Kyle Reese - Turning Around

[Reese]

818 A.S.

Just another day

Just another day in the boring life of Kyle. He was sitting in his worn out chair, monitoring the various systems of his 20-year old Mafic while it cruised on auto-pilot. Blue, yellow and green lights faintly blinked everywhere, but nothing out of the ordinary. Despite none of the systems working flawlessly anymore, Kyle knew when it was good enough to survive in bitter environment of space, or when something was really wrong and it was time to put on his pressure suit. The ship was old and should have been replaced years ago. Any mechanic would cringe on the sight of his ship, with at least 3 missing hull plates, holes in the floor, barely isolated conduits and repairs with duct tape as main material. Not to mention the extremely outdated computer systems, making flying, working or even breathing a daily gamble with his already miserable life.

After the last mining job of the day, Kyle was on his way to his favorite spot. His least hated spot would be a better description. Kyle hated his life, his job, his probable future. As a miner, he had virtually nothing. After his father finally got caught, somehow his entire debt was transferred to Kyle. He had nothing but his clothes. Every single credit he earned was confiscated immediately to pay off his father’s enormous debt.



His spot, it was a small hole in a big asteroid, located near the Orkney jumphole. It was just large enough to park his Mafic in, and the edges of the hole cast a perfect shadow over it, making anything inside virtually impossible to see from the outside. Its view on the jumphole anomaly was quite fascinating. The weirdly rotating clouds projecting every possible color on the surroundings, making it an ideal place to dream away after a day’s hard work. Sometimes, a ship would come through from the other side, from Orkney. That would always give a spectacular show, it was a shame it didn’t happen very often.

Today, that was going to be different…

Kyle had almost dozed off when the radio started making sounds it wasn’t supposed to make. It was mostly static, but a scrambled high pitched voice could be heard over the radio. It sounded urgent, the voice was clearly upset and almost sounded in panic. Kyle tried to tweak the radiation filters, but a firm slap on the side of the control panel eventually led to a somewhat clear reception.

“Emergency IMG Broadcast to all civilians in the vicinity! All miners, retreat to the nearest station at once. They’re coming! I repeat, retreat to the nearest station at once. THEY’RE COMING!”

Kyle wasn’t impressed. Outcast raids happened at least once a week… This must be some new girl behind the microphone, not used to the daily amount of violence the miners in Tau-23 had to withstand. The message repeated itself a few times as usual, after which the radio went silent again. Kyle was about to turn off the radio when another voice took over. This time, a man with a calm but most definitely anxious tone in his voice.

“Emergency IMG Broadcast to all civilians in the vicinity. This is not a drill, head for the nearest station immediately, the Gallics are coming!”

The Gallics? That’s new. Kyle had heard some stories about these people from behind the minefields. He never paid much attention to those stories, because he thought they weren’t more than just that, stories. Some entire house hidden behind the minefields, seriously?

This time however, things indeed seemed serious. Seconds after the 3rd repetition of the emergency broadcast, hell broke loose. The anomaly started rotating like a storm, shooting out red and yellow lightning bolts every few seconds. It transformed from calm unnatural beauty, into a wild storm of chaos and colors…

Then, ships started to appear everywhere. Hundreds of ships of a kind he’d never seen before. Ships of all sizes, from tiny fighter scouts to absolutely massive battleships. Kyle jumped up out of his chair, hitting the ceiling with a loud bang. With a loud curse, he started pushing buttons, powering down every system on his ship. These guys weren’t looking friendly and today was not the day he was going to get shot by a story...

In 30 minutes, an entire army gathered around the jumphole. Battleships were maneuvering in a tight formation, with snubcraft patrolling around them, making sure everything was safe. The emergency broadcast stopped and all that was left was his own heavy breathing. He had never seen anything like this before in his life.

From complete chaos to perfectly structured order. It was incredible to see how fast the fleet gained control over the area. A few small Outcast raiding parties who quickly gathered at the scene to check out what was going on were obliterated in seconds. They didn’t stand a chance against these highly trained pilots in their odd ships. Kyle wasn’t going to take any chances and decided to sit still for a few hours while he watched the fleet expanding their patrols. His heartbeat returned to a normal level, and the lack of sleep caused him to fall asleep eventually.