Threshold of Victory

by Stephen J. Orion

  Five minutes ago, Rease and her company had transferred to the Warhorse and left the delightful marine commander to stew on the Arcadia. From the moment the ship had begun crossing the soup of ultralight gasses to their target, Rease had been suddenly and intimately aware that Tarek was not the pilot. Instead it was in the hands of Maize and some shuttle pilot stand-in rounded up at the last minute.

  As a result, she did not stalk about the ship or hassle Lieutenant Walters. Instead she made the necessary checks to ensure her people and machines were set and secure, including the marines with their comparatively crude powered exoskeletons. When she finally ran out of distractions, she climbed into her arcom and buttoned it up.

  Her new pressure suit made the already cramped confines of the red-lit cockpit even tighter, and she suddenly understood why not everyone could handle sitting in an arcom. Theoretically the machines were NBC sealed, but hull integrity could be lost in an instant and the heat and radiation from Bryson was not to be tarried with. Cramped or not she wouldn’t have traded the extra layer of protection the suit provided for a second company of arcoms.

  “Approaching first drop site,” Walters finally said over the comm. “Predator One-One, confirm all elements ready.”

  Rease made one last check in with her people. “Predator confirms all units ready.”

  “Copy, depressurising.”

  The pressure bar on Rease’s screens plummeted, and a moment later the cargo ramp on the back of the Warhorse dropped open. Beyond she could see the brown and amber ocean of the gas giant’s surface, the Arcadia forming the only stable point of reference on the horizon. Below them, stretched the hull of the Mauler ship, already an ugly sight, it had not been improved by the craters and blast scoring that marked its battle with the Cold Sabres.

  “At site,” the skipper said once the Warhorse had lowered so close to the target’s hull it seemed like they might have intended to land on it directly. “Predator-One, deploy.”

  Rease lifted the cargo harness securing her arcom and moved to the door as heavy cables shot down to the surface of the Mauler ship and locked in place with magnetic clamps. She attached a cable brake to the line and stepped off immediately.

  It was less than a dozen metres to the surface, but Bryson’s gravity was almost twice Earth’s and the cable brake squealed the whole way down. The impact with the ship was jarring, and even in her skilled hands, the arcom staggered a step before she got it back under control. Moving low to the surface, she quickly cleared the line and located their entry point.

  This was easily the most dangerous part of the operation, if the Mauler cruiser abruptly changed course, it could crash into the lifter and wipe out the rest of the team. Even once they were down, all it had to do was rollover and anyone not quick enough to latch onto something would be crushed to the size of a pea when they hit the pressure floor. Richter had used that example and many others to impress on her why the Navy never attempted to board a vessel still under power. He’d then asked her to do it; the gateship wouldn’t respond to wave downs, and if they destroyed its engines, it would crash into the pressure floor long before they could rig up a tow.

  So instead, they were fast. Both the arcoms and the foot dismounts roping to the surface inside a minute which at least allowed the Warhorse to pull clear and head for the next drop site. The three arcoms and ten marines who remained with Rease clipped on to whatever surface they could find and unravelled enough explosive coil to draw a four-metre circle in the hull where they’d identified their point of ingress. The plating was thick but the thermite burned hungrily through it, disappearing into the crevice it created. Moments passed, and then decompression took hold and a fourteen-inch-tall cylinder of metal blasted volcanically into the air.

  As soon as the pressure differential had settled from a hurricane to a strong wind, Rease threw her arcom into the gap, landing in a half crouch and bringing her rifle to shoulder ready.

  It was good that she did, a pair of Maulers had been desperately clinging to the doorway and a little bit to each other. They seemed perplexed by the escaping gas, but the arrival of the arcom quickly transformed their expressions to raw aggression.

  Ultimately their ferocity counted for little, Rease tagged them both with headshots and then moved away from the entry point to allow the next arcom to arrive. Even as she was doing so, she noticed another Mauler to her right. Pivoting on her machines heel she staggered it with a snap shot and then finished it off with a round to the head.

  The monster fell backwards, crashing heavily into a giant cryocell. To the left of it were two open cells. To the right, a fourth was unsealing. Inside was yet another Mauler, its beady eyes blinking rapidly as the icy mist around it was sucked out into the low-pressure room. Its lungs began to heave as it started gulping for air; though Maulers were resilient creatures, even they couldn’t survive on the thin helium, nitrogen, and fluorine mix that Bryson called atmosphere.

  The cryocells went on for a line of twelve in total, each in a nest of pipes and cables with a rifle alongside it and a few indecipherable status lights. On the wall opposite, was another set of twelve, and both racks were linked to a pair of rails that ran along channels in the floor. Rease didn’t need to wait to pick out the pattern. She walked mechanically along the line of cells, smashing her knife through the glass and into the eye socket of each blank sleeping face before applying a quick twist and removing the blade. She felt no mercy for them because they’d demonstrated none for her, and killing them when they couldn’t fight back felt like justice for the helpless colonies they’d destroyed. By the time she’d reached the end of the line, the first gasping Mauler had choked itself out and collapsed on the floor, she drove her knife through its brain stem just to be certain and then checked on her team.

  They’d all safely descended, including the foot dismounts who’d had to use ropes to cross what was, for them, a perilous distance to the floor. While she’d been butchering sleeping Maulers, the arcoms had spread out to control the doorways to the room.

  “This place is lousy with these monster tubes,” Hollands reported from where his arcom was peering into the hall, “a lot are empty, but a lot ain’t.”

  “Well then, we have a lot of work to do,” Rease said, flicking the gore off her knife and advancing on the exit.

  ****

  Constellation Carrier CNS Arcadia

  Bryson IV Local Sector, Bryson System

  27 April 2315

  “You realise how rare it is that a communications recorder comes back with its data corrupted,” CAG Jenson said, not really a question.

  “But it does happen,” Phillips replied evenly. He stood at sharp attention in front of the CAG’s desk, his features set like a cliff, betraying nothing.

  “To an entire squadron?” Jenson pressed, allowing a degree of warning to sneak into his tone.

  “Bryson IV does have a very radiation heavy environment.” Phillips remained unphased. Let him bluster, when it came right down to it there was no charge he could hope to level against a member of the Peerage.

  Jenson folded his arms and leaned them on the desk. “It’s obvious to me that you’re covering for someone, perhaps Tarek. Assuming he’s even still alive, he’ll be collected by the boarding party and dealt with in due time. Anything you do, or do not, tell me now will not help him, but it could affect you a great deal.”

  “I am happy to answer your questions, Commander,” Phillips said. “I do not know what happened to the flight recorders, but I believe everyone involved, including the Flight Sergeant, acted in the best interests of the Constellation. I have no reason to misrepresent anything that occurred.”

  “Indeed,” Jenson made the word two distinct syllables, a warning, perhaps even a threat, lurking in the pause between them. “There will be many questions about the… unique circumstances that led to a logistics pilot being on that mission, but what is important today, what I need an answer to right now, is where the term ‘gateship’ came fr
om.”

  “I coined the term, sir.”

  “So upon meeting a previously unencountered Mauler ship, you correctly guessed its function from its profile alone? A function that, prior to now, we did not believe was scientifically possible.”

  “I had no idea what it was capable of at the time, sir. It had a large ring on it that reminded me of a gate.”

  “And not, say, a gravity ring.”

  “That wasn’t what sprang to mind at the time, sir.”

  “And you maintain that you and your squadron have no particular knowledge of this vessel or its capabilities. That the name was simply a guess.”

  “Yes, Commander.”

  “And do you, or any of your squadron, have any other ‘guesses’ that you think might be pertinent in helping the Constellation deal with this new menace?”

  “No, Commander.”

  Jenson sighed. “I will be speaking with you again over this other… fiasco with Tarek, but for now you’re dismissed.”

  ****

  Mauler Gateship Tagged ‘Bandit-Nine-Zero’

  Bryson IV Local Sector, Bryson System

  27 April 2315

  Tarek had every reason to believe he had been doing a great job of staying ahead of the Maulers. Over time, he’d come to have a general understanding of the ship’s layout and purpose, an unexpected advantage he had over its ostensive owners. The craft had several long corridors about the mid-decks, and it was possible they ran the length of the ship, but Tarek couldn’t risk them because these were host to the highest concentrations of Maulers.

  Adjoining those corridors at every possible opportunity were cargo rooms containing racks of cryocells. Large numbers of these were empty, but plenty enough weren’t, and it seemed some computer somewhere had decided now was a good time to wake every damn Mauler on the ship. If the ship’s architecture had been that simple, he’d have been cornered already.

  Fortunately, he’d also discovered arcing corridors that fanned out from the central concourses to connect to the various hangars, gun batteries, and countless other machine rooms that were critical to the operation of a military vessel. The arc corridors invariably curved around and reconnected to the main concourse, but they also connected to each other by cross passages and even by ramps across decks. These few extra options allowed the card he was holding in his mind to feed him numerous creative methods to cut back and forth across the searching Maulers’ advance.

  So yes, Tarek had every reason to believe he was doing a great job of avoiding the Maulers. Unfortunately, the card he was desperately holding on to was not the one he’d wanted.

  The want he’d first articulated was ‘I want to survive until the rescue party arrives,’ but nothing had been forthcoming.

  After some iterations and a few desperate close shaves with the Maulers he’d found a card that worked, namely, ‘I want to survive as long as possible.’

  But he knew somewhere between those two statements was an insurmountable wall of futility. However long he could avoid the Maulers, it wouldn’t be enough for a rescue party to come through. They could be on the ship right now, perhaps just rooms away, and nothing he could do would bring their fates into alignment.

  He needed rescuing – as hard as that was to admit – and it was the sort of rescue that could only come from one person. A person who didn’t even know they had the ability to save him, a person who couldn’t even consciously access the power necessary.

  She had to want to save him, and after their last encounter, he just wasn’t sure she wanted it enough.

  ****

  Rease had been working towards finding the bridge, or CIC, or even the engine room for the gateship, but had so far turned up nothing but an endless parade of cryocells. The Mauler resistance had increased dramatically as more and more had come awake to discover they had someone to fight. She had only limited contact with the other landing teams, but at last report they were all intact, if making little headway.

  Initially depressurising the ship had seemed like an easy answer to the Mauler problem, but they were being thwarted by a surprisingly efficient triage and life support system that was diligently sealing bulk heads and filtering the air back to safe levels. They had tried more holes and larger holes, but ultimately, they had only so much explosive, and the more damage they did to the ship, the less Commander Lyle and his black coats could learn from it.

  What they had established were a number of ‘safe zones’ where the ship had given up trying to fix the air and simply sealed them off. When things got too hot, her teams could fall back to one of these locations and regroup. The Maulers couldn’t follow them, and less than half were stupid enough to try.

  Furthermore, ammunition was limited, and though Rease’s unit had made good headway down one of the central corridors, they had expended a lot of rounds to do it. In their wake was a veritable carpet of stinking, monstrous corpses, and though the Mauler resistance had once again crumbled before them, it would soon be back. It always was.

  Presently the Lieutenant was checking one of the side rooms that stored the cryocells. They were finding most of these to be empty now, but it never hurt to check since a little knife work on sleeping Maulers could save a full clip or more. Something about this one caught Rease’s eye immediately.

  “Warhorse One, Predator One-One. I need you to route my screen capture to the black coats immediately, capture will be encrypted.”

  “Link established, Predator One-One,” the answer would have been too brief to identify the speaker if not for the fact that its brevity alone betrayed Lieutenant Walters as the source.

  Rease switched to the encrypted channel, set her camera feeds to live transmit and waited.

  The response came from one of the Arcadia’s senior comm-techs rather than Commander Lyle. “Predator One-One, thank you for the feed; however, the CIC are already monitoring the operation and are aware of the cryotubes.”

  Rease wanted to reach through the comm and slap the man. Decorum won out, however; and she even almost kept a neutral tone when she added, “Not the tube, the ladder.”

  “Ladder has been noted.” A response that was placative but still not understanding.

  Before Rease could tear a strip off the man, another voice entered the channel, and to her surprise it was the man she’d been after in the first place, Commander Lyle. “One-one if you would please put your hand on a rung of the ladder.”

  Rease smiled and reached out her arcom’s arm to the service ladder that was running up the side of the cryotube. Her machine’s steel gauntlet, far closer proportioned to that of a Mauler than any other creature, put two fingers on the middle rung of the ladder. Two fingers because that was all that would fit.

  “It’s scaled to us…” the comm tech said, his disbelief coming through cleanly.

  “Or something of similar size,” Lyle said. “Incidentally Predator One-one please tell everyone who’s just seen this that they are now subject to a Level-Sigma silence order. I remind you that it’s that one with very physical, very nasty ramifications if breached.”

  Rease was just switching channels to spread the word when she caught just the barest glimpse of something on her comm board – a flash on the emergency transponder channel. It didn’t come again, and it was a miracle that it had come through at all given the huge electromagnetic charge this whole place had.

  “Did anyone else get that transponder ping?” Rease asked. “Did anyone get a location fix?”

  The report came back all negative.

  “Be one in a million to find him in this place before the Maulers,” Hollands pointed out. “We’d be better off focusing on the primary objective until we stumble over him.”

  “Finding our people before the Maulers get them is always the primary objective, corporal,” Rease said, already moving towards the door.

  ****

  Tarek could feel his run had just about reached its end. When he’d first started traversing it, the ship had seemed infinite, bu
t suddenly, all of the corridors seemed to be converging on one place. His lead on the enemy sweeping behind him had been exhausted, a fact he’d discovered, almost to his disaster, when he’d tried to double back against the wishes of the card and hit two wandering Maulers.

  To make things worse, he’d been able to hear the sounds of battle behind them. The rescue was here, close enough to make its presence felt, and yet each of the Maulers between him and the Wolf-Lieutenant represented an impossible obstacle.

  And then he ran out of corridor.

  He had expected to come to an engine room, but he immediately realised he had not reached the end of the ship but its centre. This curmudgeonly craft, that even the Warhorse could have traversed in a few seconds, was apparently even longer than he’d imagined.

  But the centre was not a good place to be. Besides the numerous arc corridors that terminated here, the mainline corridors also converged, their rails passing right through an internal ring that was so very much like the one outside. The corridor became a bridge through the centre of the ring which connected directly to the outer wall by a pair of spines on which it, like its larger cousin, could evidently freely spin.

  The significance of the discovery was lost on Tarek because he was far more concerned by the three Maulers that had come out of the arc corridor immediately opposite him. Such was the angle of their approach that they spotted him immediately. He might have turned to run, but in his mind, the card blew away to the wind as it completed its purpose.

  It didn’t matter what he did now. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected to feel when the clock finally ticked down, but he’d not have guessed at the keening sense of betrayal. Perhaps because he’d never really believed the card would expire, he’d believe karma would come around and save him the way he’d saved hundreds on Box Grid. There were soldiers who trained to rescue people in exactly his position, and the one time he needed them, they were nowhere to be found.