Bright Horizons

by Wilson Harp

  “Thanks for clearing that up. Now, what kind of trade would you take for the barter?”

  Thomas cleared his throat. “Yes, if we could see what we would be expected to provide, that would be a good start.”

  Smith took a data chip and handed it to Thomas. “There are some basic materials we would like. The figures have been converted to your metric tons, in thousands.”

  Thomas downloaded the data and his aides started running through the items. Kyle’s eyebrows went up slightly as he read the list. Coal. Bauxite. Platinum. He wasn’t sure how many metric tons were available on Earth, but he was puzzled by the fact that these materials were fairly common.

  “Mister Smith, why these raw materials?” Kyle thought he heard Thomas moan a little at his continued breaches in protocol.

  “Mosar. Or more precisely, the lack of mosar. Some of the minerals are just rare and valuable items, like the platinum and palladium, but others, like your coal, are very rare to find in such quantities without mosar.”

  “But I thought you were mining on Mars? Surely you can get the other materials there as well.”

  “Not really, General. We went to Mars for the iron, and iron everywhere is free of mosar. Mosar is part of the chemical binding of all materials. Well, except materials which have never been introduced to mosar. Your planet, more specifically life on your planet, is proof that mosar does not need to be present for elements to form proper bonds. We would like to obtain large amounts of your raw materials to experiment with.”

  Thomas interjected. “You want use of some of our facilities on earth?”

  “Yes, in particular smelting facilities that we can work with on Earth based materials for some of our more innovative engineers.”

  “How many engines for this list?” Kyle asked.

  “Sixty for this list.”

  “That would only be five cruisers and five scouts worth of engines.”

  “Yes General, that should be enough to protect your system from the Iltia’cor.”

  Kyle looked over at Thomas and shook his head.

  Thomas nodded and looked back at Smith.

  “Mister Smith, what if we could offer you a little more?”

  “What would be in your offer?”

  “Mineral rights in perpetuity for Mars and her moons. Joint mining rights to all asteroids in the system. And a defense agreement with Earth and its people.”

  Smith typed on his tablet for a few seconds and then waited. The seconds stretched into a couple of minutes and then he nodded. “How many engines would you want for this additional payment?”

  Kyle typed a number on his tablet and sent it to Thomas. The Chancellor paused for a second and then he looked up to meet Smith’s eyes. “We would like an additional 150 engines.”

  Smith jerked a little and Kyle knew he had struck close to the maximum that Smith superiors had agreed to.

  “That might be a little high, but let me see what I can do,” Smith said smoothly as he went back to typing on his tablet.

  Thomas had been starting to worry, but when he looked back at Kyle, he had just the slightest smirk forming.

  “Yes,” thought Kyle. “We will take the war to the Ilita’cor. We will make sure that we, the Hedali, the Pelod, and any other race willing to work with us will never have to feel the boot of oppression on our neck.”

  Six grueling hours later, Smith left with even more minerals procured, a few extra addendums concerning water, and a permanent research facility in Brazil. In exchange, Earth had 180 engines that they now had to build ships for.

  Thomas sat back in his chair as his aides packed up their things. He looked over at Kyle and chuckled. “That was the hardest negotiation I have ever been in. What made you asked for another 150 engines? I would have asked for twenty.”

  “We need as many as we can get. Need drove me. Also, I saw his face. He had us bought for a sucker’s price. I knew he was lowballing us, I just had to figure out by how much.”

  “Rider was right. We do need you when we deal with aliens. You seem to have a sixth sense around them.”

  “Thank you. I just wish I could figure out how we can fix our mistake.”

  “You mean Kortit? We can deal with that once we start winning the war.”

  Kyle frowned and shook his head. “I disagree, Chancellor. I think we win the war when we figure out how to free Kortit.”

  Kyle stood and started pacing. “The Iltia’cor have, what, eleven planets now under their thumbs? How? And why?”

  “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.r />
  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.”