Lucky Universe: Lucky's Marines | Book One

by Joshua James

  Now he heard an automated voice, and he fell back.

  Now he was speeding away, the symphony of static and noise receding.

  Hell was back there, and he didn’t even know how he left it behind.

  “I have more to cleanse!” screamed a voice in red-hot fury.

  He felt his head explode in rage.

  Get. Up. Now.

  47

  The Hate

  A demon tore at his flesh, ripping at him from the inside. It was screaming and shaking with rage.

  And then he realized it wasn’t something the scientists put in him. This wasn’t what the experiments of the Da’hune were trying to put in him.

  This was what caused the fire and destruction in the lab.

  This was what led him out.

  He was a chosen one after all. Not chosen by the Queen Mother.

  Chosen by The Hate.

  Chosen by the cleansing scourge of the ancient Da’hune. The power that they worshipped as divine.

  This was The Hate. And it was not a god. It was a demon.

  Lucky didn’t understand how or why he knew this, but he did.

  It survived with the ancient ship. It survived inside the T’ket’ka.

  And now it survived inside Lucky.

  This was the thing that cleansed the universe of all other life to preserve itself and its own.

  This was the essence of the ancient Da’hune.

  This killer was inside his head.

  He let it out.

  48

  Too Late

  A Union soldier leaned over Lucky, staring into his face.

  Lucky felt his fingers move, causing his breath to catch.

  He didn’t have his bots or his AI, but whatever had shocked his system was wearing off.

  The Hate had chewed right through it.

  The Union soldier sensed the change, and tensed.

  The Hate slammed Lucky’s face forward into the soldier and swung his hand upward, slapping the muzzle of the rifle into the side of the soldier’s head. A beam of bright blue light burned the Union soldier’s face away, eating his helmet.

  Blood dripped onto Lucky’s chest plate.

  He laughed in a high, angry pitch, howling with delight.

  He pulled the body close, using it as a shield.

  He grabbed up the energy blaster and began gleefully spewing a single stream of blue energy at the dozens of soldiers on the platform who had foolishly lowered their weapons.

  They thought the battle was won.

  It wasn’t.

  Soldier after soldier was sliced in half, folding over in mutilated heaps.

  The few who could fire back splattered energy pulses into the heavily armored back of the trooper Lucky held aloft.

  He turned as another soldier tried to come from behind him.

  He slammed his rifle across his face, then leapt on him.

  It was Nico.

  A deranged smile crossed Lucky’s face.

  Nico’s eyes grew wide.

  Lucky slammed his rifle butt into Nico’s faceplate. Again. Again. Again. Again.

  It cracked and caved in. Again. Again. Again.

  His face was a red pool of bubbling blood, yet still he lashed out.

  Again. Again. Again.

  The rifle butt was hitting the platform now, nothing solid enough left to slow its momentum.

  There were many ways you could wound a Frontier Marine and he would regenerate, but pummeling the organic matter in his brain to mush was not one of them.

  He reached down and threw Nico over his shoulder, using him as his new shield as he ran across the platform.

  He reached the ore wall and rammed into a soldier coming down the stairs there, grabbing him and twisting and pulling and jerking until his arm came loose from its socket and spun freely from his body.

  He swung him over the edge of the stairwell and barreled up into another soldier who was too slow to raise his gun.

  He smashed his own gun into his face, using it like a club.

  But it wasn’t his gun. It was the arm from the other soldier.

  He chortled—a deep, mirthful, evil laugh as the blood splattered the walls of the stairwell.

  And then he was inside the control tower. And there weren’t soldiers here, only people in jumpsuits.

  There were screams, and some ran for the door.

  Oh no you don’t, said The Hate, and it grabbed all that it could reach, clawing at eyes and battering bodies over control panels. He tasted something wet and salty in his mouth.

  And then he had his rifle in his hand, and he was beating on something. Screens exploded below his onslaught. Energy seared across the room, bouncing off the walls. He was screaming and smashing and screaming and smashing.

  And then he was floating and spinning.

  The gravity inside the room was gone.

  Bewildered, he didn’t know where he was or how he got there.

  A faint red cloud faded from the edges of his vision.

  He was crying, sobbing uncontrollably.

  That meant only one thing. The Hate.

  Someone whispered in his ear.

  “Rocky?” he cried. “Rocky?”

  “It’s okay, man,” the voice said. “You’re ok.” It was Jiang.

  He lifted his head, and Malby was looking at him, frightened. “Holy hell. I can’t even,” he said. “I heard rumors, but … goddammit.”

  He was floating at the other end of the room they were in.

  Lucky realized now it was the control room above the platform.

  Dawson pushed off the opposite wall, and Lucky took a double take.

  “You’re alive,” he said.

  Dawson turned, keeping his distance from Lucky. His helmet faceplate was cracked and gone, but otherwise his face was fully healed. “Yeah,” he said, shaken. “It takes more than a few cheap shots to kill me.” But his voice faltered.

  He just kept staring at Lucky. They all were.

  “Like battering his brain into paste,” said Malby, glancing at Lucky.

  An image flickered across his mind, a slow-motion replay. He saw what The Hate had done to Nico. What he had done to Nico.

  He saw other things, too, but he refused to watch more.

  Outside the room, he saw the body of a Union soldier gagging and floating, bouncing off the window.

  Inside, the control room looked like a war zone.

  Bloody bodies were everywhere. Some of them looked like an animal had torn into them. One had its throat ripped open, another was missing an arm.

  The equipment was smashed and smoking. Energy sparked and jumped from box to box.

  Jiang was looking outside the control room at the chaos on the platform. The artificial oxygen field was lost when the gravity generator stopped. Unlike the Marines, these station troops didn’t have airtight suits. Bodies floated off into the larger hangar space to mingle with docked ships and gear.

  “You saved us,” said Jiang.

  Nothing could be further from the truth, thought Lucky.

  He couldn’t keep the demon at bay now. Not without Rocky.

  “No—” he started, then stopped.

  Jiang put a hand on his chest plate.

  “I understand,” she said.

  And Lucky realized that she did.

  Tears welled up in her eyes. “You can’t help it,” she said, tears flowing now. “You can’t help it.”

  Lucky dreaded what she was about to say next.

  A switch flipped in his head.

  He knew the truth.

  “I killed your brother.”

  Lucky felt the air suck out of the room.

  Malby and Dawson fell still.

  Jiang shook her head. “No,” she said firmly, as if convincing herself. “No, It killed my brother.”

  Oh, god.

  Oh, god, no.

  “Rocky? Is it true?”

  No wonder she wouldn’t give him the info on her.

  Rocky didn’t resp
ond. He’d forgotten again.

  Jiang closed her eyes and drew in a long, ragged breath. “I couldn’t forgive you for a long time. I thought I knew you. But I guess we always think we know the person we sleep next to better than we really do.” A long pause. “But I understand now. About Rocky. About The Hate.” She smiled through tears, the saddest thing he had ever seen. “You couldn’t help it. I understand that.”

  The way she kept repeating that made it seem to Lucky like she didn’t understand at all.

  Lucky wanted to kill himself.

  “But I couldn’t be near you. You understand that, right? I had to leave. I transferred here to never see you again.”

  “And yet, here I am,” he croaked, feeling tears form in his eyes, too.

  “Here you are,” she said, the slightest hint of a wry smile at the corner of her mouth. “Saving us all.”

  “No,” he whispered, shaking his head. “Rocky is gone. They took her.”

  Jiang sat up straighter, her face now a picture of concern.

  “I—I can’t keep it at bay. Not without her.”

  “Who took her?”

  As if on cue, a long, dark shadow fell across the control room.

  One of the modified Union ships glided by. Then another. And another.

  “Looks like the party’s over,” said Malby.

  Lucky looked down at the platform. “She’s gone,” he said.

  Happy Giant wasn’t on the platform.

  “There!” said Jiang, pointing to the far side of the hangar.

  A typical spaceport gate lay open, similar to ones the Empire used on their hangars. The ships were flowing through in groups of three.

  Happy Giant was already through the gate and out into open space.

  “Vlad,” said Lucky.

  The fleet of Union ships was almost gone now, along with their T’ket’ka orbs.

  And Rocky.

  “That bitch,” said Jiang.

  Beyond the gate, something was off.

  “What the hell?” said Dawson.

  Then it hit him. There were no stars. Just like the small corridor they had come through. But this wasn’t some small patch of space. The complete emptiness covered almost all the sky beyond the hollowed-out hangar.

  This was the Great Corridor.

  “My God,” said Jiang. “We’re too late.”

  49

  OIC

  “Good,” said Malby, stowing his rifle. “What more can we do? It’s not like this hangar isn’t still crawling with Union soldiers. So we spaced the ones on the platform. Big deal. Look at this infrastructure.”

  He pointed to the lattice of scaffolding and control rooms scattered around the outside edges of the hangar, where they reinforced the rock ore shell.

  “There’re plenty more out there,” he said.

  He was right. The asteroid was hollow, but it was massive. The infrastructure stretching around the outside of the space was vast.

  Then again, this was clearly the central control tower for the dock, and by extension, the entire facility. As long as they could hold this, they were in control of the station.

  But the Union would know that, too. And whoever was left that could organize themselves would do so shortly and start an assault on their position.

  “What would you suggest we do?” asked Jiang. “Maybe you haven’t been keeping up with current events, but they’re planning to open up a passageway to another universe.”

  “So what? It’s a big universe. C’mon in!” waved Malby, theatrically.

  “Did you see how big that alien ship was? Vlad said they were three times our size,” she said. “And they’ll be here soon if we don’t stop this.”

  “Exactly. Does an entire race of those things sound like something we should be taking on single-handedly?” Malby looked around at Lucky and Dawson. “Seriously, we can’t go chasing a fleet of ships into some black hole in space,” he said. Then more to himself, “And chasing them with what? I can’t even believe we’re talking about this!”

  He turned and looked at Lucky expectantly. “Well, sir,” he said sarcastically. “What say you?”

  Lucky thought for a long moment.

  “Can we space jump to that lead ship?” he asked Jiang.

  “What?” exploded Malby.

  She cocked her head. “We don’t have our hammerheads,” she said.

  “We don’t need to be fast. Those things fly at conventional speeds, and they have no weapons.”

  “Unless the Union decided to modify theirs to be more offensive,” suggested Dawson.

  “I can’t believe we’re talking about this,” Malby said again.

  Jiang pointed out the control window. “We have all the gear we need.”

  Lucky nodded. True enough. Union tech was crap, but even they could make decent hammerheads. Just point in the direction you want to go, and jump. They weren’t technically made for space-to-space jumps, but he’d done it before. They had enough maneuvering thrusters to make it work.

  “No, no, no, no!” fired Malby. “We need to regroup. We need to make contact with HQ. Am I the only one here who ain’t crazy? Dawson?”

  Dawson reluctantly turned to Lucky. “The spirit is willing and all,” he said, “but … Malby has a point.”

  “Thank you!” yelled Malby, face and palms upward.

  Lucky took a deep breath. He was so tired. Something about the Hate had juiced his biobots, but that was wearing off fast. The Hate didn’t care about pain and suffering. It didn’t dodge damage, it dove headfirst into it. And now Lucky was paying the price.

  “I understand where you guys are coming from,” he said at last. “I got the inside scoop on the hell coming our way. You didn’t.”

  “Suffice it to say,” he said, looking at Dawson, “Your child will never grow up to live a happy life. This will consume our universe from now until the end of time.”

  Dawson said nothing, but tightened his grip on the barrel of his pulse rifle. The smile slowly faded.

  “Malby, I’m not going to argue with you,” he said. “I don’t know why the hell you came this far, but those mistakes have already been made, son.” He closed his eyes and laughed. “How’s my inspirational speech going so far?” he echoed.

  No response.

  Oh right. Damn.

  Malby looked around. “I can’t believe this. He’s crazy. You get that, right?” He looked at Jiang. “Fubar in the head.”

  “You once told me I didn’t look so tough,” said Lucky. “Do you remember that?”

  Malby frowned. “Yeah, well. Okay, so, I was wrong about that.”

  “No, you were right. I’m a coward,” he said. He motioned to the room. “Killing is easy. I love a good fight because I know I can win.”

  He thought about Rocky and her spiders. He thought about The Hate.

  “But when I have to make a tough call, I put my tail between my legs,” he said. “When it’s hard, I run.”

  Malby said nothing.

  “I wish to God that Sarge were here,” Lucky said. “That someone else was here in charge. I wish it was anyone but me.” He closed his eyes. “But it’s time for us to stop being cowards, Malby,” he said. “You and me. We’re Marines, and we don’t quit when everything goes tits up. We go to work.”

  “I’m no coward,” Malby said under his breath.

  Lucky opened his eyes and looked at him. “Well, you should at least be scared right now, asshole.” Lucky spread his arms wide. “You are standing in the presence of the most dangerous thing in any universe,” he said. “The officer in charge.”

  Dawson rolled his eyes.

  Jiang had a big grin on her face.

  Malby just shook his head. “Except, of course, you aren’t an officer.”

  “He’s got you there,” Jiang said.

  “Fine, I’m the highest-ranking member in charge. Happy?”

  “No,” said Malby.

  Lucky ripped his punch pistol from his holster. “I could just shoo
t you then.”

  Malby’s eyes got big as saucers.

  Dawson and Jiang exchanged glances.

  Then Malby burst out laughing. “You are one crazy son of a bitch, you know that, Lucky?”

  Lucky put his pistol away. “You don’t know crazy yet.”

  Lucky edged himself over to an undamaged console on the opposite side of the control room. He might not have had Rocky, but these control stations were pure old-school Union tech, something the operators could handle. And so could he.

  “I have a plan,” he said. “A very, very, very bad plan.”

  “I like it already,” said Jiang.

  50

  Almost

  Do’ock Kun, Queen Mother of the Da’hune, stood inside the control room of her flagship battlecruiser.

  Her tail swished along with the others in the cramped quarters.

  Her clan deserved better for this momentous occasion. Perhaps the historians would be kind. She chided herself. Of course they would be. What kind of ruler would she be if she didn’t write her own history?

  But this was what she could spare—a mere ten thousand ships from her million-strong Do’ock fleet. The endless war must be fed, even when the Do’ock would soon end it with their glorious return to their rightful home.

  And she certainly didn’t need the firepower. She had seen enough of the humans to know that! She worried only for posterity. Her children must know that a ruler’s power flows through the perception they foster in their subjects.

  She stroked the shell of her firstborn, her lovely, clever Do’ock Kelia.

  She had been forced to relinquish her surrogate, Nico. But no matter. Do’ock Kun would soon shed her surrogate as well.

  She looked down at her brutal son, Do’ock Nigh’tok. The ferocious snarl was sweet suckle to her soul. He had the spirit of the ancient ones. The purge harkened back to their ancient gods, and she saw divinity in her son’s vicious savagery.

  The Queen Mother once more slid the smooth, hard exoskeleton of her talon through a set of quantum beams.