Threshold of Victory

by Stephen J. Orion

  “And if you have neither?”

  “Whatever you were before you came here, Andrew, you have found a place where you have the Arcadia and the Warhorse and the Undying which, as ships go, makes you a rich man indeed.”

  He stepped closer and took Tarek’s hand in his, pressing something into it. “And if you have no star, then I have one for you.”

  Tarek opened his hand and looked at the item the Lieutenant Commander had placed into it: a small, now-familiar wooden carving of a dog.

  ****

  Constellation Carrier CNS Olympian

  Battlegroup Olympian

  Grimball Local Sector, Bryson System

  23 April 2315

  Vice Admiral Kerdana looked down at the piece of paper that Captain Pierman had just placed on the table between them. She made no move to touch it. They were both seated in comfortable leather chairs in the Admiral’s state room but with the addition of the small piece of paper, the mahogany table might have been a hundred-foot wall of stone.

  “Request denied,” Kerdana said coolly, her breath stirring the surface of the wine in the glass held frozen just millimetres from her lips.

  “Might I appeal,” Captain Pierman said boldly, “on the grounds that you have not read it yet?”

  The Vice Admiral put her glass down on the table, directly on top of the request so there could be no question of picking it up.

  “Captain, for the first time since coming to the Bryson system, we have a conclusive advantage in force size over the Mauler fleet. What could possibly be in your request that would warrant putting us back at square one?”

  “You’ve read Intelligence’s theory that the Maulers are teleporting ground troops to the surface?”

  “Oh good lord,” Kerdana rubbed her left temple with two fingers. “You mean Commander Lyle’s theory that the Maulers are teleporting in. Plausible perhaps, but far too fanciful to be accepted based on some satellite imagery and a few recovered communication devices.” Her green eyes met Pierman’s. “I suppose you’re going to tell me you know where they’re coming from?”

  “I know what planet they’re coming from. My request is that I be allowed to investigate further and determine the specific location and method they’re using.”

  “And how exactly did you determine the planet?”

  “A recent autopsy on a Mauler corpse discovered it was slightly irradiated. We requested similar analysis be made on other corpses from around the planet and determined that they all share the same trait.

  The wavelength of the radiation also matches the spectrums reported by the reconnaissance probes from Bryson IV.”

  “Reconnaissance probes which did not report any Mauler activity.”

  “It’s a large area with much electromagnetic interference. It would be well suited to hiding a ship or station.”

  “You have not changed my mind, Captain. Your evidence is hardly conclusive. Even if you are correct, you might still not find what you’re looking for, and if you did, the enemy is likely to have put significant protection around it.

  “I will gladly send more probes, and once we have routed the Mauler fleet, I am willing to revisit this request. What I will not do is sacrifice a strategic majority for a theory that has so little supporting evidence.”

  “I appreciate you must deal with hard facts, Admiral. But consider that the value of confirming the Mauler method of supply and control will give us a crucial advantage in every theatre. Surely that is worth some delay in this one.”

  “It would be, if you had anything solid to go on. Instead you have a theory about teleportation supporting a theory about radiation, which suggests the location of a ship or station that might not even exist.

  “I can’t tell the Council that I’m going to spend six more months grinding in place because I decided to support something as ephemeral as that. If you were as career-orientated as I thought, you wouldn’t even suggest it.”

  “And that’s your final answer, Admiral?”

  “Yes Captain, my final answer.”

  Captain Pierman sighed and looked away, briefly examining the wall-sized oil painting of Poseidon dashing a fleet of wooden ships to splinters with waves and lightning. Finally, he reached into his jacket and drew out an envelope which he offered to the Vice Admiral.

  “This one you have to read,” Captain Pierman said.

  “You overstep yourself,” Kerdana warned.

  “Not I.” Pierman turned over the envelope so the light caught the Council seal embossed over its surface.

  Kerdana curled her lip, but she took the enveloped and opened it, reading through a very short letter of empowerment stating that any actions Captain Pierman took in ‘pursuit of the true Mauler home world’ carried the authority of Councillor Heron Troyvic. Peer Heron’s flowing signature and seal were present at the bottom.

  “You realise, if you choose this path, you are severing yourself from my interests.” Kerdana said, standing and crossing the room to hold the letter poised over a device that would both authenticate it and scan a copy for the Admiral’s records. “If the Maulers find you out there, and they frequently do find lone ships, I will not be coming to help you. Your friends on Earth, however powerful, will be sadly irrelevant in deciding your ultimate fate.”

  “This is not a personal attack,” Pierman told her. “My assignment has never been to assist this battlegroup beyond what was necessary to uncover promising leads. Like you, I must follow my orders.”

  “As you wish, Captain,” Kerdana said dropping the page into the scanner. “The fleet will be relocating in two hours, you are not welcome in our formation thereafter.”

  When the authentication finished, the Vice Admiral watched as the scanner dropped the letter onto the floor with no effort to stop it. Biting back a comment about her pettiness, the Captain collected the original, placed it back in the envelope, and left the room.

  ****

  Constellation Carrier CNS Arcadia

  Battlegroup Olympian

  Grimball Local Sector, Bryson System

  24 April 2315

  “So how was your sextuple-jinki?” Tarek asked as he and Jackson headed along the now familiar spinal corridor from the Warhorse to the hangar.

  “Well I won’t say it was disappointing, but it was more like a treble-jinki,” Jackson answered, holding his helmet in one hand while he buffed the visor with his sleeve.

  “Ah unfortunate, not enough to dodge a missile then.”

  Since Tarek’s return to the flight roster, he had seen no downtime, with the Warhorse flying deployment missions well past midnight. The Arcadia had moved back into the atmosphere to facilitate quicker runs as she offloaded the embarked ground forces, piecemeal, to units across the planet’s northern hemisphere.

  They’d just come back from delivering a tank platoon to Outpost Beach which, owing to the army’s strange sense of humour, was located in a freezing desert. It was the sort of busy-work Tarek had been afraid of when he was first dumped into the Logistics Wing, but he’d become more comfortable since posing to his cards ‘I want to get reinstated to a combat squadron’ and seeing some forty odd options.

  He hadn’t looked at any of them yet. The mindless drop-off work gave him plenty of time to further explore his powers, and knowing he could leave any time he wanted restored some his pride as a pilot. For now, he savoured those cards, looking forward to the day he would break them open and make his grand return to the Undying.

  “And what about you?” Jackson asked. “I believe the iceman himself may have been finally thawed by the lovely Ensign Velta.”

  “Ensign who…? Oh wait that one. No, I didn’t end up leaving with her.”

  “What?! But when I left she was just about dragging your ass out the door. How do you screw that up?”

  “I didn’t screw that up, it just wasn’t how I wanted to end my evening”

  “Mauler’s tits, Andy, you must be more sexually inert than this catwalk,”

  Jack
son slapped the railing as they stepped onto the stairwell to the hangar floor. Ignoring him, Tarek glanced out over the deck which finally looked more like a carrier’s fighter stowage and less like a carpark for military crawlers. Only the twelve arcoms of the platoon, now jokingly titled Rease’s Pieces, still remained, kneeling like knights in prayer at the back of the hangar.

  There were also a few less fighters on the deck, it had been sobering to discover that the Cold Sabres had lost two of its pilots in Operation Catchphrase, and a third was going home too injured to continue service. One of the aircraft had been recoverable using parts from the others, and a brand new pilot had been brought in on the same ship that took the coffins away. Rumour was that the same supply ship had carried a dozen more reserve fighters and pilots. This could have filled out the rest of Cold Sabres’ and Undying’s roster, but the Captain had made an enemy of the Vice Admiral.

  On the second landing of the stairwell was one of the Arcadia’s senior officers, the Rod of Asclepius on his shoulder patch marking him as part of the ship’s medical crew. They saluted as they reached him, but as he returned the salute he fell into step beside Tarek, forcing the co-pilot to fall back behind them. Out of the corner of his eye, Tarek saw Jackson mime hitting the doctor with his helmet.

  “Flight Sergeant Tarek,” the medical officer said, “my name is Commander Williams. We haven’t met before, but I’m in charge of the ship’s medical branch.”

  “A pleasure to meet you, sir,” Tarek answered reflexively.

  This didn’t bode well. The Senior Medical Officer wouldn’t make a personal visit for any mundane reason. Still, there were no marines with him, so vivisection was probably not on the agenda.

  “Your mission went well?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Good. You look a little tired though. When you’re off roster next, make sure you spend it asleep.”

  “Yes sir,” the pilot repeated, now curious.

  He could tell when someone was having trouble bringing an issue up and from a senior officer, it felt particularly out of place.

  “There’s a growing rumour that you have… a talent,” Williams said finally.

  Tarek sighed, at the party he’d apparently told someone, or rather he’d apparently told everyone, he was able to see the future. Since then, the ship’s more superstitious individuals had come to him asking to have their futures read. Enjoying the celebrity, he had so far agreed, giving each a shortly worded piece of advice drawn from a card of I want them to believe I can see the future. That said, the ship’s medical chief was probably little too high up the totem to be asking to have his fortune told.

  “I’m not given to superstition, but Colonel Cormento asked that all doctors in the fleet keep their eyes open for any evidence of precognitive traits. In light of that, I was wondering if I might dissect your brain?”

  Tarek stopped, almost causing Jackson to fall over the top of him.

  “I’m still using it, sir.”

  Williams smiled at that. “After you’re dead, of course, Sergeant.”

  Jackson looked from Tarek to the doctor and back again. “Are you expecting that to be soon?”

  “Oh everyone dies eventually. I was just hoping you could sign a release notice, for science, you understand.” He held a data slate and stylus out to the pilot.

  Everyone dies eventually. What a terrifying thought for a doctor to have. But not caring is easy, Tarek remembered, perhaps he wasn’t the only one who’d found that. Perhaps if you dealt with the kinds of injuries Maulers handed out on a daily basis, it was the only alternative. You either lose yourself in the work or live to see it destroy you.

  Warily, Tarek took the tablet and read through it very carefully, more than once, to ensure that the Commander couldn’t do anything to hasten the proceedings. Finally, he shrugged, left his mark, and passed it back.

  “Wonderful.” Williams was beaming. “I was wondering also… well… it would be good to have some fairly conclusive proof of your abilities to put with my medical analysis.”

  Tarek closed his eyes for a moment and grabbed a card.

  “You have an Exodite patient with a growing infection, it’s Lamenthite. There should be a treatment plan for it, but it’s in the tactical archives instead of the medical ones due to a misfiling incident. Without it, the young man will probably lose his leg.”

  The doctor gave him a long look.

  “Lieutenant Kodaa, yes. Okay that’s impressive but, strictly speaking, nothing to do with the future,” the doctor pointed out.

  Tarek nodded. “That’s not the important part. The important part is, in four days’ time, two other Exodites will come and visit you. Make sure them tell him how the treatment is going.”

  Williams frowned thinly. “Still not exactly convincing.”

  “It will be,” Tarek promised. “In four days’ time.”

  “Ahh good point. Well, I’ll add this discussion to my journal, and we’ll see what comes I suppose.” He nodded his thanks then looked over at Jackson as though he were going to say something, but then simply turned and headed away down a side corridor.

  “I can never get wounded,” Jackson said firmly. “That man is terrifying.”

  Yes, Tarek thought, but he’s probably an amazing surgeon. A scalpel free of empathy, terrible and precise, so let’s sing three quiet and fearful cheers.

  ****

  “I always love this part,” Kelly said, her eyes fixed on the glass wall.

  As soon as she said it, there was a moment of zero gravity and a boom as though a bolt of lightning had hit the room next door. A crackling buzz rang from the outer hull, and with a blinding flash of white, the stars disappeared into a fading dark. Static pressure filled the air, and the hairs on arms and legs rose as if peering to see what the commotion was.

  Kelly somehow found an opportunity to sneak away to the observation post every time they made the transition. For Tarek, the phenomenon was nothing new, even before joining the Constellation Navy, he’d made dozens of hyperspace trips, but he’d started joining her there out of comradeship. Their configuration had become almost part of the tradition, each sitting against opposite walls looking over their left or right shoulder at the phenomenon outside.

  Kelly shivered, as the static pressure gradually settled. “Invigorating,”

  “Someday they’ll probably find out it’s bad for us,” Tarek said. “Like every minute you spend in hyperspace shortens your life by six months or something.”

  “Well Mister Future-Pants, can’t you just look forward and find out?”

  “Would be difficult,” Tarek admitted. “I’m not really very good at seeing the unaltered future and seeing the…” He trailed off for a second. “You were joking.”

  “I was joking,” she said.

  “Is it weird, knowing someone for whom that actually presents a serious question. Can we admit that makes it weird?”

  “Well I don’t think it’s helped the CAG’s opinion of you, but honestly, you were always strange.”

  “Yeah but it’s not like the CAG and I ever really hang out. I sorta thought you would react like everyone else. These days it seems I’m either the messiah descended from up on high, or I’m a pariah people have to shower after passing in the hall.”

  “Perhaps a messapariah?” Kelly suggested. “I look at it this way; everyone has at least one person that they know who is into some weird new-age church or soul therapy or whatever Zen crap. So long as they keep their magic healing rocks to themselves, they can do whatever they want.”

  “Well I’m failing spectacularly at that so far. Do you mind if I explain why?”

  “Because you’re mad at me for cock-blocking you with Ensign Velta?”

  “No, that’s one I owe you for. Last thing I needed yesterday afternoon was to throw up on some junior officer while trying to make out in a linen closet.”

  Kelly laughed. “Oh Andrew, you’re so romantic.”

  “Also… I’m ninety p
ercent sure I owe you an apology. I vaguely remember saying some words to the effect of you being an undeserving wannabe who rides on the coat tails of better pilots…”

  She waved it away. “You were drunk,”

  “That’s true but…”

  But I was also mad because I know you’re going to die.

  He’d remembered that much, he remembered drinking because it had helped him forget what he’d discovered in that cell. He remembered it had stopped working the moment he saw her face, and he remembered making a plan, so cunning at the time, to convince her to quit the Undying and thus avoid her fate. It was an impossible thing to tell her, and even if he did, it wouldn’t change anything. He’d still been an ass to someone who didn’t deserve it, and she’d still be on her way to die.

  “…I’m still sorry,” he finished lamely. “You’ve always had my back, and we both know you’re an excellent pilot.”

  “Well, you’re forgiven this time. Next time I’m just gonna knock you out, sling you over my shoulder, and throw you in a dumpster.” She mimed her future plan for added effect. “I might also launch that dumpster into space, depends how I feel at the time.”

  “I’ll keep a space suit handy.”

  There was a brief pause. “I’m sorry too,” said Kelly.

  “I’m not in the dumpster yet.”

  “Not for that. For…” She paused and then took a deep breath. “I don’t have your back as much as you think. This whole… seer… thing you do, I feel like I owe it to you to believe you, but the reality is I don’t. I can’t. I don’t know if I’m letting you down for not having faith in you, or letting you down for not insisting you get a psych eval.”

  “You think I’ve lost my marbles?”

  “I don’t know, you seem pretty lucid but… well, you were in a bad way when you signed up. I suspect I might be the only one who knows by how much. You’re trying to burn down old regrets by making a big impression; balance out your ledger or whatever. We both know that’s why you took such big risks at the Academy.