Lucky Universe: Lucky's Marines | Book One

by Joshua James

  She was impatient, checking the progress of her surrogate.

  But in truth, it was something more. Her surrogate Vlad was the vessel for the gift now. It resided in her, and by association, Do’ock Kun sensed she could feel its power as well. She doubted this was true, but she did not want to ask. She would rather be ignorant and bask in ancient art. Her shell trembled. She could feel it, she was sure!

  She closed her eyes now and saw through her surrogate’s eyes as she rushed onward, into the Great Corridor.

  How pleasant to see it from the vantage point of the other universe, to know what lay just ahead of her.

  The distributed human-made ships were fanned out across the corridor, their precious T’ket’ka orbs creating a halo of protection into which her brutal son would soon guide their ships.

  Almost there … Her surrogate was peering at something, and it caught the Queen Mother’s eye as well.

  She leaned in, willing her surrogate to do the same.

  Something was trailing behind her.

  Something huge.

  51

  A Plan

  “I have to stop supporting your plans before I see them,” said Jiang.

  “It’s a good plan,” he said.

  “It’s a plan,” she responded.

  Lucky fired a stream of blue energy across space into the edge of the hangar’s gateway, destroying the mechanism and locking it in place as they passed through.

  He looked down the alien-infused Union rifle and nodded approvingly. A nice upgrade.

  “Everybody remember where we’re parked,” Dawson said, as the space jumpers emptied the firing rockets on the Union hammerheads and screamed out of the hangar at top speed, adding their own rocket burn to the ever-increasing speed of the asteroid itself.

  Lucky felt his pack pull slightly starboard and compensated. The Union can’t even make hammerheads that worked right, he thought. Old Union tech was still just old Union tech.

  The new stuff that Da’hune helped them with, on the other hand, was a different story.

  He glanced back over his shoulder. It wasn’t every day that you saw a spaceport carved into a hollowed-out asteroid.

  It was even less often you saw it under power.

  Even with the push, though, Happy Giant and the other alien ships were just tiny pinpoints again the vast, complete black canvas of the Great Corridor.

  Without the drones, Lucky didn’t any have technical data to review.

  “Are we going to catch them?”

  “It’ll be close,” said Malby. “We should get there right when they do.”

  That was too close. If they weren’t tight enough to the ships and their T’ket’ka when they hit the corridor, they would never enter the fold. They would just sail right through.

  A dozen drones flew a tight formation around the Marines. Without Rocky, Lucky couldn’t control his, but he wasn’t sure he had any left to control anyway.

  They had started this mission with a thousand drones per Marine. Then again, we started this mission with a hell of a lot more Marines, he thought.

  Then he almost ended up next on the dead list.

  Something fast screamed overhead, and he saw the other Marines scatter. Without an AI link, he got no warning.

  “Skreamers!” shouted Jiang.

  Lucky rolled to his right and directly into a stream of blue light. He would have been sliced in half—should’ve been—but a rogue locust made the same poor choice he had, and it exploded in his face on impact with the beam, causing a reaction from Lucky that sent him barrel-rolling in the other direction.

  “Dawson called it!” said Malby.

  “Not quite,” he said, his drawl casual despite their predicament. “I thought they’d add defenses to the ships, not fill them with skreamers.”

  “Same difference,” said Malby.

  “Dive fast, Marines!” said Jiang, as she nosed down harder.

  They all did the same, but Lucky felt blind without a drone view.

  The skreamers flipped in unison and started coming back around now, but they were having trouble lining them up.

  They couldn’t fly slow enough to get a good shot on the jumpers. Perhaps the only advantage they had was that they were so inconsequential that the skreamers were having trouble swatting them out of space.

  Three of the skreamers joined together in tandem, cutting at different angles as they dove, keeping the energy streams flowing throughout the maneuver. The result was a grid of blue energy that sliced through the tight formation of diving Marines.

  Lucky felt desperately for his spiders to pluck at his mind, knowing it was irrational.

  “Lucky, look out!” screamed Jiang.

  He pulled up, hoping it was the best option, not having drone data to reference.

  He chose poorly.

  A pop and explosion from his back told him he had maneuvered right into an energy arc.

  He heard a sizzle and crack from his hammerhead pack.

  The hammerhead saved his life, but now it flopped and bounced off his back, one of the thrusters badly damaged. The pack compensated with the other thruster, and he found himself flying at an odd angle.

  He immediately started to fall back from the others.

  Jiang flared her arms and settled back with him.

  “No!” he screamed. “No slowing down.”

  A moment later, another beam of blue energy shot across their position.

  Before it could hit either of them, a drone appeared and dived into it, sparking an explosion but taking the brunt of the blow. That was the second time a drone had saved his life on this jump—and it gave him an idea.

  “You guys head for the ship,” he said. “I’m going to cover you.”

  “You’re gonna do what?” Jiang asked.

  “You aren’t exactly in tip-top shape,” said Malby.

  “This is all taking too long,” he said. “We have to make that window, otherwise we miss the corridor completely. You guys have to keep burning at max.”

  “Never stopped, chief,” said Malby. “No offense.”

  “Just be ready to come get me,” he said, nodding at Jiang before flipping himself over. It was a tough move with his hammerhead thrusters off balance, but it got him more or less facing the right direction.

  He looked over at Jiang, who still hadn’t re-engaged her thrusters.

  “Seriously, this will work,” he said. “I learned it from an old friend.”

  At last, she pulled away.

  This will never work, he thought.

  52

  Flight Time

  The drones had given him the idea.

  Of course, they had died for their trouble.

  But The Hate had taught him it would work.

  When in doubt, attack.

  He rocketed directly at the nose of a skreamer. Even with only one thruster, his closing speed was enormous. What he needed was for it to—

  The skreamer flipped for another run, dropping all speed, before accelerating again. The pause was all Lucky needed.

  He smashed headlong into the side of the skreamer, his single thruster flaring at maximum speed at the last second, doing nothing to soften the blow but ramming him up to a high enough velocity to get his finger on the lip of its front plate assembly as it started away again.

  He felt his fingers pulled and ripping, sensed that the O-ring on his combat suit was failing.

  In his mind, he could hear Rocky telling him all about it while his biobots came running to save the day.

  But none of that happened. He jerked at the Union rifle still holstered inside the leg of his left combat boot. It didn’t fit like his own rifle had, and now the damned thing wouldn’t come loose!

  His fingers were growing numb now. He couldn’t feel anything below his wrist.

  He yanked and yanked, but still the rifle wouldn’t budge. Belatedly, he realized the oversize rifle was caught in the edge of his hammerhead assembly.

  He kicked out wit
h his leg, bouncing the assembly loose and yanking the pulse rifle out in one motion.

  Unfortunately, the jostling dislodged the deadened hand that had been holding him to the skreamers front plate assembly.

  As he slid down, he found himself spread eagle over the cockpit window. A pilot in black Union gear stared at him in shock.

  Lucky slapped the muzzle of the rifle against the cockpit window and pulled the trigger.

  At the same moment the pilot snapped loose his restraints and ducked as far forward as he could go.

  The blue beam shattered the edge of the cockpit, ripping it open, and sliced a hole in the top of the seat where the pilot’s head had just been.

  A release of oxygen exploded in Lucky’s face, and he should have been launched into space. But the hand with the broken O-ring saved him again, lodging against what was left of the cockpit window.

  Instead, the force of the air blast slammed him against the side of the fuselage.

  He swung back around, bringing his arm up for another shot at the pilot.

  But the pilot was gone. The cockpit was empty.

  He looked back and saw the pilot flailing off into space, having been sucked out with the expulsion of air.

  Probably should have left that restraint on, he thought.

  He scrambled into the cockpit, his useless right hand no help.

  If this had been an Empire fighter, he would know right where to find the seal kit. But he didn’t see anything that looked like it, and he didn’t have time to dig around.

  This is all taking too long, he thought. Way too long.

  He turned the skreamer hard right, amazed at the fast response, and remembered that it was Da’hune-influenced tech. It was a dream to fly.

  A half-dozen more skreamers were inbound, but they had no idea he wasn’t on the same team.

  The slow approach to the jumpers meant the fighters couldn’t do their normally precise, organized approaches, so all the excitement with his ship hadn’t been noticed.

  He lined up behind three skreamers that were about to try the same energy beam pattern trick again.

  He pulled the trigger on the stick, expecting to see ordnance fly or feel some resistance. But it was complete silence, complete stillness. There was no physical response on the stick or in the ship’s framework. Two streams of blue energy simply raced out from the wing tips and sliced the lead ship in half as if it was made of paper. It caught the wingtip of his wingman and sent him spiraling off.

  The third skreamer realized the problem, but he was too late. He tried to bug out and up, but Lucky easily matched the maneuver and again depressed the trigger to watch the silent slicing in half of his opponent.

  He turned back and found he now had the full attention of the other skreamers, who’d broken off their attack runs on the jumpers and now focused only on him.

  “I’m Tango 10 from intercept!” Malby called out.

  Ten seconds from arriving alongside the ancient ship.

  “You should be able to get back in the way we did before,” Lucky said over his all-comm.

  He dove into the group of skreamers that were coming at him, getting inside their energy beams, playing chicken. He rolled off hard, bringing two fighters onto his tail while positioning two more in his sights.

  “Negative,” said Malby.

  “The access ports,” said Jiang, who was still some ways behind Dawson and Malby. “For the smaller ships that we were on. When they blew the floor, they blew those open. I know they still are—”

  “Affirmative!” said Dawson.

  “Bingo!” said Malby.

  Lucky depressed the trigger on his stick and watched his energy bolt slice across the wingtip of one skreamer. But as he did it, one of the two behind him fired beams of their own. One flew harmlessly high and wide. But Lucky knew with two wingtip shots that the other would—

  He felt his plane slide sideways. It didn’t stop its forward motion so much as shift into two pieces moving in the same direction. His skreamer began toppling end over end, but it was headed in the direction he wanted to go.

  Unfortunately, he was now a big fat easy target. The other skreamer was lining up a run at him.

  Now or never, he thought.

  He pulled the eject bar and felt the entire cockpit assembly propel forward. He pulled his punch pistol out with his good hand and fired four energy punches against the cockpit supports, separating them.

  He holstered the pistol, released his restraints, and shoved off the ejection seat with his feet with all his might.

  He drifted downward toward Happy Giant while the cockpit assembly was shoved away from him in the opposite direction.

  Heat seared behind him as the cockpit assembly was sliced in half by an energy beam from the skreamer who’d hit him. He doubted they could make out his single signature, especially as they were getting close to the fleet of ships now, but even if they could, they wouldn’t be able to get a bead on him for another pass or two.

  “Guys, I think I could use that help right about now,” said Lucky.

  His badly damaged hammerhead had nothing left to give in the way of thrust.

  Over his comm came only static.

  I missed it, he thought.

  53

  Stranger

  At least they made it. That was the important—

  Jiang slid up beside him, and his head jerked around so fast he heard her stifle a laugh.

  “You rang,” she said, grabbing him by his crippled hand.

  He barely concealed a yelp of pain. “Other hand, please,” he said through clenched teeth.

  She switched over and pulled him down toward the access point to the small hangar full of little giants where they had earlier battled the Union soldiers.

  “Back to the scene of the crime,” he said, feeling his energy sapping away.

  Jiang looked concerned. “Lucky, stay with me,” she said.

  “What’s the problem?” said Malby.

  Lucky spotted him and Dawson standing at the port entrance.

  “He doesn’t have any bots, that’s the problem. His damage is adding up.”

  “No way,” said Malby, somehow fascinated by the revelation.

  “Not good,” said Dawson, looking at Lucky as he pulled him inside the hangar space.

  He slapped a med-pack on his wrist, but Lucky was so cold he tried to pull it back off.

  “He’s not going to make it,” Dawson said. “We’re in vacuum here. His seals are broken, his faceplate’s cracked, not to mention the radiation exposure. He won’t last another five minutes.”

  “Dammit, don’t say that,” barked Jiang, looking around for inspiration.

  “If we could get his biobots working again …” said Malby, but he trailed off. He was a technical specialist, but even he didn’t know how to jumpstart a dead AI.

  “It’s okay,” said Lucky, shocked to hear his voice was just a whisper. “The plan is still a go,” he said. “Get moving. I—”

  He looked over Malby’s shoulder. Similar to the ship’s eye that Rocky had shown them in the larger hangar, an image was coalescing inside the smaller hangar. Why would that be active here?

  As he watched, two balls were forming and then slowly lowering down to a section of exposed metal near the base of one of the smaller ships.

  The ship was one of the few in the hangar that hadn’t sustained any real damage in all the fighting earlier.

  As Lucky watched, a metal rod with several pins on it detached from the port it was sitting in and slid down toward Lucky.

  The balls from the ship’s eye settled just below the erect rod. The rod began to bounce a little, and the balls bounced along with it.

  Lucky closed his eyes and laughed. “Such a pervert,” he croaked, shaking his head.

  Dawson, Malby, and Jiang all followed his gaze.

  Only Malby caught on and immediately guffawed.

  “So lemme get this straight,” he said to Lucky. “Your AI is a chick who li
kes dirty jokes?” he said in astonishment. “Un-goddamn-believable.”

  Lucky opened his eyes. “You can try your lame pick-up lines on my forehead later. Right now, help me up.”

  Malby dragged Lucky over to the rod.

  Up close, it looked menacing.

  “You sure about this?” Malby asked.

  “Sadly, yes,” he said. Lucky knew it was the pin contacts on the end that mattered.

  She could get into him from anywhere inside the ship as long as she had direct access to his neural pathways.

  “This is going to hurt,” he said. “This is really going to hurt.”

  He balled up his fists and clenched his teeth.

  With the last of his strength, he slammed his neck backwards into the rod, feeling a bolt of searing pain as the metal contacts dug deep into the bloody sore that still hung open on his neck from where Rocky was first torn out of him.

  An instant later, the pain was gone. Stimulants hit his bloodstream. His biobots awoke from their slumber, and the dull pounding sensation in his pain receptors receded.

  Spiders danced in his mind.

  “Hello, stranger,” cooed Rocky.

  54

  Useless

  Lucky smiled thinly. “I thought I’d—”

  “Stow the wet kisses,” she echoed. Rocky paused, and Lucky guessed she was connecting with the other Marine AIs.

  “You have the plan?”

  “Yup.”

  “Can you guide them?”

  “Already done. Their drones have the coordinates.”

  “Plan hasn’t changed,” he said to the Marines, realizing he was sounding a lot like Sarge. “And time is getting very, very tight.”

  “You think?” said Malby. “In case you didn’t notice, we’re already in the corridor.”

  “Well, then you’d better hope it lives up to its moniker,” he said.

  Malby furrowed his brow.

  “Great,” said Lucky, making air quotes with his hands. “As in ‘Great Corridor.’ As in very large. As in—”