by Wilson Harp
Kiskaliski was a given. No one could handle a weapon like K-man. At least no one Kyle had ever seen or heard about. Three Lauchheimer trophies by the time he was 21 was unreal. When he had been selected for his first Omega team, Kyle had personally ordered him to forgo any future attempts at the award in order to prevent anyone from looking too close at his service record.
Anderson and Boone were both career State Department men who had signed up for the Marines at the start of the Indian war. They had vast linguistic and diplomatic skills and he knew how they handled themselves under fire.
Kitch was his go-to girl as one of his pilots. Her sixty-eight confirmed tank kills in the opening days of the war had landed her on the cover of Time magazine in front of her A-10d. After that, she continued to have the storybook career. The Distinguished Flying Cross had earned her an attaché position under Admiral Rider while he was in charge of the Joint Chiefs. Kyle met her right after Hyderabad and was impressed by her intelligence and ability to handle stress. He had never seen anyone better at handling an emergency.
Sergeant Major Carl Williams was just amazing. In addition to being a genius with anything mechanical, he had a PhD in philosophy from Harvard, spoke six languages, and was the son of a Marine General. He was also involved in eighteen firefights in Delhi and Mumbai and had earned two bronze stars, a silver star and the Navy Cross, so he could hold his own under fire.
Williams had highly recommended Corporal Terry Ranke for the mission after learning the details. Ranke had dropped out of MIT after two years because he didn’t feel challenged. He joined the Marines at the age of twenty four after several years of boredom in the private sector servicing Cray’s as a freelancer. Kyle added another mechanic that Williams had worked with during the war, Sergeant Ben Hollis.
So, he needed another pilot, another security member, and another mechanic to fill out his roster. He looked over his spreadsheet again. Sixteen pilots to review, forty-five Marines that had great combat experience for security, and nine engineers recommended by Williams and some contacts at NASA.
Kyle took another drink of coffee and pulled up another comparison chart.
Chapter 3
08 April 2042
Kyle stepped out of his car and stood looking at the huge machine rumble along just a few hundred yards from where he stood. Over twenty feet tall and weighing close to 3,000 tons, these machines dwarfed even the mobile artillery pieces that he was so familiar with.
He shook his head in amazement. If the shuttle movers were this impressive to him now, what had people thought of them sixty years ago when they were first used?
Kyle looked towards the shuttle hangers and saw four movers coming to the launch area and three heading back to the hangers. Tomorrow would be a busy day at the center; four launches in twelve hours.
He pulled his duffel out of the back seat and crossed the parking lot to his new home for a few weeks.
An airman at the desk welcomed him with a smile and voice that reflected the sunny, bright Florida day.
“Welcome Colonel, what’s your assignment code?”
“CO of Tango 37 group.”
“Your team is in the East Building, sir, just past the pool. We have assigned the entire second floor for you, and that includes a secure briefing room. I will call General Thibodeaux and let him know you have arrived. Here is your passkey and your room is 204.”
“Thank you, Airman,” Kyle said as he took the guest brochure and passkey that the airman offered. He pulled his duffel back up to his shoulder and strode off to check out his quarters.
Several people were lying out at the pool, and a blonde woman was swimming laps. A quick scan told Kyle that none of his team was out there. Out of the corner of his eye he caught some motion and was able to see a curtain at a second floor window quickly come to a rest.
A slight smile crossed his lips. He was so proud of his team; they weren’t going to be taken by surprise.
As he entered the stairwell, he heard movement up and down the hallway. Major Diane Kitch greeted him at the top of the stairs.
“Good Afternoon Colonel, I hope your trip went well.”
“Thanks Major, it went fine. I always enjoy the drive down.” Kyle started walking down the hallway. “The whole team here?”
“Dolsen should be getting here this evening, she hit a connection issue in Chicago, but everyone else is here,” said Diane as she kept pace with him.
“Great, let me throw my gear in my room and I’ll meet you in the briefing room. Which one is mine?”
“Next door on the right, sir. The briefing room is two down from there.”
Kyle used the passkey to open the door and look in. Bed, two chairs, a table, a sliding glass door that he knew opened onto a small balcony. Closet and bathroom doors. TV and dataports.
The room had a distinctly un-military feel to it; like looking at a cheap, but nice, motel room.
Kyle dropped his bags on the bed and went back into the hallway.
“Everything ok, sir?”
“Yeah, seems fine. How is the food here?”
“The terminal has a decent snack bar if you want some junk, but stay away from the officers club. I don’t know what they think is acceptable “steak”, but that’s not it. Four pizza joints deliver and two Chinese places. Since we are restricted to camp, don’t know any local restaurants. Oh, and of course there’s a couple of fast food places.”
Kyle smiled and grunted. She knew he hated fast food.
Diane turned and opened the door to the briefing room. Inside were the other 10 people he had been expecting. A few doughnuts had survived the wait, and the smell of decent coffee wafted through the room.
“Good afternoon everyone, I trust your trips down here were good.”
A chorus of greetings and “Yes sirs” met him as he strode to the front. He took out the data chip from his front shirt pocket and touched the dataport on the wall. A second later, a small beep told him all the data was downloaded. He walked to the front as he began to speak.
“As you all know, this is a mission that is unique in the history of the Corps and in fact in the history of mankind. We are a diplo escort to the most important meeting that we will ever have. Now I know that a diplo escort is not what you would expect to be a big mission, but this one is. We have no idea how the members of the other party will react to us. When I was gathering this team, I had to take many things into account. I needed people who were experts in linguistics. I needed people who were experts in engineering and had heavy science backgrounds. I needed both men and women. I needed people I could trust to behave as told with no hesitation, but who could adapt to changing situations quickly. I needed people I could trust. And above all I needed the best Marines I could find.”
Kyle took a deep breath.
“And I needed to do it with the restrictions that were placed upon me. You all have a security clearance of SC-07. This means that you not only meet every qualification for every security clearance you have ever even thought existed, you also are all single, have no minor children, and over 25. These are very important details as we are quite possibly on a suicide mission. If we don’t make it back, the Pentagon decided that they would rather be in a situation where they don’t have to lie to spouses, young children or parents about what happened. Grown children, siblings and elderly parents, of course they can lie to with no guilt.”
Kyle smiled as he listened to the sardonic chuckles from everyone there.
“So let’s go over what we are going to do while we are here. First, we are going to learn what to do so we don’t mess up the interior of the Shuttle with our vomit. Second, we are going to break up into a couple of teams. Major Kitch, Captain Jennings and I will learn how to fly the shuttle and how to operate the various systems. Sergeant Major Williams, Sergeant Hollis, Sergeant Dolsen and Corporal Ranke will be given a complete run through of the electrical and mechanical workings of the shuttle. Gunnery Sergeant Ramirez, Sergeant Kiskaliski, and Sergeant Greene will be gi
ven training in zero G combat. Major Anderson and Captain Boone will be briefed by our Ambassador on protocol and etiquette for this run. They will in turn brief us as to what is and is not appropriate to say, do, eat and look at while on our host’s ship.” Kyle walked to the front of the table looking over his selection of Marines. “Now that we have that taken care of, are there any questions?”
“Sir,” said Sergeant Hollis. “I’ve read all my background, but there is no description of what the Hedali look like.”
A knock at the door interrupted Kyle before he could answer. A second later, two men entered and shut the door behind them.
“Colonel Martin, I hope I’m not interrupting at a bad time.” The tall thin man was wearing an Air Force uniform and had a friendly smile on his face. He also wore 3 stars on his shoulder marking him as Lieutenant General Thibodeaux.
“Of course not, General. Please have a seat. And you must be Ambassador Thomas,” Kyle said to the shorter, middle aged man who seemed so out of place.
Ambassador Jim Thomas was dressed in a polo style shirt with casual slacks and tennis shoes. His short beard and slight pudge of a stomach stood out in sharp contrast to the physically fit and clean shaven look of all the other men in the room.
“Thank you Colonel Martin. I look forward to working with you.”
Kyle waited as the men sat, and then looked back over to Hollis. “The question, I believe, was what do the Hedali look like? The answer is, we don’t know. Mister Ambassador, would you like to fill us in on any new information?”
“Absolutely Colonel. As you are aware, we have been in contact with the Hedali for the last six months. For months the communication was slow and laborious due to the language barrier. We were finally able to figure out some of the structure and etymology of several of their key words and started working toward communicating more questions.”
“Up until that point, they were essentially just giving us basic information on their technology and the ability of their ships. I personally think we stunned them a bit as we learned their language quicker than they learned ours.”
“It was at that point that they asked if we would be interested in joining them in a, well, partnership is the closest understanding of it. Think of it like a galactic Big Brother program. They teach us about the galaxy and help us discover some of their technology for ourselves.”
“For the last month or so, we have been able to get a little more information from them that will help this mission in particular. The Hedali are bipedal, between 5’6’ to 6’0” tall in general. They have two sexes, male and female as close as we can tell. Their ships atmosphere would normally be a bit light in oxygen content, so we will be taking oxygen masks to wear, but they seem to indicate that they can boost it enough to allow us to breathe easy without causing any problems for themselves.”
“It will be hot though. They have indicated that if they lower the temperature in the areas where we will be during the treaty signing to a comfortable level for us, it will be rather chilly for them. They have agreed to 112º Fahrenheit to allow us both to be uncomfortable without either being too uncomfortable.”
Several of the Marines sat back in surprise and a couple even whistled low at this news.
“Excuse me Mister Ambassador.”
“Yes, Sergeant…?”
“Sergeant Major Williams. At what temperature do they normally keep their ship?”
“They indicated that their optimum temperature is around 180º Fahrenheit.”
“Will we have enough cool packs to protect us if something happens?” Sergeant Greene asked with a little panic in his voice.
“We will deal with equipment concerns later,” Kyle quickly interjected. “Please continue Mister Ambassador.”
“Thank you Colonel. We will stay on board the Shuttle until an hour or so before the signing. There will be three NASA personnel, you thirteen Marines, and my team which includes myself, my aide Amanda Stuart, and a documentarian from the Smithsonian, Drew Carter. Major Anderson and Captain Boone will be part of my team in civilian dress. My team will be given a brief tour of the facilities and we have asked that two of the uniformed Marines be along. They seemed to think that was appropriate as an honor guard.”
“If I may ask, then sir,” Williams said with his firm no-nonsense style. “Are the rest of us just supposed to rest on our tailbones for an hour while this is going on?”
Ambassador Thomas smiled a bit and tilted his head in a reassuring way. Kyle could see how this man got the job; his command of body language and his ability to express his emotions non-verbally was impressive. He just hoped the Hedali thought so as well.
“Ideally, Sergeant Major, that is exactly what will happen.” The Ambassador stood up and walked over to Kyle. “I know that you are all highly skilled and highly prized Marines in your specific fields. I also know that you are all very good at the skills that every Marine must have, that is, combat. We don’t anticipate any problems, and I pray to God that we don’t run into any. But if there is a problem, the Pentagon wanted the absolute best of the best to be there. Because, quite honestly, if you can’t handle the situation, it will tell us a lot about what we are getting ourselves into.”
An eerie silence filled the room.
Ramirez finally spoke up. “Mister Ambassador, what I guess you are saying is that this will either be a cake walk or a suicide mission. Is that correct?”
“No, I don’t think that’s a fair assessment. I think it will be either a cake walk or suicide mission, or something in between. I have faith that you are the best of the best. And while the idea of facing danger on an alien ship orbiting Jupiter may not be something you could see surviving, I have to say that if anyone can, it will be the men sitting in this room.”
Kyle looked at each Marine sitting there. He saw steely resolve and that glimmer in the eye that all professional warriors get when they are ordered into the heat of action.
“Thank you Ambassador Thomas, I think that will wrap up this meeting. We will, I’m sure, have more questions in the next few weeks, so why don’t we set up meetings daily at 1500?”
“That sounds good Colonel. Gentlemen, thank you for your time,” said General Thibodeaux.
The General and the Ambassador left the briefing room as the Marines sat staring at their hands, the table or a point on the wall.
“We’re boned,” said Williams. He was always the master of the understatement.
12 May 2042
The first two weeks of training went quickly. The Marines were divided up into teams of five or six to experience “The Vomit Comet”, as the Sub-orbital Training Transport was commonly known. There were no real bad experiences on the STT, but one Marine did get a little sick on their first trip up.
NASA requires any mission specialist to have 30 hours on the STT before launch, so for 8 hours a day, there were Marines on the edge of space. In two weeks, they were all space ready by NASA’s standards, and--more importantly--in their own minds.
The team of Ramirez, Kiskaliski and Greene spent the rest of their time in a modified STT practicing zero-g maneuvers and combat. They were always smiling and ready for tales of their adventures any given day. They were Marines doing what Marines do best; getting prepared for combat in any environment.
The engineering team spent days pouring over manuals and blueprints before getting to see the Shuttle up close and personal. The engineers at NASA were impressed by how quickly the Marines picked up on some of the more subtle aspects of this most quirky of vehicles. By the end of training, the Marines were able to do all checks and repairs without asking for help from the engineers.
The pilots took to the Shuttle controls like a bird takes to the air; that is to say a lot of aborted launches and quite a few hard landings. But just like those baby birds, they started getting the hang of it. Kyle and Kitch had more experience with a wider variety of aircraft, but Captain Jennings had the majority of his experience in transports. It was decided after three day
s that Jennings would be the first choice in an emergency with Kitch and then Martin as his back-ups.
The diplomatic team had some problems, however.
“It’s not political correctness, Colonel.” Ambassador Thomas was clearly frustrated by the accusation “I just think it’s a better way for the Hidali to recognize some of our social structure.”
“I fail to see how having both of my female Marines as your escorts will accomplish that objective.”
“As I’ve said, Colonel, with myself, Miss Stuart, Major Anderson, Captain Boone and the documentarian, we are four men and one woman. With both Major Kitch and Sergeant Dolsen as the escorts, it would balance it to four men and three women.”
“Yes, but neither of them are on this mission to provide combat support.”
“They are Marines. Every Marine a rifleman, right?”
Kyle took a deep breath. He liked Ambassador Thomas, but at this moment he was very unhappy with the skills that the man brought to the table. He felt a trap and was trying to come up with a way out of it.
He suddenly saw the opening.
“Mister Ambassador, you want Anderson and Boone in civvies, right? If the only personnel in military uniform sent to escort you are both women, would that not convey the idea that our military was made up of only one sex?”
Ambassador Thomas sat back slowly and stared at Colonel Martin.
“Colonel, I have always had a great deal of respect for you, but I now have more respect and a bit of trepidation. That was a very good counter to my argument and one that I have to admit puts my position at a disadvantage.”
The men let a silence fill the room that held pure expectation. Ambassador Thomas finally broke the spell.
“I want Sergeant Dolsen and Sergeant Greene.”
“May I ask why?”
“May I ask why not?”
“Because I need Dolsen in case there is a problem with the shuttle.”
“So Kitch then.”
“Ok, Kitch, but I want you to take Ramirez.”