Threshold of Victory

by Stephen J. Orion

Slowly he moved his arcom up to crouch beside hers at the edge of an intersection. He followed her gaze to see a lone Mauler standing in the street, a wheeled tank held upside down in one massive meaty hand. The huge beast’s beady eyes were transfixed on its prize, one finger slowly reaching out to flick one of the tyres and send it spinning on its axle.

  “Trouble?” Twos asked, still trying to understand why this Mauler was such a threat after the dozens they’d slipped past so far.

  Rease’s arcom pointed at the building behind the Mauler. “That’s our target.”

  Damn, Twos thought. They’d slunk all the way here only to find the enemy right on top of their objective.

  “Wait here,” Rease told him.

  Her arcom slipped away into the shadows of the street-side buildings and began ghosting towards the Mauler. That this thing didn’t notice a machine the size of a semitrailer loping down the street on the balls of its feet seemed impossible, and she was halfway there before Twos realised she hadn’t been sarcastic when she said ‘perfect.’ This was ideal for her. Ideal that all this monster had to do was take one tiny glance away from the thing that had become its sole focus.

  Like it has become your sole focus.

  His own thoughts were sharp and chiding, jerking his attention away from the unfolding drama to scan his screens anxiously. What he saw made the sweat freeze on his back: a Mauler emerging from a cross street just meters behind him.

  Instinct kicked in, too late to run he had to fight. He spun his arcom, dropping his sight on the beast and stabbed the trigger. The harsh buzz of the safety warning sounded, and Twos swore, slapping the safety off and then pausing with his finger halfway onto the trigger.

  The moment they catch wind of us, we become house entertainment for every single one of them.

  He wanted to forget the words, but they echoed back to him relentlessly. A single gunshot and enough Maulers would pour out of the streets to drown him and the eminent Lieutenant Rease.

  The Mauler, of course, had no such concerns. It was working to bring the rifle it had used as a walking stick back into a firing position. Gritting his teeth, Twos threw his arcom forward, scything the butt of his rifle through forestock of the Mauler’s weapon.

  With a grunt of surprise the creature lost its grip and the gun went clattering to the street. For a moment they both stood frozen, as though neither could quite believe what Twos had just pulled off.

  But the Mauler’s natural aggression meant it recovered faster, delivering a blunt fisted punch to the head of his arcom. Twos tried to shy away, tried to get his own guard up, but he was too late to be in the game. His vision exploded in stars as a shattering, steely concussion rang him deaf. His balance was gone; maybe the machine was already falling, or maybe he made it fall, but regardless the ground seemed to dive up to meet him, transferring a world’s worth of energy in a moment of contact.

  As his vision waved in and out, Twos struggled to get his arcom back to its feet, or at least to ungraciously scamper away, but he couldn’t sort the world out. He was sure he was lying on his side but the instrumentation insisted the machine was on its back.

  The Mauler was suddenly looming on all his screens again, hurling itself at him with both of its fist together in a hammer strike. Desperately Twos made to fend it off, and with a heartbeat to spare, he managed to get his arcoms armoured forearms in front of his face in time to catch the massive blow. The joints locked responsively and though alloys groaned and protested beneath a peel of metallic thunder, the limbs held.

  Not to be discouraged the Mauler began to rain blow after blow into the stubborn limbs. The cockpit rang like a bell tower as Twos cowered away from the trembling walls, struggling to find an out but terrified of doing anything that might disrupt the status quo somehow keeping him alive.

  And then suddenly the ringing stopped.

  Afraid it might be a trick, Twos gave the silence just long enough to realise the Mauler might also have gone back to get its rifle. Lowering his arcoms abused arms he saw his attacker still kneeling atop his machine, its hands checked mid-air and a single trickle of blood running down its neck from where the last ten inches of a silvery blade was emerging.

  Silhouetted behind it was Rease’s arcom, its hand on the grip of the blade lodged to the hilt where the monster’s skull met its spine. She drew the metal clear and deftly wiped both sides of the blade off on the Mauler’s leathery skin before pushing the monster aside and offering Twos a hand.

  “That was quite a pounding,” she said. “I hope you at least let him buy you dinner first.”

  Twos didn’t say anything, his jaw had locked up from clenching his teeth, and it was all he could do to gingerly place his hands back on the controls. His arcom took her hand and she pulled him back upright, holding him steady while his sense of balance wavered.

  She cautioned him to remain still for a couple more minutes and he wasn’t about to argue, every second gave the thumping ache in his head time to subside. All too soon she insisted they move out, but it was just for the blissfully short trip down the street to the objective building. They passed by the Mauler that had been guarding door, its eyes staring almost peacefully at the sky, the only wound visible on its body was a surgically precise cut on its neck, much like the one that had just saved his life.

  On the inside, the objective building was every bit as unexciting as almost every other structure in Box Grid. A concrete floor, high ceiling, and windowless walls with a single broad doorway. It took only a glance to recognise there was no cavern entrance here, or if there was it was very well hidden.

  Momentarily the spotlights on the wolf arcom’s torso burned to life and swept the room, clicking off as soon as they’d covered the full arc.

  “The hell,” Rease’s voice came over the comm with a tone Twos couldn’t identify, was she angry? Confused? Both? “Watch the street,” she finally instructed.

  Following her order, Twos moved to the door and crouched down where he was shadowed by the wall but able to see into the street. While keeping one eye out for danger, he periodically allowed himself a glance at Rease’s progress.

  The Lieutenant had moved to the wall, her arcom’s claw-painted hand reaching out to touch a dark smudge that was barely visible in the dim room. Following it with his eyes, Twos saw it described a line that bisected the room, travelling down the wall, across the floor, up the far wall and over the ceiling.

  There was a short sharp beep from Twos passive sensors as they registered a half second burst of radar emission. His hands tightened on the controls before he realised what had really happened. On his screen, he could see Rease’s arcom with its lupine head looking up at the centre of the room like it was listening for the return of the radar ping it had sent out.

  There was another short beep and the machine abruptly looked down, moving several steps to crouch with one hand on the concrete, the other hand raised. Another ping and she stalked forwards, still half crouched, following the line to the very centre of the room. If she’d started to dig with both hands like a dog at this point, he wouldn’t have been surprised.

  Regardless of the stories he would tell later, however; she was more pragmatic, using her knife to separate the four concrete slabs that met at the centre of the room. The process took several minutes, and Twos felt anxiety creeping up on him. This was the longest they’d been in one spot, and he knew Maulers were dumb, but surely someone would miss the two they’d killed sooner or later.

  Rease continued to be absorbed in her work. She burrowed her machine’s fingers under the concrete and levered up the heavy slabs, dragging them aside to leave only the raw earth. She pulled out her entrenching tool and extended it with a pneumatic hiss, quickly setting to work digging away the soil, her arcom looking for all the world like a robot werewolf who’d become a road worker.

  ****

  Constellation Cruiser CNS Tartarus

  Approach to Inlet B2I0003

  Grimball Local Sector, Bryson System />
  21 April 2315

  Maybe they won’t.

  That had been the hope, the prayer at the back of Kelly’s mind from the moment she left the Arcadia: maybe they won’t attack. It had been a pretty boring run at first; the brass had insisted that they maintain radio silence until the Tartarus was safely away in hyperspace. But that had never happened.

  Instead had come news that the Maulers had directed an attack force towards them. That meant they were comms-free, but suddenly no one wanted to talk, and as command scrambled an intercept force, Kelly found herself worried for her companions in the rest of the squadron. They were flying CAP, would they be used as first response, would they go alone against three cruisers?

  Of course, they had the Eternity and the Undying’s shared pledge, but anything could happen, if someone became separated – Wraith or Bracket maybe. What if Eternity couldn’t make it to them? What if he never knew?

  And after, that the word was that an enemy cruiser had broken through and pulled away from the intercept group.

  Maybe they won’t – only this time it was maybe they won’t catch us, and suddenly the fate of the CAP was her chief concern no longer.

  “Undying, this is Tartarus actual,” the voice that snapped the silence was granite, somehow mismatching the broken ship that limped desperately towards escape. The Captain continued, “We’ve been monitoring our pursuers and determined we can’t out run them, and the fleet’s scramble force is still engaged.

  “Tartarus is in no condition for a straight up fight, and in addition to my own personnel, I am carrying numerous severely wounded casualties back to the Constellation. I no longer have the ability to guarantee they will make it, but you do. To that end, I have authorised your flight leader to launch a pre-emptive strike to cripple the enemy cruiser.”

  Kelly swallowed. So much for maybe they won’t. They would be going headlong into battle. Better in some ways, she supposed, than cringing until it caught up with you.

  “That’s right, Players,” Softball’s voice eagerly replaced the Captain’s. “Form up, and let’s go break that thing’s legs.”

  Riding sinuous blue engine trails, the Snowhawks pulled away from the wounded cruiser to form a five-ship arrow heading back the way they’d come. With every bit the same grace, the two heavier Duke bombers formed an echelon behind the fighters. As the last ship settled into position, they accelerated to cruise velocity and quickly left the Tartarus behind.

  “Your basic Mauler cruiser looks like a big bit of chewed gum covered in cannons,” Softball explained as they travelled. “The big guns that you’ll see first can’t track you and usually won’t bother. There are more little guns that can, and they will spray out a massive volume of shells to ruin your day. We need to take out those guns before Embassy Squadron’s bombers can deploy their heavy ordinance and cripple the cruiser.”

  “What about fighters?” Edge asked.

  “We’re expecting maybe a half dozen. I don’t want us engaging them within the cruiser’s gun range, so we’re dividing into two teams. Clumsy and I will go in first, cut laterally across their effective range and see if we can pull some of their escorts. The rest of Undying will move in behind us and smoke anything we pull.

  “We’re going to have to leave a little more gap than we did on Grimball, or they’ll split us up like last time so please come straight in once they’re committed.”

  “And Embassy?” the curt voice of the Embassy Squadron leader cut into the channel.

  “You’re on the bench until we clear those guns,”

  “Affirmative. Don’t botch this one, Undying. We haven’t failed one sortie in the last month, and I don’t want you ruining our record.”

  “You’ll get your chance at the plate. In the meantime, maybe you could work on your attitude.”

  For a moment Kelly thought the Exodites were pulling back in a huff, but then she realised the Mauler cruiser had just appeared on the extreme edge of their sensors. Its EM signature was so large, even at this distance, that its fighter escorts were invisible beside it.

  “Ugly,” Errant commented.

  “Isn’t it.” Softball said. “Clumsy, you ready?”

  Kelly rolled her shoulders and settled herself more firmly in her seat. “Depends whether you want bravado or honesty, Softball.”

  “Bravado, of course. Save honesty for your candle-lit dinners and long walks at sunset.”

  “In that case, let’s go eff them in their a-holes, sir,” she said.

  “I love it when you talk dirty. Let’s go!”

  And then they were going. Their ships’ tails disappearing into blue comet glows as they rode at full burn towards the cruiser. It expanded rapidly, but like an island, it seemed to grow endlessly as you approached it. Somehow always further away until it stretched from horizon to horizon.

  “Entering their field of fire,” Softball said. “ECM on, jink and turn, keep your speed.”

  At that moment, Kelly remembered something one of their instructors had said: “If jinking looks like desperately flailing around trying not to die there’s a good reason for that. Don’t lose control, but don’t be afraid to let fear guide your hand. Your self-preservation instinct is one of the strongest and smartest you have, at times like this, it sees things you won’t.”

  Compared with her last bait run on Box Grid, she had no shortage of fear this time She was painfully aware that Softball was unlikely to pull of any heroic intervention if she screwed up. She compressed her fear into a tight ball and watched it in her mind’s eye, checking for reaction. When it shied away from something on the right, she pulled hard left; when it ducked, she dove, and when it surged forward, she demanded everything the afterburners had.

  Space around her lit up with exploding flak shells, peppering the void with deadly shards of metal that would use her own craft’s momentum to cut her to ribbons. For the most part they were well behind her, the few seconds between fire and arrival meant the tiniest course corrections made a huge difference. As they completed their run and began to pull away things became more dangerous.

  “They’ve stopped firing, fighters will be closing,” Softball warned.

  Sure enough, the Mauler fighters came up every bit as fast as they had on Grimball. The timing of her movements became more urgent, more desperate, as tracer rounds hummed past so close the sound sometimes reached across their scintillating wake to thrum against the hull. The strategy here was very different to dodging the cruiser. They could out-turn a Mauler but not outrun one, that meant you wanted to pull sharp and hard, force them to peel off and set up a new attack run.

  But there were six Maulers, and between them, they could maintain constant pressure, a new fighter coming in each time you threw one off. She didn’t even get a good look at her attackers, she knew there were both Bugs and Scarabs, but as they jockeyed for attack position, she could only focus on the ones in the immediate danger zone around her six o’clock. The intense focus necessary just to stay alive seemed to last forever.

  And then, abruptly, it stopped.

  In fact, it stopped so suddenly that Kelly continued to bob and weave a few more times before checking her screens.

  “They’re pulling back into the cruisers field of fire,” Softball said, sounding every bit as drained as she felt, “Errant, Fury, Edge, how did you guys go?”

  “No joy,” Edge said. “We barely got a look at them before they pulled back.”

  “I guess they don’t have the numbers to be reckless, but neither do we. We’re going to pull back and catch our breath and go at this again, but this time we’ll run a closer gap. If they split like at Grimball, just engage them directly, but whatever you do, stay out of that cruiser’s flak field.”

  ****

  Mauler Village

  Codename: Box Grid

  Planet Grimball, Bryson System

  21 April 2315

  The Warhorse was still orbiting Box Grid. Its altitude was such that the Mauler fighter had yet
to spot them and, even if it did, it would struggle to reach them. There’d been no word from the ground team, but time was running out. Tarek knew they would be at the objective site by now, although god only knew what they were hoping to find or how long it would take to find it.

  He didn’t have time to think about it. In his mind, he was trying to unlock a power that might not even exist, and he had come to the end of every trick in the Colonel Cormento’s obtuse booklet, as well as a few he’d improvised. If his mind was any more ‘focused’ he’d go cross eyed, any more ‘clear of distractions’ and he’d forget to breathe.

  Stop, he thought. Okay, just relax and try a new approach.

  When he was leaving school and trying to find a course in life, his father had asked: What do you want? If you start with that and stay honest with yourself, the steps to get there will become apparent. Tarek would have pointed out that following that advice hadn’t exactly worked out in the real world, but his narrow perspective at the moment was only interested in how things could apply to flying.

  “Okay then,” he said, letting the sound of his own voice bring him a little closer back to reality after what had been a very cerebral hour. “What do I want?”

  I want to use this power.

  But that wasn’t the answer. He knew it as soon as it popped into his mind. That was like saying, I want to use this hammer. That wasn’t a motivation; it wasn’t anything on its own. The real question was what did you want to use it for.

  I want to destroy this Mauler fighter.

  But that wasn’t the answer either, he realised, because it was a lie. The Scarab was just a machine, so he’d have no qualms blowing it apart for a reason, but he wasn’t the sort of vandal who inflicted property damage for fun. At this moment, this Mauler was a nuisance, and he was slightly scared of what it represented, what it might become, but he was worlds away from a passionate need to smash it to pieces. Especially while there were still other ways to extract the Wolf-Lieutenant.

  And there it was. He wanted to bring back Rease, and whoever that other guy was. He wanted them safe and alive, back on the Arcadia.