The Deftly Paradox

by Matthew D. White

  The others quickly grabbed the last of their gear and the team circled up outside: all told, four MOC operators, two assisting maintainers, plus Mr. Lorde, representing the council’s interests, as well as his own. He looked between the members of the gathered combat unit. “Last chance to back out. Remember, weapons cold until we get within the OSIRIS’s bunker. All of this is still logged as training, so play the part if anyone asks.” No one dissented so he flagged the team onward.

  ***

  “Third cannon is disabled,” Commander Graves announced to the chief behind him. The senior NCO was still laying his full weight upon the door latch in a desperate attempt to prevent the security team on the far side from breaking through. On the targeting screens, Graves watched as more ships gathered and surrounded them, continuing to counter his assault with properly-directed shields, as well as systematic destruction of the capital warship’s offensive capabilities.

  Through the feed to the bridge, he could see Captain Richards intently staring at the monitors showing the progress of his forces against wayward XO. He had already lost a battleship and nine destroyers to Graves’ actions, but the determined rage remained imprinted upon his face; the price would be worthwhile once the junior officer was apprehended and the operation against New Loeria was successful.

  Someone had obviously tipped them off, the captain decided as the resistance, minimal though it was, had been far more coordinated than what was originally expected against the remote, unsuspecting civilian target. Richards scanned across the accompanying displays, sensing his plan coalesce in a blaze of righteous fury. The OSIRIS’s will would be done, this day and always, for the good of all mankind, whether his exec would understand it or not.

  His exec had only managed to compromise a single station, a small fraction of the total armament of the ship, but the power was still considerable compared to the other ships in the fleet. More dangerous was the range and placement of the battery which covered more than two-thirds of the sky and significantly hindered their deployments. In response, Richards had to split his force to carefully disable his own ship while at the same time continue the engagement against the surface.

  “Commander Graves, your game is over,” his voice grated over the intercom. “Stop this before you waste any more of my time.”

  “Every minute you spend attacking your own ships is a minute of life granted to New Loeria,” Graves replied across the channel and without hesitation, dropped the trigger again.

  Their dwindling row of deck guns released another wave of fire, peppering the facing vessel’s energy shield with a line of planet-shaking rounds. One slipped off the edge of the hardened barrier of protection and sliced through the opposing ship’s engine, exploding in a sharp burst of light.

  The battleship rocked hard to the side from the loss of propulsion, sending their volley of fire not to the capital ship’s weapons but raking down its unprotected hull. Graves’ station shook violently, rumbling heavy above the captain’s screaming from the bridge. He smiled at the thought of Richards losing his mind in the battle, forcing him to destroy the pride of his fleet on his way to an ephemeral victory. The punishment or death he was sure to earn would easily be worth seeing the captain’s utter humiliation.

  Surely someone else would consider their actions and put a stop to the madness, he thought. Every ship in the fleet knew what they had been deployed to accomplish and they advanced without interruption. It would need to be enough, Graves decided, that he should stand alone and give New Loeria a chance to escape, an opportunity to fight back against a weakened enemy, or the time for a nullification to arrive from the council. For the moment, he reveled in the Captain’s distress, prayed the man would reconsider the destruction he had vowed to release.

  Outside, on the far side of the scope, the nearest battleship had stabilized once again, though Richards continued his ranting. Graves smiled at the impotent display but leaned forward as the captain seemed to change his calculus. He ducked close toward the operations officer’s microphone, with enough clearance so his voice would carry through the ship.

  “Lieutenant, disable life support for the weapons station.”

  Graves’ heart sank as he processed the words and immediately spun to face the room. Their line of operators was still secured to the deck while Baldric held his own with the security team at the door. They were all expendable, but that didn’t mean he could let it come to pass. “Captain Richards, are you insane?” he shouted back attempting to raise a response.

  “Son, not nearly as much as you,” the captain replied with a sigh of exasperation, as if he were a parent enacting a punishment upon an unruly child. “Cease your action or in a few minutes you will suffocate and freeze. Choice is yours.”

  The position in which Graves found himself was increasingly compromising. Part of him determined that if he stayed fast, he’d be directly responsible for the deaths of everyone in the room. If he gave in, he’d be contributing to genocide. Nothing in space ever came easy. The commander took a deep breath. “This isn’t a choice,” he replied and mashed the trigger again, feeling the retort of his remaining guns fire off another volley. He’d hang on, he determined, for as long as he was able.

  ***

  A hundred miles away, Mercer closed in on the battleship’s command deck. The defenses encountered thus far had been ill-prepared, under-equipped, and not expecting the sudden advance on their most secure position. Smoke billowed from the randomly-placed grenades, and he could finally make out the last fifty yards of open corridors that separated his team from their target. The gambit, initially a very far shot, was steadily becoming a reality. A battleship under his control could be enough to cost their foe the initiative, he convinced himself, if only they had the courage for the final sprint.

  He unhooked the last two explosive charges from his vest and waved to the remaining soldiers in his fire team. “Listen! Five seconds of covering fire on my mark then I’m advancing. After they detonate, take the bridge!” They nodded and complied, giving him the sustained burst of deadly rounds to suppress their resistance.

  As the timers on the two charges cooked off, Mercer sprinted down the passage, aiming at the tiny smoking hatch. With only a stride to go, he pitched the pair of grenades through to the obscured bridge and dove for the corner, contracting to a tight ball to avoid the shrapnel carried by the blast.

  They ripped outward in a deafening explosion, sending chunks of molten iron screaming out in all directions. Mercer’s world went silent in the aftermath of the blast.

  He rolled to the side and, with shaking hands accompanied by a blank sensation of numbness, crawled to his knees. He looked up to see the last of his team already bounding through the hatch to the bridge, following his order with a concentrated assault on the enclosed space. More gunfire followed in a sharp exchange but quickly dissipated.

  Lieutenant Mercer got to his feet, rising through the low-hanging cloud of smoke, and listened for his team. The hallway was left in an uncomfortable state of quiet after being thoroughly wrenched apart by his private war. Sensing the danger pass, Mercer turned to the bridge and crossed the threshold, finding himself in the middle of a venerable police action.

  Most of the crew members had either surrendered outright or had been incapacitated by the grenades. Bodies of the closer victims lay scattered near the door, their light uniforms useless against the sudden attack. His team had subdued those still capable of resistance through various means, with several getting a rifle to the back while restraints were applied.

  Commander Warner followed him through the hatch, taking in the surroundings and ignoring the significant damage and conglomeration of soldiers. Turning to Mercer, he grinned. “Well done, lad!” he exclaimed. “You, my friend, have the beginnings of your own pirate crew.”

  Mercer smiled but shook his head. “You’ve got me wrong,” he said, looking between the subdued officers of the deck. “I’m not doing this for me and not for bloody power. Tell me wha
t we need to do to get this crate under control.”

  “Absolutely. We’ve still got a planet to save.” He shrugged, springing ahead and going for the central console. “So I don’t think you cooked anything. Not too bad, anyway,” he mumbled, scanning over the controls. “Your boys downstairs have apparently taken the weapons stations; tell them to secure and hold the rooms but don’t engage anything outside. I don’t want the rest of the fleet coming down on us just yet.”

  Mercer nodded, going for his radio and spied the door. “The hatch?”

  “Yes! Lock us in here before we have company. This isn’t your ship yet, if the rest of those bastards on security detail have anything to say about it.”

  The lieutenant did as he was told, slamming the hatch down tight and engaging every lock he could see. It would be hard to get in but impossible to get out if their fortunes were to change, not that he was counting on the latter.

  The deck commander continued his work. “Just reported the boarding action as failed to the fleet. They’ll think we’re still on their side; for a while anyway.” He smiled again. “That’s just too bad for them, especially when they’re still requesting support to help out the flagship’s little kerfuffle.”

  “What’s going on down there?”

  “According to the distress bulletin, some fool barricaded himself in the weapon station and proceeded to open fire on the fleet. They’re trying to take the guns out one at a time, but they’ll destroy half the damn ship to pull that off. That and trying to smoke him out from the inside.”

  “What’s our best move to slow them down?” Mercer asked the veteran officer.

  “It’s tough since we’re still considerably outnumbered.” He shook his head, driving through the controls. “Especially since I’ve got a limited bandwidth right now and we’re dealing with seasoned crews with more weapons. We can try to drift closer to the center of the formation without drawing attention to ourselves, open fire on everything in range, and hopefully disable a few more battleships if they are undefended, then retreat into space to maybe do it again if we can get an opportunity.”

  “Sounds insane but not the first time I’ve heard something that today,” Mercer admitted, keeping a foot planted on the hatch’s seal. Nothing had yet to make its presence known on the far side, but he kept his vigil. His soldiers had the crew stabilized and subdued. Commander Warner had the helm, such it was. Together they had the chance to pull it off.

  ***

  “Mooring’s off!” Leo called back to her pilot in the last operational destroyer attached to the burning hulk of the fleet’s proud battleship. She sprinted back after releasing the cable on the steeply-banked fuselage, diving for the ramp as it began to skid down the polished skin. Catching the edge and tumbling aboard, she held on tight as the engines screamed to life, steadying the tiny craft against its gargantuan host.

  Leo got to her feet in the tight cargo bay, packed with the passengers who followed from the city’s downed transport, and stumbled forward to the flight deck. “We’re clear! Get us moving!” she called out again to the crew ahead.

  They complied and the destroyer ceased its slow skid off the battleship’s hull, and with a rush from the oversized engines to each side, rocketed upward, gently slipping out of the bonds of gravity that held the rest as hostages. A final white flash of sunlight reflected off the cabin as Leo pulled herself along and hit the flight deck.

  “Another shot just went off. One more city hit. We’re running out of time over here! Where are we going?” the pilot called out to her.

  The pain and the sense of failure deepened within Leo’s heart as their vessel picked up speed. “Get us to the fleet,” she ordered without inflection.

  “Copy that. What’s the plan?”

  She shook her head, trying to right the pounding against her temples. “I don’t know yet; I just don’t know. We can’t let them get another shot off.” Leo said, gritting her teeth. The fleet would be spread wide enough to engage all the cities of New Loeria without issue and any one of the battleships carried with it the power to finish the job. Their tiny destroyer wasn’t nearly big enough to affect the outcome in any significant way, but she refused to allow the realization to blanket her mission.

  The rest of her world was still counting on her to do something; she would refuse to let their memory die without a fight. Simultaneously, she knew the lieutenant who had come for her at Merrimack was still fighting, and it wasn’t as if he’d give up while there was still a chance of success or even in the face of certain, abject failure. Leo watched as the atmosphere beyond their ship thinned out, retreating from indigo to blackness and carrying them to the edge of space. “We’ll figure something out.”

  “I hope you’re right. I’ve got the fleet monitored on the IFF tracker and they’re taking up the whole field up here,” the pilot responded as the blue atmosphere outside gave way to the infinite black above.

  23

  The surface entrance to OSIRIS’s core was as impressive and over-engineered as any other piece of its eternal being. From the outside, the structure resembled a spacecraft hangar large enough to land a full squadron of destroyers. Beyond the thick vault doors, the internal space was mostly open, aside from the barricades and ramparts along the walls and the bunker entrance at the center.

  The inner doors protected a massive ramp that extended deep underground, stretching on like a highway sliding off into the distance. Their subterranean highway, which could have easily been mistaken for a spaceport’s landing strip, was clear all the way to the core, its entrance cracked open as per normal operations for the passing of ground forces.

  The inner pair of reinforced doors rode on actuators the size of small buildings, with enough mass to protect against anything less than an extinction-level-event. Shafer looked up at the towering structures, taken aback not only by their immense size but by the prospect of any manmade process to cycle them. The surface checkpoint barely raised an eye at their passing and let them continue underground, as per their falsified but legitimate-looking orders.

  For the smattering of years, he had worked at the MOC, Shafer had never considered the prospect that OSIRIS was anything more than what he had seen on a daily basis spread out below their facility on the maintenance floor. Knowing its tendrils were deeply rooted across the galaxy in both the remote instances, as well as in the faulty design of their ships, was a disconcerting feeling. He wondered that even after all of their work, if there would be any assurance that they would remove its ability to rule their lives. Perhaps this was all part of OSIRIS’s plan to further subjugate humanity. Conversely, and for all he was privy to, his mind could nearly fathom another colony rising up, claiming to be the rightful successor to the flailing Dominion as it steadily dissolved itself from within.

  The passage sloped gently downward, forming an underground tunnel for the massive superhighway. The concrete deck, compacted by an age of traffic devoted to construct, update, and maintain their host, was worn smooth beneath their feet and carried a long echo from their steps. On each side wall, Shafer took note of the myriad signs and warnings regarding the security measures ahead. The notification served a proper reminder not only to the danger of their operation but also the importance of the location where they found themselves. A large number of the illuminated placards reminded them that deadly force was authorized in the defense of OSIRIS; however, he wondered if that contingency operation had ever been tested.

  Lorde led the way, hugging the wall to the left in an effort to mask their approach from the forces that were likely already alerted to their presence. His weapons hung loose from the armor, with his hands clasped across the receiver of his primary rifle strapped tight across the center of his chest. There was no sign of any opposition, and if they were in hiding, it was likely they’d be out of range for any of the instruments carried between them.

  The team’s journey had lasted more than an hour before the tunnel began to level off and spread out, stretching
far into the distance. Closer in, two domed bunkers flanked the highway, marked with multiple firing positions across a half-dozen levels. As he first spotted them, Lorde guessed they were still easily five hundred yards out.

  “Keep your heads down,” he warned the team. “They’ll make a challenge to us and then escalate force. We’ll need to suppress whatever ones provide the opportunity and get out of the field of fire as quickly as we can.” Lorde added, “As soon as it starts, half the team covers, the rest advance. Switch every ten seconds.”

  “How close will they let us get?” Erikson asked, nervously scanning the structure, resisting the will to preemptively go for his weapon.

  A sharp blast of static rolled down the passage, released by the loudspeakers along the station, accompanied by a row of flashing sirens. Lorde shook his head. “Four hundred yards, give or take. It’ll take a minute or two to close the gap on the run, but we need to get inside and seal the surface hatch before they deploy the regular force from behind us.”

  “Attention. You are approaching the OSIRIS’s core without substantiated authorization.” The soldier’s voice came in loud and shrill over the speakers set into the walls on either side. “Cease your advance until clearance is verified.”

  Lorde paid the words no mind. “Keep going. Don’t acknowledge anything,” he muttered, letting his mind pick the future muscular response once the conflict grew hot.

  “Second warning. Cease advance until clearance is verified,” the giant voice spoke again, accompanied by a scattered burst of burning flares, streaking out from the firing positions and bouncing by the operators.

  Without missing a step, they continued onward until the crack from a rifle echoed and the single round slammed into the hardened ground before Lorde’s feet. He marked the shooter’s location by the brief puff of smoke and set the dim silhouette as his first target.