Bright Horizons (11 page)

“Because
their military advantage is so great that the oppressed planets have no
choice,” Thomas answered. He was carefully watching Kyle as if the General had
turned into a dangerous serpent.

“I
disagree. I think it’s because those they have conquered expect the Iltia’cor
to hold a strong military advantage. They don’t like to think they have been
conquered by a weaker force than they imagine.”

“A
paper tiger?”

“In
many ways. The Iltia’cor are very effective in their assault methods. The
damage to our military facilities is extensive and the Earth will bear the
scars of the attack for years if not decades to come. But what happens when the
assault fleet moves away? They leave a small force, able to suppress an
uprising for a short while, but if there was a full scale rebellion, how would
they handle it?” Kyle asked, clearly on a roll.

“How?”
asked Thomas.

“They
would send their assault fleet back to put it down again.”

“And
it would be worse for the rebels than before,” said Thomas.

“Correct.
But do they have enough forces to put down multiple rebellions? If several of
their subjugated planets were to go into full rebellion at once, the Iltia’cor
would be scrambling to keep them all under control. If even one planet were to
overthrow their yoke, it could start a chain reaction on the rest of the
planets.”

“What
exactly are you thinking, General?” Thomas asked, sitting on the edge of his
seat.

“I’m
not sure yet, but Kortit must be the first planet liberated. If we liberate the
Hedali, the Iltia’cor will fall. This I know for sure. We just have to figure
out that puzzle,” Kyle said as he sat back down. “It’s the engines. We have to
figure out what to do with the engines. When we can figure out how to use them
correctly, we can free Kortit. And when we do that, we beat the Iltia’cor.”

Thomas
stood from his chair and stretched. “I guess we should build some ships then.”

“Yes,
but a few steps are needed before that. We need to get some serious amounts of
titanium and get a smelting facility for it. The Chinese have some basic
designs for an orbital smelter and we are trying to get that arranged.  Between
the U.S., Russian, Indian, Chinese and Australian shuttles that survived the
attack, we are standing at eighteen.”

“What
about the ion burst engines?”

“We
have one Boeing factory and a McDonnel-Douglas factory working full time on
them.  Should have six a week at full capacity.”

“Great,
how many will we need?”

“Two
per Shuttle, but eventually hundreds. As soon as we can fit them to the
Shuttles we can start looking for asteroids rich in titanium.”

“The
moon?” asked Thomas.

“The
Norwegians have an extraction method they want to try. We can set them up on
the Russian moon base, there are supposed to be some favorable sites near
there.”

“What
next?”

“We
need shipyards. We have one being built at the moment, it will focus on
manufacturing the Scout vessels. We have another ready to start next week. I
would like to see at least two more started in the next two months.” Kyle shut
his eyes and grimaced. “We need more engines.”

“Sir,
I don’t know that we do,” Williams said as he entered the room.

“What
do you mean, Carl?” Kyle asked as he swung his chair to the doorway.

“Well,
sir, I have an idea,” Williams said with a smile on his face. Kyle knew that
smile. Williams had an idea, and that made him very happy, very quickly.

Chapter 12

14 September
2043

“Updates?”
Kyle said as he hurried into the Operations center.

“Have
live feed, sir.”

Kyle
sat down at the empty chair and popped in the ear piece as he looked at the
monitor.

“…
Jenkins is down. Littel might have been taken out, not responding. … Keltner,
report in. … Keltner here, my team is accounted for. … Grant, what is your
status… Henders, here, Grant is down, lost Yevos and Klein. … Hold there
Henders, we have help moving to you….”

Kyle
hit mute on the line and looked around. “Johnson? What is your tally?”

Sergeant
Johnson popped his head up over his station. “Looks like upwards of ten lost,
maybe as many as fifteen. Another twenty to thirty down, and maybe three times
Otina down in sight.”

Kyle
did the mental math. Eighty men stationed on the asteroid, maybe forty-five
wounded and killed.

“Sir,
we have finished our sweep, only one large vessel was involved, and we have
tracked it out of the area. Colonel Rafferty thinks that it is over for now,” a
young Lieutenant said. Kyle was skimming his memory for her name, but other
thoughts took priority.

“Can
we evac our wounded on the Shuttle?” Kyle asked the man sitting next to him.

“Yes
sir, Doctor Pearson believes the med bay can handle the worst cases, and we
will pack up the rest and get them back here tomorrow at the latest,” Colonel
Richards responded

“Good.
Now get Major Rostovich in the briefing room, I want to find out what happened
up there.”

Kyle
stood up and walked over to the far door, his tension clearly visible to
everyone in the room. He hated losing men in combat. He hated sending men into
the line of fire, but that rock was too important not to secure.

“General,
I have a video feed of the assault.” Major Rostovich was already in the
briefing room setting up a video panel by the time Kyle got there. “Five small
vessels, likely small single pilot fighters, and twelve landing craft launched
from the large Otina vessel. The small vessels attempted to take out the Shuttle
as it was landing; our heavy support weapons took down two of the fighters,
while the larger vessel and three of the fighters retreated from range. I think
we got lucky in that they were using mosar based weapons. I don’t know how soon
they’ll realize that won’t work, but I wouldn’t think too much longer.”

Martin
sat down and started pulling up various reports of the attack as Rostovich
continued filling him in. “They managed to get twelve landing craft to the
ground and about 200 to 300 ground troops deployed. They were using high
explosive and energy weapons, but no projectiles that we could determine.
Grant’s squad looks like the hardest hit, the main structure on number 2
collapsed right on top of them.”

Kyle
watched the images as he carefully listened. “Did they get any of their landing
craft off?”

“No
sir, looks like some Otina tried to high tail it back to their vessel, but we
took the craft down before it was able to escape. When that one went down, the
large vessel hit it hot and fled the engagement zone.”

“Any
captured?”

“Yes
sir.” Rostovich looked up from his tablet with a shocked look on his face.
“Rafferty says they have over one hundred Otina held in the terminal station.
They are securing them now, but he says they are not resisting.”

“Make
sure he has complete control at all times, we have never had POWs before and I
don’t want any surprises. What relief do we have heading out?” Martin asked
while looking at Rafferty’s report on his own tablet.

“Epsilon
and Intrepid were already heating up, Epsilon is supposed to pick up the cargo,
but I have it on hold in case we need to send more troops,” said Rostovich.

“No,
release it, the Otina are pretty stunned I would say. Have it and Intrepid pick
up the cargo, and get Ramses heated up with a med team and an engineering team.
We need to repair number 2 and keep mining.” Martin shut off his tablet and
looked at his master roster.

“We
need a strike force to handle the Otina, I fear,” Martin said lowly.

Rostovich
shook his head. “Sir, I don’t think the Council will appreciate starting a
second front on this war.”

“Not
a second front, Erik, a simple strike force. The Otina are disrupting our
titanium production, and we are slipping behind schedule as it is. The
Norwegian extraction method has hit a snag on the moon so the asteroid belt is
our best hope.” Martin looked at the construction schedule on his board. “It
looks like the ECS Enterprise will be ready for some test runs soon. Life
support has passed the 72 hour mark without a hitch and the weapon mounts are
live.”

Rostovich
sighed heavily. “I can’t believe you convinced the Council to name Earth’s
flagship after a TV show.”

Martin
smirked a little. “It was also the first space shuttle, right?  So you can’t
blame me entirely.”

Rostovich
started pulling up names. “Who do you want on this strike force?”

“Why
not give Salazar the job?  Spain has been waiting for one of theirs to get a
command, and Ramon is a top notch commander. He can pick his own XO, but make
sure Kiskaliski is on his team, that will give him a good tactical advantage
for anything he comes up against.”

“Yes
sir. Will get it set up,” Rostovich said.

“Sir.”
Sergeant Jackson knocked on the door as he opened it.

“Yeah
Jackson, we are just finishing. What is it?” Martin asked as he looked up.

“Colonel
Rafferty wants to give you some intel personally, and Mister Smith just walked
in the door and took a seat.”

“Send
Smith in, and put Rafferty through on line one. Rostovich, set up the force,
give them three scooters. That should be enough to hunt down the Otina.
Parnell’s long range transmission array should be able to coordinate with
them.”

“Yes
sir, the roster will be set by tomorrow,” Rostovich said as he gathered his
tablets and data connections and left the briefing room.

Smith
deftly stepped into the room a mere second after the Major left. Kyle picked up
his line and motioned for Smith to have a seat.

“Martin
here, what do you have for me Rafferty?”

The
voice on the other side was deep and rough, Rafferty was an old school infantry
man who never aspired to rank but just wanted to stay in the action.

“General,
I have a tale to tell. Weirdest thing ever.”

“Go
on.” Kyle was intrigued, Jack Rafferty was always taciturn and direct.
Something must have rattled him for him to start like this.

“Well,
seems like the Otina are waiting for death or worse. We have a linguist here
who is trying to talk to them and they seem really distraught over it. They
keep saying “just continue” or something like that. I have a feeling it’s a
vernacular for “get it over with”.

“Hold
on a second, John,” Kyle said hitting mute on his line. “Mister Smith, how
would Otina handle prisoners of war?”

Smith
grimaced as Kyle asked the question. “They wouldn’t. Otina would only be
interested in imprisoning one of their own who had committed a violation of
their code of laws. Any being of another race captured would be summarily
executed or in the case of a few warlords, they might be subjected to medical
experimentation.”

“So
if we were to have taken some prisoners, they would be expecting the same
treatment?”

“Undoubtedly.”

“Thank
you Mister Smith,” Kyle said as he turned his line back on. “Colonel Rafferty,
I think we may have a great opportunity. Seems the Otina think we are going to
summarily execute them.”

“So
we break them up into small teams and isolate them. Give each group the idea
that they have been spared for some reason.”

“Exactly
Colonel, only no interrogations. Keep them separated for about four or six
hours, then pool them back together. Get some linguist to listen in, record
everything, and we will see what they talk about when they are confused, and
probably relieved.”

“Yes,
sir. Rafferty out.”

Kyle
sighed as he sat back in his chair.

Smith
stirred a bit, hesitated, and then spoke. “I take it from what I heard that I
gave you information that you have used for your advantage?”

Kyle
smiled and stared up at the ceiling. “If I say yes, would that give me a
discount on the engines?”

“I’m
afraid not, General.”

“If
I say no, would that get me the discount?”

Smith
laughed and then had the decency to look surprised. “I’m sorry, but the prices
are set fairly by our treaty.”

Kyle
dropped his sight from the ceiling and stared at Smith.

“In
addition to the coal and other minerals we are giving you, we also gave you a
facility and some of our engineers are helping you with the titanium based
alloy we have designed for our ships.  In just a few years, you will be able to
design warp engines that have no mosar.  We expect to see a nice new contract
that will allow us to be the first kids on the block to have those new, shiny
engines.”           

“Of
course, General. I am one of our sales specialists who are convinced you will
be victorious over the Iltia’cor. Success, as they say, is a looked for quality
in a customer. At least that’s a common saying for weapons sales.”

Kyle
pulled up a chart on his tablet. “We have improved our impulse ion engines to
run at 14,000 kilometers an hour and our burst ion engines can now reach eight
percent of the speed of light. We have made some significant advances in our
engine capabilities in the last few months, wouldn’t you say?”

“Indeed,
General, it has been most impressive. But you still lack warp engine
technology.”

Kyle
nodded. “Very true, this is why we had to buy them from you. And why we need to
discuss the size of our fleet. We have our first cruiser ready to run, twelve
scooters already in use, and our old earth fleet of shuttles available for
movement around the inner solar system. With the engines we can afford, we will
be able to build a war fleet of twelve cruisers and thirty scooters.”

“Scooters,
General?”

“Our
small scout type vessels.”

“Ah,
an interesting term for them.”

“Just
a nickname that caught on I guess.”

“I
see. I believe you had concerns at the negotiation about how small your fleet
would be. Why are you bringing up these concerns again? If it is to ask for
more engines…”

“I
need to ask your opinion, not to bargain for more engines,” Kyle interrupted.

Smith
looked a little uncomfortable. “General, I am merely a seller of goods and not
well versed in military strategy. Plus, that would violate our policy of
neutrality.”

“I
wouldn’t want that, Mister Smith, I just need you to confirm some technical
specifications,” Kyle said, pulling up a design on the projection screen. “As I
understand our intelligence, the Iltia’cor have right at eighty four large
cruisers and about three hundred and fifty smaller fighting craft. That leaves
our twelve outgunned by a large margin. Our advantage is they have brutally
subjugated eleven worlds, now that they have taken the Hedali at Kortit. That
forces them to tie up a good two dozen or so cruisers and scores of smaller
vessels just to keep the peace. With five planets in their own system, they
need to leave a home fleet of some size to protect it. At least a dozen or so I
figure.”

“I
agree with your assessment so far, General, but where are the technical
questions in all of this?”

“As
I understand it, Mister Smith, you have determined for the size of our
cruisers, we will need ten engines to create a warp field big enough to move
it, and with our scooters, we will need two engines. Is that correct?”

“Yes,
that is correct, General.”

Kyle
pulled up a new schematic and looked over at Smith.

“What
is that? It is a tiny vessel by mass, but it looks like you have placed twelve
engines on it.” Smith stared closely at the schematic. “There are no weapon
ports or even a sizable crew compartment on that vessel.”

“That
is correct, Mister Smith. We are hoping this design will work as we understand
it. If we docked one of our cruisers to this vessel, could the twelve engines
create a large enough warp field to move both vessels?”

“I
would have to check the math, but I think so. But why create a separate vessel
to mount the engines?”

“It’s
very simple. If we mount the warp engines to our war vessels, we are stuck with
twelve cruisers and thirty scooters to wage war with. If a mosar weapon strikes
even one of the engines, we lose the engine and strand our vessel and its crew
in whatever system it is in. With this vessel, we can tow our war ships to the
system we wish to strike and have them operate with engines based on earth
technology. Our sleds, that is the nickname we have given to these new vessels,
can then warp out of the system as soon as we undock our war ships. Hopefully
they will get out before any shooting starts, but even if they are hit in
battle, they will be able to escape with even two engines intact.”