Threshold of Victory

by Stephen J. Orion

  “And you look like you were working with the enemy.” Rease maintained as stern a tone as she could, aware that the pistol felt heavy in her hands and she couldn’t quite wipe the corners of a smile from her lips. God knows what he would think if she started giggling at him over the barrel of a weapon.

  “Presumably up to the point where I shot him, you mean?”

  “That just means nobody can trust you,”

  “And they probably can’t,” Twos agreed. “But I’m not like you. I can’t do what you do. Trust me, if I thought I could blaze my way in here and whisk you away to safety I would have. Those three arcoms back there, they’d have killed me dead.”

  “So this is, what, a rescue?”

  Twos made an open-handed gesture. “Such as it is.”

  “And you expect me to believe that you had no prior connection to…” she almost said ‘commander got-shot-in-the-face’ but aborted at the last minute and tried to make it seem like she’d left an intentional pause.

  “Not specifically. I… traded for a reassignment with a black coat a year ago. His price was that if one of his ‘friends’ ever needed help, I’d return the favour. There are beacon codes to identify themselves, markings, secret handshakes, all that.” He glanced over at the corpse. “Obviously, he left out the part about his friends running the Mauler factory.”

  “That’s a lot for me to take on faith.”

  “Maybe what I did and who I did it for isn’t so important right now,” Twos suggested. “Even if you assume the worst, you have to know I’m not fool enough to take you on man-to-man. My plan was for you to take the arcom and walk out of here with me riding in a knapsack, not a lot of room for me to take you down at that point.”

  Rease wanted to challenge him further, but the drugs were sapping her wherewithal, and the weight of the pistol becoming unmanageable. If he was a traitor, then a show of weakness would be more dangerous than a moment of misguided trust.

  “We’ll use your plan for now,” she agreed. “But I want that folder.”

  “Ah,” Twos said, making no move to give it to her. “There might be a problem with that. You see my name is in this, and if you give it to the Captain, as I imagine you intend, he’s gonna have me shot.”

  “It breaks down like this,” Rease said as sternly as she could manage. “You give me the folder, I’ll read it before I hand it over, and if you’re no worse than you claim, I’ll give you any pages including your name. Or…” She adjusted her aim just enough to remind him that she had it pointed at his head. “…you don’t have to wait for the Captain, and we can wrap this up right now.”

  “I did come to rescue you, you know?” Twos said placing the folder on the ground and sliding it over to her. “Remember that.”

  “Sure, and if it checks out, I’ll ask them to give you a medal.” She finally, gratefully, lowered her sidearm. “Now go unlimber the rucksack and stow yourself.”

  ****

  Outpost Origin

  Inimicus, Unknown System

  30 April 2315

  Twos’ deception proved sufficient to pass the three Exodite arcom’s guarding the main passageway. Rease struggled with the concept of leaving so dangerous an enemy behind her, but she had to admit that she was in no condition to fight. Just moving through the base was hard enough as her sense of balance was off-kilter and she kept adjusting for slopes that only existed in her head.

  Unexpectedly she ran into her Task Force Vendetta half way to the command centre.

  “Twos, where the hell have you been?” Dryden demanded as soon as he saw her.

  “Actually, it’s Rease,” she responded. “I’ve got Twos in my sack.” She took her finger off the transmit button as another snicker threatened to escape. Twos in my sack, hilarious.

  “I knew you’d make it back!” one of the other arcom pilots whooped.

  Forcing herself to be serious again Rease reached out for the transmitter. “Only just. I thought you’d all be through the gate by now?”

  It was Felton who answered. “Gate’s been cut off, we were heading for the submarine hangar.”

  “I may have sorta… destroyed all of their transports. What happened to the gate room?”

  “Nothing. Problem is the Olympian came in upstairs and burned down the orbital gate. Last word she was giving the Arcadia a pounding.”

  Rease took a moment to digest that. “the Olympian is working with the Exodites?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Great, that’s our way out,”

  “There’s no gate on the Olympian.”

  “Really, then how did they get here?”

  Felton, sitting in the open-topped transport the marines had commandeered, began shuffling through the papers he was carrying. “There’s nothing on the main system about it, nothing in the code books.”

  Rease reached into the gap next to her own seat and pulled out the black folder. With one hand she flipped it open and right there, on the first page, was the gate code for the CNS Olympian.

  The arcom pilot smiled. “Turns out it’s in mine, Lieutenant. Let’s go see how much we can surprise them.”

  ****

  High Orbit

  Inimicus, Unknown System

  30 April 2315

  For the Arcadia’s air wing, the battle against the Blood Iron was the fight of their lives, and Tarek was no exception. Shortly into the fight, he’d implemented a regime of rapid plan changes, giving out orders or taking actions that would significantly alter the future every time the deck was ripped from his mental grasp.

  It was disorientating to the point of uselessness, the constant switches meant he never held a card long enough for it to make a difference, but that wasn’t the point. The purpose was that so long as he kept the future in motion, the advantage was denied to both sides.

  But that still left the Undying facing an elite squadron while the Olympian blasted their carrier out from under them, and Tarek had no idea what to do about it. Indeed, shortly after he’d started making a nuisance of himself with the cards, he’d attracted the attention of the Blood Iron’s acting leader, Peril.

  She had the dual honours of being the one of two Blood Iron pilots he’d met in the flesh, and the only one to have held a gun to his head. Somehow the experience in a dogfight felt very similar to the latter, and he fought a desperate defensive action to stay out of her sights. Past a certain point, every pilot had to rely on their enemy making a mistake that they could capitalise on, but Peril’s flying was so flawless that, for a time, Tarek thought she might have actually been the other seer.

  But she wasn’t, and that changed the dynamic significantly.

  “Candice,” Tarek called her by her first name over the comm as he pulled a hard turn as close as he dared to the tracer fire of another Blood Iron pilot in a completely separate engagement, “why are you a party to this? I know you and your squadron have lost friends to the Maulers.”

  “We’re not protecting the Maulers,” she countered, matching his turn around the deadly stream of rounds and staying tight on him. “We’re protecting the Constellation.”

  “Like hell. You have to kill this many people to cover something up. You can’t pretend it’s in the public’s interest.”

  “You know nothing of the public’s needs,” Peril snapped back, sending Tarek diving towards the planet with a burst of cannon fire. “The only reason you’re even trying to convince me is because your own life is at risk. You have the greatest power in the galaxy, and you use it to lash out at the thing you’re most afraid of minute-to-minute.”

  “If that were true, I’d have destroyed you already.”

  “Hah, as though you haven’t tried. You’re welcome to keep at it. Without your power you’re just another wannabe.”

  “Am I? Then why are you leading the Blood Iron instead of Cormento? I don’t know what excuse he gave, but we both know his precious seer told him that, if he faced me, I’d kill him. He sent you in his place, not because he trusts you, bu
t because you’re expendable. It’s the public need, Candice; just another word for greater good.”

  Peril went silent, and Tarek was struck by the sudden and frightening realisation that it was not quiet contemplation, but rather frozen rage. She didn’t come at him any harder, she didn’t lash out or make mistakes, she just continued press him, to wait for her moment.

  And he had no doubt that she would kill him as soon as he gave her the chance.

  Chapter XV

  The ship that won the war

  Constellation Carrier CNS Olympian

  High Orbit

  Inimicus, Unknown System

  30 April 2315

  The majority of the crew in the gate room of the Olympian, fled the moment Rease’s arcoms surged through the portal, and for the better part her men let them go. It was dangerous to allow the enemy to regroup but she could understand their hesitation.

  A few quick advances, and Taskforce Vendetta had secured a buffer of rooms and corridors around the gate. This sojourn had been enough to determine they’d arrived just behind the Olympian’s hangar deck, separated by a heavy blast door which Rease’s people we already working on opening.

  “Okay, so we’re not on the planet anymore,” Felton said as Rease climbed down from her arcom. “Now we steal a shuttle and head back to the Arcadia, yes?”

  “Just so they can kill us there?” Rease said with less patience than she’d meant. “We came here to finish this, and we’re going to finish it. We’re destroying this carrier.”

  “I take your point, but that’s a hell of a long shot. The ship’s full of redundant systems. At best, we could make ourselves a nuisance, but they’d run us to ground long before we hit anything useful.”

  “Oh we’ve already hit something useful.” Rease jerked her thumb back at the gate. “Remember what happened to that Mauler destroyer back at Bryson?”

  It hadn’t been the destroyer that had given her the idea. True, it was a good example, but the image that was etched indelibly in her mind was Hollands, whose arcom had been mostly vaporised just metres away from her.

  “I’m pretty sure that when it projects a gate, it doesn’t project it through the ship,” Felton pointed out.

  “Doesn’t isn’t the same as can’t, Lieutenant,”

  “Alright, how do we change it?”

  “No idea, but I know someone who does know.” She drew her pistol and checked the clip. “While the arcoms raise hell out on the hangar deck, your men and I are going arrange a prison break.”

  “Not so fast, Chief,” Felton held up a warning hand. “You’re in no condition for a gun fight. I think you’re going to stay here, with my medic.”

  “It’s my plan. I’ll share the risk.”

  “I think you’ve given more than enough today.” Felton put a hand on the top of her pistol, not with any real weight but her muscles collapsed under the added pressure. His smile was understanding. “We’re with you, Luperca. We’ll take it from here.”

  Rease took two steps back and all but collapsed into a sitting position on the foot of Twos’ arcom. It was all Tarek’s fault. He’d created these cracks in her armour. He’d exposed the weakness that had almost disarmed her back on Inimicus, and now Felton had taken the wind right out of her.

  But as much as it clashed with everything she wanted to be, her soul cried out in agreement. The unthinking instinct to throw herself into the heart of danger every time, had cost her so much today that she was rebelling against it and threatening to lose all self-control. The thought of needing rescue enraged her, and since Cadence, she had convinced herself she would never need it again. She hadn’t needed a saviour on Box Grid, either time. She’d have made it out, she always did.

  And she didn’t need rescue now, not from Felton, not from Twos, and definitely not from Tarek.

  Yet somehow, she wanted one. It was the one thing the universe owed her after the anguish she’d been forced to endure. She didn’t need them, any of them, but she was tired of proving it, and now she just wanted the universe to make good on a three-year-old debt.

  She looked up at Felton and opened her mouth to speak, but she had no words for the panoply of pain and emotion that rose and fell against the background euphoria of hydrocodone.

  And he didn’t need any words from her. He didn’t need guidance or motivation or reassurance. He simply shared the plan, organised the defence and raiding parties, and even had Specialist Herrera look into isolating the gate computers. He worked with a competence bereft of the trappings of greatness, and though she’d have done it all much better, she didn’t and, more to the point, she didn’t have too.

  ****

  The battle had become an exhausting endeavour for Vice Admiral Kerdana. She was not used to this kind of difficulty, for in her mind, she carried a perfect sphere of frozen water into which all manner of futures could make themselves present. Those images had guided her from an aspirant officer to one of the most powerful figures in the Constellation. With those images no ship, or battlegroup, or political lobby she led had ever lost a battle.

  And they would not lose this one either, of that she was certain. The Arcadia was too badly damaged, her munitions expended, and her fighter wing too inexperienced to face her elite Blood Iron pilots. Any academy graduate could have won such a battle without needing the power to see the future.

  But for Kerdana, winning the battle was not enough. The temporary absence of the Olympian from her battlegroup, the last-minute assignments of hundreds of crew and half her air wing, could all be explained away easily enough. A billion-dollar structural repair bill, however, was not so easily covered up. People would want to know what her ship had fought and why it had been equipped with Constellation particle lances.

  So the Vice Admiral was compelled to use her powers, or at least to attempt to. Every future she summoned forth was shattered into icy fragments by Cormento’s rogue seer. Each order she gave was inevitably followed by an adjustment, and then another, until she felt her control over the crew slipping as they began to resent her micromanagement and even whisper about her mental stability.

  “Admiral,” the officer who stepped onto the command stage in the CIC was ill-timed.

  “What?” Kerdana snapped, only half listening as she rubbed her temples, in her yet mind another icy sphere had shattered thanks to Tarek’s meddling. The shards resounded off the sides of her mind as they deflected loudly throughout a place that was supposed to be silent.

  “We’ve been boarded, via the gate. The intruders are well armed and moving quickly through the ship. We’ve been unable to determine a specific target yet. Another force is—”

  The Admiral cut him off with a pinching gesture.

  The new future she’d just put together told her that this insurgency was irrelevant, it wouldn’t have taken her long to scan forwards and identify their target, but she needed to spend her time elsewhere. All that mattered was that this taskforce hadn’t been sent by Tarek, and whatever they meant to do, it posed no immediate threat to the ship.

  Kerdana looked up at the leader of the Olympian’s marine detachment.

  “Apologies Commander, but I’m dealing with a few more pressing concerns than a small boarding party,” she gestured at the image of the Arcadia on her screens as the Olympian shook with another particle lance hit. “I trust your judgement in this matter. Take whatever measures you deem necessary to locate and destroy these intruders, provided it does not disrupt the combat posture of this ship.”

  The marine officer nodded. “Yes sir.”

  He was about to walk away when the Admiral suddenly flinched as there was a loud bang and a shattering cascade of ice that only she could hear. The man opened his mouth to say something but Kerdana silenced him with a look and gestured for him to go away.

  Then she returned to the Sisyphean task of reassembling her crystal ball.

  ****

  High Orbit

  Inimicus, Unknown System

  30 April 2315<
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  Phillips feared the Blood Iron, perhaps more than any of the Undying. To others they were an elite squadron, legendary even, but to him they were the unreachable standard against which his father had held him from the moment of his birth. In the Colonel’s eyes, there were only two types of pilots, those in his squadron and those who weren’t trying hard enough.

  With that image in his mind, Phillips had expected the battle to be over before it began. The Blood Iron should have cut them down like so much wheat before the scythe. Yet they hadn’t, they’d thrown everything they had at the Undying, and somehow, the squadron was holding, and not just holding but outperforming the Cold Sabres.

  Ironically it wasn’t a new trick. In fact, they were doing what they were best at, what they had been chastised for by everyone from the CAG to arc jocks – they were flying in tight support positions and watching each other’s backs to the exclusion of all else. He, Softball and the other veterans were covering the gaps exposed by the newer members, and though they’d only taken down a single member of the Blood Iron, they’d also only lost one ship, and that had been Candlelight who had survived the engagement to return as Paveway’s pilot.

  The Blood Iron had chosen the wrong fight. In any other engagement, against any other squadron, they might have won, but the Undying were the perfect shield against their perfect spear, and the two could resist each other almost indefinitely.

  As he zigzagged through the fight, disrupting the attacks runs of Blood Iron pilots, Phillips couldn’t keep the smile off his face. If his father could see him now.

  ****

  CNS Olympian

  High Orbit

  Inimicus, Unknown System

  30 April 2315

  The grenade detonated with a deep resonant thump, followed by a scream of metal fragments shredding up the walls. It was over as soon as it happened, and then Felton was following his point man into the smoke clouded room.