Lucky Shot: A Lucky’s Marines Prequel Read online

  There was a pause.

  “Waldo, hit it!” yelled Razor.

  “My drones are … gone. I don’t have drones,” he said. His voice sounded bewildered.

  “Killjoy?”

  “Ditto. Drones are dead. Everything is dead.”

  Lee now realized that Killjoy had been the lead fighter that flew directly at the ship while the others took up support positions.

  “I have no power,” he said cooly.

  “Alright, Monkey see if you can—“

  An orb that had floated in front of the dreadnaught flared. It was only for a moment. But in that moment, a lone arc of energy was released.

  It moved in a slow, long arc, covering the distance to the Iconic at a leisurely pace.

  It was the laziest weapon he had ever seen.

  When it reached the Iconic, nothing seemed to happen. It simply passed through and kept going into space.

  “Killjoy!” screamed Monkey over alert comm.

  A wisp of the energy arc had slowly snaked its way over to Killjoy’s fighter.

  The fighter instantly fell apart, the hull sliced cleanly in half at the impact point.

  At the cockpit.

  From his distance, Lee couldn’t see anything. But Monkey must have had the best view.

  Her voice quivered. “Shit, I see him. He’s still strapped in. He’s in his rocker seat.”

  Then his sister spoke, clear and direct. “Lee, go!”

  Lee was shaken from his stupor.

  Then he heard a gasp. Waldo was saying something in a language he didn’t recognize. He wasn’t even sure it was words.

  Lee stared for a moment at his position map in his HUD. Something wasn’t right. The Iconic suddenly had a ghost image. Like a second, smaller ship next to it. No, it wasn’t a second ship. It was like the Iconic was now two ships.

  He looked up. The Iconic has been sliced in half.

  5

  Lee felt his hand tremble on the stick. He jaw slackened. He couldn’t seem to focus his eyes.

  Debris was quickly building around the Iconic. Debris and bodies.

  The beam hadn’t made a clean cut. It sliced through the belly just about a third of the way into her and come out the other side.

  The portion that hadn’t been sliced open was now ripping apart, thanks to the impossible force of the two halves of the ship moving at different speeds.

  The engines fluttered and stopped. Another thing that he had never seen. Starship engines never stopped, never cooled, never went dark.

  Movement in his position map grabbed his attention.

  Two fighters were diving fast at the dreadnaught.

  Lee made a decision. He mashed forward on the control column, gripping it so hard his knuckles burned.

  They didn’t trust him with drones, yet. But he still had a fighter. He nodded toward a control in his mind’s eye HUD and armed his slug cannons.

  He was coming in way too hot and he didn’t give a damn.

  “My drones are getting Killjoy,” said Razor. “Go hot on that orb, Waldo.”

  “With pleasure,” he said.

  Two dozen drones shot with impossible speed directly for the dreadnaught.

  And then they drifted right past.

  “Shit, I can’t keep anything active near that thing.”

  “Watch it!”

  From the rear of the ship, a circle of light erupted, diffuse with a faded glow inside. It was expanding at incredible speed. Almost instantly, it had enveloped all the fighters. A moment later, it had washed over Lee as well.

  He felt his stick go limp in his hand.

  His ship started to roll.

  Thanks to the burst of speed, he was moving at well over a klick a second. And thanks to his flight path, he was heading directly at the dreadnaught. He’d smash right into it in seconds.

  Uh oh.

  “Shit, shit, shit,” said Monkey.

  “You guys dead, too?” said Waldo.

  Razor didn’t answer. As Lee shot into view, he saw why.

  She had leapt out of her fighter.

  He saw a short flare and realized Razor was wearing a powered flight suit.

  Unlike the ships themselves, it appeared the flight suit had power. It made sense. The helmets still had power, the AI’s still had power—enough power to keep up communication and drone support, anyways. Inside their powered suits, they had life support.

  Whatever was sapping their power, it was limited to the fighters. It was almost like they knew just how to cripple their technology and leave the occupants alive.

  He streaked past the dead fighters, a tumbling hunk of metal on a collision course with the dreadnaught.

  “Coming through!” he screamed as he grabbed the cockpit ejection handles and pulled.

  Nothing happened.

  Shit.

  Of course. The rockets that popped the hatch were dead. Everything on the ship was dead.

  And now he was dead too.

  He flipped over and kicked with all his strength at the cockpit hatch.

  Pain rippled down his ankles and legs. The hatch didn’t budge.

  And then his fighter smashed into the side of the dreadnaught.

  Time slowed to a crawl. Lee could feel his body being thrown forward—or was it just the ship around him coming to a complete stop?

  The top of the cockpit rushing up to meet him, and in that last instant it occurred to him that this was the same hatch that he had just smashed his feet into with no visible affect.

  He couldn’t see how his face was going to fare better.

  Darkness encroached on his eyes, but he felt something holding him awake.

  A buzzing kept hitting him, over and over, like something was shocking him awake over and over.

  His damn AI was trying to tell him something, he was sure.

  Wouldn't the damn thing just let him die in peace?

  His head slumped forward…

  He jerked back up with a start.

  Blood and glass were on his face, and a piercing hiss filled in his ears. Something was painfully slapping at his head. He realized it was a hand. Now what was that doing there?

  A second later, it mashed hard into his faceplate and stuck there. Another moment, and it was flowing like water across his cracked, broken faceplate.

  And then the loud hissing stopped. His breath came back to him.

  The hand that had covered his faceplate turned translucent and he realized it was an emergency patch, a fixit slapped onto his broken, leaking helmet by—

  His sister stepped back, shaking her head. Her hand was broken and bleeding, and the ring of her pressure suit had failed. In her other hand, still strapped into his floating rocker seat, was Killjoy.

  "Hey, asshole,” she said with grin.

  Razor shoved Lee aside as she shoved Killjoy into the smashed cockpit of Lee's fighter.

  "Are you close?" she said to Killjoy.

  "Ten seconds," he said in a muffled voice under the chair he was strapped to.

  "Hey, just put me anywhere."

  Razor ignored him.

  Lee felt dizzy. He leaned forward and threw up, splattering the inside of his newly sealed but still badly cracked helmet with green, rotten juice.

  He vomited again.

  "Good as new," said Killjoy, feeling around his midsection. He pulled a pulse rifle from the holster next to his leg.

  "I think the next thing we need to do is put a shot right down the mouth of that orb."

  "Agreed," said Razor, still looking at Lee. No sympathy there. Just disappointment. She looked a hell of a lot like their mother the day the cops brought him home after a joyride in a stolen ground hugger. But he didn’t think his sister was in the mood to be reminded of their mother now.

  To be fair, he'd seen that look on lots of his superior's faces as well. And his father’s.

  He smacked his lips and tried to push the taste of bile down.

  "What happened?"

  "See for yourself,
" she said, nodding over his shoulder.

  Lee turned.

  A second ship hovered in the space next to the dreadnaught.

  It was more accurate to say it occupied the space all around the dreadnaught. Above it. Below it. It filled every inch of his field of vision.

  It wasn't so much a ship as a floating mountain of rock, like an asteroid carved into the shape of a space station.

  6

  "What the hell—”

  A wide cloud of energy shot out of the giant rock and arced over to the nearest fighter.

  "Waldo," Killjoy said under his breath.

  Lee waited for the fighter to get sliced in half or explode or something.

  What he saw wasn't what he expected.

  Unlike the orb that the dreadnaught used to slice their ships in half, the energy pouring from within the rocky space station formed a hazy tunnel of energy through space.

  As he watched, it yanked Waldo's rigid body from the fighter and sucked him into a ragged opening in the space port. It happened so fast.

  It wasn't a cargo hold or an airlock. It didn’t seem like the rocky space port had anything like that. It looked like it was a cave.

  And then the energy tunnel fired out again, and they heard Monkey scream over the alert comm.

  "Screw this," said Killjoy.

  He raised his pulse rifle and aimed it at the orb on the dreadnaught, right above them.

  In an instant, a beam shot out of the orb and smashed into Killjoy.

  It slung him off the side of the ship and sent him cartwheeling into space.

  "Killjoy!" said Razor.

  She fired her own rockets and dove for him.

  Lee again had a nagging moment of shock that their personal suits would still work in all this.

  It was all so choreographed to keep them alive and intact.

  And then the tunneling energy that had hit Waldo fired out again and brought Killjoy to sudden stop.

  His back went rigid, and he was spun around like a top.

  The stream threw him back, smashing him into Razor, who was diving straight down after him.

  The two bodies collided with a harsh thud and Lee thought for a moment that they both were unconscious.

  But then he saw Razor swinging her arms around, looking for something to hold.

  She reached out and grabbed wildly. By chance, one of the dead drones happened to be nearby and the act of grabbing it gave her enough inertia and she was able to regain control.

  She still had a grip on Killjoy.

  As she pulled him to her, the energy leaped out and snatched him away. Razor was sent spinning away, still holding on to the useless dead drone.

  The beam didn’t seem to notice her.

  It yanked Killjoy’s rigid body in the ship.

  Lee still clung to the side of his crumpled-up fighter, impotent and scared.

  His sister snarled something at him. He barely recognized this badass. Where was his little sister? The one who stayed home and took care of their father? The responsible one? The smart one?

  And wasn't he supposed to be the badass? The one who broke legs for the protection racket in the colony? The one who made grown men cry?

  He was sure he had already pissed himself.

  His sister ripped out her pulse rifle and fired her rockets, launching herself toward Lee while she squeezed off burst after ineffectual burst from her rifle into the side of the ship. She was aiming for the orb, the one the others had all been trying to hit. Lee didn’t understand what was happening, but he knew that destroying that was the key to destroying the ship.

  But energy pulses from his sister’s rifle were simply absorbed by the energy that swirled around the orb.

  If they were going to damage that thing, they would have to deliver a payload right into the heart of it.

  She was still hanging on to the damn dead drone for some reason.

  She was screaming something at him. Or maybe at the universe.

  Lee tried to focus on her voice, but his eyes were drawn to the drone.

  The drone.

  The damned drone.

  7

  Lee finally shook himself out of his stupor and looked around.

  Would it still be there? Would it still be working?

  These were probably questions he should know the answers to. He’d probably learned them in training at some point, but damned if he could remember.

  It was all about luck now.

  He dove for the cockpit of his crippled fighter.

  “Lee, what the hell?”

  His sister was still holding the useless pulse rifle in her hands. He wasn’t sure what she had in mind next. Maybe she would just challenge the thing to a fist fight.

  It had worked well enough on him.

  Lee dug wildly around the battered cockpit. Everything that was powered within it was long since incapacitated by the energy, but he didn’t need power for what he had in mind.

  His own power would do.

  He reached around, grabbing frantically. Where was it?

  Lee’s hand brushed against something the size of his hand.

  The locust that had brought the info cube.

  The energy field had finished whatever it was doing to Monkey and Waldo and Killjoy. It was coming back out for them.

  Lee pulled the release on his pulse rifle and dropped a silver energy grenade into his hand. He’d learned in basic that they could arm the field nuke grenades that their pulse rifles held.

  He pressed down on the metal seal on top. Nothing happened.

  He clicked it again. Nothing. He clicked it several more times in rapid succession.

  “Are you kidding me?” he screamed, slamming the grenade into the side of the cockpit.

  A red ring popped to life around the cap on top of the grenade.

  Shit. The AI in his head instantly started counting. Had he asked it to do that? He must have.

  Five.

  “What the hell?” screamed his sister as she came up alongside him.

  He fumbled for the grenade, almost dropped it, then slapped it into the payload doors of the locust.

  He turned away from her, willing his suit forward, feeling the heat on his backside as the twin rockets flared at maximum power. He shot with surprising speed toward the orb.

  Four.

  He looked back at his sister. Her body went rigid as the energy force field slammed into her, throwing her body horizontal. Her jaw slammed shut. Blood spurted onto her faceplate as she bit the end of her tongue off.

  Her eyes went wide, then pitch black, before rolling back in her head as the muscles in her neck strained.

  “No!” Lee screamed.

  Three.

  He held the locust drone above his head, ready to give his life to deliver its powerful payload right into the soft heart of the orb floating in front of the dreadnaught.

  And then he came instantly to a stop. He felt his muscles strain and pop as he was violently pinned back. He heard rather than felt his vertebrae snap like twigs and he was doubled over backward and slammed into the hull of the dreadnaught by the full force of the energy beam.

  Two.

  The rocky space station had finally settled on Lee, its final victim. It was as if the energy beam realized that Lee wasn’t a real Marine. Just an afterthought to grab while it was here.

  Lee stared straight ahead, powerless. His body was locked rigid.

  His hands were empty.

  Too late, assholes.

  One.

  Guided by his momentum, the deadly little locust drone disappeared into the hazy orb.

  Nothing happened.

  Lucky closed his eyes and felt hot tears on his face. He wasn’t sure if it was the pain of his mutilated body or the knowledge that they had lost. That he had lost. That he had failed his sister.

  And then the orb exploded.

  He felt the heat of it and waited for the end.

  But the energy beam that held him never wavered. He opened
his eyes.

  And looked right into the eyes of his sister.

  The beam that had held her was gone.

  Lee felt a pain in his chest. His heart thumped. He tried to scream but he couldn’t move.

  He realized now what had happened. In a desperate bid to stop him, the beam had dropped her and grabbed him.

  The universe had chosen him instead of her.

  “No,” he finally screamed, his grief managing to break the beams spell.

  The dreadnaught disintegrated around him while he was protected within the tunnel of energy, sucked back into the rocky space station. It seemed utterly undamaged by the blast that enveloped the dreadnaught.

  But there was no beam protecting Rania.

  There was nothing to save her.

  “Rania!” he screamed.

  She was enveloped in flames. Lee refused to look away, the bright light burning his watery eyes. Even as he was pulled into the rocky cave of the station, he refused to look away.

  But there was nothing to see. She was gone.

  He screamed again, crying. He was bawling like he hadn’t since he was a child. Spit and blood and tears mingled on his lips.

  He screamed until he couldn’t feel anything. Until the pain was gone.

  Until everything was gone.

  He was on a table. There were faces all around him. He couldn’t move. His eyes stared straight ahead.

  “He isn’t the one,” said a disembodied voice.

  “He is as good as any,” said the man above him, his blood red eyes marking him as a clone.

  Another head appeared. A flock of metal tubes protruded from the face. No eyes, no nose, no mouth. Only tubes with lenses. Lee could see his own pathetic, cowardly reflection in them, and he wanted to die.

  “She won’t be happy.”

  “She never is.”

  “Will he remember any of this?”

  “No. He won’t remember a thing.”

  Lucky Universe

  What follows is an extended sneak peek at Book 1 of the Lucky’s Marines series, Lucky Universe.

  At least 8 books are planned in the series.

  Enjoy!

  I See You

  “I see you!” screamed Skunk from the turret above as the ancient pulse pounder belched a volley of ionized slugs in rapid succession. “C’mon now, get some!”