Bright Horizons (18 page)

Chapter 19

19 August
2044

The curtain
pulled back and bright light fell across Kyle’s face.

“Sir,
we are about to rendezvous with the Berlin,” said Leonard.

Kyle
sat up on the small bunk in the sleeping cabin. He wished he had been able to
sleep at least a little before arriving, but he had been up for the last eight
or nine hours thinking. He was thinking about how to get his sister out of the
Otina base. He was thinking about what condition she would be in when he found
her. He was thinking about his last dinner with her. He was thinking about the
incredible grief his family went through when they believed she had died. But
mostly, he was thinking about bringing his sister home.

“Thanks
Lieutenant,” Kyle said as he stood and stretched.

“No
sleep at all, sir?” Leonard asked.

“No,
but that’s ok. Sorry to make you change up your day,” Kyle said, stifling a
yawn.

“No
need, sir. We understand. If it were my sister, I’d be doing the same thing.”

Kyle
smiled and patted the young pilot on the shoulder as he walked into the main
cabin of the ship.

The
view out the main window of the Hedali vessel was amazing. None of the Earth
ships, except the pre-contact shuttles, had an actual window to look out of
from the bridge. There were some small view ports, but they were locked down
for the most part. There were external camera’s that gave good images for the
cruisers and allowed the scooters to land planet side using thrusters, but it
wasn’t the same as looking out a good old-fashioned window.

Ahead
of them was the Berlin. Several scooters were moving around it and two were
docked with it.

“Berlin,
this is Earth Transport Three. Approach vectors received, docking computer
online. Guide us in,” Andrews said.

Kyle
watched as Andrews pulled his hands away from the controls. The large cruiser
seemed to subtly twist and turn and grow much larger until Kyle saw the small
hatch that would provide docking.

Leonard
pressed a button on the console near the surface hatch and Kyle watched as the
floor of the main cabin revealed a shallow depression with a docking hatch
nestled at the bottom.

“Sir,
you might want to know that I will kill our artificial gravity in a few
seconds,” Andrews informed Kyle.

Kyle
nodded and then felt his stomach roll as he suddenly went weightless. A few
seconds later he felt their transport make contact with the large cruiser.

Leonard
moved to the hatch, opened it and crawled inside. “Port is up,” he called when
he had moved in a way, letting the others know how to orient themselves when
they experienced the Berlin’s artificial gravity.

Kyle
made sure he climbed into the hatch facing the port side of the Hedali ship so
that he wouldn’t suffer the disorientation that he had encountered many times
before. He hoped that one day they would standardize the docking of their
vessels so the first crew member transferring wouldn’t have to let the others
know from which position to enter.

As
Kyle crawled through the short tunnel, he noticed there were several men
waiting for him on the other side. He took a hand offered to him and was pulled
up by Commander Ramon Salazar. “Good to see you, General.”

“Good
to see you as well, Commander,” Kyle said. Sergeant Kiskaliski stood slightly
behind the others, but Kyle made eye contact and smiled. “You wear First
Sergeant well, K-Man.”

K-Man
smiled back at Kyle .“Your star looks lonely, sir. Maybe they should add
another.”

Kyle
laughed and shook his head. “I don’t know if I could stand that. Now,
gentlemen, what is the plan?”

Salazar
motioned down the hall. “If you will come this way, sir, we have a briefing set
up for you.”

A
short distance down the hall a small situation room was set up with a tactical
display table. Salazar moved to the far side and started narrating the plan as
Kyle took a good spot by the table and watched the presentation.

“Here
is target Bravo. It is entrenched pretty deep in this asteroid, situated here
in the belt,” said Salazar pointing out the location. The holographic image of
the asteroid in question zoomed in and rotated so that Kyle could clearly see
the surface portions of the base.

“We
will move into position 5,000 kilometers off of the surface and the Berlin will
take out the heavy weapons located here, here and here. Once those are
neutralized, we will move in with the Orinoco and the Nile, we will land the
Danube over here once we have breached the perimeter. We were going to be using
the Darling, but we have a problem with her navigation system,” Salazar said as
he looked at Kyle. “We would like to use Earth Transport Three to bring down an
additional twelve troopers, if that would be good for you, sir.”

“That
will work fine with me, Commander, and I hope you realize that I will be going
as well.”

Salazar
nodded to one of his men and looked back at Kyle. “I thought that might be the
case. I had them prepare a kit for you. So you, Andrews and Leonard will be
accompanied by twelve marines and land here.” He indicated another spot on the
asteroid. “In all, our Strike Force will be made up of ninety three troops. We
are expecting ten Human prisoners in the lab area on level two.”

“How
many levels are there?” Kyle asked.

“Three
levels, the lowest one will have the main computer and communications gear,
which is the primary purpose of this assault.”

Kyle
nodded. The prisoners, including his sister, were a secondary target of the
raid.

“Sergeant
Kiskaliski will lead Team One whose target will be the main communications
array. I will be leading Team Two and will bring in the tech equipment to
download the data from their main computer systems. Team Three will be led by
General Martin and will be providing support for Teams One and Two until the
lab where the prisoners are being held is located. At that point, it will
become an extraction operation. Everyone clear?”

“Yes
sirs” were heard from all of the men in the room.

“Let’s
get your squads together and meet at your assigned ships,” Salazar ordered.

Kyle
turned and almost ran into a man coming towards him.

“Excuse
me, sir. I didn’t expect you to turn that quickly. I’m Sergeant Wills and am
here to get you geared up. If you will follow me.”

Kyle
had to walk briskly to keep up with the marine leading him further into the
Berlin.

“Sergeant,
the Commander said there were ten prisoners, but the Endeavor only had a crew
of eight. Do you know the reason for the discrepancy?”

“No
sir, just know what the mission briefing said. Ten possible prisoners, and we
are going to bring them out,” said Wills as he opened a door. “In here sir,
we’ll get you all set.”

About
half an hour later, Kyle was in full combat gear. It had been several years
since he had prepared to go into ground combat and he was amazed at how
everything came back to him. The weight of the body armor was reassuring, the
laser sight on his rifle was like an old friend, and the feel of the KA-BAR on
his waist was like the caress of a lover.

He
was more than ready to go get his sister off of that rock. He took several
measured breaths to settle down his anxiety. He knew that being focused and
calm would serve him better than being excited and anxious.

“We’re
ready sir, less than three minutes until we are in position,” Salazar said as
he stuck his head into the locker room. “We’ll see you on the rock.”

Kyle
nodded to Salazar and left the room heading towards his ship. Several marines
were waiting there for him, including Sergeant Wills holding a space helmet.

“Sir,
as you are boarding up to go on your first hypo-atmospheric mission, let me do
the honor of sealing your helmet.”

Kyle
smirked. He had heard of this tradition, it was like checking parachutes in the
old days; a sign of good luck, trust and camaraderie. He lowered his head so
Wills could secure the helmet. A few clicks and a hiss declared that his oxygen
system had kicked on. He pressed the side of his helmet and his head up display
activated showing him all the associated information. Another button brought up
the infrared display. He turned both off.

“Everything
is working fine Sergeant, thank you.”

The
marines gave one loud “Oorah!” and started boarding the Hedali Transport.

Kyle
smiled and crawled in with his team, hindered just a little by the helmet
already secured on his head.

The
artificial gravity field ended halfway through the short crawl and he was able
to swim out of the hatch with ease. He drifted over to Andrews and oriented
himself so his feet would hit the floor when they detached from the Cruiser. A
quick glance at the positioning display showed that the Berlin had approached
the asteroid with target Bravo and had started it’s bombardment of the Otina
base. Kyle looked out the front windows of the transport and saw the edge of
the energy bursts from the firing railguns on the Cruiser.

Kyle
looked behind him and saw that Wills had secured the hatch and one of the other
marines was standing by the console to close up the floor.

“Grav
in 4… 3… 2… 1… Mark,” said Leonard as the transport separated from the Berlin
and the artificial gravity came back online.

Kyle’s
feet hit the floor of the ship and he instantly felt more at ease. Zero gravity
is a fun thing to play in, but it is a real pain when you need to move around
and get things done quickly.

The
Berlin left the view of the windows and Kyle saw the Orinoco and Nile speeding
ahead toward the Otina base. Three large craters were all that were left of the
heavy weapons that were protecting the base from other Otina clans.

Kyle
had asked Lon about the Otina while considering how to deal with them after Earth
signed the Treaty of the Stars. Lon had provided as much information as he
could about them, but the information was sparse in places. Since they had
never signed the Treaty themselves, the Otina were considered outcasts and
vagabonds and no one really knew where their home system was. That had been
fascinating for Kyle to read about. The Otina basically separated themselves
into families, tribes and clans. The families were led by Captains and
generally were bound to ships or bases. The tribes were loose confederations of
families and were led by Warlords. And the clans were very strictly delineated
groups of tribes who were led by Kings. While there was some internecine tribal
fighting, most Otina viewed other clans as their main source of danger.

Kyle’s
focus was brought back into line when he saw a burst of laser fire from the
Orinoco as it started to land. A smoldering line of debris scarred the middle
of one of the bulwarks leading up to the main entrance of the base. As Andrews
landed their ship, Kyle saw the Orinoco’s ground troops start deploying as the
Nile hovered about 700 meters up laying down suppression fire.

“Ready
for deploy, sir,” said Wills. Kyle looked back at the marines. They had their
helmets secured and were all facing the door.

“Marines,
go!” Kyle ordered. One of the troops hit the button on the control panel and
the hatchway started opening. Before the ladder had touched the surface of the
asteroid, four marines were on the ground and heading towards the base.

Kyle
had just exited the transport when he saw the Nile land and its troops start to
deploy. The Otina had been taken by surprise, as was the plan, but in the
minutes between the orbital bombardment and the landing of the craft, the
crafty aliens had been able to put up a small amount of resistance. Kyle saw
two Earth troops lying unmoving near the Orinoco as he approached the entrance
to their base.

The
chatter and responses of the troops as they moved in told Kyle that the Otina
had blocked off several routes on the ground level and were trying to funnel
the Earth troops into a particular corridor. K-man had spotted the ruse and had
one of his men deploy two grenades which detonated the booby traps and killed
several Otina waiting in ambush.

By
the time Kyle had caught up with the lead team, they had secured the main
elevator shaft to the lower levels and the Earth engineers were cutting the
cables and setting up their own secure lift.

“We
can get the prisoners up with no problem?” Kyle asked as the engineers went
about their business.

“Yes
sir,” one of them responded without slowing down his work. “We can even get a
stretcher up it like a mother’s embrace.”

“We’re
open,” someone stated. K-man and another of his marines stepped into the canvas
stirrups. They zipped down out of sight and two more marines stepped up to take
their turns. A blast and the sound of automatic fire from below told everyone
that the Otina were still showing heavy resistance but K-man and his team were
advancing anyway. In short order thirty marines were down on the second floor
and it was Kyle’s turn to descend. He stepped in the stirrup and grabbed the
rope with his left hand. The motor cranked the pulley and he rapidly descended
on the makeshift elevator. He practically fell off the cable into the opening
that had been a sealed doorway. About a dozen Otina lay strewn about the
hallway in both directions.