Threshold of Victory

by Stephen J. Orion

  “Ground’s torn up past this building. Most of the structures are now rubble mounds,” Rease said. “I’ve got an enemy mortar team in a crater at two o’clock, about a dozen metres out. Further forward I spot two separate concentrations of Maulers using the wreckage for cover and exchanging fire with the strong point.”

  “Massing?”

  “Extending this flank, I’d say. There are small groups periodically crossing left to right under the cover of their front line.”

  “Sounds like we’re heading into a box, Chief.”

  “Yeah, I’ll take that up with the Major when we get there. Can I get you to grenade that mortar?”

  “I’d love to, LT.”

  Rease switched to her general command channel. She and Connor had taken a beeline route to get to the starport, going dot to dot via isolated units, breaking them out of pitched engagements to form a growing convoy. All up she’d pulled together five arcoms, three Hellhammer tanks and a handful of IFVs and troop trucks with assorted infantry on them. The biggest win had been supplies. She’d snatched up a number of ammo vehicles, a couple of medical trucks, and even a fuel tanker though that last one just seemed like a big incendiary bomb for hire.

  Rease gave her instructions quickly, she wasn’t terribly far ahead of the convoy, and stopping the line of vehicles would leave an exposed flank too long to effectively protect.

  “Everyone listen up,” she said. “We’re about to push for the strong point. Connor and I will lead the front with one other arcom, Ilmet that’s you. Dryden, I want you on rear guard with Hellhammer One, you’ll take my current position and stay here until the whole convoy’s passed. Macey, there’s one cross street between here and the port. When Connor and I pass it, you’ll take the other two battle tanks and hold that position. Again, you don’t move from that spot until the convoy’s passed, clear?”

  “We’re with you, Luperca,” Macey answered, her voice implying a little too much adrenalin for Rease’s taste.

  The Lieutenant stayed patient while she waited for the convoy to catch up, trying to ignore the mortar team lobbing round after round into the starport, weakening the strong point with every shot downrange. Finally, Ilmet rounded the corner, signalling the arrival of the first elements of the convoy.

  “Alright we’re going,” Rease announced, immediately stepping out into street and beginning her advance at a swift jog, her rifle at shoulder ready and trained on the left of the two front line Mauler units.

  The Maulers were too stupid to leave a rear guard, but they weren’t deaf. When Connor’s grenade detonated the unspent shells in the mortar pit, it cast a fireball a dozen metres into the air. It was, for a moment, the loudest sound on the battlefield.

  Rease’s weapon sent a volley of rounds into the squad she’d been focusing on, catching them flatfooted as they glanced over their shoulders, their minds struggling to comprehend how the enemy could at once be in front, and behind them. She downed three and winged a fourth before the survivors were able to return fire.

  The Lieutenant’s arcom jumped up to the left, carrying her out of the first return volley before she kicked off a naked concrete pillar to redirect her momentum back into the street. The Maulers’ second volley shattered the pillar leaving only skeletal iron rebar. Rease didn’t give them another chance, bringing down both survivors them in a trio of quick shots.

  Sparing a glance to her colleagues, she could see Ilmet was advancing at a walk, hosing the remaining Mauler position with automatic fire, sending them diving into whatever cover they could find in the wreckage strewn street. Connor had taken up a firing position on a shattered wall on the opposite side of the street and was picking his shots, finishing off those Ilmet had driven to immobility.

  A potshot from one of the Maulers struck Ilmet’s arcom square on. At these ranges, it easily pierced even the frontal armour, detonating inside the machine’s torso and throwing it onto its back like an unloved metal doll.

  Rease downed the attacking Mauler with a headshot, but almost immediately her attention was demanded elsewhere. She’d hit the cross street, and as Murphy’s Law demanded, three Maulers were coming down it at the same time.

  Before they even noticed her, one was struck in the ribs by a HEAT shell from one of the Hellhammers. The monster was lifted upon to its toes before being consumed by fire from the inside out.

  The Lieutenant pulled her machine into a swift crouch, taking out a kneecap on the closest Mauler. The second fired before she could get her sights on it, but not at her. The round went up the street, blasting her supporting tank into little more than a pair of scorched treads and some scattered armour fragments.

  Macey was coming up quickly, and she and Rease both unleashed on the standing Mauler at the same time, sending it to the ground with two smoking craters in its chest. No sooner had she fired than Rease was instinctively leaning to the right, a move that prevented her arcom’s head being taken off by a shot from the Mauler she’d kneecapped.

  She silenced the threat with a three-round burst to the chest and kept moving, letting Macey take up her position at the cross street. Rease took cover at the rubble line just shy of the starport and held her position until Connor advanced to join her.

  The Lieutenant switched to the local channel for the defenders and was immediately assaulted by the sounds of an all too desperate hold out. She had to shout to ensure she was heard.

  “Friendly convoy coming out from south of your position, leading with smoke.”

  She triggered the smoke launchers on her arcom’s shoulders, firing pair of canisters into the open ground beyond the rubble wall where they landed on an undulating pillow of their own charcoal smoke. With Connor on her flank, she charged out from cover and put her arcom down on one knee amid the smoke. She switched her heads-up display to an IR overlay, but while it peeled away the smoke, it turned the battlefield into a chaos of blurry bright shapes strobing with weapons fire.

  “Convoy,” she ordered, “advance into the strong point, double time.” She restrained the urge to pick shots at the large shapes she could categorically identify as Maulers.

  It seemed to take a lifetime for the full convoy to roll past while Rease and Connor huddled in a progressively thinner shroud of grey. By the time Dryden and the rear guard had reached them, they were already trading potshots with Maulers hiding in the rubble.

  From inside, the ‘strong point’ looked more like a collection of wagon circles that wouldn’t have been out of place in a western. As was often the case, the space port predominantly comprised several large landing pads, and the base survivors had the option of camping out in the open or trying to hold the enemy at the edges, which meant exactly the kind of brutal close combat engagements the Maulers excelled at. Both options were in evidence around the base, and neither provided any real protection for the supply and munitions vehicles, most of which were already crippled or burning.

  “Connor, I want any of our convoy that can carry supplies to load up from those damaged vehicles. Even if it means dismounting the infantry,” Rease ordered, taking the opportunity to replace her own spent magazines from the huge rifle clips in the back of an open topped munitions truck. “Dryden, Macey, take the Hellhammers and see if you can shore up this southern line. We’ve delayed their encirclement on this side. Do what you can to keep it delayed.”

  “Where will you be?” Macey asked.

  For several seconds she couldn’t answer, for the AA vehicles spaced around the landing pads began to pierce the sky with brilliant ribbons of red energy, others throwing missiles into the air where they disappeared into the distance. Seconds later Mauler Scarabs appeared overhead, several of them coming down as flaming wrecks.

  There were two kinds of Mauler aircraft, Bugs and Scarabs. If you were on the ground you didn’t worry about the Bugs too much, they were fast but the maulers used them strictly for fighter-to-fighter engagements. Scarabs on the other hand, were bigger, meaner and had a tendency to carry anti-ship mi
ssiles or freefall bombs.

  The Scarabs that had evaded the starport air defence were carrying the latter. As they passed overhead the base rippled with explosions from dozens of bombs. Raking bouts of chain gun fire added to the chaos and the defenders scrambled for cover but there was little to be had. They’d chosen the most open space in Box Grid, and now they had to pay the price for it.

  As soon as they’d arrived, the fighters were gone, but they’d done their damage, countless vehicles were torn to pieces, some leaving only deep craters in the concrete. Many of the anti-aircraft weapons had been victimised in the attack, the Maulers not being particularly brilliant but at least able to grasp the simple strategy of killing the things that could hurt them most.

  “I’m going to see who’s in charge of this mess,” Rease finally answered – but not to Macey because her arcom was now a scattered debris burning in a shallow furrow.

  ****

  Kelly wasn’t one of those pilots who professed to have a deep and romantic connection with flying. What she had instead was a natural aptitude for it and a strong desire to do her part against the Maulers in a way that didn’t risk her ever being within arm’s reach of one. A Snowhawk had always seemed safe and distant compared to the chaos on the ground. However, as she broke out of the cloud layer and caught a glimpse of Box Grid, that chaos suddenly seemed a lot closer.

  The city was obscured in countless places; rivers of smoke bled into the sky from deep fiery wounds. Even from this distance, she could see the flicker and explosion of heavy guns and the havoc they wrought on both sides. She also saw the enemy fighters, perhaps two-dozen, swooping back and forth low over the township. Their tracer rounds twinkled deceptively small against the carnage that erupted where they struck.

  Softball came over the comm. “Eternity, the mud squad’s idea of some is a little understated. We really gonna do this, or are we going to get them to bring in Cold Sabre?”

  “Of course, we’re going to do it,” he replied. “I’m going to lead Alpha flight across the southwestern side of the town and draw some of them out. Bravo: give us a few seconds’ lead and then come in behind whatever we pull and dust them. Charlie: stay with the lifter until we’ve thinned things out for a ground strike, if anything takes a run at Warhorse, cut them down. All copy?”

  “Copy,” Kelly said with a good deal more certainty than she felt, her answer falling into a chorus of affirmative responses.

  Eternity did not hesitate, dropping his fighter’s nose and rapidly trading altitude for speed as he approached directly towards the town. A member of Alpha Flight, Kelly had no recourse but to follow. She pushed the control stick forwards, and her Snowhawk plunged after Eternity with the other three fighters of the flight coming down on the squadron leader’s other side to form a loose asymmetric arrow. Everyone in the wedge had a role, Eternity and ‘Bracket’ were the aggressors, ‘Madness’ was Bracket’s cover while Kelly, ‘Clumsy’, was Eternity’s. Then there was ‘Scorch’, a reserve who was to commit if one of them died.

  If one of them died.

  “I count eleven enemy fighters, breaking away from the fight and orientating towards us, tagging for engagement,” Eternity announced.

  One after another, a score of the Mauler fighters were encased in glowing red squares on Kelly’s HUD, their blunt noses turning front-on as they moved to intercept the new arrivals. She swallowed, flicking the safety cover off her missile trigger. They were still heading straight on towards the township, and if they didn’t peel off soon they’d be committed to a messy head-on engagement with the Maulers.

  “Bugs or Scarabs?” Scorch asked.

  “All Bugs I think,” Bracket replied.

  Madness came on. “I’ve got three more.” His report was followed by another trio of red boxes. “Ahh hell, you sure about this, sir?”

  “Hold your nerve,” was all the commander replied.

  Kelly tried to console herself that the distance readouts meant the enemy was still much further away than they looked. Such was her distraction that she almost missed Eternity beginning a sweeping left turn, pulling away from the straight approach without sacrificing much speed. Kelly had to bank harder to stay in formation which meant she lost more speed and had to endure more G’s.

  She had to focus: she’d won her call sign for awkwardness outside the cockpit, not in it. But she was now discovering a terrible dichotomy to dealing with a live enemy that she had never expected. She couldn’t afford to obsess over the deadly enemy now on her two o’clock or she might lose her nerve. She also couldn’t take her eyes off it for a second or she might miss a critical telegraph.

  You won’t kill me, she promised them. I will kill you. Or at least I would, if I wasn’t heading straight in as bait… oh hell.

  As the Snowhawks shot over the southwestern corner of the city, the Bugs slipped out of her field of vision, and she had to crane her neck to track them. Mauler fighters were faster than a Snowhawk in a straight line, but they had poor aerodynamics which cost them in the corners. This became apparent as the swarm of fighters pulled a high-G turn to try and fall in behind Alpha Flight.

  “We’ve got a problem, Commander,” Kelly said, watching as the enemy split into two groups, one taking the bait and the others pulling up to engage Bravo flight head-on.

  “It’s no problem, Clumsy. We’ll just have to sort ourselves out.” As always Eternity’s response was given with complete confidence. “Stay on course and speed, let them accelerate to catch up, when they close to range, we’ll split into pairs. Scorch, climb to a reserve position. Bracket, Madness, you’ll go evasive while Clumsy and I pull back around. Just like in training.”

  Eternity was right about one thing – the six enemy fighters accelerated after them with the momentum of a freight train. The commander had barely finished talking when the air was suddenly filled with cannon shells, and he was calling for a hard break. Bracket and Madness pulled away to the left. Kelly followed the squadron leader to the right, sucking air through her oxygen mask as the G’s of the turn forced her into her acceleration couch. She barely caught a glimpse of Scorch, but she had a feeling he was diving instead of climbing.

  The enemy fighters peeled into two groups of three. Unable to follow the tight turns, they prevented a massive overshoot by climbing while they banked, using gravity to pull in their turn radius.

  “They’re still on us,” she said, summoning an over-shoulder display onto her HUD.

  The Bugs were well off centre with no clear attack angle, but they were correcting fast.

  “It’s not us I’m worried about,” said Eternity. “Take a deep breath, Lieutenant. We’re going back for the others. Split S.”

  On that, the pair pulled into a rolling half-loop that gave up altitude to preserve their momentum and left them facing back the way they’d come. They were dangerously low now, the pallid badlands of Grimball whipping by beneath them like a holo on fast forward. Up ahead, Bracket and Madness were completely defensive, cutting sharp turns back and forth, using their manoeuvrability for all it was worth to keep the Maulers from getting a workable attack angle.

  But the enemy’s numerical advantage meant they didn’t have to fight on the human’s terms, and one of their ships had pulled away to where it could line up a killing attack run at its leisure.

  It didn’t spot them skimming the surface towards it until a missile detached from the wing of Eternity’s Snowhawk and slammed into it. The explosion sheered away the better half of the aircraft’s left side, and it entered an uncontrolled roll, tracing fiery rings behind it as it barrelled into the ground.

  The display might have been altogether beautiful, but their assault on the lone ship had given the fighters behind them time to set up an attack run. The desertscape below was suddenly alive with explosions as the heavy guns on the Maulers sought out the two arcing Snowhawks. The attack forced Kelly to pull away from her wing leader, jinking in every way she could think of to avoid being blown to pieces.

/>   You won’t kill me, she thought, hoping desperately that it was true.

  ****

  “Where’s Major Penial?” Rease asked, stalking into the mobile command vehicle.

  The MCV had originally been deployed at the spaceport to act as a control tower because the Maulers apparently operated no such structure. It had more recently been adopted by the command staff for the Box Grid strong point. In addition to the usual computers, holodecks, and comm arrays, this command vehicle sported a torn and collapsed rear section and a handful of body bags.

  “The Major’s been KIA for an hour,” a man wearing a captain’s bars and a shrapnel cut on his cheek answered from behind a holodeck.

  “I’m Lieutenant Rease, 10th Arcom, you are?”

  “Captain Yelsin, 56th Armoured. We’re pretty busy, Lieutenant. Any governing reason you’re here instead of out there fighting?”

  Rease ignored the question. “What’s your plan here, Captain?”

  “We hold this position until air support can clear the skies, and then we extract by heavy lifter,” he said it with the confidence of repetition.

  “No. That was Major Penial’s plan, I asked you what your plan was.”

  “Don’t care for your tone, Lieutenant,” Yelsin warned.

  “This is what we’re going to do,” Rease said, ignoring him again as she gestured to the map. “Before we’re completely surrounded, we’re going to break out east with the tanks and arcoms forming a rear guard. When we hit this open ground outside the city, the tanks will run a mobile defence until the supply chain, arcoms, and infantry can get to the top of Mortar Hill. Once they’re in position, the bipeds will provide support fire while the tanks climb up to join them.”

  When he realised many of the officers around the table were nodding their agreement, the Captain rose his voice to the level used for dressing down insolent privates. “Stow your shit, Lieutenant. You are not in charge here.”