Threshold of Victory

by Stephen J. Orion

  “Ah, you must be here about Lieutenant Kodaa,” Williams said, as though they weren’t gun-toting maniacs.

  He almost lost his nerve right there as the two pairs of eyes and one pistol turned towards him.

  “He has a Lamenthite infection in his leg,” the doctor said, immersing himself in the details, in the craft, to stem the shaking fear in his voice. “It’s a nasty business, can be fatal if it spreads. The good news is we instituted a treatment plan, and its progressing quite well. He’ll be walking again in another day or so. If you’ll follow me.”

  He didn’t wait for an answer, he turned and headed into the long-term care ward. The whole way he expected to feel the hot rush of a bullet in his back. He expected it all to fall apart, but somehow it didn’t. He heard their soft tread behind him as he led them to the Kodaa’s room.

  The sick man was sitting upright, reading from a data slate, and he smiled a little uncertainly when he saw the doctor come in. “This alert, nothing serious, is it?”

  “I truly hope not,” Williams said, sparing a glance at the two armed Exodites who had followed him in. They were no longer brandishing their weapons, simply carrying them. “How is your leg?”

  “It itches,” Kodaa said. “But I understand that is good compared to the numbness earlier.”

  “Oh yes. That sensation is your body repairing the damaged arterial walls.” He smiled. “Anyway I’ve brought you some guests. They wanted to see how you were doing.”

  The Exodite Lieutenant looked at the two gunners and noted their weapons. “Good morning gentlemen, is everything well?”

  The two gunners looked at one another and then back to the patient. “Much is not I am afraid,” one said. “This infection you have, did you get it fighting?”

  “I am afraid not.” Kodaa said looked a little guilty. “It lies dormant for a long time, so I probably picked it up before I left Solace. I went through all that training just so the Constellation could fly me around in a bed.”

  For a few awkward moments, no one said anything. The two gunners looked increasingly anxious, their gazes running almost feverishly between the Kodaa, Doctor Williams and each other. One of them was rubbing the side of his weapon, and when it seemed the tension might crack the Kodaa finally spoke again.

  “If you try to harm anyone here, I will have to stop you,” he said having apparently grasped the situation without the need for words. “I fear my efforts will go poorly, but you should not harm these people. That is beneath us.”

  “We must cripple the ship, Brother,” one of the gunners said and shot a hasty glance at Williams. “Though I cannot tell you why.”

  “So you would kill doctors? Wounded? That makes me ashamed.”

  The gunner who had been fiddling with his weapon sighed, dropped the clip and cleared the chamber. “Me as well,” he said and then offered the weapon and clip to the doctor. “May we go freely?”

  “You may leave, but I don’t know what will happen to you out there.” Williams felt like he was either about to take an important stand or make a terrible mistake. “Or you may stay here, and I will say you knew nothing of what is transpiring outside.” Gingerly he took the proffered weapon.

  “You are kinder than we deserve,” the second Exodite said turning over his weapon as well. “It would be unseemly of us not to accept so generous an offer.”

  Not so generous as you might think, Doctor Williams thought. You come into a medicentre to kill doctors, and you think I’ll let you off free? You think I’m obligated to keep my word to war criminals?

  “We’ll put you in one of the empty wards for now,” said Williams. “Probably best if you keep your heads down until all of this is over.”

  ****

  Tarek had not wanted to join the fight for the checkpoint outside the CIC, but with the lockdown in effect, it was the only way off the quarterdeck. What he’d said in the Captain’s office was true enough; there was little he could do now to change, or even improve, the play of events, but he could not sit idle. The die may have been cast, but there were still punishments to be mete out, and not everyone would receive the second chance he gave Pierman.

  After he left the Captain’s office, he met up with the two marines from his original escort and made a beeline to the checkpoint. They couldn’t travel directly due to security doors and the danger of running into any of the several officers that Tarek’s visions had alerted would seek his arrest.

  At the checkpoint, the single beleaguered defender had been joined by a brave ensign who had taken the marine’s backup sidearm. Belatedly Tarek realised the ensign was Velta, the same girl he’d nearly slept with after the party until Kelly had stopped him.

  Kelly…

  “Boy, am I glad to see you,” the marine guard said, jarring Tarek away from a dark spiral.

  “I see things here are unchanged,” Tarek said, walking past the window.

  The checkpoint was built like a small bunker, its single exterior door was now sealed, but the room also had two slitted windows to the corridor that acted as firing ports for defenders. While these provided significant cover, there was a lot of firepower in the corridor pointed at them, and when they saw Tarek’s shadow, several of them fired.

  He knew it was coming, in point of fact, he’d intentionally set it up to make an impression, but it took all his concentration not to flinch or even hurry his step. A half dozen rounds were fired, and every one missed, some passed by close enough to stir his hair with their wake.

  “I’m afraid to say, we have to kill those men,” Tarek said once he’d cleared the window and the shooting stopped. Velta was looking at him like he was the second coming. The marine, however, looked at him like he was mad.

  “Who’s the best shot here?”

  The two marines Tarek brought and the defenders briefly exchanged glances, and then all eyes turned to one of the men who’d come with the pilot ‘Private Lanchester’ according to his tag.

  “Okay, everyone pick a window and get ready to take your shots. Lanchester, we’re going to set up a diversion.”

  “Sir?” he asked.

  Tarek gestured to a spot slightly offset from the window, from where the marine could see about half way down the corridor. He wouldn’t be able to see the Exodites, but they wouldn’t be able to see him either. Uncertainly the marine moved to the spot.

  “So the wall is clad with metal panelling,” Tarek closed his eyes, largely for effect. “You can see the seams. There should be eight panels total in your view.”

  “Yes sir,” the private answered.

  “Count four panels in from your left and find the bottom right screw on that panel. Do you have it?”

  Tarek, eyes still closed, heard the marine sight down his weapon. By virtue of his power he also knew that the private nodded once he had his mark and wondered whether that was an intentional test of his power or a nervous oversight.

  “Okay, now measure up three feet from that screw, you should barely be able to see a scuff on the wall. That’s your target mark. You’ll fire a single round and then move to the window.”

  “I’m going to shoot the wall?” The marine said as Tarek finally opened his eyes.

  “As you would in snooker or pool, Private.” Tarek turned to look at the others. “Everybody ready? We cannot hesitate past this point, they’ll recover from the shock quickly.”

  His ad hoc command all nodded. No one looked happy at the prospect of shooting people who had, until recently, been friends, but they deferred either to his rank or his reputation.

  Finally he gave a nod to Lanchester. “One round. Private. You’ll tell all the girls you did this later.”

  The report of the marine’s carbine echoed mercilessly around the checkpoint but the shot went exactly where Tarek knew it would. Ricochets were deadly in close quarters but they were rarely predictable and so no right-minded fighter would waste rounds on a trick shot.

  There was a metallic crack as the round deflected off the wall and an ab
breviated scream that followed it. All shipboard firearms were issued with soft fragmenting rounds to prevent damage to vital systems and reduce exactly the sort of deadly ricochet Tarek had just engineered. As a result, the round that hit the leader of these Exodites was already in pieces by the time it reached him, and his pilot’s jacket barely slowed them at all before they entered his chest and found his heart.

  As Tarek had instructed, his people moved immediately to the windows, but he took point by opening the door out of the bunker. Just as the card he held demanded, the Exodites were all looking at the man in their midst who had somehow been shot by an invisible assailant. For many it was just a glance. As soon as their heads turned towards the scream, their mind was already telling them they shouldn’t take their eyes off the checkpoint.

  But in the space of that tiny glance, Tarek’s people opened fire, fully automatic rounds spat from the window as the marines swept the corridor. Velta fired relentlessly and with surprising accuracy, peppering two men in the chest with a half clip of rounds each.

  Tarek fired too, but his shooting was atrocious, and he knew it – certainly he struck flesh but he doubted any of it was critical; it was difficult to tell in the carnage that unravelled towards him. Despite his bravado, he didn’t really want to face this, but he forced himself. This was war, this was the reality that Rease faced every day, and it was far different to the sanitary, almost graceful contest of fighter engagements.

  Men and women were ripped and punctured, blood ran and pooled. Some danced in the fusillade, some were knocked down by the first round, some died mercifully quickly and others were clipped and fell screaming in pain. A few fired at Tarek, he was the most obvious target, but so desperate were they that none found their mark.

  The hardest part came next.

  There was a brutalised Exodite, a corpse that hadn’t yet realised its fate and still wanted to fight. One arm was a shattered ruin, but the other pawed at a pistol on the bloody floor beside it and finally found purchase. Tarek levelled his weapon at the man but he struggled to pull the trigger. This was not a Mauler, not a monster, and its desperate attempts to kill him were not mired in hate or aggression but in an overpowering desire to survive.

  He hesitated too long, the shaking barrel of the Exodite’s weapon came upon him.

  And then a bullet tore through the air and pierced the Exodite’s skull, kicking his head back into the mess on the floor. Numbly Tarek looked over his shoulder to see Velta had advanced to deliver the kill shot. She held her pistol in two hands, her shoulders heaving and a slightly manic look in her eye.

  “They have to die,” she said to the man she’d just killed, and then she looked up at Tarek, her gaze dangerously focused. “You said they had to die, right?”

  “Them or us,” he told her. He tried for empathy, but he knew he sounded mostly hollow.

  He wanted to tell her to go back to the CIC, to find somewhere she could throw up or cry or scream or maybe all three. He wanted that for her because he wanted it for himself, but there could be no reprieve for any of them. The ship needed him and he needed this motley unit.

  Swallowing the bile in his throat, he marched through the gore of the hallway and gestured for the others to follow.

  ****

  Pierman and Jenson had moved to the CIC immediately after Tarek left, and Richter joined them in short order. Following the alarm, the attack on the checkpoint had become their singular priority, if the enemy were able to break into the CIC, they could effectively decapitate the ship’s command and control ability. Their first action had been to summon the bulk of the marine detachment to the quarterdeck, and the minutes they were taking to arrive were stretching out interminably.

  In that critical time, someone had severed the CIC’s control of the long-range communications array and somehow used it to overload the dorsal sensor array.

  “I have two more reports,” Richter said, “A couple have decided to turn neutral at the medicentre. There was also an attack on the junior officers’ mess which was repelled with significant loss of life to both sides. The common thread is Exodites.”

  “Exclusively?” Jenson asked.

  Richter nodded. “I’ve put out a ship wide telling all crew to avoid Exodites. My men will detain them wherever they show their faces.”

  “And our present situation?” Pierman asked, casting a significant glance towards the door.

  “Should be resolved shortly,” he put a hand to his headset and listed for a moment. “I stand corrected, apparently the Exodite attackers have been wiped out. My team are securing the checkpoint now.”

  The Captain was frowning and looking at the clock above the holo-stage. “Your men did not arrive quickly.”

  “Quickly enough,” Richter countered.

  “Perhaps. Have them check the bodies for weapons and report back what they find.”

  There was a pause while Richter did so and waited for a response, after a moment he said. “Pistols and submachineguns only. Looks like the weapons from the survival kits off the bombers.”

  “Are there any explosives in those kits? Any cutting tools?”

  “No sir,” Richter said intuiting the Captain’s gist. “A diversion.”

  “Well, it seems they were never in any danger of getting in,” Pierman pointed out. “If you couldn’t get past the lockdown barriers, where else would you strike to disable a carrier?”

  ****

  The various munitions bays, machine rooms and control centres adjoining the Arcadia’s hangar bay were a veritable sea of critical targets. This was the challenge facing Lieutenant Collins when he’d found himself the highest-ranking officer on the deck. They’d armed up quickly enough, but then he’d found he had barely enough men to convincingly defend all of the locations.

  Ultimately, he’d called on his fighter pilot training. He set up small groups to act as delaying forces on the most critical targets and then assembled the rest of his unit into a mobile combat force. The mobile force carried the better weapons and commandeered several rovers normally used to transfer pilots and munitions around the deck.

  When a dozen armed Exodites had emerged into the hangar, he’d initially taken it as a blessing. His relief quickly turned to horror as they descended on one of his defence teams with fury and violence. The Exodites had waited to open fire until they were already on top of the defenders and the fight somehow resembled more of a firing squad. The half dozen crew Collins had left guarding fell almost in synchronisation as the heavy metallic rattle of gunfire echoed across the deck.

  Collins didn’t have time to wonder why the Exodites were attacking, they’d assaulted a munitions vault and one of them was clearly working to override the locks on the blast door. He shouted his force into motion and rested his submachine gun across the hood of the transfer vehicle. A short squeeze of the trigger sent a barrage of rounds downrange that sparked off the armoured walls and sent several of the Exodites diving for cover.

  Unfortunately, there was plenty of cover to be had; at Collins own direction, his defence units had established crude fortifications out of jet parts and other non-combustible supplies. Mistaken for friendlies, the Exodites had walked right past them and now they were using it those same barricades to great effect. The Exodites began to return fire, forcing the drivers to weave back and forth which was a harrowing experience for the passengers and made accurate shooting almost impossible.

  “Attention all stations, this is internal security,” the voice came over Collins comm unit and the general announcements speaker as a single voice. “At this time, it appears the Exodite crew have mutinied.”

  No shit, Collins thought gritting his teeth and returning fire as a lucky Exodite shot struck one of the other men on the rover with him. The casualty slumped down in his spot and then slid off the side before anyone could grab him, rolling like a rag doll behind the vehicle.

  “Please follow standard security procedures. General crew should remain clear of any apparent combata
nts. Any Exodites who…”

  Collins stopped pay attention as the message warbled on, his attention seized by the cold and dreadful sight of the munitions vault hatch swinging open. As soon as the gap was wide enough about half the Exodites stormed towards it. The Lieutenant snapped his weapon to full-auto, braced hard and sent a stampede of deadly rounds at the widening doorway. A full clip emptied and he’d cut down two of them but it wasn’t enough.

  This munitions vault was unique; it carried the nuclear ordinance for the bombers and even though those warheads were useless without the arming codes, the mere fact that the attackers had gone straight for them made Collins incredibly uncomfortable.

  “Collins,” the radio on the Lieutenant’s belt came alive. “You need to abort your assault.”

  Collins jerked his head aside as a bullet ricocheted off the tyre guard just in front of him.

  “Who is this?”

  “Two reasons,” the voice on the radio continued as though they hadn’t heard the question. “The first is that you’re charging head long into gunfire which is going to get you killed. The second is that they have a nuke in there, and if you box them in, they’ll have no option but to use it.”

  Before he could respond, another incoming round made a hellish screech as it grazed the Lieutenant’s weapon. After two near misses in as many seconds he decided he had to concede the stranger’s first point at least. Calling out to his unit he ordered them to dismount and use the transfer vehicles for cover.

  Once he was safely barricaded behind the little rover, he directed his attention back to the caller. “I say again, who is this?”

  “Flight Sergeant Tarek, you’ve probably heard of me by now.”

  Collins paused before answering. “Not everything I’ve heard is good, Tarek.”

  “And you can address that later, for now I’ll talk you through this crisis. They have a nuke, if it’s not armed already, it will be before you can get in there.”