The Deftly Paradox

by Matthew D. White

  His pilot cut hard to the side, banking away from the maelstrom ensuing below. The sharp change in acceleration drove Mercer toward the floor and nearly to his knees. He held tight against the airlock frame.

  “Get to the far side of the formation; same plan, just keep us away from their little problem,” he clarified, watching the visual field change outside the forward screen of their ship. The fleet was massive, extending off into infinity across New Loeria’s terminator. “Give me an ETA and we’ll be ready to move.”

  “Copy that.” The pilot revised the flight path and made a wide, slicing arc across the space. “You’ve got twenty seconds,” he added, spying an open landing bay on a ship within sight and range in the formation. A row of small, shadowy transports were lined up at the edge, leaving no room for error for their heavy destroyer as they screamed in on approach. “Hold on, this is gonna be rough,” he warned and aimed for the narrow opening.

  In a flash, the darkness of space gave way to the dull, gray light of the battleship’s landing bay, narrowly missing both the roofline above and the waiting shuttles to the sides. The pilot cut the thrust, slamming them hard onto the deck in a rush of sparks and smoke before bringing them screeching to a rough, graceless halt. “You’re all clear! Covering fire!” he called down to the ground force as he deployed a small cannon from the nose, raking lines of hardened projectiles across the line of transports on the far end.

  In the hold, Mercer dropped the loading ramp, revealing a smoking warzone just coming into being. He looked to the deck commander beside him. Nothing fired down upon them so they held their position.

  “What’s the quickest way to the gunner’s station?” the lieutenant shouted over to Warner.

  The commander followed him onto the flight deck. “We’re a quarter mile behind the bridge. The gunner’s station is three decks down in the center of the fuselage,” the commander stated. “Cut right and head for the service corridor that spans the length of the ship. Look for the first stairwell on the left. That one will take us down one level where we want to be.”

  “You heard him. Move out!” Mercer yelled and dashed forward from the protective hull of his ship. No incoming fire met him, the only ground forces amassing against them were suppressed by the fire from the destroyer. They made it to the corridor and he stopped at the stairs while the rest of the team caught up. “This is it?” he asked.

  The commander nodded. “This is the eighth deck. Deck six has the offensive systems.”

  Mercer nodded. “Second Fire Team, take our guests downstairs. Secure the area and engage fleet vessels at will.” He turned to the commander. “You’re coming with me.”

  “Where?” Commander Warner asked, apparently taken aback by the question. “We’re splitting up?”

  “To the bridge. This is too easy. We’re taking this entire damn ship.”

  21

  From her vantage point in the control tower of New Loeria’s spaceport, Leo could just catch the outlines of six additional domes extending above the dusty, rolling mountains to the north. Stretching onward for hundreds of miles, the network of fabricated structures was the perfect base from which to colonize the whole of the planet as the atmosphere slowly stabilized for human consumption. Within another generation, there’d be no need to maintain any shelter, as the air would be fully engineered for life and protective of the human population from the dangers of deep space.

  Such as it was throughout her life, Leo remembered. A thousand nights spent staring through the flawless crystalline structure at the bands of stars above. Her family far to the south, in an outpost overlooking the sea. The endless days spent on the roads in between the domes for whatever assignment was required to keep them from starving. It wasn’t much of a life but it was all hers. And today she watched as that life was brought to the slaughter. Their heads upon the block and the axe about to fall, and for what she could not contemplate.

  A silvery bolt illuminated the landscape from above and impacted the second dome from the left like a colossal bolt of lightning far off in the distance. It disappeared in a flash and a billowing cloud of crimson fire and smoke. The concussive wave advanced across the mountains, as well as the plain before them, rattling the observation windows beset within their sealed frames. Within her chest, Leo felt a knife slide closer to her heart as she watched the cloud loft into the sky. How many more had just perished? What could she have done differently?

  “Second confirmed hit,” the operator beside her announced. Leo’s heart continued to sink. The blinding light faded, taking with it the life within her eyes. Part of her head told her it was only a matter of time until the rest would join them.

  “Ma’am,” the operator said, turning toward her, “you don’t need to be here. Get down to the landing bay and get on a transport.”

  The words pulled Leo back from the edge of despair. Part of her wanted to stay, to allow her grave to be dug among the countless others whom she regarded as her countrymen. She stayed where she was, watching the pillar of fire slowly rise and consume the city beneath. Something pulled her back, forced her feet to carry her away. “I understand,” she murmured.

  She didn’t dare consider it cowardice. Instead, it was a sensation boiling deep within her that her duty was not yet complete. With a life left to give and no immediate task to which to sacrifice it, she broke lock on the fiery vision. There was no reason to throw her life away. Leo went for the stairs, bounding down to the ground floor below. Every step tempered her determination that no strike from an unseen enemy would be the end of her or her home. There still had to be a way to fight.

  At the final landing, a half-dozen passenger ships were lined up in the bay with enough scattered civilians to fill them five times over. She had no time left to think and sprinted for the closest loading ramp, bounding up alongside the rest of the crew. Inside the tight cabin there was only standing room and she wedged herself against the leftward wall, catching a glimpse of the chaos on the deck outside through a window not much larger than a dinner plate.

  Through the air around her, she felt the engines spin up and pull them free of New Loeria’s oppressive gravitational field. Leo held her breath, looking between the scattered faces of a hastily-scraped-together militia around her as they coasted out of the protective field of the city and rolled forward over the wide, barren plain outside. They quickly picked up speed, the dingy landscape becoming a blur as they increased in altitude and left the larger target of the colony behind.

  Silently, Leo closed her eyes and released a sigh of relief. There might just be a future for her; they wouldn’t simply run and hide, only to be eliminated once the OSIRIS tracked them down. There would be a reformation among all those who escaped. No colony would stand for such an act of terror. The council would be forced to correct their ills and right the path of the galaxy. If not, the colonies would consolidate the first rebellion capable of facing the whole of the Dominion. Together they would have their revenge on the fleets and the council for what they had done. A single tear slipped down her face which she refused to wipe away, instead allowing the icy sting to further seal her resolve as it slowly caressed her cheek.

  In a deafening explosion of fiery hell, the hull above Leo’s head instantly vaporized into a raging inferno, engulfing half the cabin and blowing out the rear bulkhead to the passenger bay beyond. Warnings blared above the screaming rush of air only a yard above Leo’s head and she went for the floor, desperate to anchor herself to anything of permanence. The closer crewmembers, the ones she could make out through the onset of fire and smoke, likewise went for the frame crisscrossing the deck.

  The sky of New Loeria spun beyond the gaping laceration torn through the side of the transport. Nevertheless, their engines roared wildly from below as they lost altitude, eating through every foot of elevation they had gained at a terrifying pace. Leo closed her eyes, unable to process a way through the din and felt herself all at once succumb to the fate provided her and the citizens packed
into the titanium coffin to every side, ready for the ship and the planet to swallow their lives.

  It came like an impact against a solid wall of stone, a driving force to split them from hull to the marrow. Their ship drove hard into the desert floor but didn’t completely collapse. Instead, it rendered apart in a ghastly shriek as it ground to an unceremonious halt. As quickly as their fate had approached, it had again dissipated, leaving them instantly in relative silence.

  Smoke billowed through the dark interior, illuminated by the screaming warning lights of the cabin, and Leo dove for the perforated hole beside her. She narrowly missed the jagged metal skin and aimed for the voluminous mountain of sand gathered beneath the crash site below. She hit hard and fell into a roll, tumbling down the embankment kicked up by their ship’s careening frame.

  Catching herself as the ground leveled out, she instantly feeling a stinging in her lungs from the thin, slightly toxic air. It’d kill her slower than the fleet, Leo determined as she glanced across the horizon. To the west, the dome still stood tall in the distance, unmarred from an orbital strike, but still an hour’s run away and more than enough for the atmosphere to blister the tissues within their lungs. North, south, and east was far worse; an open expanse waited to swallow them up if they dared to set out on foot. Without a doubt, they were stuck in the wasteland with whatever happened to be loaded on the transport before launch.

  There were likely oxygen masks still packed in the cabin. Leo almost made a run for the lower hatch of the shuttle, before a growing rumble overhead stole her attention. From high above, a thunderous roar continued to build as the darkened bulk of a fleet battleship, engulfed in flames from a thousand hull breaches, screeched down from above and plunged full speed into the forlorn badlands before them.

  The shockwave from the monstrous vessel tossed Leo from her feet like a doll. She cowered on her stomach, half expecting a trailing bolt of molten steel to find its way to her downed ship and finish them off. Nothing came as Leo continued to watch the ship burn, the flames reaching to the heavens. Atop its frame, a miniscule compliment of transports and destroyers slid from its dorsal landing bay and rolled down the battleship’s rear quarter before likewise tumbling into the dirt.

  Leo looked between the wreckage and her transport, more members of the surviving crew now lining the shredded holes of the cabin. “Hey!” she yelled up, waving for their attention, “keep the civilians on oxygen! Anyone who can fly or fight, get down here!”

  Needing no more prodding alongside the adrenaline overload, a handful of the soldiers leapt from the ship, tumbling down the sand as Leo had done only a minute earlier. The end of the battleship’s smoking remains were barely a mile away and Leo turned toward her assembled force. “There’s got to be something in there that’s still flyable. Come on!” she ordered and broke into a run, aiming for the scattered junkyard of subordinate ships ejected by their host upon impact.

  The run wasn’t long but stung at her joints after the unceremonious landing provided by the Fleet’s finest weapons officers. Leo felt her heart pound as she stumbled onward but dared not drop her pace nor look behind her. Their only chance at success—at survival—laid ahead within the burning carcass of their enemy. With every step, the massive vessel grew, quickly sending their group into shadow.

  “Any ideas? What looks promising?” she asked the group without letting up. On her right, the two transport pilots looked across the selection of charred husks engulfed in the ever-rising wall of smoke.

  “Top of the ship, there’s a destroyer that’s half out of the landing bay.” One pointed up to the highest possible destination on the twisted wreck. “It’s the only one that didn’t take an unpowered nosedive. Not a one of them could survive a drop like that and still function.”

  “Understood.” Leo made for the lowest access point on the ship and, halfway in a climb, vaulted up the steep pitch of the hull.

  22

  The sun hung low in the sky, casting a brilliant orange sheen across the everlasting structures which dotted the grounds of the OSIRIS’s home spaceport. While the stature of Senator Leary looked onward into darkness, toward the rising of the next day, the crew of the MOC landed at the edge of the taxiway where two well-used shipping containers waited.

  “I’ll be the first one to say I’m surprised that worked,” Shafer said as their team approached the conexes. “Falsifying orders is one thing, but did no one in the fleet’s chain of command think this through? No one thought to ask why?”

  “I’m not positing questions,” Lorde stated as he unlatched and threw the door open on the first box. Behind the rusted hatch waited a long row of black weapon cases stacked against the right wall, facing off against an equally impressive row of pallets loaded with personnel armor on the left. “But I’ve got to admit, your maintainer came through,” he added, silently relieved as to the effectiveness of their manufactured commands.

  Lorde opened the first case he came to by the door, revealing an exquisitely milled battle rifle painted all over in a matte, swirling mix of black and gray tones. “You all remember how to use these, right?” he asked the team at large.

  “Full qualification after ascension and quarterly renewals,” Erikson said. “It’s the Dominion standard, even for the MOC. Are you actually going to trade that tacky, custom jacket in on something that will be useful?”

  “Just because some of us need to project a professional appearance at any time of the day is no reason to be hateful,” Lorde replied, “especially when one is unable to attire himself with anything more than a dry shred of class.” He removed his black suit jacket and hung it on the wall, continued by his silk tie. “Seriously, did you rescue your attire from the floor of a feline euthanasia clinic?”

  Maddie snickered at the exchange but quickly caught the pair’s attention. “Nice to see you can think on your feet, at least after spending a year in your cushy office trying to see how fast you can spin your chair before you black out.”

  “That’s right, get it out of your system,” Lorde said, letting the comment fall off and digging into the nearest case of armor. “Please tell me there’s ammunition in the other container.”

  “Of course,” Shafer replied as he returned around the corner with an armload of rigger’s belts packed with loaded magazines. “We might have to take the maintainers’ word for it that they’re ready, but so far they’ve pulled through.”

  “Chance I’m willing to take,” Erikson said. “I don’t think the Fleet stocks up on cases full of blanks just for the occasional group like us to charge headlong into oblivion.”

  “What do you imagine they were thinking about when they packed all this up for us?” Sullivan asked the group as he went through his own stack of equipment. “Do you think they considered that it’d all be used against them?”

  “Probably not,” Shafer said with a shrug. “Benny said he’d classify it as a training drop from Fourth Fleet. They’re in orbit and Third Fleet is on the ground, so regardless, they won’t deal with the consequence directly.” He opened another case, spying a compact rifle sporting three barrels arranged around a common bearing and shielded by an angular aluminum shroud, pierced all over for improved airflow. “I do believe I’ll be taking this,” he muttered and lifted the weapon free, aiming down the stubby blade of sighting glass along the top which was inscribed with an illuminated reticle.

  “There’s enough here. I think we could each carry a full set. This is if we didn’t need to worry about armor and ammunition,” Erikson said. “Just focus on higher power, the biggest you can manage. We’re going against reinforced fighting positions, not tin soldiers in the field.”

  A look of steely determination baked into Maddie’s face as she dissected her portion of the mission and assembled her equipment. At no point in their adventure together did the other operators treat her differently than they had anybody else; she had kept pace with them at every turn and hadn’t shied from leading them all if the opportunity arose
. At the same time, she didn’t want to risk any of that changing now, and if their guidance was slightly accurate, they were truly going into harm’s way.

  The team was no longer battling against an extra-solar excursion against a passive, if not dangerous environment. The fight for them was quickly becoming real. In a way, it would soon be as undoubtedly real as it was for the personnel on New Loeria. They no longer maintained the luxury of thought of backing down. Leo had gone forward alone, and Maddie knew that the captain would stand alongside them in spirit and fight until the end. The fire within her eyes confirmed the assessment when they first had met.

  The smallest set of armor fit her well, and the familiar weapons weren’t overly heavy, as she had expected from her regular qualifications.

  Catching a glance from Sullivan, she saw the same expression that was reflected in her own. In whatever way they came to be standing on the field, sheltered in an overloaded shipping container and prepared to destroy the very symbol of their civilization, she knew they were up to the task. In a way, Maddie felt as if she had been preparing for what was to come her entire life. The desire for safety and security, which had enveloped her in a comfortable but controlling prison, had begun to crack and fall away.

  It wasn’t fear that gripped her but the resolving stanza from a rising symphony, strengthening every fiber of her essence. “Ready?” she asked Sullivan but received only an absent-minded nod in response.

  On the facing wall, Lorde assembled the last of his assortment of explosives, rifles, and matching ammunition. With a look at his watch, he called to the others, “Almost time. We need to be on the march in four minutes if we want to make checkpoint on time.” The final piece of his uniform, the textured, armored helmet, fit low over his face, protecting every vital surface from all but the most devastating weapons. He easily made out their voices, cleanly processed by the transmitter within the ceramic helm.