Lucky Universe

by Joshua James

  “Priority net is down too.”

  That was the worst news of all.

  The priority net was the high-orbit network of drones that facilitated armada-wide chatter. Even with this fubar fun going on, they should be unaffected.

  It could simply be interference from the blast.

  Or someone could be knocking out high-orbit drones.

  Lucky knew what his money would be on.

  “On that note,” Rocky said, “we seriously need to consider cover support.”

  Lucky pulled up the data Rocky had pieced together and cursed under his breath.

  “Sarge, we got nothing sending signatures from the surface.”

  He waited for a response. Data from his combat suit told him the pressure was changing outside. They were picking up some ionizing chop in the thin atmosphere. Their options were diminishing fast.

  A dark rage rumbled inside him, clawing to get out. He fought it down.

  “Sarge?”

  “I heard you Lucky. Stand by.”

  Now Malby jumped in. “Wait, there’s nothing down there? Nothing?”

  Lucky was already evaluating the situation in his head. This was bad. Not terrible. Not yet, anyway. Even without heavy support weapons, seven Frontier Marines were a formidable force.

  Thanks to AI implants and drone tech, a single field operator could run an effective force equivalent to multiple non-AI divisions.

  Lucky shuddered at the thought of deploying with a full division of non-augmented Marines. He could only stand so many of his fellow Marines as it was.

  A guy needs elbow room.

  “Always warm and fuzzy thoughts with you, eh?” said Rocky.

  “Get the hell out of my thoughts.”

  “Occupational hazard. I’m giving you a fresh cocktail.”

  “More drugs. My hero.”

  “Two minutes to glide status.”

  “Let me know when—”

  “Contacts!” cried Malby.

  10

  Skreamers

  Lucky pulled his head out of his ass and scanned the surface.

  The Marines were at angels one five and falling fast.

  The hammerhead was no longer providing thrust, just glide support thanks to a set of small airfoils that had materialized as their speed slowed.

  His locust drones had come home to ride out the entry and weren’t yet redeployed. That wouldn’t be a problem under normal circumstances, since they’d be getting telemetry data from the high-orbit drones.

  He hadn’t bothered to use what meager net was still up. Neither, it seemed, had Rocky.

  “What are you seeing, Malby?” he asked.

  “In orbit, in orbit!” screamed Malby.

  What the hell?

  “Rocky, give me a look.”

  He couldn’t turn his head back at this point, but Rocky ran the visuals from the skimpy network of local drones through his mind’s eye.

  The thin atmosphere offered an unbroken view into space. Aided by the enhancers on the drones, the view was fuzzy but clear enough.

  Union fighters were pouring into near orbit.

  Skreamers. Highly maneuverable, single-occupant fighters.

  Wherever skreamers were, though, bigger ships were sure to follow.

  But he didn’t see anything bigger up there yet.

  “Where are they coming from? I don’t have carrier contacts.”

  “They just showed up,” Malby declared, and for the first time Lucky realized he was a tech specialist. Malby would be tapped into whatever was left of the rapidly disintegrating drone network that fed data to the whole armada.

  “No larger contacts.”

  “Not possible,” said Jiang flatly.

  “What’s that formation?” asked Cheeky.

  Lucky saw it too and guessed Cheeky had fighter experience, same as him.

  He watched as the skreamers lined up for strafing runs against the few destroyers left out there. But skreamers were no match for a destroyer, even a damaged one. It would take hundreds of runs just to make a scratch.

  But the skreamers formed in a strange pattern, flying in tandem, wing to wing and in columns of five.

  And then he watched as a blue energy surge appeared to jump forward from a point well in front of each skreamer, then merge and arc out lazily toward a destroyer. The energy then seemed to disappear through the massive starship and keep going.

  A moment later, the destroyer began splitting into two clean halves as silent explosions raged across its bulk. Then all fell still.

  Holy hell. What had he just seen?

  “Rocky?”

  “Assessing now. Definitely nothing we’ve seen out here before.”

  That much was certain. The Union barely had the tech to wipe their asses. Where the hell did they get the firepower to gun down destroyers with a handful of fighters?

  He watched as a second formation came together and another beam of blue energy sliced through another destroyer.

  Two more destroyers turned to intercept. A single beam cut through the stern of one and tore deeply into the hull of the second.

  “Angels five,” announced Jiang. Five klicks.

  Lucky felt the puff of more locusts releasing from the back of his combat suit. It was time to assess the situation on the ground.

  “I have something else now,” said Malby, still patched into the orbital drone network.

  Lucky wondered how the hell the private had this kind of access.

  “Definitely bigger. But it just showed up like the fighters. I have no previous vector.”

  “FTL drop?”

  “Negative, no signature for that. It just showed up.”

  “Any ID?” asked Dawson.

  Lucky realized he hadn’t heard from the rookie in a while, wondered if he was passed out. Or dead. Either way, his AI would take them to the planned coordinates. Nothing like touching down with a sack of dead meat, a not altogether uncommon occurrence in Lucky’s experience.

  “It’s … It’s doing something,” said Malby.

  Lucky waited.

  “A little more detail might be helpful, Malby.”

  “It’s … They have something that’s … that’s burning up everything.”

  “Say again?”

  “I’ve lost the network. I’ve lost all the fleet drones. I think everything in near orbit is gone.”

  Malby sounded shaken, his voice at a high pitch, and Lucky could almost hear the cocktails pouring into his system to bring his heart rate down.

  “There was a pulse unlike anything I’ve never seen. Energy dispersion was off the charts. I need to crunch the numbers on it. My AI is saying that it just dissolved everything.”

  “Rocky, you getting his AI data?”

  “Yes. Seemed like a controlled nuclear burst, but the yield was magnitudes beyond anything we’ve ever experienced before. And if I didn’t know better, I’d say the pulse splintered the chain reaction, dispersing it to specific targets.”

  “But you do know better, so what was it?”

  “That’s my best guess.”

  “Seriously? Your best guess is that the Union, who swore off autonomous technology two-hundred years ago and hasn’t had a weapon that could penetrate Empire armor in twice as long, just used a weapon out here that our scientists can only have wet dreams about?”

  “That’s what I’m saying. Except the wet dream part.”

  They were in full glide formation now. He felt the soft shifting of locust drones as the last ones dispersed from his dive suit. He already had a good view of the terrain below in his mind’s eye.

  “Sarge, this is a major problem. Not only do we have no planet-side signatures; now we have hostiles above with no resistance. We’re sitting ducks down here.”

  “We do have planet-side signatures, though,” said Jiang.

  “No—” Lucky started to say, then stopped.

  But there were signatures down there. The drones could pick up weaker signals this close to th
e surface. Well, one tight cluster of them. They hadn’t resolved fully yet.

  They were right at the coordinates Peters had them diving for.

  “Friendlies?”

  From within his mind, he felt one of the spiders pluck a string of data. Without thinking, he dipped and his body slipped sideways, like a puppet answering the pull of a string. Something bright arced by his shoulder.

  Not friendlies, then.

  “Incoming!” he screamed. From the corner of his eye he saw the other Marines fan out in search of more maneuverability.

  “Five seconds to close visual range,” declared Rocky.

  “If we can see them, they can see us.”

  “Sarge,” he said over direct-comm. “Suggest we alter coordinates two klicks south, come up low on their position.”

  Lucky didn’t wait for a reply. He wasn’t much for waiting on orders anyway.

  “Nico, get on my six and look alive.”

  Lucky banked out of his dive.

  “Rocky, find us somewhere to land, preferably away from—”

  “Multiple incoming,” Rocky stated, entirely too casually.

  11

  Dead Meat

  His spiders began jumping around excitedly as lines of data streamed into his head.

  Beams of blue energy leaped up around him and the other diving Marines, and he again felt the soft pull of his mind as he glided between two incoming vectors.

  He gritted his teeth, knowing that with all the drugs he probably looked like a maniac.

  Why the hell weren’t these guys on scopes until they were right on top of us?

  “Good question,” agreed Rocky.

  “Better question: What now?”

  They couldn’t do this all day, and certainly not as they got closer to the ground.

  As it was they were easy pickings, with zero intel on the enemy signatures below and falling fast without any support from the ground or in the air. Even by Frontier Marine standards, this was a hot jump.

  The terrain map in one part of his mind’s eye wasn’t much help either, the landscape generally flat with few natural barriers.

  But man-made barriers were everywhere. He realized what he was looking at were hundreds upon hundreds of ground rovers, parked haphazardly everywhere.

  It was as if everyone from every mining platform around had hopped in a rover and made straight for this part of the planet.

  “Looks like someone decided to have a party and didn’t invite us,” said Malby.

  “Typical,” said Jiang.

  “Sarge,” Lucky said over direct-comm. “We gotta get out of this.”

  No response. Lucky sighed. It wasn’t the first time a sergeant had left it to his lance corporal to run things. His superiors just couldn’t seem to get it through their ladder-climbing skulls that Lucky didn’t want to be in charge of anything more than his own neck.

  Lucky spotted a relatively clear space amongst all the randomly parked rovers about a half click from where the concentrated fire originated.

  “That’s where we go, Marines. Hit it hard. Now,” he barked over all-comm as Rocky painted the target into the mind’s eye of the other AIs.

  They all dived.

  Except Peters.

  “Sarge?”

  He waited a beat.

  “Are you screwing with me? I know it isn’t the target, but c’mon! We don’t stand a chance from the air.”

  Still nothing.

  “He’s dead meat falling,” said Rocky.

  She must have accessed his AI via the local net.

  “How bad?”

  “RTC in five minutes.” Regeneration to consciousness.

  “Bullshit. This will be over in two. Rocky, get his AI to override and land him with the rest of us.”

  “No can do. His internal injuries can’t handle the Gs. AI is aiming for soft landing on the far side.”

  Lucky glided up next to Peters.

  Both his legs were broken and twisted, bouncing off the back of his hammerhead wing. Whatever they were shooting at them from the surface, it has sliced through his alloy armor like it wasn’t there.

  It’s just not possible, he thought. The Union had nothing that could do this.

  Inside Peters’ body, he knew trillions of biobots were furiously working to restore his vital organs to health. He hated the old asshole, but he was a good boss on the ground. At least he had been the last time he’d put boots on the ground with him.

  More than anything, Lucky did not want to be the most senior guy left down here. That scared the hell out of him.

  “This is suicide. He’ll be cut to pieces on a slow approach. Can we circle?”

  “For five minutes? No, we’re in full glide now. In fact, we can only stay up another minute.”

  The other Marines were diving for the clearing in the haphazard maze of rovers. He watched the flare of their hammerheads reversing thrust as their AIs waited until the last possible second to fire hot bursts that brought them to a stop inches from the ground.

  He imagined the stimulants hitting his own bloodstream as the cocktail fought to keep the Marines conscious and aware as the sudden hard-G landing rattled every joint in their bodies.

  Everybody else was having all the fun.

  “Here comes some fun,” said Rocky.

  With the other Marines on the ground, Lucky, Nico and Peters were the only targets airborne.

  A dozen blue energy beams filled his forward view.

  12

  Pancake

  Lucky let his spiders do the work, reacting to their signals.

  He juked hard to port, watched a beam scream over his shoulder, then rolled over two more of the blue energy beams.

  He checked his six and was pleasantly surprised to see the kid holding his own.

  Rocky pinpointed and enhanced an image from one of his drones positioned near the base of the structure down there.

  Lucky recognized the building as a stackshack, one of the Union’s fast deployment bases. It was an ugly square block of a structure, with interlocking levels flanked by external ladderwells on either side.

  These stackshacks, however, were tougher than they looked, with reinforced dura-alloy walls and heavily secured airlocks. They weren’t fortresses, but shacks were decent defensive positions in a pinch.

  Abandoned equipment lined the exterior ladderwell closest to Lucky. It looked like the landing team had set up operations at the base of the building then bullied their way up to a higher floor.

  Some sort of weapon sat atop the ladderwell now. He didn’t recognize it, but it was clearly Union build. Far more advanced Union build than he had ever read intel on, and he again thought of the Union skreamers taking out their destroyers in orbit.

  Five firing canons sat on two tracks with a single operator in the middle.

  Lucky took a good long look at the man sitting between the twin cannons. Middle-aged, fat, and balding, and wearing miner’s overalls.

  What he wasn’t wearing was any body armor.

  What the hell?

  “Rocky, have your locust fire on him.”

  The locusts had relatively weak ordnance onboard, but were more than capable of cutting through flesh.

  The image wavered as the locust fired a pulse.

  Two more of Rocky’s locusts nearby fired off pulses of their own.

  They all bounced harmlessly away.

  The operator was clearly protected by an active energy shield that probably secured the whole platform. It meant a direct attack with anything other than a battle cannon was probably useless.

  What he wouldn’t give to have all his ordnance flying down with him. Too bad it was in little pieces in orbit.

  He took another look at the ladderwell. It was little more than scaffolding.

  “I’ve got a bad idea,” he murmured.

  “Lucky,” chirped Rocky in a warning tone.

  “Yes, Mother?”

  That shut her up.

  “Nico, stick with Sa
rge,” he said.

  He didn’t look back to see if he was dead meat, too. If he was, so be it. This was no longer babysitting territory.

  “Yes, sir,” came the crisp reply.

  He pushed his nose farther over.

  He was seconds from running out of glide space.

  The building came screaming into view.

  He didn’t have any weapons. Except himself and his thrusters.

  Five seconds.

  Red mist crept at the edge of his vision and he willed it away. Anger bubbled up, biding its time. Lucky couldn’t keep it at bay forever in these conditions.

  “Rocky, keep the demon in the bottle,” he said.

  He aimed for the base of the scaffolding.

  It dawned on him these were the exact coordinates he was supposed to be landing at.

  How happy his superiors would be to see him following orders to the letter.

  Four seconds.

  “Wait until the last moment to fire those reverse thrusters.”

  “You’re going to be sliced in half by one of those supports.”

  “Good talk.”

  Three seconds.

  The crosshatch side of the scaffolding loomed up. It suddenly didn’t seem so funny.

  Just as he began to line up on one of the supports, out the corner of his eye he saw the cannon belch an energy beam.

  It was a blur just fractions from him.

  Two seconds.

  Too close!

  He knew he wouldn’t be able to dodge from this distance. He gave himself over to the spiders, allowing them to yank him like a marionette. He felt his body swing violently as a burning tore through his thigh.

  One second.

  He opened his eyes and felt a wave of nausea as his body was thrown viciously forward, flames coursing around the edges of his vision from the shoulder exhaust vents of the hammerhead.

  A metallic shriek rang in his ears, jerking his head to the side as a sickening thud brought him to a sudden stop, pain searing through his left shoulder.

  Something above him was driving his head downward, bending him impossibly forward. A snap, and he felt his body swing fiercely back. Something hollow and metallic arced past his head, and he caught a momentary glance of scaffolding collapsing downward, pancaking one section at a time.

  Closer. Closer. Closer.

  His prone body started bouncing as the platform around him shuttered. He felt the spiders tugging at his mind, willing him to move.