Lucky Universe: Lucky's Marines | Book One

by Joshua James

  Lucky sacrificed the last of his balance to shove his boot as far up Malby’s ass as possible, hoping it hurt, pushing the Marine the last few feet up the side of the stingray platform. The inertia pushed Lucky straight toward the ground, which was rising fast.

  He hit it, rolled, and watched as Malby, Nico and the stingray slid over the crater edge with inches to spare.

  Lucky felt his spiders clawing at his mind, felt a pluck and swung to his left as a blue stream darted past his head.

  He turned to find four of the Union puppets advancing on his position.

  In another time and place, it might have been a nice family portrait. A middle-aged man in a jumpsuit, a slightly older woman in overalls, and two girls in jumpers.

  Unfortunately, they were all missing eyes. And they all held weapons at their hips and pointed them at Lucky.

  But other than that, a real nice moment.

  The nearest girl fired, but a locust appeared from the heavens, diving into the shot and disintegrating.

  Another followed it, smashing into the girl and folding her in half, sending her weapon flying.

  Lucky began to hop backward, dragging his broken leg with him and considering his options. The stimulants his biobots fed him dulled the pain, but didn’t help with the uselessness of the leg, which was minutes from regeneration.

  He saw a rover to his right and considered running for the open cab. Or hopping. He also knew it likely contained yet another of these things. Maybe he could get the drop on it.

  And then the ground disappeared below him.

  He was falling, bouncing with bone-crushing intensity.

  He had backed right over the edge of the crater.

  24

  Almost

  He rolled to a stop.

  He couldn’t feel his legs. He couldn’t feel his hands.

  He couldn’t feel anything.

  “Rocky, what’s the story here?”

  Nothing.

  “Rocky?”

  “Bad news.”

  “I got that. How bad?”

  “Broken back. Two minutes.”

  Lucky raised his head. He had limited neck movement, but nothing from the shoulders down. He knew even as his mind raced that his biobots were working furiously to fuse together the nerve damage in his back, reconnecting tissues in ways science could never have done a century ago.

  But two minutes was going to get him killed.

  The alien ship was still another hundred yards away, and there were even more of the rovers crammed around here. If it wasn’t obvious before, the artifact was undoubtedly the main attraction drawing all of these things to it.

  He watched as the stingray carrying his Marines smashed into the ground, spilling them at the base of the anomaly.

  “At least someone is making progress,” said Rocky.

  “Can we call them?”

  “Done. Now what? They can’t get here any faster than you can get there. And there are lots of—”

  Lucky was watching for the second stingray when a pair of skinny, wrinkled ankles dropped into his line of sight. An elderly woman in muddy pants had crawled slowly from the passenger side of the rover to his right. She walked purposefully toward him.

  “Rocky?”

  “Another minute.”

  He strained at his arms, willing them to work. His rifle lay tantalizingly close, right across the palm of his hand. He could see his hand. See his finger. See the trigger. But nothing he could do could put the two of them together.

  He looked back at the old woman, her face now obscured by the weapon she held aloft. For the second time today, Lucky was staring right down the barrel.

  He gritted his teeth.

  Not like this.

  He was no hero, certainly not like his sister. He wasn’t worth a damn. He wasn’t worth having his name said in hushed tones while no one remembered her.

  But he was worth more than this. Worth more than being killed by a senior citizen with a blaster that was smaller than her shrunken head.

  What makes you think you deserve better?

  That wasn’t Rocky. It hadn’t come through his echo channel. It was something else, something deeper, something that knew him more intimately than he knew himself.

  The voice had a lilt to it, a twinkle in the words. There was a smile behind the words, a laugh.

  It was the voice of madness, Lucky realized.

  It was Him.

  “Rocky?”

  No response.

  He felt his finger twitch. Could he get to the trigger of his gun?

  Maybe he could lift the gun, kill the old woman, make a run for the anomaly. Maybe he could get back control. Maybe he could stop it.

  But he couldn’t.

  Red clouds billowed up in his vision, swirling around faster and faster.

  He felt himself start to laugh. A big, booming laugh. A playful laugh, like a child full of wonder.

  The woman faltered. She tilted her head. Hair fell across the red crusted scars on her blind face.

  She closed the gap, never lowering her weapon, never wavering. But not firing either. She came closer and closer as the wild, childish laughter grew louder and louder until Lucky couldn’t recognize it as his own voice any longer.

  She came until the metal of her gun kissed the polymer of his faceplate.

  And suddenly, the laughter stopped, and Lucky felt the rage turn on in a blinding rush.

  His head smashed forward with such violence it snapped the gun sideways and the woman lost her grip.

  He watched as his own arm came up with his weapon in hand, and in one motion his other hand grabbed the back of the old woman’s head and bent her in half over the rifle, then watched as the pulse punch of the gun ripped her frail body in half.

  A far-off voice was yelling and screaming, like there was struggle. But it was so, so far away.

  He could barely hear it, barely make anything out. What was it saying?

  He strained, but it was unintelligible.

  Then he heard his own voice howl in rage.

  In an instant, he was leaping toward another eyeless puppet, this one an older man with sunken cheeks. He hadn’t gotten out of the rover yet, hadn’t even had time to lift his weapon.

  Lucky leapt into the cab with him.

  He saw his pulse rifle flash, heard himself laugh again.

  The Hate was so very happy, like a prisoner released from his cell.

  But this time the far-off voice was closer, more determined. Stronger.

  “Lucky!” it screamed.

  He recognized it. He knew that voice. He had heard it before, but his mind refused to work. It was fuzzy with rage.

  He was over the man now, crushing him on the floorboard of the cab, beating him with something.

  “Lucky!” came the voice in his head again, more urgent this time.

  “Lucky, we’re regen’d up. You don’t need this.”

  Now he was sure he recognized the voice.

  Another swing, and the eyeless face sank inward. The head splattered.

  And then all the animosity in his mind simply drained away.

  Until next time, Lucky.

  It was the dark voice from somewhere else in his mind. But it was weak and distant.

  The red clouds in his vision burned away. He could think clearly.

  “Okay, I got it now. He’s back in the bottle. I got Him, Lucky. I got Him.”

  “He got out?”

  “Just for a minute, but we’re okay now.”

  Lucky looked down at the destroyed, crumpled face and body of the eyeless man.

  He dropped what he’d been hitting him with. A ragged leg ripped off at the knee joint. The man’s own leg.

  “You know it could’ve been worse,” Rocky said.

  Lucky glanced out of the front cab and realized it was worse. Much worse.

  An eyeless was right next to the cab’s window. Two more lie only a dozen steps away.

  He looked down at the destroyed
eyeless man on the floorboard, then up at the display column.

  Aw, hell.

  He grabbed the man’s bloody head and slammed it up next to the AI sensor, hoping there was enough brain activity still going on in there for the rover to recognize the link with its owner and—

  The rover’s engine roared to life.

  He slammed the power column forward, and it lurched ahead.

  Lucky sat up and reached for the steering column. There was nothing there. He looked down. Nothing.

  What kind of backward, ignorant, AI-stupid people build a rover with a physical control column for thrust and not one for steering?

  The Union, that’s who.

  “Rocky, I got a little problem.”

  “Don’t look at me. I can’t interface with this Union gobbledygook.”

  “So how do I steer?”

  “I don’t know, but you’d better figure it out.”

  He felt the rover smash up against another one parked at a different angle, which threw his in a new direction. At least the crazy motion of his drive made him a difficult target.

  But it was also sending him the wrong way. He was driving parallel to the alien ship, and the longer he drove without turning, the larger a course alteration he would need.

  A blue energy beam flew wildly over the rover, then another scorched the dirt next to his big front tire.

  That gave him an idea.

  He jumped over to the passenger door of the cab, kicked it open, and swung his head out. He pulled his punch pistol from his shoulder holster and fired one punch into the big tire.

  It exploded with a bang, and the rover started listing to the right.

  Lucky’s spiders plucked urgently, and he swung up just as a blue energy beam lanced down the side of the cab where his head had been. He looked back to find an ugly man with fat arms hanging out of the back of the rover bed.

  As he watched, three more eyeless clambered out.

  Of course, he thought.

  He pulled himself back inside in time to see they were headed for a collision with three rovers parked in a semicircle. He was going to hit the center rover head on.

  He leaned down to brace for impact and saw the dead eyeless man’s blaster.

  He grabbed it and fired through the front view of the rover. It sliced through the metal like it wasn’t there and blew a perfect line down the center of the rover dead ahead of him.

  The energy beam caused the rover to break apart into two similarly sized chunks. It didn’t, however, clear his path. One side rolled away, but the other fell right into his path.

  His rover hit it with the flat right tire and bounced up and over the debris, leaping skyward. For a moment he was weightless, then gravity reasserted itself and slammed the rover back down.

  It bounced, swinging wildly on the flat front tire, then flipped up on its nose and stood upright, teetering for a full second, then toppled over onto its roof.

  Lucky rolled out. With the Union blaster in hand, he sliced again and again through the back bed of the rover where the other eyeless had been. Then he pulled out his own rifle, flipped it, and launched a pulse grenade, then flipped it back and dived away.

  The rover, or at least what was left of it, exploded in a fireball.

  Lucky turned to run.

  And looked straight into Malby’s face.

  Jiang and Dawson stood next to him.

  He looked up to see he was standing at the base of the alien ship.

  “Hey,” he said. “Sorry I took so long.”

  25

  Home

  Beams of blue energy shot overhead, glancing off the anomaly without leaving a scratch.

  That shit was tough, whatever it was.

  The Marines scattered. Jiang fired two pulses, and Lucky saw one of the eyeless crumple.

  Malby started back toward the anomaly, rifle up.

  “Holy hell, Lucky,” he said. “You do know how to make an entrance.”

  Dawson fired off two pulses at another eyeless.

  “Coolest thing I’ve seen in a long time,” Cheeky said as the Marines reformed and fell back together in a carefully defensive formation.

  “Should I tell them you nearly pissed yourself, or will you?” Rocky asked.

  Something exploded overhead, and for a moment he thought they’d taken too long. But it was just a stingray with a broken platform spinning lazily, firing its twin cannons into the maze of rovers.

  The other stingray was on the ground, apparently too damaged from the hard landing to lift off again.

  The Marines had formed defensive positions around the base of a sheer wall of gray ore that reached up at least fifteen meters. It was smooth, offering no easy ascent.

  “Where are our scientists?” said Rocky.

  Good question. The brain gang was nowhere in sight.

  “Where could they’ve gone?”

  “The locusts can’t get bearings on anything near that ore.”

  Malby was staring over Lucky’s shoulder. He turned, expecting to see another eyeless Unionite, but instead saw a mushroom cloud in the distance.

  “What’re we waiting for?” asked Lucky.

  “A way in,” said Jiang.

  Vlad’s voice surprised them all. “Let’s go! This way!”

  She was motioning around a second rock formation with identical sheer cut sides. But the ground beyond was grooved with angular sides that seemed to climb up subtly.

  Lucky was sure it hadn’t been there a moment before. But how could that be? The rock formations looked ancient. This hadn’t been disturbed in eons.

  They all ran around the corner, then stopped.

  Three Marine bodies were slumped on the ground.

  One was splayed at an angle, with most of her head split down the middle, her faceplate crushed and mangled.

  Another nearby had massive wounds that could only have come from an Empire high-impact grenade. He must have taken a hit and gone into regen with it in his hand.

  The Marine next to him had massive damage to the back of his head.

  One grenade, two unlucky Marines.

  “Where are the rest?” asked Malby as he ran to the nearest dead Marine and started to rip out pulse recharger pods. He tossed one to Jiang who slapped it to her gear pack.

  “Nuke blast on the east side,” said Jiang. “Saw it as we landed.”

  Cheeky was nodding next to her. “They blew themselves and a half-mile radius of these bastards to hell.”

  Dawson was scavenging one of the other Marines, straining to avoid disturbing the pulped-up face. He threw a couple charge pods to Lucky. He tossed one to Nico. The kid looked shocked.

  “Get over it,” Lucky said. “We need ‘em more than they do.”

  The ground around them started to rumble.

  “What’s that?” asked Nico.

  “Oh hell,” whined Malby.

  “Let’s move,” barked Jiang.

  The ground bounced violently now, and for the first time Lucky sensed a difference in the look and feel of the artifact and the ground below it. The vibrations made the whole thing suddenly come into focus. The scale was so massive it hadn’t registered from where they were.

  They weren’t on the ground anymore.

  They were on an artificial deck. Inside the ship.

  Lucky still couldn’t understand how they had even entered the ship. There was something maddeningly fluid about it, like the walls were shifting around them. And yet. Everything still looked like ancient, unchanging rock. Damned peculiar.

  They slipped under a ledge of flat gray rock and climbed up one more steep incline. The twisting path meant Lucky could look back and see nothing but ancient rock. But had they gone that far? Now he wasn’t so sure. And the angle of the approach seemed wrong. They had scaled a steep incline, but the path behind now seemed too shallow.

  Perspective was hard to judge within the walls of sheer gray rock. Maybe it’s playing tricks on my mind?

  “Do we have a bett
er plan than just to go as deep into this thing as we can?” he shouted upward.

  No answer from the scientists, who were already up top.

  He doubted anyone heard him. The rumbling was louder now.

  “Ummmm,” Rocky started. “So, here’s a thing.”

  “A thing?”

  “Well … ummmm.”

  Only my AI could get tongue-tied, Lucky mused.

  Dawson stood at one side of a steep ledge, helping Nico crawl up. Cheeky was doing the same for Jiang.

  Lucky saw Malby reaching over the edge.

  “Gimme your hand!” he screamed. The vibration of the rock ore around them was deafening. It felt as if it might break apart at any moment.

  But then Lucky’s mind froze.

  Over Malby’s shoulder, inside the cavernous space that the scientists and Marines were scrambling across, were symbols.

  Alien symbols.

  Alien symbols that Lucky had seen before in his nightmares. And here they were, just as he had left them in his dreams, embedded in the rock walls around him.

  Malby was screaming at him now, right in his face. But Lucky couldn’t hear him.

  Rocky echoed out something, but it too was drowned out. Something loud and high-pitched resonated in his ears.

  He could read the symbols. And so could He.

  Welcome home, Lucky, said The Hate.

  And then the ground vibrated one last time, and he was thrown into the air like a scarecrow in tornado alley.

  Everything went black.

  26

  Specimen

  Hello, nightmare.

  Hello, Lucky, said his nightmare.

  Lucky woke up and just wanted to breathe.

  He was drowning. Green-yellow liquid covered his face, filling his eyes, his nose, his mouth.

  He tried to reach up, but his hands wouldn’t move.

  He tried to yell, but his mouth wouldn’t open.

  He was frozen inside a tank of gel, staring upward into a vast open space.

  A head hovered over him.

  A machine head.

  A phalanx of metal tubes protruded from the face. There were no eyes, no nose, no mouth. Only the tubes. There was a glass lens in each, and as the head moved closer Lucky could see his own sickly visage reflected in each one of the tubes.