Bright Horizons

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.