Children of Steel

by John Van Stry

  “I heard you were responsible for some of the damage here at the port before we came in."

  I noticed the Captain’s ears perked up a bit at that.

  “I had help Sir.”

  “Still, it was an impressive piece of work. What we need you to do now is help the Captain lead his group up to this area on here on the map.”

  I looked at the area he was pointing at on the map on the table and nodded, “I’m familiar with that area Sir, we covered these approaches,” I pointed to two different places on the map leading into the one he had indicated. “On our way down here.”

  “Good, well you both had better get started then. Good day Gentlemen."

  I followed the Captain out of the tent. “How are we traveling?” I asked.

  “By foot, they haven’t brought our ground vehicles down yet, and we don’t have the time to wait for them. This is a fast assault infantry unit and we cover a lot of ground pretty fast.” He looked over at me. “I hope you can keep up with us.”

  I bristled a bit at that, “I’m sure I’ll be able to keep up with your men Captain.”

  “We’re all wolves and cheetahs in this outfit Warrant, and we’re all distance runners. You probably have a hundred pounds on my average trooper. I’m not doubting your abilities as a soldier, but we cover a lot of ground in this outfit on foot when we have to, it’s our job.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll keep up,” I replied a little tersely.

  His people were all ready to go as soon as we got to them, and we headed out immediately. I went over what I felt was the best route as we moved, the two of us up at the head of the spread out column. Everyone kept a good distance from one and another, to avoid being taken out by a single attack.

  As time wore on I had to spend more time at the front to point out the path to take and what to avoid as possible ambush sites. We did make contact several times with the enemy and by late afternoon I welcomed each break as it gave me a chance to cool down and catch my breath. The Captain hadn’t been kidding and I was having trouble keeping up, long distance running was not my forte and this group covered a lot of ground moving at a very fast pace. The Captain’s constant checking with me to make sure I was still up with the lead element wasn’t making me very happy either. I might be having a hard time of it, but I wasn’t going to slack off and let him think I couldn’t hack it. These guys might not be from my corp, but I had my orders.

  “You still with us there Warrant?” The Sergeant I was working with up front asked me after a short water break.

  “Yeah, I’m here.” I grumbled panting.

  “Why don’t you let my men take that pack for you at least, I could split it between a couple of them.

  “No thanks.”

  “What, worried we might steal it?” he laughed.

  I looked up at him, “Yeah actually. I don’t know any of you guys and you don’t even work for the same company.”

  “So you don’t trust us.”

  “I don’t trust easily. Sorry.”

  “Well if we really wanted what you had in your backpack we could just shoot you and take it.”

  “Possibly, but you’d lose at least a half dozen men in the process.”

  “Not if I just wait until you pass out from the heat and exhaustion. Which you will do soon enough if you don’t lose some of that load. Then I could just take it from your unconscious body.” He pointed out.

  “Good point,” I sighed and dumped my backpack.

  He called over four of his men then and split my pack among them to carry.

  “See, that wasn’t so bad, was it?”

  I smiled wryly at him, “I won’t know until it comes time to get it all back, now will I?”

  He chuckled and gave me a slap on the shoulder, “Good point.” He got up then, “Well let’s go look for that game trail you said was up ahead.”

  I nodded and headed off after him. I was embarrassed at having to hand over my pack, but the loss of weight really did help a lot.

  “So the word is you had a little something to do with all that destruction we saw on the ground back there at the landing site.”

  I nodded, “Yes, I had a hand in it.”

  “A bit risky, wasn’t it?”

  “And this isn’t?”

  “We’ve got a hundred and eighty men with us, you had what? Two?”

  “Well I didn’t join special ops to sightsee.”

  He nodded as we jogged along. I took another look at the map and pointed out a few of the landmarks up ahead he needed to send scouts to.

  After he sent them off and we continued to move on down the narrow trail as it wound around the rocks and through the brush.

  “So why did you join then?”

  “To kill the enemy, why else?”

  “Been doing it long?”

  “Special ops? About half a year.”

  “You don’t look like a fresh recruit.”

  “I’m not, I volunteered when they formed my Block.”

  “I’d noticed the flight wings on your collar. Was kind of curious how you ended up as a ground pounder.”

  “Shuttle pilots don’t get a lot of combat time.” I observed pausing to use my binoculars to scan the hillside up ahead.

  “True, but they live longer.”

  I shrugged, “Longevity isn’t the issue anymore.”

  “What is?”

  “Body count.” I said and started off again.

  He thought about that for a while as we moved through a narrow define that forced everyone to stretch out even more to avoid being an easy target until we could have some men take up positions on the rises to either side of it.

  “There’s more to life than killing the enemy you know.” He said a bit later when we started down a hillside in among the local variant of trees.

  “Not anymore.”

  “So what will you do when we finally kill them all, when there aren’t any left?”

  I shrugged, “Deal with that when the day comes. Why do you care?”

  “When you’ve been doing this job as long as I have, you learn a few things.” He said dropping back even with me and lowering his voice, “People in unit’s like this, they’re afraid of the hotdogs, the guys with a score to settle or a point to prove. They don’t like the type that charges right in, cause then the rest of us have to charge right in too.”

  “Don’t worry Sergeant, I don’t expect any of you to follow me into trouble or back me up if things go wrong,” I growled softly.

  “You got me wrong Son, if you get in it we’ll all get in it too, one guy charges, we all charge, we’re infantry it’s what we do. But none of these boys and girls are special ops, they don’t have the training you do.

  “So don’t go leading my troops into a meat grinder because you just have to take that target to satisfy your own sense of revenge, you might be able to handle it, but they sure can’t.”

  I turned my head and looked at him.

  “What makes you think I’ll just go charging into anything?”

  “Like I said, I’ve been doing this a long time. I’ve seen your type before; consequences don’t ever enter into your mind. When you’re only dealing with two people, consequences aren’t important. But when you’ve got a couple hundred, consequences start to matter.”

  “Like the difference between a shuttle and starship.”

  “Exactly.”

  I nodded, “I got you Sergeant.”

  “Good.”

  “So why are you and I having this conversation and not the Captain?”

  “The Captain isn’t exactly comfortable with someone who isn’t exactly in his chain of command. He’s never had to work with someone from another corporation either.”

  “And you have?”

  “More or less, the lower your rank, the less you care about those kinds of things.”

  I nodded, “You know, I’ve never spent any real time with someone from any of the other corps either. Well at least not in this kind of situ
ation.”

  “Yeah I know what you mean. Kind of goes against the grain. But this is shaping up to be a long haul, so I’m sure we’re all gonna have to get used to it.”

  I had the feeling that there was more than a little truth in that.

  We got into position by nightfall and dug in for the evening on the outskirts of one of the major towns. The rules for engagement with the towns were pretty strict; any bloodbaths would definitely meet with sanctions from the Earth government. So each of the towns would be surrounded, isolated, and taken carefully in an attempt to keep civilian casualties at a minimum.

  I met that night with the Captain and filled him in on what I knew about the town, which wasn’t much. The place was big enough to make it hard for three animen to go sneaking into and around. But we had scouted the farms and the edges of the town and I gave him all the information I could about those. The updated maps that he was getting from orbit were pretty high definition, so he wasn’t lacking for information about the lay of the land.

  That morning we advanced on the town. The fighting at the border was tough, the town’s people put up a pretty stiff resistance. But they didn’t have the weapons or the armor that we had, or the experience. Their losses were pretty heavy after the first few hours of fighting. After that they pulled back into the buildings inside. That’s when the fighting got nasty for us, moving building to building, clearing out floors; it was time consuming and dangerous work. Most of the people surrendered without a fight, a few put up a little, but some gave their all. And that made the job both dangerous and difficult. It took us four days to make the town more or less safe.

  I sat down with the Sergeant I’d been working with since I started with the group. We’d gotten in the habit of eating together and exchanging notes about our experiences.

  “Doesn’t look like your corp’s any better on the rations than mine,” he chuckled.

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if they came from the same place.”

  “Got that right. So tell me,” he said looking up from his food pack. “You’ve been here for a while; ever get to find out what these people here are like normally?”

  I snorted, “Hell no, didn’t want to get seen. Besides I already know what they’re like,” I growled.

  “What? The way they’ve been fighting us? That’s to be expected, we’re invading their homes after all.”

  I shook my head, “No. They took one of our complexes last year. I was part of the action to take the place back. They executed my brother when he surrender and tortured my sister, almost to death, when she wouldn’t be a sex toy.” I snarled out the last bit, and looked down at the ground taking a moment to let the anger go.

  “I’d heard rumors about what they did at some of the places they took. Never met anyone who saw it first hand though.” He sighed and took a drink from his canteen, “So you think these folks are cut from the same cloth?”

  “Guilt by association.” I growled and went back to eating my food, opening a third ration pack. “All I know is they hate us enough to slaughter and torture anyone that gets in their way, even other humans.”

  “Yeah, I’ve seen that type before. They think humanity is so superior and special, and then they see us, and see their own failings reflected in us, and suddenly they realize that they’re not so special. Kind of freaks them out.”

  “Why? It’s not like we’re like them!”

  “Oh we’re way too much like them, more than they can stand!” He chuckled.

  “You know, I had this same conversation with another person a while back, so I asked one of the company’s geneticists about it. He said we’ve got very little human stock in us, that it all came from our animal ancestors.”

  The Sergeant snickered at that and tossed his now empty ration pack with the others.

  “Yeah, they say that, but it’s not exactly the truth.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked curious, looking up at him from my eating.

  “Well, yeah only some of the physical genetic material in us is human. And a big chunk is animal, from whatever stock we’re based on. But the rest? The biggest chunk? Well the parts might have come from the animal stock, but it’s been re-arranged to human patterns.”

  I blinked at him, “I don’t know if I follow.”

  “That portion of your gene’s is exactly like those in a human. The only reason they didn’t use human material for that part of you is because it’s cheaper to use the animal portion. Also, legally, if more than half of your physical genes come from a human, regardless of the pattern, you’re human. So they have to use animal DNA.”

  “So why didn’t he tell me that then?” I asked, a little confused, dinner forgotten.

  “They’re not supposed to talk about it I guess. Also from what I understand the number of differences between your original genes and what they reshape them to isn’t as big a difference as humans want to admit, or are comfortable knowing.”

  “So how do you know all this?”

  He shrugged, “Been doing this job for forty years now, I get bored in my off time, so I do a little research here and there, a little hacking now and then.”

  “So why tell me this?” I looked around, the others had left us alone and our voices weren’t pitched to carry. Soldiers learn pretty quickly when it’s not wise to snoop on the conversations of their superiors.

  “Who else can I tell?” he chuckled. “If I tell the officers, they might get bent out of shape, figure I’m being subversive. The enlisted? They’re still young and stupid, they’d blab. Some of the other NCO’s know, we’ve talked about it before. As for you,” he grinned, “who are you going to tell? You don’t work for Hudson, so if you run your mouth when you get home it’s your worry, not mine.”

  I thought about that and remembered my food, and started to eat again.

  “Think they’d psych a guy for going on about that kind of thing?” I asked between bites.

  “Maybe, I don’t know. Probably depends on how you were taking it. Maybe if you were a cull.”

  I finished my ration pack and debated a fourth one, I was still a little hungry, but I didn’t want to bog myself down with too much food.

  “What the heck is a cull?”

  “They don’t have that term over in Tri-Star?”

  “Obviously, so what’s it mean?”

  “You know how some folks can’t deal with life too well? The one’s that have to be ‘put down’, disposed of?”

  I nodded, my hunger forgotten suddenly as I thought about my own close escape. “It’s not a topic considered safe to talk about, everyone considers it bad luck.”

  “Yeah well, not all culls are accidental. Some of them are planned.” He had lowered his voice so I had to lean forward to hear him, obviously this wasn’t a safe subject to talk about. “You see, some sequences lead to more aggressive behavior than others. I’ve hacked a lot of papers on the subject; one of my brothers was a cull.”

  I nodded, not saying anything.

  “The aggressiveness makes for good soldiers, but just as often they flip out and have to be killed.”

  “So why do it?” I asked shocked, “If it only works half the time? That’s pretty wasteful, not to mention expensive.”

  “Because culling serves as a strong object lesson to the rest of us. We all see what happens to anybody who starts to engage in wild or erratic behavior, to those who don’t fit in, or who can’t control themselves.”

  I felt a strange tingling in my hands, and suddenly noticed I’d clenched my fists so tightly that my claws had dug into my palms. I let out the breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. “How often do they do this?”

  He shrugged, “Hard to say, I think it depends on the company. My brother was the only cull in my crèche group; he was about five when they got him. He had a violent temper, and turned it on anyone nearby, including me. But remember not all of them get killed, a lot make it to adulthood.”

  “So why tell me?” I asked again.

&
nbsp; “Because the corporations usually keep track of the culls, the ones that haven’t been put down yet. They make good soldiers, but there’s always that chance.”

  “You think I’m one, don’t you?” I whispered.

  He nodded, “Yeah, you’ve been like a machine when we’re out there fighting. I can tell you’ve got a lot of anger and hate driving you, but you’ve got it focused on the task at hand.”

  “So, I should be in the clear, right?”

  “You’re a pretty good kid, it’s nice to see you didn’t go down the path my brother did. But what happens when they’re all gone Warrant? What then?”

  “I don’t know, I haven’t thought that far ahead.”

  “Well surely there has to be someone out there it’s worth thinking about it for.”

  “Not anymore,” I sighed and hung my head closing my eyes.

  “Just because they’re not here anymore, doesn’t mean you still can’t do it for them,” he said getting up. “I need to make the rounds, talk to you later."

  I just nodded and sat there, trying not to cry as I thought about what he’d just said. I’d lost my reason’s to go on past my revenge. Or had I? Cassy would want me to; I’d be a fool to think otherwise, even for a second. And then there was Herza. And my cubs. Hell, even Helena.

  I shook my head and took a couple of deep breaths to get myself under control. He was right, part of me wanted to rage against what he said, to yell out that I had no reasons no one to do it for. But that would be a lie, both to her memory and to myself. I’d have my revenge, I’d kill every last bastard that they’d let me kill. But after that maybe I still had a life, maybe I still had people who loved me and needed me. I couldn’t let them or Cassandra down, could I? Maybe I could go on.

  27

  The next week was pretty rough. The other major bases didn’t fall as easily as the first one had, the toughest of them held out for almost seven days until the defending commander set off a tac nuke. The response from orbit was pretty harsh and left a three mile wide crater where the base had been.