Selenna who laughed. "I prefer to just have one or two that I already know."

  "Thinking of settling down already?" Sharazad asked surprised.

  Kyrani shook her head, "No, I just prefer knowing my partners."

  I noticed that Hawkeye's ears had peaked up and he was watching her rather closely. I looked back at Cassandra who looked at me and grinned.

  I noticed that Banner and Terease were grinning at each other too.

  "So how many more of these 'special' missions do you think we're going to have?" Trig asked, looking at Balizar.

  "Why ask me?" Balizar said, looking innocent.

  "Because if anyone knows, you do," Selenna said with a smirk.

  "Yes!" "Exactly!" "Obviously!" said the rest of us, agreeing with her.

  Balizar laughed, "Well, we have a couple of cargo runs to make before we can do anything else. As to what other things we might be doing?" he shrugged, "There is nothing on the schedule, but," he looked around at all of us and continued in a very sober voice, "They'll be cleaning up from this war for years. How much of that affects us, is anybody's guess."

  "That bad?" I said surprised.

  "The enemy had a pretty mature intelligence network. We also bypassed a number of smaller bases in the push to take out their home world. Then there are the war criminals," I felt Cassandra stiffen a moment when he said that, "Though most of those later cases will be dealt with discretely."

  "So we should expect more?" Lyle said.

  "Not necessarily, I don't think we'll see any hostile takeovers or raids for a while, but we may see some strange things. Also, Tri-Star shipped a lot of troops to combat positions, as well as the gear and people to support them.

  "Well, all of that stuff needs to go back into storage, and those troops need to be re-tasked and retrained into money making jobs."

  "That'll effect us," Trig said nodding to Shepherd, Midnight, and Thaksin. "We were rushed out of the crèche without any other training than combat and simple security ops."

  Balizar nodded, "I expect the four of you to be reassigned as soon as we get someplace with a good training facility, or where there's a manpower shortage. That's why I've assigned you tech training. Every bit we can teach you here on the Astra is one less course that you'll have to pay for."

  We all agreed with that sentiment, the four of them were carrying much lower debts than normal, because they'd had sixteen months less training than the standard, to get them into service quicker. Well now they had to make up that training, and they had to pay for it.

  However, shipboard training was free, as most instructors donated their time, or worked out any payment issues directly with their students. To get into Helmsmen training, I'd used my 'brownie points' to get my instructor lighter duties during her off duty hours, which she used to train me. I'd also gifted her a number of trophies that I'd taken during different combat operations.

  I used to have quite the collection of officer's hats that I had taken off of dead enemy soldiers. Seeing as Cassandra wanted me to get rid of it, I thought I had come off rather well in the trade.

  The conversation after that was about how well the four of them were doing on their studies, which several of the clan were helping with. After that we talked some about what we'd taken part in during the attack on Triste, and then any issues we were having in general. Those were the kinds of things that Balizar and Sharazad dealt with as clan leaders, and mostly involved the younger ones, and thankfully, not me.

  After the meeting, the single members pretty much paired off for the evening, about the only surprise there was Mist and Thaksin hooking up. I knew that Mist still tended to prefer jaguars to leopards, as they were a lot more laid back, so I found that interesting.

  The six of us who were no longer single sat and talked a little more, about nothing in particular, and then we each went off to bed. I had noticed that Cassandra was a lot happier and more relaxed after we left Triste than she had been since I'd rescued her. I guess her fears of being abandoned or condemned over what had happened had been shown to her to have been baseless. Also she got to have some closure on the issue, as she knew that the ones who had done it had been finally been 'dealt with.'

  11

  We were sitting in the shuttles, listening to the countdown to breakout. Dave and I were the first in line, but the odds of us launching were close to zero, this was the Solar system after all.

  "You know, this is the first time I've been back to Earth, since I left on the Astra," I said to Dave as we waited.

  "That was the last time I was here as well," Dave said from the back.

  "Think we'll launch?" I asked as the count got below the thirty second mark.

  "If we do, don't shoot anything unless it shoots at us first, 'cause I don't want to pay for it!"

  I snorted at that and when the count reached 'five,' I ran the throttles up to
military power, ducked my head down behind the dash and closed my eyes.

  As soon as the flash was over I sat back up and listened as Stasha, the husky working sensor control started to call off the targets in the area, followed by each one's designation.

  There were a lot of them, and more than a few were listed as 'Earth Center traffic control.' Rumor was they were remote missile pods set near the more common lanes to attack anyone getting the wrong idea.

  "Hey, how come the captain hasn't throttled back, or flipped us yet?" I asked Dave. I noticed that the Astra was still burning at seventy percent power.

  "Captains always like to clear the entry zones as soon as possible around Earth. You never know when the next ship is going to jump in, or where. And while space may be vast, it only takes one mistake to ruin your whole day."

  "I thought it wasn't possible to breakout where another ship already was."

  "Yup, that's the theory," Dave said. "They're not even supposed to be able to breakout within a half mile or so of you. But if someone breaks out in front of you, and they're going slower? Not fun.

  "Same if they break out behind you at a faster speed."

  "Huh," I said. "Ever seen it happen?"

  "No, heard about it though. They didn't bump, but panicked the hell out of everyone onboard both ships as they each took evasive action."

  "All shuttles, secure from launch!" Shuttle control ordered, and I pulled the throttles back to off, and started to do my post flight checklist as the shuttle bay door closed and they pumped the air back in.

  "Well, learn something new everyday." I looked at the outside view, displayed on my helmet via the ship's sensor network before shutting it down. There were almost two dozen ships within ten thousand miles of us. That was pretty crowded.

  "Looks like another easy alert cycle," I said as I popped the hatch. I checked the atmosphere out of habit, and seeing that it was good, I unsealed my helmet.

  "Far be it from me to complain," Dave agreed.

  "Let's go grab some lunch, I'm hungry."

  Dave nodded and we went and racked our gear, then went up to the mess.