Threshold of Victory

by Stephen J. Orion

  “All pods report final pressure green. Navigation plan upload is complete and launch tubes are open. Stand by for deployment.”

  The arcoms were loaded into what the engineers called Single Deployment Entry Rockets. Obviously the military were as obsessed with acronyms as engineers were with dry, unwieldy titles so the field name was SinDER – an all too real reminder of what they’d be if the oft-mentioned pressure seals failed on atmospheric entry.

  The good news was they wouldn’t be entering the atmosphere today, not unless something went horribly wrong. Instead the Sinders would be used in their secondary configuration as boarding pods, conveying the eight remaining arcoms of Rease’s Pieces to the surface of the orbital gate. Three more pods would accompany them, each containing twelve marines from a platoon under one Lieutenant Felton. Privately Richter had described Felton as ‘the best of what’s left’ after the prize crew lost with Commander Lyle and the losses to the Exodite mutiny.

  “Launching.”

  That bland statement was all the warning Rease got before she was crushed into the padding of her chair by the first stage rocket. The Sinder leapt out of one of the Arcadia’s long-range missile tubes, and with a stomach wrenching lurch, it re-orientated itself towards its target and – a moment later – let the primary rocket off the leash.

  Everything rattled, from the arcoms main structural members to Rease’s bones and teeth. She tried to focus on the telemetry monitors around her, but they were waving back and forth like crazed weathervanes. She wanted to hold something to steady herself, but everything around her seemed possessed by its own free motion, so there was nothing to do but ride it out.

  And pilots do this by choice, Rease thought like she did every Sinder drop, they are absolutely crazy.

  ****

  The first guns are the hardest.

  That was the advice Phillips had given them during the pre-flight briefing, and it certainly rang true now. Softball was at his wit’s end trying to find a gap between the wall of flak the two destroyers could put up. Just a small window would allow him to get close enough to put one of his HEAT missiles into an enemy gun. One less gun would mean a larger window of attack and soon their edge would become insurmountable. If they could just get it.

  They were targeting one of the destroyers very specifically, using its bulk to shield their approach from the guns of the other ship. Unfortunately, this created quite a narrow range of approach, and it was with a certain grim satisfaction that Softball noticed even Eternal and Silver were struggling to make a decent impact.

  “Softball, abort, abort, abort!”

  The shout came from his wingman, Calibre, and he responded without thought, pulling hard on the stick and boosting the Snowhawk away from the looming surface of the destroyer. Only when he almost struck the hull despite his rapid withdrawal did he register what was happening.

  The destroyer, both destroyers, had flipped on their axis with surprising agility by using every engine at their disposal to do so. A moment later they went to full burn, their massive primary drives lighting up the sky as they killed their previous velocity and began to accelerate back towards the gate.

  “Looks like they just spotted the Sinders,” Edge guessed.

  ****

  The earthquake that had become Rease’s reality finally subsided into a series of smaller aftershocks as the Sinder apparently decided it was largely happy with its speed and direction. Either that or she’d become so used to the abuse that her body was filtering it out as white noise.

  Either way she was now able to watch her progress on the screens and process the battle unfolding around them. The fighter engagement was a scrappy blur of radar noise that she treated as one amorphous entity and otherwise ignored. What her attention lingered on were the two ugly blobs of the Mauler destroyers and the trail of specks harassing them.

  Those destroyers were far closer than they were supposed to be, and instead of shuffling off to protect the assembly they were closing rapidly on the insertion team. The Undying were scrambling over one of the destroyers trying to disarm them so the bombers could move in.

  The Undying.

  She wasn’t sure how she’d missed it in the planning sessions, but now it seemed her life had come full circle. The same squadron that had failed miserably to provide air support on Grimball were back for a repeat performance. She had done her best to recreate them out of the ashes of the Exodite attack, but nobody went from being a bunch of dainty rookies to hardened fighters.

  The destroyers continued to close in.

  ****

  Walters, and he still thought of himself as such, since he had nothing but disdain for the call sign ‘Big Guy’, put his hand on his thigh to stop his heel from tapping up and down on deck. Jackson, in the pilots’ couch on his right, looked over at him briefly but said nothing and turned his eyes back to the fight ahead.

  The destroyers were like flowers with petals of fire and steel, wreathing themselves with a seemingly impenetrable wall of explosions and tracer fire. It would have been beautiful, but even viewed from well back it seemed threatening, perilous.

  Walters knew what the situation called for – he’d been there for the Undying’s speech after all – but somehow he couldn’t quite bring himself to do it. Heroism was not in his blood, that was why he was in the support arm where his well-established survival instinct would help protect a valuable asset. He had a nose for dangerous situations and an instinct for staying out of them.

  But he knew what the situation called for.

  He’d heard Rease once referred to as the ‘Air Droppable Shit-Storm’ and he believed that was as much a reference to her effect on lives, as it was her battlefield prowess. She passed through like a rioting mob, shifting things, destroying some things and leaving others behind, until somehow the only way to frame what was left of your world was with a different perspective.

  He knew what the situation called for.

  His leg stopped its shaking and he thumbed the channel for the other bomber, “Paveway One-One, this is Paveway One-Two. We need to make our move.”

  Paveway was the new call sign for the bombers since Embassy would forever be associated with the mutiny.

  “Still too many guns, Two. We would have to close to point blank before engaging or the nukes would be destroyed, at that distance…”

  “Copy lead, we’ll close before firing,” Walters killed the channel.

  “Oh hell,” Jackson said looking at him in disbelief.

  Walters nodded and with a great show of defeat the pilot set the bomber accelerating out of formation.

  He touched the comm panel again, this time on the broader channel. “Eternal, this is Paveway One-Two, we’re making our run now.”

  “Negative, Paveway,” Eternal Wraith’s response was immediate. “We need more time to clear your approach.”

  “We have another bomber,” Walters said slowly. “We have only one strike team.”

  There was a long pause and then. “Understood, Paveway. Bravo flight, form up and cut across the face of the bombers approach, decoys as you go. Alpha, get in tight around the bomber. Do whatever it takes.”

  ****

  Tarek knew what he had to do even before Bravo flight made their mad dash through the edge of the flak. Before they left a trail of brilliant glittering flares in their wake. Before Eternal Wraith took up a position right in front of the bomber.

  What their commander was asking was not wing flying or cover fire. He was asking for body shields, a wall of aircraft ready to die to protect their most important asset. For all the strength of their commitment before leaving, the Undying watched on in mute shock as their minds reached the same conclusion Tarek already had.

  No one else would make the move until he did. They were all watching him, waiting for his presence because if the seer joined the formation, it would mean it wasn’t a suicide run. For all that he couldn’t just throw himself into the formation because he was a seer and that meant he
could either put himself into the path of a shot, or make sure someone else did. There was nothing in between.

  Tarek had been a master of not caring, and he knew he was too valuable to throw his own life away. But Kelly was with him now, and she would never allow him to ostensibly join the force, to put himself in a position of utter safety so as to lull those who trusted him to fall into position around him. Tarek would never submit himself to the guarantee of death and Clumsy would never trick her comrades to theirs. He’d been trying to reconcile the two disparate positions since he’d seen this moment come up on the horizon.

  Rease, of course, had the answer, as she always did. She’d been doing it since long before he’d met her and she was doing it even now.

  Letting out a deep breath Tarek let go of the cards. Let go of the hand he’d perused for contingencies. Let go of the deck from which he drew it all. For the first time in a long time he stepped away from the overlapping realities of ‘will be’ and ‘is’ until all that remained was the stark present.

  And then he pulled his Snowhawk down onto Eternal’s wing, forming another plate in the armour across the face of the bomber.

  A moment later, Fury joined them, then Candlelight and Softball, Calibre, and Edge. Not just Alpha but both flights, pulling in too tight to manoeuvre, creating a wall against the flak and blasting out decoys in a rain of shooting stars. The destroyer rushed up at them, the sky exploding as the defence guns struggled to identify a meaningful target.

  The air rattled and scraped and screeched as abuse came in from all directions but the Undying held. A shell exploded right in front of them and had it been a fraction closer it would have killed them all, but the Undying held. Edge was caught by a round and his ship torn apart around him with a sobbing scream over the comm.

  But the Undying held.

  “Paveway, you are more than close enough, take your shot!” The voice of the Exodites in the other bomber pleaded.

  “Everyone clear out,” Big Guy instructed.

  Gratefully Tarek pulled away, letting off the last of his decoys to give the bomber a good screen for its own withdrawal. Seconds later the flash and flicker of the flak blasts were drowned out by a barrage of nuclear destruction.

  ‘Once you transcend the fear of death,’ Tarek’s ACM instructor had told him, ‘no one will ever hold anything over you again.’

  He felt free.

  ****

  Rease had a ground pounder’s understanding of air power. She knew what they could drop, and she knew how much steel and concrete you had to have between you and them if you wanted to survive it. As a result, she knew the nukes carried by the bombers today were smaller than the city killer devices that the capital ships typically lobbed at one another.

  Such a round was not a guaranteed kill, but a small bomber had the advantage of being able to deliver its payload to the precise spot it wanted. A good hit would knock out a few guns or disable the engines. A great hit would knock out the reactor and leave the ship powerless.

  Walter’s strike against the Mauler destroyer would go beyond all those to become legendary. It found a magazine, one with nuclear ordinance, and managed to throw enough angry neutrons around to start a party. What was left of the destroyer after that couldn’t have filled a thimble.

  Legendary shot or not, there were two destroyers.

  The last enemy warship was coming on fast, now visible on the Sinder’s external magnifiers. The Undying were reorganising for another strike, but the kind of courage it took to throw yourself between a friend and a bullet was difficult to repeat in quick succession. Even if they could find the nerve, it wouldn’t matter. There wasn’t time to take down the ship, its guns were already tracking to fire.

  Before it could, its side lit brilliantly with the ravenous energy of a particle lance. Then another, and another and more after that. The source of the attack wasn’t showing on Rease’s screens because it was also the source of the sensor data she was receiving, the Arcadia. Committed early and yet somehow perfectly on time.

  The destroyer’s big guns swivelled and began to lob colossal plasma rounds at the carrier, but it was coming up fast, faster than Rease even thought it could move. As a few lucky rounds detonated across its surface, the Constellation warship flipped end-for-end, its manoeuvring jets burning like refinery towers and its emergency evasion tanks all blowing out at once.

  The destroyer’s flak guns came into range of the Sinders. They flickered like distant stars as they opened fire, only to be obscured by the hurtling mass of the Arcadia, her primary engines now driving hell fire against the gravity of the planet. The slowing warship was a waterfall of metal and at its horizon Rease could see the cresting flames of the Maulers attacks but that was all.

  Almost as soon as it had arrived, the carrier passed beyond them, but it no longer mattered, the Sinders were completing their own nose-to-tail turns and decelerating with gut wrenching force. Now within metres of the primary gate there was no chance the enemy ship would risk attacking them directly. Its fighters, a lifetime away at the assembly, were the only threat, and they were being swept away by Odyssey and the rest of the rest of the Cold Sabres.

  As the relative velocity reading on Rease’s pod dropped below one metre per second, she heard the whoosh-thud of the magnetic grapples launching to get a hold of the gate’s hull. Four of the six made solid contact and that was more than enough, they reeled her pod in and held it fast to the surface.

  The primary gate had its main iris, still obstructed by the pair of nuclear mines, and hanging off one side was a manual control building. It was on this structure that Rease’s team had landed, or near enough in the case of a few that had caught on the main ring of the gate.

  “Task force Vendetta, sound off,” Rease called as she hit the key to blow away the hatch on the Sinder. Outside a stark starscape watched her coldly as she stepped out on to the hull of the gate, careful to ensure her arcom’s feet achieved magnetic lock.

  One by one the team came back reporting that all had come down successfully, more or less. Vickers’ pod had landed with something blocking the hatch but Dryden was on his way to help him out and seemed optimistic that they would be along shortly.

  Leaving them to it, Rease made her way to the external airlock of the manual control building. Tarek had assured them the airlock was not hardened against attack so she simply smashed one of her arcoms hands through the metal and yanked on it. The door came away like tinfoil, and she had to hold tight to the external hull to avoid being blown clear by the explosive decompression that followed.

  Along with the flood of air, debris, and unsecured equipment came the forms of several unfortunate Exodites who were blown away to a cold future as satellites of Inimicus. Rease levered her arcom into the hatch and swept her light across the manual control centre, spotting a trio of pressure suited Exodites who’d managed to find something to cling to. Two surrendered immediately, but one had a pistol and apparently thought to use it, the small calibre rounds pinging harmlessly off the wolf’s armour.

  Rease raised the arcom’s off hand. After the mutiny, she’d had her techs rig up an antipersonnel weapon on all her company’s arcoms. It was little more than an assault rifle welded to wrist with the biggest box magazine they could find, but it was more than sufficient for her purpose here. With a short burst, she left the would-be hero floating bonelessly away amid a spray of ruby droplets.

  The Lieutenant covered her two new prisoners until Felton’s marines arrived to detain them more permanently. With the area secure, the team set to work on the real prize, the smaller gate that the Exodites had used to get up from the planet. Certainly too small to bring through a ship, or even one of the bulky Scarabs, but perfect for an arcom.

  As the Exodites on Inimicus would soon find out.

  ****

  “Calibre, have you got anything left we can use on that heavy cannon?” Phillips asked as he brought the Sabrecat through another wingover turn and fired a spray of useless
chain gun rounds into the armoured hull of the Mauler destroyer.

  The Arcadia was taking a beating. Her dramatic intervention had saved their insertion team, but it had put the carrier deep into Inimicus’ gravity well. She couldn’t risk using any further gravity acceleration without incurring atmospheric friction that would negate any benefit. This limited her evasion options considerably when compared to the Mauler that could periodically dive towards the planet to build up speed, making for a much more elusive flight path.

  Even so, the hostile destroyer was taking her share of hits, large scars that glowed blue white with residual heat marked where the Constellation ship had clawed at it with her particle lances, but the Mauler was built for thrashing it out in exactly this sort of close combat engagement, and it could take a beating. By contrast, every hit against the Arcadia removed something the ship used, an atmospheric flight pod, the port side aviation fuel stores, the aft damage control tower and dozens of other smoking craters where Eternal couldn’t even identify the previous resident.

  “Sorry boss, I’m all out,” Calibre responded.

  “I’ve got some rockets,” Candlelight offered.

  “Worth a shot,” Phillips said pulling clear of the destroyer’s gun arc and then upending his fighter to point back towards it. “Form up on me, and I’ll cover you on the way in.”

  “I have an alternate suggestion,” the voice was from Paveway One-One, the Exodites. “If you can remove one of those aft flak guns, we’ll make a strike on the Maulers primary drives.”

  Phillips considered it for just a moment and then nodded. He’d been discounting the second bomber because they’d made it clear they weren’t going to take the same level of chances as Big Guy’s crew had. Given the fact the Arcadia was already engaged, it hadn’t seemed prudent to waste time on the small guns, so instead, the Undying had been using their heavy missiles and rockets to try and disable the Mauler’s primary artillery.