Threshold of Victory

by Stephen J. Orion

  Still, the Exodites of Embassy Squadron had been around on Grimball for a while, and they had a pretty solid record. To her knowledge, they hadn’t had any premature nuclear incidents so far.

  Her own silent innuendo brought a smile to her lips, but it died quickly when she realised that in the whole time she’d been seated, the ship’s officer had said nothing. He’d finished reading the mission packet and then carefully stowed it in a drawer at his station before bringing up maps of Box Grid on his screen.

  “No questions?” Rease prodded.

  “No sir.”

  “No comments?”

  “No sir.”

  Rease sighed and stretched before lapsing into silence. After a few moments, she tried again.

  “Are you prepared to give a repeat performance of your last visit to Box Grid?”

  He paused and finally looked at her. “What do you want, sir?”

  She pointed to the top of the stairs. “Up there is the man who brought this ship down to extract my team. What I want to know is whether the man in front of me is one of the ones who threw him in the brig for it.”

  “He wasn’t thrown in the brig for rescuing you. He was thrown in the brig for failing to follow my orders.” He turned back to his work. “All the difference in the world.”

  “Except that you ordered him not to do it.”

  “I did, and if you think I regret it for a moment, you’ve been listening to a little too much of your own legend.” Once again he turned in his chair to regard her. “I’ve heard about you, some kind of ace arcom jock. I’ve seen plenty of ace pilots in my time, and they all think the world revolves around them, that they’re the lynch pin to the war.

  “But there comes a time in the real world when officers have to choose between the war and the ace. That’s when the ship doesn’t come for you, when the cavalry gets sent elsewhere, and when you have to face the reality that every other soldier faces every day – they’re expendable.”

  “The worst kind of officer,” Rease said coldly, “is the one who thinks it’s okay to make sacrifices to win. It might be necessary, but it’s never okay.”

  “That a fact?” Walters said with a slow nod. “Then tell me this: the buddy you brought along, he’s no commando, not even a vet. You look me in the eye, and you tell me that you didn’t just bring him along to give the enemy something else to shoot at.”

  Rease met his eye. It was in her blood to take any challenge, but she couldn’t lie, not for this. “He’s here to do a job. It’s got a risk, but I’m not going to leave him to die.”

  “So anyone more callous then you is unforgivable, and anyone less callous isn’t being realistic.” His lip twisted. “It’s a good thing you’re here to be the incorruptible moral benchmark.” He glanced at his panel. “You should get back to your machine, Lieutenant. We’re landing shortly.”

  “You can’t cast me off that easily, and I won’t be dismissed. Like my friend, we call him Twos by the way, I’m here to do a job, and it comes with a hell of a lot of risk, but I need your word that you’re not going to leave me to die. Not without at least exploring any chance that might bring me back.”

  “No deal. I know my pilot is capable of a lot more than I thought before. I know he can make this thing dodge AA like it’s a sports car. And so if we find ourselves in the same place we were last time, I’ll make a very different call.

  “But two days here are never the same. A Mauler fighter might show up, a VTOL jet might go foul, a tornado could wash down the extraction site. If any of a million things happen, will I risk this ship to save you? Never. This ship is the only large VTOL transport on the Arcadia. This ship has many more lives to save than yours, and any risk I weigh has two arcoms on one side and the survival of hundreds on the other.”

  “Your problem is you think that because your ship is more difficult to replace than an arcom you don’t have to wear your equivalent share of the danger.” Rease crossed to the door. “I’m not saying you don’t have to weigh the risk. I’m saying to take your damn thumb of the scales.”

  ****

  At the core of the Arcadia was an elliptical room thirty metres long that held the C3 centre for the ship. In the middle of the room was a raised stage enwalled by holographic data feeds and at its centre a single massive holodeck. On the lower floor that surrounded the stage were the many dozen crews who provided those data feeds, their own terminals and screens connecting them to every section of the ship and in many cases to the greater network of Battlegroup Olympian.

  More than mere secretaries, the crews on these stations interpreted and enacted the orders from the ship’s senior officers. When the Captain said, ‘move us into orbit around that planet and assume a defensive posture’ it was up to the crew at these stations to fill in the blanks with their own judgement. To decide where in orbit and what precautions were necessary based on the current threat levels and, in general, to not embarrass themselves by having to ask the Captain for clarification.

  For their part, the Captain and his senior staff stood within the holowalls of the raised stage and made strategic decisions based on the endless streams of information available to them. Presently the holodeck was displaying three separate sections of space, the immediate locale of the Arcadia; the cluster of ships that represented the Mauler battlegroup; and lastly the CNS Tartarus making her slow way to a hyperspace beach. The beach in question happened to be the very same one the Arcadia used to enter the system, an inlet imaginatively called B2I0003 which reached into the planet’s gravity well without becoming so narrow or shallow that it couldn’t be used by large ships.

  “Maulers just active pinged the Tartarus,” Commander Lyle announced.

  With an offhand gesture, Captain Pierman rotated displays on the holodeck so the one showing the Mauler fleet was closest him. Almost a minute passed before the fleet showed any signs of what they’d learned. When activity finally began, it happened all at once, every ship altering its bearings almost simultaneously to split into two groups.

  Three large contacts drew an immediate line towards the ship that was struggling to escape the system, a line that would take them perilously close to the full strength of Battlegroup Olympian.

  But the rest of the Mauler fleet was breaking away to the other side of the Constellation’s Naval detachment, putting them in a position to directly threaten the planet. This left the human commanders three choices, namely, go after the bulk force and lose the wounded heavy cruiser; go after the Mauler’s strike group and let the main enemy fleet raise havoc; or try to do both.

  But this wasn’t an unexpected turn of events, indeed while the Mauler’s tactical acumen in space far exceeded that of their ground forces, they tended to repeat certain patterns almost unfailingly.

  A voice feed was forwarded to the command stage, the calm tone of Vice Admiral Kerdana flowing effortlessly over the background noise of the C3.

  “Captain Pierman, the Maulers are on the move. I’m deploying four ships as Task Force Red to head them off, if you would please assign your reserve fighters to act as screen.”

  “Yes sir,” Pierman replied, gesturing to the CAG on the other side of the holo. A moment later the icon for Cold Sabre squadron appeared next to the Arcadia and began moving away towards the departing warships.

  Spinning the holo with another gesture, Pierman watched as their own fleet began to split. They’d sent two cruisers and two frigates which would be enough to at least drive back the trio of Mauler ship, provided they could keep them at range. What concerned him more was that the ships they sent away represented more than half of the battlegroup’s front line vessels.

  It seemed Kerdana was reading his mind as she spoke again.

  “Please prepare your ship for direct combat. If the main enemy fleet forces an engagement, the remaining escorts won’t be enough to screen the carriers.”

  “Are they likely to attempt that?” Pierman asked, moving to one of the holowalls to examine his ship’s latest c
ombat readiness assessment – it read all green except for one of the portside point defence batteries which was down for emergency maintenance.

  “They have done before,” Kerdana said and cut the comm feed.

  ****

  Copper Hill

  Planet Grimball, Bryson System

  21 April 2315

  The landing site Rease had chosen was well outside the AA range of Box Grid, after all, there was no reason to demand anything fancy this early in the piece. As a result, the touchdown was nothing but procedure, and the two arcoms stepped off the landing ramps just slightly ahead of schedule.

  “We’re clear,” Rease reported, her machine crouching in the shadow of the massive transport. “We’ll be running radio silence from this point forward, rendezvous at primary extraction point in two hours.” Licking her lips, the Lieutenant scanned the sky for the Exodite bomber, but it was nowhere to be seen. “And Silver, keep the meter running, okay?”

  He didn’t reply, perhaps he’d been told not to, or perhaps they’d completely disconnected his comm circuit after his last performance. Regardless, the Warhorse blasted its huge VTOL jets, and with an explosive surge, it drove skyward.

  “Won’t they notice an eight-hundred-ton lander lifting off?” Twos asked as the ship switched to its primary drives and rocketed away.

  Before she answered, Rease checked her comm panel to make sure the rookie was using a laser comm and not broadcasting openly right after she’d said the words ‘radio silence’. To her relief, he was at least that professional.

  “Depends if they’re feeling particularly thick today,” Rease finally answered, prodding her arcom into a smooth loping run. “Regardless, we’ll be taking an indirect route to the town, stay with me, six-metre spacing.”

  Their landing site had been on a squat table mountain just north of the city. Skidding down its western face, they had to pick their way through low silt dunes scattered with submerged rock. The machines didn’t like the mix of low traction with hidden subterranean obstacles, but the flow of the land provided cover all the way up to the city’s edge.

  “Keep your safety on,” Rease instructed. “Don’t shoot at anything unless I tell you otherwise.”

  “Yes sir,” Twos answered quickly. Then, after a pause. “I thought most of the Maulers left town.”

  “Maulers have three basic behaviours, gathering, charging and lurking. When they see something, they charge; if it’s too big, or drives them back, they gather; if they can’t see something, they lurk. A lot of the force here charged off after the tanks and trucks I sent away by ground last time. Those that didn’t are still here. Lurking.”

  “So they’re basically all looking for a fight, and the moment they catch wind of us, we become house entertainment for every single one of them.”

  “Careful Twos, keep thinking like that and someone will promote you to captain.”

  Twos didn’t respond to the joke. “So what do we do if they do catch wind of us?”

  “That’s an excellent question, and if I come up with answer, I’ll be sure to tell you,” Rease switched her arcom to a crouched run as they reached the last two hundred yards to the settlement. “In the meantime, let’s not get caught.”

  ****

  “Oh shit!” Jackson’s voice exploded over Tarek’s headset. “Passive contact, four o’clock low, distance sixty klicks.”

  Internally Tarek echoed the sentiment as he looked down at the scanner. The red dot indicating the signature was closing in on Box Grid at over three hundred kilometres an hour, and that meant it could only be one thing, a Mauler fighter.

  “Stay calm,” Walters voice said. “Nothing to indicate he’s spotted us, he may be just passing through.”

  Or, Tarek thought, he might be the lone survivor of an aerial engagement somewhere and has had decided to guard the city until his fuel runs down. Random behaviour in lone Mauler fighters was something they’d been warned about in the academy.

  In mere moments, the fighter reached visual range, and Tarek brought it up on the magnifier. It was a Scarab, and as he watched, it fell into a lazy orbit of the city, not dissimilar to that of the Warhorse and her accompanying bomber, but at a much lower altitude. That it apparently hadn’t detected them, or perhaps just didn’t care, was no comfort, for his guess had been right: it didn’t appear to be moving on.

  When Walters voice came into his headset again, it was on the outbound comm line. “Embassy Two, we’re tracking a lone Scarab orbiting the town, copy?”

  Tarek glanced over to the Duke class bomber flying low on their wing. Though far smaller than the Warhorse, it was still massive compared to a Snowhawk, boasting two turret gunners, a pilot, and a weapons officer. She could have destroyed a dot like Box Grid many times over if she’d been carrying a full loadout.

  “We’ve got him,” the Exodite answered. “Looks like he’s putting down roots.”

  “We noticed that too. Have you got an air-to-air armament, Embassy Two?”

  The answer to that was so long coming that Tarek almost though they might not have received the question. “We’d rather not tango with that thing Warhorse, bomber-against-fighter engagements are prickly under best circumstances.”

  “Just exploring our options, Embassy Two. Are you suggesting we abort?”

  Another pause and when they finally answered Tarek understood what had been causing their hesitation. “Warhorse we are carrying four AA missiles, but we’d have to deploy our main payload before attempting a dogfight.”

  He swallowed hard. Deploy our main payload. The mission didn’t have to be aborted. The bomber could make a high-speed drop on the city, and then it would be light enough to at least hold off the fighter until they could escape. Of course, Warhorse One’s role would no longer be relevant at that point.

  “Warhorse?” the bomber pilot asked after a long enough pause.

  “I’m considering it,” Walters said. “For now, we have time up our sleeves, so let’s just stay out of that things sight.”

  But it’s not going anywhere, Tarek thought, looking down at the now peaceful settlement of Box Grid and the fighter circling it vulture-like. Closing his eyes, he willed for the moment of clarity, the moment of certainty that had allowed him to pull of his miracle rescue last time. When he opened them again nothing had changed, and the only thing he felt looking at that fighter was a cold lump in his stomach.

  “C’mon, jack of clubs,” he whispered. “I could really use your help.”

  ****

  Constellation Carrier CNS Arcadia

  Battlegroup Olympian

  Grimball Local Sector, Bryson System

  21 April 2315

  In the C3 on the Arcadia, Captain Pierman had merged the holo of the enemy’s main fleet with that of the Constellation battlegroup so he could see the specific distance between them. They’d been playing a fencing game over the last hour, the enemy would advance like they were going to attack and then pull back as Olympian and her escorts assumed attack posture. The only engagement thus far had been a brief scuffle between the CAP and a probe of enemy fighters that had ended with no losses on either side.

  “Captain, we may have a problem,” Commander Lyle said, and in a rare show of boldness, he took control of the holo, spinning it around so that the display containing Task Force Red was before the ship’s master.

  In front of Pierman, one of the enemy cruisers had broken through with a handful of fighters and was steaming on towards the CNS Tartarus.

  Chapter IV

  Jack of clubs

  Mauler Village

  Codename: Box Grid

  Planet Grimball, Bryson System

  21 April 2315

  Twos wasn’t what you’d call a hardcore military man. Caught up in the images of the first Mauler attacks, he’d signed up that day with no idea what he was getting into until he was on the ground with a tank company watching nightmare giants rip apart people he’d thought he’d be saving the Constellation with.

>   It had been an eye opener, and since then, Twos had been trying to get out, but being in the Constellation Armed forces wasn’t like being a shop assistant: you didn’t just give your two weeks and cash in your leave. The reality of his existence now was that there was only one way out and that was through. Much like an egg and spoon race, if you wanted to get to the other end with nothing irreparably broken, you had to progress very carefully.

  It also helped to have a clerical error get you into the training batch for the new arcom units, not to mention enough savings to ensure the people who mattered overlooked any less than stellar performances. Better to be broke than dead.

  All that meant Twos wasn’t the typical death or glory arcom pilot, and when Lieutenant Kyra Rease, who basically held the patents for both death and glory, selected him for a behind lines operation, he thought his number had finally come up. He’d suggested to Captain Yelsin that anyone who could get him out of this mission might see a significant anonymous deposit in their account, but the Captain had proven to be quite incorruptible.

  “It’s Lieutenant Rease, if she says you’re on the mission, then you’re on the mission,” Yelsin had told him with a bemused smile.

  Ironically, this type of operation was turning out to be something Twos could get very used to. Stay quiet, keep your head down, don’t shoot at anything unless you absolutely have to. Suddenly everything Twos had been doing the whole war was considered best practice.

  Better still, the legendary Luperca was proving to be nothing of the adrenalin junky Twos had picked her for. She was as cautious as him, but she had a sixth sense about her, she knew instinctively when to wait, when to go, and when to run like hell. It was like she could hear the Maulers though the flimsy concrete walls of Box Grid.

  “Perfect.” Rease’s first words over the comm in a quarter hour of silence nearly made Twos jump in his seat.