Threshold of Victory

by Stephen J. Orion

  “Where did the Exodites get the infrastructure to build this Mauler fleet?” Pierman finally asked. “There’s an assembly here yes, but they’d need factories, mines, chemical plants. This planet should be covered in cities, not just a single underwater base.”

  “To be fair,” said Jenson, “the Maulers have never fielded that large a fleet, it’s just that the Constellation is spread thin trying to cover every system, while the Maulers can hit in force where they choose.”

  “I’ll grant you that, but ship building requires a lot of different supporting industries, that only scales down so much.”

  “Could they not be building this stuff on Solace and gating it in?”

  “I thought of that, but I’ve seen 1st Fleet’s reconnaissance reports from the original contact missions, and that just bothered me more. The 1st were most thorough and based on their reports it would have taken the Exodites years to build a single Mauler battle group. There was also nothing at all about the gate technology in there, nothing to suggest they were even looking into it.”

  “Where are you going with this?”

  Pierman pulled out his data slate and placed it on the table, bringing up an article with a few quick taps of his fingertip. The headline read: ‘Senator Cooper demands inquest – cites expenditure on Constellation Navy’s new assets at double the cost of delivered ships’.

  Jenson frowned and skimmed the article. “This was written a while ago, what did the inquest find?”

  “It never happened. Cooper was killed in the Mauler raid on Cadence, and there was no more talk of it.”

  The CAG leaned back in his chair. “Let me be honest with you, Captain. You might be right, this might all be some great conspiracy, but you’ve just put down a mutiny. You wouldn’t be human if you weren’t in a suspicious frame of mind.

  “Let’s not forget who gave us our mandate. The Council wants the Maulers stopped, that’s fact. Anyone who doesn’t share that view will be dealt with when, and if, they turn up.”

  “You’re right of course,” said Pierman. “I’m just beginning to think there might be a reason that the Navy has had so much trouble finding the Mauler home world.”

  He tapped the pad again and it cut to another image.

  It was the title page for a reconnaissance report from the first contact missions to the Exodites. It was marked ‘Eyes Only’ and sent directly to Councillor Octavius Cormento rather than being submitted to the normal command chain. Jenson tried to flick to the next page, but the body of the document had been deleted from the intel database.

  The front page, however, indicated the author of the report was Colonel Malabeth Kerdana, the same Malabeth Kerdana who was now the Vice Admiral leading Battlegroup Olympian.

  ****

  Tarek had asked Rease to meet him in the baffles. It was an unexpected invitation coming from him. The baffles were the sort of place you went to do something illicit or to murder somebody, neither of which seemed a likely reason for the request. Combined with his last clever idea, the one that ended with her breaking a musical instrument across the side of his head, Rease wasn’t sure she wanted to attend.

  But as much as Tarek frustrated her, as much as she resented the parts of him that fascinated and unsettled her, she was curious. She went, and as open-minded as she’d been about what he might have intended, he still managed to throw her a complete curve ball.

  “Tiny arcoms and Maulers,” Rease observed, “in bits.”

  “Yep,” Tarek said from where he stood on the other side of the makeshift table. “We assemble them and paint them.”

  Rease nodded twice. “Why?”

  “Well there’s this tabletop war game I guess, but I’m not really into it. Mostly the act is therapeutic, calming. You have to be deft, precise. You can’t rush it.”

  “No, I mean why am I here? There are more traditional, dare I say more effective, ways to impress a girl.”

  Tarek shrugged. “I gave you a flute because it was something I thought you’d like. It… well you know how that went. So now I’m going to share something I like and see if it sticks.”

  “You’re going to woo me with little plastic robots.” Rease picked up the head of an arcom and held it between thumb and forefinger, allowing herself to admit that it was surprisingly accurate.

  “Not everyone on this ship is trying to win your affection, Rease. I don’t care what you think of me. What I want is for you to have a good time. Smile, laugh a little.”

  “Well I’m certainly laughing,” Rease offered sardonically.

  “Oh, you’ve seen nothing yet; check this out.” He grabbed a box off the table and held it out to her.

  And Rease did laugh.

  The brightly coloured box featured a special edition model; a familiar wolf stylised machine; and a tagline promising: ‘Lieutenant Kyra Rease, ace of the 10th Arcom, hero of White Picket’.

  “Alright, you’ve got my attention,” Rease admitted, snatching the box out of his hand. “But I’m painting this one.”

  “And who am I to refuse the ace of the 10th Arcom, the hero of White Picket.”

  They both sat down, and for some time, they discussed only the processes and techniques of the models. They debated over what poses the figures should be assembled in, what colours they should be painted, and the best way to mix the shades. They worked together to pose the wolf arcom with its knee delivering the famous groin shattering blow against a Mauler. As promised, Rease painted her namesake’s model which left Tarek to provide the victim and some bits of scenery. When they were finished, they set the tiny diorama atop one of the boxes to catch the light and leaned back to admire their work.

  “You’re pretty good at this,” Tarek said.

  “I’m good at everything,” she said. “But you did okay too. Using the legendary Tarek future knowledge to outsmart the paint no doubt.”

  “Nope, this is years of skill honed to perfection.”

  “Honed to ‘only okay’,” Rease teased. “Better stick to the flying thing.”

  “Alright that’s quite enough bullying for one day thank you.” Tarek checked his watch. “Same time two days from now?”

  “No,” Rease said firmly. “No plans. Too easy for someone to… not show up.”

  “Fair enough, we’ll live in the moment. Let me ask you a different question then: would you like to do this again?”

  “Yeah, it was more fun than I expected,” she admitted and turned to leave before turning back just as quickly. “Actually no, we shouldn’t do this again.”

  “Okay…” Tarek drew the word out. “A reaction like that probably needs a ‘because’ after it.”

  “Don’t push it, Tarek”

  “Then don’t throw my generosity in my face.”

  Rease opened her mouth to snap a retort, but then closed it again and took a deep breath.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.” Look, I’m happy to get together and do normal things with you, just not this.”

  “Why? This is the first thing I’ve ever seen you do socially that you actually had some heart for.”

  “You seem to have this personal quest to dig out the real me, but you’re a pilot, so there’s some things you don’t know, reasons army personnel keep their relationships shallow.” She picked up their model and held it with the Mauler facing its bellowing mug at Tarek. “Do you know what a Mauler is, if you stop to really look at it?”

  “A monster?”

  “A child,” Rease said. “They go berserk when they see us, but when they don’t, when you move among them undetected… they’re children. The world is a big mystery to them, and they puzzle it out through exploration and play.” The Lieutenant pivoted the model so the arcom faced Tarek. “And the people who kill Maulers, stripped of the heroism and glory? They are the worst kind of killers. The kind who can come face-to-face with innocence, snuff it out with barely a thought, and feel only the satisfaction of being the better predator. That is who pilots the arcom, Andrew. Don’t try too
hard to meet her.”

  “I know,” Tarek said quickly, slipping it in before she could leave, before he lost his nerve. “I…. caught up with Desla and…” He absently rubbed his thumb against a spot of dried paint on his forearm. “I saw what I was capable of, when free of conscience.”

  “That’s fine,” Rease said. “Desla was a bastard.”

  “Yeah he was, but I was never meant to be. You were never meant to be. This place, this brutal circumstance, it makes us recraft ourselves just to survive it. I mean, young Kyra, before the Maulers, wasn’t murderous, was she? She didn’t pull the wings of butterflies or drown puppies?”

  Rease was surprised to find she struggled to meet his eyes. There was too much there that was familiar. The air had become heavy, and she wanted to run, but not nearly as much as she wanted to stay.

  “No,” she finally admitted, throwing the word out like a piece of hot metal.

  “Kyra, look…” Tarek took a deep breath. “I know you’ve accused me a couple of times of trying to win your heart, and that’s light years from the truth. Despite that, I do love you. I love you like I loved the stars as a child; distant and beautiful, radiant and outrageously powerful. But for all that, they’re so far from everything that they can’t possibly remember their way home.”

  He smiled a twisted smile. “I actually asked my mother that once, when I was three or four, I said, ‘if we map by the stars, what do they use to navigate’.”

  “They don’t,” Rease answered coldly, she wasn’t sure if it was her own answer or one of the ghosts or something in-between. The words were bitter they continued to spill out despite her efforts to clamp her lips shut. “They’re just hurtling through space until they collapse or explode.”

  “Maybe.” Tarek picked up one of the painting guides and flipped it open to a short article on Rease’s real world career, her fresh-faced self staring out from a photo of new recruits at the top. “Or maybe they weren’t always murderers, maybe they drank deeply from the cup of war, so others didn’t have to. Maybe when the cup is finally empty, they can change again and become something new.

  “Maybe they can find their way home if we stop trying to possess them, use them, and covet their glory. Maybe they just need someone to reach out an honest hand.”

  Rease said nothing.

  For what could have been hours her mask never cracked, but her pulse raced in her throat, and her silence betrayed layers of uncertainty. She swallowed.

  “Good night, Andrew,” she said finally. “Good luck tomorrow.”

  ****

  By the time Rease returned to her berths, she discovered the package she’d received via inter-ship mail had been delivered to her room. Ordinarily she’d have had to pick it up, but apparently damage to the environmental system had forced them to clear out the mail room.

  Expecting something from Tarek, the arcom pilot almost didn’t open it, but then her eye caught the name of the sender: Kelly Smart. It was sent during the mail day, just before the Exodite mutiny. Probably among the last things she had done.

  Kelly was difficult for Rease. She was a ghost but not a ghost, lost but somehow still present. Visiting her had been viscerally painful and beautiful and everything in-between.

  And now the half-blood ghost has sent a letter from the past.

  Tearing open the package Rease upended it onto the bed. A flute, bent in half in a moment of anger, thumped heavily onto the blankets, followed by the gentler descent of a square of paper.

  It read, in Kelly’s kind but challenging tone: ‘You still have not apologised.’

  Chapter XIII

  Were I flying among you

  Constellation Carrier CNS Arcadia

  2nd Moon of Inimicus, Unknown System

  29 April 2315

  “You need to go see Kelly.”

  It was the first thing Phillips said when Tarek saw him up and about. The doctors had upgraded the Lieutenant Commander’s flight-readiness assessment from ‘definitely not’ to ‘risky’. Given the desperate need for skilled pilots, the acting CAG had signed off on his subsequent release.

  “No, I don’t,” Tarek said, continuing on his way to engineering. “Nothing I can do will help her.”

  Except for the small amounts of personal time he allowed himself, Tarek was using his power to its best effect. He travelled the ship giving the crew small prophecies that would make just a little difference in the next battle. In aggregate, those small differences would give the Constellation a significant edge.

  “You can be there,” Phillips said, easily keeping step with him.

  “People always say that,” Tarek said. “Yes, I can physically be present and unable to save her. Or I can physically be here, doing my job, and be just as unable to save her. What the hell difference does it make?”

  “It’s not about saving her. It’s about giving her the one thing the living can give the dead.”

  “Passive observance?” Tarek shot back. How dare this man, who betrayed and murdered his squadron, deign to give him advice.

  “The ability to affect life after death. To know you remember them, to know that someone in the world will make decisions, make change, because they existed.”

  “You will excuse me if I don’t take the word of an immortal on notions of impending death.”

  The squadron leader grabbed Tarek by the shoulder and pulled the man around, checking his step and bringing them face to face.

  “I volunteered to serve and face ‘impending death’ same as you, you smug prick. Look into my eyes,” he said coldly. “Do not mistake my swift recovery for an indication of minor injuries. When the mutiny broke out, I had no sixth sense to protect me, and what Desla started, you almost finished. I have been to the brink and come back. I know what she’s facing. I know that the one person on this ship she most wants to see is the one person who has not yet taken even five minutes to see her. If I can’t hide from my failures, then neither can you!”

  Phillips shoved him off and stalked down the corridor.

  ****

  “I can’t believe I’m saying this,” Jackson said as he stepped down off the heavy bomber. “But I wish Tarek was with us. I mean can you believe we’re doing this?”

  Walters climbed out of the craft behind him and said nothing. Reed was waiting for them on the deck with a couple of bottles of water, and she took up the slack.

  “I think you boys did just fine.”

  “Easy for you to say with your fancy Undying squadron patch. You get a fighter, you know, for fighting in. These bombers are like heavy lifters that are even more likely to be a target.”

  “You couldn’t fly a fighter, Jackson,” Reed quipped. “You fly like an old man.”

  “And you fly like a maniac,” he countered. “I thought you were some gentle lovely creature when you came into my home, but then you tried to ram a Mauler with it. With my home Abby, that’s not nice.”

  The conversation broke off while Walters and Jackson completed their post-flight checks and debrief with the Exodites who had taken them through the training exercise. Those surviving Exodites were from a number of different strike craft, but they had just enough people to form a complete crew for a single bomber. Since the mutiny, they were even more isolationist, and as soon as the briefing was over, they moved away in a cluster.

  “I don’t trust them,” Reed said with a frown as they walked away. “Anyone who’d go against their own can’t be counted on.”

  “Wait…” Jackson held up a hand. “…you’re saying you’d rather they had rebelled?”

  “At least that would have been honest, no telling what they’ll do next.”

  “Secure that attitude, pilot,” Walters rumbled. “They’ve proven where their loyalties lie. It isn’t your place to doubt them.”

  “Ought to be somebody’s,” she muttered under her breath.

  “Why are you here, Reed?”

  She shrugged. “Just looking for some company, LT. The Undying you said I was get
ting put into, well, they aren’t a thing anymore. Disbanded due to losses.”

  “So where will you be?” Jackson asked.

  “I dunno, I guess we’ll be replacing pilots for the Cold Sabres, make one big happy squadron.”

  “Seems like a bad omen to me.”

  “Lot of those at the moment. I mean tomorrow they’re going to throw everything they’ve got at us, and we have, what, a carrier that’s barely holding together, and an air wing that’s half made up of people the brass didn’t want in the air wing.”

  “Carriers got plenty of fight left in her,” Jackson protested. “And so do we.”

  “We got hit worse than they’re saying. You can’t get to the stores on the portside bow because the cross corridor is breached. Can’t get to the one on the starboard bow ’cause it’s not even there anymore, just a big hole into space.”

  “Maybe they’re going to put in a pool?” Jackson suggested.

  “Tomorrow we’re are going to win,” Walters said. “No omen will convince you of that. Self-belief only comes from one place.”

  “I know,” Reed kicked a loose screw across the deck. “But I’m not so good at the waiting part. Brave is easy when things get loud, but this is killing me. I just want to get out there and finish it so we can go home.”

  “I’m sure I can find something to keep you occupied,” Jackson said holding his hands up. “Something about this long and this thick.”

  “Wow, with lines like that it’s hard to believe you’re still single,” Reed said. She stooped and retrieving the screw she’d kicked. “I tell you what, if you promise never to mention your junk again, I’ll buy us all a drink.”

  “My first favourite thing offering to buy me my second favourite thing, how could I refuse?”

  ****

  Meeting Kelly was every bit as brutal as Tarek had feared it would be. She was smaller than he’d remembered, reduced by her injuries, not just in stature, but in spirit. Her quirky wisdom, honest smile, and challenging questions had been subsumed beneath the driving effort to survive and the anger, sorrow, and fear that came with the realisation that you were slipping.