Threshold of Victory

by Stephen J. Orion

  Collins fully expected to see both ships shear each other apart, but instead they just clipped one another. At lower speeds, it might have made almost no difference, but their comparative velocities meant a huge volume of energy was forced into both craft. For the Warhorse, the relative force was not great, the hull warped and screamed, but she stabilised quickly. By contrast, the bomber’s entire starboard wing assembly seemed to dissolve into splinters as the craft suddenly whipped into a flat spin, engines creating a blurred blue ring.

  The rather lovely illusion the bomber’s engines made as it spun suggested an RPM that would have knocked the crew unconscious immediately; and that was only if it hadn’t killed them outright. A moment later, the engines flared out, and the reactive stabilisers blew, beginning the process of normalising its rotation.

  Those responses were automated, however, and didn’t mean the crew had survived, but Collins wasn’t about to take that chance. He had a short window between reaching range and overshooting, but he was an expert in his field, and hitting a target that wasn’t evading was rookie’s work. He got tone and let two missiles fly, throwing in a barrage of gunfire at the last minute just to be certain.

  The missiles struck simultaneously and the bomber transitioned from hardened aircraft to cloud of debris in a single duplex flash. The nuke did not trigger in the blast, a reality that was both spectacularly unlikely and the one thing on Collins mind as he shot past the wreckage.

  “Good shot, Razor,” Walters offered simply.

  “And nice flying to you,” Collins replied, and let out a breath as he burned off the last of his fuel trying to slow down. “Perhaps you can show your appreciation by towing me home?”

  ****

  Pain resolved itself before vision did, a cruel curtain of sensations that draped across him from head to toe and then back again. Phillips didn’t recall falling unconscious, but as he opened his eyes to a dimly lit room, knew he’d been out at least long enough that someone had moved him.

  He was in the baffles, the spaces between the pressure hull and the layered armour that mitigated impacts. Though used for all manner of prohibited activities and storage, the baffles were off limits and ostensibly only pressurised because the atmosphere helped bleed impact energy. It was not a good place to be when you were wounded, the baffles covered a vast area, and the odds of being stumbled upon were not high.

  Phillips was not, in fact, immortal. He knew that, and he hated the term. But as a member of the Peerage he was certainly difficult to kill. Quite apart from the revitalising effects of the life extension treatments, their physiologies were altered significantly before birth. Given sufficient time, he could recover from just about anything, provided he could keep breathing and didn’t bleed out. Breathing wasn’t a problem, but he could see the pool of his own blood that had formed around him. He could feel the light headedness. His wounds would not seal, and even if they did, the fact that someone had dragged him down here, instead of taking him to the medicentre, suggested that natural convalescence might be curtailed any minute.

  As though summoned by that thought, a figure emerged out of the shadows, stepping over the strutting with its arms out for balance but oddly careful not to let them touch anything.

  Phillips squinted. “Desla?”

  “No.” The voice was Tarek’s, but it was cold and distant. “He’s been dealt with.”

  It was then that Phillips caught sight of the blood that covered the pilot from his fingertips to his elbows. He was trying to effect cold anger, but Phillips could see the failing of the expression, the tiredness, the slightly dazed look in his eyes. There was no telling how long the anger had burned for, and perhaps it smouldered still, but that was not enough to cover the shell shock and sorrow. Finally Tarek gave up and slumped against a diagonal strut opposite, his hands hanging by his sides but away from any surfaces.

  “I brought you here to kill you,” Tarek admitted.

  “If so, you are taking your time about it.”

  Tarek barked a bitter laugh but said nothing more.

  Phillips was trying to think of a way to say that ‘you don’t want to do this’ that didn’t sound like a weak plea for his own life. He didn’t much care what became of him. Just staying awake was exhausting, and leaving this place meant having to face a ship so much emptier than it had been before. A place that fairly echoed with his own failures. Better by half to pass away here in the quiet.

  Abruptly Tarek stripped off his jacket and began to use it to scrub roughly at the drying blood on his arms. “You know they’re dead, right?” he said, not looking up from his work.

  “I know,” Phillips sighed, a shuddering and painful movement. “We’d both be somewhere else if they weren’t.”

  “Kelly is…” He paused to scrub harder. “…she’s taking the slow way out.”

  ‘She might pull through’ was what Phillips would have said to anyone else, but against a man who knew the future, it could only be the worst kind of platitude.

  Phillips said, “For all our powers, I regret we weren’t more like her.”

  “Don’t compare yourself to me,” Tarek said, too tired to be a rebuke, it came out an almost gentle warning.

  “You’re not like me, but whether you’re better or worse will depend greatly on what happens in the next few minutes.”

  Tarek threw his bloodied jacket on the ground and glared at the pilot. “And you definitely don’t get to judge me.”

  “Power is a terrible thing, Andrew. I warned you what might happen.”

  “I didn’t start this,” the man snapped coming to his feet.

  “No, I did. In seconds, I made a choice with no certain outcomes, and if I could go back…” he trailed off. God if he could somehow go back. “…but how long did you spend deciding how to respond to this? How long did you spend contemplating my death for crimes I didn’t yet know I’d committed. An hour? A day? More?”

  “You can’t go free for what you’ve done.”

  Phillips looked up to meet his eyes. “Do I look free to you? I know what I’m going to have to live with, Andrew. Is it so hard to believe that I want better for you.”

  “Honestly,” Tarek kicked his jacket into the corner. “Something’s changed. You were supposed to die here, but… I don’t see that future anymore. It looks like you get your last chance after all.”

  “You can’t see futures you can’t make, you wrote that,” Phillips said. “Maybe it’s not just about muscle memory.”

  “You want to test that theory?”

  “Don’t be ashamed of it,” Phillips leaned his head back. “Why don’t you forget about your power for just a second. You still get to decide how this ends. You don’t even have to kill me, you can just walk away.”

  “Sounds like you’re asking me to do it.”

  “Whatever I may be after this, my star is gone. I traded away everything I cared about for her, and now I have nothing.”

  “There are still Undying left, a whole flight were on patrol.”

  “And you’d want me to lead them?”

  “No. But if I carry you out of here, you’re going to protect them. You’re going to be the squad mate you should have been from the start.”

  “I failed at that once already, remember?”

  “Then next time die trying,” Tarek bent down and pulled Phillips arm over his shoulder in preparation to lift him to his feet. “This will hurt.”

  It didn’t exactly sound like an apology.

  Chapter XI

  Once more

  Constellation Carrier CNS Arcadia

  Bryson IV Local Sector, Bryson System

  28 April 2315

  Once more, Rease decided as she led her remaining arcoms off the Warhorse and onto the Arcadia’s freight elevator. Once more they will try to destroy the gateship.

  As the freight elevator descended and she caught her first glimpse of the hangar deck, she decided they’d borne this attack rather well. There were bodies scattered about
, and she could see a single pocket of resistance in one corner, but compared to most battlefields, this barely qualified as a skirmish.

  Before she’d left the Warhorse, Razor had given her a name, Technical Chief Danning, the man he’d left in charge of the ground crew. She yanked off her pressure helmet and keyed her comm. “TC Danning this is Lieutenant Rease, 10th arcom. This as clean as it looks?”

  “Don’t feel very clean LT,” was the response. “We’ve cornered the last of the Exodites in the starboard-aft corner of the hangar, but they’ve built up some cover using crates and there’s a lot of open ground between us and them. I’m waiting on some marines to come down with grenades to clear them out.”

  “I’ll do you one better,” she swapped to her unit channel. “Sandal, walk a perimeter. Dryden, take the rest of the unit to stowage. I’ll handle the impervious Fort Box-Stacky.”

  From Rease’s perspective, the Exodite problem had reached a dangerous phase: the mop up. Mop up was when the battle had been decided, but no one was sure who still had fight in them, and everyone started to be exceedingly careful about wrapping up the loose ends. All too often the wrap up phases lasted longer than the actual battles as the bureaucrats came out of their holes and demanded everything be done methodically and by the book.

  On paper that would be fine, but it could leave the victorious force focusing all its attention on a largely harmless and defeated enemy when it should have been consolidating to face the next attack, an attack she knew was coming. She’d seen it befall many inexperienced officers, and while the senior commanders on the Arcadia appeared to have plenty of tenure, she imagined this was probably the first time they’d fought a battle on their own ship. The desire to obsess over the details would be strong.

  As she approached the Exodite position she flicked to external speakers. “Exodites, negotiation is over, you have until I finish talking to throw down your weapons. Do so now.”

  The only answer was a patter of small calibre rounds that chattered against her machine’s armour from one particularly optimistic mutineer. No one in Danning’s team returned fire, confirming Rease’s fears that they’d already decided ‘mission accomplished’ and had no appetite for further risk.

  The Lieutenant waited one breath more than she’d promised and then depressed the trigger for her arcom’s rifle. The high explosive shell landed right in the middle of the Exodite positon and blew it apart. The floor compressed beneath the same ballooning fireball that hurled the crates aside like toys. Bodies, and parts of bodies, lashed into the air amid the destruction and landed as far back as Danning’s position.

  Advancing into the wreckage, Rease knocked aside anything that looked like it might be large enough to hide behind or under. She found only one surviving Exodite, covered in ash and blood, he nonetheless brandished a pistol, which he fired madly at her while he tried to scramble away. Arcoms were designed for engaging Maulers, not foot dismounts, so none of her weapons were really scaled to use at point blank on a lone foot soldier.

  Picking the most expedient solution that came to her, she kicked the man. The steel calf of her arcom hit him like a bus, pitching him into the nearest wall where he bounced to the floor and rolled bonelessly to a still heap.

  One final check confirmed no Exodites remained, and she stepped over the gawking faces of Danning’s men and moved over to stow her arcom in their assigned lotting at the back of the hangar. As the machine powered back down, she regretfully pulled her cloying pressure helmet back on so she could use the radio as she climbed out.

  “Arcadia security control, this is Lieutenant Rease. My team have landed and secured the hangar for you. Where do you need us next?”

  “Lieutenant, this is Richter,” the marine commander’s crisp tones replied almost immediately. “Your assistance is appreciated, but please leave the corridor fighting to my team, I would ask that at this time you keep the hangar and its accompanying stockpiles secured.”

  Rease was about to demand a real job when a bloodied young woman in a CIC uniform with ensign pips came up to her. “You’re the Angel of Death,” she said reverently.

  “Copy control, we’ll hold here,” Rease signed off quickly and turned to regard the woman.

  Her eyes were fierce and they scanned the hangar perpetually, a pistol in her white-knuckled hand occasionally half-rising at some imagined threat. She’d acquired an armoured vest and combat webbing from somewhere, and the pouches on her gear were loaded with ammunition of all types. With her free hand reached out and pressed something into Rease’s palm.

  Rease looked down to see two pistol rounds and a shotgun shell.

  “Hide them,” the ensign said. “You don’t want to run out.” She glanced around again. “It’s not safe here,”

  Once more, the words popped into Rease’s mind, but she cast them aside because what stood before her was something she could not ignore. It wasn’t the fact the ensign was dangerous and unpredictable, though she certainly qualified as both. It was the fact she was at a turning point, Rease could see it in her eyes. From here, the girl had one chance to find her way back to herself or she would be forever an agent of violence.

  “Holy shit, Chief,” Dryden said coming up beside her, an action that attracted a suspicious stare from the ensign. “You know those weren’t Maulers, right?”

  Rease looked at him and was surprised to find herself slightly wounded by the fear she saw in his eyes. Coldly she said, “They seemed like they wanted to be.”

  Then she offered her hand to the ensign and led her away from the scars of the hangar deck.

  ****

  CAG Jenson looked down disdainfully at the envelope that Captain Pierman handed him.

  “Are we really going to do this?”

  Jenson, Pierman, and Walters were gathered together in the Captain’s office; standing in a loose V around the window to the CIC. For now, Richter was the watch officer, his men had accounted for all of the Exodites, but the marine commander was still the best man to manage the after-battle clean up. It was late and everyone was tired, but Pierman had insisted they review Tarek’s predictions immediately following the stand down from high alert.

  The Captain did not respond to the CAG’s question. Instead he took a silver letter opener from the desk and slit the side of the envelope. He offered the letter opener to Jenson.

  With a twist of his lip, the CAG took the implement and roughly hacked the envelope open. He slid the trifolded page out and ran his thumb over its surface, testing its texture. He didn’t want what was in the letter, whether it was true or false, they had already crossed a line. This was a ship of the Constellation, not a witches’ coven, they should have been dealing in absolutes, not measuring the predictions of a failed pilot. The Captain cleared his throat pointedly.

  Sighing Jenson unfolded the page and ran his eyes over the content.

  1. INT. ARCADIA’S CIC.

  A buzz of activity fills the ship’s command centre, the crew are nervous but professional. A half dozen look up with relief as CAPT. PIERMAN and CMD. JENSON enter through the main door.

  COMMANDER JENSON

  Watch officer, report?

  It went on – written gratingly in script format – describing the play-by-play with unerring details. Things he said, how he said them, what he did and even, at times, what he thought. As he read, Jenson’s fingers began to tighten around the pages, creasing them as he read faster and faster, no longer searching for accuracy but instead searching for errors. One tiny mistake would have been enough, but as the script closed in on the present it only maintained its flawless accuracy.

  Finally he came to the last paragraph:

  CMD. JENSON

  (JENSON is furious, but as he reads the final lines of the screenplay he realises it is not Tarek that angers him, for that man is merely the messenger.

  His anger is at the notion that his future had been preordained, that there might be nothing he could do to change the outcome.

  Carefu
l to keep his hand from shaking, JENSON puts the letter onto the edge of the Captain’s desk)

  Careful to keep his hand from shaking Jenson put the letter onto the edge of the Captain’s desk and looked at the others.

  “Well,” Pierman said looking from the Commander to Walters and back again, “that was rather confronting. I won’t ask you to tell me what you’ve just read, but are you satisfied in its accuracy?”

  Walters let out a long slow breath and nodded. “Every detail,”

  “Jenson?”

  The CAG took a moment to slow the thrashing whirlpool of his thoughts. “He must have a source. Best case scenario is that he was working with the Exodites and had a change of heart.”

  “How would that inform him of activity taking place in the CIC, before it took place?”

  “He could reasonably extrapolate.”

  “Word for word?” Pierman shook his head. “As irrational as the premise is, we need to approach it rationally. All the evidence we have points to our young Flight Sergeant having some advanced knowledge of the future. Furthermore, all the evidence we have suggests he is prepared to use it to our advantage.”

  “Sir, if I may,” Walters said.

  “Given the circumstances, speak freely Lieutenant.”

  “Tarek is prepared to use it to his advantage. He defies orders at will.”

  “A good observation, but so far he’s ultimately been working to the same greater objective. I think it’s time we started including him at a higher level, see what he does when he has more input into the strategy and planning.”

  “Surely not,” Jenson said. “Forgive me, Captain, but he’s not even a junior officer, whatever his powers, he’s not ready for that kind of responsibility.”