Threshold of Victory

by Stephen J. Orion

  The realisation blew into his mind like a chill wind, flinging windows open in his consciousness as a score of glimmering cards rode the currents, somehow right in front of him – but not. He did not see them, but he sensed them in a very immediate way, their lucent corners tugging as the wind continued to blow, pulling at him in a way that seemed somehow more real than the here and now.

  Abruptly two of the cards were caught in the wind and disappeared into the void. It was a metaphor, or a kind of acute stress reaction if you weren’t diplomatic. He had found what he was looking for, and his mind was struggling to put it in a context his conscious mind wouldn’t reject. He guessed the cards he imagined were possible futures, and he was pretty sure that guess was dead on because, like the metaphor itself, it was his.

  There was, of course, only one way to find out. In his mind, he touched one of the cards.

  What followed was staggering. An overlapping terse montage of sight and sound and touch and smell and taste, and all of it together rolling like an avalanche over him. He struggled just to make sense of it.

  He saw himself telling the someone something. Someone was the Embassy bomber, but his outgoing comm was cut so it might have been Walters, so maybe he spoke to Walters who spoke to Embassy.

  ‘I know you’re planning something risky, but you have to trust me on this, it’ll only make things worse. Let them get clear of the city, and then we’ll pick them up,’

  And they were, and they did. He could see a new extraction point established and there were a few encounters and the encounters were tense, but the two arcoms cleared the city, were whisked away by the assault lander, and then nuclear destruction was unleashed.

  He took a deep breath and struggled to come to terms with what he’d just seen. The cold flow of air continued to race in his mind making thinking as hard as shouting into a gale. Embassy Two was going to attempt something, and apparently he had to convince Walters to convince them not to. The question was how he was supposed do that without appearing to be a foaming at the mouth nutjob?

  The answer had to be in the card, the compressed details had been staggering, but then he didn’t know what he was looking for. Perhaps he would come away from a second viewing with more insight.

  He reached out in his mind to touch the card again, but the wind intensified suddenly, sending hearts and kings and diamonds and suits that hadn’t yet been named away into the void.

  Five seconds later he understood why.

  “Alright Warhorse, I think we’ve been patient enough with this Mauler,” the voice of the Embassy weapons officer reached his ears in the real world, somehow both distant and loud. “Standby, we’re going to try something.”

  Tarek let the future go, and the cold hurricane was suddenly gone from his mind, leaving him feeling light headed and hollow.

  Without hesitation, he stabbed the comm button. “Embassy, belay that.”

  But of course, it didn’t work because his comm was dead. He flicked to the local circuit. “Walters you need to stop them, they’re about to make a terrible mistake.”

  Before Walters could answer, Tarek saw a single AA missile detach from the Exodite bomber and streak down towards Box Grid. There was no radar ping, they were going for the long shot – after all the Mauler was flying a predictable circuit, and with no active targeting, it wouldn’t even know the missile was coming.

  But Tarek already knew the ordinance carried disaster with it. Whether it hit or missed, this missile was the one that had scattered the cards to the void, destroying so many of the possibilities that could bring the Wolf-Lieutenant back.

  For second after second the weapon continued on its intercept course, its on-board, stabilisers correcting updrafts and cross winds as it drew ever closer. Not a breath was taken in either of the Constellation craft as the missile came within the last dozen metres.

  And passed just a half metre behind the Scarab’s port wing.

  But the weapon didn’t stop, it carried on to the town below, smashing through the roof of a building and detonating it from the inside. The walls turned to fragments and the fire that it cast in every direction.

  “Uh-oh, he’s mad now,” Jackson said, and Tarek could see the Scarab as it changed course and began to climb towards them. “Yeah he’s coming this way.”

  He’s nothing, Tarek thought with an unsettling mixture of fury and euphoria. I command the future now and I’ll not allow an inconsequential machine stand in my way.

  ****

  Rease felt as much as heard the blast, a reverberation that carried right through the ground into the blacksteel bones of her arcom and deep into her heart. She didn’t allow it to stop her though, indeed she began to dig more feverishly at the object she had just started to uncover. Twos was whimpering something, and above her a piece of debris came shattering through the thin concrete roof to crack one of the cement floor tiles.

  In less than a minute she’d unearthed the object she’d been digging at. Smooth and steel, it was shaped roughly like two cones connected base to base. She had no idea what the hell it was but it had been buried, and that meant it was treasure to someone. Her arcom carried a mission satchel over one shoulder and she quickly stuffed the device inside before sealing it shut and snatching up her rifle.

  She turned to the doorway and found it empty.

  Swearing under her breath, she hit the comm. “Twos, sound off.”

  There was no response. Swearing again Rease moved rapidly to the door and slid into a crouch where she could peer out. The building two doors down and across the road was nothing more than a steaming pile and she could already see a few Maulers in the street looking for something, anything, to fight.

  “Warhorse, this is Predator One-One,” Rease said, breaking long range radio silence for the first time. “I’ve become separated from Predator One-Two. Can you locate and guide me in?”

  “Standby,” Walters single word response was somehow calming, and Rease took several deep breaths while she waited for him to continue. “He’s two blocks away, bearing two-zero-seven, heading one-seven-four, at speed.”

  “Copy all,” Rease said.

  Before the words had even fully left her mouth, she triggered her smoke launchers, flooding the street immediately in a grey blanket. Sprinting in a machine the size and weight of an arcom was a risk at the best of times, and doing it in a smokescreen certainly qualified as reckless, but given the situation, it was the best of some bad options.

  “Predator One-One,” Walters voice was back as she pelted down the street, ducking into the narrow alleys away from the smoke choked main road. “There is a Scarab covering the city, so your only chance for a pickup is the primary extraction point. I can provide some guidance for getting out of the city.” There was a pause. “The Mauler activity in your area is currently concentrating on Predator One-Two and the destroyed building. That leaves you an opening if you turn to bearing zero-nine-five.”

  Rease didn’t stop, though she was forced to change direction as a Mauler wandered out in front of her. It didn’t notice her as she broke out of the back alleys, bolted across a broad street and into the narrow lanes on the other side.

  “If I do that, can you guide Twos out?” Rease asked, avoiding his mission call sign intentionally.

  Walters responded with another question and it came quickly, like he’d been expecting the response.

  “Predator One-One your second element appears to have abandoned you against orders. Did you still want him walked out?”

  “Warhorse, be advised Predator One-Two suffered a communication malfunction but is still on mission.”

  The lifter commander’s sigh was loud enough that the mic’s breath filters didn’t cut it out. “In that case, he is almost certainly doomed on his own, but if you attempt to link up you may lose your only chance at escape.”

  “Copy Warhorse, this one is on me. I’ll call you from the primary extraction site or not at all.”

  ****

  Mauler
Cruiser Tagged ‘Bandit-Six-Two’

  Thirty-eight minutes from Inlet B2I0003

  Grimball Local Sector, Bryson System

  21 April 2315

  “Embassy, what the hell are you doing?” Softball demanded. “You’re supposed to be staying back from the engagement.”

  “We were,” the Exodite spat back. “We didn’t come to you, you caught up with us.”

  Kelly looked on in disbelief as the two Duke bombers barrelled through the fight. Between them, their four defence turrets blazing in separate directions, staving off the Bugs and Scarabs that were suddenly very interested in them. A glance down at her console displayed an even worse picture: Tartarus had just appeared on her radar horizon, and that meant they were running out of time. For all their efforts, only a couple of the Mauler fighters had been downed.

  Softball’s voice was back on the squadron’s command frequency. “Clumsy, I need you to cover Embassy One. Errant, cover Embassy Three. If those bombers get splashed, it’s game over.”

  “We don’t need your help,” Embassy One’s pilot snapped. “If you have two men to spare, get them clearing guns from around the cruiser’s portside engine.”

  Despite what the man said, Kelly had found Embassy One already being tracked by two Maulers, one Bug and one Scarab. The bomber’s brazen run through the field of battle had allowed the pair to shortcut through the cruiser’s field of fire to reach engagement range while also escaping Edge and Softball. That left Kelly as the nearest fighter, so she paid no heed to the arrogant bomber’s comments and forced the throttle open.

  The bomber was jinking hard as the tracer rounds from the two Maulers flashed past on either side of it. Their turret gunners could spoil the enemy’s shots, but while they were evading, the chance of scoring a killing hit seemed almost laughably low. Kelly’s angle of attack of was very obtuse, so she only had the opportunity for a very short burst from her guns before she shot past.

  As she came back around, she realised she had, in fact, clipped the Bug, knocking it off its attack line. To her great surprise, it was now fleeing from its former prey, the bomber having come hard around, tracking it in an ominous absence of tracer fire that could only mean the ship was concentrating on a missile lock. The Mauler wasn’t jinking, but it was burning hard for the flak field.

  And that left the Scarab still on the tail of Embassy One, trying to find the midpoint between the turret arcs where the target’s own fuselage would protect it.

  “Oh, you’d like to get shot down, wouldn’t you?” Kelly growled under her breath at the Embassy bomber. “Would make you feel real good about how much a screw up the Undying are.”

  She closed rapidly on a much better angle of attack this time. It was only a heartbeat later that she noticed the turrets on the bomber had all but stopped shooting.

  “Undying, get off our six. You’re in our target shadow and our guns can’t engage.” There was a different note in Embassy One’s voice this time – still cocky, but also urgent.

  “Unnecessary Embassy One,” Kelly replied. “I’m seconds away from a kill shot.”

  And she was, but that second never came, the stars ahead of her suddenly bloomed with fiery arcs and deadly fireworks of burning flak. Swearing, she pulled up hard but allowed her ship to lose its momentum in the turn because she expected Embassy One to pull the same turn without slowing. It was a move that would bring the Scarab right into her sights if it stayed on them.

  But the bomber didn’t. She tipped down her wing and saw the bulky ship cutting through the deadly flak field. The blue flare of a missile cleared their ship and caught the Mauler they’d been chasing as it burrowed deeper into the field. The Bug blew into two pieces which each rode a curtain of flame into the side of the bleak cruiser’s hull.

  Only now did Embassy One cut away, unerringly slipping through the gaps in the flak. But the Maulers weren’t done yet. The Scarab dropped a missile of its own, a blocky thing on a sputtering jet of orange that would never have caught a Snowhawk, but closed inexorably on the Duke.

  You idiot, Kelly thought. But she wasn’t sure if she meant them for being too eager to make the kill or her for not being eager enough.

  She didn’t have to wait long on the answer. As Embassy One pulled free of the cruiser’s engagement field, it began to fly dead straight, and with a single barrage of cannon fire one of the turrets blasted the missile into a brilliant explosion.

  ****

  Mauler Village

  Codename: Box Grid

  Planet Grimball, Bryson System

  21 April 2315

  Twos charged down the street as fast as he dared, blasting at the Maulers that were coming in with what seemed like ever increasing numbers. They emerged in window frames and doorways, alley mouths, and junction corners, and every time it seemed like he had less time to suppress them before they took a shot. The road behind him was cratered and cracked with near misses. Pieces of broken ceramic-steel were scattered in a few places where glancing blows had torn at his already abused machine.

  In a single blast, this mission had turned into the very nightmare he’d been so afraid of at the start. It was like one of those training simulations he’d done so poorly on back at the academy, cardboard cut-outs flipping up all over the place while someone stood there with a stopwatch eagerly waiting to call out ‘you’re dead’.

  And the legendary Luperca had finally flown her true colours. At the corner of heroism and survival, she’d chosen to dig up some piece of junk when she should have been getting the hell out. He’d advised, then shouted, then pleaded, but she’d kept working away like he wasn’t there, and that had left him exactly one option.

  But as he rounded the next corner, he saw what could only be described as fortifications. Trenches and scratch-built barricades from building to building, and all of them crawling with Maulers. As the street erupted in a fusillade of gunfire, Twos dove down another alley and came to a sudden jarring halt.

  Standing directly in front of him was an arcom painted in lupine colours, its rifle pointed at the floor while its offhand was palm out towards him in a silent command to halt. Frozen in place while all manner of unthinkable options rushed through his mind Twos watched the arcom pull its hand back and tap the antenna on the side of its head.

  It took Twos several attempts to gets his numb and shaking hands to flick the comm switch back to the live position.

  He licked his lips. “Lieutenant,”

  “Twos,” she said, “you have good eyes and shitty judgement. Right now, I need someone with good eyes.”

  “But…” Twos began and wasn’t sure he had anything appropriate to finish with.

  “But you just left me to die?” Rease asked coolly. “That’s one of two truths you have to live with. The other, the harder one, is that not everyone is as bad as you are. Now which is it going to be corporal, good eyes or bad judgement?”

  “It was shitty judgement before, sir,” Twos answered. “And I think I’ve done enough of it for one day.”

  “Good. Stay with me and stay low.”

  ****

  As Rease and Twos pulled away from the Mauler entrenchments, they were constantly harassed by the small army of Maulers Twos had managed to attract. Before they had any hope of escaping the city, they had to find enough clear space to completely disengage. So far, they’d run into nothing she couldn’t handle, but every fight announced their position to the Maulers who seemed hell bent on herding them back from the city limits.

  “Warhorse,” Rease said, hoping not for the first time that Silver and not Walters would answer. “Predator has consolidated, but we need a clear corridor, can you see anything promising from your position?”

  “Predator One-One, the Maulers are assembling entrenchments across most of the southern edge of the city,” Walters answered and then paused. “Can you make it to the tertiary extraction point?”

  Rease brought her arcom to a skidding halt. The tertiary extraction point was the only one l
ocated in the city, a city Walters himself had said was guarded by a Mauler fighter.

  “I can,” Rease answered hesitantly. “Can you?”

  “I’m investigating that,” Walters answered. “It might not be my only option, but I’m fairly certain it’s yours.”

  “Predator One-One…” It was a new voice, the Exodites from the bomber, Rease realised. “…did you find anything?”

  Rease started to answer then closed her lips and started again. “Negative, if you’re coming, you’re coming just for us.”

  ****

  Mauler Cruiser Tagged ‘Bandit-Six-Two’

  Thirty-two minutes from Inlet B2I0003

  Grimball Local Sector, Bryson System

  21 April 2315

  “Undying this is the Tartarus,” a calm voice said into the ongoing battle around the Mauler cruiser. “We’re out of time. Please prepare to clear our cannon arc as we come about.”

  Even as they said it, there was a flare of brilliance that triggered the auto-tint on Kelly’s canopy. Ducking involuntarily in her cockpit, her eyes traced the plasma round that barrelled out of one of the Mauler warship’s guns and hurtled away towards the Tartarus. Still too distant, it missed by a wide margin as the human ship began its turn, its main batteries tracking back at its aggressor.

  “We have to do something,” Kelly said into the command channel. “They’re going to get torn apart.”

  “Keep your head,” Softball replied. “We can’t engage that thing while the Tartarus is smashing it to pieces.”

  “What about an attack from directly aft. It’s large enough to shadow us from the Tartarus.”

  “Only just, you’d be in a tight fire corridor for defence guns. They’d splash you for sure.”

  Kelly clenched her jaw, frustrated at the desperation that was creeping into her voice. “If we lose this ship, they’ll disband the squadron, is that how you want to be remembered?”