Threshold of Victory

by Stephen J. Orion

  They had survived their last defence. Now the gate was trapped, and the Arcadia had the initiative once more. Their action was a retreat certainly, but it was a most victorious one.

  ****

  As the last fighter to re-join the Arcadia, the Sabrecat was also the last brought aboard, and when Tarek dismounted Rease was waiting for him on the deck.

  “We need to talk,” the arcom pilot said coolly. With no further explanation, she turned her back and made her way towards an empty repair alcove, not seeming to care if he followed or not.

  Frowning Tarek didn’t chase after her immediately, instead he went through the post-flight checks with one of the techs. When he was satisfied that the work was done, and perhaps more thoroughly than necessary, he followed after her.

  Rease was leaning her hip on a repair dolly with her arms folded. “You think this is the time and place for showing off?”

  “Excuse me?” Tarek counted sharply.

  “I saw you out there; I spoke to your people. You might have made an impression on the Maulers, but you left your squad-mates to fend for themselves and then damn near got yourself killed.”

  “I knew what I was doing,”

  “They needed you.”

  “And since when were you the authority on that. Lyle’s team ‘needed’ you on the gateship, but you apparently decided, all by yourself, that you had to be back on the carrier.”

  “Don’t make this about me. I made a call, and maybe it wasn’t the right one, but at least I know who I’m fighting for. You’re not just some pilot now, Tarek. You’re a symbol to this crew, these pilots. They need to believe in you, and we can’t afford for them to see you get destroyed.”

  “I’m not fighting for some wannabe in the next plane. I’m fighting to win the damn war.”

  “It isn’t your war!” Rease snapped at him.

  “It isn’t yours either!” Tarek shouted back.

  They both stopped at that, each caught in their own crossfire. They stared at each other in silence, neither sure where to take things from there.

  Abruptly Rease let out a short laugh. “Truce then. It’s our war.”

  “I’m not sharing my war with you,” Tarek responded in mock offence. “Get your own war.”

  “Excuse me,” Rease returned with every bit as much irony. “I saw this one first.”

  Tarek wanted to be still mad at her, at what she’d almost cost them, but the mutiny had left him weary of fury. Anger had been flooded out by an unexpected sense of relief, and he could see it in her as well. They’d both made it. They’d faced such opposition that even foresight hadn’t been able to guarantee survival, but they’d come for each other when they needed too, and they’d made it. How they’d done it seemed suddenly unimportant next to that.

  “Alright fine,” Tarek said, feeding the sense of comradeship. “You can have weekend access, but I want alimony.”

  ****

  A little later the ship stepped down from high alert, and Rease and Tarek were both summoned to the CIC. Only critical damage control teams and the smallest possible watch remained on station as the overworked crew finally went off shift. Three end-to-end crises had taken their toll, and despite the tension, the exhausted personnel welcomed the chance to take a break.

  But that break didn’t extend to the command crew. In the CIC, Captain Pierman was waiting for them on the command stage, accompanied by Richter, Marcus Homer from Cold Sabre who was acting CAG and one other. That other was a tired looking 2nd Lieutenant named Dewitt who was apparently the most senior analyst left after Lyle and his team had been lost on the gateship. All-in-all the ship’s senior staff was starting to look very ad hoc.

  “First of all, good job everyone,” Pierman said as they gathered around the holodeck. “Perhaps not everything went as planned, but what we’ve survived over these last hours would have tested any ship in the Constellation Navy. I’m proud to say few would have performed as well, and I’d ask all of you to convey that to your sections.”

  Richter, Homer and Rease responded appreciatively. Tarek remained silent since he didn’t really have a section.

  “For the moment, we have the enemy at an impasse, between our override program and the mines on the gate, they can neither track us nor deploy reinforcements. Tarek, are you able to determine how long it will take the enemy to circumvent our countermeasures.”

  “Not exactly.” He’d learnt from the fiasco with the gateship not to give guarantees. “We have fifty hours at most.”

  “Sir,” Homer said and let the word hang, clearly still hesitant to voice an opinion to the ship’s Captain. When a rebuke wasn’t immediately forthcoming he bulled on. “Could the enemy not locate us conventionally, we’re well within patrol range.”

  He gestured at the holo-stage which centred on the Mauler home world, tagged ‘Inimicus’ for lack of better astrological identifiers. Inimicus had a trio of small moons, and the Arcadia had used the gate to move to the L2 Lagrange point for one of them moons, keeping it between the ship and the planet as it circled its host. In any normal military situation, such locations would be monitored by probes, patrolled, or even mined.

  “It appears that the Maulers, or their controllers, never really believed they would be traced back here,” Dewitt said. “The gate had almost no firewalls, the planet is defended by just three warships, and there’s no outlying security perimeter. Confidence that we’ve achieved total surprise is at over eighty-percent.”

  “Haven’t we just taught them the error of their laxity?” Homer said. “In their place, I’d be organising patrols immediately.”

  “They think we’ve gone much further than we have,” Tarek said. In truth he had no idea what the enemy thought, but his cards told him the Arcadia would not be discovered for fifty hours. All that really mattered was finding a reason suitably logical to satisfy the acting CAG’s concerns.

  “I’d still feel more comfortable if we sent out patrols, or at least maintained a squadron on alert. We’re very vulnerable right now.”

  “Unfortunately, it’s a risk we need to take,” Pierman said. “You’ve been out there yourself, Commander. You know the strain that end-to-end missions take. When we go after the Mauler base, we’re going to need everyone we’ve got and that means taking the recovery time now.”

  “Alright so let’s talk about this attack,” Rease said, leaning her palms on the holo-stage.

  The Captain held up a hand. “In a moment. I don’t want this to devolve into an effort to place blame. I am quite satisfied with how the last operation went, but we need to discuss what happened during that operation.” He looked at Tarek. “How much do you know about why the gateship failed to arrive?”

  Tarek felt all their eyes on him and, most keenly, he felt Rease’s. Even without the cards, he’d known this question would be coming, but he’d dreaded it all the same. He didn’t really care what the Navy officers thought – if necessary he could have simply used a card to find the words to convince them.

  But Rease was an entirely different problem. He was willing to do whatever it took to defeat the Maulers, short one thing. He would not give her awareness of her own powers. It was, as Phillips had warned, a terrible burden, and the Wolf-Lieutenant had too many of those already. Unfortunately, she also represented the greatest risk to any plan they could make against Inimicus, even her most well-meaning intervention could cost them everything.

  Aware that he’d allowed the silence to drag on too long Tarek told half of the truth.

  “For most of us, our destiny is a function of our experiences and our attitudes. They are almost mathematical. Lieutenant Rease is… different. She has the ability to alter her own destiny and when she does so it creates… ripples that alter the futures of others. Until I encounter those ripples, until I know what she changed, I can’t account for it.”

  Pierman and Homer were regarding him thoughtfully. Richter was implacable and Dewitt was openly sceptical. For her part, Rease looked like he mig
ht have just told her that her hair could be used to transform deck plating into butterflies.

  She tilted her head to one side. “So what you’re saying is I’m psychically cock-blocking you?”

  There was a mix of stifled laughter and mutterings of disgust before Pierman held up a hand for quiet. “Do you know what happened to Commander Lyle’s team?”

  “As it happens I do. They were…” He looked at the clock. “…or rather they will be picked up by a search and rescue team from the Olympian.”

  “Oh,” Pierman looked genuinely surprised and then allowed himself a rare smile. “Welcome news. Shall we get to the matter at hand then?”

  There were nods of agreement, and a gesture from Richter magnified Inimicus until they were looking at the portal and the two remaining Mauler warships.

  “Sergeant Tarek, just how much can you tell us about the Mauler facilities here?”

  “As you all no doubt saw, Inimicus is mostly covered in water. The Maulers are bioengineered in a facility on the bottom of the ocean, here.” He touched the hologram and left a glowing marker on the planet. “There’s also an orbital assembly facility located, here.” Another gesture put a marker into orbit around the planet. “It builds their warships, just don’t ask me why it isn’t in the same orbital path as the gate.”

  “And who is in control of these outposts?”

  “I think you’ve already guessed that much,” Tarek said. “Exodites.”

  Homer shrugged. “So we use the air wing with the small nukes to attack the assembly, drawing the Mauler warships away from the gate. Then the Arcadia launches a nuclear strike and destroys the base.”

  “I can do you one better,” Rease said with an eager smile.

  All eyes turned to her.

  “You do… that plane stuff you said…” She made a finger waggling gesture. “…but we also use the gate to dial the other Mauler gateships and nuke them through their own gates. We won’t just cut the head off the snake, we’ll break every bone in its body.”

  “We’d need the gate codes for the other ships,” Dewitt pointed out.

  “Well how did we get this one?” Rease asked.

  “Every gateship has the codes for the home gate,” Tarek offered, “but not for each other.”

  Rease’s eyes narrowed. “You’re hiding something.”

  Tarek sighed. “I’m fairly certain they have the gate codes in the facility on Inimicus, but we can’t reach them. Even if we had a submersible dropship, they have enough torpedoes and mines to destroy any ship that descends towards the base.”

  “That’s…” She’d been about to say ‘bullshit’ but she glanced at the Captain. “…an oversimplification. If you know they have the codes, you must have seen a future that got us down there.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Tarek said.

  “I’d say it matters a hell of a lot actually.”

  “Look, there’s a small gate on the planet, you can use the gate up here to insert a strike force directly into the Inimicus facility, but it doesn’t matter. I can see the future remember, it can’t be done.”

  “We have to try, you already admitted your visions aren’t perfect.”

  Tarek stopped and stared at her. “You’re right, I don’t know what will happen if you go down there but I do know what will happen if we send anyone… if we send everyone else.”

  “Well I’m not everyone else,” she countered defiantly. “And I’m going down there.”

  Pierman was watching them both thoughtfully. Before Tarek could voice further objections, he held up a hand. “Even if your predictions surrounding Lieutenant Rease were known to be one hundred percent accurate, this would still be a worthwhile gambit.”

  “I think I’ve given ample evidence to support my concerns,” Tarek said.

  “Sergeant, I seem to recall you speaking to myself and others at length about ignoring someone’s power simply because it was uncommon or beyond your control. I do not know for sure whether Rease can succeed, but her record tells me that when she says she will, she does. Perhaps if you expect others to have faith in you, it might follow that you should have some faith in them.”

  Tarek’s mouth snapped shut. “Yes sir.”

  “Very good, Sergeant. We are going to call it a night here, fresh minds will be necessary to craft an effective strategy and we will reconvene late tomorrow morning once you’ve had a chance to draft up your plans in detail. You will each deliver your own section’s phase of the operation, and I will ensure that the strategic staff on the carrier are available to assist.

  “Commander Homer will be responsible for the assault on the assembly, including the destruction of the remaining Mauler fighters and destroyers. Richter, you will assist Rease in planning a ground assault against the planetary facility with the priority of locating the gate codes and transmitting them to the carrier.

  “I will organise the carrier phases of the operations. We’ll discuss this in detail tomorrow, but the focus will be on keeping Arcadia in reserve until the last possible moment.

  “Get some rest and, hopefully, dream of masterful plans that we can use to ensure this battle is quite one-sided. I’ll see you all tomorrow.”

  ****

  Constellation Carrier CNS Arcadia

  2nd Moon of Inimicus, Unknown System

  29 April 2315

  By the time he left the strategy session the next day, Pierman was exhausted. They had a workable plan, but with so many strong and experienced personalities, it had been a battle almost from start to finish. Tarek wanted to make constant, often inconsequential, changes to the others’ plans, and he delivered them in a way that made Homer and Richter immediately defensive. Rease had proved surprisingly flexible with accepting changes to her plan, but her record suggested that, as soon as she made contact with the enemy, she would start improvising anyway.

  Not for the first time, the Captain wished Lyle was with them. He remembered the sensation of utter disbelief when he’d watched the portal snap into nothingness and the Commander had not somehow emerged. He’d never fully trusted Commander Lyle, as was proper for any officer working with the Intelligence section, but the man had infallibly come through when it counted, and his charm made him easy to work with.

  And now he was gone when Pierman could have used him the most. His acting replacement, Dewitt, was clearly out of his depth, providing only the most painfully obvious intelligence assessments. He’d clearly been stressed even before his elevation, and it seemed the dark rings under his eyes were more developed each time he appeared, his attitude more tense.

  That Commander Lyle was alive – assuming Rease hadn’t cock-blocked another of Tarek’s visions – was small comfort. He certainly couldn’t help from a hundred light years away. The Arcadia was at once on the cusp of total victory and complete failure, having made it all the way to the heart of the enemy’s power but with no way to tell the Constellation what they had discovered. If tomorrow’s attack was unsuccessful, it would be a long time before anyone found this place again. Would the Maulers grind civilisation into oblivion before then?

  All through their planning session, the status monitors had him told him of the damage that his ship had taken, of the fighters and crew he had lost buying that extra time. What it could not tell him were the things that worried him even more, the fractures of instability that ran throughout the ship. His CAG who had run aground in unfamiliar territory, his seer verged on mutinous, and his crew’s hearts were divided over who they thought could lead them to victory. In truth, the ship’s confidence in all leadership, be it Tarek’s foresight or Pierman’s conventional authority, had been shaken by the Exodites’ sudden attack and the lives it had claimed.

  “I believe you’re in my seat,” a voice said, but with mirth rather than severity.

  Pierman looked up. He was in the officers’ lounge and couldn’t quite recall the journey he’d taken to get there. Presently assuming the seat opposite him was CAG Jenson.

  “
Rough session,” Jenson said, passing over a glass of water with a slice of lime.

  “If you have some time, I wouldn’t mind talking it through with you. My stand-in command staff are… well they mean well.”

  “I’m guessing this discussion is to be based on a fair bit of Tarek foresight?”

  “We’ve done a fair bit of probe recon to confirm his statements.”

  Jenson looked at him for a while and then barked a short laugh. “You almost had me, you haven’t done a scrap of recon, have you?”

  Pierman smiled thinly. “Let’s call it a believable fiction then. Certainly, we have a fair idea of the enemy forces arrayed against us, since we fought most of them yesterday.”

  “A fair point. Alright, lay it out.”

  For the next hour, they talked through the strategies that the others had come up with, the CAG offering some small suggestions or pointing out oversights. For the better part, Jenson appeared to be remarkably supportive of the plan, and it did a lot to make the Captain more comfortable about their chances of success.

  “It seems to me that this is all pretty solid,” Jenson finally said. “I’m guessing there’s more bothering you than just the mission and the people you have to implement it.”

  “I have some other concerns,” Pierman admitted. “But I’ve been keeping them to myself.”

  “Perhaps it’s time you let them see the light. I’m not sure there’ll be much time for doubts and hesitation tomorrow.”

  The Captain sighed and turned his gaze out the window. In the distance, they could see two of the Exodite bombers going through training manoeuvres. Those bombers were perhaps the weakest point in the tomorrow’s engagement. One would be piloted by Exodites who, for now at least, remained loyal to the Constellation. The other was being flown by Walters and a bunch of support pilots who were apparently going to become combat ready in a single day.