Eclipse (Bright Horizons Book 2)

by Wilson Harp

  “Thank you, Captain,” K-man said. “We’ll try to keep the Otina from putting more holes in your hull.”

  The Platte landed on the asteroid and the ramps dropped quickly. The marines found their legs after the hard landing and rushed out onto the Otina held ground. Blasts from the Otina forces came flying in on the Earth troops. K-man shouldered his rifle and fired at the distant figures as he trotted down the ramp. The scope was the same one he had used on Earth. It was hard not to make a mental adjustment for gravity, but he had experienced enough low-atmosphere and no-atmosphere fighting to keep that in mind.

  The lack of oxygen for their fire-arms had been overcome by a company back on earth which had devised an 0² compression feeder that could be attached to the firing chamber. It allowed enough oxygen into the chamber to allow each cartridge to fire correctly.

  He peppered a far embankment with some .50 caliber rounds and saw as the Otina manning a large weapon ducked behind the reinforced wall.

  “I need a heavy laser on that position,” he ordered. He pulled a handheld laser targeting device and focused it on the Otina heavy weapon. A few seconds later, one of his team’s lasers fired and ripped through the position.

  “Sir, we have taken some casualties,” Lippor reported. “The Otina are trying to move along the far ridge and are firing some sort of mortar-like explosives. Walsh and Henning were hit. Henning is pretty bad off.”

  “We’ll get a medic team in. Paint that ridge and get one of the lasers on it,” K-man ordered.

  The Yangtze started to land, which broke up the chain of fire that was coming down on K-man’s team. He pulled up the active map on his helmet’s display and saw that the Otina were starting to withdraw back into their compound.

  “We are moving in, Watts. Bring your team to our right flank as we go by you. Peterson, your team will come in behind us. Yoshino, we need your medics at the Platte, we have two down,” K-man said. “Let’s go, team.”

  K-man started trotting toward the Otina compound. They had some defenses that were still holding, but their targeting computers were very bad at hitting a small moving target.

  K-man figured that as bad as their targeting systems were, they must have relied upon heavy vehicles and entrenched positions to wage war. The Earth forces generally overwhelmed the Otina even when heavily outnumbered. Superior technology and superior manpower was no match for superior training and ability.

  The rest of the scooters had landed and K-man could see the green stars of the unit commanders all converging onto his position.

  Captain Watts had a demolitions team that would breach the door if they found it sealed, but K-man liked leading from the front. He would lead his team in and start securing the Otina base section by section.

  The front gates of the compound were two huge doors that would slide open to reveal a hangar. This was a typical design for an Otina compound. The difference with this one was that the compound was gigantic according to long range scans. The underground levels were hundreds of feet deep, and there was a fair sized energy source at the center of the asteroid, almost three miles down.

  The doors were sliding closed as K-man and his team approached. The doors were much thicker than K-man had seen before and he doubted if the demolitions team would have much success.

  “Team, fall back from the door. Berlin, do you have time to help us?”

  Captain Gagne’s voice came over the channel. “We are putting out a few fires up here, but how can we help, Colonel?”

  “I’m going to paint a door for you, would you mind knocking?”

  One of the things that the task force had practiced was breaching a hardened base by using one of the Berlin’s rail-guns. They had never had to use the tactic before, but K-man was sure this would be the only way he could get his team into their compound.

  “Roger, Colonel. We will put a rock right where you tell us.”

  K-man and his men fell back into the perimeter of the Yangtze. Sporadic fire from the Otina kept their heads down, but K-man found a good angle to light up the hangar doors.

  “We are clear, Captain,” K-man said.

  A few seconds passed before the doors to the hangar were obliterated by the heavy projectile fired from the Berlin. K-man had seen the craters left from the Berlin’s bombardment of the heavy weapon positions around every Otina base they had raided, but this was the first time the Berlin had fired on an asteroid with the ground troops already on the rock.

  The force of the impact buckled the ground and K-man was concerned about damage to the Yangtze. His men seem stunned by the sheer weight of the impact, but no one seemed injured.

  “Are we okay?” K-man called to all of the troopers. He sent the signal that would have all of the men register their status. Once he saw a green light from all of his commanders, he pushed forward once again.

  The hangar was wide open and exposed to the advancing troops. K-man counted at least five large transport vessels and several other smaller ships. The hangar could easily hold four times the amount and there were empty bays near the top that must have held the fighters that were scrambled against the Berlin.

  This was a major base. K-man thought maybe this was the command base for all of the Otina in the system. If so, then they had a good chance of finding Ramirez here.

  K-man and his men moved easily through the rubble at the entrance of the hangar. Occasionally there would be some motion on his sensor indicating that an Otina was firing on his men, but the threat was generally neutralized before he could spot the enemy.

  The resistance they had met outside the compound melted away as the Earth forces moved further into the Otina base. The hangar was secured as quickly as his men could get to the far end, and soon three doors that led into the compound proper were breached and secured.

  K-man had close to two hundred troops for this assault. He had lost six men before they reached the hangar doors and another two in the hangar. There were another twenty wounded too badly to continue, as well. The med teams would be busy before this day was over.

  “Looks like we have command and control located, sir,” Lippor said.

  A schematic of the compound appeared on K-man’s screen. A room flashed in red light indicating where the techs felt was the best position for the Otina command room.

  “Let’s move,” K-man said to his team. Two scouts pushed ahead as K-man and the rest of the Earth troops followed about ten meters behind. There were a few Otina who would pop out of a side door or passage to challenge their progress, but nothing that slowed them down until they were almost on top of the marked room.

  “Sir, we have about ten Otina manning a position up ahead,” Sergeant Bueno said in a whisper. He sent a video feed to K-man as he stayed behind cover as much as possible.

  There was a large room with a high ceiling that the scouts had approached. They were in a doorway hidden from view. Bueno had a fiber optic camera that allowed the scouts to see around corners before exposing themselves.

  The room had a reinforced door, indicating that the command room was exactly where the techs said it would be. Above the doorway was a defensive bunker where some Otina had taken position. From the feed Bueno was sending, K-man could see that the Otina were under about ninety percent cover. They hadn’t seen the Earth scouts or they would have started firing immediately.

  “Gordon, come with me,” K-man said. Sergeant Gordon was an experienced sniper. K-man motioned to him that they were going hunting and the two of them carefully made their way to where the scouts were positioned.

  “Gordon will spot and I’ll fire. When I start firing, roll some smokers out,” K-man said.

  The Otina were nervous, but several of them kept their heads above cover. K-man turned his scope to infrared and waited for Gordon to mark his targets.

  He sighted down his scope and looked at each of the four targets Gordon had picked for him. Then he prepared himself to fire.

  Gordon pressed the button that lit up the green light i
n his scope and K-man squeezed the trigger.

  The recoil on his rifle didn’t cause his shot to wobble as he tracked to his second, third and fourth targets, firing as soon as he had the shot. The scouts rolled their smoke grenades right when the first Otina was hit and by the time the other aliens had realized they were under attack, four of them were dead and the source of the gunfire was shrouded in heavy smoke.

  The infrared scopes allowed K-man and Gordon to clear the rest of the entrenched aliens in just a couple of seconds.

  “Clear here,” said Gordon as he scanned the area.

  “Clear,” K-man said. “Move up, men.”

  The rest of the troops moved to where the scouts had positioned themselves. The smoke hung in the air as K-man moved across the room toward the reinforced doors. Greenway moved forward to breach the door. He pried open the door’s control panel and hooked his tablet into it. A few seconds later, the door slid open.

  Captain Watts charged into the room with a small squad. K-man expected to hear the sound of weapons being discharged. Instead Watt’s voice came over the comm.

  “It’s clear, sir. But… you need to get in here, Colonel.”

  K-man moved into the command room where Captain Watts and the others stood looking at the bodies of about twenty Otina.

  Most of the aliens sat at their stations. A few had toppled onto the floor.

  “Take atmospheric readings, I want to know what happened,” K-man said. “Greenaway, get in here and see what we have.”

  The computer tech pushed the body of an Otina out of a chair and sat. He started working on the alien system. He had become quite adept at understanding all of their systems and his role on K-man’s team had expanded dramatically on the last several raids.

  “Sir, we have a situation,” Greenaway said as he kept pulling up screen after screen.

  “Self-destruct?” K-man asked. Every base they had taken on this current mission had launched a self-destruct command. Greenaway was very fast at countermanding them.

  “Well, yes. But I shut that down already,” said the tech. “The problem we have is that they are purging their system of files. I’m doing what I can to stop it, but they are determined not to let this information fall into our hands.”

  “What kind of information?”

  “Not sure, sir. Just dumping what I can into a separate file system. I’ll know more when I can look at what I can save a little closer.”

  Another voice came through K-man’s comm unit. It was Major Reynolds, one of the new officers assigned to the team at Ellison.

  “Colonel, we have secured down to level four. There is still some resistance on level three at the armory, but everything below us looks like tech and computer systems. I don’t think there are any POW’s here, sir.”

  “Keep me updated, Reynolds.”

  K-man went over to where Greenaway was working. “How much data are we talking about?”

  Greenaway never looked up from his station. “Not sure, sir. A ton, I know that. More than I have seen before. I’m not sure how much I am saving, but we are losing a bunch each second.”

  “Keep it going. Michaelson, do we have the results from the air sample?”

  “Just getting it in now. Looks like… Wow, looks like eight percent arsenic levels in atmo. We definitely will need to go through the chem shower before we can get out of this gear.”

  “Will it cause problems with our suits?”

  “No, not corrosive. Just highly toxic. Someone wanted to make sure that none of these Otina talked to us.”

  K-man looked at the screen that Greenaway worked on. Whoever was in charge wanted this information gone. With any luck, Greenaway could save what was important.

  Chapter 11

  Williams had expected there to be some infection levels in several of the subjects, but two of them were much higher than the others.

  “What could cause mosar to spread that way?” he muttered.

  “What?” Loudon asked. Dr. Jennifer Loudon was the best exo-biologist he could get his hands on with the security restrictions that were placed on him by Kitch.

  Not that the restrictions mattered, she was the best exo-biologist period. She had been in medical school when the Iltia’cor invaded. She devoted herself from that day forward into learning as much as she could about alien biology.

  “I was just trying to figure out the pattern for these levels,” Williams said. “Look at them.”

  Her eyebrows went up as she looked at the numbers.

  “We are sure that these people were all secondary contacts with Swanson?”

  “Yes, they never had direct contact with him. They only had contact with his alpha circle.”

  “What about contact with each other?” Loudon asked.

  “What do you mean?” Williams looked up from his tablet.

  “I mean, what if they were being exposed to mosar from a secondary source? Could the rate be based upon how many other people with mosar they are around?” Loudon asked.

  Williams blinked. “We’ve been looking at this all wrong,” he said.

  He pulled up the lists of those people who had been confirmed as having mosar in their system. He started putting together a graphical map and sent it to the large display panel on the wall.

  “We need to find out if each of these people,” he said pointing at those who showed higher levels of mosar than they expected, “know any of the others.”

  “These two do,” Loudon said. “They work in the same office.”

  “What about this guy?” Williams asked. “His level is the highest of any in the beta ring. Could he know more than one other person?”

  “I’ll have to call him and get that information,” Loudon said. “What do you think is going on, Doctor?”

  “I think we are looking at this like a biological infection. But it isn’t. Look at the pattern.”

  Loudon shook her head. “Sorry, I don’t see a pattern.”

  “Radiation,” Williams said. “This is like radiation poisoning.”

  “So if they aren’t contagious… what are they?”

  “They are radiating out mosar. They aren’t causing mosar to grow in the others, the amount of mosar they have is because of proximity to someone else who has mosar.”

  “Would the amount of mosar a person has cause them to radiate more of it from their body?”

  “I don’t know,” Williams said. “Just a theory now, but I don’t believe a more highly infected person would cause higher levels to be radiated.”

  Loudon’s jaw opened and closed several times before she spoke. “How long would a person need to be near an infected person for the mosar to spread?”

  “I don’t know,” Williams said. “It’s just a theory. But if it is spread like radiation and not like a disease, then not near as long as I had thought.”

  “We’ve been near every person we have found. Every person we have found has been around hundreds of people.”

  “And we have found hundreds that don’t have any mosar in their system. I don’t think a half hour in the same proximity is enough to cause damage.”

  Loudon relaxed at the news. “We should still test our staff and ourselves.”

  “I believe you are correct, Doctor,” Williams said. “I’ll set up the tests for our staff tomorrow. Why don’t we get started with ourselves right now.”

  Loudon laughed and motioned to the mosar scanner. “Shall we flip for it?”

  “No, ladies first,” Williams said with a fair attempt at a bow.

  Loudon walked behind the privacy partition and disrobed. Williams turned on the mosar detector and did an initial baseline scan.

  “Would you hurry up, the floor is cold,” Loudon said.

  “Just finishing up now. When you have a green light step up on the platform. Make sure you don’t have any jewelry or other accessories on. That means your glasses, Doctor.”

  Loudon swore under her breath and took her glasses off. She set them down on her clothes
that were folded on a chair and waited until the light near the top of the scanner turned from red to green before she stepped onto the scanner platform.

  “Just relax, it will take about two minutes,” Williams said.

  “I would never have guessed that, Doctor. I’ve only heard you say that to every patient we’ve had.”

  Williams shook his head at her sarcasm.

  The preliminary scan showed some mosar. Williams still wasn’t sure what health risk the element posed to humans, but he was still concerned since it wasn’t native to the human biology.

  He watched the levels. They were in alpha stage. Less than one part per million. This is where most of the others were located as well. The beta stage was one to three parts per million and there were fourteen of over eight hundred subjects in that range. Swanson’s body was estimated to have been in the fifty to one hundred parts per million range. Even that low of an amount, about six percent of that of a Hedali, was lethal when faced with a mosar weapon.

  Loudon stepped out of the scanner when the light turned back to red.

  “Well?” she asked. “Am I going to have to wait three business days for the results?”

  “Alpha,” Williams said. “Sorry, Jen. You do have some mosar in you.”

  She sighed as she dressed behind the partition.

  “I suppose that is the risk I was taking by getting involved in this project.”

  “Indeed,” Williams said as he started resetting the scanner. “I expect that I will have just as much, if not a little more, than you.”

  “Do you think it has to do with interstellar flight?” Loudon asked as she finished dressing.

  “I’m not sure. Dolsen had that theory. She pointed out that none of the other races had noticed mosar in their system before they started travelling outside their system. She suspected that it might be some sort of parasite that lurks in deep space and latches on as we travel through it.”

  Loudon came out from behind the partition. “What if it is a result of the warp fields that are required to travel faster than light?”