by Joshua James
“Gear up and fall in, ladies. Today is a glorious day in the service of our Empire, as is every day!”
Peters surveyed the recovery room of groggy Marines with the stupid grin of a kid who just received his first pulse rifle.
“Once again you sorry bunch are the tip of the spear. We go first, the rest of the fleet follows.”
“Oohrah,” managed a couple Marines.
“We’re the only Marines on mission point. So look alive!”
“Or look dead,” chimed a few more Marines.
The only Marines on point. For an op this big. There was an entire armada out there.
Lucky glanced around, but only Jiang seemed puzzled. The rest were just going with it.
“We’re it?” Lucky asked. “Just us and the fodder?”
A couple Marines smirked at the slang for Empire regulars. The sergeant didn’t.
“Stop thinking, Lucky. It makes you look stupid.”
Malby snorted loudly.
“Move it, assholes! I want priority drop in ten mikes! High-G, crash protocol, drones out, hammerhead approach!”
A thaw and leap assignment had its perks.
“At least I don’t have to talk to anyone,” he thought to Rocky.
“Present company excepted, of course,” she replied.
He’d always pictured Rocky’s trillions of nano-minions inside his mind as tiny spiders laying down impossible webs of targeting data, defensive positions, and operational information every trillionth of a second.
Lucky sensed the familiar old combat fear welling up in him. A little pit of anxiety that formed a perfect sphere he felt pressing against his abdomen.
He pushed it down.
Fight first, fear later, his sister always used to say. She had lots of sayings like that. Did older sisters just get a handbook or something? Maybe it was just a stick jockey thing.
She was a born pilot. Notched more combat kills in six months than he had in a dozen cycles.
She should be the one they told stories about.
But she was gone now.
After so many deep sleep cycles, his long-term memory was everything his short-term memory wasn’t; totally baked in. He couldn’t forget her if he wanted to.
And he desperately did.
Hypersleep stasis was a fact of life in the prolonged high-G FTL burns, but that’s not why the Empire froze their Frontier Marines. They wanted to scrape their money’s worth out of them. Non-mission time was time their precious super troopers were aging for no reason.
Freeze ’em and preserve ’em. Even a super trooper was just another cog in the massive machine.
Lucky watched as the rookie in the pod next to him puked. First freezes are tough.
The puke was nothing but green bile, but he managed to dribble it down his face and onto his gear.
Thank the universe he didn’t have to jump with the rookies. He might be a lifer who didn’t give two shits about promotion, but at least he’d been doing this long enough that he got to jump with the rest of the competent grunts who didn’t get dead the second they touched dirt.
“First dive?” asked Cheeky.
The kid wiped his face with the back of his hand and nodded.
“Just trust your AI,” said Jiang. “They do all the work anyway.”
“And stick close to Lucky,” Cheeky said.
“But not too close,” Jiang countered. She wasn’t smiling. She seemed to know Lucky a little too well.
“She has dived with me before,” he shot to Rocky.
“Don’t worry about it,” she replied.
Well, well. It wasn’t the first time she’d kept personnel info from him.
Cheeky stared at Jiang’s backside with appreciation. She saw him out of the corner of her eye and mouthed something. Cheeky went red.
“Yeah, right,” snorted Malby. “Just because that lucky bastard always makes it means nothing for the rest of us.”
There was a general murmur of agreement about that.
“Nobody lives forever,” Lucky said flatly. He stared Malby down, but the asshole just blew him a kiss and went back to pulling on his gear.
“I really, really like him,” said Rocky.
Lucky glanced back to the kid, who was struggling with his gear. Couldn’t be more than sixteen.
“Jiang’s right. Your AI will handle everything for you.”
Jiang arched an eyebrow. “I was talking about the dive. It takes decades to fully mesh with your AI.”
Lucky paused at that. His AI had been a mess when he first got it. But by the time he was revived from his deep freeze, it meshed perfectly. It had saved his life over and over again. His AI was what made him Lucky. He had spoken to other augmented Marines about this before. They always agreed that AIs were life savers, but Lucky got the impression they never meant it as literally as he did.
“I’m just that amazing.”
“Sure you are.”
They didn’t seem to get as much flak from their AIs, either.
“Constructive criticism.”
“Sure, it is.”
In fact, other Marines didn’t seem to argue with their AIs at all. Just gave them orders, and they complied.
Silence.
“Lucky!” screamed Peters in his ear. He flinched. “How long has it been? Ten years?”
“Sarge,” he said.
Peters smiled easily. “Look how nice you clean up! No black eyes or broken teeth or drool anywhere on you!”
“Told you that you were in trouble,” Rocky said, smug as ever.
“Now, I know you’re going to pull some sob story about being freezer burned. Can’t remember a thing. But my AI is in fine shape, Lucky,” he said, smacking himself in the head. “Yes, sir, I’m watching a fine little screening of you liberally applying your fists to the face of a senior officer in the mess on Rikon on your last cycle. Ring any bells? No, of course not. Lucky, Lucky, Lucky.”
He stepped closer and whispered. “We haven’t worked together for a few cycles, so let me remind you. I run a tight fucking ship. How the hell you haven’t been flushed by now, I don’t know. You got special requested for this mission. Somebody at fleet keeps looking out for you.”
Behind Peters, Malby mouthed “special requested” and pantomimed jacking off.
“But keep at it, and I’ll shoot you in the back myself.”
“Another satisfied member of the fan club,” observed Rocky.
He ignored her.
His last cycle was Rikon? And this was Union space? He was on the wrong side of the galaxy.
He snapped the base of his hammerhead assembly in place with one swing of his arm, then jammed the locks with the butt of his pulse cannon without looking at him. Better to get to the drop hangar before he said what he thought.
“Yes, sir!” he said sharply.
The hammerhead was an orbital entry attachment that made it possible to jump from space to planet in a handful of minutes. It plugged straight onto his combat armor, adding limited ion thrusters and even more limited glide ability. The armor itself plugged into the exposed plugs up and down his body that ran straight through to his dura-alloy skeleton. It was an impressive piece of tech that made him look comically top heavy.
Point it down and dive. Even a Marine could figure it out.
“Clean contact,” echoed Rocky. “Positive control.”
He was about to shove on his helmet when Peters spoke again.
“You got a jump buddy, Lucky?”
Lucky froze. He searched desperately in his mind, plucking at the web of information Rocky had downloaded. Of course he had one assigned. He had to. Couldn’t jump without one. He heard Rocky laughing in the corner of his mind.
“No, sir.”
Peters smiled. The bastard knew it. Then he looked over his shoulder at the puking kid.
Oh hell, no.
“Private Nico, you’re with Lucky.”
He felt his teeth clench, and Rocky released a second cocktail into his system to cope wi
th the spike in blood pressure.
“Yes, sir!” snapped the private immediately, then tripped, sprawling forward over his hammerhead, the same gear he’d just puked on.
Someone laughed.
Lucky looked down at the rookie.
“Gear up. I want to be diving in two minutes.”
The kid’s eyes went wide. He had the hammerhead over his head and shoulders but still hadn’t managed to snap it into his combat plugs.
Next to the “this side up” message on the private’s gear someone had scratched the words “this side fucked” with an arrow pointing the other way.
“This one’s gonna get me killed,” he said to Rocky.
5
New Roma
He turned and headed for the hatch to the jump hangar.
The rookie followed, still struggling with his gear.
They were halfway there when Lucky saw Jiang, Dawson, Cheeky and Malby all standing around one of the big ansible screens.
“This is crazy.”
“What did she do?”
“Desertion. Or Dereliction. One of the D’s,” said Malby with a shrug. “She’s hot, though. Fifty credits says she doesn’t last thirty seconds.”
Without taking her eyes off the screen, Jiang flipped Malby the bird. He smirked.
Lucky shouldered Malby out of the way.
“Fuck off,” he said.
“What are we watching?”
“Some seriously messed up shit,” replied Dawson in his twangy drawl. For once, the smile was gone.
Lucky didn’t get what the big deal was. The ansible feed showed a public execution in one of the lesser Coliseums on New Roma, no doubt devoted to one of the trendy new gods. Huge marble columns rose into the night sky. A very fine venue.
But the crowd was sparse. Did it really warrant a feed?
This poor soul was pitted against three-dozen mechanized combat bots. That was enough firepower to wage a small war. He wondered what could justify such a show of force. And then he saw why.
Behind him, he heard the rookie draw in a sharp breath.
“No way,” Lucky heard himself mutter under his breath.
She was a Frontier Marine.
“Way, tough guy,” said Malby, elbowing his way back in.
She had been stripped of her armor. But the legion number tattooed on her neck was plain to see. 5th Legion.
Damn, thought Lucky.
That was one of the Peacekeeper Legions stationed on New Roma. They were generally hated by the population. But then again, Frontier Marines were pretty much hated everywhere else in the galaxy, so why not at home? And somebody had to keep the population in line. More than twenty Legions were stationed on New Roma at any given time.
Lucky had never been to the Empire home world, but it looked nice. If you were rich. And well-connected. And lots of other things that Lucky was not.
The Marine had now been dodging around for a good dozen seconds. Malby might just lose that bet.
One of the drones got in a clean shot as she tried to maneuver around one of the defensive posts scattered about the killing ground.
Oh well.
She bounced around like a puppet under the heavy barrage of slugs. Lucky winced. Her nanobots would repress her pain receptors, but she had to know she was done for now. She couldn’t move with that much damage.
She staggered, and one of the battle drones finally found a good angle for its big pulse pluggers and fired.
At the last moment, she yanked her head backwards, and Lucky could almost feel the heat of the pulse on his own face as it sliced through air in front her hers.
But a second drone fired in the same instant. Perhaps in armor, maybe with some luck, she might have managed to dodge that too. But she had neither.
She was torn in half, her torso flipping into the air like a leaf on the wind. The drones didn’t quit their assault, and the shower of slugs shredded her airborne upper body like a rag doll until there weren’t even enough pieces left to see.
Her smoldering legs were all that remained.
The battle drone, apparently offended that any part of her was still recognizable as meat, fired another pulse. The rest of her disintegrated, along with a healthy chunk of the coliseum’s dirt surface.
Malby let out a low whistle. “Niiiiiice.” He slapped Lucky on the back. “Another pilot rotation just opened up.”
This was new. Soldiers were sometimes killed in the executions. But Lucky had never heard of a Frontier Marine buying it this way. The Empire treated them like royalty. They spent untold trillions of credits on building and refining them.
“We’re officially old news,” said Cheeky.
“C’mon, she was just a screw up,” chided Jiang, though she didn’t sound like she was convincing herself, let along anyone else.
“Word is the Elites are almost ready,” said Malby.
Ah, the Elites. For a bunch of entitled assholes who thought they were hot shit, the Frontier Marines sure seemed worried about being replaced by the next big thing.
“That word has been around for as long as you’ve been a dick, Malby.”
“No, its legit,” said Cheeky.
“The blood eyes rolled out something last month. A first batch. Prototypes.”
“Says who?” Lucky asked, doubtful.
Dawson shrugged. “People.”
“Let me know when your people aren’t full of it.”
Just then, a red-eyed Empire scientist walked past. Like all clones, the red eyes were a mutation purposefully bred in.
The scientist didn’t react to hearing the “blood eyes” slur, if he had it at all. Lucky didn’t care. He hated scientists, cloned or otherwise.
“Well, how else to explain that little show?” Dawson asked. “They’re sending a message. We aren’t special anymore.”
They were all silent.
“Move it, Marines,” barked Peters, who’d appeared out of nowhere and blew past the group, heading for the hanger.
Jiang snapped on her jump helmet and followed.
The rest of the group turned toward the hangar, lost in their own thoughts.
Lucky had just reached the jump doors when he felt a tremor in the floor.
“Did you feel—”
And then the floor dropped out from under them.
“Fuuuu—” screamed Malby.
The lights flashed red and a high-pitched klaxon screamed in their ears.
A single word flashed in Lucky’s mind’s eye, transmitted no doubt through the internal AIs of every Marine around him.
B-R-E-A-C-H
The Marines scattered.
Lucky instinctively grabbed the rookie as the floor came violently back under his feet and slammed the kid down as he braced his armor against a crack in the wall panel next to the lift doors.
He grabbed his dive helmet, pulled it toward his head, and almost had it on when the ground dropped out from under him again.
The helmet cracked against his jaw and shoulder as he slammed into the ceiling that had inexplicably come crashing down upon him.
Stars flashed at the periphery of his vision and he wondered for a brief moment if they were real or just in his mind. He was on the edge of consciousness.
And then the lights went out.
6
Go
Rocky activated the infrareds in his eyes, and Lucky was treated to a view of gear and Marines floating among what was left of the staging room, which wasn’t much.
The business end of a pulse rifle floated by his face, and he pushed it away.
Gravity was gone.
Oxygen was thinning fast.
He didn’t yet have his helmet fully sealed, but Rocky had seen to it that his organic systems were protected with nano-mesh.
The walls had buckled inward, and the collapsed ceiling exposed a mess of wires and energy transfer lines. Gas poured in from the wall opposite Lucky.
“We’ve got radiation,” said Rocky, all business now. “I’ve a
ctivated shielding. Estimated time to lethal dosage is just under an hour, but it’s going to be a real pain in the ass in ten minutes.”
The alarms had fallen silent with the lights, and they hadn’t come back up. That was worrisome.
“Time to get off this bucket.”
He snapped his helmet lock and heard voices on the all-comm from the scattered floating Marines.
“Damn, Tanner, you alright?”
“Still got gas, Malby?”
“Get this off me.”
One voice boomed above the din. “Mission has not changed, ladies. We jump,” bellowed Peters. “We jump now!”
Lucky took a second to digest this. Peters got higher priority data than anyone on the jump carrier. If they were still jumping, then some serious shit was going down.
“Oh yeah,” echoed Rocky. “It’s fubar out there. I don’t have full data, but there is clearly fleet-wide damage occurring. I’ve lost the broad net. Just weak local now.”
That was bad news. The Marines’ AI copilots formed local networks to coordinate actions. Those nets should always be relatively strong as long as you were within a thousand klicks of other augmented Marines. And the last time Lucky had checked, this mission was stacked with them.
Internal AI never went offline unless a good chunk of your internal organs went offline, which was generally considered bad.
Lucky grabbed the rookie by his hair. He didn’t even get his helmet on, he thought.
The kid’s AI saved him, as it had many of the Marines, by instantaneously pumping nano-mesh over their skin to seal the vacuum and reduce radiation damage. All Nico’s facial features were covered by a fine skin flap, rendering him blind, deaf, and dumb. He was only alive because of the mesh.
But the idiot still should’ve had his helmet on by now. Peters knew exactly how useless the kid was when he threw Lucky into babysitting duty.
“Let’s move!”
Nico shook his head and tried talking through the mesh. It might mean he was panicking. It might mean he was deep in discussion with his AI. Probably getting yelled at by his AI to get a helmet on, that it couldn’t keep regenerating damaged cells forever.
Lucky punched him.
He couldn’t see it, but he imagined red snot oozed from Nico’s broken nose for a second before the nanobots staunched the flow and began knitting the bone and cartilage back in place. But it was going to take a few minutes for those teeth to regen.