Threshold of Victory

by Stephen J. Orion

  Astrogation on the Arcadia had been able to determine their location and, by extension, a path home. Before their departure, the crew were conducting emergency repairs using equipment and parts salvaged from wreck of the Olympian and, where desperate, the Mauler destroyers. The repairs were ugly, but the chief engineer was optimistic it would be enough to get them back to friendly space.

  For good measure, the Captain had ordered the Warhorse to deorbit a nearby asteroid into the surface of Inimicus. While it was likely to have drastic ramifications for the planet’s ecosystem it would also ensure that the Mauler facility was rendered beyond repair.

  Tarek ghosted through the ship in the days that followed, feeling no small amount of guilt for how cleanly he’d come through it all. The ship, their home, was a ruin, and so many of them would carry permanent scars of this fight. Jackson had ended up losing a kidney and a dangerous amount of his liver for his duel with the Blood Iron; Lieutenant Collins from the Cold Sabres had lost a leg and would never fly again, and there were countless others who wouldn’t even be coming back.

  Others didn’t come back alone, but had found new demons to haunt them. Abagail Reed had turned in her flight status after being first shot down and then going out again in a bomber wet with the blood of its previous occupant. She wasn’t even the worst, there were crew who had night terrors so bad they to be medicated to sleep after almost being sucked out of the ship or witnessing other horrors in supposed safety of their home.

  Then there was Rease.

  She certainly didn’t have it worst, but to Tarek’s mind she deserved it least. After three rounds of skin grafts, she was still bandaged across her face and down her neck and shoulder. Permanent nerve damage had left her without feeling in her right hand, and the doctors suggested she would probably feel phantom pain in her arm for the rest of her life.

  All things considered, his last intervention didn’t seem like much of a rescue.

  As a seer, he knew when they’d finally let her out of medical, he also knew she’d sneak out a half day early because the Luperca did everything at her own pace. Tarek knew she’d come looking for the black folder he’d taken from her when she went into surgery, so he made his way to the observation post that had hosted so many deep and meaningful conversations what felt like a lifetime ago.

  The post was gone, annihilated by the gigawatt caress of a particle lance, and the corridor outside now went nowhere. It was as private a spot as any, so Tarek sat in the quiet hall with the folder beside him and waited. Inevitably Rease found him, wearing loose clothes over her bandages but otherwise refusing to show any concession to the injuries she’d suffered.

  “I sorta remember something about how you were supposed to give that to the Captain?” she pointed out, gesturing to the folder.

  “And good morning to you too, Lieutenant Rease,” Tarek said picking up the folder and standing. “Good to see you up and about.”

  “Tell me why you’re withholding vital information from the Captain first, and then I’ll decide how nice I feel like being.”

  Tarek smiled wanly. “Of course.” He handed her the folder. “Have you read it?”

  “Only the first page.” She took it and flipped it open. “I had a lot going on.”

  “It’s orders from the Council of Peers to start the Mauler project. There are directions of which planets to attack and when, justifications ranging from wide-spread dissidence to elimination of a specific individual disguised by collateral damage.”

  “And you kept this from the Captain?”

  “For now. If we show this to him, it will start a chain of actions inevitably leading to a civil war. If we don’t, it won’t.”

  “That’s not our decision to make.”

  Tarek sighed. “I wish that were true. I know exactly what will happen if I give this to the Captain, to anyone for that matter. Ultimately I’m one of only two people can make a choice.”

  “And I’m the other.”

  “It’s a small world.” Tarek gave another thin smile. “Believe me when I say that I want the architects of this to pay; these crimes are so unspeakable that I can barely comprehend letting them go unanswered.

  “But more than anything, I want you to have a chance to go home, Kyra. A chance to find out what that even means. No one has a right to ask more of you than you’ve given already.”

  “So you’re offering me a choice,” she said.

  “Yeah. It’s probably evident by now that I give shitty gifts.”

  Rease barked a short laugh despite herself, but she didn’t otherwise respond. Eventually she came to lean against the wall beside him and flipped absently through the pages of the folder. Tarek wanted to ask what she was thinking, wanted to speak just to fill the silence, but he was afraid to affect her decision.

  In a way, he already knew what she would do, not because he was a seer, but because he’d come to know her. He wanted to be wrong, and it seemed every second she spent deciding increased that chance, but he knew that every world listed in those attacks might as well be Cadence – he knew that one of them was Cadence. Tarek’s experience with the horror of these crimes was academic, but hers was intimate.

  “We fight,” she said finally, not a trace of doubt in her voice.

  Tarek looked at his feet. “You’re sure this is what you want?”

  “I hear what you’re saying, and I’m closer to caving than either of us would like to admit. I know you’re worried that I’m making this decision because its what’s expected of me, but I don’t think I could, not after what happened on Inimicus. I’m making this choice because, as much as the last years have changed us all…” She thought a moment, choosing her words carefully. “I know that the Kyra Rease who might have been would want to see this through as much as the Kyra Rease who took her place.”

  “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

  She smiled, and for perhaps the first time, it seemed an honest smile, not perfect and bold but as true in its joy as it was in its trepidation.

  “Don’t worry about me. We beat the Maulers. We can beat this. And after? After, I’m sure I’ll find my way to something worth calling home.”

  Tarek looked away, his heart hurt at the beauty of her, of the tiny hope that had found its way into the cracks to heal what had been broken too long. It wasn’t much, but Phillips had been right about one thing, a long way from anywhere all you really needed was a tall ship and a star to guide you.

  Without thinking, he took her hand and pressed it warmly, surprised when she didn’t pull away.

  “Travel by starlight, Luperca,” he said.

  Surprised and embarrassed when he realised, from her raised eyebrow, that he’d spoken aloud, he pushed off the wall and stepped past her to leave.

  But she didn’t release his hand.

  “Stay with the pack, Silver,” she said. And then, against all odds, she embraced him. “We’re faster together.”

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