INTERREGNUM

A sequel to Children of Steel

Published by John Van Stry

Copyright 2015 John Van Stry

Copyright John Van Stry 2015

Cover Credits: Amanda Rozga http://rozga.weebly.com/

No part of this eBook may be reproduced in any form without expressed, written consent from the author.

Any resemblance between characters in this story and people living or dead is purely coincidental. This is a work of fiction created by the author and the author retains all rights to the material in this story.

License Notes

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

P68300DE

1

"Launch detected!" Dave said from the back, and then I heard him swear over the intercom, "Correction multiple launches detected!"

I ran the throttles up to max, lifted them over the gates and firewalled them, watching as the engine gauges did their little dance as the afterburners both lit off without a problem.

I pushed the 'Master Threat' button, killing the alarm in my headset and extinguishing the light, then reached up to dial the TFR down to one hundred feet, and set the ride to 'hard.'

"Separation?" I asked.

"Ten seconds!" Dave replied.

I looked at the terrain ahead, as the shuttle began to buck up and down rather severely, trying to get us down to only a hundred feet over the hilly ground, there was a large hill dead ahead, and going over that would put us in clear view of the missile's radar. I pushed the stick to the left, along with a touch of left rudder to try and take us down the valley I could see to the side of the hill.

Just at that moment the ship unloaded as the radar changed target and we rolled ninety degrees and I swore loudly as I rolled it back. Using the stick wasn't recommended when the Terrain Following Radar was engaged, but I didn't have the time to mess with the flight director and wait for it to move us around.

Just as I got it level, the Master Caution light came on.

"TFR channel one fail!" Dave called.

I swore again, "Reset!"

"Not responding!"

I pushed the button on the throttle and dumped out some chaff, then triggered two flares after that. I could see the valley, we'd be there in a second, and the heads up showed we'd just crossed the mach barrier as one point two crossed under the needle. The missiles were probably doing mach six.

"Bus one failure! Main computer restart!"

I swore again and checked my backups, they all looked fine, and the main instrument panel didn't even blink as the second bus and backup computer picked up the load. The entrance to the valley flashed by, the ride line on the display showed no problems up ahead. Mach two passed by the speed indicator. I dumped some more chaff and flares.

"Broke lock!" Dave called.

"Bus one?" I asked.

"Gone."

I grumbled and pushed the 'Master Caution' button to clear it, and suddenly my hand hit my knee and my chin hit my chest.

"Fly up!" Dave grunted, followed by a string of obscenities.

"Shit," I swore and grabbed the stick and pulled the throttles to idle. TFR channel two had failed and the last act of the TFR was to generate a pull up when that happened to keep you from flying into anything. We were already passing ten thousand feet as I rolled us inverted and pulled hard to the deck.

"Active Radar." David paused, "Target Radar," another pause, "Radar Lock." A moment later, "I think they just launched twenty missiles at us."

I grunted and slammed the throttles back to mil power rolling us upright. "Hold on," I growled, we were still supersonic and I pulled hard, taking us up to ten G's in an attempt not to slam into the ground. I lost vision completely for a moment, when it came back we were now subsonic, the hard pull had burned off a lot of our speed, and we were at tree top level.

The shuttle shuddered a moment and I raised us up a bit higher.

"What was that?" I swore.

"We clipped a tree."

I swore again, "How bad is it?"

"I think we lost about two feet of the starboard wing."

I nodded, and banked hard to the left, feeding in enough rudder to keep us from sinking down any lower, as I dodged another hill.

"Three seconds!" Dave called and I snap rolled us back to the right on our side and pulled so hard that I had tunnel vision. I could actually see the missiles as they went by. One of them exploded and I could hear the rattle of the shrapnel hitting the shuttle, which shook heavily in the shockwave.

My master warning light lit up, along with my engine number two firelight as I rolled us wings level. I could see the engine gauges for number two were all running down to zero, except the temperature gauge and the EGT. I triggered the fire bottle for number two and pushed engine one back up into afterburner. Maybe not a safe move, but this wasn't a safe place.

I looked at the engine gauges for number one. They hadn't budged; they were still at Mil and not going anywhere.

"I've lost control of engine one," I said and looked at our speed; we were point eight mach and slowing.

"Bingo fuel," Dave said.

"What?" I checked the gauges again.

"We're leaking. Must have holed a tank. Let me see if I can move it around."

I checked the gauges for the five tanks, two looked solid.

"Move it to two."

"Got it."

"Time to target?" I asked and tried to find the target guide on my helmet display.

Just as I noticed it wasn't moving, Dave started talking, "Bus two failure, main computer failure, backup computer restart, generator one failure, generator two failure. Ah hell."

I swore and slapped the toggles to turn off everything I didn't need, we were on batteries now. "How's the APU?" I asked.

"Launch radar!" Dave said again.

I looked around, we had come out onto the plains, and I could see a city off in the distance, probably our target. I pushed us down as close to the ground as I thought I could get. The backup instruments had us at point six mach, about four hundred knots.

"Get that APU up and those jammers back online!" I growled.

"APU is gone; it must have taken damage, batteries at fifty percent and dropping."

"Range to target?"

"Looks like a hundred miles."

"Arm the missiles,"

"Armed."

"Full power to jammers."

"Jammers on."

I looked at the power gauge on the batteries, with the jammers back on; it had started to drop fast.

I started to count down, "Launch in five, four," I pulled up hard on the stick until the nose was at thirty-five degrees, "three, two," I saw one of our missiles come off the rail and streak away, Dave had launched it early, I said "one" and then with a jerk everything froze.

"End Mission." Came over the headset and I sighed and popped the canopy release and took off my helmet. Setting it on the canopy rail I undid my harness and stretched a bit, enjoying the cool air before climbing up out of my seat.

"I was going to complain about that launch," I said looking back to Dave who was climbing out of the rear cockpit seat in the simulator. "How'd you know?"

"I was watching the mirrors; I saw a flash and figured it was a missile closing on us. I was in the process of launching number two when we got tagged. Wonder if it got clear?"

I shrugged, "Let's go ask the console operators and see how they scored us."

Dave nodded and we grabbed our helmet bags from the hooks on the outside of the simulator and put our helmets away. I stretched again; we'd been in there for over two hours.

The platform shook slightly as the access ramp clicked into place against it, the platform itself was suspended in the middle of a thirty-foot-wide bubble, on which the simulation was displayed. Through the use of hydraulics and gravity plates it gave a very realistic recreation of flying a shuttle.

We walked up the ramp and exited through the hatch and went out into the main access hallway. There were a dozen domes on either side of the hall, I noticed that all of them were powered down at this point, and there were two other crews exiting theirs as well.

"Well, that looks good," Dave said.

"Yeah, we might even be in the running," I agreed as we headed down to the far end of the hallway, and exited through the double doors into the complex's control suite.

The control suite was a fairly large room, there were twenty-four consoles spaced equally around the perimeter of the room, with one main console on a raised circular dais in the middle. Each console had a series of screens above it, except for the main one. The three consoles corresponding to our simulator and the other two we'd seen crews exiting were still manned by one operator each. They were probably finishing up the scores.

I looked up at the main console, a senior chief warrant officer, a silver fox by the name of Pipes, was keeping an eye on her techs.

"Chief, how close did we get?" I asked.

She glanced down at her board then looked up at us. "Nine miles, five hundred sixty-two feet, seven inches."

"Did our second missile clear the rack?" Dave asked.

"That was the second missile. The first one was over ten miles out."

The other two crews followed us in then. I didn't know either of them, as they weren't from the Astra. Only three crews from the Astra had joined the competition, and one had gotten knocked out in the first round. I didn't see the other crew here, so they must have gotten knocked out earlier in the mission.

"Hey, Chief," A red fox from one of the other teams called out. "Who won?"

"Henri and Delage from the Nieuport," She said motioning to the marten and wolf that were the last into the room.

"We won?" The marten said looking rather pleased with himself. I'd seen him around before, mainly because Dave was hitting on his WSO, a female wolf named Bristel.

I shrugged and walked over and stuck out my hand, "Well, congratulations, how close did you get?"

"Close?" He said looking at me with a sly smile as we shook hands.

"Son-of-a-bitch, you nailed it, didn't you?" I said laughing.

"Welllll, Yeah. We nailed it," he said laughing as well.

"Who took second?" Dave asked looking up at the chief.

"You did, by three feet, six inches."

"Aww damn, three and a half feet?" the red fox complained.

"How did you get past the second channel failure on the TFR?" I asked him curious.

"Oh, when the first channel failed, I turned it off."

I blinked looking at him impressed. "You turned it off when you still had a channel working?"

He nodded, "Had that same damn thing happen to me once during the war, got my shuttle shot out from under me and had to eject. We," he jerked his thumb towards his WSO who was talking rather happily with Dave at this point, "almost spent the rest of the war in a prison camp, or worse. Ever since then, if I only have one channel, I turn the damn thing off. Nothing worse than becoming a popup target in a missile rich environment!"

"Huh, I hadn't thought of that," I said nodding. "Still, it's impressive. I'll have to try that in the sim when I replay this."

He looked around, "Well, let's see how many of our compatriots are at the bar, I believe the first round is on me."

The red fox came over and shook the marten's hand, and then mine, "Three feet," he sighed shaking his head.

"Three and a half feet," I corrected smiling.

"Let's get to the bar before he starts in on jokes about it only being six inches," said the chief climbing down from her raised console and coming over to join us.

"Well, now it's a matter of honor, Pipes!" the red fox said laughing. "But yes, I could use a drink after that!"

We all followed the chief out to the bar as I called Cassandra to let her know the competition was over, and I'd be back in an hour or two.

2

We’d been in port at Hobson’s Choice for about a month, which was rather surprising. I had a pretty good idea what it cost the company to pull the Astra off of her regular scheduled route, but then the whole war really had been very costly for Tri-Star. Everyone had been warned that the bonus situation for this year wasn’t going to be good, and probably not next year either.

The company and the captain however needed this downtime to do repairs and refits on a good deal of the ship, the war had not been easy on the Astra. The engines also needed a rebuild, so Terease was spending most of her days and nights aboard ship, which at times left her mate Banner kind of grumpy. Apparently, the engines on every ship were a custom build, so rebuilds had to be heavily supervised by the ship’s engineers. Of which Terease was now one of the senior ones.

The rest of us were almost equally busy installing new upgraded weapon systems into the Astra, and redoing the many 'temporary' emergency repairs that the ship had picked up over the last couple of years with more permanent ones. At least the local shipyard was able to help us with a lot of that work, as that didn’t require any specialized ship knowledge. So Cassandra and I got to spend most of our evenings, as well as our Sundays, planet side.

"Hon?" I said yawning, it was early on one of our off days, and I had been thinking of all that bonus money sitting in my account for the last several weeks. I hadn’t applied any of it toward my buyout yet. To be honest, when I went into special ops, I cut down my pay-off option percentage to only a fifth of my income. I figured I probably wouldn’t survive to the end of the war, so I’d been banking as much as I could and I’d set my children as the beneficiaries of my account if I died.

"Yes, Raj?" Cassandra replied drowsily, turning to snuggle up under my chin. She was almost fully recovered from her years in the prison camp at this point, physically at least. She was still having nightmares, but the psychs had said that over time those would go away.

"I’ve been thinking," I said and was surprised when she suddenly stiffened. "What?" I growled teasingly.

"That’s when you’re your most dangerous," she grumbled. "Thinking about what?"

"Well, I was talking with Banner the other day and he mentioned that if it hadn’t been for Terease’s being instrumental to the Astra that he would have been transferred out at the last rotation. But because she made it clear she went where he went, they kept him here."

"So?" Cassandra asked.

"Well, I don’t know if you realize it, but I have a lot of money built up in my account and...."

"No," Cassandra said.

"No?" I grumbled, "You haven’t even heard me out."

"You’re not that hard to figure out, Raj," she grumbled back.

"Do you even know how much I have in the bank?" I sighed.

"Yes, actually."

"What?" I asked surprised.

"I’m in intelligence, dear, what, you think I don’t keep tabs on you?" she chuckled.

"You could be bought out, completely. Free and clear."

"No, Raj," She growled.

"Cassy?" I said softly.

"No, Raj. I’m serious. That’s your money. I read what you went through to earn all those rewards. Besides, your debt is huge compared to mine. You’re applying that money to your account, and that’s final."

"Hon, with you paid off, that would almost guarantee that we’d be posted together from now on."

"No, Raj!" She growled and I could feel her claws starting to sink into my skin.

"Cassy honey?" I purred as sweetly as I could. "What do you think will happen to me if we get split up again?"

"You’ll be fine, Raj," she was still growling.

"If I knew you were in a nice safe place I’d be fine. But what are the odds of that?"

"Raj...."

"We are doing this, Cassy, because it’s what’s best for you, and yes, it’s what’s best for me. And you’re going to stop growling, and you’re not going to complain. It’s not just your physical safety I’m worried about; it’s my mental health as well."

Cassandra stopped growling and sighed. "You paid me off already, didn’t you?"

I chuckled and hugged her tight, "Yesterday, just before shift end. Captain King took care of it for me."

"I should be mad at you, I wanted to ask you to do it, but I thought that was too selfish." Cassandra grumbled releasing her grip.

I laughed, "Well, I was being completely selfish. I want to be sure you’re safe, hon."

"Well, maybe I should reward such devotion..." she began with a sultry purr when someone knocked at the door.

"Raj, Cassy, you in there?" came Terease’s voice.

I grinned as Cassandra growled, but for a different reason this time.

"Yes, we’re here."

"Banner and I are doing breakfast, coming?"

Cassandra looked up at me and smiled as my stomach growled. "Sure, why not?" she said.

We hit the shared bathroom in the dorms we were living in, quickly showered and ten minutes later joined them. Interestingly enough, Balizar and Sharazad were joining us as well; or maybe not so interestingly when I thought about it. There were only three mated pairs of leopards onboard the Astra now and that was the six of us. At the one clan meeting we’d had since I’d returned to the ship with Cassandra, when the others had left after hooking up for the night, the six of us had spent some time talking about the kinds of things that I know I hadn’t cared about at all just a few months before. Since then it seemed we spent more time with them, rather than the single members of the clan.

The company of course considered us all to be married; it was a term more understandable to humans than ‘mated.’ Even that term was different among the different species. For most animen, if you mated, it was for life. Pairing was the term normally used for relationships that weren’t as permanent.

"So, the captain tells me Cassandra is paid off now," Balizar said as he led us outside to a waiting taxi. Balizar was the head of ship security and any military forces onboard the Astra, which effectively put him as third in command, after the captain and the executive officer.

"Really?" Terease said surprised. "Well congratulations, Cassy!"

"Yes, congrats!" Banner added smiling.

Cassandra sighed. "He snuck off and did it before asking me," she grumbled.

"Feel that guilty?" Sharazad, who was Balizar's mate and ran the Astra's intelligence section, said teasing Cassandra as we all got in the back of the taxi and Balizar gave the driver our destination.

Cassandra nodded.

"Why in the world would you feel guilty?" Terease asked curious. "It makes perfect sense."

"Because I desperately wanted to have him do it," Cassandra admitted ears going flat as her facial fur bushed out, blushing.

"So?"

"All of the money was his; Raj stopped paying down his debt over two years ago."

"You have changed that back now, Raj, right?" Sharazad said giving me a nasty look.

I nodded, "Did it right after I paid Cassy off."

"Still," Terease said picking back up, "It makes a lot more sense to pay one of you off, then the other. Raj has the bigger debt I’m sure, so pay off the small one first." Then she grinned at Banner, "And you can’t have children on a spaceship, now can you?"

Banner suddenly looked very embarrassed and I noticed Cassandra started to fidget a little as well.

"Thinking of cubs already?" Sharazad said surprised.

"Let’s just say I’m laying the groundwork," Terease snickered.

I looked at Banner and he looked back at me and just shrugged. Terease was like a sister to me, and we shared quite a lot about our spouses, though it had been more me sharing with her since I got back onboard, as I was still rather new to all of this. Obviously I’d have to start paying more attention to what she was telling me about Banner.

"So, Balizar, any idea when we’re leaving?" Terease said turning to him.

Balizar quirked an ear and looked at Terease, "And what are the grounds for this latest deduction?"

"The engines are finished as of yesterday afternoon. So there’s no reason for us to sit in orbit anymore." She said smiling.

Balizar nodded. "Sound reasoning. Yes, we will be leaving soon. We even have our orders."

"So where are we going?" I asked curious.

"Because all of our trading schedules are so out of order, I’m not at liberty to discuss our next stop." Balizar said smiling. Then he looked at Terease, "And if you think you’ve figured it out, you can talk to me about it in my office. Otherwise, no speculations in public. Understand?"

Terease nodded and smiled, "Yes, Sir."

"Sometimes I think you’re being wasted down there in Engineering," Sharazad laughed. "Your knack for making logical conclusions based on scant evidence is rather impressive."

Banner let out a massive sigh rolling his eyes towards the roof of the car as he looked up, and we all looked at him.

Terease stared at him, "Whaaaaat?" She teased.

"I haven’t been able to surprise her with a gift, a date, anything, for almost two years now. She always figures it out, and she knows all of my best hiding places."

"Yes, the trials of being mated to an engineer," Balizar laughed. "But there are worse professions to be mated too!" he said with a smirk and looked at Sharazad who just smirked right back.

We arrived at the restaurant about then, and went inside.

"So how have you been holding up?" Sharazad asked Cassandra and me, as the others went on ahead.

"I’m fine actually," I told her. "My nightmares stopped pretty quickly after I found Cassy."

"And you?" she asked Cassandra.

Cassandra sighed, "I’m still having them. Most of them aren’t that bad; I wake up, smell Raj, and know I’m safe."

"And the rest of the time?"

Cassandra’s ears flicked back and she looked down at the floor stopping. "About once a week I have a pretty nasty one. Just waking up doesn’t stop my panic. Raj has to turn the lights up and calm me back down."

Sharazad nodded, "Don’t be afraid to talk to me or Bal about it. We’re both experienced with these kinds of problems, and we want to keep it in the clan. Don’t worry if they don’t stop right away. It’s going to take a while, don’t try to rush it, and don’t feel guilty about it."

Cassandra nodded, and we went and caught up with the others.

The day was an enjoyable one; Cassandra and I met with Gabe, my friend and former crewmate and his girlfriend Karen later on for lunch and spent the day out with them. Gabe was a foxmorph, and a pilot like me. We'd meet on the Astra when I'd first been assigned there right out of flight school. When he finished his first tour, Karen's family had used some of their influence to get him stationed here, as the two of them had gotten quite serious with each other.

Karen was human, from a rather wealthy and powerful family here on Hobson. Their relationship had been something of a surprise to most of us, especially now that they were engaged to be married. Cross-species relationships weren't common, ones with humans were even less so.

"So, set a date yet?" I asked the two of them later over dinner.

Karen smiled and Gabe nodded. "December, which is two months before my assignment here is due to end."

"Wonderful!" I said and Cassandra echoed.

"We bought Cassy out yesterday," I said and leaned over and gave her a kiss.

"Well, congrats to the two of you as well!" Gabe said.

"If you ever need a place to stay, Cassandra," Karen said, "Our house will always be open."

Cassandra bushed, "Thanks, I appreciate the offer."

We talked awhile more about nothing really in particular, I’d already recounted my war stories, and Cassandra hers, on previous engagements. So we really didn’t bring that up again. I know Cassandra didn’t like discussing what had happened to her much, she had only told me some of the nastier stories and I think even bringing up the more tame ones still bothered her.

As for my stories, well, she’d sort of just stare at me with that ‘you ever do that again and you’re in trouble’ look while I recounted them.

The next day everyone was ordered back to the ship. We loaded for a day, and only into the central cargo hold, the two cargo modules we’d picked up were left empty. We’d also picked up two troop modules, one of which was full, and broke orbit as soon as the last cargo shuttle unloaded.

"So, anybody know what kind of troops we're bringing along?" I asked as I sat around on alert with the other shuttle crews playing cards. It was kind of nice to be sitting alert on the Astra again; I was surprised to find that I had actually missed it.

"I heard they opened up the access way once they finished the departure burn." Carol said. Carol was a female otter who had been with the Astra since it had dry-docked at Earth when the war started. She originally had been brought in as my replacement. She’d been flying for over a decade and apparently was rather accomplished as a pilot.

As a poker player however, she wasn’t so great. "They were packed in there pretty tight, and they have moved quite a few out into the ship's general quarters." She continued.

"Going to see if any of the old Falcon block members are onboard?" Dave asked as he anted up.

I nodded. "Eventually. Not like there’s a big rush, they’re not going anywhere."

"Wow," Chief Shandour said tossing his cards in and mucking them. "You have changed."

I looked at the big tiger; Chief Shandour was still huge, one of the biggest tigers onboard. I was surprised he was playing cards with us; or rather, I was surprised that I was now sitting at the table with all the senior hands, which was the only one he ever played with. He was the head of flight ops, and in charge of all of the shuttle crews.

"How so?" I asked curious.

"Well, not only are you not in a rush to go see what kind of troops we got onboard so you can swap stories, but you’ve learned to use your tail to trick rather gullible pilots into staying in when they should have folded."

Carol blushed and mucked her cards rather quickly.

"Aw, Chief, I was going to use that money to buy Cassy a nice necklace," I said smirking. I only had a pair of twos, and the chief probably knew it. But Carol was a pretty wild bettor, and kept seeming to think she’d win on the river.

"So, how is married life?" Jeb, one of the pilots who had been here when I’d first come onboard asked.

"It suits me," I said smiling. "It really does. By the way, whatever happened to Jerry? I’m sort of surprised he isn’t still here."

"Oh, when they built those two cruisers they were looking for some really hot shuttle pilots to fly the new attack fighters they designed to go with them. Jerry took one look and was in love," Chief Shandour said. "Last I heard he had racked up quite the number of kills."

"Yeah, well, he is an eagle," I said chuckling.

"Most eagles aren’t half as good as Jerry. I’m hoping we can get him back when they put the cruisers into mothballs."

"Do you think they will?" Carol asked.

Most of us nodded, "They’re too expensive to keep running around," Chief Shandour told her. "They don’t make any money for the company. They’ll stick them someplace out of sight; keep them maintained and ready for use if we ever need them again. But after the blowup we just had, no one is going to want to go to war again for a long, long, time if they can help it."

"Yeah, war is just way too expensive," Jeb agreed nodding.

When I got off shift I went and found Cassandra, and we went to the cafeteria together to eat lunch. As I had expected, the place was packed. It was a heavy combat group: tigers, leopards, wolves, about what I would have expected. I got a few looks; I was after all rather large for a leopard. Cassandra got quite a few more, as we got our food and found an open table, until they noticed we were both wearing mating earrings.

"As I earn my pay! Raj!" I heard and turning around saw my old corporal from the Falcon.

"Brasile!" I said and waved him over "Or should I say, ‘Sergeant Brasile now?" I grinned noticing his extra stripes.

"Well, they had to put someone in charge of the maniacs after you left," he said sitting down. "Hi, Cassandra," he nodded to her, "you’re looking better than when I saw you last."

"Thanks Brasile," she said smiling.

"How many of the old squad is here?" I asked curious.

"All of them actually. A couple of other squads from the Falcon are here too. The rest got spread around through the different battalions, or moved into other assignments."

I nodded, "Who’s the battalion commander for this group?"

Brasile grinned, "Johnson, only he’s a light colonel now."

"What about Aruba?" Cassandra asked, her voice a little low.

Brasile’s eyes got a hair wider, "Oh, yeah. She’s a captain now. I’ll let her know you’re onboard."

I put my arm, and my tail, around Cassandra, "Don’t go looking for trouble, Hon, she’s in the past now, and you know it."

Brasile snickered making both Cassandra and me look at him. "What?" I asked.

"Just the idea of you of all people telling someone not to go look for trouble is all."

"Oh my paycheck! Is that Raj?" I heard and looking over I saw Hess with a tray in his hand standing with the rest of the old squad. A minute later and they were sitting down to eat with us.

"Hey Brasile," I said in a very loud whisper. "Who’s that new Sergeant sitting over there?" and I motioned towards Hess. "He looks familiar, but I could have sworn that no one would be stupid enough to put stripes on that particular uniform."

Hess blushed and then laughed. "Okay, yeah, I let them give me some stripes."

"Oh, that’s not the worst of it," Brasile said whispering loudly back. "Some idiot actually made him the squad second!"

"Will wonders never cease!" I gasped as Hess threw a roll at my head and I caught it in my mouth.

"Hey, I survived you, the ‘Terror of Falcon block!’ What’s a few stripes and a few troops to lead after that?"

We laughed and I shook my head, "Well at least we made it through, right?"

We all nodded.

"So what's the name of this group?" I asked.

"We're the 'Second Heavy Infantry;' it's a pretty big group too, which is kinda weird after being in a group with only sixty in it."

"So, any idea where we’re going?"

They all shook their heads, "I’m sure we’ll learn soon enough."

Brasile introduced the new member of the squad, a young female leopard named Kennedy who was fresh out of training. Then they told me a little about the awards banquet, or rather, more about some of the drunken antics afterwards.

Cassandra and I had the rest of our other regular duties to attend to after that, for me it was a lighter than normal load because I was part of the alert crew, and even though this was my off shift, I had to be available at a moment's notice. We were twelve on, twelve off, unless there was an alert of course, then I’d run for the shuttle bay. I spent most of my extra free time either studying, or working out. Then dinner with Cassandra and off to bed.

That was the routine for the next three days. Riding as light as we were, the Astra made fairly good time out to the Eschar limit and we entered jump-space. The captain had a ship wide briefing scheduled for right after we jumped, which I watched from the flight deck as I was still on duty.

"Attention to Orders," the captain started on the screen, he was sitting in the captain's chair on the bridge. "As you all know, the war has been hard on Tri-Star's business, and our shipping schedules have been heavily impacted. For the next several trips the Astra has been pulled off of her normal shipping schedules to deal with some remaining issues that have come to the company's attention."

Several people on the flight deck groaned, and I suspected that sentiment was shared by more than a few people onboard. If the Astra wasn't trading, then we weren't making money, and that meant there would be no bonuses at the end of the ship's fiscal year.

"Yes, I realize that this will have an impact on the ship's fiscal status, and I have taken that up with the company," Captain King said. "I have managed to secure a guaranteed minimum bonus for all of those still indentured, regardless of our trading profits," I saw everyone's ears go up at that comment, "provided of course that we carry off our assigned missions successfully."

He paused a moment to let that sink in, Captain King was pretty well respected by everyone onboard, and the underlying message here was that he probably had put his own reputation with the company on the line for us, to win that concession.

"As for where we are heading today, there are several small concerns that were wiped out, or which folded, during the war. The corporations that took part in the fighting have divided up those assets, which they know about, and we're off to collect some of those assets that now belong to Tri-Star.

"Our next stop is a small mining and research facility owned by the now defunct Sagert Company on a planet known as 'Tualatin.' As far as we know it has been several years since any ship called at this facility, its location was not public knowledge and only became known to Tri-Star after we acquired its assets.

"So this is as much of a rescue mission as it is one to recover new assets. The second troop module that we're carrying contains the replacement crew for that site; we will be taking off any surviving members, again, we have no idea what shape the survivors there will be in, or if there will even be any. We do not know if the site was attacked by any of the humanist movement during the war, and the records we do have on the site are incomplete."

I thought about that, and wondered if that was why we had troops onboard?

"As for the troops we are carrying," Captain King said, answering my unasked question. "It has come to the attention of Tri-Star and their allies in the war that there were a few companies that were assisting our enemies. We will be engaging in a hostile takeover of some of their assets after we have completed our mission at Tualatin. You will be briefed on that mission after this one has been completed.

"We will be leaving jump in forty-one days, your section heads have been briefed, you may ask them for further details. Thank you, Captain out."

"Forty-one days," Dave said looking at Chief Shandour, "that's pretty far out, isn't it?"

Chief Shandour nodded and looked at us. All of the shuttle crews were here, even those who were off watch. "The Sagert company was a concern based out of Alexandra, they didn't have many holdings, but they had been doing fairly well until the war broke out. They had their headquarters at one of their larger installations, and it was completely destroyed by an orbital bombardment about half way through the war, which wiped out the board and several of their major investors. No one even knew about that until a little over a year ago."

"So how long have then been isolated?" Carol asked.

"We don't know, at least two years, maybe three."

"Guess we'll find out when we get there," I said. "What kind of planet are we looking at?"

Chief Shandour shrugged, "No idea. We recovered the name and location from a surviving company navigation database, along with the names and locations of the rest of their sites. Tualatin was far enough out that it must have been discovered by a private survey, so we won't know what we're dealing with until we get there. For all we know it may have been raided by the enemy during the war as well."

"Well, hopefully it isn't a hole in the ground, I don't think that would help the bonus situation much," Jeb sighed and the rest nodded in agreement.

"Well, until we get there, we won't know," the Chief agreed. "For now however, we have maintenance to do, and training to perform. Now, let's go over the schedule."

We spent the next hour going over our duty schedule for the next month. With the Astra recently having undergone repairs, there were a lot of things that now needed to be inspected, calibrated, reset, or even refitted with the ship now in jump. Some of those were just checks on the systems now that they'd been shaken down on the flight out, but others were things that could not be properly set in normal space. All of these things had to be done in addition to the normal work that had to be performed onboard ship during any voyage.

My own schedule would be a little different than the rest of the team as I now had a watch to pull on the bridge as part of the helmsman training courses I was taking. That of course made my schedule a lot busier, as those training courses would be held during my off-duty time. Of course I was still expected to pull the same work details as the other flight crewmembers during my off-duty time.

The normal duty schedule on the Astra was twelve on, twelve off. During the twelve on, you worked your normal duty station, and performed your rated job. During your twelve off, you worked a half-shift of six hours supplementing other duty teams with whatever secondary skills you might have, doing general ship's maintenance, drilling with ship security if you were so rated (and I was) and engaging in any extra training or duties that you might have assigned to you.

That left about six hours of personal time, which I spent eating, sleeping, working out, and studying my course work. Cassandra's schedule coincided with mine, so we usually spent our free time together. Sunday was the only day that the schedule varied, as there was only a two-hour general maintenance required for the off-shift personnel.

Of course the extra watch I had to sit on the bridge sometimes cut into my six hours of personal time, but I really didn't mind all that much because coming back to the Astra after serving several years on the Falcon was like coming home.

Plus every night when I went to bed, Cassandra was there with me.

They unsealed the second troop module to let the workers out, now that it was no longer necessary to keep it a secret from the crew or any prying eyes that might have noticed before we left port. They were mostly technicians and equipment operators, there were two shuttle pilots, but they were regular cargo pilots, not assault types, so I didn't have a lot in common with them. As for the makeup of the group, there were no leopards, or I think any big cats at all in it, so I really didn't mix with them. No common interests really.

During the first week we were in jump however, I’d noticed that I was getting looks from a lot of the troopers who we’d taken onboard whenever I ran across them. My guess was Brasile and Hess were probably telling stories and I suspected my present demeanor wasn’t living up to the image that the stories presented.

"So you’re the ‘Terror of Falcon block’?" A rather beefy wolf asked sitting down next to me in the cafeteria while Cassandra and I were eating lunch about eight days into jump.

I nodded, "Well, that is I used to be."

"You don’t look that tough to me," he said looking me over.

I shrugged, "I was a lot angrier back then."

"More like Hess and the others from Falcon block are just telling stories," he laughed.

Cassandra leaned forward then so she could see around me and looked him over. "Five thousand credits you don’t last ten minutes against him in a match." She purred and then sat back and returned to eating her food.

"What! Ten minutes!" He said laughing. "Sounds like easy money to me!"

I looked him over and nodded, "It is, especially as you wouldn’t last five," and I smiled at him rather evilly. Something I’d found I could still do, but then I had had a lot of practice.

He growled and looked outraged. "You wouldn’t last a minute against me!"

I shrugged and went back to my steak. "I won’t hold it against you, if you’re too afraid."

"I’m not afraid of anything, especially not some overgrown cat!" he said standing up. "I’ll take that bet."

I looked up and saw Hess grinning on the other side of the table. I winked at him.

"Well, let’s go down to the main gym and find out then." I turned to Hess, "Think you could find Colonel Johnson to ref for us?"

"Sure thing, Raj!" And he got up and left the table.

"Ready, Hon?" I asked Cassandra.

She nodded and got up, so I stood up as well. Looking around I saw a quite a few of the new troops get up from their tables to follow us.

When we got to the gym, I was rather surprised that there was quite the crowd there. I hadn’t fought an onboard challenge since I’d come back to the Astra. Of course I had gone to several fight bars with Cassandra and a few of the others back on Hobson, plus I was now sparring with Chief Shandour several times a week.

I went over to the far side of the room and stretched a few times to warm up, as I watched the wolf. He shadow boxed a few times and did a few dodges. I could see he was a little slower moving left than to the right. I wondered if he was faking it to throw me off, or if he didn’t realize what he was giving away?

"Hey, Raj, see you didn’t waste anytime!" Colonel Johnson said coming into the room.

"Eh, gotta defend the honor of the block and all that," I said grinning at him.

"Try not to break him okay?" Colonel Johnson said, and the wolf just growled.

"Bets?"

"My Mate’s handling mine," I said and nodded to Cassandra.

"Ah yes! Cassandra, finally I get to meet the fem that tamed the monster!"

I shook my head and sighed as Cassandra placed a few bets, and covered a few more that came in.

"Fight!" Colonel Johnson called out a moment later and the wolf charged.

I stood my ground until he was almost on me, then I dodged to his left to see if he had been faking it, or not.

Turns out he hadn’t been. I did a sidekick to the back of his knee, collapsing it as the joint bent like it was meant to. This caused him to lean back as he stumbled off balance, and putting my right hand on the right side of his head as I shuffled in closer, I brought my forearm around and gave him a rather hard elbow strike to the left side of his head.

That stunned him for a moment, so pivoting on my left leg I spun clockwise, and leaning over I extended my right leg and caught him on the forehead with my heel.

He went down and stayed there, eyes glazed.

"You okay?" I asked looking down at him.

I could see out of the corner of my eyes that a lot of the troops were looking rather shocked, except for those that knew me, who were high-fiving.

He blinked a few times and shook his head.

"What happened?" he said slowly as his eyes cleared.

"You lost," I said. "I’m Raj by the way, you are?"

"Dan," He replied raising a paw and rubbing his forehead. "What did you hit me with? A club?"

I helped him sit up. "Pretty much."

He looked at me slowly, "Can you teach me how to do that?"

I laughed, "First smart thing you’ve said since I’ve met you, Dan! Sure. Check my schedule on the ship’s net and pick out whatever works for you."

I looked around the assembled group. "Any other takers? I don’t have to report in for another fifteen minutes."

"I’d like to go a few rounds," a tiger said. "But not right now. I have duty in fifteen as well."

I nodded, "Okay."

I helped Dan stand up and led him over to Colonel Johnson who handed Cassandra a rather large wad of cash.

"I’m going to have to talk to the captain to see if I can borrow you for some advanced hand-to-hand courses, Raj," he said smiling.

I nodded, "Sure thing."

"Just make sure you don’t talk to him about borrowing Raj for anything else," Cassandra said sweetly.

"Or?" Colonel Johnson asked curiously.

"You really don’t want to know, Colonel," I said and started pushing Cassandra towards the exit as she started to growl. "Trust me on that...."

Cassandra laughed after we had left the gym and I gave her a kiss.

"How much do you have there?" I asked her.

"Only thirty kay. You knocked him out too quickly for me to get any more side bets in," she grumbled.

"You’re almost as bad as Herza!" I snickered and gave her a hug when she gave me a dirty look as I mentioned Herza’s name.

"If you teach them to fight, you’re not going to be able to make any money off of them," she grumbled.

I nodded, "Yes, but it isn’t really fair of me if I don’t teach them. They’re combat troops, Hon, and some of what I will teach them might save their lives."

She nodded and sighed, "Point taken."

3

Colonel Johnson did get to 'borrow' me for advanced hand-to-hand instruction; it showed up on my schedule the next day, replacing two hours of technical and general assignments on my 'off-duty' roster.

When I showed up for my first class, the group there was a lot larger than I had expected. There were fifty assembled there in the main gym.

"Well, this is a surprise," I said looking at all of them. Dan, the wolf I'd bested the other day was there, as well as the tiger who'd expressed an interest in a match.

"Did you volunteer to be here, or were you assigned?" I asked the group in general.

"What difference does it make?" One of the leopards asked.

"All of the difference in the world. And when I ask a question, I expect an answer, understand?" I replied addressing him.

"Or what?" He asked puffing up a bit.

"Okay, you're first." I said motioning him over, "The rest of you fan out and stand against the walls."

"First for what?" He asked sauntering forward.

"This," I said and punched him in the face. He stumbled backwards a few feet, and landed on his ass growling.

"Listen up!" I said loudly to the class, as my opponent gathered himself up, getting back to his feet. "This is the advanced hand-to-hand combat class!"

He stood then and as he took a step towards me, I side-skipped towards him and side-kicked him in the chest, blasting him back into the wall, which he hit with a loud "ooof!"

"I am your instructor, and you will treat me with respect, or I will kick your face in," I dodged to the side as he pushed off the wall to attack me and dropping low, I spun around, letting my right leg lash out and knocked his legs out from under him. As he fell to the floor I jumped on his back, grabbed his hair, and pulled his head back hard and pulled my marker-knife across his throat, leaving a nice bright red mark as I put a knee in his back. The marker-knife was an old idea that I had only seen used in some of the more advanced classes, it left an ink mark across fur or skin when drawn over it, and was damned hard to wash off.

"Now what did you do wrong?" I growled in his ear.

"You ambushed me!" he growled back in pain.

"No, you acted rashly and stupidly," I told him and the rest of the class. "You approached a known dangerous opponent without caution or respect."

"How was I to know you were dangerous?"

I pulled his head back a little more and just shook my head. "What is the name of this class?" I sighed looking at the others who were all watching.

"Advanced hand-to-hand combat training, Sir!" They all responded.

"Get up," I said releasing my hold and getting back up quickly, "and go stand against the wall."

He growled, but he got up and went.

I clipped the marker knife back to the leg of my coverall. "Okay, now again. Did you all volunteer, or were you assigned this class?"

"Assigned, Sir!" They called out.

"Better. Now, show of hands, how many here have seen combat?"

I looked around, everyone's hands were up.

I nodded, "And how many of you have seen hand-to-hand combat?"

Only two people's hands went up. One was the tiger's. I turned to him, "What happened?"

"Gun jammed while taking out a machinegun emplacement, Sir," he said.

"Did you have fun?" I asked

"Sir?" he said looking scandalized.

I smiled, not one of the friendly smiles that I know I was rather fond of these days, but one of the nastier ones that I favored back when I was in Falcon Block. I thought about that a moment; had it only been a few months ago? Suddenly it felt like it had been years.

"I asked, if you had fun, gutting and cutting up those ani-hating bastards with your claws and your knife," I said with a low growl, still smiling.

He looked embarrassed, but he nodded, "Yes, yes, sir, I enjoyed it."

I looked around at the rest of the room, they weren't looking at me the same way as they had when I came into the room, and a few of them were pressing back against the wall now, instead of just leaning back on it.

"There are two key things to remember when you are engaged in hand-to-hand combat with the enemy," I said walking back to the center of the room and looking at all of them. "The first is that you are going to win, you are going to win no matter what. That you will prevail! And not because losing means you are going to die, die with some other bastard's knife stuck in you, but because you love it, you love it with the same passion that you love your girlfriend or boyfriend, you love getting in there nice and close and turning the enemy into so much dead meat!

"It's not enough to be good at it; it's not enough to want to see the enemy dead. Guess what? They're good at it too, maybe even better than you, and believe me, they want to see you dead too. Hand-to-hand combat is personal, as personal as taking a lover, and if you don't love it, you won't be good at it; you won't give it your all. You'll be just like a two-dollar whore, your heart's not in it, you're only gonna do a half-assed job.

"The second rule is that there is no timid! You are a bad, crazy, psycho, sick motherfucker and you are going to kill them all with a smile on your lips and a song in your heart and you are going to let their god sort them out later! You hold nothing back, you fear nothing, and you never hesitate.

"Attitude is the fight, understand?"

The all stared at me a moment.

"Understand?" I yelled at them.

"Yessir!" They all said, but I could see that they didn't.

"I have you all for thirty days. In those thirty days I'm supposed to teach you how to be better fighters, better warriors, make you into killing machines that cannot be stopped. I can teach you the basics, I can set you on the path, but as with all things, some lessons must be learned deep inside before you can believe."

I turned towards one of the groups that had formed along one of the walls. Neither the tiger nor the other one who had been in unarmed combat were in it. This group has also seemed to be a bit more shocked by what I had said to them.

"Time for an object lesson." I motioned towards them, "You eight, do you think you can take me?"

They all gaped a moment, looked at each other, and then looked at me and sort of laughed.

"The rules are simple," I said pulling my marker knife out, "I get a mark on your neck or head, you're dead. Two on your body, or three anywhere else, and you're out as well.

"Oh, and its full contact," they all looked a bit surprised then as they realized I wasn't joking. "Fight!" I laughed and attacked.

I ran right into the middle of them, I wasn't all that worried, yes it would hurt, and I'd probably get a few nice bruises and maybe even a broken bone or two, but I was cheating. Eight on one can look pretty scary, but if three of them were able to engage me at the same time, I would be impressed; I doubted that they'd ever fought as a team before in close quarters. They would be more likely to get in each other's way than to be able to hit me. Plus they weren't expecting it.

I however had none of that to worry about; everyone around me was a target, so I didn't have to worry about who I was hitting. And while I wasn't as angry as I used to be, to be honest I wasn't really angry at all, I wasn't trying to kill them either.

Besides, I hadn't had a good challenge in months.

I got two of them across the throat before the others even realized that I was not going to wait for them to get their act together and that this was a serious fight. I think I broke an arm or two and almost a leg as the others started to fight back, but I was carving them up with the marker and leaving bright red trails on their bodies followed up by a dot on their foreheads, just to be obnoxious. I was down to only three of them within less than a minute, before they realized that I had to get two hits, and they could use each other as cover at least once. At least they figured that much out.

I was using claws, teeth, legs, arms, tail, absolutely everything that I had and I never stopped moving for an instant. I was cutting them up with my free hand to put the fear of getting hurt in their heads along with the fear of the marker.

I could see the shock in their eyes, they had heard the stories, and now they were seeing that there really was a maniac in their midst. But I will give them this much, they didn't back down, they stood their ground and fought back. It took me two minutes to knock just one of them out, and by then I was bleeding from a half dozen cuts and my left wrist felt like it was broken.

The last two rushed me then and I head butted one so hard that I saw stars, he staggered back so I reversed to face the other one and used my old spinning hook kick trick on him, and he went down hard, shaking his head as he tried to get his wits back. I marked him on the forehead with a dot as I jumped over him, then turned back towards the last one and charged, he had recovered quickly, so I used a spinning kick to move him back, followed up with a couple of crescent kicks to his hands to keep his guard open, then flicked the marker at him, making a nice large red dot right between the eyes.

I stopped and looked around, all of them were now marked, and several of them were down on the floor recovering from my attacks. I motioned to the medics I'd arranged for in advance. I'd never seen a hand-to-hand course that didn't cause injuries, especially the advanced courses, so I'd made sure to invite them. I'm sure they appreciated the practice as well.

I limped back to the center of the room as the medics went to look over the ones I'd just beaten up, and I looked around at the rest of the class.

"Why did I win that fight?" I asked and flagged one of the medics over to look at my wrist.

"Because you're better trained," one of the students answered.

"And because you refused to lose," the tiger said looking at me.

I smiled, "And also because I'm a crazy insane maniac with no fear or a lick of sense. I have been shot, I've been stabbed, I've been set on fire, blown up, and burned, broken bones, "I shrugged, "but I never once let that thought enter into my mind when I had to fight the next time. You will get hurt, you may even die, but if you do not believe in yourself, if you are not committed, if you don't love every single moment of it, it doesn't matter how good you are, you're going to lose."

"It's broken," the medic who was examining my wrist, told me.

I looked at him, "I know it's broken. Tape it up. I'm not done here."

"You need to go to the sick bay, it needs to be fixed," He insisted.

I stared at him.

He taped it up.

"Okay, everyone, we're going to start with the basics, and I don't care if you hate it. But speed is one of those things that count in a fight, and speed comes from repetition, and we are now going to do a lot of that!"

I had them line up on the deck and I showed them each of the exercises I wanted them to do. And I made them do each of them a hundred times as I walked around, well limped around, and checked their form and criticized them.

The ones I'd beaten weren't in too bad a shape, and I made them exercise as well, though I did cut them some slack.

After they got through all of the simple exercises I paired them up, and ran then through all of the standard unarmed combat drills, including some of the not so standard ones that I practiced. Again I made them do each exercise a hundred times.

When they had finished that, I had them start from the beginning and do it all over again.

"Why?" One of them asked.

"Because from now on you're going to be doing these everyday, and I want to be sure you're doing them right."

A few people grumbled, but no one was about to raise any issues.

"Okay," I said when they were all finished. "Every morning when you get up, do twenty reps of each of those. And every night before you hit the showers, do them again. Next session we're going to start on the hard stuff. Dismissed."

I watched as they left, and then went down to the medical bays to get my wrist fixed, and the rest of me patched up as well.

"So I hear you put a smack down on some of my troops today," Colonel Johnson said sitting down next to me as I ate dinner that night with Cassandra.

I shrugged, "After all the stories they've no doubt heard, I had to do something over the top to get their attention. They expected it, I'm sure."

Colonel Johnson nodded, "Still, I've ordered all of them not to challenge you again, nor test your patience. I know you have a different group tomorrow, and I don't want them getting any wise ideas."

"Oh, I don't know, it was kinda fun," I said and then "ooofed" as Cassandra elbowed me hard in the ribs.

"Behave," she growled and I laughed.

"I'll try," I said and she just rolled her eyes in her head with a snort. "But they're still going to need to see something to make them," I searched for the right word, "umm, to make them understand?" I shrugged, "I need to make the point to them that the stuff they always thought were just stories, aren't. That they can do those things if they bust their asses and work hard. Everyone in Falcon block knew that, if I had tried that stunt I did today on them, I'd have gotten my ass handed to me."

Colonel Johnson nodded, "Yes, but they were front line shock troops, special forces types who knew they'd have to do a lot of close in work and trained hard for it. These guys are just heavy infantry. They've got the combat experience, and they're decent fighters from what I've seen in their files, but they've always worked at a company level, with large numbers and artillery to back them up.

"Now they have to learn to fight in smaller groups, and in close quarters. I don't expect you to turn them into another you, Raj," Colonel Johnson smiled, "or even Falcon block. But I do want them to have the confidence that they're going to need when they find themselves fighting at the squad or half-squad level when we come to that takeover on the next trip. I'm going to need a few teams I can send into mines or buildings to clear them."

"So squad and half-squad drills?" I asked thinking about the way we used to deal with choke points.

Colonel Johnson nodded, "Once they're ready for it, yes."

"So, Colonel," Cassandra asked, "why Raj?"

"Excuse me?"

"You know what they need to learn, why do you need Raj to train them?"

I looked over at Colonel Johnson who looked embarrassed. "Because some of the things I will need them to do are almost suicidal, they'll get you wounded and maybe killed. But Raj here," Colonel Johnson nodded to me. "He did them so many times, we all lost count and he survived every one.

"I don't know if it's the way he did it, or if he's just lucky, but in either case, I need my soldiers to believe that they can do these things and live through them, because then they won't hesitate." He nodded towards me again, "Raj is proof of that. And if it turns out he can teach them to survive like he managed to, then I definitely want him training them."

"Just understand," Cassandra said and looking up at Colonel Johnson she put on her sweet smile, the one that I knew always meant trouble, "if you try to get him to go back into combat, I will murder you in your sleep."

I just sighed and shook my head as he nodded and smiled, "And that's why we don't allow married people in the assault groups."

Colonel Johnson finished his dinner and stood, "Cassandra, Raj," he nodded to each of us and left.

I didn't say anything, just waited.

"Aren't you going to say anything about me threatening to kill your former commander?" Cassandra said after a couple of minutes.

"I didn't want to be next," I quipped and then gave a little grunt as she elbowed me again.

"Better to lay down the rules now, so there are no misunderstandings later on," she purred.

I smiled and got up as she did, "Well, after everything they've seen from me, they already know that you must be pretty nasty yourself to keep me in line!" I said and laughed.

"And don't you forget it!" She growled, but I could see that at least she was smiling as she did.

4

The second class that I taught the next day was much better behaved, I found out later that the colonel had not only read the first group the riot act for not respecting me as their instructor, but had made all of them read all of my combat citations, as well as the many reports that Aruba had written about me.

Then they'd shown some of the combat camera footage they had of me in action. While my own footage never seemed to survive for some reason, like say my deleting it, several of the squadies had saved some of the 'better' stuff. I'd seen some of it back when I was still on the Falcon, and it wasn't very pretty, but looking at it now I could see that it made me look like the Devil's own son, straight out of Hell.

I know it made everyone wonder just how I had ever survived, and when Cassandra got a hold of it she came after me with a mop handle and threatened complete mayhem if I ever so much thought about doing such insanities again.

"Well, that's just what happens when you aren't in my life to make me behave," I told her once she'd calmed down.

"I could beat up your colonel friend for passing those around. Do you have any idea what the people on the ship will think if they see them?"

I thought about that, "It was war, Cassy, and a rather nasty one. I think they'd understand."

"Yeah well, you need to understand that you have to work twice as hard to keep your nose clean now, Raj. Everyone always worries about combat vets going crazy, and you do have a history, remember."

I nodded. Yes, I had a history. But to be honest, I really wasn't worried about any of it. I'd lost my rage about halfway through the war. I was however starting to get worried about Cassandra. Getting hit with the mop handle hadn't hurt all that much, it broke before she could really work me over too long. But she'd never really had a temper before, and while I didn't mind if she used it on me, I was starting to worry if she'd turn it on someone else.

Maybe I needed to have a chat with Sharazad. I'd have to think about that.

Breakout, when it came, was nicely anti-climatic. Dave and I were sitting number two on the rack, but nothing showed up at all. The Astra had broken out well above the plane of the ecliptic, with a decent amount of momentum. We'd learned in the pre-breakout brief that while we had the system location and a notation on which planet the base was at, we had no information on the system at all beyond that.

So we needed to survey the system to find out how many planets there were, and where those planets were, so we could plot an intercept and enter orbit.

When I finished with my alert shift I headed to the bridge, with us in normal space my shift schedule had changed again, I was no longer teaching the advanced hand-to-hand class, but I was now on the watch-stander list for the bridge, as part of my helmsman training courses.

The bridge itself was an interesting place. It was the control center for everything onboard the Astra, so it was a pretty large room. It also was buried deep inside the Astra, making it the most protected space in the ship.

I walked up to the door and checked in with the guard, and was admitted after being identified, the bridge being one of the few actively guarded spaces. There were two entrances; one on either side, port or starboard, the captain's seat was about ten feet back of dead center, with the helm station directly in front of him exactly at dead center. Engineering was to the left of the helm station, and the communications station was to the right.

The other stations were all on a second level beneath the bridge. To get there from the bridge there were two access ways, metal ladders through open holes in the floor. There were two additional openings in the deck to either side of the captain's chair; those were situated so that when seated in the captain's chair you could see the offense weapon's officer station on the left, and the defense weapon's officer station on the right.

Those stations could be raised up to sit flush with the main bridge floor during combat, giving their operators access to the bridge screen, and allowing the bridge team to communicate with them directly by voice.

Also on the bridge sub-deck, you had all of the other stations that reported to the captain. Ship security had a console there, there was also a second engineering console for life support and internal systems, as well as consoles for intelligence, signals intelligence, shuttle control, damage control, cargo master, two console stations for ships sensors, two more communications stations, and an auxiliary helm station.

The reason for everything being on the sub-deck, and the main deck being so clear was the main deck display, which was breathtaking, and to cut down on chatter on the main deck. The bridge sat in a sphere, and all of the walls were set up as a large display. It was like sitting out in space with nothing around you, but the chair you were sitting on, even the floor beneath you was also a display, with the perspective set to make it look like it was farther away than it really was.

Walking on the main bridge was an acquired skill, as it was quite easy to lose your perspective. Everyone on the bridge wore headsets of course, to allow them to communicate individually without disturbing other communications taking place there. When on the bridge there were often several hushed conversations going between the console stations and either other station controllers, or even other persons in the ship.

The captain however did talk out loud when giving orders, and responses to him were also aloud as well as over the com circuits. That was not only traditional, but it made sure that everyone on the bridge knew just what the captain was doing, who he was talking to, and what he was expecting.

The captain was not on the bridge when I entered; the first officer had the duty and was looking over reports on one of the screens at his station. I went to the helmsman station and reported in.

"Reporting for duty, Ma'am," I said softly to the Jeri, she was a senior helmsman aboard the Astra and my primary instructor aboard ship. She was an otter, and had over twenty years of duty as helmsman on ships in the same class as the Astra.

"Ah good, I see you brought your helmet," she nodded towards my helmet bag.

I nodded, "Yes, Ma'am."

"Take the aux helm station. Use com channel seven."

I nodded again, "Yes, Ma'am." and climbed down the starboard side ladder, to the auxiliary helmsman station.

The lower deck was much different than the upper deck, you couldn't see the main display from here, and the lighting was subdued. The ceiling was low, I barely had room to stand up, and it was covered in displays around each station, which lined the outskirts of the deck, the center of which was where the secondary engineering station was located, as it was the biggest station on the sub-deck.

The auxiliary helmsmen station was all the way to the front of the area, the only displays around it, were informational ones, which was why I had to bring my helmet. The same system that was used in the cockpit of the assault shuttles was used down here. There was a ring of laser projectors that would display on my helmet a duplicate of the main screen, so I could see what they were seeing on the main deck.

There were also a full set of flight controls here as well, however those were normally kept locked out. There was a third helmsman station back in engineering as well, but normally it was only manned during combat operations.

I sat down and strapped in after nodding "hello" to the other people working down here that I knew or recognized, then put on my helmet, coded in my identity, and fired up the station. Selecting channel seven, I checked all the instruments and updated myself on the ship's flight status.

"Helm, aux helm is online," I said.

"Okay, Raj, here's our current status. Sensors have identified seven planets in system, four planetoids, no asteroid belt. We believe that the fifth planet out is our target." I watched as the different planets and other items highlighted on my system schematic display as she pointed them out.

"The captain is waiting for signals intelligence to confirm that there is a station there, before having communications try to raise them. As it stands right now, we have a course correction maneuver scheduled to take place in sixty-eight minutes," I looked at the course command repeater, and saw the counter that was counting down to the burn, along with the maneuver data. "Which is to put us on a course for Tualatin Five. Unless of course we get data changing our assumptions."

"Copy that, Jeri. Anything else?" I didn't "ma'am" her now that I was plugged in, the only sir or madam here was the captain, or whoever had the con when he was off the bridge. Everyone else was either by name or by station.

"Not right now. Feel free to look around the system, just remember to un-slave your display when you do."

I felt my facial fur bush out in a blush. Last week I'd forgotten to un-slave the main display, and everyone got to watch me do one of my course exercises.

"Roger, Jeri. Are there any exercises for me today?"

"Negative on that, Raj, our main concern right now is the mission. Oh there is one thing you can do."

"Sure, Jeri, what's that?"

"Orient the ship for the burn. I've unlocked your controls. Remember, she's got a lot of mass, so take your time. Have fun!"

I swore, softly, at that. I quickly checked the ship's auto-vector controls, but those were locked out.

I had the computer put the vector display on my helmet, and took a moment to consider my options. I could roll the ship first, to put the vector change in line with a simple yaw command, but that would force the intel and sensor people to re-orientate their antennas. Well, they'd probably have to do that anyway, but it might force them to do it twice.

As a shuttle pilot I would have just moved directly to the new heading, but as a shuttle pilot I could have flicked it there in a second. The Astra's mass was close to a hundred thousand tons, and while the maneuvering thrusters could shove it around with quite a bit of speed, not only was that wasteful, but even with artificial gravity, people would feel it.

I decided on a direct move to the new heading, it was a forty-six degree change from our current one. I would use one percent thrust, and keep applying it until I had a degree a minute rate of change. I wasn't in a rush, and I could time how long the burn took and compute my stopping force when I was done.

I switched my mike to the command circuit. "This is Aux Helm. Re-orientating ship's heading to one five two, azimuth two nine three. Maneuvering will start in ten seconds."

I watched the clock tick down to ten as I typed in the thrust limit I wanted for the thrusters, then moved the stick to where I wanted it to be, and just held it there.

After a minute I could see the heading change as the ship slowly began to move, it took another two minutes for the rate of change to get to what I was looking for.

I checked my display, and I had burned for two hundred and one seconds. I looked at the maneuver clock; I had sixty-four minutes left. I set an alarm for sixty-one minutes and then just kept an eye on the track to make sure that the nose didn't stray from where I wanted it too.

It did of course, but I used the steering jets to nose it back into line, I had to be careful with those of course, because I had to counter all those actions with opposite ones and it was all too easy to get into a PIO situation. I only did it twice, I was pretty sure I had it straightened out by then, I'd deal with whatever was left when I stopped the ship's heading change.

The worse part of it was the waiting. I could have moved the ship a lot faster, and no one would probably have noticed, but on shuttle's fuel is your biggest worry, so conserving it is always important.

When my alarm went off, I checked to be sure we were where I thought we should be, and then I applied the flight control in the opposite direction as before and just waited until the timer ran down to zero. Once there I centered the stick, made a light tap to correct a slight drift that the instruments seemed to indicate, and then keyed the com again,

"This is Aux Helm. Maneuver completed. Bow orientation now bearing one five two, azimuth two nine three. Out."

I switched the main com off mic as Jeri came on the line.

"Not bad, Raj, but why so slow?"

"Fuel conservation. Plus I didn't want anyone to feel it."

"Okay, but don't worry about fuel so much next time, if it's an issue I will let you know. As for feeling it, anything up to ten percent of maximum on the thrusters won't be felt by the crew, and you have to get over fifty before they'll really be bothered by it. Above eighty and you'll want to tell them to strap in or hang on."

"Okay" I replied.

"Next question, why didn't you roll it first?"

"I didn't want to mess with the sensor and intel people too much."

"Okay, that was the right thing to do. But always do that which you feel safest with. The only people who you really need to worry about are the defense and offense crew when it comes to ship orientation. The others may bitch, but if it is going to make your life hard, ignore them. But the weapons crews must be listened too. If they suddenly ask you to roll the ship, roll it."

"Got it," I replied.

"I have the con," Jeri said.

"You have the con."

I called up the course plan and displayed it on my helmet, as I waited for the engine burn. Our course led to Tualatin Five, which I would not have been able to pick out of the background stars if it didn't have a designator tag pinned to it on the main display. All of the planets and planetoids were marked. I could see Tualatin Six, which was about a quarter of the system away, and Tualatin Four, which was on the far side of the sun.

The system data entries told me that Tualatin Six was a Jovian-sized gas giant with eleven moons, and that Tualatin Four was a terrestrial planet about twice the size of earth, with no moon and a Venus-like atmosphere.

Turning my attention back to Tualatin Five, our destination, I zoomed in on the planet and called up the system data entries. Tualatin Five was a gas giant, a bit larger than Neptune, but not much. It had four moons, one of which was much larger than the others and in a highly elliptical orbit, with its orbital plane canted thirty-eight degrees off the plane of the ecliptic.

That moon was designated as Tualatin Five-D, and was the one getting the most focus from the sensor teams.

"So, is Five-D our target?" I asked Jeri.

"The general consensus is that it stands out, so it's the most likely target."

"What do the sensor techs think?"

"Helm to Sensors, Intel," I heard Jeri ask over the main com, "What's the current guess on our target?"

"Intel. Same as before, still no signals."

I keyed my mic on the command circuit, "Aux Helm. Shouldn't you have picked something up by now?"

"Intel. Either they're all dead, or they're running a hidden installation. We only broke out one hundred and three minutes ago, so if they saw our breakout flash and sent an immediate response, we won't hear anything for about ten minutes from now."

"Think we will?" I asked.

"Sensors. They'd be crazy not to. We broadcast a message at Tualatin Five as soon as we had identified the planet to tell them who we are and why we're here."

"Time will tell us," the exec's voice said coming over the command circuit. "Helm and Aux Helm, I want you to plot least time intercepts to Tualatin Five-D. Give me a couple of options. Report when ready."

"Yessir," I heard Jeri respond.

"Aux Helm, Yessir." I replied as well.

It took me five minutes to come up with two different solutions, one of which was a max thrust option, all the way into orbit. The other was only different because it put us in an orbit over the moon's equator. I sent it up to Jeri, as helm command she'd present the options to the exec.

She sent me hers at that point, and her max thrust option was the exact same as mine, which made me feel good. Her equatorial orbit was a bit closer than mine, and she'd also included a polar orbit option, as well as a gravity sling option that dove directly at Tualatin Five. That last one was the most interesting, as it allowed for us to power down the engines and coast in, with a correction burn on the far side of Tualatin Five, which would not be visible from the moon. It wasn't as fast as either of the previous options, but it would still get us there fairly quickly, and they wouldn't see us coming until we did the orbital injection burn.

"Jeri, what's with the last option?" I asked her over our private channel.

"Just covering our bases, they may not be friendly, Raj, plus its good practice."

"Incoming message, Sir!" The communication operator, a female fox suddenly said.

"Let's hear it," the Exec ordered.

"Mayday, Mayday. This is the Sagert Company mining installation, we are on the fourth moon of the fifth planet. We are low on food, supplies, medical, everything. Please assist. Mayday, Mayday, Mayday. This is the Sagert Company mining installation, we are on the fourth moon of the fifth planet. We are low on food, supplies, medical, everything. Astra, please assist. Message repeats."

"Guess they got our message," The Exec said. "Bridge crew, standby for orders."

I heard him go off com then, and I guess he was talking with the captain. A minute later he came back on the bridge circuit.

"Sensors, do you have a fix on their location?"

"Yessir! Sending it to Helm."

"Thank you. Helm, maximum burn, least time option, execute in five minutes."

"Aye, Sir! Preparing to maneuver, do you want me to announce it, Sir?"

"I got it."

"Attention all hands! Attention all hands!" The exec had switched to the Astra's ship wide announcement circuit. "Secure for maneuvers and maximum burn in five minutes. Repeat, secure for maneuvers and maximum burn. Section heads, orders to follow. That is all."

I looked at the plot, Jeri had already started to move the ship to point it at the new vector, it was a small enough change that she'd have it done by the five-minute mark.

"Engineering, any issues with the engines today?" The exec asked.

"No, Sir, Engineering reports all green."

I listened in on the command circuit as all of the sections reported secure, then watched as the burn clock counted down to zero and the engines went to maximum thrust.

I was surprised by just how much I felt it; I was also surprised when we lost gravity. I'd never been on the Astra during a maximum thrust burn before. The two times it had happened that I was around for, I was flying a shuttle, so I wasn't onboard for the experience.

"How long until we get gravity back?" I asked Jeri over the circuit.

"We'll get twenty percent back in thirty minutes, once the engines have hit full power."

"It takes the engines thirty minutes to hit full power?" I said surprised.

"You might want to skip ahead to the engineering section of your course work, or ask Terease if you want the finer details in regards to the Astra, but while under max thrust all non-vital power is diverted to the engines until they spool up to one hundred and ten percent."

I nodded and looked at the course plot again, three days until flip over, seven days until orbit. Well at least there was a clan meeting tomorrow.

I did look it up when I got back to my quarters, while waiting for Cassandra. I already knew that full thrust was one hundred percent, and that maximum thrust was typically one hundred and ten percent. Those settings carried over into the shuttles.

What I hadn't known was that in the Astra, the engines did take quite a bit of time to go from that one hundred percent, to the one hundred and ten. And that extra ten percent consumed a lot of power, so gravity was turned down to conserve power, and a lot of non-essential systems were also throttled back.

I was even more surprised to learn about 'Emergency Thrust'. Emergency thrust was one hundred and twenty-five percent power and all other systems were shutdown, with all power going directly to the engines. If something didn't have a backup power source, it was offline.

It also took the ship's engines ninety minutes to reach that level of power, and depending on age and condition, they'd start to burn out after ten or so hours. The one advantage of emergency thrust was that you got to the max thrust power level in only ten minutes, and the one hundred twenty percent level in forty-five.

The disadvantage was that it cut engine life by a significant amount when you used it. Oh, and once you went past one-twenty the chance of catastrophic engine failure became something to worry about.

Hopefully this was an option I wouldn't ever see.

5

The next day was Saturday, and it was time for the monthly clan meeting. I was still on alert, though at this point no one was all that worried about an attack on the ship as we were inside the Eschar limit, and anyone dropping out here would fry their jump engines. Also, as far as we could tell, the location of this system was still a secret.

Fortunately my schedule was such that I wasn't on duty during the meeting the evening, so attending wasn't an issue for me.

The meeting was in one of the larger exercise spaces rather than Balizar's and Sharazad's quarters as we were hosting the leopards of the 2nd Heavy Infantry, now onboard the Astra.

As meetings went, it was fairly typical. I didn't bother to figure out the male/female ratio, like I once would have, but it did appear that Mist, Danielle, Kyrani, and Selenna were enjoying a lot more attention than usual.

"What are you thinking about, Raj?" Sharazad asked coming over to me.

"How nice it is not to have to play that game anymore," I said with a smile and nodded towards Selenna who was definitely holding court.

Sharazad laughed, "Yeah, I don't miss it either. So how is Cassy doing?"

I opened my mouth to say "fine," but then I stopped and thought about it a moment.

"That bad?" She said looking concerned.

"I wouldn't say that," I replied, "but she is a lot more prone to threats of violence."

"How so?"

"When Colonel Johnson asked for me to help train some of the newer troops, she threatened him if he tried to borrow me for anything more than that."

Sharazad shrugged, "Well, you only mated a few months ago, and he was your last commander."

I shook my head, "She threatened to kill him in his sleep. And she meant it. It's not what I would have expected, she used to be a lot more about veiled threats, hints, you know, less about actual physical violence."

Sharazad nodded.

"Also, she's gotten a lot more physical with me," I related the elbow jabs, the attack with the mop handle, and a few other minor incidents. "To be honest, it seems like she's developing a temper," I sighed. "I don't mind her turning it on me, but I'm worried she might turn in on someone else."

Sharazad nodded again, and thought for a moment, "I suspect that going through the prison camp she had to modify her behavior and become more physically aggressive to survive. I also wouldn't be surprised to learn that her inability to have any affect on her environment in the camps frustrated the hell out of her, and her temper is an outlet for that frustration."

"Okay, that makes sense. But what do we do about it."

"I'll talk to Balizar about it; just keep an eye on her. If it starts to get worse call one of us."

I nodded.

When everyone started to settle down to discuss any events or issues that had come up for any of the members, I went and found Cassandra. She was talking with a bunch of the females from the infantry, there were quite a few of course, but that really didn't surprise me. What did surprise me was that Aruba was there, and Cassandra wasn't growling at her.

I came up behind Cassandra and put my arms around her, giving her a hug, I nodded to the other females who were all giving me that appraising look reserved for boyfriends and mates everywhere.

"Greetings, Aruba," I said and nodded to her. "Congratulations on your promotion." I gave Cassandra a kiss on the top of her head, and relaxed a little when she leaned back into me. I guess the expected fireworks weren't going to happen after all.

"Thanks, Raj. Let me introduce you to the girls," and she named each of the group that was there, introducing me to them.

I smiled and nodded, saying hello to each as Cassandra just leaned back and purred, I realized that I had wrapped my tail around her, like I always did whenever we were close, and that gesture, plus my arms, which were still wrapped around her, had not gone unnoticed by any of them.

When everyone found a spot to sit down after that, to listen to Balizar and Johnson, I pulled Cassandra onto my lap.

"Were those looks of envy I saw?" I whispered in her ear.

Cassandra purred, and gave a small nod, "I'd be lying if I said it didn't feel good. I got the best male around, and he's all mine."

I rubbed the side of my head against hers from behind, "And I got the best female," I purred and gave her a hug.

"Sometimes I worry about that hon," She whispered back to me.

"Why would you do that?" I asked surprised.

"Because I'm damaged goods, and you could have your pick of any of those."

I blinked surprised. "Damaged goods? How could you say that, Cassy?"

She sighed and I could feel her start to lean forward a little, "I did things, Raj,"

I pulled her back against me, "We all did things, Hon. Just remember one thing."

"What?"

"That you're right, I could have had my pick of any of those, and I picked you."

"You're too good for me, Hon," she purred and let herself be pulled back against me again.

"Not good enough is more like it," I whispered and gave her ear a lick making her giggle and relax.

I spent the rest of the meeting making sure she knew how I felt about her, and letting everyone else see as well, with a lot of very public displays of my very sincere love and affection. When we went back to our quarters afterwards Cassandra rewarded my efforts rather lustily.

"So what got into you today?" She purred into my ear much later as we lay entwined on our bunk.

"Being reminded that I got the best of the bunch," I purred back, smiling.

Cassandra sighed and smiled back a little wanly, "Raj, there are things I want to tell you, things that I did, and well, I'm afraid of what you might think of me afterwards."

"Cassy, I don't care," I said and I hugged her, "I mean that, I really don't care. It's in the past now, it doesn't matter."

"But I don't know...."

"Look, talk to Sharazad, she's a lot older, and more experienced. If you need to tell someone, tell her. If she thinks you should tell me, fine, then tell me."

Cassandra looked at me for a moment, obviously in thought.

"Why don't you want to hear it?" She asked curious.

"Well, one of the reasons is that I'm afraid I'll get angry and want to go take it out on people who are probably all dead now anyway."

"And the other?"

I could feel my ears go flat as my own facial fur bushed out in embarrassment, "Well, I don't want to tell you all of the things that I did, some of them were pretty bad, Hon. I really don't want to end up comparing notes, you already have enough stupid things from my past to beat on me about after all. They're all in the past now, and that is where I want them to stay."

She stared at me for a minute, not saying anything. I looked back at her; I'd tell her if she pushed, I just hoped she wouldn't.

"I'll go talk to Sharazad," She said and sighed.

"But one of these days I think I may want to compare notes."

Now it was my turn to sigh.

"But I think I can wait a couple of decades until then," she said smiling.

I hugged her and purred. "Me too."

#                #                #

The ship ‘flipped’ and started the deceleration burn very early Monday morning. When I'd reported to my two-hour bridge watch, you could see Tualatin Five without any magnification by then, and it continued to grow rather quickly.

We were taken off of alert status that day, we were close enough into the gravity well now that a ship couldn't jump in anywhere near us. Of course attacks usually were really only a threat if you were carrying something worthwhile, or if there was a war on. And neither of those situations applied to us today.

What we did end up doing on the shuttle decks was preparing for a rescue mission. As we'd gotten closer we'd learned about just how dire their situation was. We had rigged the two main cargo shuttles with stretchers and had packed them both full of medical equipment and food supplies.

The assault shuttles would be carrying all of the 2nd H.I.'s medics, our medics, and two of the Astra's five doctors. Fifty members of the ship's security team were also going down, plus a couple of people from engineering and half of the intelligence analysts as well.

I got assigned to fly the shuttle carrying the intelligence analysts, seeing as Cassandra was one of the one's going and I guessed they figured it would curtail any arguments.

"How many people will we be evacuating?" Dave asked Chief Shandour as we went over our plans the day before we were scheduled to land.

"Four hundred and seventy," Chief Shandour said.

"That many? How many are we leaving behind?"

"Well, we brought five hundred on the second module, so all of them at least."

"No, I meant of the crew that's already there."

"Oh, management figured it would be best to swap them all out. They need to be processed into Tri-Star, and let's face it; they haven't had a break in years, so it wouldn't be fair to leave any of the Sagert crew behind."

"Wait a second," Carol asked, "We're taking out four-seventy, and that's all of them?"

Chief Shandour nodded, "Apparently."

"Do we have any idea how many were originally there?"

"We think a thousand," he replied.

Everyone looked at each other for a moment.

"Sidearms are being issued to all personnel for this mission; they are to be worn under your uniform. We don't think there will be any problems, but the captain has decided that it is better to be safe, than to be sorry." He paused a moment, "We know that the last time a supply ship came here was almost two years ago. They expected the last one well over a year ago."

"Has anyone asked for an explanation?" Dave asked.

"Why bother? We'll find out soon enough."

Everyone looked around at each other again. No one wanted to say anything, but you could tell they were all thinking it.

But the chief was right, we'd find out for sure soon enough.

The next day we launched while the Astra was still doing its orbital burn. All six of the assault shuttles and both of the cargo shuttles were going down. We had twenty in the back of each of the assault shuttles, which made for a tight fit when you added in their gear and the supplies we were bringing down.

I was fifth in line. The first three were a mix of security forces and the combat medics. Fourth had more security, plus a few of the engineers we were bringing down and the one behind me had more medics, the two doctors, and some other specialists. Mine had the ten intelligence team members, plus another group of security. The two Cargo shuttles were so packed full of gear that there were only the flight crew onboard. Once unloaded they would start shuttling up the installation personnel almost immediately.

The data we had on the fourth moon was fairly complete at this point. It was less than a fourth of the size of earth's moon, but had about a quarter of a 'G' gravity. Apparently the core of the moon was some sort of super-dense material, probably tossed off from some kind of planetary or stellar explosion, and it had ended up in orbit around Tualatin Five.

The installation was on the moon's North Pole, as the crust was probably thinnest there for any kind of mining operation to go after the core materials.

It did have an atmosphere, though it was a rather thin one, really just enough to make flying a pain.

The orders were to let the first four assault shuttles land first; so they went ahead of the rest of us. They would disembark, check the situation, and the medics would assess the physical condition of everyone. Once they gave the all clear, the two cargo shuttles would land, as well as the last two assault shuttles.

The only problem was that it looked like the one hanger that they had, which could be pressurized, would only fit the two cargo shuttles, and maybe not much else. So vac-suits would be the order of the day for just about everyone.

"So, what did you think happened?" Dave asked me as we orbited around a point a few miles away, waiting for the all clear.

"I haven't a clue to be honest. I'd say to ask the people in the back. They're the intel group."

"Well, if only a bunch of preds are left, I think it will be pretty obvious," Dave sighed.

I nodded, the rumors onboard the Astra were already in full swing once everyone figured out that about half the people on the ground were missing. "Just wonder what the company will do if that really happened."

"Well, there's the all clear. Might as well go find out."

I nodded and keyed the circuit to the team in the small hold, "We're cleared for landing. Make sure everything is secure.

"Roger that, Raj," The team lead's voice came back over the com. The senior intelligence officer on the team was Senior Warrant Olivia, a fem rabbit; Cassandra was actually third, right behind Selenna who was second. The rest were mostly technicians and computer operators who were are much a part of the internal tech team for the ship as they were the intelligence team. Even the security troops we had with us doubled as techs, but then pretty much everyone who was on the security detail had a second job, you can't be fighters all the time on a cargo ship after all.

I brought us around and followed the cargo shuttles, and then watched as they landed in the underground hanger, which had its roof open. I could see there were a few shuttles in there already, which would explain the lack of room for the rest of us. I could see the entrance over by where the rest of our shuttles were parked, so I flew over to land by those, with number six off my wing.

"Everyone suited up back there?" I called on the com.

"We're good to go."

"Okay, opening the rear hatch," I called and hit the switch, and then I powered down the shuttle and checked the seal on my flight helmet.

"Ready?" Dave asked as I disconnected my suit from the shuttle's systems.

"Good to go."

He nodded and opened the cockpit access to the back, rather than pop the cockpit canopy, and we both climbed down to join the others who were gathering up their gear.

Dave and I helped, and then led them over to where the entrance was. We then cycled though in groups of six into the compound.

The first thing I noticed once we got inside and I got my helmet opened was the smell. It wasn't exactly bad, but it didn't smell the way you'd expect a ship or pressurized compound to smell. There were a lot of scents in the air, and not all of them were good ones.

"Atmosphere scrubbers must be compromised," Olivia said.

"Command is down the hall that way," Said one of the two security troops that were stationed by the door.

"What happened here?" I asked him, I knew him, he was from the Astra of course, he was one of the wolves in Dave's clan.

"They'll brief you in command, but no, they didn't eat each other."

I heard several of the others give a sigh of relief, and when the next group of six cycled through, we started down the hallway to make room for the others.

"Well, that's a relief," Dave said.

"Definitely," Olivia said and Selenna agreed. Cassandra just looked ill for a moment and didn't say anything.

It only took a couple of minutes to walk to the command room. Balizar was there, he had come down on the first shuttle as the commander of the ship's security force. There were several other people there who weren't from the Astra, all of whom were lying down on the floor, with medic's examining them. Two of them were human females, the rest were all females as well, two wolves, a raccoon, and a rabbit. They all looked emaciated and weak.

"So what's the situation?" Olivia asked.

"We're going to start evacuating the people here, as soon as we've got them all triaged. Gather the rest of your team and meet me in the conference room," Balizar pointed to a door leading from the command center.

Olivia nodded and we all moved into the room, I sat behind Cassandra as she sat at the table. Within a few minutes the rest of the team was inside and Balizar came in and closed the door behind him.

"Okay, here's what happened," He started off immediately. "According to what I was just told, when the supply ship didn't show up on schedule, they went to short rations. Their hydroponics and meat culture vats weren't fully up and running. They still needed a lot of raw materials for those, which the next ship was due to bring.

"When four months had come, they only had enough food for another two, but the head of the hydroponics department said he could up the output if enough people donated their bodies to the mix."

I noticed there were a lot of shocked expressions at the table.

"They didn't!" Someone muttered.

"They most certainly did. Over a two-week period, three hundred and twelve people went down to the vats and killed themselves. A month later, another one hundred and ninety or so joined them.

"They were getting ready to do it again; using dead bodies in the growing medium apparently doesn't work well for the long term."

"Who picked them?" Olivia asked.

"According to Administrator Sechkler they were all volunteers." Balizar said. "The only rules they had were you had to be over eighteen, and had to be there of your own free will."

"Do you believe her?"

He shrugged, "They were facing death by starvation if they didn't do something, which can be a pretty good motivator for self-sacrifice. The command team had stopped eating two weeks ago, and were about a day from killing themselves when we showed up. That's why they're so weak now, same for about a hundred others, they were on a downward spiral here. Even the rest of the survivors look pretty malnourished."

Olivia nodded, "I'll have my team examine all the records and the data and see if we can verify their story."

"Also gather whatever data you have on other company installations, as well as any other intel you can find. Once we have everyone evacuated and the engineers have completed their assessment, we'll be moving in the new team and shipping in all the new materials. So don't expect to have more than three days to gather data. We'll be leaving as soon as the new team is set up.

"Raj,"

I looked up, "Yessir?"

"Once the facility is secured, take Dave and go examine the other cargo shuttles in the hanger. We're going to move out some of the material they've extracted. The Captain figures it'll help cover the costs for the operation."

I nodded, "Yessir."

"Well, at least they didn't eat each other," Cassandra sighed as Balizar left the room.

"Hardly matters when you think about it," Dave said. "These people are still going to be feeling a lot of guilt and anger over using their friends to grow food."

"You think so?" I asked curious.

"Hey, I know about survivor's guilt," Dave sighed. "Add to that seeing your friend's and coworker's sacrifice every time you sit down to eat?" He shook his head.

I could see Cassandra shiver at that, so I put my hand on her shoulder, "Well at least its over for them."

She nodded but didn't look too happy. Then again, everyone in the room looked a bit sad.

"Okay," Olivia said taking charge, "let's get our gear set up in here, might as well use this as our command station, it's nice and close to the main command station. Jose, see if you can run a data line from the main console in here. Let's find some maps for the station, and see if we can find any for their networks as well. Selenna, Cassandra, take Raj, Dave, Red, and Muris down to the hydroponics level and give it a once over. Do the meat vats next. Make sure no one is messing with anything, then seal them off for now. We'll do a more detailed investigation of any remains down there after they have all the station personnel evacuated."

She looked around at everyone, and then clapped her hands, "Come on, people, yes it's sad, but we have lots of work and little time, so hop to it!"

Dave and I looked at the other four, "Do we need to bring anything along?"

Selenna shook her head, "Red and Muris can carry the door seal tags. Cassy and I will take the cameras. Let's go find a map and be on our way."

I nodded and we followed them out of the room.

It took a minute to find a map and get it downloaded to Selenna's handheld, then we headed off to the life support systems area, which was were the food production was located.

"Wow, this place is pretty big," Dave commented looking over Selenna's shoulder at the map.

"The mine had just proven itself and they were getting ready to increase the workforce. The next ships in were supposed to be bringing more miners." Selenna replied.

I listened as Dave continued to make small talk with Selenna, I didn't know if he was truly interested, or just hitting on her. With Dave you really never could tell. I noticed that Cassandra was being a little quieter than normal, so I put an arm around her as we walked, and was a little surprised that she leaned into me as we did. Obviously this place was bothering her, but I had no idea why.

We passed a lot of people as we made our way down, and they were all doing the same thing: eating.

Someone had come through here before us passing out high energy rations and everyone was eating them. None of them looked to be in good health, and they all looked tired, weary I guess would best describe it.

We passed several medics examining people, and they all seemed grateful for our rescuing them, but again, there was still that feeling of melancholy.

Entering the life support section we came across a bit of a surprise when we entered the hallway that led to the hydroponics and vat cultures area. On the wall someone had written:

Do not grieve for me,

for I have given of myself freely.

I do this to save my clan members,

to save my friends, my coworkers.

I take this burden, so that others will live.

Celebrate our lives as we celebrate yours.

And under it and down the hallway were signatures, hundreds of them. I almost cried, several others, including Cassandra, did.

We took pictures of all of it, and when everyone had gotten composed we went into the labs.

The hydroponics section looked like any other hydroponics farm I'd ever seen before. We checked to make sure all the entryways were secured, that there was nothing out of place, and then sealed the entry and put seals over the door to indicate if anyone entered.

We did the meat culture vats next, and again, nothing out of place, and nothing really different. We sealed that up as well.

There was one area left, ‘reclamation and intake processing.’ Normally that was were all of the raw materials for the two sections were processed, as well as the facility's raw sewage. When we got to that one, I could see Cassandra was looking pretty shaky. But then again, so was everyone else. Even I wasn't feeling too good.

I looked at Dave and he looked at me, I sighed.

"Let me go in and check it out," I told the others.

"Why?" Selenna asked, sounding a bit unsure.

"To check it out first."

"No, I mean why you?"

"Because I've seen more dead bodies than any of you."

"He has you know, course he killed most of them himself," Dave joked.

"I'm okay, I'll go." Cassandra growled and straightened herself up. "I've seen worse, I'm sure."

I looked down at her, "You sure?"

"Yes dammit, now, let's go check it out."

I nodded and opened the door and went in, with Cassandra behind me, followed surprisingly by Dave.

The area quickly checked out as standard, except for one room that was marked with a set of skull and crossbones that someone had crudely painted on the door. When I opened it and looked inside the scent of old blood was strong. Looking inside I could see it was the old decontamination room. There were bloodstains against the back wall of the showers, all of them at a depressingly large height.

"Guess this is where they did it," Dave said looking in.

"Headshot?" I said with an involuntary grimace. "Not exactly pretty."

"It's quick, and as far as anybody knows, painless." Cassandra said looking in as well, then ducking back out again.

I stepped into the room and took a few pictures, the room wasn't very large, and so I was able to cover it quickly. The walls were all steel, probably to make the room itself easier to decontaminate. When I got closer to the shower stalls where they had died, I could see the wall was pitted from the bullets that had been used. Probably another reason why they had picked this place.

I left quickly.

"I wonder why they didn't just use poison," Dave asked as Cassandra put a seal on the door.

"Because anyone eating them would die as well," Cassandra said softly. "It would also pollute the vats and kill off the cultures."

I pulled her close and gave her a hug, I could feel her trembling. "You okay, Hon?" I asked.

"It just, it just reminds me of the people they murdered in the camps, Hon," She replied and hugged me back. "I saw a lot of people I knew killed."

I nodded, "Well, that's over now."

Cassandra sighed and nodded and we all went back to the entrance and opened the door.

"Just stay away from the one I put the seal on," Cassandra told the others. "The rest of this is like the other rooms, no visible evidence."

Selenna and the other two nodded and made a quick circuit of the room, checking all the other exits, offices, and taking pictures. After that we secured the exit, put a seal on it, and went back to Olivia's headquarters.

"You going to be alright, dear?" I whispered to Cassandra after she reported in and told Olivia what we had found.

"Yes, yes I'll be fine, love," she said and gave me a hug. "Though I may have a few nightmares tonight."

I hugged her back and rubbed heads, "If you need me call."

"I'll be okay; you have your own work to do."

I gave her another hug and grabbing Dave went to the hanger.

"She okay?" Dave asked.

"I think so, things were pretty rough in the prison camps from what I've heard, and she was in one for three years."

Dave nodded, "Yeah, I've heard some of the stories from a few of the folks we brought back. Nasty Stuff."

"Well, it's all in the past now."

Dave shook his head, "Don't be too sure Raj. How long did it take you to get over Cassandra's loss?"

I looked at him, "Not sure I follow where you're going with this, Dave."

"It took you months to even start coming to terms with it, Raj, I know, I was there."

I nodded, he was right about that.

"So it's probably going to take Cassy that long to come to terms with whatever happened to her. Maybe longer. To her, she's still living it."

I thought about that, it made sense. "Good point."

I checked the airlock, the hanger was pressurized, so we went in and got to work. The two shuttles from the Astra had left already, taking up the worst of the people here. There were three shuttles in the landing bay, two of them were ore carriers, and the third was a smaller transport. We did a basic flight check on each, they were all in good shape and ready to fly and we reported that back to Balizar when we were finished.

It took about twenty hours to evacuate all of the facility personnel, after that a larger engineering team came down to do a complete survey before we dropped the replacement team off. The captain figured that it would be at least six months before Tri-Star would be able to send a supply ship out here, and he wanted to be sure that the replacement crew would be able to live here without any problems.

After the engineers did that, the replacement crew came down to take over and the rest of us spent three days moving gear from the Astra down, then taking ore back up. We loaded each of the cargo pods one-quarter full, to keep the ship balanced. We could easily have filled both the pods; they had kept the mine going up until they had made their sacrifice, and even to a small degree afterwards. I guess they needed something to take their minds off of it. But the stuff was incredibly dense and massed quite a bit, and it would have slowed the ship down too much to keep our schedule.

6

Five days later, we broke orbit. The survivors were all being bunked on the second crew module, the one that had carried their replacements. Our trip out was going to be a bit slower this time, but not enough to be an issue.

Once we had things squared away, the captain briefed us all on our next stop. As there wasn't anyone in the system any possible spies could talk to, he didn't bother to wait for us to enter jump.

We were all seated at our duty stations, which for me was the flight deck, when the captain came on the ship's network for the briefing.

"As many of you know, during the last war there were companies and other concerns that for one reason or another supported our enemy," he began.

"We will be hitting one of those companies next."

I thought I heard a small cheer, and then realized it was me and I shut my mouth embarrassed. Of course looking around the flight deck, I could see I wasn't the only one who felt that way.

"Timing is going to be very important on this operation, which is why we couldn't haul as much ore out of Tualatin as I would have liked. We will be meeting up with a cruiser, a frigate and a troop carrier, at a staging point. Then we will all jump in together. This is going to be a hostile takeover of assets. Other units will be attacking all the other assets of the target company simultaneously, throughout known space. Some of those units will be ours; some of them belong to our allies.

"When we are done, Capital Mines will cease to exist as a company, as all of their assets will have been seized. Now Colonel Johnson will brief you on the ground operation."

What followed next was primarily for the ground troops, which would be all of the 2nd Heavy Infantry, and about three hundred of the Astra's security forces. When I had first joined the Astra, it shipped with a standing crew of around three hundred, which was pretty small for a ship of its size. During the war that crew had increased in size to over five hundred, all of those extras were security members, or more precisely, troops. They did have other jobs onboard as well, and it made general maintenance a little easier on the rest of us, though more people onboard did mean more maintenance, so it mostly balanced out.

There were also instructions for us flight crews as well. We would have to move over a thousand people to the ground, and with only six assault shuttles and two cargo shuttles, that would take a while.

Of course that was when we found out that the small shuttle bay on each of the troop modules had two drop ships in it, and that we'd be moving over a hundred troops onto the frigate when it showed up, as it was carrying two drop ships as well.

That meant we'd be able to put almost half of the forces on the ground in the first wave. The drop ships would all fly back to the Astra to reload for the next wave, which meant about two more sorties for them until all of the ground troops were deployed.

The assault shuttles would start flying combat support after the first wave hit, and only two of them would reload with troops after that, unless we won the air war sooner, in which case more would be assigned into the troop deployment role.

There would be two more assault shuttles launching from the frigate, which was the Eagle. They would also come back to the Astra for rearming, as our assault shuttle bay was large enough to turn around several shuttles at once. Our rear shuttle bay would handle the drop ships, which wasn't that much different than handling the cargo shuttles.

The troop ship was carrying the 1st Heavy Infantry. It carried ten drop ships, also of a new design, and they would HALO the 1st H.I. in one pass, then load up with extra ammunition, food, and other supplies and land once a safe landing zone was established. As for the Cruiser, it would be supporting us with ten of the company's new attack fighters, as well as an impressive array of armaments, including orbital to ground batteries.

As for the bane of my combat existence, the cargo shuttles, they would not launch until the air war had definitely been won, and would be ferrying heavy military equipment after that. When I found I would not be expected to fly any of those sorties I almost danced.

When the main briefing finished, they turned us all over to our individual section chiefs to find out the details for our own group.

"How many people are we going up against, Chief?" I asked.

"Estimates put the total number on the ground to be between eight and twelve thousand."

"And we're hitting that with only two thousand?"

"Two thirds of the defending personnel are human, so we really don't expect much of a fight out of them as they're mainly technicians, miners, or administrators. Of the four or so thousand that are animen, most of them are grunt labor. Intel puts their fighting force at probably two or three thousand, of which two thirds are again, human."

"They have human fighters?" Jeb asked surprised.

"Well, they were in league with the Humanist Front, so we're not really surprised by that," Chief Shandour said. "This group used to be fairly well connected politically back on Earth, so they were untouchable. Well, guess what?" He smiled and looked at all of us. "With what came out from the war, and with everything I hear is playing on the news back on Earth, their political connections have all suddenly dried up and they've gone from 'untouchable' to 'very tempting targets.'"

There were more than a few laughs at that.

"So, we've got a lot of pictures, maps, and other intel on the target, their defenses, and the general layout. The techs are programming the sims and tonight we'll start running basic drills and take some time to learn the terrain. Tomorrow we'll start practicing the mission. Any questions?"

"How good is the intelligence?" Sharon, one of the other WSO's asked.

"Corporate sent a couple of spies in six months ago. We'll probably have an update from them once we launch our attack as well. Anything else?"

There were a few more questions, but they were related to the training schedule. I went and got my copy of the information, then sat down with Dave and started going over it. We had eight weeks until we met up with the other units, and then another week or so until the attack.

"Been a while since you've flown any live combat, feeling up to it?" Dave asked.

I nodded, "Sure, why wouldn't I?"

"Well, then be ready for all the crap that the chief is going to have them throw at us in the sims, because he's going to want some proof."

I smiled, "I'm looking forward to it actually, it'll be fun."

"This is obviously some new sort of fun that I'm not aware of," Dave grumbled.

"Well, I need to do something to break you of all those bad habits you developed when flying with Shaun."

"I developed no such thing," Dave said. "In fact I'm just scandalized that you would even suggest it!"

I smirked, Shaun was a very pretty female wolf, and had been Dave's pilot for his entire tour on the Falcon.

"Uh-huh. Well, the kiss rule just went right out the window."

Dave looked offended, "What! No kiss? Then how am I supposed to feel motivated to do my job if I don't get a kiss for every target I destroy?"

"I'm sorry, Dave, but I'm a married leopard, you'll just have to suffer through it somehow."

"Next you'll be telling me you won't spend the night before the mission with me," Dave said and faked a sob.

I just sighed and shook my head. "I know that never happened."

"Well, it happened once," Dave grinned.

"And once was enough?" I asked with a smirk.

"Truth is, we were so tired the next day that we decided to save our partying until afterwards."

"Uh-huh. Well, unless you want me spending time in your room after this shift ends, how about we start studying this stuff?"

"Really, Raj! And here I thought you said you were mated!"

I sighed and shook my head. Dave's sense of humor could be strange at times, but after knowing him all these years I'd at least gotten used to it.

I was recounting some of Dave's antics to Cassandra later that night while we lay in bed and I noticed that she wasn't really saying much.

"Are you okay, Hon?" I asked pulling her closer and looking into her eyes.

"I'm okay," she said and looked away.

"Cassy?"

"Yes, Raj?"

"Please don't lie to me. What's wrong?"

She looked back up at me and sighed, "What we saw down there reminded me quite a lot of some of the things that happened to me, to the people I was with, my coworkers, my friends."

"Cassy, they weren't murdered by the enemy, they didn't die in the war, it was just a terrible accident."

She growled, "It wasn't an accident! If their company hadn't been destroyed, the supply ship would have come, would have saved them."

I sighed, I hadn't honestly thought of it that way.

"They were murdered as sure as my friends were murdered. They were forced to eat each other, maybe not directly, but they still were!"

She was still growling and had gone stiff against me. I started to have flashbacks to some of the fights I'd had in the past with Aruba.

"Do you want to go down to the gym and spar?" I asked.

"Why would I want to do that?" She growled at me.

"Because then I get to put on protective gear before you start hitting me," I whispered and kissed her on the nose.

She started to snarl, then broke it off suddenly and just started to cry.

"I'm... I'm sorry, hon, I'm sorry. I... I just can't help myself sometimes."

"That's okay, dear, that's why I'm here. I know it's tough, I know you still haven't gotten over it. I know it hasn't ended for you yet."

"No... no it hasn't. When will it? When will it end?"

I kissed her again, "Talk to Sharazad. If anyone knows, I'm sure she will."

Cassandra hesitated, "I'll try. I'll try tomorrow."

"Surely there were some good things that happened, weren't there?"

She shook her head, "Not really. Oh, there were small things, small victories, but if we seemed happy, too many times they'd come back and look for an excuse to make us suffer. Up until you rescued me, the best thing that ever happened was when I got moved into that camp. There were so many of us there, that they stopped caring."

I thought about that, I'd killed the commander of that camp when my men had reported finding pelts in his office that he'd skinned off of other prisoners.

"That was the best thing?" I said shocked.

She nodded. "They were a lot more professional there, than in any of the places I had been before. They didn't spend their time trying to break each of us, or punish us, individually. As long as we worked and produced, they only bothered us with minor harassments."

She shivered and I pulled her closer again.

"But some of the places we were before that, they... there were people who would delight in hurting us, or torturing us. They'd look for excuses to punish us, some didn't even need excuses. The worst was this one place we were sent to early on in the war. After we'd been there a few months working on some base they were building, they started to tell us they didn't have enough food for all of us. About once a week they'd tell us this, and they'd tell us that in order to have enough food, the last one in line would have to be ‘put down.’

"At first we'd all scramble not to be last, and they'd laugh at us and then shoot the last person in line after telling them about how much their 'animal friends' must care for them. After a few weeks of that, people started to willingly go to the end of the line; they'd given up hope, and thought they'd save the rest of us the pain of trying to survive.

"When the guards figured that out, they mocked us, and shot the person at the head of the line that week. After that, until we were shipped off to another place to work, it was pretty random. If you caught the wrong attention at the wrong time, that was it, you were killed."

I hugged her tight, what can you say to that? I didn't know any magic words to sooth her, to ease the pain. "I'm sorry, Hon," Was all I could think of to say. "It's over now and won't ever happen again."

She nodded and buried her face in my chest and cried as I held her, until eventually, she fell asleep. I hoped this was the worst of it. It made me angry that such things had been done, but I knew there was nothing I could do about it. Most of the people who had done these things were dead now, or so far away and in hiding, that they'd never be found and punished.

When morning came, I was surprised that Cassandra had slept through the night without waking. I guess telling me had kept any bad dreams away. She was a little quiet when we hit the showers and got dressed, but was a lot more relaxed and talkative when we got to the mess. So I was a lot less worried when we went our separate ways for the day.

We started training on the details of the overall plan that day, or at least the details as they pertained to us. With four ships coming in, we all knew that there wasn't going to be much in the way of any surprise. They'd see us coming and know why we were there.

The first wave was going to focus on attacking their command and control complex. We would bring the first wave into attack that while the Eagle, the cruiser Natal, and the Astra took out both orbital and ground radar, so they would hopefully not know where we were going until we attacked.

During that initial battle, we'd start by bringing in the first wave of the 2nd H.I., and while the enemy tried to counter that, the drop ships from the troop carrier J Wayne would perform their massive HALO drop, putting the entire 1st H.I. behind the enemy's counterattack, and would hopefully roll them up.

The next two waves, which would bring down the remaining elements of the 2nd H.I. would be directed to land them where they would do the most good. Our commander hoped at that point that we would have total air superiority and a ground based refueling and rearming station would then be set up for the attack craft and the fighters, so they wouldn't have to return to their ships to rearm.

We would be practicing that plan until we launched the attack, as well as practicing a number of variations, including ones where things didn't go at all right. We had the time after all, and the chief had the sadism to put us through it.

My unarmed combat classes started up again, and we started using sections of the ship to practice storming chokepoints and fortified positions. There were techniques that we'd used in Falcon block, and I taught them here. Of course we did do a couple of live-fire drills, because some things you really do need to experience in training to make sure you did it right when the bullets really were flying.

And practicing how bullets ricocheted down a hallway meant you needed a real hallway to stand in as they did.

I let the colonel explain that one to the captain. At least I didn't have to fix the damage that we did. The troops in the class got to help with that.

The new people onboard, the ones who had been working for Sagert before Tri-Star took them over, didn't come out of the module they had been living in for almost two weeks. When they did start coming out, they weren't very sociable at first, and they all looked a little haunted.

By the time of the second clan meeting, they were being a lot more sociable, there was only one leopard in that group, his name was Josu, and he was only seventeen, this had been his first assignment. He'd been born in the crèche of a crèche company, a place that provided workers for companies too small to 'grow their own' as it were.

All the other leopards at 'Facility D' as everyone was calling it, had suicided. There had been six of them, and they'd all been older, and from what Sharazad had learned in private from the one surviving administrator, they were all afraid that they'd lose it and start preying on the others when starvation set it, so they'd been in the first group of volunteers. Josu however had been too young.

He had one of the worst cases of survivor guilt I'd ever seen, and like everyone else here, I'd seen my fair share, and even felt a little of it myself. Kyrani had taken up with him; I suspected the hand of Balizar behind that one, because she was the closest to his age.

Also, because she stayed right next to him, even though I knew she'd been very interested in several of the males from the 2nd H.I. before we'd picked up Josu.

I guess the other males had gotten the word as well, because none of them were hitting on Kyrani, though I did see several try to engage Josu in conversation.

"I feel sorry for that kid," I said to Cassandra as we mingled with the others.

"Oh?" she asked looking at me. "Why?"

"Because he has nobody. The only leopards he'd gotten close to all went off without him, he lost his whole world in a terrible incident," I avoided the word 'accident' since Cassandra's little blowup. "And then spent two years isolating himself out of the same fears that led the others to kill themselves."

"What about me?" She asked, surprising me.

"What about you?" I asked looking down at her.

"Do you feel sorry for me?"

"If you didn't have someone who loved you more than life itself, if you didn't have a bunch of brothers and sisters, if all of your friends had died, maybe," I said hoping I had dodged all the mines in that little field.

"Only maybe?" She said quirking an eyebrow.

"You were a lot more experienced, and you are a lot stronger, Cassy," I said and gave her a hug. "And of course you have me!" I added and grinned at her. "But he doesn't have anybody. Kyrani's trying, but until he opens up, it's gonna be a long hard road for him."

Cassandra nodded slowly, "Well at least he doesn't have to hide what he did, and everyone here knows what happened."

"Maybe, but I doubt that makes him feel any less guilty."

She nodded, "Why don't we go join them?"

"You sure?"

She laughed, "Kyrani's probably the only innocent one in this room. I'm sure we can help."

I sighed and smiled, "Okay."

We went and joined them on the bench they were sitting on; I sat next to Josu as Cassandra went and sat next to Kyrani.

"Hi, Raj, Cassy," Kyrani said smiling.

"Hi," Cassandra and I both replied. Josu ducked his head and said "hello" rather softly.

"So how's it going?" I asked Josu softly as Cassandra struck up a conversation with Kyrani.

"Okay," he said looking down.

"Don't bullshit me, Josu, I can see it's rough."

He looked up at me, his eyes were sad, he wasn't growling, which is what I expected. I thought he'd be angry with me, not this.

"It stinks, okay? It's lousy! I shouldn't be here! I don't deserve this!"

I nodded, "You know they'd tell you to stop talking shit and to get on with your life if they could, don't you?"

"And how would you know that?" he said with a slight growl.

I smiled; anger was a bit better that just sorrow. "Because I just said it. Tell me that I'm wrong."

"They left me! They didn't even think about me! Do you know how rough that was?"

"I think I have a pretty good idea," I told him.

"I doubt it!" he grumbled. "And why should you care anyway?"

"Eh, part of being mated," I smiled at him, "you start to care about things other than getting laid and making friends. Speaking of getting laid, you and Kyrani having any fun?"

He glared at me.

"Josu, please do not tell me that you ignoring the charms of a beautiful female who is not only interested in you, but seriously concerned about your welfare."

"Balizar is forcing her to be with me," he growled.

I shrugged, "I don't know if I'd say 'forcing, 'more like he asked her to spend some time keeping you company."

"And how would you know?"

"Because he once did the same thing with me, had me go spend some time with someone who needed help."

"I don't need help!" growled.

"Josu, we all need help, sometimes more than others. As for Kyrani, well unless you ask her, or at least try to seduce her, you're never going to know, are you?"

I saw his ears go out to the sides, flat, and his facial fur all bushed out. I got the message almost immediately.

"When was the last time you had a lover?" I asked softly doing my best to show my concern.

He growled, still embarrassed, but didn't say anything.

"When was the last time you even just slept with someone else?"

He growled a little louder and I started to wonder if Balizar knew? Probably.

"Relax, Josu, I'm not here to embarrass you. But why haven't you? There are a lot of others who would be happy to just spend a night."

"I don't want to sleep with anyone, I just want to be alone!" he muttered looking back at the floor.

I looked over at Kyrani, who looked at me and shook her head, looking a little lost.

I shook my head and sighed, "Well, if that's what you want, but if you change your mind, don't be afraid to ask for help." I got up and signaled Cassandra and Kyrani to follow me.

"We can't just leave him there, alone," Cassandra said to me.

"Balizar told me to stay with him!" Kyrani said looking at me nervously.

I shrugged, "He said he wants to be alone, I don't know what else we can do. You've been with him for how many days now?" I asked Kyrani.

"Three," She said looking dejected.

"Has he even talked to you?"

She shook her head, "Not really. He just tolerates me when I'm around."

"We can't leave him alone, Raj," Cassandra said to me, "It's not healthy for him to shut himself off from everyone."

I shrugged, "I don't know, I did it."

"And they let you get away with it?" Cassandra asked looking at me surprised.

A sudden thought popped in my head, "Actually no. Excuse me a moment, I'm going to call in a favor."

They both looked at me funny and I looked around the room, until I saw Aruba. She was chatting up Hawkeye of all people.

"Aruba, Hawkeye," I said walking up to them smiling.

"Raj," Hawkeye nodded.

Aruba saw me and sighed, "I know that look. What do you want, Raj?"

I smiled wider, "It appears we have a leopard who is being very unsocial, is sleeping alone, and is refusing to do anything with anyone."

Hawkeye nodded, "Oh yeah, Josu."

Aruba eyed me suspiciously. "And what does that have to do with me?"

"Kyrani tried and failed, so I was thinking...."

"What? Raj, he's just a kid!"

"Aruba," I said still smiling, "you helped me, I'm sure you can help him."

"I helped you because you're built like a brick shithouse," Aruba said with a smirk. "Why don't you go bother Danielle, or Selenna even? Hell, Selenna could make a corporate account fake his spreadsheet!"

I shook my head, "Because I know you can do it, that's why."

"Oh please, there are a lot of fems here who could do it."

I nodded, "True, but if he loses it, I know that you can deal with it."

"Gee thanks, Raj," she growled.

"Okay, how about this," I winked at her, "Either you do this, or I'll lay the hottest sexist kiss on you, that you can imagine."

"Oh, I don't know, I can imagine a...." Aruba stopped suddenly. "Cassandra will dissect me with a rusty knife, won't she?"

I nodded.

"Bastard!" she growled.

I nodded and smiled sweetly, "Yes, but you already knew that. Besides, if someone doesn't do something soon, that kid is going to get psyched. I'm surprised he hasn't killed himself already."

Aruba sighed and nodded. "Okay, I'll do it. But you owe me, Raj. And if I can think of something Cassandra won't gut me for, you are damned sure going to pay it."

I nodded, "I can live with that."

Aruba turned to Hawkeye, "Maybe next week," she said. Then she paused a moment and taking a deep breath she schooled her expression into a rather pleased one.

"Wish me luck, boys. I'm going in!"

And with that she turned and strolled across the room and sat down next to Jesu who started.

"Think she has a chance?" Hawkeye said looking at me.

I nodded, "She got me out of my shell, so yeah, I think she does."

7

My intercom rang and I sat up, swinging around to put my feet on the floor.

"Lights, ten percent," I said and yawned as Cassandra grumbled half asleep. I looked at the clock, it was three a.m. Thursday, ship time, I'd been asleep about an hour.

I hit the switch for the intercom as it started to ring a second time.

"Yes?" I said.

"Get down to my cabin, Raj, I need your help."

I recognized Balizar's voice immediately.

"Oh my way!" I said and hit the off switch.

"You do anything?" Cassandra grumbled half asleep.

"Then he would have said that he has a problem," I said stepping into my ship suit and pulling up the zipper. "Go back asleep; I'll see you at breakfast."

Cassandra grumbled softly and rolled over to face away from the light.

"Lights off," I said and stepped out of our quarters and went directly to Balizar's. Second shift was smaller, so I didn't run into anyone on the trip. I knocked and went in when the door opened.

"What's the prob--" I started to say to Balizar, and then stopped when I saw Aruba, she was lying on the couch and had a bandage wrapped around her chest. Sharazad was tending to her, I could smell the blood.

I swore.

"Josu attacked Aruba," Balizar sighed.

"How did that happen?" I asked looking at him, and then back at Aruba.

Aruba shook her head, "We were just laying there in bed, same way as we had the last five. He seemed like he was finally starting to get used to me being there, then suddenly he just exploded and attacked me.

"I pushed him out of bed, and as I was getting up, he grabbed the stylus for my tablet off of my desk and stabbed me with it. Then he ran out the door." She sighed, "I came down here, told Balizar.

I looked at Balizar who didn't look very happy, "He's trying to hide down in the main cargo bay. I want you to go get him, and bring him back here."

"I'm sorry I set Aruba on him, Sir," I apologized.

"Don't be, she was actually making headway with the boy. If this had happened with Kyrani in the room, it would have been much worse."

"Do you know where in the bay?"

"Lowest floor, section alpha two-three."

"Dead or alive?" I asked softly.

"Alive, preferably." Balizar handed me a rolled bag, a small roll of tape, and some zip ties. "Try not to let anyone see you bringing him back.

I nodded, and sticking the ties and the tape in my pockets, I left.

It took me about fifteen minutes to get down to the main hold. There are only a half dozen ways into the hold, and I zip tied five of them shut. Then I zip tied number six behind me as I went in. The ties probably wouldn't hold that long, but I was sure they'd hold long enough. I waved to one of the cameras, I'd worked this hold enough times to know where they were, which was two at each entrance.

Normally no one watched them, because nobody came down here and the doors all had alarms on them. I checked my pockets, to make sure there was nothing in them that would make any noise, stretched a few times, and then I slowly started working my way down to the bottom deck.

The lighting here was very low, and only along the main walkways, ramps, and the main ladder. I looked at one of the floor designators to get my bearings, then went to the opposite side of the bay and looked for an access shaft.

All of the floors in the bay were really just pieces of heavy-duty grating, and any or all of them could be removed to allow taller cargo when required. The crews that moved and secured the floor panels needed to be able to move between the levels easily, so they set up access ways, usually along the walls, so they could climb up and down as they worked. When I found one, I started to climb down to the bottom level, using the holes for the interlocks as handholds.

The only hard part was the poor lighting, there were no lights set up by the section where I was climbing down, and I had to be quiet.

When I got to the last level, I stopped and listened a moment, mouth open to quiet my own breathing, and help my hearing just that little bit more. I couldn't smell him, and we'd worked this hold only a few weeks ago when we'd been at the base, so there were still a lot of other scents around as well.

I moved slowly, creeping up on his position. I didn't know if he'd be awake, looking out for someone to come get him, or curled up asleep somewhere. I was hoping that after all the excitement of the fight and running down here that he'd be tired, and that the darkness would have lulled him asleep.

When I got to the section where Balizar said he was, I could smell him. Alpha twenty-three was near the main hanger door, so there were several cameras here. I moved slowly and carefully now, and circled the spot. There was no sign of him on the ground, but there were several taller pieces of cargo here, so I made a second round and looked for signs of climbing.

After I found those, I picked a different container, with lots of things I could cling to, and climbed up it slowly. When I stuck my head over the top, there he was, inches away from me, he was asleep, but before I could climb up further he woke rather suddenly, and his eyes when wide and growling he started to get up.

Swearing loudly, I reached up and grabbed him by the arm, and pulling hard I pushed off the side of the container, and dragged him off the top as I fell.

He started to snarl and flail at me with all his limbs, so I just whipped my arm around and slammed him into the deck as I landed on my feet.

Then I kicked him in the face.

He was still flailing and snarling and growling, but he was having trouble trying to stand. I kicked him in the stomach, and grabbed his head as he folded and introduced it to the floor.

That stunned him for a moment, so I dropped to my knees, putting one of them on his butt and pulled out one of the larger zip ties, and looped it over one of his ankles, then hauled his other leg over and got that one as well, and zipped it down tight.

He screamed and started thrashing then, probably because his left leg was broken.

He tried to roll onto his back, and I really couldn't stop him, so I rolled off and hopped to my feet as he attacked the zip tie, trying to free his legs. So I kicked him in the head again, and pulled out another and bulled him down hard to the floor again with my body and tried to get his arms behind him and get a tie around them.

That proved harder than I thought it would, the kid was putting up a hell of a fight, whether because he was crazy, or because he was starting to figure out what would happen to him next. I grabbed his head and turning it to the side I slammed it into the floor, once, twice, three times, then on the fourth he started to weaken. I got the ties around his wrists then, tightened them, then put a second one on, another around his legs higher up, and linked three together to pin his arms to his body.

I dragged him over to one of the walkway lights and sat him up against a container and checked him over. He was still breathing, but he was bleeding pretty well from the side of his head. There was a first aid kit by the cargo station that the loadmaster used during loading and unloading operations, so I took him over there, turned the station lights on, and patched him up.

When he started to growl at me, I backhanded him across the muzzle without even looking up.

"What is your problem, Josu?" I asked and started to look at the leg. I'd have to undo the ties if I wanted to splint it, and I sure wasn't doing that while he was conscious. Hell, for all I knew Balizar was going to psych him when I brought him back. So why waste the time?

"They left me! They're all gone!" He yelled.

I smacked him again. "So WHAT?" I yelled at him, getting into his face. "Yeah, they're dead, they're all dead! They killed themselves to try and save others. SO WHAT?"

He looked shocked at that. I wondered if anyone had ever raised their voice to him.

"They... they left me! ALONE!" He wailed. "Everyone knew why! Because they were gonna EAT THEM!! anna... anna everyone thought I would TOO!" he started to cry then. "And they wouldn't talk to me, or be my friends, they all were afraid!" He growled and looked up at me again "I WANNA GO! I WANNA GO TOO!"

I smacked him across the face, hard.

"Too fucking bad," I growled. "We don't always get what we want kid. But if you want to piss on their graves after what they did for you, well fine. I don't care. But just wait until you're off ship and not our responsibility anymore.

"You don't understand! No one under--" He shut up as I grabbed his muzzle and wrapped the tape around it a couple of times, silencing him.

"Oh, I understand, kid, we all understand. That's why we're all so pissed at you. When somebody offered us help, we took it. We didn't spit in their face or stab them." He flinched when I said that. "Now I suggest you think about what you tell Balizar when I drop you at his feet."

I got the bag out and shook it out. It was big enough to carry him, so I put him in it and cleaned up the mess and put everything away.

Then I slung him over my shoulder and took him back to Balizar's office.

"Anyone see you on the way back?" Balizar asked.

I shook my head, shift change was in two hours, so there weren't too many crew up yet. Plus I had been careful. I set the bag on the floor.

"How is Aruba?"

"She's fine. How is he?"

I shook my head, "He's got a broken leg, and probably one hell of a headache."

Balizar sighed. "You can go now. Thanks, Raj."

"Hey, there but for the grace of a lot of people, go I. But he's right; they should have let him go as well. Leaving him alone for two years, among all that fear and suspicion," I shook my head, "he was just too young to cope with it."

Balizar nodded and sighed.

I left and went back to the room, I got another hour of sleep at least before I had to get up.

"So what happened?" Cassandra asked me as we headed down to the mess.

"Josu lost it," I sighed and shook my head.

Her eyes got wide, "Did you?"

I shook my head, "Balizar had me go get him; he was holed up in the cargo hold."

"Did he hurt anyone?"

"Aruba, but not too badly. I think Balizar wanted the whole thing kept quiet. Maybe he's still hoping we can save the kid."

"You don't think so, do you?" Cassandra asked softly.

"No, I'd be surprised if he's even still with us. I think of how close I came to his fate," I shivered, "Marcus and Mist sure saved my ass."

"But you wanted to be saved," Cassandra said.

"Yeah, Marcus definitely gave me something to live for, so do you!" I smiled and gave her a hug, and then stopped and gave her a kiss in the hallway.

"What was that for?" She purred smiling.

"Don't ever give up on me, and I promise I'll never give up on you, love," I purred back.

"Deal," She said, and we started walking again. "I'll see what I can find out from Sharazad."

I shook my head. "Don't. Balizar looked pretty unhappy and I suspect Shar is the same. I'd rather not rub any salt into that unless they want to tell us."

Cassandra nodded.

"Have you talked to her, about your issues yet?" I asked.

She stiffened for a moment and I sighed.

"Cassy, please."

"It's not easy, hon."

"No, it never is. But letting it all bottle up inside isn't good."

"I'll try."

"That's all I'm asking for," I smiled.

"Until the next time."

"If I didn't ask you for things, you wouldn't know I loved you," I teased.

She nudged me, but didn't say anything as we entered the mess.

When we got our food and sat, Brasile, Hess, and Aruba, joined us, which was pretty normal. No one said anything about Josu, but I doubted that Brasile or Hess knew anything, and even if they did, it wasn't a subject you talked about. Having someone get psyched was a touchy subject among leopards, so it was always kept quiet.

In the month that followed, no one asked about Josu, or what had happened to him. He obviously wasn't around anymore, so everyone just accepted it and moved on.

8

When we dropped out of jump at the rendezvous point, we were a couple of light months out from the target system. The cruiser and the frigate showed up an hour after we did, and the troop transport showed up a day later. The frigate flew up fairly close and took on board the troops they would be landing. Plans were gone over one last time, to make sure everyone had the same plan. Clocks, drives, and navigation was synched, then we moved into formation, accelerated up to speed, and jumped.

We dropped out of jump four days later. In order to keep formation, which is rather difficult in jump-space, as you can't see or talk to anyone else, we traveled at a fairly low speed while in jump. But it paid off well as we all came out in trail formation, which is with each ship following the one behind it, and at the same time. With the Astra leading, they only saw the Astra's breakout flash, and it was the largest due to the Astra's heavy tonnage, so all of the other breakout flashes were obscured by ours.

One ship coming in, even if it is a very big one, isn't all that worrisome. The Astra's specifications are well known, so they'd probably guess we were coming in with a decent size attack force, but they would believe that we wouldn't be able to carry enough to win. So they'd believe we had bad intel, and that they had the upper hand.

Their best bet under such a scenario would be to keep us from landing any troops, so they were expected to commit heavily to an air attack. The ten fighters from the cruiser Natal would be a rather shocking surprise for them. Assuming that they bought the story we were trying to sell them.

For the next three days we proceeded in system. The Eagle and the Natal had their drives turned rather low, and with the baffling they had, they wouldn't show up until they went to full throttle. Their goal was to get as close to the two orbital platforms and destroy them before the Astra and the J Wayne came into range. After that, they had enough engine power to do whatever they wanted to. The Natal's engines were actually as big as the Astra's, and the Natal massed less than a tenth of us.

So the separation between us and the two warships increased quite a bit, as the Astra was forced to burn the entire trip in. The J Wayne was in the same situation as we were, though being smaller was able to hide behind us the entire time.

When the two warships came into firing range of the orbital defenses they weren't detected, as had been hoped. I suspected they had shut everything down the day before, and they just coasted in so close, that when they suddenly powered up and fired the orbital defenses were destroyed on the first salvo.

Our radio and sensor people didn't pick up any broadcasts, so they didn't know about the extra ships, but they would fairly soon.

Six hours later the attack started. The Natal and the Eagle opened up on the orbital radar and ground radar sites, four hours later the Astra was close enough to join the bombardment, which had now switched to their headquarters building and any defense installations that were known about.

Four hours after that started, we checked our shuttles, checked the troops in the back, got inside, sealed it all up and then we launched.

The ride down was quiet. The ten fighters from the Natal were formed up in two groups of five, to either side of us. When we dropped down to fly the terrain, they stayed up above us, to draw off any attackers.

Lead flashed his lights as we came down on to the deck and we all spread out into a loose fingertip position, and pulled our throttles back to point six-five mach. Things were quiet for about another five minutes, then I saw a flash up above me in the air.

"What was that?" I asked Dave.

"I got the fighters dialed in back here; they've just been engaged by the local's air defense. Sounds like there are a lot of them too."

"Is Jerry up there with them?"

"That's who made the first kill," Dave laughed.

"Figures," I sighed.

"One minute to drop zone," Dave said over the general intercom, alerting the troops in the back.

I saw the indicator for the 'prepare to drop light' that was in the back come on as Dave opened the rear door.

"Prepare to jump, thirty seconds." Dave said then started counting down by fives.

I looked around, my board was still clear. over to my left I could see lead's rear bay door was open, and when Dave got to zero, I saw the twin drogue chutes pop out into the air stream, from the back of lead's shuttle, immediately followed by ten troops on each of the two lines. Then as soon as they were all clear, all of their speed drogues deployed and then they were lost to my sight as they slowed down drastically and we continued to speed forward on course.

I checked my board and the 'bay clear' light was lit, when the last trooper was pulled out by the drogue chute, his tether pulled a pin that both triggered all of their drogues, and let me know they were clear. I flipped the rear bay door switch to closed, and moved in closer to lead as we started to bank around to the left.

Dave sent the target info to my helmet display and I armed the bomblets.

"Still quiet?" I asked Dave surprised.

"Don't worry, we're about to get company," he said.

I looked at the countdown on my helmet display; we were five seconds from the target. I waited for zero, then hit the pickle button and two canisters dropped from the wings just as we came over the main compound, and each canister disintegrated into five hundred and twenty-six little anti-personal bombs.

"Company!" Dave said and all of the threat indicators suddenly went active. Lead broke hard right and I slid under him as I broke right as well. Suddenly my headset came alive with radio calls from the other shuttles as we got jumped.

"Where are they?" I asked checking my threat indicators.

"Lots of targeting radar, nothing is sticking yet. It's coming from all around us, I'm making six airborne, and probably twenty ground based, we need to....

"Launch!" he said surprised and I dumped two flares and broke hard left as lead broke away from me and a missile streaked between us.

"Manpad, two more coming!"

I jinked us back to the right, pulled the throttles to idle and punched out more flares. This close they were probably using infrared for terminal guidance. If not, hopefully the jammers would spoof them.

I saw a bunch of small explosions go off as our bomblets all hit the ground.

"That'll teach 'em!" Dave growled and I pushed the throttles up to mil power. "Turn left thirty degrees!"

I did, hard and I saw the indicators for the other two cluster bombs wink out.

"What was that?" I asked looking around and above us. We had company now alright, there were enemy fighters diving on us from my ten o'clock, and a couple more off to my eight o'clock that were being chased by our guys.

"No idea, just a large group of people in formation. Probably a marshaling area."

"Take the radar guided; I'll use the heats and the gun. Time to get busy," I said and picked out my target, one of the guys coming in on us was turning to engage my lead, so I pushed the throttles to max and pulled hard to bring us around.

"Carol, break left!"

She broke and I hit the chain gun as I came around, my nose tracking the guy trying to get on her tail, and suddenly there was a bright flash and he disintegrated.

"Raj, break right!" Someone shouted over the radio and I rolled over and pulled hard, something flashed past me, then a missile came off the rail and a moment later whatever it was exploded a lot closer than I would have preferred.

The next three minutes were the most intense flying I'd ever done. We were low, almost on the deck, and I'd lit both the burners at this point, as we were energy poor. The guys coming down on us from above were moving fast and trading altitude for airspeed, which made them energy rich. So they were not only moving faster than us, but all that extra speed let them maneuver faster than us.

At least our fighters were on their tail, so it wasn't just a duck shoot.

But my only real defense was to stay as low as I could, which meant I was literally flying around buildings and trees, through clearings, and changing course every five seconds as I tried to build more speed so I could pop up there and actually fight. I had switched the radio to channel Air-One so I could hear the Natal's pilots as well as the Astra's and the Eagle's now, as Natal's group dove in on the whole mess. Mostly I was too busy trying not to fly into anything or get tagged by one of the enemy fighters to pay much attention to what they were saying, if it didn't start with my name or my call sign, I just ignored it.

I was on my second lap around their base when I saw my opening and pulled up hard, and then rolled back over, leveled off, and took off after one of the enemy's fighters. Dave must have been busy in the back, because the remaining three radar guided missiles fired in quick succession and I had no idea at all where they went, I was too busy trying to get a bead on the guy I was following while not getting pasted at the same time.

He jinked left suddenly and someone crossed between us so fast that I don't know if it was his or ours. But I got a growl from my heat seeker and I fired, then broke hard right myself because I suddenly realized that Dave was screaming at me in the headset.

Whatever it was, it didn't hit us, and I pulled up hard and looking around, I could see wreckage everywhere, there must have been twenty downed aircraft, and everyone was heading away from the spot. I found one of theirs and gave chase.

"What's the score, Dave?" I asked and tried to push the throttles forward, they were still in full afterburner.

"We got ten minutes of fuel left, two heat seekers, no bombs, Carol's out, Charlie is out, Jeb is out. Jerry's guys have them on the run, but I think they lost a couple as well.

"Check," I said and unplugged the burners. "We hit anywhere?"

"We're hit everywhere, but minor crap mostly. And oh, look at that, we got thirty minutes of fuel left." Dave growled.

"Sarcasm does not become you, Dave," I said as we closed on the guy I was chasing. I checked my board, sure enough, only two heat seekers left. I didn't even remember firing the second one.

I got a good growl, from the missile, and fired.

"So, did you hear anything I said the back there?"

I watched the missile streak after the fighter.

"I recall screaming," I said and counted, it took four seconds, and the missile blew the ass off the fighter I was chasing. I broke hard left and checked our six, then looked around for threats.

"I was yelling, not screaming. Did you know that we had a fighter on our tail?"

"Were we jinking back and forth like crazy?"

"I'll take that as a no," Dave sighed.

"Did I get the guy I fired the heat seeker at?" I asked still looking around. "And where the hell is everybody?"

"The enemy is trying to strafe the 1st H.I. They just hit the ground and are kicking serious ass. Our guys are shooting them down. And yes, you got him. The other one missed however."

"Can we make it back to the Astra to refuel and rearm?"

"Negative."

I swore, "Well we have one missile and a hundred rounds of ammo. Ideas?"

"They're setting up the ground base over here."

An icon appeared on my helmet display.

"Well, might as well go there then." I said and headed off that way. "Do you know if the others got out or not?"

"Carol and Jake are okay; she put it down in the woods someplace. I think Charlie and Malibu ejected, but it looks like Jeb and Rasha got pasted."

"Sorry, Dave," Rasha was a member of his clan.

"Well, to be honest, I thought we were going to join them there a few times. Flying on the deck, around buildings, trees, and under a bridge in full afterburner? At point eight mach? Do you have a death wish, Raj? Or are you just fucking crazy?!"

"I'm surprised you even have to ask!" I laughed. "My threat lights were going crazy up here; I think everybody took a shot at me."

Dave sighed, "If there is a record for the number of missiles a pilot has broken lock on, I think you just beat it. Also I think all those flares you dumped started fires all over the facility. You were so low they were hitting the ground before they burned out."

We arrived at the refueling point. They were hauling gear out, but one of them saw me and waved me over to one of the spots being set up, and someone else then guided me in with hand signals. I was impressed, they may not have had half the stuff unloaded from the cargo shuttle, but they started in on us before the engines had even started to spool down.

I turned the radio to the command channel for the Astra. "Flight ops, Alpha-two. We're re-arming. Request orders, load out." I said keying the microphone.

"Alpha two, you are assigned to ground support. Contact Captain Aruba on Tac-Six when clear."

"Roger, Alpha-two out."

I waved to the crew chief who plugged into the shuttle intercom.

"Yes?"

"We need a ground assault load out," I told him.

"Give us package ground-two," Dave said from the back.

"You got it!" he said and unplugged, then went over to his crew and set them to work.

They armed us directly out of the shuttle as they continued to set up, at least they had already offloaded the refueling tanks, I don't know if the hose would have reached that far.

I got a thumbs-up from the crew chief, and started the engines. As soon as I got them both going I throttled up and got us in the air. The shuttle rocked a little, we were loaded pretty heavy, Dave had called for a lot of ordinance.

I switched my main radio to Tac-Six, and put the secondary on Air-One, though I really didn't have the time to track the air war right now.

"Captain Aruba, Alpha-Two, ready for support missions," I said, keying the mic.

"Roger, Alpha-Two. Proceed to grid hotel-five-two, Stone-one is your G.C."

"Roger, Captain." I said. Dave put the info into the nav, and I flew us off to our ground box and called to our ground controller as soon as we got there.

We spent the next hour flying close air support, hitting targets and softening up defenses for our troops. We went through munitions so fast in the first half hour that we had to return to re-arm twice. We got buzzed once early on by an enemy aircraft, but one of the fighters from Natal tagged him immediately, and we weren't harassed again.

It wasn't easy of course. The enemy was dug in pretty heavily, and we took a lot of ground fire. By the end of that hour there were so many bullet scars on the canopy, that I was starting to have trouble seeing out of it, and the hover ducts were so shot up that landing was becoming a real challenge, not to mention that three of our ordinance racks had been rendered useless.

"When are these people going to rollover?" I grumbled to Dave as we started our second hour of ground ops. "They're beat. They have to know it by now."

"You'd almost think we were fighting the humanist's again," Dave agreed.

"Almost makes you think that they're hiding something, doesn't it?"

"Possibly. Some of the chatter I'm picking up on the ground channels is interesting though."

"Oh? What?" I knew that Dave monitored a lot more channels that I did. But then I had other things to worry about.

"That the marksmanship of a lot of the defenders has suddenly gone to shit. They're making a lot of noise, but that's really about it."

"That sounds... odd."

"Yeah, command isn't sure what to do, so they're being cautious, so it is slowing down our advance, but casualties have dropped to zero all along both fronts."

"Alpha-Flight, Colonel Johnson," came over the radio suddenly. "You are all ordered to switch to P-one loads, repeat, Phoenix-One loads."

I banked us around and headed us to the ground site. "Whoa, that's a surprise!" Dave said and I nodded my head. I could see on my radar that the five of us left in Alpha were breaking off. P-one loads were pacification gas, we didn't have a lot of it either, I'd be surprised if we had enough to load out all five aircraft.

I landed and they quickly scrambled safing and pulling off the unexpended munitions, then putting on the pacification gas bombs.

Poison gas weapons in war were banned of course, more so than nuclear ones. Nukes got used for several things, as well as defense in space, so corporations had a reason to have them, even if they did pop up in groundside battles occasionally.
But there were no reasons to use poison gas anywhere and the prohibitions against it were huge, so where the penalties for using it, so when you saw gas it was a safe bet that it was either tear gas, or pacification gas.

Pacification gas was really just a sleeping gas, and it worked great in enclosed spaces, outside, it didn't work so well. Especially not if there was a breeze. Also it came in bright neon yellow and black canisters, called 'yellow jackets,' so everyone would easily see we weren't slinging any real weapons.

I took off as soon as they got us loaded up, the other four had all landed by then, and Alpha-three, and Alpha-five took off not long after I did.

"This is stupid," I complained to Dave as I headed off to the coordinates we were directed to drop our bombs.

"I'm not so sure about that..." Dave said slowly.

I released each of the bombs as we passed the drop points; they each disintegrated into hundreds of brightly painted neon canisters that spun as the dispensed gas.

"What the hell?!" I said looking at the troops as we flew over. They were all collapsing and dropping their weapons, humans and ani's alike. And we weren't even over them yet.

"What did they put in those things?"

"A better question," Dave said from the back, "is why didn't they just surrender? Why did they need an excuse?"

I banked around and did a flyby, going a lot slower this time. All of the enemy troops were down on the ground; our troops were moving in slowly, picking up the weapons and securing the enemy soldiers.

"I don't follow," I said and flew back to our staging point.

"The gas was obviously an excuse for them to claim they were beat, that they fought to the end."

"Why would they need that?" I asked confused. "These things have rules, once you're losing; you surrender to cut down on loss of life."

"Yeah, but most of those troops are humans don't forget."

I laughed, "Which is why I would expect them to want to surrender sooner, rather than later."

"Yeah, me too. Whatever it is, someone in command must have figured it out."

We landed and we were immediately re-tasked into an ambulance. They slung a couple of extra fuel tanks on wings, and loaded us with medical supplies as they rigged stretchers in the back. We even got two of the Astra's medic's assigned to us.

For the next ten hours we did nothing but medevacs as a ground hospital was set up. By nightfall we had everything tied up, except for the main compound. There were still people holed up there, who refused to surrender, and the leading elements of the 2nd H.I. were slowing going building to building, dislodging the defenders.

What made it slow going, was the order had come down to use non-lethal means to dislodge the defenders, who were at this point, all human. Normally that would have been very unpopular with everyone, but once the defenders figured it out, they also switched to non-lethal weapons as well.

While that left all of us rather puzzled, as long as our people were no longer getting killed, we really didn't care. Corporate politics could get pretty convoluted at times; I figured someone would explain it all eventually.

9

It was about four a.m. when the fighting ended. As soon as the last of the defenders got marshaled off to the makeshift prison camp, they brought down every intelligence analyst, technician, and computer specialist they had, from all of the ships in orbit.

They descended en masse onto the compound, and started combing through the buildings, the networks, the computers, and all of their archives, both computer and paper. I asked to be assigned to cover Cassandra again, and was surprised that I didn't have to ask a second time.

"So what's this all about?" I asked her as I followed them into the main building.

"When they took the building, the assault team reported that they were destroying records."

"So?"

"Why would they destroy their records?"

I shrugged, "No idea."

Cassandra smiled, "Exactly. So it's our job to find out, just what was so important that they had their troops to hold out, even after it was obvious that they had lost."

"Yeah, that was kind of strange," I agreed.

We went down into the bowels of the building, where the computer storage archives were kept. We had a few combat engineers with us, to check for traps. Power had been cut to the building, so we were using our own flashlights.

When we got to the data vault, someone had already blown the door, and all of the servers, and other machines were dead.

"Well, that doesn't look good," I said shining my flashlight around. Overall there was very little damage in the room.

"No, this is excellent," Cassandra said going over the machines rather excitedly.

"How so?"

"Because they didn't destroy the media, and they may not have finished deleting the data they wanted destroyed. These data centers are full of redundant data backups and such to keep from losing everything.

"See if you can find the tape vault, Hon," she said as she started checking over a couple of the racks.

"Tape vault?"

"That's where they store all of their backups. They're on tape cartridges about the size of tablet."

"Tape? Like magnetic tape?" I asked surprised.

"Yes, tape."

"Why would anyone use tape?"

"It's cheap and it lasts longer than anything else."

I shrugged and started looking through the area. It was a pretty large room, and when I got to the far end, I found a line of metal closets all along the back wall. They were all unlocked, so I opened them carefully, after checking for any traps. There was nothing in any of them, except for a few cassette-like things on the floor. I picked one up and brought it to Cassandra.

"Is this one?"

She looked at it, and nodded smiling, "Where did you find it?"

"In a bunch of empty cabinets in the back," I said and motioned.

"Oh well," She sighed. "Guess we have to do this the hard way."

"And that is?" I asked looking around.

"We unrack each of these servers, hook it up separately, and see what's on it."

"That sounds like it will take a while," I said looking around, there were at least a hundred of those servers in here.

Cassandra nodded, "We'll have to pull them all and send them off to be examined, but I'll look at them first, and see what kind of shape they're in."

"Why didn't they just blow them up?" I asked curious.

"That would just have scattered the drives all over the place, it wouldn't have destroyed the data on them. These drives are built to last for decades; destroying the platters is incredibly difficult. It's safer to just erase them, but that takes time." She looked around the room a moment.

"Abe!" she called and a husky stopped and looked at her.

"Yes, Ma'am?"

"Get some lights down here; we need to map this network before we start pulling boxes."

"Yes, ma'am," he said and ran off.

"Wow, he's polite," I said surprised.

Cassandra laughed, "Yeah, well you're here."

"Oh please, I'm not that bad!" I grumbled.

"They do it to Shar when Balizar is around as well." She said, going back to work on the boxes.

"If you say so." I looked around. I was getting tired, I'd been up for over twenty-four hours at this point, and with the excitement being over, I was starting to feel it.

"I'm gonna go over there and take a nap, wake me if you leave the room, okay?"

"Sure thing, Hon," she said, distractedly. "It's gonna be hours before I'm ready to start pulling any data."

I nodded and found a place to stretch out, and closed my eyes.

"Raj."

My eyes snapped open, Cassandra was looking down at me, and the room was lit up pretty well. I sat up and rubbed my face, and checked my watch. I'd been asleep for four hours.

"What's up?" I asked her.

"We're heading over to the P.O.W. camp, they're going to start interviewing some of the command staff and Sharazad wants all of the analysts there when they do."

"Why's that?" I asked curious as I got to my feet.

"You never know what someone will come up with to ask them during an interview. If one of us thinks we see something, we'll send it to the interviewer and see what response she gets to that question."

I nodded, it made sense I guess.

We caught a ride over to the camp. There were patrols everywhere, as well as work crews cleaning up the mess. There was a lot of mess; it was going to take a lot of work to put this place back in business.

When we got to the camp, they made me check my weapons, even my knife, they were very cautious about what they'd let inside, and only the guards were allowed to be armed.

We were escorted to a room that had obviously just been set up, with a series of displays on the wall. It showed a room with a table, a chair, a ring on the table, and nothing else. Cassandra sat down near one of the monitors, all of the other analysts were already there and doing the same.

As I watched, two guards brought a man into the room, shackled him to the ring on the table, then left the room.

After a few minutes he pulled at the shackles, to see if they were loose, or if he could move the table, but he wasn't going anywhere. When he finally gave up after five minutes Sharazad walked into the room.

She started to question him then, nothing terribly interesting to me; mostly it was about who he was, what he did here, his responsibilities, who worked for him, that kind of stuff. She told him that once they had gotten everyone processed, that they would all be returned to Earth.

Her last question was why they hadn't surrendered when they knew they had lost.

"They promised us a thousand credit bonus for every hour we delayed you, but only if we didn't surrender," he said and shrugged, "at that kind of money, why argue?"

Sharazad nodded and had the guards take him away.

The next ten interviewed were the same, I went and got some food and brought it back to the room and passed it out to everyone. I noticed the guy on the screen now didn't look comfortable, and Sharazad was asking him different questions than the others.

"What's up with him?" I asked Cassandra.

"He's one of the supervisors here, and he doesn't want to lose his job."

"Really?" I said surprised. "Have her offer to throw him in with the ani's and see what he says." I joked.

Cassandra typed something in on her keyboard and I noticed Sharazad look at the small tablet she had.

"I was joking," I sighed.

"It's a good question. Let's see what happens." Cassandra said not looking away from the screen.

"Would you like to be moved in with the animen prisoners, Mister Scott?" I heard Sharazad ask him on the speakers attached to the display.

He looked surprised for a moment, but then actually smiled, "Actually, I'd prefer it, Ma'am," he replied.

"Don't like your fellow human's, Mister Scott?"

He shrugged, "Most of them are okay, but there are a few I'll be happy never to see again."

"Oh?" She pulled out a pad and pencil and set it on the table. "List them please."

He looked at the pad, and then looked at her. "I do this, and you hire me, understand?"

"Why would we do that?" Sharazad asked looking at him curiously.

"If they find out I fingered them, I'm a dead man. And they're probably going to guess just who gave them up, especially when I don't show up on Earth. You want names, I want a job. Deal?"

"Deal."

We watched as he picked up the pad and pencil and started listing names. He looked like quite a list. When he finished Sharazad directed he be put in with the Animen prisoners.

"Oh, what do I tell them?" he asked as the started to lead him out of the room.

"About what?" she asked, obviously curious.

"Well, they were promised their debts would be halved if they didn't surrender, and from the sounds of it, none did."

Sharazad looked surprised, "These men," she tapped the list, "promised that?"

Mr. Scott grimaced, "Makes you wonder, doesn't it?"

She tapped the table a moment. "If we can find proof of the offer, we will honor it."

"Thanks!" he smiled and they led him out of the room.

"Good question, Cassy," Sharazad said looking up at one of the cameras. "Let's break for a few minutes. I want him well clear of the building before we start in on this little list of his."

She left the room then and we all stretched.

"Where is that room anyway?" I asked.

"On the other side of this wall," one of the analysts said tapping it. "Just go around the hallway and look for the room with the two guards outside it when someone is being questioned."

"What are they going to do with the workers here?" I asked looking around the room.

"Most of the humans will all be ferried back to Earth over the next six months. Well except for any we find like that last guy who wants to stay, and any of the union workers who don't want to leave. We have to honor any union contracts that are in place, unless we can prove they were involved in the fighting against us.

"As for the ani's? They're all working for us now, so they'll just go back to their old jobs here, just with better pay and a chance for advancement."

I nodded, and took a short bathroom break as the others all did the same.

When we got back and we all were seated in the room, they brought the first guy on the list in.

I wasn't paying much attention at that point; I was looking at my own tablet and working on my report of yesterday's events. So I didn't notice the growling until it started to get loud.

I looked up at the screen and nothing strange seemed to be going on, I looked around the room and noticed everyone was looking at me. I looked over and then realized they weren't looking at me, they were looking at Cassandra.

"Cassy?" I said and reached over to touch her and she jumped out of her chair like a shot and ran out of the room.

I blinked surprised a moment, then dropped the tablet and took off after her.

I saw her tail whip around the corner and I followed. By the time I got to the next hallway over, there were two very shocked guards and an open door between them. I heard a howl of outrage, a blood curdling scream, and Sharazad yelling "STOP!"

I knocked both of the guards out of my way and Cassandra was laying into him with her claws and screaming in outrage. Sharazad had one of her feet and was trying to pull her off, but she wasn't getting anywhere.

I dove on top of her and wrapped my arms around her, pinning hers to her body. Cassandra isn't a big female, she's maybe five foot six, and has the kind of body that makes most males, feline and otherwise, stop and take a second look. So she doesn't have a lot of muscle compared to most fighters, and especially not me.

I almost couldn't pull her off; she seemed stronger than Chief Shandour at that moment.

When I got her off, I rolled onto my back on the table and scissor-locked her legs with mine. She was bucking and fighting, trying to get free, she was worse than Josu had been.

"Cassy, stop!" I whispered in her ear.

She kept growling.

"Cassy, STOP!" I growled again, and gave her ear a nip.

She stopped so suddenly that I had to release my grip so I didn't hurt her.  She turned and buried her face in my chest and started to cry.

I looked over at the guy in the chair. She'd scalped him, his face was cut up pretty good, and so was his arms and chest, from trying to fend her off I guess. He was a bloody mess.

"Fucking Animals!" he screamed.

I couldn't help it, he was right there, so I kicked him in the face, bouncing his head off the wall and knocking him unconscious.

"Raj!" Sharazad yelled at me.

I looked at her, "Hey, if Cassy attacked him, he deserved it!" I put my arms around Cassandra and carefully got off the table and onto my feet.

"I need to..." Sharazad started and then her eyes met mine and she stopped.

"Need to what?"

"Outside, now!" She growled and pointed.

I carried Cassandra, who was still crying rather hard, out of the room and Sharazad pushed me further down the hallway.

I stopped and looked at Sharazad, she looked pissed, in fact, I don't think I'd ever seen her look so mad before.

"Did you have to kick him?" she growled.

"Yes," I growled back.

"Well at least we know he's important now," she sighed, as two medics ran by and went into the interrogation room.

"Take her out of here, find out what happened, and find me."

"What about the tape?" I growled.

"I'm not stupid, we don't tape these things. Now get out of here and take care of Cassy. I'll deal with this mess."

I nodded and picked Cassandra up in my arms and carried her outside. No one stopped us, and I told the guards I'd be back later for my weapons. I headed for one of the hills outside the compound, and took my time walking up it. Cassandra stopped sobbing as I walked, but she didn't say anything, she just held on and was quiet.

When we got to the top I set her down on her feet and got down on a knee in front of her, and taking her face in my hands I looked into her eyes.

"Tell me what happened. Tell me all of it."

"He, he was one of them."

"One of whom?"

"One of the men who held us. We were held captive and forced to work at digging out a base and building it."

I looked around, "Here?"

She shook her head, "No, I don't know where, in space, on a moon I think. I only saw him and some of the others in charge, the people with us; they were captured like I was."

"What did he do?"

"You know how I told you about their little lottery? The one where they would kill one of us?"

"He was one of them, wasn't he?" I said.

"He was the one in charge of the guards," She growled, "but it gets worse."

"He raped you? Tortured you?" I said softly, preparing for the worst.

"Worse than that, Raj," she said and looked down at the ground.

"What could be worse than that?" I asked, and as soon as I said it, wished I hadn't. But I had to know.

"Remember how I said they told us they didn't have enough food?"

I nodded.

"We ate them, Hon. They skinned them, and butchered them like animals, and then they made us eat them!" She started to cry again.

I stood back up and growled, pulling her against me.

"They forced us to do the one thing we all fear the most. They made us eat each other!" She looked up at me. "Do you have any idea what the others would think if they knew about this? What they would think of me?"

"That's why you were so antsy back at the mining colony."

She nodded, "It made me remember what I did, what they made me do."

"I told you before, Hon, you were a victim. You had to do these things to survive, you weren't given a choice. It's just not your fault!"

"Yes, it is! I shouldn't have done it! I should have refused!" She cried.

"If you had done that, you'd be dead!"

"So?"

"So? So what about me! What about us! I told you before, Cassy, I don't care what you did, or why you did it. You're alive, we're together, you didn't do it because you wanted to, you did it because you were forced to!"

"Well, it sucks!" She growled.

"Yeah, but at least you have an excuse," I growled back at her, shocking her a moment.

"What's that supposed to mean?" She said eyeing me.

"I wasn't forced to do any of the things I did. I did them because I was angry, I was full of hate. You had to do terrible things to survive, but you were forced into it. I did those things because I enjoyed them. No one held a gun to my head.

"So when you have your nightmares you can wake up knowing your soul is clean because you were forced. I can't make that claim, Cassy."

Cassandra looked up at me horrified. "What did you do, Raj?"

I shook my head, "I don't want to talk about it."

She growled and grabbed my ears, yanking my head down until we were nose to nose. "WHAT. DID. YOU. DO! Tell me, Tell me!"

"I ate a man."

"WHAT?!" She said shocked.

"I ate a man, or rather I tried too."

She stared at me. "But I ate people too."

"Yes, well no one was forcing me, and," I looked down at the ground, "he was still alive when I started."

"W... Why?"

"I lost it, Cassy; it was the first combat action I saw after I was told you were dead and well...."

I told her what had really happened when I had gotten inside the command building on that first assault.

About the man I found destroying records, and what I did to him.

She was hugging me when I finished, and I was crying quietly.

"I never told anyone what I did that day, Cassy. I knew they would have just put me down on the spot, enemy or not. It was the lowest I ever sunk to."

She hugged me, "I understand, Raj. Really, I do. And, and I can see that you got through it, and if you could get through that, well," she took a deep breath and sighed, "Well I guess, I guess I can get through this too."

I nodded and gave her a kiss. "So what are you going to do?"

She sighed, "I'm going to have to tell Sharazad about what they forced us to do. I'm sure I'm not the only one who doesn't want to talk about it, and is too afraid to confront it. Who is losing sleep over it?

"It's time I got help for it, and I should make sure that they get help for it too."

I nodded and sat down on the ground, and tugged her down to join me. She made a querying noise and looked at me.

"First, how about we just hold each other for a while and watch the sun set?"

"The sun doesn't set for six hours, Raj," Cassandra gently chided me.

I smiled at her, "I'll wait."

She just shook her head and laughed, and then she sat down with me.

When we finally made it back, we tracked down Sharazad and took her some place private and Cassandra told her.

Sharazad didn't say anything, but pulled out her tablet, "Look at these and tell me if any of them were involved."

Cassandra took the tablet and slowly clicked through it.

"Yes," she said and looked up from the tablet.

"All or some?"

"Six of them."

"Okay, mark those six."

"What are you going to do?" I asked Sharazad as Cassandra marked off the ones on the tablet.

"Talk with Bal," Sharazad said.

"Then what?"

"Interrogate them; see if we can find out why they were involved, and what Capitol Mines' involvement was. This could explain why they were so hot on destroying all of their data stores."

A moment later the door opened and Balizar stepped inside and closed the door behind him.

"What's so important that you needed me here at once?" He said coming over and giving Sharazad a hug and sitting down next to her.

"That guy Cassy mauled today?" Sharazad started.

"Yeah? What did he do?"

"He was one of the guys that tortured her. He and six others she identified ran one of the penal mines. One of their favorite tricks was murdering prisoners and forcing the survivors to eat the remains."

"I see," Balizar said slowly and nodded. "Where are they now?"

"In separate holding cells, along with the other twelve that Scott guy fingered for us."

"Okay, give me their names and I'll take care if it."

"Can I help, sir?" Cassandra asked.

"It's Bal, and no, you may not."

"But, I know what they did, I saw it. I can help you question them."

Balizar sighed and looked at her, "Cassy, I can't spare you to work on this. There are other things I need you to do. Important things. You're one of our best black hats around, and I need you to use those skills on the system here.

"While I'm sure these guys were deleting lots of evidence, you can be sure that there is stuff that they hid, stuff important to them, stuff we want to know."

"Yes, Bal," Cassandra sighed.

"I want you to go through all of their databases, and ours as well. Find every mention of their names, their faces, anything, and remove it. And make sure no one can tell it's been removed."

Cassandra blinked, "Ours too?"

"Yes, ours too. I'll bump your access level to make it easier. These men no longer exist, see to it."

"Yes, Bal."

I looked up at Balizar, he looked just as calm as he always did. "Do you need any help?" I asked him.

"Maybe later. You two go get some sleep; you have a lot of work to do tomorrow."

And he gave Sharazad a kiss, then got up and left the room.

"Is he going to...?" I asked.

"Raj?"

"Yes, Shar?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about, and neither do you, correct?"

"Yes, Ma'am."

Sharazad smiled, "Better. Anything else before I go?"

Cassandra shook her head, and I said "no."

"They have food over in the main cafeteria, go eat, and then check in with shuttle ops. They should have a place for you to sleep."

We nodded and left.

It was a twenty minute walk to the cafeteria, and there was quite a line to get inside. All of the 2nd H.I. troops took the time to shake my hand and thank me for the air support, and they pushed us to the front of the line. When the 1st H.I. people saw my wings, they didn't complain either. There were so few people flying air support and medevac, they wanted to thank us for it. So ten minutes later we had a seat and a tray full of food. Some of it was just field rations, but not all of it, some of it was actually hot.

I found Dave and the other shuttle crews, including Carol and her WSO Jake, they were all sitting around one large table and talking.

"Hey, Raj, Cassandra, was wondering where you two got to," Dave said as we sat down.

"Eh, was helping Cassy with her work, what's up?"

"Just going over the day's events. I think I found out why they all laid down on us today and pretended to be gassed."

"They were offered a large bonus if they didn't surrender," Cassy said and started in on her food with a relish.

"Ah, guess you heard it already. Is it true?"

I nodded, and started to eat my own dinner. I hadn't eaten since I'd brought those snacks in to the observation room, and that had been a long time ago.

"Yes, we had it confirmed," Cassandra said between bites, "they really didn't want to fight us by then, but the offer was pretty good, so their leaders found a way to lose and still keep their bonuses."

"How'd they know we'd still honor it?"

"I think it was more of a case of not wanting to die and deciding to see if they could get away with it, rather than fight to the death."

Everyone laughed and nodded, "Yeah, once you know you've lost, what good is a bonus you won't live to spend?" Carol agreed.

"Oh, and we got some other good news," Dave said. "Jeb and Rasha are alive and okay. Well a bit injured, but okay."

I looked up, "I thought you said they got pasted?"

"They did, their shuttle blew up and broke apart, but the nose held together and crashed in a pond. The mud and the water slowed them down enough to survive, and the water put out the fires. Jeb broke half the bones in his body, and Rasha a few less, but when they came too they called for help."

I nodded, "What about Charlie and Malibu?"

Dave sighed, "Charlie didn't make it, he was dead when they ejected. Malibu is injured, but will be okay."

I nodded again, "Where are the Natal pukes?"

"I think they're all back up on the Natal, getting their aircraft maintained. They took a bit of a beating."

"Oh? How many did they lose?"

"Four aircraft, two pilots."

"Seriously?" I said looking up at Dave surprised. "Those guys are the best we have. What happened?"

"What happened was there were fifty enemy aircraft, that's what happened," Hawse, one of the other pilots sitting at the table said. "They had five full wings here."

"Apparently there was some kind of forces shift last month," Dave said. "And it was too late to do anything about it when we got here."

"Well, they could have told us about it at least!" I growled.

"They told the Natal's pilots, they just forgot to tell us."

I shook my head, "Well, too late to complain now, that paycheck's been spent."

We talked a while more, swapping stories about the fight that day. It was interesting hearing everyone else's point of view. They all mentioned seeing me on the deck dodging the other aircraft, as well as several missiles that had been launched at me, which lead to Dave giving a rather inspired description of what it was all like from the back seat as he held on for dear life and "screamed like a little pup" the whole time until I pulled up.

Even Cassandra was laughing by the time he had finished. For me, it was all a blur. There was so much going on, that I never had the chance to focus on any of it. I was just trying to stay alive.

"Any idea where we're sleeping tonight?" I asked Dave when we finally wound down.

"Back of the shuttle. The barracks that are still livable are going to be given back to the locals, once they've been processed. They're setting up tents for the H.I. troops and support personnel."

I nodded, "Thanks."

Cassandra and I got up, tossed our trash and walked over to the airfield. We found her gear bag stashed in a hanger, with most of the other unclaimed gear, and then went to the shuttle. The pallets were still rigged for the wounded, so I grabbed the biggest one and we bedded down for the night.

"Thanks, Hon," Cassandra whispered and hugged me.

"For what?" I asked softly.

"For understanding."

I purred, "Cassy, I love you. Always have, always will. I know you would never do something bad. I have faith in you." I kissed her and she snuggled back.

"How long do you think we have until Dave shows up?" She asked huskily and gave me a playful lick.

"Long enough, I'm sure!" I snickered.

10

I spent the next several days flying shuttle missions, there was a lot of gear and a lot of people that needed to be moved around, and all of the shuttles were put into service to get the work done. During that time Cassandra worked in the data center, where Sharazad put her in charge of the technicians tasked to put it all back together and get it back up and running. Her job was to examine all of the available data, and see what intelligence could be gathered from it.

On day three when we walked into the cafeteria, I was rather surprised to see it up and running normally, with hot food, and people I did not recognize behind the counters.

When we sat down to eat I turned to one of the guys from the 2nd H.I. who I recognized, he was one of the lions, I couldn't remember his name though. "Who are they?" I asked.

"Oh, they released all of the morpher POW's last night." he shrugged, "Guess they work for Tri-Star now, like the rest of us."

I shrugged and looked at Cassandra.

"Don't look at me," She said shaking her head. "I've been going through all of their data storage facilities to figure out what to keep, what we can analyze now, and what gets sent off to the labs. I've got a fairly large load of storage devices to be sent back already."

"Find anything interesting?" I asked.

"Well that depends on what you consider interesting. It looks like they destroyed the most sensitive information first, and the rest is mostly the kind of financial and inventory data that most corporations try to keep hidden from each other and government auditors. Apparently this was one of Capital Mines' prime data locations. Everything they had, got backed up here."

"So why go to all that trouble?" The lion next to us asked. "I mean, the entire company just got acquired, so we'll have it all anyway."

"They didn't know that all of the company's assets were being raided. I don't know if they've been told yet that Capital Mines no longer exists." Cassandra said.

"Duh!" he said and smacked his own forehead, "I forgot about that. I can see why corporate would want all that information too, everyone's debts and contracts would be in there as well."

Cassandra nodded, "I'm pretty sure we got all of that now, but I think the inventory is really the most important."

He nodded and finished his breakfast, then got up and left, giving us a wave as he went.

I waved back and pulled out my comp unit and started to check my messages. "So, what's your schedule today?" I said looking it over as Cassandra checked hers.

"I got a meeting with Balizar and Sharazad to review my progress going over the data center."

"Both? I thought that was Sharazad's job?"

Cassandra shrugged, "Technically he's her boss as the head of security, but they work together on almost everything I've noticed."

"Really?" I was surprised, I'd never noticed that. Then again, I didn't work directly with either of them. Cassandra worked with Sharazad constantly, as she was in her department.

Cassandra laughed, "O.M.C.S! Old Mated Couple Syndrome! They've been together so long; I suspect that they talk about everything. Plus I get the impression that they were in the same line of work when they met."

"Well, that would make sense," I nodded agreeing, and then I smiled, "Hey, think we'll be like that ten or more years from now?"

Cassandra grinned, "I think we're well on our way. So what's on your schedule?"

"I have a recon flight to do in thirty minutes; Balizar wants to look over the local area supposedly."

"Well, I won't keep you, later, Hon."

We hugged and then split up and went our separate ways, I wasn't worried about her safety at this point, we still had two companies of troops down here, and while they were now working along side the Astra's techs, they were all well armed.

When I got to the shuttle, I found Balizar waiting for me, but not Dave.

"Hi, Bal, Dave inside already?" I said looking around.

"We don't need him for this," Balizar said. "Do me a favor and lower the ramp, then come back here and give me a hand.

I nodded and did that as Balizar went and pulled a small truck up behind the shuttle. When I came down into the back, there were two long wrapped bundles laying on the edge of the ramp, with a weight attached to each one. Even if I didn't have a sense of smell, I could have figured it out immediately.

"Sir?" I said looking at him surprised.

"Come on, I got five more to move," he said and waved me over.

I looked at him again, hesitating.

"That's an order, Raj, we can talk once we're done here," He said rather calmly as he picked up another of the cloth-wrapped bodies and tossed it on the end of the shuttle ramp.

I nodded and helped him with the remaining four. He threw a tarp over the line of 'bundles,' I guess to obscure them, then moved the truck out of the way and jogged back over to join me.

"Let's go," he said and hit the switch to close the rear ramp as we walked into the small hold.

I climbed up into the pilot's seat and got the engines fired up and started to taxi us over to the runway. Balizar came up and took the back seat a couple of minutes later.

"Where are we going?" I asked him, as I got clearance to take off.

"Head northeast, I want to go about twenty miles out past the shoreline."

"Yes, sir," I said. I was a little nervous about what we were doing; it didn't take a genius to figure out just who those seven bodies where.

It took us about a half hour to get there, from what I could see looking up into my mirrors; Balizar was working on something on his tablet.

"We're here, Sir," I said

"Take us down to a hundred feet, then open the rear hatch, and pitch us up enough to drop our load."

I did what he said, and even bumped the stick a few times to be sure, then leveled us off and closed the rear hatch.

"Sir?" I asked after we were done, "Now what?"

"Back home of course, and knock off the 'sir' crap. Of all the people here, I know you're the least upset by this Raj."

I sighed, "I'm trying to be good, Bal."

"Which is why I didn't ask you to help when I interrogated them. Well, that and I don't know how objective you could be after what they put Cassy through."

When he mentioned 'helping' I had a suddenly flashback to my time on Pharaoh. "Is that why you did it? Because of what they did to Cassy?" I asked looking up into one of the mirrors on the canopy rail, the one I kept set so I could look at Dave. Balizar was only wearing a headset, so I could see his face.

"It was just the fact that they did it, Raj, it didn't matter that they did it to a member of our clan."

I nodded, "Umm, can I tell Cassy about it?"

"No, but I'm sure she'll figure it out. This is our little secret, Raj, don't tell anyone."

"Even Shar?"

Balizar actually laughed at that, "The best way to keep a secret is to never talk about something, even to those who know. These gentlemen never existed, they were never here, you don't know their names, so you can't even be asked about them."

"What about the other analysts?" I asked curious.

"They've had to process thousands of humans over the last two days; do you think any of them will remember these few?"

"Well, Cassy did freak out on the one guy," I said.

"Sharazad cut the video as soon as Cassy entered the room. They only heard her screaming at him, and then saw her crying as you took her away. Too many separate incidents, and nothing really to stand out. By not talking about it, they'll forget it all soon enough. Lack of sleep with do that you know."

"Thanks for not asking me to help," I said feeling relieved.

"Well, after what happened on Pharaoh, I thought it best."

I started a moment, "How the hell did you find out about that?"

Balizar just smiled at me.

"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 two 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.

One of the problems with breakout was that it messed up the normal duty rotation. This breakout took place in the middle of when I'd normally be asleep, so in two hours I'd have to report for my alert cycle. Add to that we were short a crew pilot now, so every third cycle I'd be pulling a double shift.

"Think they'll have a replacement crew member for us when we get there?" I asked.

"Probably," Dave said, "The Company does have one of its training centers here after all, so I'm sure there will be a replacement waiting for us."

I nodded and got in line to get some food. Cassandra came down as we were in line and I waved her over.

"Hi, Hon, Dave," She said and gave me a hug.

"Hi, Cassy," Dave said.

"Hi, Hon," I hugged her back.

"I'd like to fly down and visit George, once we get leave, okay?"

I blinked surprised. "Well sure, if you want to."

"George?" Dave asked.

"Our crèche guidance counselor," Cassandra said.

"Oh, your company uncle," Dave said nodding. "That's not really a bad idea, haven't seen mine in ages. Wonder if she's still working?"

"Only one way to find out," Cassandra said.

Dave nodded, "Sure, I'm game. Company crèche in Brazil, right?"

Cassandra and I both nodded.

"I wonder if anyone else would want to go."

"Ask around and let me know, I'll set the trip up once we're a lot closer to making orbit." Cassandra said.

Dave nodded and smiled, "Thanks, I'll do that."

After we'd eaten and Dave had left I looked at Cassandra, "So what brought this on?"

"What?" She said and grinned at me.

"Wanting to see George."

"Oh, maybe I just want to show him that I can indeed pick them," she laughed and then idly ran a finger through my chest fur, pushing the zipper of my fly suit down a little further.

"You know, I still have ninety minutes before I have to report back to the flight deck," I growled playfully.

"Sounds like a plan to me!" She laughed and we both left for our quarters rather hurriedly.

#                #                #

The Astra ended up in orbit around the moon, and I got a front row seat to the whole process as I was assigned to the backup helm station on the bridge as we first entered orbit, then transferred into a lower orbit near an ore procession facility. We didn't even have to unload the ore, they just sent out tugs to take the cargo pods off the ship.

Once that was done, we moved into another orbit, and more tugs were sent out to take the troop transport modules off to where ever they were going to process the now former employees of Capitol Mines. Company shuttles also started to offload the Tualatin facility survivors, to be processed into Tri-Star as they were all now corporate employees like the rest of us.

While they were all in significantly better shape now than when we had picked them up, Tri-Star wanted to put them all through physical and mental screenings, to make sure they were fit for duty, and if not, to address whatever problems that they now had.

Once that was all completed we were all given five days leave. I was rather surprised that the extra crew we had were not also going to be offloaded here, but they were given the same orders as the rest of us.

As for the trip down to the company's Brazil headquarters, Cassandra and I ended up being joined by Dave, Rasha, Carol, Jake, Lyle, Mist, Trig, Midnight, Shepherd, Thaksin, and most interestingly: Balizar, Sharazad, and the captain!

"We have business at the Brazil offices," Captain King told me and nodded towards Balizar and Sharazad, "So we thought we'd just tag along."

"No complaints from us, Captain Sir!" Cassandra said and saluted.

"Seeing as there are a group of us, I made arrangements for one of the regular cargo shuttles," Balizar said. "It'll be a lot easier than catching a ride down to the Moon, and then a second one to Brazil. You don't mind flying, do you, Raj?"

I shook my head, "Not at all, Bal." I turned to Dave, "Care to help?"

"Sure," Dave said and nodded, and we all went down to the rear cargo bay and the captain signed out the shuttle.

I brought Cassandra up into the cockpit with me, and Dave brought Rasha as well. The cargo shuttles are pretty roomy, and the cockpit has two pilot positions, as well as a radio operator, flight engineer, and a pair of jump seats. I stuck Cassandra in the copilot seat, Dave took the flight engineer spot, and Rasha grabbed the radio operator.

"Everyone okay back there?" I called over the main intercom to the main hold, which had two dozen jump seats set up in it.

"We're good to go," Carol called back.

"Okay, be warned, leaving gravity!"

Dave fired up the engines as I checked to make sure we were sealed up, then I called shuttle control, which opened the hatch for us, and we left.

The flight down to Brazil was pretty standard. I got us onto a fast track, so it only took us about ninety minutes to get to the atmosphere, and then about another twenty or so to get down through that and land.

"Wow," I said as we came in on the standard approach, "This brings back memories; I must have flown this approach at least a hundred times while training here. Nothing has changed."

"I don't think they're allowed to add anything anymore," Dave said. "Zoning laws or something like that. I think they have a building to tree ratio or maybe it's a building to open space."

I shrugged and lowered the gear, "I don't know, I just kind of like it." I turned on the intercom, "Prepare to land," I warned everyone.

It didn't take long to get the shuttle parked and everything squared away. They sent two vehicles out to pick us up. A car for the captain, Balizar, and Sharazad, and a small bus for the rest of us.

"Don't forget to slave your coms to the company network," Balizar told us as their car pulled up. "Once we finish our business, we can go into town for dinner together."

We all nodded, "Yes Sir," and then we saluted the captain, "Have a good day, Captain."

Captain King smiled and waved to us, then got into the car as it stopped, followed by Balizar and Sharazad. It then drove off and left us waiting for the bus as we stood in the shade under one of the shuttle's wings.

We only had to wait a few minutes before the bus showed up and we got onboard.

"Where too?" The driver, a human, asked.

"The Williams building please," Cassandra told him.

"Why would you want to go there?" He asked surprised as he started to drive off.

"We grew up there," Cassandra said sitting down behind him. "Thought it might be nice to visit some of the people who raised us."

The driver nodded, "Ah, I'll bet they'll be happy to see you, we don't get a lot of kids coming back to visit. Course that's probably due more to the attitudes of a lot of the more provincial types we get around here."

"Well, we all did grow up here, so we're familiar with that."

"Well San Palo is a lot more accepting, what with the company's presence here in the area, but if you go off campus, do check with the gate guards about where you're going first. They'll let you know what's safe, and what isn't."

"Don't we need a standards and practices briefing?" Rasha asked.

"Show of hands, who didn't grow up here?" The driver asked and then looked up in the mirror. Only Rasha had her hand up.

"You others keep an eye on her, okay?" He said and smiled.

"Don't worry, we will," Dave said.

We pulled up in front of the Williams building, which was the dormitory for all of the creche kids here at the company's Brazil location. It was a pretty large building, ten stories high, and covered an area equal to a couple of football pitches.

We all just stood there and looked at it for a moment.

"Feels kind of weird to think of this as 'home' doesn't it?" Dave said.

"Sure does," I agreed.

"Well, let's go inside," Cassandra said and grabbed my arm and led me in through the doors.

The lobby was the same as I remembered it; there were two guards, and a receptionist, all human.

"Can I help you?" The receptionist asked.

"Hi, we all grew up here, and we were wondering if we could visit with our aunts or uncles, assuming of course they're still here." Cassandra said rather pleasantly and handed over her company ID.

The receptionist held out her hand and motion to the others, so we all passed her ours as well.

"I see your ship just came in," She said looking at her display as she quickly scanned each of the ID's.

"Yes, ma'am."

"Okay, I notified each of your uncles," she said and handed back our ID's. "Find a seat and they'll be down shortly. Please be on your best behavior, the children here can always use good role models.

"Dave?" She said and looked towards Dave and Rasha.

"Yes, Ma'am?"

"Cecelia is no longer working here as an Aunt, she is however still employed and works on the campus. I've called for a car, so if you go out front they'll take you to visit with her."

"Can I bring my friend?" he asked and motioned to Rasha.

"Of course."

Dave nodded and left and we all found a seat. About ten minutes later George showed up and Cassandra and I went over and hugged him.

"Cassy! Raj! Of all people! It's so nice to see you! Did you two really get mated?"

We smiled and nodded as he touched each of our mating earrings.

"Please, come, come inside and visit. I want to hear all about it!"

We waved to the others, I knew they had different company uncles, and we followed George inside and up to his office. Everything was the same as I remembered it, though there were a couple of new pictures on George's desk. We spent the next hour or so having a pleasant visit with George, and updating him on the rest of our little family. He was sorry to hear about Nepal's death, but happy to hear that everyone else was doing so well.

He also dropped a couple of hints that he was very happy to hear that I had done so well, and was continuing to do well. I suspect that he either knew I was a cull, or had his own suspicions on the subject, having been a counselor and company uncle for so many years.

"Oh don't worry, we can find our way out," Cassandra said when we got up to leave, "You current group must be getting close to graduation, I would think."

"Actually they pushed my last group out early," he sighed, "that war really caused a lot of issues for all of us. My new group are all six now, and they're running me ragged of course."

We both nodded and smiled, shook hands, hugged, and left.

"Come on, Raj, I want to check something out," Cassandra whispered to me as we left.

I gave a small nod and followed, wondering what she might be interested in.

George's office had been on the sixth floor, Cassandra led me to one of the stairwells, and we went down, following the crowd of kids.

We didn't leave the stairwell until we were two sublevels down, which was where the technical training labs were. There were still a lot of kids, the species variation was about what I remembered it to be, and the age spread was probably around eight to twelve. I noticed we were getting a lot of looks, as we were in our ship uniforms. But no one was saying anything to us; they probably figured we were instructors.

I continued to follow Cassandra as we walked down the hallway, and then turned down a side corridor. The number of kids in the halls quickly went to zero as they all went to their classes before the next hour started.

"Where are we going?" I said.

"Where do you think?" she grinned at me, and then stopped in front of an access door to one of the maintenance corridors. She looked both ways, I did as well, there was no one around. Then she tricked the lock rather deftly, and went inside, pulling me after her.

I looked around; I remembered this place of course. It was one of the spots we used to sneak into after lights out to do those kinds of things that the 'adults' wouldn't approve of. And from the looks of things, it still was being used for that.

"Aren't we a little old for this?" I said looking around as I followed her down to the far end.

"If anyone asks, we were taking a little stroll down memory lane," Cassandra told me, and then stopped and looked around.

"Ah, here we are. Lift me up onto your shoulders please Raj."

I looked at where we were, and what was above us. I remembered this place.

"Cassy," I said a little worried.

"Raj, we don't have time for this, do it," She said giving me the look that told me not to argue with her.

I sighed and picked her up and put her on my shoulders.

"Perfect," she said and popped the access panel that was up near the ceiling. "I do think you've grown some since last time Raj," she teased.

"What are you doing?" I whispered.

"Give me a minute," she said, obviously distracted.

As I watched she pulled out a couple of data jumpers and plugged them into the node that was behind the access panel. Then pulled out her tablet and hooked it up.

"Great! They never found it!" she purred and started tapping on her tablet.

"Never found what?" I said, but I already knew the answer.

"My back door," she continued to purr softly as she entered more commands on her tablet.

I grumbled but didn't say anything; instead I watched the door and concentrated on listening to the hallway. After twenty or thirty seconds I started to hear footsteps. As the kids didn't wear shoes, it meant trouble.

"Someone's coming," I growled softly.

"One second," Cassandra said, and she popped the jumpers out, closed the panel and latched it. "Down!"

I dropped her down, and as the handle on the door turned, we grabbed each other and started kissing.

"Hey! What are you...?"

We stopped and looked up; it was one of the human security guards.

"Oh, uhmm," Cassandra's ears went out to the sides and her tail curled, "We were just uhmm."

"Reliving a couple of memories," I growled, "Sheesh, you guys always used to knock first!"

The guard actually looked embarrassed, "Look, I'm sorry, but the new dean has us cracking down on the kids, so when the monitors pick up motion in the area, we have to come down and check it out."

We untangled ourselves, and made a show of 'straightening up' our jumpsuits. I looked around for the motion detector, and popping off the cover cut the data wire.

"What are you doing?" he said looking at me in surprise.

"Giving you guys an excuse not to find the kids. What else?" I said and smiled at him.

"Shall we?" Cassandra said to me.

"Yeah, let's go." I agreed nodding.

The guard looked at us as we left the access way and then at the motion detector, and then back at us.

"Oh come on, they're kids. They need their little getaways, their secrets," Cassandra told the guard. "I bet you used to do the same things when you were a child.

The guard just sighed and nodded, "Yeah, the older guards have said as much. And it's not like I broke it, right?"

We went back up to the main floor and met up with the others who were waiting, having just finished with their own reunions.

Cassandra had her com unit out and looked up at the rest of us. "Balizar wants to meet us at the main gate in an hour. He's taking us into the city for dinner. He said to remember to sign in for rooms; we'll be here a couple of days."

I pulled out my own com and sent Dave a message so he'd know what we were doing, and then I followed the others outside. There was a bus stop out front, and we took that to the visitor barracks to reserve rooms for a couple of days.

"What was that all about," I whispered into Cassandra's ear when we moved away from the others for a moment as they signed in.

"I'll tell you later," she smiled.

"Cassy," I gave a soft growl.

"Balizar needed a favor."

My ears went up in surprise, "He knew?"

She nodded.

I gave her a hug and a kiss.

"And don't go punching him," Cassandra warned with a smile.

"I'll think about it," I smiled back.

Cassandra just sighed.

We all met up at that gate as planned, surprisingly, even the captain showed up. Sharazad had arranged for a small bus for all of us, and we rode that into the city, where we ended up at a rather nice Indian restaurant.

The city was interesting, Cassandra and I sat near the front, I found it interesting that Captain King, Balizar, and Sharazad were sitting together and talking quite a bit. I had no idea that they were such good friends, but apparently, they were.

"Yes, I know it's a stereotype," Balizar said standing up and turning to the rest of us as the driver stopped in front of the restaurant. "Asian leopards, Asian food, but I haven't been able to find good Indian food for years, and this place is one of the best."

We all got up and followed the three of them, Balizar, Sharazad, and the captain, inside. The maitre d met us as we entered and were steered to a semi-private area, with one long table. As there were fifteen of us, it made sense to me, I don't think they were necessarily trying to segregate us from the rest of the customers.

Captain King sat at the head of the table, with Balizar on his right, and Sharazad on his left, and the rest of us just sort of randomly filled in.

The food turned out to be rather good, I really knew nothing about Indian food, but Balizar and Sharazad apparently knew quite a bit, so we followed their guidance on what to order, and we weren't disappointed.

The service at the restaurant was also rather good, and the staff were all very friendly. It was a little strange at first, as they were all human, but none of them had the kind of attitude that I'd been warned about on Earth back in my days growing up here.

When Balizar got up and excused himself to go to the bathroom, I got up and followed him in as well.

"Yes Raj?" He asked when we got inside.

"Did you ask my mate to do you a favor today?" I said and I gave him a look that I know was less than friendly.

Balizar looked at me unfazed, but I wasn't surprised by that, no one had ever seen him upset. "Why?"

I growled, "If you are going to ask her to do these things, you are going to tell me about it, and you are going to involve me."

"Oh, I am?" He said folding his arms and just looking at me.

"Dammit, Bal, she's my mate and you know damned well I've got a temper. I'd pop you one right now if we weren't out in public for taking such a smug attitude about it. I trust you enough not to ask what you're up to, but if it involves her, it involves me, understand?"

Balizar nodded slowly. "I apologize, Raj, I didn't think you'd be this upset about it."

He went and used a stall then, and I did the same.

"So, tell me next time?"

"Yes." he paused a moment, "Do you really think you could hit me?"

I looked over at him, he was smiling.

"I know I could hit you," I said and smiled back.

We cleaned up and left, and when I sat down Cassandra gave me a curious look, but I just smiled, so she shrugged and we finished dinner.

We spent about an hour after dinner walking around the city and looking at the sights. The humans on the street were not as friendly as those in the restaurant, but no one was actually rude to us.

When we got back to the room later that night, Cassandra actually swept it for listening devices, and it wasn't much of a surprise that she didn't find any. The company really doesn't have the resources to spy on us, and if you think about it, it's kind of pointless in the long run.

"So, did you talk to Bal?" She asked as we climbed into bed.

"Yes," I nodded and pulled her over smiling.

"Well, I didn't see any bruises on either one of you, so it must have gone well."

"Yeah, I think it did. I think he understands that I worry about you, and he needs to let me know if you're going to be doing these kinds of things for him."

Cassandra laughed, "Raj, it wasn't that big a deal."

"It would have been, if we'd gotten caught," I pointed out, "And someone could easily have found out about why that backdoor was there, and just what you used it for all those years ago."

"I wasn't worried about it; I knew we wouldn't be there long enough."

"Uh-huh, and you knew that how?"

"Bal told me what he needed and why. I agreed with him and volunteered after that."

I nodded, "Well if you were sure that it was important, I'm okay with it. I just don't like surprises dear."

"Okay. Did Bal tell you what it was about?"

I shook my head, "No, it wasn't the place to have that kind of discussion, but if you're okay with it, that's good enough, I don't need to know the details." I pulled her close and kissed her then, and purred. "Now, about what we started back there...."

12

We spent two days on Earth, as apparently both the captain and Balizar had some sort of important meetings that they had to attend.

When that was done, I flew us to the company base on the Moon that we were working out of, and then Cassandra and I spent the last three days of our leave touring several of the more interesting tourist sites on the Moon. The high-pressure underground cavern where you could rent wings and fly like a bird was actually rather interesting. Cassandra liked it the most; as she was lighter and smaller, it worked well for her. My own size and weight worked against me, I had to go with an extra large set of wings, but it was still fun.

When we got back to the Astra, there were four cargo pods attached to it, and the main hold had been packed full. It was all high-end equipment, the very expensive technical gear that Earth specialized in producing. It didn't weight half as much as ore or any other raw material, but it was still worth a fortune. I guess during those two days we were on Earth that the captain had been doing everything he could to get us a high paying cargo.

It was nice change not having to load cargo for once and I reported to the shuttle deck as we broke orbit, I hadn't met our new flight crew yet and was actually looking forward to seeing who we got.

When I walked into our ready room, I was surprised to see everyone milling around somebody.

"Hey, Raj!" Dave called, "We got Jerry back!"

"Well, damn, there goes my shot at top pilot!" I laughed and walked up to the group.

Sure enough, there was Jerry, he was wearing a leather flight jacket, aviator glasses, and his beak gave him his usual perpetual smirk. He looked exactly like the kick-ass pilot he was.

"Jerry!" I said and shook hands with him, "Great to have you back! How'd we get so lucky?"

"Well, they put 'ole Natal back into mothballs, but the good captain, she stopped by here first, anna' dropped off mosta' of the crew. As I already knew the Astra were on its way 'ere, I made sure to get me request in before she showed up."

"Too bad we didn't get to see you out at Triste, I really wanted to thank you guys for saving our asses that day."

"Well I'll be, ye' really have changed!" Jerry laughed as he shook my hand. "I guess they were right, ye' really have taken to married life!"

"How's that?" I said grabbing a seat and sitting down as he took a seat and everyone else sat down as well.

"Ye' used to be a lot more envious of me flying skills, now ye' are praising them!" He said with a nod and a wink.

I shrugged, "Maybe. I just know that during the war I learned to appreciate those that are covering my butt."

"Hey, how are those new fighters?" Dave asked, "Are they everything you hoped for?"

Jerry nodded, "Yeah, they be most fantastic, I'mma already missing it now that the powers that be ha' finally sent me back to the commerce fleet."

"How many did you shoot down back there at Triste anyway?" Carol asked, "Everyone here was telling me that they'd be shocked if you got less than a dozen."

Jerry laughed, "It tweren't that many, I had a lotta good competition, the other ones I were flying with were mighty fine pilots too."

"But it was close, wasn't it?" Dave teased.

I grinned, along with everyone else, as Jerry actually looked embarrassed, "Well, aye. But t'were a lotta nice targets ta' pick from!"

He looked back at me, "I hear ye' had a rather good day there as well, Raj."

Dave laughed and I shook my head, "I spent half the battle flying around like a maniac on the deck in full AB, dodging buildings, trees, and missiles."

"Aye, but ye' still bagged three of 'em," Jerry pointed out, "patience is the bigger half of the game, the other half be not getting shot down. And ye' distracted so many of the enemy, with all that dodging ye' were doing down there onna the deck, that me fellow pilots were able to pick off a lotta easy kills."

I nodded, "I saw the recreation of the dogfight later, after we left. But at the time all I could think of was how outnumbered we were, and was just trying not to get tagged. I had no idea until later just how many of them were after me, I just knew I was in the thick of it. When you guys came down and made that pass, it let me get back on the attack."

We got introduced to Jerry's WSO next, she was fairly new, Jerry's fighter apparently had been a single-seater, so when he got here he'd gone down to the local WSO training facility and pretty much just picked the best one he could find. Her name was Janice, and she was an ocelot. I'd never met one before, she was a bit smaller, more fox sized, and from the way she looked at Jerry, she probably thought he was a god.

Then again, I think a lot of us felt that way too, there were a lot of medals on that jacket of his; he'd obviously been very busy during the war.

The flight out was as quiet as the flight in, but we made better time, as the pods were a lot lighter than what we'd brought in, with only the tech gear in them. When we made jump, the captain announced our destination: Alexandria.

I looked around the Squadron room, "I've never been there, anyone?"

Dave shook his head surprising me, Dave was pretty well traveled.

"I've been there," Rasha said waving a hand.

"Great! So, what's it like?"

Rasha shrugged, "It's a lot like Hobson, only not as friendly to us. But for the most part, behave yourself, stay out of trouble, stick to the ani districts and no one will have any trouble. It's one of the older settlements, so it's pretty built up."

Everyone nodded.

"Wasn't Sagert based out of there?" Dave asked.

"The company we rescued?" Jeb asked.

"Yeah, that one."

"I think they were incorporated there, but that's about all I remember. Why?"

"Eh, just wonder if they'd have rather ended up there, than back at Earth."

"I doubt any of them will be staying back on Earth for long," Chief Shandour said coming into the room, "They'll be broken up and sent out to join the general workforce."

"Broken up?" I asked surprised.

"After what they went through, you don't want to keep any of them together; they'll just commiserate over how bad it was. Better to separate them all, put them with new people, and let them start over."

I shrugged, I guess it made sense, but what did I know?

"Okay, today's schedule calls for EP sims, Jerry and Janice are up first, being the new team. The rest of you can spend your time going over the dash ones and working on your team skills."

"Yes, Chief," we all said and I went over to sit with Dave and we both got to work.

The trip to Alexandria was enjoyable, there were no real surprises expected, we had a good paying cargo, and it looked like the Astra would be getting back into its normal routine soon, which is what we all wanted: A return to normal.

I did a little research on Alexandria and I learned that is was a sector headquarters for Tri-Star, not unlike Hobson's Choice was. It was not normally on the Astra's trading route, but the Astra was the only ship able to haul such a large cargo that was in Earth orbit during the time we were there, so the captain was able to get us assigned.

This meant that there should be a lot of opportunities for a good cargo out of Alexandria, as well as a lot of current information on what trade was available at different planets throughout the region.

It also meant was that we were finally going to lose the extra people onboard. One hundred of them were being re-assigned, most of them going back to school for the training that they'd missed when they'd been sent out early to take part in the war.

"I'm gonna miss being here on the Astra," Trig said as we all relaxed at the monthly clan meeting.

"I'm going to miss getting paid," Midnight grumbled. "It's going to suck running up debt again."

"Well at least we got to knock a few course off here on the Astra," Thaksin said. "That'll save us a few bucks."

"Count your blessings," Sharazad said with a smile. "Schooling is a lot cheaper out on Alexandria than on Earth."

"Really? I didn't know that." Midnight said.

"Wages are higher on Earth, so they have to charge you more."

"Huh, glad we aren't training there then, but I would have thought it cheaper for the company to train us there, rather than to ship us off to Alexandria."

"Lack of course space," Balizar said. "It would have caused all sorts of schedule problems, and as we were already going to Alexandria by that point, it was just cheaper to take you with us."

I was hit by a sudden sneaking suspicion. "Is that so?" I whispered in Cassandra's ear and gave her a little squeeze. She just giggled.

I looked over at Balizar then, who just smiled at me.

I started to wonder just who really ran the Astra? If the Captain knew about this? I'd be surprised if he didn't; Captain King struck me as a pretty sharp human, the few times I'd dealt with him.

But this definitely put a lot of things in a new light.

I looked up and noticed Balizar was watching me, a thoughtful expression on his face. I sighed and rolled my eyes, I knew that expression, and it usually meant trouble, as in the kind I'd been trying to avoid for the last seven months.

The rest of the trip was unremarkable, except for my beating Jerry at poker the first time we all sat down and played after breakout. He laughed and I was never able to sucker him in by using my tail again. But even just doing it once made me feel pretty good.

It took us two days to unload the Astra, there wasn't a stevedore's union here, so we had to do the work ourselves, as normal.

When we finally got it all done, I went back to my room to get my stuff to take planetside for leave when I got pinged on the ship's com.

"Yes?"

"Meet me down by storage locker thirty-six 'B'," Balizar's voice came out of the speaker.

"I was about to go down to join Cassandra," I sighed.

"Bring your gear bag, we'll be going down. I need help with a delivery."

"Roger," I said and put the com back in my pocket. The 'B' or beta storage lockers were on the deck above the cargo deck, they usually held ship's gear or ship's spares. So I got my bag, put on a clean jumpsuit and went down to see what Balizar needed.

"Ah good. Give me a hand here, Raj," Balizar said as I walked up, he had a small pallet hauler in the passageway, and he was opening the door to the storage locker.

I grabbed the controls and steered the hauler in behind him.

"That one," he said and pointed to a rather large piece of equipment in the center of the small locker. It was about eight feet long, three feet wide, three foot high. It made me think of a coffin.

As I slid the hauler under it, and raised it off the floor, I had a sudden unpleasant thought.

"Is this Josu's body?" I said.

"Yup, been keeping him down here on ice until the time was right."

"What?!" I stopped and looked at Balizar; he was unplugging something from the side of the box. "Why is his body even still here?"

"Raj," Balizar sighed, "That's not a coffin, it's a medical stasis unit."

"You mean he's still alive?" I said hopefully.

"I popped him in here after you left him with me."

"So what are we doing?" I asked and started to maneuver the hauler out of the room.

"His home crèche is here. I figured if anybody could put him back together, they had the best shot." Balizar said.

I got it out into the hallway, "Where are we going?"

"Assault bay. We need a VTOL for this."

I nodded, and then I looked around. "Um, does the captain know about this?" I asked softly.

"Course he does. Mike and I have been working together a long time now, we don't keep secrets from each other."

"And that little bit of course manipulation back in Brazil?" I grumbled.

Balizar laughed, "He didn't ask about the how, just agreed with doing it. Those kids we had onboard all did a good job. Screwing them with a high bill would have been a slap in the face."

I nodded and navigated the hauler into the lift, and took us to the shuttle bay, then wheeled the hauler out. When we got there, there was a shuttle set and ready to go, so I rolled it up inside, then Balizar helped me strap it down.

I went and got my helmet out of the equipment room, then joined Balizar in the cockpit and called shuttle control.

Thirty minutes later, I was flying over the city, I'd given traffic control the address Balizar had told me, and they directed me to a small field in the middle of a complex of six buildings.

"Land on the roof of that one," Balizar told me, and pointed to a landing pad on one of the buildings.

I nodded, it would be a bit of a tight fit, and I had to spin us around so that the back would be near the lift entry that was on the roof.

"Okay, lower the ramp," Balizar said and slipped out of his seat and went down to the hold.

I hit the switch, checked the gear to make sure the load was level, shut it down and then went back to join him.

"So, Mister Balizar," An older looking woman came up the ramp. "I see you've brought back one of our children. I understand there was a problem?"

Balizar nodded and handed her a data stick, "It's all in there. We thought that maybe waking up here, back home, might help him recover."

"I'm surprised that your company would care," she said, and I could see that she really was surprised. She turned and waved to two large bear animen, who came in and started to remove the unit.

"Well, it took me a while, but I convinced the accountants that it would be cheaper to rehabilitate him than to replace him."

She smiled and nodded, "Good for you. I'll read this before we wake him up. Anything else I should know?"

"I used a few post hypnotic suggestions on him when I put him in there. I listed them at the end of the file."

"Do you think that might help?" she asked looking at Balizar a little curious.

"I have a little experience with these units; it has worked in the past."

"Okay, who should I notify when he's ready?" She asked as the two workers wheeled the unit down the ramp and past the open doors of the lift.

"It's all there in the file," Balizar looked at his watch. "I really must be going. Thank you very much for agreeing to help us with this Ma'am, we appreciate it very much."

"Oh, so do I, Mister Balizar, just because we sell them, doesn't mean we don't care about them."

She turned and followed the workers, and I hit the switch for the ramp and we both went back to the cockpit. I took off once I was sure that they were no longer on the roof and flew us to the company's field.

"So, no questions?" Balizar asked from the back seat.

"Just one I guess." I replied.

"And?"

"So, does the captain really run the ship? Or do you?"

I looked up at the mirror and saw Balizar grinning, "Oh, he runs it. I just help him to run it better."

13

Alexandria was a nice planet, the people weren't really all that bad, and no one went out of their way to give you trouble. We spent two days there on leave, then had to get back to work loading the Astra for another run. We were loaded with two full troop modules, five hundred personnel on each, for a full thousand. Of that, about fifty or so were security team personnel, the rest were all technicians, laborers, and skilled construction workers.

As Balizar had said months ago, the war had caused a lot of resources, or as I liked to call them 'people,' to be moved and relocated. Now that the war was over, all of those people had to be redeployed. So we got a thousand passengers, along with three cargo pods full of gear that also needed relocation.

"Well, this stinks," I said to Cassandra, Dave, Marcus, and a few others who were having lunch in the mess with us.

"Well, the captain did warn us that there weren't going to be a lot of paying missions this year," Cassandra said.

"It's not that so much, as that it's so crowded we have to eat in shifts," I grumbled.

"Raj is just upset because there's all those extra fem's onboard now, and he's mated so he can't enjoy it," Dave laughed.

I glared at him.

"Raj! Is that true?" Cassandra asked with a smirk.

"Of course it's true!" Dave said, "Raj here was quite the female's tomcat, he had quite the reputation onboard the Astra."

"Dave, you can be replaced with a machine that makes coffee, you know that, right?" I growled.

Cassandra laughed, "Of course he was! You're just jealous because the fems don't line up for you, like they did for my mate." Cassandra rubbed up against me then in a very suggestive way, "and I enjoy it that they can't have him anymore, and that he's all mine," Cassandra added purring rather deeply.

I perked right up and put my arm around her and kissed her nice and long. Long enough that Dave coughed and a few others made comments about 'getting a room'.

I turned and smiled at Dave, who had his ears down and looked rather embarrassed. "Suck it up puppy," I purred, "That's what love looks like."

"Yeah, yeah. Rub it in, Raj," he grumbled. "I swear, sometimes you two are so over the top that I think it's an act."

"You should see Balizar and Sharazad at the clan meetings," Cassandra laughed, "Sometimes they put us to shame!"

"It's a cat thing," said Marcus, who had joined us for lunch today. I didn't get to see him often, but he did join us on occasion. "Cat don't mate as often as a lot of you others do, usually we just pair up for a while and move on. So when it does happen, it's pretty intense."

"I hadn't thought about that," Dave admitted.

"How many mated couples do you know?"

Dave paused a moment, "Just the three here on the Astra."

"Exactly, mostly you'll just see regular pairs that have been together for a few years, sometimes even long enough to have raised cubs. Probably less than a third actually mate for life, most just pair up."

Dave nodded.

"So that makes the females even more envious of Cassy there," Marcus said with a smirk, "if Raj was just paired, they could at least try for a fling, but he's just flat out not interested anymore."

Dave looked at me and I nodded, "I thought you knew that Dave."

"Well," Dave sighed, "There's hearing and then there's seeing. And let's face it, Raj, you didn't seem to be the type who was going to limit himself." He glanced over at Cassandra and grinned, "Not that I'm saying you shouldn't. Just that, well Cassy there is well above your pay grade!"

Cassandra laughed and I purred, "Which is why I'm not interested in anyone else."

"Point taken."

"So where do you think we're off to?" I asked changing the subject.

"I'm sure the captain will let us know once we're in jump."

"Eh, just ask the tech weenies on the pods," Marcus said. "They're not making much of a secret of it."

We looked at him surprised. "Really?" Dave said.

"Well, it's not like what we're hauling is that expensive a cargo, it's just personnel mostly, and some pretty standard support gear. Stealing it would cost more than its worth, and the people, well, with the war over; no one right now is looking to grab people. In fact, I hear there's a bit of a surplus right now."

I nodded, and so did the others, that was the rumor going around.

"Wonder if they're going to build a few more cargo ships?" I asked. That was the other rumor currently going around.

"Well, they built those two cruisers, so I'd be betting that they'll build at least two more of the French class, like the Astra here, they have to move those captains somewhere, and if they don't give them something nice, they'll move to another corporation," Marcus said.

I nodded again; Marcus was a lot smarter than I'd first thought, back when we'd first tangled, but during the war, he'd gone up through the enlisted ranks pretty far. He was a Master Sergeant now and apparently one hell of a technician as well.

"So, where are we going?" Dave prompted.

"Oh, Iverly is the next stop. They're doing a massive expansion there; rumor is its going to become another sector HQ. I think we're dropping everything off when we get there."

"Iverly? That's over by Pharaoh's region of space. That's a long trip," Dave said pulling out his tablet and checking a few things, "Especially as loaded down as we are."

"So what?" I said and looked at Dave, "After being crammed into the Falcon for a couple of years, this place is like a luxury hotel!"

Dave smiled, "Yeah, there is that. And most of the woman here aren't bigger than me!"

We all laughed at that, most of the fems on the Falcon had been Special Forces, like me, and they were neither weak, small, nor timid.

"Well, let's go down to the ready room, we're back on shift in a few minutes." I said and gathering my gear I gave Cassandra a kiss and we all headed back to our duty stations.

Dave was right; the trip to Iverly from Alexandria was a long one, especially loaded down as we were. The Astra was only pulling about one point eight lights, so it would take us almost fifteen weeks to get there. And while it wasn't too bad for the regular crew, the Astra was our home after all, the passengers started getting what the doc's called 'Cabin Fever' about ten weeks in, by twelve weeks all of the officers were carrying stun rods, and as I was a warrant officer, that included me as well. To try and help calm things down, they were having clan meetings every Saturday evening now, instead of just once a month.

"Last time we were in this situation, it was a lot less pretty than this time," I said to Jeri as we were sitting duty on the bridge. Bridge duty under jump was a lot more relaxed, half the stations weren't even manned, and the officer of the watch was usually whoever was manning the helm. The captain ran the ship out of his office when we were in jump; the bridge was reduced to not much more than a communications center.

"I wasn't onboard back then, what happened?" Jeri asked.

I shrugged and told her some of it, leaving my own mishap out.

"If it wasn't for the passengers, I don't think there'd be any problems on board right now," I said after I had finished.

Jeri shrugged, "Well, in your story, none of the crew had set foot on a planet at that point in over six months or had leave in almost a year, but that's not the real reason the crew is taking it so well."

"Oh? What is?"

"It's the passengers," she said with a chuckle, "they're mostly ground pounders, and we're all space crew. So it's an 'us versus them' thing. Especially as there are a lot more of them than us. The Astra is our home, this is our tribe, and they’re the outsiders, so we're just uniting against the common foe.

"If they weren't here, I'm sure we'd be having our own issues. However," she fingered the stun rod she was wearing, "I doubt we'd be issued these."

I nodded, "I'm expecting fights to start happening soon. I've already had to break up a few arguments."

"Better you than me," Jeri sighed. "I'm five foot nothing and weight less than half of what you do. Trying to stop a fight would hurt."

"Well at least they're all techs and not soldiers or security types," I laughed, "so they're not really trained in hand-to-hand."

"I would like to point out that I'm not trained in hand-to-hand either. At least they're all restricted from coming into officer country, so I don't have to mix with them much."

I nodded, "Well, I would say to go down to the mess with a couple of friends, then at least if anything happens you won't be alone."

"Way ahead of you on that one Raj, the otters are all traveling in groups as of the last clan meeting. Even the otters on the troop modules are getting a little concerned, we don't have issues with enclosed spaces like some of the others do, sort of a species thing I guess. But some of those other groups are getting antsy in the modules. So a couple of the females are sharing my room right now, and we're sticking together."

"What, not putting together a harem of your own males?" I teased her.

Jeri rolled her eyes, "We like to segregate into male and female groups socially. Like Humans do."

"Huh, didn't know that." I looked up as our relief came onto the bridge. When in jump space, the massive bridge display was set to a neutral gray, with displays for all the ships systems arranged around the perimeter at eye level.

Richoli reported in and relieved Jeri, I of course didn't have a relief as I was up here on training detail, so I signed out along with Jeri.

"Need an escort back to your quarters?" I asked.

"Thanks, Raj, I appreciate it."

"No problem. Don't hesitate to buzz me if you need an escort, I don't mind."

She nodded and the trip down to her cabin was uneventful, of course, she was close to the bridge, all the primary bridge crewmembers were.

"When are you heading down for dinner?" She asked.

"Actually I was going to grab Cassy and head down there right now."

"Give me a minute and I'll join you, okay?"

"Sure."

She changed, and then we went and caught up with Cassandra and the three of us headed down to the mess.

The line was a little longer than normal, but I didn't mind, sometimes it got a little backed up.

"I really feel sorry for the cooks," Jeri sighed, "with this many people to feed; they must be working overtime just to keep up."

"Yeah, well, they're failing if you ask me," Grumbled a bear that I didn't recognize. As I knew all of the Astra's bear clan, and as he wasn't wearing an Astra ship suit, it was clear he was one of our 'passengers'.

"We only have a dozen cooks onboard the Astra, that's why we have to eat in shifts when we're carrying so many extra people," Jeri sighed. "They're doing the best that they can."

"Well, their best isn't good enough!" The Bear growled, and a couple of other bears in the line nodded, friends of his I guess.

"It still beats eating rations," Jeri said, sounding to me like she was trying to salvage the conversation. I looked at Cassandra who looked at me and sighed.

"I'm not so sure about that!" he said and looked at Cassandra, "And what's your problem?"

"I'm not the one with a problem here," Cassandra said, "I'm just waiting for dinner."

"Oh, you looking to start something?" he said, and his friends started to mutter to each other and look a bit hostile as well.

"Excuse me," I said raising my voice so that it would carry, "Let's keep the conversation pleasant."

"What? I can't complain about the food on this scow?" He grumbled glaring at me.

I smiled, "You can complain about it all you want, just don't start anything with the other crew members."

"Hey, she was the one with a problem! I'm just trying to get some food here, and I would be too if this damn line wasn't moving so slow!"

His friends nodded, one said: "Yeah! What's wrong with this place?" Another made a comment about making them 'wait for crappy food.' There looked to be about five of them, and they were all muttering to each other and just bitching about the line and life on the Astra. I just smiled pleasantly and ignored it.

The line by now had made decent progress; we were getting pretty close to the start of the serving queue, a few more minutes and I was sure this whole thing would settle itself.

I glanced at Cassandra and she got the message and moved around to the other side of me, away from the bear and his friends, Jeri doing the same.

"What, something wrong with me?" he growled.

"No," I said.

"I didn't ask you, I asked her!" He said, and I could see his friends were encouraging him.

"Hey, leopard girl, something wrong with me? Don't like the way I smell or something?"

"Crewman," I warned him, and prayed that Cassandra would keep her mouth shut, another minute and we'd be there, and hopefully food would take his mind off of his problems and stop him running his mouth.

"Hey! Why don't you mind your own business," he said brushing my arm aside, "I'm trying to ask your friend there what her problem is."

"As you were, Crewman," I said and gave a little warning growl.

"Or what?" he snarked at me, "Come on, babe," he said focusing back on Cassandra, who had her back to him, and was ignoring him completely. "You got a problem with me? You don't like bears or something you stuffy black bitch?"

He pushed past me and grabbed her shoulder from behind.

It was instant, I snapped.

I grabbed both of his shoulders as I stepped back with my right foot, then I pulled hard, jerking him towards me, and I twisted, throwing him over my hip with all of my now enraged strength.

He flew backwards a good ten feet and probably would have gone even further, except for the bulkhead that blocked his way. He made a rather pleasing sound as he hit it, and slid down to the floor, stunned.

I saw motion out of the corner of my eye and growling I turned. Three of his friends were moving towards me. I whipped my stun rod out and broke it over the head of the first one, who went boneless from both the charge and the force of it, falling to the floor. I let the second one get a little closer, and then hit him with a left haymaker straight to the face. His lower body kept moving forward, but his head snapped back so hard from the force that he just fell onto his back, out cold.

Cassandra stuck her stun rod into the third one, and held it against him, triggering several jolts as he went down thrashing. Everyone else just held up their hands, and took a couple of steps back.

I turned back to the bear I had thrown into the wall. He was picking himself up, and he looked angry.

"Sit your ass down!" I growled at him. "You are under arrest for assaulting a superior, someone call security."

"Oh, I'll give you security, you cat bastard!"

I sighed, I wasn't angry anymore, how could I be? He wasn't a threat to Cassandra now.

He charged arms wide, head down.

I stepped forward, into him, and got him with an uppercut to the face, which I followed quickly with a left hook to the head, then a right one.

He started flailing at me, trying to hit me, I was in a fighting stance now, so I slipped in, gave him two left jabs to the face, kicked him in the crotch, and when he bent over I grabbed the back of his head and pushed his head down as I brought my right knee up hard.

I winced as I felt things in his face break; I hadn't meant to hit him that hard! I grabbed one of his arms, and circled behind him, putting him into a hammerlock and kicking him in the back of the knee joint to force him down onto his knees.

"Problem, Raj?"

I looked up and saw Shooma, the bear that Terease worked with, he was the head Engineering on the Astra, as well as the head of the bear clan on the Astra.

"Oh, hi, Shooma. I think I have it under control. Has anyone called security yet?"

"Yes, someone has. What did he do?"

The bear was still struggling, I tightened the hold more, pulling his head back as well with the arm I had around his neck.

"He grabbed Cassandra from behind, while calling her a 'Bitch'," I sighed.

"He did what!" Shooma said shocked, and moved around in front of bear I was holding. He wasn't struggling as much anymore, but then I had all of my weight kneeling down into the back of his left calf, and had his arm so far up his back it was almost breaking. I could tell he was hurting.

"Prestan," Shooma said rather sternly, "You will apologize to Senior Warrant Officer Cassandra Rakir immediately!"

"I'm not apologizing! She started it! That...."

I squeezed a little and he wised up enough not to finish that sentence.

"You will apologize, or I will have Raj break your arm!"

"You wouldn't date!" Prestan growled.

"Break his arm, Raj," Shooma said calmly.

"You sure?" I asked.

"Well he did attack your mate, I feel it's only fair," Shooma said.

"Okay," I said and started to apply pressure, I'd never broken an arm this way, I wondered how much it would take.

"Wait... wait! I apologize!" Preston cried out in pain.

I stopped and released a little pressure.

"What was that?" Shooma asked, as several members of ship security came in, Hawkeye and two tigers, they started to secure the three on the floor.

"I apologize to the Warrant Officer, Ma'am, I apologize for grabbing you."

Cassandra nodded, "Apology accepted."

I got off of his leg and stood, helping him up. One of the tigers secured his arms as well.

"Thank you, Raj, for not crippling him," Shooma said.

I felt my ears go down in embarrassment, "I should have stopped him before he grabbed Cassy, I really didn't want to hurt him."

"Still, it shows restraint, I have warned several of our passengers that many of the Astra's regular crew are combat veterans," Shooma said, a little louder than before. I suddenly realized that we had quite an audience, the mess sat over a hundred, and there were people gathered around the doorways as well. "What did you do again?"

"Special ops, three years of living in Hell," I sighed, playing it up a little. "Again, I'm sorry about hurting him; I tried to get him to calm down."

Shooma nodded, "I'm sure you did. I will have a talk with them on the way down to the sick bay."

"Balizar wants to see you," Hawkeye said softly as the two tigers escorted the bears out of the mess area. The one I'd hit over the head was having problems walking, so Shooma was helping him.

I sighed and nodded, "Oh my way."

I went over to Cassandra and gave her a hug. "I'll see you later, time to get yelled at I guess."

"I'll go with you," she said.

"Cassy hon, I'll take care of it. Go eat dinner, and get me something if you can, alright?"

"You sure?" She asked looking at me.

"Yes, I'm sure. I'll be fine."

"Okay," she gave me a hug and a kiss.

I hugged her back and then headed up to Balizar's office. I walked in, saluted and stood at attention. "Reporting as ordered, Sir."

"What just happened?" Balizar growled, looking up at me from his desk.

I recited carefully everything to my best ability. When I got to the bear grabbing Cassandra I sighed and looked down at Balizar, "I admit I kinda lost my temper when he grabbed Cassy. I probably shouldn't have thrown him into the bulkhead that hard."

"And after that?"

I told him the rest of what happened, including what happened with Shooma.

"I feel bad about the guy I hit over the head with the stun rod, I didn't realize I hit him that hard until it broke, also, I know I used a little too much force when I kneed the first guy in the face when he came back at me. I really didn't want to break any bones."

Balizar sighed, "Well, he did lay hands on a superior officer, as well as your mate. When I got the report I was worried that we'd be dealing with a dead body or two."

I nodded, "I do feel really bad about what happened, Sir. I mean I did try to derail it, or at least keep anything from happening. When he first pushed my arm out of the way, I let it slide, hoping that he'd not go any further than that."

"Why didn't you do anything then?" Balizar asked me curious.

"Oh, that's your fault," I said and smiled sweetly at him.

"My fault? Just how is it my fault?"

"Oh simple, you see, I'm a combat troop, an advanced hand-to-hand combat trooper and bare knuckle fighter. I know how to kill people; I know how to beat them to a pulp. But I do not know how to leave somebody lying stunned on their back wondering just what the hell happened to them."

I smiled again. "Sir."

"You still want to spar with me?" Balizar looked surprised.

"I want to learn just what the hell it was you did to me. I don't have that kind of attack in my skill list. Everything I know is about speed, brute force, and lots and lots of repetition."

Balizar thought about that a minute.

"Raj, you may have a point. The fact that you kept your head, well, that says a lot. Four years ago, and I know that bear would be dead."

"So you'll teach me?" I asked with a hopeful smile.

"I'll think about it."

"Can I bring Cassy?"

Balizar stopped and blinked. "Why do you want Cassandra to learn?"

"Do you think I could beat up Sharazad?"

Balizar almost started to growl, then stopped, "I see your point. I'll talk to Sharazad about teaching Cassandra, as for you," he smiled, "I'll think about it."

I saluted and smiled, "Thanks, Sir!"

"Oh, one last thing, Raj," I stopped at the door and looked back.

"You're on punishment detail for a week."

I sighed, "Damn, I'd hoped to avoid that."

"What, no complaints about being innocent?" Balizar chuckled.

"I know you have to keep up appearances with the other clan heads, I'm sure they all remember the last time I got into a fight in public."

"You're learning. Dismissed."

"So you got punishment detail?" Jeb asked when I got down to the shuttle deck the next day.

"Yeah," I nodded and shrugged, "I broke that one bear's skull when I hit him over the head with the stun rod. Sorta got a little carried away."

"But they started it!"

"Did Cassy get in trouble?" Dave asked, "I saw the way she let that one guy have it."

"Nah, she just stunned the hell out of him, she didn't break any bones on him. Honestly, I think if it wasn't for that dust up of mine with Marcus a few years back, I'd have been in the clear. But you know Balizar, he doesn't want anyone to think he's going soft or playing favorites."

"I suspect Shooma will try and talk him out of it," Chief Shandour said from the door to his office, I guess he'd been listening since I came in.

I shrugged again, "Hey, if it makes our lives easier, I'm more than willing to do it." I grinned a little embarrassed, "but I really did throw that guy into the wall a lot harder than I should have. I was just kinda pissed that he'd grab Cassy like that."

"The old Raj would have done a lot worse," the Chief pointed out.

"Hmm, possibly," I said with a guilty look, "Cassy probably would have stopped me before I started pulling out their entrails.

"Assuming you would have heard her," Dave laughed.

"I always hear her, and listen to her," I said and gave a mock shiver, "Cassy has ways of getting even. Usually late at night. After you're asleep."

"That is the voice of experience guys and gals," Chief Shandour said with a chuckle, "never piss off your mate or your lover, because you have to sleep; sooner or later...."

Most of the crew got a laugh out of that.

"I will say that I am happy that you restrained yourself, Raj. If that had been Tara, I'd have ripped his arm off."

I looked at the Chief a bit shocked. "Seriously?"

"Well, I would have warned him that he was talking to my mate the first time he snarked off to her. So, yes."

"I'll keep that in mind for next, time, though I hope there won't be one." I said nodding.

"What, ripping the arm off?" Dave teased.

"No, warning that he's messing with my mate. I definitely should have told him." I shook my head, "Might have avoided the whole thing."

"You know," Dave said shaking his head, "I'm not sure I can get used to this 'new' Raj. I sorta miss the proclivities for unexpected and explosive violence."

"I was never unexpected," I mock growled.

"Well, to those of us who knew you, it wasn't."

I sighed, "How many more weeks until we get there?"

"Too many," Chief Shandour said. "And the captain is starting to get a little concerned with our passengers. Tensions are up, so everyone is to be on their best behavior at all times, and keep your eyes open. All the known troublemakers are being watched closely, and are going to be brigged at the slightest excuse.

"The trouble is, a lot of the passengers are getting bored, and we don't have any work for them to do. They were being run through some course work, to increase their skills, but a lot of that is finishing up, and that's a lot of idle hands. If it comes to a real problem, the captain is going to start availing himself of some of the more non-standard methods to deal with it.

"However, certain members of the ship's crew, such are yourselves, are being warned in advance, as there may not be time to warn you in when these things are employed. So simply put, from this point forward, do not drink anything other than water on the mess deck. Also, don't eat any pork. Understood?"

We all looked at each other, but nodded, "Yessir."

"You are also ordered not to share this information with anyone, even if you think they have already been given it."

"Yessir," we all nodded again.

"Last of all, none of you are to set foot in the troop modules for any reason. If anything does happen, we suspect it will be in there, and we can't afford to have any of you too injured to fly. If you have a hot date, bring them back to your quarters."

"Yessir."

"All right, inspection time. Let's go check the shuttles."

We all got up, went out to our individual shuttles, and spent the next several hours undoing, inspecting, and then resealing twenty-three separate inspection panels.

"The captain must be pretty worried," I said to Dave when we got to the last panel on the nose. We were standing well away from the rest of the crews now.

"Well, we have what, four, five, weeks left?" Dave said while carefully undoing the fasteners on the nose plate. "They're not ship's crew like the rest of us, and there are a lot of them. Can you imagine what a riot would do to the ship?"

"I know, that worries me as well. I just never thought we'd run into this kind of a problem from our own people."

Dave shrugged, "Here, hold this," he handed me the fastener tool, and carefully removed the plate. "Ever notice how few people really are deep space rated? Not everyone is okay with being stuck inside a ship for month after month, with little time off, and only occasional leave."

"Yeah, but we get paid extra for that," I said.

"That's only because so few people qualify, that they have to offer a bonus to get us to accept the position. For most of the passengers onboard, I bet this is the longest they've ever been on a ship."

"True."

"And if they weren't here, we'd probably be having our own problems," He said with a snort.

"Also true, but there are a lot less of us, and we know better than to do anything stupid."

"Oh really?" Dave said and grinned at me.

"Okay, okay, not to do anything stupid to the ship."

The next few days were pretty quiet onboard. I noticed that a lot of the ship's crew was suddenly drinking water. I'd also noticed that coffeemakers had turned up at more than one duty station, to let people get their daily dose of caffeine.

Trouble started on a Friday, late in the normal day routine. I got com'ed, as well as a lot of the other personnel who doubled as security. There was a fight in the mess, and it was growing. By the time I got there, it looked like about twenty were involved.

"You six, over there," Chief Shandour pointed, and we went. More security showed up as we went to work taking out the fighters, a couple of which were ship's members. The moment we got near any of them, they just dropped and curled up in a ball on the floor, so we ignored them.

It only took a few minutes to stun the rest of the fighters into submission. A few had gotten their hands on stun rods themselves, probably taking them from some of the security members early on in the fight, when they were still outnumbered.

We quickly zip tied all of the offenders and moved them to one side of the now emptied mess hall. There were about seventeen of them.

There were three security members who had gotten beaten pretty well; those were sent down to medical immediately.

That left the five members of the ship's crew, who were sitting against the far wall, and being quietly interviewed by Banner.

The medic's started treating everyone left in the room, starting with the bound and still only semi-conscious offenders, while the rest of us started to clean up the mess.

By the time we got that finished Banner called us all over.

"Okay, a couple of the passengers got into it with one of the ship's crew. It escalated from there. About half the people involved were actually trying to pull people apart and got caught up in it. Haul that group down to the brig, and I'll sort them out there. Then you can all report back to your regular duties."

We all nodded and followed his orders.

Saturday night there were two more confrontations, but those were broken up rather easily.

Sunday I was in the mess with Cassandra and I noticed that several of the passengers looked a little bit tired.

"Hey, how come none of you guys are eating the pork?" One of the guys in line next to me asked.

"Because it costs extra," I lied.

"What? I though the food was free?" He said looking around for a price list.

"It is for passengers and guests. It's figured into your movement cost, which the company pays for. But this is our duty station; we have to pay for our grub. Yeah the pork is good, but I ain't paying the extra money for it, the mate and I have some serious buyout debt," I said and yawned.

"Wow, sorry, I had no idea."

"Eh, don't worry about it. Go ahead and enjoy yourself, doesn't bother me none."

"Thanks!" he said, and I watched as him and his friends dug in on the pork, and the other crew members in line just gave me one of 'those' looks, and rolled their eyes.

Whatever the captain had them put in the food, it must have worked, because for the next two weeks, things calmed down, but now all of the Astra's crew were walking around, all pent up with stress. We were a week from breakout and we had all started to view the passengers as ticking time bombs.

Two nights before breakout, they rioted.

"Shit!" I swore as the lights came up to full in our cabin, waking us both up, and the 'General Quarters' alarm sounded over the intercom.

"All hands, all hands, we have a situation with several of the passengers. All passengers are restricted to their bunks; use whatever force is necessary to send them there. Any passengers found in restricted spaces are to be subdued immediately, deadly force is authorized in those areas only."

I swore again, opened my locker, got my combat gear out, and started to put it on as the announcement repeated two more times. I looked over at Cassandra she was pulling her jump suit on, and then she grabbed a heavy vest to put on over it.

Unit orders came over the intercom next, Cassandra and I were both to report to the bridge guard station. I could hear that the other units were being sent to engineering, the shuttle bays, and the captain's quarters.

I put my helmet on and powered it up, slaving it to the shipboard com net. I checked Cassandra's gear, rechecked mine, then we unlocked the small safe and pulled out our stun rods and side arms.

The side arms were specially designed for shipboard use; they fired a fifty caliber smart slug at low velocity. The slug would blossom out before impact and had about the same impact as a hard swung baseball bat. They were noisy, very limited in range, but they hurt like hell and broke bones. In close, a head shot would kill you; anything outside of ten feet was almost guaranteed to be non-lethal.

"Let's go," I said and opened the door.

The only people in the hallway were other ship's crew, most of them were geared up like Cassandra, only the warrant officer and higher ranks were armed with sidearms, the rest were just armed with stun rods.

When we got near the bridge, there were about ten people trying to force the door.

I pulled my pistol, "Leg shots," I told her.

"Raj, we need to warn them first."

I pulled the trigger five times in quick succession, and five of them fell to the floor screaming in pain. I was sure I'd broken a bone with each shot.

"Put your hands up, or we will shoot you!" I yelled, then whispered to Cassandra, "There, I warned them."

Three put their hands up. I shot the other two immediately.

"Lay down," I motioned with the gun, they laid down.

"Cover me, I'll secure them. Any of them try anything, headshot them." I growled to Cassandra.

"Raj, that'll kill them!" Cassandra warned.

"Exactly," I growled looking at them. I saw a lot of ears suddenly flatten, but at least Cassandra got the idea.

"Okay," She said and took a stance with her back to the wall, so she would see anyone approaching from behind.

"Now, listen up!" I growled and pulled out a bunch of zip ties. "Right now, you're just going to be fined, but this is a restricted area, if any of you resist further, you'll be killed. So lie still and you'll be sleeping in your own bunk tonight!"

I then zipped all their hands behind their backs, and zipped their legs together as well. I went a little carefully on those whose legs I'd broken, but they got tied as well.

"Check the bridge," I told Cassandra. She nodded and hit the door com.

"Bridge, this is the portside guard station."

"We see you. The bridge is clear, the guards are inside."

"How is the starboard entrance?"

"It's clear, that was the only group."

"Orders?" Cassandra asked.

"Standby for orders."

Other crewmembers started to show up by then, and we sorted ourselves out by unit.

Cassandra's unit and one other were moved into the bridge, another was left at each door, and the rest of us were sent to start sweeping the ship.

For the next four hours, we moved slowly, deck by deck, checking every cabin, every office, every exercise room, and every space, no matter how small. We only came across two more of the passengers before we left officer country, and those were the two otters sharing Jeri's quarters. So we left them there under orders not to leave.

We linked up with the units from the captain's and other senior officer’s quarters, when we finished with officer country. They had apparently had a nice little riot to put down, but I gathered they hadn't used the same level of force that I had. Then again, those were not restricted areas.

In the general crew quarters section, we came across a lot more passengers. Apparently quite a few were now bunking with the crew, either for romantic reasons, or because they knew something was up in the pods and they decided to try and steer clear. We locked them in the rooms where they were, again under orders not to go anywhere. All were happy to agree.

"Okay, here's the plan," Hawkeye was in charge of the group, and we had just finished with the crew quarters. "Chief Shandour has got the assault shuttle deck locked down, and there haven’t been any issues there. Banner has secured the engineering spaces, and is in the process of trying to link up with Marcus's group, who are holding the lower shuttle deck; but they're having a tough time of it.

"So I'm going to split off half of you to go re-enforce Marcus's team, don't stop for anything, if you see any problems, call it in. The rest of us will continue to hold these positions. Once those rear points have been secured, Banner will use his team to drive the rioters back, we'll leave the path to the pods open, and try to get them to retreat into there."

"Then what?" Someone asked.

"Then we gas them. Once they're all asleep, we'll go and secure our problem children. Everyone got that?"

"Rog!" we all called.

He detailed everyone then, I was lucky, I got to guard one of the access ways.

It took another hour, from I was hearing over the com channels as I scanned them to get an idea of what was coming, a couple of the rioters were bound and determined to 'get off the ship' and were trying really hard to get onto one of the cargo shuttles and leave.

A couple of the crew with me swore when they heard that, those people were probably going to end up psyched, I suspected that Banner might pull the trigger himself on a few of them right there.

When the leaders were finally taken down, unconscious or otherwise, the rioters broke. They came streaming back up the ship, but when they saw us, their heart was no longer in it, so they took the route of least resistance, and went into the troop modules.

We sealed the hatch behind them, called the bridge, and then waited.

An hour later, we were given gas masks, and sent inside while the atmosphere was regenerated.

"Wow, what a mess," I sighed.

"Yeah, they definitely trashed the place," Hawkeye agreed.

"I wonder if it's this bad in the other module."

"We can find out later, let me call for more help, then we can check out the rest of the module."

I nodded and looked around as he did that. The modules were pretty much just a big barracks in a tube, blocked off into sections, with each section separated by a rest room facility with showers, and a small combination recreation, exercise, and mess area. They had a couple of food vending machines and microwave ovens to heat stuff, but no real food preparation equipment.

In this section, all of the bedding had been pulled off the bunks, and a lot of it was destroyed. I think they were trying to figure out how to make weapons or something. Being technicians, they didn't have any of course. There was also a lot of gear strewn around, and most of that looked pretty well trashed as well.

I counted at least hundred bodies, all were unconscious, quite a few were injured, we didn't find any dead, thankfully.

Hawkeye pointed to the extra security members that joined us. "Start securing them," he said pointing to the unconscious rioters.

He motioned to me, "Okay, let's check the next section."

I nodded and followed, there were ten bunk sections, each designed for around fifty normally. The front section was a little different, as that's where the officers lived when a module contained troops.

"Well this is a little better," Hawkeye commented when we got to the next set of bunks. The rest room and rec area's we had passed through had been left fairly untouched.

I looked around, maybe half the beds had been pulled off, and there were probably fifty people here.

The third section had almost no damage, and there were only a handful of people in it. The fourth, fifth, and six sections were deserted and barely damaged at all.

The seventh section had been barricaded off from the rest of the module, someone had piled all of the mattresses up in the two entryways to block it off. It took us about ten minutes to clear a space so we could get inside, where we found over two hundred people.

"Well, these folks made the right move," Hawkeye said. "Let's get their IDs and make sure that they don't get charged for any of this mess."

I nodded, and set about scanning everyone's ident disk.

"So what's the plan now?" I asked Hawkeye as we worked.

"Everyone that rioted is going to be shackled to their bunk and sedated. Those that didn't will be taking care of those that did. All passengers are going to be restricted to the modules, and food will be delivered."

"Wow, that's pretty rough."

"Yeah, but that's how it goes. I heard you shot a few up by the bridge?"

I nodded, "Yeah, ten of them, one of me, so I broke a bunch of legs. They'll be okay. I feel for the ones who went down to the main shuttle bay."

"Yeah, from the sounds of it, Banner was a lot harder on them, than you were."

"Well damaging the engines or changing mass in jump space is a lot more dangerous than falling out of jump space," I replied. "If they had gotten on the bridge, they wouldn't have been able to kill us; they'd have just made life difficult."

"And messed with our bonus situation," Lyle said, coming up to help us record tags. He'd been quietly listening to our conversation as he'd worked through the sleepers in the last section.

"Damn, I sure hope this doesn't mess up our bonuses!" Hawkeye swore.

"Just have to see how much damage they did," I agreed with a sigh looking around for any I might have missed.

14

They were still cleaning up the mess when we came out of jump. Sitting alert was actually a welcome change of pace, and when we saw the level of defenses in the system, we all gave a sigh of relief, the war might have been over for almost a year now, but we were all still living with that mindset. Iverly was really quite a busy system; they even had a space dock.

Because I was sitting alert, I didn't have to deal with cleaning up the mess, and there was quite a bit of petty vandalism that needed to be cleaned up or fixed, which was both annoying and insulting, this was our home after all. But because everyone else did have to deal with it, there was still a lot more work for those of us on alert to do than there usually was.

"So, how bad is it?" I asked Cassandra. It was morning and we'd just woken up, I hadn't seen her in two days, and when I'd gotten to our cabin last night, she was already deep asleep. Like everyone else, she'd been working hard. Nobody wanted to spend anytime cleaning up the ship when we got into port, everyone wanted to be able to go take leave.

"Three dead and one of those was an accident," she sighed. "I want to apologize hon."

I looked at her surprised, "Apologize for what?"

"For doubting you when you shot the folks in the legs. Yesterday when I was down in the med bay, I saw what they did to one of the bridge guards, they beat him up pretty bad, he's going to be laid up for over a week the docs told me."

I gave her a hug, "I thought you'd be mad at me for being so curt with you at the time."

She shook her head, "No, you're the one with the experience in fighting. Balizar said you took them out quickly and with a minimum of force, he said you could have legally killed them if you wanted to, because they were in a restricted zone."

I nodded, "What were they doing up there anyway?"

"They just wanted out of the ship and someone told them that the bridge is like standing in a huge open space when the displays are on." She sighed and stretched, and I watched, appreciating the view. "So that's why they went there."

"What about the others?"

"Well, apparently a couple of the rabble rousers who hadn't been brigged yet figured out that we were drugging their food, so they convinced a bunch to start eating and drinking like the rest of us crew were. Then once they’d shaken off the effects of the drugs the captain had the cooks put in the food, they decided to take over the ship to 'protect themselves'. They thought we were going to do worse things or something like that. None of the rioters are too clear on what they were thinking at that point."

I nodded, "Yeah, cabin fever can really mess with your head. What about the leaders?"

"Those are two of the dead. Banner got one of them fairly early on while defending engineering; his team put a serious beat down on the lead elements. So the rioters then switched to the shuttle bay in an attempt to run away. That's when he got the second one, and they stalled inside the hanger bay at that point with no one to rally them. But they were still dug in fairly well, so he shot six more, but not fatally at least, and when those six dropped, that's when the rioters finally started to break."

I grabbed my robe and tossed Cassandra hers. "What was he shooting them with?"

"A sniper rifle," Cassandra shook her head and sighed. "His team was armed with carbines. When the rioters attacked engineering, Banner's group came up from behind and took out the lead element immediately. Then he let the rioters retreat. He'd hoped that attack had broken their will."

"Wow," I said as we headed for the showers.

"Yeah, it was pretty nasty. The main gym has been turned over into a hospital ward, they shot up a couple of dozen rioters, they're all going to live, but the captain handed down a fifty thousand credit fine to every rioter that entered a restricted zone."

"That's gonna hurt."

Cassandra nodded, "All the ones who cleared out early, hid, or barricaded themselves away from the rioters are getting a letter of commendation for staying out of it. The ones who called security and warned us are getting a bonus."

"How many of them rioted, anyway?"

"Well as near as we can figure out, about half of them did, but only about three hundred came into the ship. The rest just sort of burned out in their modules after they trashed the place. Of the ones that left the modules," she shrugged as we entered one of the shower stalls and hung up our bathrobes, "Maybe half followed those two leading things down to engineering. The rest just wandered around the ship, trashing stuff, or were like the small group at the bridge."

"Well, they won't be our problem for much longer," I said and turned on the shower.

"Yeah, but I feel sorry for them, being cooped up on a ship for months at a time is rough, at least we have jobs and work do to on it."

I nodded, "Yeah, I know. It's why I hit the gym as much as I do."

"Speaking of gyms," Cassandra said handing me the shampoo and turning her back to me. "What is this training you set me up for?"

"Well, I asked Balizar to teach you the fighting style that they use."

"Why'd you do that? I know how to fight."

I smiled at her back as I started to scrub her fur with my hands, "Who do you think would win in a fight, me or Sharazad?"

"Why you, easily," Cassandra laughed.

"Don't be too sure," I said and started working my way down her legs and tail, "They train in secret, the one time I got Balizar to spar with me, I didn't last three seconds."

"So why have them train me?" She asked turning around and facing me as I handed her the bottle, then I turned so she could do my back.

"Well, if you're going to do more field type work for him like you did back on earth, I want you to be able to stand up to someone like me."

"Do you think he's going to have me doing more of that?" Cassandra asked sounding curious.

"Well, he agreed to have Shar train you, so maybe. Besides, he promised to train me once years ago, when I was 'older and more mature,'" I said mimicking Balizar's voice. "Well he knows I'd teach you anyway, once I learned it, so why not train you too?"

"So does that mean he's going to teach you?"

"I hope so," I smiled. "I haven't learned any knew fighting styles in years!"

Cassandra sighed and slapped me on the butt.

"You and your fighting," she teased.

The next day I found an hour of my off-duty time had been re-scheduled to meet with Balizar in one of the smaller workout rooms that could be used privately. I got my pads, guards, and other sparring gear and met him there.

"Thank you for taking me on as your student," I said and bowed respectfully to Balizar after I'd entered and locked the door.

"Well, I did promise you I would consider it, and you have changed Raj, quite a bit. To be honest, I'm surprised you survived your time on the Falcon."

"Well, the gods of the personnel office do seem to watch out for fools and little cubs," I grinned.

"So what did it for you?"

I stopped and looked at him, "I'm not sure I understand."

Balizar grinned, "Of course you do. You had a 'moment', you woke up to who you are and what you are, and you made a decision to change your life. Indulge an old male, what happened?"

I looked down a little embarrassed, "Well, it wasn't just one thing, but remember Aruba?"

"Ah, yes, you two had a thing once, back on the Falcon?"

"Yeah, she was riding me over some of my behavior, and well, it was either beat her to a pulp, or just start owning my actions. I realized that life still had something to offer me that I could rise above that which I was made to be."

"And what was it that you were made to be?"

"Um, I'd rather not say."

He nodded. "How'd you figure it out?"

"Sir?" I said looking up surprised.

"You don't have to 'sir' me in private Raj, not now, or ever. I've read your records, I've watched you enough years, I doubt Cassy even knew what those tags meant in your file, or she'd have deleted them from your records back then.

"So, how did you figure it out?"

I sighed, "I was talking with an NCO from another company's infantry. We'd been working together for a while, he told me. Said he could see it in me."

Balizar nodded, "They mess with us, they mess with us in a lot of different ways. It starts when you're designed, continues when you're schooled and trained, and then even after you're sent out into the world it continues.

"It's what we all have to deal with; it is the price of our 'admission' to this life. Most don't know or don't care. But you know, now. So knowing what you know, being who you are, what do you plan to do next?"

I blinked feeling a bit lost by the course of the conversation, "I though I was here to learn about a better way to subdue people."

"I can't teach you what you need to know if I don't know what you need to learn," Balizar said looking at me very seriously. "What are your plan's, Raj? What is your next goal?"

I thought about that a moment, "I just want to stay with Cassy, maybe... no definitely, have some cubs with her. Say in ten years or so, when we've built up enough time and experience to get a nice long assignment planetside."

"And what's your next step in that goal?"

I shrugged, "Honestly, I don't know. I guess I'll let Cassy decide, and I'll go from there."

"You know about OODA loops right?"

"You mean 'observe, orient, decide, act' right? They taught us that in assault pilot school."

Balizar nodded, "You've applied it to your fighting as well, right?"

I nodded, "Well, yeah. It's too valuable a lesson not to try and use it."

"Everything in life is based on the loop, all of our actions, all of our interactions. How do you beat somebody when using the loop?"

"Well you get inside their loop, you act first."

"And how does that help you?"

"Because they have to re-observe, re-orient, before they can decide and act."

"So you keep them constantly in the O's, by always acting before they can decide or act themselves, right?"

I nodded, "Of course."

"But what if they're faster than you?" Balizar asked.

"Umm, do something unexpected, throw off their observation, move so that their decision is no longer valid."

Balizar nodded, "That is one way, but if they're faster than you, they'll still get back ahead of you soon enough. So what's another way?"

"Um, throw off their observations?"

Balizar nodded, "That can work, for a time, but it's not always dependable. The real answer is to mess with their orientation."

I looked at him puzzled.

"We all know how things are supposed to work, how we expect things to move, people to react, how a body moves and bends, how a fist strikes or a kick is delivered, we have filters in our minds based on our understanding of the world around us, and the training we have received. If you present your opponent with something that he cannot understand, cannot grasp, that doesn’t pass through his filters, how does he respond to it?"

That stopped me a moment. "I, I don't know."

"And you didn't when we sparred on the shuttle deck. What you saw made no sense, so you couldn't process it, probably couldn't even recall it. Am I right?"

I nodded.

"That is part of why Shar and I spar in private, if people get used to seeing what we do, then they can orient themselves to it. This is why what I teach you, you will use in private, or if in public, only briefly and away from cameras if at all possible.

"I am not only going to train your body how to move in ways that are not natural, or which appear to not be natural, but I am going to train your mind to have less filters, to see the things that are un-seeable, because they are either too common, or don't make sense. I'm also going to teach you how to take advantage of other people's filters, to find the things that they won't see, and exploit them."

"That, that's a lot," I said thinking about it.

"The lessons you learn here, the same as the lessons you learned in your assault classes, your fighting classes, all of your combat classes, apply to all of the world around you. Everything is a conflict, everything is a competition. When you apply these rules to your life, to the world around you, you will find that you have control over your own life, and your own destiny."

I pondered that a moment, I'd brought the OODA philosophy to all of my fighting, armed, unarmed, not just the flying. I hadn't thought of bringing it to the rest of my life, but suddenly I could see the benefit.

And now, I was going to learn how to refine those abilities even further?

"I think I see why you wanted me to be older and a bit wiser," I said.

Balizar smiled. "Like the great man once said: 'It's all in your head.' Now, let's get started."

#                #                #

"Well, am I glad that's over," I sighed and leaned back against one of the cargo bay bulkheads to catch my breath as we watched the cargo hatch close. We'd just finished unloading the main cargo bay. All of the modules, both cargo and troop, had been disconnected and hauled off several hours ago, after being emptied first of course. With the Astra connected to the space dock, we'd been able to unload directly, but with a fair number of our cargo movers still recovering from minor injuries received during their stint helping subdue the rioters, we'd been a bit short-handed.

But everyone wanted to get the cargo off so we could be 'done' with this trip and 'done' with its problems. So even those of us who normally hated shipping cargo were quick to volunteer.

"And people say audits are bad!" Lyle said, leaning back against the wall besides me. "I'll take one of those over this any day."

The others standing around with us all agreed as we took a break, before heading back to our quarters.

"Any idea how long a leave we're going to get?"

"I'd think five days," I said stretching out my sore arms.

"Nah, probably a week at least," Lyle said.

"Yeah," Hobbs, one of the tigers agreed, "Captain is gonna give everyone a break for sure after this shit. He'll be worried about us more than the money."

I thought about that, "I hope you're right, I could use a nice break right now."

"You'll see!" Hobbs laughed and we all went off to hit the showers.

I shrugged and headed back up forward myself, the ship was already emptying out, and being docked to the station meant you could just catch one of the regular shuttle flights down, rather than have to wait for one of the Astra's shuttles.

"Hey, Hon," Cassandra said when I got back from the shower. "Get dressed; we're all heading down in a few minutes."

I grabbed the shorts she handed me and put them on, then took the shirt.

"Here, I packed for you," she handed me my half packed duffle bag and picked up her own smaller one.

"Who is 'we' and where are we going?" I asked following her out of the cabin.

"The whole clan. Balizar is taking us all out to a resort to unwind for a few days."

I smiled, "That sounds good. How long are we getting leave for?"

"Two weeks," Cassandra purred and leaned into me as we walked. I put my arm around her.

"Wow, that's a pretty long leave."

"I think the riot had a little something to do with that. That was a company paid trip, so we are getting a company paid leave, with a hazard clause."

"Well, we haven't had a good leave since we left Hobson's, which was what, a year ago?

"More, thirteen months."

"Huh," I said, and then greeted the rest of the clan, as we met by the main boarding hatch.

"Are they going to leave the Astra docked here?" I asked as we were signed out by the deck officer.

"I think so, nothing else is due in, and the space dock here is pretty large." Balizar said as we walked down the gangway tube to the station.

"Are we really getting two weeks leave?" I was still a bit surprised by that.

"Sure are. Let's hit the Standards and Practices briefing."

"I thought this was a company planet?" Mist said.

"There are a lot of other companies doing business here, so they require it now."

We all followed Balizar who led us into a room, where an otter in a Tri-Star uniform greeted us.

"Welcome to the standards and practices brief for Iverly Three. There are currently six other corporations doing business here, under contract to Tri-Star, so do not get into any conflicts with any of their employees. Weapons are allowed, you can pretty much haul around whatever you want. But if you pull a weapon on someone without cause, don't expect to live much longer than it takes everyone around you to draw and shoot. All of the locals are armed, we don't care if you are as well, but as strangers we recommend that you don't carry anything bigger than a knife until you understand how things work here."

"Why is everyone armed?" Mist asked.

"Holdover from the war, Iverly was hit pretty hard early on, and it took a lot of work to win it back. Then they tried two more times to try and hit us, so it was just more practical for everyone to keep their weapons with them at all times, and well, it's become the custom. Also, if you get out into the wilds a ways, there are some predators one must be wary of, and in the smaller mining operations, they can wander in from time to time."

He spent a few more minutes going over a few minor points, and showed us pictures of the things to watch out for.

"One last thing, if you don't know it already, the planetary manager is an animan, like us. So while there isn't any real prejudice going around, sometimes you'll be held to a higher standard."

"How is that not prejudice?" Lyle asked curious.

"People think of PM Koen as almost a god around here," the otter sighed. "At least those who were here during the war, and immediately after."

"Oh? Why's that?"

"He led the resistance, the stories they tell are, well, I wasn't here then, I only shipped out here a year ago. But they're pretty hard to believe, but don't let anyone down there hear you say that, unless you want either a lecture or a fight."

"They're that touchy about it?" Mist asked.

"More like proud. Guy is supposed to be some sort of genius, and it's hard to argue with the success of the installation here. The population is growing by leaps and bounds, and the company is pouring a lot of money into it.

"Any questions?"

Nobody had any, so we went and caught a shuttle down to the planet.

"How did an ani end up as the planetary manager?" Lyle asked looking around at the rest of us as the shuttle started down.

"Everyone else who would have been qualified for the job was dead," Balizar said. "I read the report, it was pretty bad here, Keon did such a good job at rallying the troops that the company rep on the spot made the call to put him in charge. Obviously he made the right call."

"Obviously," Lyle agreed.

I watched the cabin display as we flew down to the planet. We got a good view of the local area as we approached, there was a lot of construction going on, more than I think I'd ever seen before.

"I wonder how many people they have emigrating here a year," I said as we landed.

"With all that construction, it has to be a lot," Mist said.

"They're also very lax on breeding here," Sharazad said. "The PM pretty much approves all the requests he gets, so the population is really growing pretty fast. I think they're projecting to be over one million by the end of the decade."

"That's pretty impressive."

The shuttle stopped and we got our things and disembarked, going down the portable stairway onto the tarmac and walking over to the terminal. We were handed maps of the facility, told where the company quarters for visiting employees like ourselves was located, then directed to ground transportation rather quickly.

Everyone was polite, friendly, and professional. I saw animen of all types around, more as we left the terminal building and walked over to the garage for the ground transportation.

There were also quite a few motivational posters that I saw, with sayings like 'We are the best, let's prove it,' or 'When we help each other, we all win!'

When we got to the counter, Balizar made the arrangements for us, we would be taking a bus of some sort, I guess it was close enough that we didn't need to fly.

"It's kind of weird not seeing any humans," Banner noted as we stood there waiting for the bus to be driven around.

"Are there any here?" Terease asked, turning to the attendant behind the counter.

"Humans? Of course there are," she laughed, "I don't think any of them work here at the spaceport however, and as it's a workday here, they're probably all at work like everyone else."

"Well, how many live on the planet?"

The attendant shrugged, "I have no idea actually. I know that the PM is trying really hard to get a lot of them to come out from earth, the best teachers and scientists are still human after all, and they're building a huge college out here now."

"So, seventy percent?"

"Oh no, more like thirty. With the war, and what happened here, well, not a lot of humans were willing to immigrate. Too dangerous they said. But now that the war is over we're hoping that will change!"

"Wow, a planet where we're in the majority?" Terease giggled, "That's different."

Our bus pulled up then, and we all got on and found seats. As usual, the single members congregated together, and we mated couples sat up in the front near the driver. I almost laughed about that, remembering when I would have been in the back of the bus goofing off.

The trip out was interesting, the driver pointed out the local landmarks, talked about all the changes that had taken place in the last three years, and all of the larger changes planned for the next decade.

"Wow, the PM here really has some pretty big plans," Cassandra said to him after he'd gone down the list. It was pretty impressive.

The driver nodded and smiled, "He's pretty driven, I've even met him a couple of times when he came out to the landing field while traveling. He's a nice guy too, takes the time to talk to people, ask how they're doing, what they think about things. Treats you like you matter, you know? Most exec's, they never seem to care. Course I have no idea where he even finds the time to spend asking a guy like me questions. They say he works fourteen hours a day, seven days a week, sometimes more!"

"Sure doesn't sound like the guy I used to know," Balizar said.

"You know him?" The driver said surprised.

"Knew him, years ago. Funny guy, had an interesting sense of humor, always good for a laugh, but wasn't the type to work himself that hard. Guess the war must have had an effect."

Our driver nodded, "Yeah, the old-timers, that's what we call the ones who were here during the war, they talk about it sometimes. Say it was pretty rough and they all think he had some sort of personal grudge or something, ‘cause he was quite the hardass and would lead them into combat from the front. 'First in, last out' they say."

"Huh," was Balizar's response and he sat back, thinking about that as the driver continued on, pointing out a few more landmarks, but we were out of the town now, so there wasn't as much to see. We got to the resort about twenty minutes after that, and all went to find our rooms.

15

Unsurprisingly, it turned out that the jaguar, ocelot, and lion clans from the ship were there as well. The tiger clan, being one of the largest on the ship, had reserved their own place. There were I think about fifty of them onboard now, which was almost twice as many as the rest of the cats onboard.

We were there for five days, and it was nice to be outside and away from work to just decompress for a while.

"So, have you thought about my question?" Balizar asked. The four of us, Balizar, Sharazad, Cassandra, and me were relaxing, sitting around a table, sharing a pitcher of some sort of drink, pretty much off by ourselves.

"Which question was that?" I said. We'd been just talking about odds and ends, nothing in particular.

"What are your plans? What are the two of you going to do?"

I looked at Cassandra, and she looked back at me. We'd had a few discussions of course, but honestly, we'd never really sat down and just hashed it out.

"I guess we don't really have a plan," Cassandra said. "We're just taking it as it comes right now."

"Well, we have a few goals," I said and smiled, "But nothing really planned out."

"Don't you two talk?" Balizar asked shaking his head.

"Oh don't be such a hard case," Sharazad said nudging Balizar, "We were just as bad when we first mated."

"What's the rush?" Cassandra asked, "I mean, do you know something we don't know?"

"I know lots of things you don't know," Balizar chuckled, "so let's change that.

"The people who sit in HR departments all will see you a certain way. The ones that run the intelligence department will see you in a different way. And all of that comes from some of the most inane or simplest things in your lives and your records." Balizar took a sip of his drink.

"Now, remember Raj I told you that they, the powers that be, mess with us, and that they mess with us constantly?"

I nodded.

"Some of that is based on what they believes works. Some of that is just the latest cause célèbre, so they will always be trying to fit you into their expectations, their boxes, how they perceive you will determine what they will do to you."

"So how do they perceive us?" I asked curious.

"Well, let's start with Cassy, as she's in Intelligence. Originally, she was marked as secure, but unreliable, because of signs of posttraumatic stress. But that changed to reliable when it was reported that she had been fully rehabilitated when we arrived at Earth. On top of that, she was updated to desirable, because now that she's paid off, she can not be bribed."

"For some reason, the humans who run the intelligence agency believe that anyone who has not made buy-out can be easily bribed," Sharazad interjected.

"On top of that, because you're mated, they've added 'stable' to that list." Balizar continued.

"And they just love that 'Stable' tag, don't they, Hon?" Sharazad said and grinned at Balizar, who grinned back.

"So that makes you, 'secure, desirable, and stable'."

"But Raj isn't paid off!" Cassandra objected, "Why doesn't that come into effect?"

"Because first, humans really don't understanding the concept behind 'mating' yet. Second, because Raj falls under the military, and they rate things differently, and the intelligence people use those ratings." Balizar said. "Now there is one last set of rankings for you: ineffective, effective, and highly-effective. Prior to the war, you were listed as 'effective', but that has currently been removed, due to your inactivity. More on that later."

Balizar took another sip of his drink. "Now, Raj here is rated based on different factors, when I had him last he was rated as 'loyal, obedient, fairly-stable, effective.'"

"How come Cassy doesn't get a 'loyal'?" I asked curious.

"Because intel doesn't use 'loyal', secure is the best they get, they use different codes."

"I can see that causing issues," I chuckled shaking my head.

"It can, and it does at times. Now, after you came back to us, you were rated 'devoted, attendant, solid, deadly, mated.'"

I stared at Balizar a moment, "What?"

"Hey, how come I don't get a 'mated'?" Cassandra laughed.

"Because Intel doesn't understand it, but the military does," Sharazad answered her.

"So what does that mean?" I asked again.

"It means that when the intel people ask the military about Cassy's 'husband' they'll tell 'em that you are the corporate-damn Rock of Gibraltar, that if anyone messes with the company, or with Cassy, that you will 'take care of matters.' Then they'll ask if perhaps intelligence might wish to transfer Cassy over to them? Which of course will make the intel people want to keep her even more."

"Seriously?" I asked surprised.

"Oh, the military and intelligence hate each other." Balizar laughed, "It’s been going on for decades."

"No, I meant their opinion of me," I was a bit shocked by that, the idea that they might feel so strongly about me, it was kind of nice.

Balizar nodded, "The military is very loyal to its own. Especially the special ops troops who hung it all out for the company during the war. You get enough awards, and they will even look the other way while you date the CEO's daughter and screw his wife.

"So what his means, is that because Balizar is not paid off, intelligence knows that they have a solid hold on Cassandra, because that's the way they think. They also know that if they send Cassandra anywhere to work, that if they send her 'husband' along with her, that her fourth tag, the one which hasn't been re-evaluated yet, will go up."

"That's the 'ineffective, effective, highly-effective' one, right?" Cassandra asked.

"Yes."

"And what happens then?" I asked suddenly worried.

"If Cassy gets an effective, they bump it to highly-effective, and they start talking to the military about 'joint-assignments' because they want to keep the two of you together, 'so could they please loan you to them?'

"That doesn't sound too bad," Cassandra said.

"No, it's not, but it's what happens when your base ranking goes to 'highly-effective' which would happen easily because you're so smart," Sharazad said to Cassandra.

"I thought 'highly-effective' was as high as it could go?"

"Because of Raj, they'll put a star on that highly-effective tag."

"And that means?" I asked.

"That the President, the CEO, and the Board will get a letter from intelligence demanding your immediate re-assignment to the intelligence agency, and then the two of you will start being assigned to the really tough jobs." Balizar said and tipped his drink to us, then took a rather large drink.

"Um, is that a bad thing?" Cassandra asked softly.

"It can be," Sharazad said. "It depends on who you work for and what kinds of jobs they send you out on. If you end up out in the field as an operative, it can be very exciting and challenging, but that's also the kind of job that can get you killed."

"The worst part about it, is quitting," Balizar said. "If you end up dealing with a lot of corporate secrets, they're not going to like the idea much of you leaving. Even retiring can be problematic."

"So what do we do?" I asked Balizar.

"Sharazad and I are working on that," he smiled. "You have a few more years of duty aboard the Astra before you'll start to come to their attention, but this is why I want to know what you two want to do. Sharazad and I both still work for intelligence. We enjoy it, but then we have a pretty good deal.

"And when we were younger, we were both in much more dangerous jobs," Sharazad said, then added with a grin, "And we enjoyed that too."

I was surprised that Balizar suddenly looked very embarrassed. "Now, if the two of you want to avoid that whole route completely, you need to start planning on what you want to do, so we can try and make that happen." He said.

"But if you decide you are okay with intelligence work, you need to determine just what you kind of intelligence work you want to do, and maybe even for who in the company, or what group." Sharazad said.

"And we'll make that happen," Balizar agreed. "So talk about it, think about it."

I nodded, "We will."

"Just how far up in the company are you?" Cassandra asked looking at Balizar, and then Sharazad.

"Sharazad laughed, "Not high enough that you could work for us."

"Well, not yet anyways," Balizar said with a smile.

We returned to talking about less important things after that, but I could see where Cassandra and I were going to have to start making some decisions on where we wanted to go next, when our time on the Astra was over. It was definitely something to think about.

The rest of our leave was rather nice; we stayed at the company's quarters each night and spent the days checking out the town. There were a surprisingly small amount of private stores and shops, considering how much construction there was going on and how many people lived there. I guess the smaller concerns hadn't really gotten established here yet, Iverly was growing so fast that the kind of people who opened up those shops probably hadn't even realized that the opportunity existed.

You could see that they had pretty ambitious plans for the planet, and it wasn't just the locals doing all the building either, Tri-Star was building a lot too. I wasn't privy to the plans of the corporation of course, and to be honest, business wasn't something I knew a lot about, but it was fairly obvious that Iverly was going to be a pretty big settlement eventually. I'd say that the rumors of this being a new sector headquarters for Tri-Star were right.

Being that it was still mostly a company town, I didn't have too many problems tapping into the local fight scene. A couple of nights after we left the resort I went down to the local fight bar and fought a few times. I brought Cassandra with me and Banner and Terease both came along as well. Banner just to make sure there weren't any problems and Terease mostly out of curiosity.

It was still fun, Cassandra still enjoyed watching me kick butt, and of course the extra money didn't hurt either. But I was surprised to realize that I hadn't fought on the bar scene since we'd left Hobson. True we had been busy, and I didn't think I'd have found a place on Earth or the Moon, but it didn't seem to hold as much interest for me as it once did.

16

"Now hear this! Attention to orders!"

We all sat down and turned to the screen on the ship's com in the ready room, the Astra had just entered jump-space after a five day run out of the Iverly system.

"At ease everyone," Captain King's image appeared on the screen as he talked. "Recent intelligence that we gathered has identified a small hidden base leftover from the war. As best as we can determine, this base is deserted. However, the group we found this information on has ties to piracy, and Corporate has no idea if the information about this base was passed on or not, and has no desire to allow this base to fall into the hands of any pirate organization.

"So we have been given the task to destroy it." The captain paused a moment. "Now normally we would just drop an orbital bombardment on it, and leave it at that. However, there are concerns that there might be innocents, or intelligence data worth recovering. So if it can be done without exposing our people to grave danger, we will investigate first. If not, we will simply destroy it.

"Once we have completed that, we will be making maximum speed to Hobson's Choice, where we will return to our normal duties.

"That is all."

The screen clicked off and we all looked at the chief.

"Okay, the plan is actually fairly simple." Chief Shandour began, calling up a schematic of the system on the wall screen. "We break out here," He pointed to a location on the edge of the system, "the base is there," He indicated one of the moons of a large gas giant.

"As you can see, the base will be on the far side of the gas giant when we break out. We don't know if they have any sensors in place or not, we'll be pretty far out, so odds are good they won't see us even if they do - the captain is planning a low energy breakout."

"How long is it going to take us to get there?" Dave asked, "That's quite a distance and we're hauling three cargo pods."

"The pods are empty, and will be jettisoned after we breakout. The Astra will then engage in a series of maneuvers. The first will be to put us on this course," a line for a least fuel gravity-braking course appeared. "At which time we will launch two shuttles. The Astra will then maneuver to this course," a second line appeared on the display, it was a much longer approach, one that would take two extra days to get there.

"The second course is more cautious, one that allows us more time to scan our target and be sure of it. The plan behind this is to lure all attention to focus on the Astra. If any sign of a threat appears, the shuttles will attack and destroy the base. If no attacks are made, or no sign of life is apparent, the shuttles will land and do a quick exploration, then set charges and join up with the Astra when it passes nearby."

"How long a shuttle mission is that?" Jerry asked. "Looks to be six days."

Chief Shandour nodded, "Yes. It's going to be a bit rough on those onboard. Especially as one shuttle will be carrying a small team to investigate the base, as well as to rig charges."

"How small a team are we talking about?"

"Six, including the shuttle crew."

"That's a bit tight for six days."

"So bring your girlfriend," Chief Shandour joked and everyone laughed.

"What happens if the Astra has to run?" I asked looking at the courses on the display.

"The shuttle carrying the destruction charges will make an attack run as it passes by. The other shuttle will be free to abort on whatever course they feel best."

"Yeah, but doesn't leave you with a lot of options," I complained. "Starve to death, or what? Suicide?"

"Well there is this," Chief Shandour pointed to a new course that appeared on the display. "This is the ballistic course of the containers after we jettison them. Each contains extra fuel and rations, you'll get picked up in six weeks. Less of course if the attack run is successful, as the captain does not intend to jump out of the system until he knows if the attack was successful or not."

"I would like to volunteer for the shuttle making the attack run," Jerry said standing up.

"Don't bother, you were already assigned to it," Chief Shandour laughed.

"Who gets the other one?" I asked.

Chief Shandour paused a moment and started rubbing his chin, "Well let's see, who ever we put on that shuttle really needs to be pretty friendly, and we do have this one pilot whose mated to an intelligence analyst."

Everyone laughed and I sighed.

"Oh great!" Dave grumbled, "I get a week of having to listen to those two!"

"I seemed to recall that you've been spending time with an intelligence analyst yourself there Dave," Shandour grinned.

"Umm," Dave's ears splayed and his tail curled down. "Maybe."

"So Mist will be going along...."

I almost laughed as Dave's tail went back up. I had no idea he'd been seeing Mist, I'd tease him about that later.

"Who are the remaining two?" I asked.

"Kyle and Wendy," the chief said, naming two ferrets from the crew. I knew who Kyle was as he worked down in Engineering with Terease. Wendy was his wife.

"So, how long until we get there?" Jerry asked.

"One week."

"One week!?" Jerry said surprised and we all looked equally shocked I was sure.

"That's why this is important, and why the Astra was launched with no real cargo. This is right in our own backyard." Chief Shandour said.

"What kind of hardware are we going to be slinging?" Janice, Jerry's WSO asked.

"Two one hundred kiloton bombs."

"That much?" She asked surprised.

"Well, no one knows how well this base is protected, and everyone wanted to be sure."

"Those aren't part of our usual armament, I take it they're in the cargo hold?" Dave asked.

Chief Shandour nodded. "The techs should be bringing them up shortly. You and Janice can help set them up and put them on Jerry's shuttle."

"What's my shuttle going to be carrying?" I asked.

"Four LGRT missiles, and a pair of cluster bombs filled with audio sensors to drop on the surface of the moon. The installation is underground, so that will probably be the only intelligence that you'll be able to get before you go down inside."

I nodded.

"Any other questions?"

There were none.

"Okay, get to work everyone!"

I spent the rest of the day going over the plan, checking the course we were given to fly, what the fuel requirements would be, and then what it would take to make a rendezvous with one of those empty pods if we were forced to abort. Once I had a good idea what that would involve, I went and found Jerry to go over it all with him, and see if his numbers and ideas agreed with mine.

By the time we got done with that, the bombs had been assembled and we went to look at them. Both of them had penetrating tips, so they'd go in a good forty to fifty feet before they exploded. Deeper if they didn't hit any hardened defenses.

"How hard is it to remove the warheads?" I asked.

"Pretty easy, take us about twenty minutes for each one," Dave said.

"And how heavy are they?"

"Two hundred pounds."

"Ugh, I guess I can carry that, but it won't be fun."

"We stowed some gear in Jerry's shuttle to make it a bit easier. Don't worry," Dave laughed.

"Well let's go find a place to sit, then I'll go over the plan with you. You can check my math."

"Sure."

"Oh, and Dave?"

Dave looked at me, "Yeah?"

"Mist? Really? I mean all this time, and I had no idea you liked cats!"

"Well um..." Dave's ears flattened in embarrassment.

"It's because you can't have me, isn't it Dave?" I sighed and gave him a sad look. "I had no idea my being taken would hurt you so...."

Dave growled and threw his stylus at me. "Oh grow up...."

I laughed, "Well she does like calmer older men..." and I ducked again as he picked up a dash one and threw that at me as well.

Breakout was uneventful, there was no traffic nearby, in fact there was no traffic observed anywhere in the six hours that the Astra maneuvered to prepare for our launch.

When the Astra finally kicked us out both Jerry and I made our initial burns, made sure our courses were locked in, and then I locked my controls, set the proximity alarms to ignore Jerry's shuttle, and settled in for a long wait.

Stretching, I racked my helmet, unbuckled, and made my way back to the small cargo hold.

Cassandra met me and gave me a hug, "Well, six days all to ourselves, whatever will we do?" She purred.

I laughed and looked around. Dave was already entangled with Mist, though giving them a second look I got the impression that Mist was the aggressor in this particular encounter.

"I wouldn’t say exactly all to ourselves."

"I can ignore them if you can," Cassandra laughed. "Besides, Kyle brought some cloth to rig a couple of partitions for when we want a little privacy."

I shook my head; the cargo hold of an assault shuttle was pretty small. You could pack twenty troops in it, and the operative word there was 'pack.' Of course, in freefall everything did seem larger, because you could utilize all of the space involved.

"Poor Jerry, him and Janice all alone over there," I sighed and shook my head.

"You kidding?" Dave laughed, "Janice worships him. She spends more time in his room than in her own."

"Damn, how come I never got a female WSO?" I chuckled shaking my head.

"Well it's not like you need one now, is it?" Cassandra said still purring.

"True, true. Well, might as well get settled in, it's a long flight."

Six days later, I was sitting in the cockpit, with Dave, eyeing our target off in the distance. Twice during the trip I'd had to come up and make minor correction burns, the second one being yesterday as we skimmed fairly close to the gas giant now below. The trip actually wasn't that bad, yes there had been a few slightly embarrassing moments, but those were mainly for Dave and Mist, the rest of us being mated or married.

Kyle had brought a projector, a screen, and several new movies with him, so we'd spent more than a few hours watching movies, or playing cards. We'd also slept a lot, something one didn't usually get a chance to do much of working on the Astra.

But now we were nearing our target, we were two hours out and so far, there hadn't been a peep out of anyone.

"Targeting locked," Dave told me.

I checked the targeting display; it had taken him a good twenty minutes to locate the base without using any active radar. If it wasn't for the intel we had that gave it's location on the moon, we probably would never have found it.

I looked around outside. Jerry was about a hundred yards away. I could see him sitting in his cockpit as well. We had a com laser setup going.

I keyed the transmit button on my throttle, "We're ready to launch one of the microphone rigs," I took a second look at the threat panel, still quiet. "What do you think?"

"I think that place is dead. We're close enough that if this wakes them up it won't matter anyways, so might as well see what we got."

I nodded to myself, "I agree. Fire when ready Dave."

"Missile away," Dave said and we watched as it launched off the rail. It was actually pretty slow, being in space and going after a static target with no air, it couldn't go much faster than us, or the small devices it was going to drop would be destroyed by the impact.

"Time to impact?"

"Forty-eight minutes," Dave said.

"Okay, call it off when it's five minutes out."

"Roger."

I spent the next forty-three minutes checking instruments, then looking outside, then checking instruments again over and over. We were getting close enough that if something happened, it was going to happen quickly, and we needed to be ready for it. I was sweating when Dave called it out.

"Five minutes! Turn on the listening gear!"

"Roger!" Cassandra called from the down in the hold.

"Four." Dave called, then slowly,

"Three."

"Two."

"One."

"Impact!"

I waited a couple of minutes, and opened the com to Jerry so he could hear the conversation.

"Anything?" I asked.

"Some background noise, still sorting it out." Cassandra said.

"What kind?"

"Nothing organic so far," Mist said.

"Sounds like blowers, basic HVAC." Cassandra added a minute later.

"Why would they leave the air conditioning on?" Dave asked.

"Temperature inversions can lead to problems with humidity and other things that damage equipment," Cassandra supplied. "If they put up a few solar panels, it's not like it costs them any resources to run it either. It's pretty standard operating procedures for most bases."

"Jerry, you're the boss, it's your call." I said.

"We're landing. Janice located one of the entrances. Sending the coordinates now."

"Roger that."

"Talk to you again on the ground," Jerry said and turned off the laser unit.

A moment later, he lit his engines and I lit mine and followed him in. Under power we got there in ten minutes, all the time neither Cassandra nor Mist reported any new sounds. When we came around to land, I could see the mark on the surface for the entryway, looking at the map on the display I was able to locate where the hanger doors were supposed to be.

Once you knew where they were, at this distance they were pretty obvious. I landed next to Jerry and shut down.

"Everyone suit up," I said and went down in the back to grab my gear. I had brought my combat gear for this, and I made sure everyone had on basic armor, and checked their weapons before opening the back.

Jerry was already outside when we got out there.

"Still no signs of life," I said on the suit com, then went over to the access hatch and slowly checked it over.

"No signs of traps, stand back please."

I grabbed the locking wheel and spun it then took a step back myself. As soon as the hatch dogs unlocked the hatch popped up and a gust of air came out.

It stopped before I could start counting. "Airlock, I'll go first, Mist, you're second. Once we sound the all clear I want Kyle, Cassandra, Wendy, Dave, Janice and Jerry."

"Why do I have to be last?" Jerry asked curious.

"Because you probably have the sharpest senses and quickest reflexes after me, so if someone comes up behind us, you'll see them first."

"I knew there was a reason they put you in charge of ground ops," Jerry laughed. "Lead on."

I grinned to myself; I wondered if Jerry ever worried about anything? I pulled the hatch open and using a mirror, scoped it out, then dropped a light stick down and checked again. There was a ladder on the side and it went down about thirty feet. I jumped down, bending my knees, and putting hand on either side of the wall to slow my descent. When I got to ten feet from the bottom I entered the gravity field for the gravity plates, and I pushed against the walls slowing myself slightly as I landed.

"Gravity the last ten feet," I warned and stood closer to the door, rifle at the ready as Mist came down next.

It took her a minute to come down the ladder, once she was behind me I spun the wheel on the door and undogged it. It was made to swing inwards and was only being held closed by air pressure now.

"Listen up, when I push this open move in quickly as I'm going to let it slam behind me."

"Why not close the hatch up top?" Mist asked.

"Because if we have to retreat quickly, we don't want that in the way. Ready?"

She nodded.

I hit the door hard and pushed, my rifle held high. As soon as I got it started, the air rushed around it, making quite a bit of noise against our helmets. I got in quickly and Mist slipped by in front of me, then I let the door slam, stopping the air from escaping.

I put my helmet against hers and turned my mike off, "Wait here."

She nodded.

"And don't shoot me when I come back."

I checked the readouts on the left arm of my suit as I made my way slowly down the corridor. I was wearing my full combat gear, and that included a small device that sampled the air and told me if it was safe to breath or not. Other than there being a higher than normal level of methane, everything said it was fine, oxygen, carbon dioxide, nitrogen, all in normal levels.

So I popped my faceplate open a bit to take a sniff, one of the things I didn't like about the airtight skin suit was that you couldn't use your sense of smell, and you could often smell someone long before you saw them. One sniff and I'd know pretty quickly if the place was abandoned or not.

The stench was almost over powering! I was taken by surprise and gagged, slamming my faceplate closed and hitting the 'purge' bar on my helmet, which quickly blasted the worst of it out of my helmet, but that odor was one I knew.

"You okay, Raj?" I heard Cassandra query me over the com link.

"I'm okay," I said and activated the flashlight on the end of my rifle and turned it to its highest setting.

"What was that noise?"

"Don't crack your helmets when you get in here, the stink is pretty bad," I warned.

"What's it smell like?" Dave asked.

I came to the end of the corridor, the pressure door was open, which was unusual, normal procedure for pressure doors leading to exits were for them to be closed and sealed. There was a large brown stain at the opening to the door, it was dried, kind of crystallized looking, I ran my light up and found what I was looking for.

"It smells like a dead body. A very ripe dead body," I said and looked at the corpse on the ground. There weren't any insects in space facilities, and if there were, they were usually killed pretty quickly by devices in the environmental systems designed solely for that purpose. So there weren't any maggots or other little beasties feasting on the body. But that hadn't stopped it from rotting, and it really wasn't a pretty sight.

I swept the room with my flashlight, there were two more dead bodies, all were human, all appeared to have been shot, several times. Considering that there were weapons lying on the floor, I couldn't tell if they shot each other, or had been in a firefight.

"Make that three bodies," I said.

"What happened?" Cassandra asked, "Can you tell how they died?"

"Three bodies, human, I think they were shot. There are weapons on the ground, and a lot of dried blood." I carefully moved into the room. I didn't want to slip, fall, and have to clean all that crap off of my gear. Bad enough my boots were going to get covered. I surveyed the room, there were signs on the walls thankfully, that made it easier.

"I'm in the room between the Hanger and the Control Room. There are suit lockers and such here. The pressure door to the hanger is closed, and if I'm reading the telltale correctly, the hanger is in a vacuum." I moved to the door leading to the control room, it was sealed and I couldn't undog it.

"The door to the control room is sealed. Mist, come up here with the door breaching charges, watch your step when you enter the room."

"On my way," Mist replied.

"What about the rest of us?" Dave asked.

"Keep your eyes open. Are you picking up anything new, Cassy?"

"Nope, still nothing on the microphones."

"Well, let's see if we can't wake somebody up."

Mist came into the room and we set the charges, then backed out of the room, back into the hallway.

"Fire in the hole!" I called and hit the detonator. There was a muffled 'thump' and I moved into the room quickly, with my rifle leading the way.

The doorway to the control room at the end of this corridor was closed, but it wasn't blocked, I pushed it open, again leading with my rifle, and looked around.

"Nobody in the control center," I said and quickly moved into the room, sweeping it with the muzzle of my rifle. The lights were on in here, so it didn't take me long to clear it. "No bodies either, but there was a firefight in here," I said noticing the brown stains of blood at two of the command consoles, and what I guess were now rotted pieces of flesh. "From the looks of it, someone came up here and shot the watch team in the back of the head. Then I guess they cleaned up the bodies."

I checked the security cameras, several of which were still functioning, though the displays were a bit messy, at least someone had wiped them off, probably whoever killed the watch standers.

"Any signs of life?" Cassandra asked.

"None that I can see, flipping through the security cameras, a couple aren't working, but I don't see anyone on the ones that are on. I do however see some more suspicious stains, probably blood."

"We're coming in," Cassandra replied.

"Sure. Close the outside hatch, leave your helmets on, and mind your step. Mist, come up to where I am, leave a few light sticks along the way."

I checked the other exits from the control center, there were three more of them, and all of them were fine. I kept the door I entered closed, and when the others got there, I had them reseal it as well. I'd checked the air in here, and it didn't smell all that bad, but I could still smell dead people.

Then again, I was tracking dried blood on my boots.

When they all had come in, I noticed Cassandra was standing stock still, and her eyes were open wide, she was starring straight ahead.

"Cassandra?" I said and got no response.

I hit the release on my helmet and pulled it off, then quickly undid hers as well.

"Cassy?" I said, "What's wrong?"

"That," she said and pointed to the main entrance, the one that lead deeper inside. Someone had hand written a sign and put it over the doorway, it read 'Your work shall set you free.'

I looked back at her and shook my head, "What? I don't get it."

"I was held here," She said and looked at me in shock, "This is where they tortured us, and killed the others, I ... we built this place!"

I swore and pulled her close and hugged her as the others looked on, I could feel her shaking, even through my armor and her suit.

"I'm sorry, Hon, I'm sorry," I whispered to her, "Do you want to go back out to the shuttle? We can go right now. You don't need to be here for this."

Cassandra clung to me a moment, I felt her sob quietly a couple of times, and then she stopped and sighed and rubbed her head against mine for a moment.

"I'm... I'll be okay." She said and untangled herself from me, standing on her own. "It was a bit of a shock, that's all."

"You sure?" I asked.

Cassandra nodded, "Yes. Besides, I want to make sure that they're all dead," she growled.

"What is with the sign?" Janice asked looking up at it.

"It's from a very dark time in human history," Dave said. "It was something they put up on one of the death camps, where they sent undesirables to work until they killed them."

"I didn't know that," Cassandra said, "I thought it was just some sick joke."

"Well, let's see if we can't figure out what happened here," Mist said motioning to the blood stained consoles.

I nodded, "Jerry, Janice, you two will stand watch up here, and guard. Cassandra, Wendy, Kyle, you three see what you can learn from here and the commander's office," I said and pointed to one of the exits. I'd already checked the room out; there were no bodies in it, or signs of violence.

"Mist, Dave and I will search the rest of this level and make sure it's secure. After that, we'll decide how we want to tackle the rest of the facility."

Everyone agreed and we went to work.

Two hours later, we all met back up in the control room.

"Okay," I said leading off. "We found lots of signs of violence; I counted indications of eighteen people being killed, including the two up front here. Access to the lower levels has been sealed off, from inside, though one of those was obviously breeched. What did you find?"

"They were expecting a supply ship, six months ago, it never showed up. Three months ago a ship showed up, it was supposed to be a second supply ship, but when it tried to put in at Trieste, well, we had just taken it." Cassandra said, reading from her notes.

"So it came here, with no supplies, and barely enough fuel."

"And that's when it went to hell," Wendy said with a snicker.

I looked at Wendy and then at Cassandra who had a rather nasty smirk on her face.

"The ship that came in, could have taken thirty people out of here, and gotten to Iverly, maybe a handful of other places. But they were low on fuel, and would have had to take half of the rations that were left here."

"How many people were here?" I asked.

"One hundred and thirty-six."

"Oh." I suddenly got the picture. "So they went around and killed all the people they couldn't take."

Cassandra nodded, "That was how it started. The people in charge knew that the others would never let them take half of the remaining food and go, even if they promised to come back. Because honestly, they knew they couldn't go to Iverly, they'd be found out. So Commander Mueller, the base commander here, got his little toadies together and they started to slaughter everyone at the station."

"So they had to kill what, one hundred and six?"

"No, they were going to kill one hundred and twenty, leaving just the sixteen of them, safer that way, you know? And well, maybe they didn't need all of the crew on the ship that came here as well. Mueller left a few hints of that in his log too."

"He recorded all of this?" I said shocked.

Cassandra nodded, "Mueller was a pretty sick bastard who was very much in love with the sound of his own voice and loved to listen to his own brilliance. I got to know him very well," and she turned and spit on the floor.

I got up, moved around the table, and sat down next to her. She gave me a questioning look, but I just patted her leg and stayed there. I don't know how bad those memories might be, but I was smart enough to know that moving away would have been a very bad thing, and not moving may have been seen as just as bad later on.

"So what happened? I take it that little plan failed?"

"Apparently, from what Wendy was able to pull out of the security archives, combined with what I have been able to figure out from recorded message traffic, one of the techs not on the survivors list apparently had Mueller's account bugged and warned their friends, they sealed off the next level, and moved all the remaining food to the lowest level, and then fought a war of attrition."

"They held out for over a day," Wendy said. "And eventually it sounds like they made a deal."

"Sounds? What does that mean?"

"They blocked the security cameras, so they couldn't be seen, but they didn't mess the microphones up too badly."

Cassandra picked back up, "Well, the deal turned out to be a trap, unsurprisingly, and Mueller shot the techs, but one of them had rigged a trap, and that destroyed most of the food."

"And it gets even better," Wendy snickered.

"Let me guess, they all turned on each other?"

"Oh, Mueller started talking about cannibalism, I think he had lost it mentally at that point, and well, I guess someone shot him, because we heard another bunch of gun fire. When it was all over, there were eight left, and they decided to go out to the ship, and take their chances at Iverly."

"And the three we found dead?"

"There were only six suits left, so they fought it out. From what we saw on the security feed, two or three of the five survivors from that little dustup were probably wounded."

"So five of them got away?"

"That's what we think," Cassandra said. Wendy and Kyle nodded in agreement.

"Did you send this up to the Astra?"

"Yes, they want us to proceed with the demolition. Their getting away guarantee's that others are going to discover this place, and they don't want to see it used, especially not this close to Iverly."

I nodded, "Well, let's break up into four groups, and tackle the remaining levels. We'll take them one level at a time. We might as well see if there is anything worthwhile before we destroy the place."

"Sounds good to me," Dave and the others all agreed.

We spent the next twenty hours searching the rest of the facility. There were a lot of personal effects of the people who lived there, but honestly, none of us really felt like looting the dead, plus we didn’t have the time with the Astra only a day out when we finished.

When we got to the bottom floor where the last of the carnage had taken place, we had to seal up our helmets, the stench was pretty unbearable. At least someone had closed the doors down here to keep it from filling up the rest of the place.

"I'm surprised that they took the time to put all of the bodies from the original massacre down here," I said when we came across most of the dead in one of the storage rooms.

"They were planning on coming back," Cassandra told me. "Maybe the ones that got away still are. There's a lot of wealth in this place if you took the time to take it out."

"How are you holding up?" I asked her.

She smiled at me through the helmet, "I'm okay. The worst of it I let go when we left Trieste. Now? I'd pity these people, if they all didn't deserve what they got."

I nodded, "Kind of funny how they all went for each other's throats as soon as a problem came along."

"They were all just bullies and sadists really, just scum. They only ever cared for themselves, and all they ever wanted was power over others. Deadly power. There was no way they could ever have worked together here, they were actually worst than their leaders."

"You really think so?" I said surprised.

Cassandra nodded, "Those people at least had an ideology, a belief, even if that belief came from fear. They did bad things, but they could and did work together, they may have hated us, but at least they didn't hate each other.

"But these people? These are the lowlife scum that they attracted, they only ever cared for themselves, and what pain and harm they could inflict on others. None of these people came from the movement's home world; all of them came from Earth or one of the major colonies. These were the people they recruited for the things that even the leaders were too afraid to sully their own hands with."

When we got to the room of the final showdown, we all stopped and looked at the mess. There were over thirty dead here, and in the middle of the room several large pallets of rations that someone had destroyed. It looked like they'd used thermite on them.

"There he is," Cassandra said and pointed to one of the bodies. "That's Mueller."

I looked at him; he was an overweight man, with short stringy black hair. Not very tall, but he was wearing some kind of uniform, unlike most of the rest here.

"What's with the uniform?" Dave asked motioning to the body. None of us wanted to touch any of them, they were so rotted at this point, they'd probably fall apart.

"Just his way of showing everyone else that he was special," Cassandra sighed. She looked around, "This was actually the last room we dug out before we were sent on our way. We actually all expected to be killed, but their leaders said they needed tech workers and would pay a reward for them." Cassandra shook her head and laughed, "When they heard about the reward, one of the bright boys did the math and suddenly they realized that if they hadn't killed as many of us as they had for fun, they would have gotten over a million credits."

"I can just imagine the argument that led to," Dave sighed.

"Yeah, and they took it out on us, as always. But at least they didn’t kill anymore of us." Cassandra said with a sigh and turned back towards the doorway.

I reached over and gave her a hug. "Let's go get the bombs," I said.

17

When we left the next day to make our rendezvous with the Astra we did have a few unexpected treasures: Cassandra and Mist had found Mueller's safe and Kyle had opened it. There was quite a bit of money, precious metals, and gems inside it. That along with the intel that had been raided from the base's servers we hoped would help defray the cost of the expedition.

We watched the bombs go off as we left; Jerry triggered them once we were a nice safe distance away. The one we'd put in the hanger made a nice explosion. The one we'd stuck down on the bottom level just made the ground bulge for a moment, and then it was all over.

Getting back to the Astra only took a few hours, then I think all eight of us went directly to the showers. Balizar had taken one whiff and had told us debriefing could wait until after we'd had the chance to clean up.

The debrief had been fairly quick, they already had Cassandra's report on what happened, and we'd brought copies of the base's files to bolster the report, along with the pictures we ourselves had taken.

Later that day the captain made an announcement to the ship that this was the last task leftover from the war that had been assigned to us, that we were still heading to our home port, Hobson's Choice, and that once we arrived we'd have a week's leave, and then the Astra would be able to finally return to our normal trading routes.

Everyone on the Astra I think breathed a sigh of relief, the idea of going back to our normal duties, after so many years of not doing them probably made everyone happy. By the time we were in jump, it really did seem that things were finally getting back to what we all thought of as 'normal.'

"So is what the captain said true?" I asked Balizar as I sat on the floor panting, this was our first training session since we finished with the base on the moon. "Is the war over?"

"That war is over, oh I'm sure there will be a few spy rings uncovered, a politician or two removed from office, but the rest of it is all over including the shouting."

"So, is that it, do we go back to normal?"

Balizar grinned, "Normal? What is normal? Do you know why this company was formed?"

"Which, Tri-Star?"

Balizar nodded.

I shrugged, "I'm not really sure, weren't they a mining company originally?"

Balizar waved a hand at me, "That was just the method they chose."

"The reason this company, or this corporation was formed, was simple: To make a profit."

I cocked my head and looked at him, "What? Then why did we fight this war? Why did we do any of this?"

Balizar sighed and leaned back against the wall, "This company was founded to make the founders money, that's the reason any company is ever started. No one does all this work out of the kindness of their heart, they do it for a return, be that return money or the admiration of others, or just to feel good about themselves. It is the most basic nature of us all, human and animan.

"But somewhere along the line the culture creeps in, takes a hand, influences the way business is done, and if that helps make a profit, or at least doesn't hurt the bottom line, it gets blessed and everything moves on.

"The culture that dominates the world today does so, because it is the most successful, has spawned the most ideas, the most power, the most profit. It turned women from property into equals, gave them the right to vote. Did away with slavery, communism, fascism, it even fights never ending battles with itself to promote the idea that 'all men are created equal.'"

"But we're not men," I said.

"And that's where the current problems, the current wars, the current struggles start. Why are we free? Why aren't we all born slaves?"

"Because it's not cost effective, they'd have to carry us from birth until death, and there wouldn't be any motivation to perform, and the unions fought it as an unfair labor practice."

"That's what they teach you, but that's wrong. They can motivate you by pain, they can simply kill you when you're not needed or too injured. No, we're free because it goes against their culture to keep us as slaves, because it preys on their guilt and their most cherished beliefs that 'all are created equal.' Because they know that eventually slaves revolt, and when they do, they're not very forgiving of their masters.

"Why are we able to have children? Why aren't we all born sterile?"

I thought about that one, I had an answer, but suddenly I wasn't so sure it was right. "You know, I never really thought about that. They tell us it's easier that way."

"The Hong Kong disaster," Balizar said.

"What's that got to do with it?"

"Why did terrorists nuke Hong Kong?" Balizar asked me.

"Why do terrorists do anything?" I said, "Oh, I know the reason they gave was economic freedom, human rights, but that's the same story every terrorist gives."

"The Chinese nuked Hong Kong." Balizar said looking over at my shocked expression. "Oh, they covered it up well, but the governments, the corporations; they all know the real reason. You see, the Chinese were the first to push Animen into high production, they weren't concerned with trials, or other such things, they just saw a way to quickly gain an expendable and powerful workforce that they could abuse and that they wouldn't get hit with human rights violations over.

"The Animen they produced were all sterile, couldn't reproduce, they had no future, and they knew it, there was nothing down the road for them, each one of them was born a dead end, and they were smart enough to know it, and human enough not to like it. They rebelled; they took over Hong Kong, slaughtered everybody in the city, and were moving onto the mainland. China suddenly found itself staring at an army of a couple hundred thousand berserkers with modern weapons and armor. They had no choice really.

"So it was covered up, and the law was handed down to everyone: No sterilizations."

"So why are we even here? Why create us?"

"Because they need us, humanity was starting to stagnate. The majority were happy just sitting at home. The corporations needed to keep expanding to make a profit, without us, there would be no workforce. We're not human, so they don't feel too bad about our circumstances, but we're human enough that they feel guilty. That guilt can either lead to compassion or to anger."

"So what does all this mean, and why are you telling me?"

"It's simple, Raj, over time Tri-Star decided to treat its employees well, to try and become more of a family. To do all it could to promote an atmosphere of something just more than a job. Then we came along, and at first they struggled with us, they didn't know where to put us in that hierarchy, how to treat us. Until about twenty years ago, we got a new CEO who thought we should be treated like the companies 'children', which meant there was a responsibility to us, a responsibility to be more, do more, to treat us better."

Balizar looked over at me again, "Some people can see the future more clearly than others. They created so many different species of us to try and keep us from teaming up against them, but this CEO saw that as long as it was 'us and them' that couldn’t be stopped, that it eventually would happen. So he decided to eliminate the 'them' make everyone 'us.' Give everyone a future."

I shook my head, "Sounds pretty ambitious, think it will work?"

Balizar shrugged, "Damned if I know. But for it to work, it means that those people in the company who want to keep things the way they were, they had to be moved to places where they couldn't cause problems."

"Like a cemetery?" I said a little sarcastically.

Balizar gave a little start, surprising me. "No, we've avoided that kind of thing. But once that was done, the next battle has been to remove those promoting that separation in government. Now on Earth that's impossible, same on a lot of the colonies. But not all of them and those are the ones where Tri-Star has been building."

That stopped me dead in my thoughts, "We?"

Balizar nodded, "There are those of us in the company who agree with this goal, and have been working towards it. It's kind of an unofficial group, I'm sure the board, not to mention Earth's governments, would have a fit if they knew about it, but the logic behind it is hard to argue with. Animen won't remain second-class citizens forever, regardless of whether we are happy in that role or not, no matter how much conditioning and training they put s through, it just won't last.

"So if Tri-Star is to survive, it needs to start preparing for it now, so when the time comes, everyone who works for Tri-Star can accept it. The same is true for Humanity, when the time comes, those places that accept it, will survive without a war or a revolution."

"But those places that don’t, won't?"

Balizar shrugged, "Maybe, maybe not. It's hard to see the future, but you can be sure that were will be revolutions and war, and a lot of people dying, on both sides. You do what you can, for those that you can, and well, screw the rest. They have eyes, if they can't see this coming, or if they refuse to deal with it, that's their problem, we have enough of our own."

I nodded, there were a lot of worlds out there, I could see where it could get messy, and I could also see his logic.

"So, again, why tell me all of this? Why the lesson? I don't see this as really having anything to do with what you're teaching me."

Balizar laughed, "Why, Raj, it has everything to do with why I'm teaching you. I'm asking for you to help!"

I felt my jaw drop.

"What?" I asked.

"Cassy and you would be a great asset to our little cause, and you're smart enough to see the big picture. Besides, it'll give you a hell of a story to tell your grandcubs when you're old and grey."

Balizar stuck out his hand. "So, how 'bout it?"

I looked at his hand; Balizar had just told me that he was a member of a secret organization inside the company, one that had the goal of promoting the acceptance of animen as equals. Something that went against everything I had been taught as a cub.

I sighed and shook hands with him, "This is crazy," I said.

"We can either build the future we want, or have one chosen for us that we fear, and I do not want to see my friends, my family, and yes, my company, involved in a war of extermination between the races."

He grinned suddenly then. "Besides, it'll be fun."

I started to wonder then just what Balizar's definition of 'fun' was.

"Cassy is going to kill me."

"Nah, I already talked to her."

"You did?" I said surprised.

"Yup. She was quite adamant that you be told. Said we shouldn't sell you short, that you were a lot smarter than you let on."

"So now what?" I said thinking about that. If Cassandra was onboard, then I knew I was doing the right thing.

"Now, we get back to training. Then shower, then dinner."

"I mean, about this whole thing you just told me," I said waving my arms around. "What about that?"

Balizar sighed with a grin, "You watched too many holo's as a cub, didn't you? We're looking at something that is going to take decades, maybe longer. It's not going to start happening after the next commercial break. Besides, I still have a lot to teach you. Now, up on your feet, let's go."

It was late; I was lying in bed with Cassandra curled up against me, asleep after making love. When I'd first come aboard the Astra years ago, I'd been pretty inexperienced, naive really.

When I came back last year with Cassandra, I thought I had it all figured out, but in a way, that had also been a bit naive.

And now? Cassandra had gotten over most of her issues, from the war, and I think I was done with mine now as well. We were together, we were happy, we had a future, and life was good. We had jobs, we had our goals, and we had a cause to work on that was a good one.

I hugged Cassandra and she snuggled closer in her sleep. I hoped I wasn't being naive about this once again. But tomorrow was another day, and I would worry about it then. For now, I'd just enjoy what I had, because right now, I had everything I’d ever wanted.

END

As an author, I would ask that if you liked this book, please take the time to rate it. Ratings are an important part of success as an ebook author, and four or five star ratings are of course the ones that help us the most. So while I feel a little embarrassed about asking for ratings and reviews, the reality of this business is that without those reviews my work will not rise in rankings and will not be seen by others. So please, if you liked the story I would greatly appreciate your taking the time to write a short review and rate the book.

Thank you,

John Van Stry

www.vanstry.net (vanstry@gmail.com)

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If you liked this book, you might like my other stories:

Urban/Modern Fantasy:

Portals of Infinity, Book One: Champion for Hire

William is just your typical engineer fresh out of college with a stressful job, a boring life, and not a lot of prospects of anything better in the future.

Until one weekend while hiking in the woods he stumbles across a portal to another time, or perhaps another place. The more he investigates this new world the more he realizes that it may just be able to offer him a lot more than the one he's been living in.

However, there are forces at work beyond anything that Will has ever come across before and the local goddess seems to have taken a liking to him. Will may soon find himself getting an offer he cannot afford to refuse.

Portals of Infinity, Book Two: The God Game

Will’s life has definitely changed since that day he went hiking in the woods of Pennsylvania. He’s discovered that reality is a lot bigger and stranger than he had ever imagined. Learning about the portals that link the infinite number of worlds opened his eyes to that wider reality. Learning that he was being groomed to become the Champion of a God in one of those realities was an even more startling discovery.

But now it’s time for him to pay the bill for his ‘recruitment’. Just as the Gods on a single world fight and jockey for power and position, the older Gods from the many different spheres of the infinite play a much larger and more complicated game. The Goddess Aryanna has a quest she needs completed, and William and four other Champions are the ones tasked to do it.

What bothers Will however is what could a Goddess possibly need? And why would it take five Champions to retrieve it?

Portals of Infinity, Book Three: Of Temples and Trials

With the first of what he suspects will be many favors completed, William finds himself busy with important tasks back at his home on Saladin. Queen Rachel has several jobs she needs him to do, and Feliogustus has similar tasks in mind for him as well. All in all, it seems easy enough to Will, it’s not like he’ll be fighting in any wars, or traveling across the infinite on a strange quest after all.

But things aren’t always as easy as they might seem, and both politics, as well as the other gods, aren’t going to ignore Will, or the tasks he’s been set to complete. And is if dealing with that isn’t problem enough, when the time comes to do some serious diplomacy between Hiland and a neighboring Kingdom, a deadly problem comes from a most unexpected quarter, forcing Will to take immediate action to payback both his, and his God’s foes.

Portals of Infinity, Book Four: The Sea of Grass

With no otherworld tasks to run for Fel, Will has spent the last year mainly helping Rachel consolidate her hold on her expanded kingdom. Barassa has been set back, for now, but Will knows it’s only a matter of time until they’re at odds once more and Barassa still has the bigger army. So taking the time to learn more about their enemy seems like a good place to start, and of course, Rachel has more things she expects him to do, even if he has no idea just how he’s going to do them.

Fel also has things for Will to do as well, even if they are the more mundane jobs that a Champion of the faith must perform. Escorting missionaries isn’t the most exciting or glamorous job, but its one Will must do. At least the people are different, interesting, and friendly, and some perhaps a little too friendly. But that’s never gotten him in trouble before, right?

The Hammer Commission

Mark's job seems pretty dull, working as an investigator into crimes committed against Church property, theft of holy objects, vandalism; nothing terribly exciting but he does get to travel the world.

That's just the window dressing. Mark does work for the Church, but as an elite member of a thousand year old secret society that hunts down devils, demons, and other evils. His job is not just to find them, but to remove, dispel, or kill them: he's on the front lines of the secret ongoing war between Heaven and Hell. However as wars go, it has been a fairly easy one for the last few decades, with nothing seriously evil having been summoned since the last world war.

But all of that is about to change, and the question for Mark may not be can he survive, but can he survive long enough.

Science Fiction:

Children of Steel

Raj is just your average everyday genetically modeled and artificially created anthropomorphic worker for one of the many corporations of the future. Extensively trained and conditioned from birth he's now indentured for the next fifty years of his life; assuming he doesn't die first, or somehow manage to pay off his creation and training debts.

Created by the corporations to deal with the harsh labor shortages of the twenty second century when humans will no longer take on the dangerous jobs Raj finds himself now in the harsh world of space exploration, trading, corporate maneuverings, and sometimes the even more dangerous fanatics that hate Raj and his fellows. No longer in safe confines of the training academies he must learn how to live and deal with both his fellow workers and the humans he encounters and not get saddled with extra bills or fines because he's screwed up or worse yet, get 'put down' because he's lost his temper one time too many.

After all, it's not like he's human...

Danger Money

Jotun was born and bred to be a corporate assassin, back in the days of the Corporate Wars. Confined these days to life in a gilded cage, Jotun welcomes any opportunity to get out and lately he's been getting out a lot. But as a genetically designed and Laboratory bred animorph by a company that isn't quite sure if it trusts him anymore his choices are few: do the jobs that eventually will kill him, or refuse, which will also kill him.
Of course it isn't like he doesn't enjoy the work, but when everybody wants you dead you start to wonder if there isn't more to life.
When an unexpected betrayal kills the few friends he has and nearly him as well, Jotun realizes he has bigger problems than his lifestyle, namely finding out who betrayed him and paying them back, no matter what the cost.

Danger Money is a Science Fiction story that takes place in my Children of Steel universe, a future where genetically created animorphs serve as second-class citizens and handle all of the dirty and dangerous jobs that are part of humanity's extension to the stars.

Dialene

Dialene's Captain decided to play pirate, and one well placed nuclear torpedo later she finds herself prisoner of the Corporation whose ship they were attempting to raid; her friends and lover all dead. With no corporation to ransom her back she finds herself in the unenviable position of having to work off the debt assigned to her for her part in her Captain's actions. With concerns as to where her loyalties lie she has but two choices: Work in the mines on an airless rock where a small fem like her would not last long, or work in the company bar entertaining those very same miners.
At least working in the bar beats the alternatives, until one day an interesting character inserts himself into her life.

A Novella from my Children of Steel universe, Dialene is a foxmorph who until her capture was a highly rated shuttle pilot working a deep space trader for one of the more notorious corporations. Like most of her kind she had no choices in her employer who considered her nothing more than a disposable asset.

Shorts: The Furry Years

A collection of short stories that I wrote years ago for several of different anthropomorphic fanzines. Includes the following short stories:

Changes: The hero of the story wakes up in the morning to find his world has changed, rather drastically for him, hardly at all for others.

Old Business: This is from my ‘Children of Steel’ universe, it’s about the beginning of it all, the very first of the sentient animen (or animorph) ever to be created.

New Beginnings: Jack is the new bartender at a small pub, a nice quiet pub in the business district. The patrons tend to find his opinions humorous, as what does a bartender know after all? (More of a slice of life type story).

Fox Hunt: A joke that I just could not resist.

Easy Money: What happens to spies who come in from the cold? Especially ones who grew up on the wrong side of the tracks? Nothing good I’m sure...

Available in eBook format at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, Kobo,  iTunes, and wherever eBooks are sold, available in print from CreateSpace or Amazon.