by Joshua James
“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 with 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 th
ey 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 likes 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—”
“Oh my God!” Jiang broke in. “Can we just go?”
“You coming?” said Dawson.
Lucky jerked his head forward, felt the tearing of the metal pins from his neck, and suppressed a scream. The biobots were already plugging away at it, along with everything else, but there was enough here to take time. He gently slid over on his side.
“I’ll just sit here and regenerate if it’s all the same to you,” he said. “I’d be useless in a fight.”
“Figures,” Malby said under his breath.
Jiang, Dawson and Malby took off at a fast, low run, a gaggle of drones in their wake.
Lucky watched them go.
“You want the bad news or worse news?” echoed Rocky.
“Bad.”
“I didn’t just mosey on out of Vlad’s mind. I had to fork my own source,” she said. She paused to laugh at her own phrasing.
Lucky sighed. Had he really wanted this back so bad?
“She still has a full copy of my spiders in her neural system. We have to physically take that back out of her.”
“Like they did to me?”
“Exactly.”
“Will she know? That you forked out of her?”
“Yes. Even if she didn’t, the Ship would tell her. It must honor the gift-holder.”
Great.
“And the worse news?” he asked.
“She’s using all the other ships in a huge, networked array of T’ket’ka that Vlad is controlling.”
Lucky’s forehead creased.
“Why do they need all that?”
“Because she isn’t going to go through the corridor. She’s going to sit here and hold the door open.”
“For what?” he asked, then immediately regretted it.
“The ten thousand Da’hune battleships that are entering from the other side. And they are a lot bigger than Happy Giant.”
Lucky closed his eyes and tried to imagine that. As usual, his imagination failed him.
But then he smiled. They were holding the corridor open. This meant his plan would work even better—
“Back to the scene of the crime,” said a voice that made Lucky gnash his teeth.
Vlad.
And she stole his line.
Lucky dragged himself around the side of the small ship, then his spiders jerked him back. A blast sent part of the ore splintering away.
“You are too late, you know,” she said. “So very, very late.”
Lucky slammed his head back.
If he could kill her, blow away the AI in her mind, would the T’ket’ka fail? Somehow that seemed too easy.
But he really wanted to kill her.
Lucky slid his rifle into the crook of his left arm. He was in no shape for this. He could still barely stand.
“Rocky? How long to full regen?”
“Ten minutes. But you are ambulatory. That was priority.”
In other words, he could run for it. Or stroll very quickly for it, at least.
He looked again at the small hangar. It was just as they had left it. The wall toppled over the wrecked small ship, debris strewn everywhere. A huge hole to his left where the Union had blasted away the floor.
“Rocky, tell me that you still have—”
/> “On it.”
A lone locust slipped out of one of the ships.
Lucky heard the drone fire and leapt out from behind the ship in the same instant. He felt his spiders pluck his mind, and he shifted his weight just as an arc of energy flew past his flank, singeing the side of his combat gear.
The drone was already a fireball drifting away.
“That was close!”
“She has spiders, too,” Rocky shot back.
Of course. The pattern-recognition abilities that the Da’hune passed to him were now in her.
Lucky realized this was at best a stalemate. She didn’t have his weapons training, but she also didn’t have his wounds.
He leapt up again, squeezed off two shots, felt his own spiders jump, and followed their lead.
Vlad jumped away from his shots as he skipped away from hers.
They might be shooting at each other for hours at this rate.
Then a series of explosions erupted in front of him, centered on Vlad.
Jiang, Malby and Dawson were holding defensive positions at the far end of the hangar, lighting up Vlad with pulse after pulse.
Vlad skipped away like a prize-fighter, dipping and juking, rolling away from shot after shot. She fired off one round. Then another. And another.
Dawson fell back, but Jiang and Malby kept alternating shots.
Jiang flipped her rifle and launched a pulse pounder, then flipped it back and dove away.
Vlad laughed playfully, dancing and backtracking her way out of the hangar. The explosion should have killed her, but somehow she managed to contort her body so that the shrapnel flew harmlessly by.
A real lucky move.
“Goodbye, Lucky,” she said as she casually stepped out of the hangar. “And thank you again.”
Lucky didn’t go after her.
Instead, he ran to the next little giant he saw that wasn’t damaged. The Marines joined him, Malby keeping his rifle trained on the path Vlad had used while Jiang helped Dawson carry a gear bag.
“I really want to dust that bitch,” Malby said.
Lucky nodded. “Join the club.”
Jiang gave Lucky a thumbs-up as they dove in. “Time to go,” she said.
Dawson set down the gear bag and lifted out a beige orb that throbbed with energy.
“Rocky told our drones right where to find it,” he said. “But man, it gives me the heebie-jeebies.”
Lucky placed it carefully in the shielded holder in the center of the floor. He felt an instant shift in the small craft as it lifted off the ground.
