Prologue
“He told me he wanted to retire,” the Emperor said, blood splashing up her legs.
Only she wasn’t the Emperor. She was Dragon, April’s AI, using one of April’s android sleeves. She was getting used to having a body to completely control. It might be more useful to have full control of the computer systems everywhere on the station, as she did, but it was so much more fun to have a body.
“Who did?” the giant creature next to her asked. Dragon hadn’t given him a name, so he didn’t have one. He was wearing a huge powered suit and combat helmet that made his voice sound slightly mechanized. In fact, she knew his actual voice had a gravelly slur to it, owing to the six dozen or so razor-sharp teeth. The Empire white coats said he was as close to Da’hune as they could get him without tipping out of control. At least he could think for himself, unlike the rest of the damn things, although she wasn’t so sure.
“Who do you think, mutant dick?”
“Lucky.”
“Bingo,” she said.
The big creature grunted. “I suppose he’s getting his wish.”
“Don’t be a smartass,” she said, which was pretty rich even for her.
The Da’hune creation towered over the android sleeve that Dragon used. He walked with an awkward gait, like he was squeezed into a body that didn’t fit. “Your Highness, with all due respect—”
“Stop. Stop right there. Nobody ever says that to me without regretting the next thing they say, so you better think it over.”
The giant creature paused. He didn’t know that he was talking to Dragon right now, but she doubted he would make a distinction. Dragon was the one running the show up here on the station, while April was down below making sure the white coats didn’t screw everything up.
April couldn’t be trusted to do the dirty work up here. Traipsing through the bloody remains of dead soldiers was best left to Dragon.
Finally he said, “You give him too much respect. He’s just a human.”
The big oaf might be right, Dragon thought. She’d probably gotten that from April, but she wasn’t interested in taking chances. Too much was riding on this.
“Just make sure you kill him.”
The creature shook his head dismissively, then turned and strode away.
She should have known then that everything was going to go to shit.
Chapter 1
“This should be interesting.”
It took Lucky a second to grasp that the voice was in his head. “Rocky?”
But if she responded, he didn’t hear her. Someone was jerking him by the shoulder. Repeatedly, up and down. It would be pleasant if they didn’t seem to be using his head as the starting-off point for each one. He opened his eyes and stared up into a face he knew. “Hector?”
“We need to move,” Hector said. He backed away, and Lucky could see the top of a cryopod.
Lucky realized, belatedly, that he’d been woken from hypersleep. Then he noticed the top glass was cracked and broken. He’d been in enough pods to know that was a bad sign. That was a sure way to get the person in the pod killed.
“Just to verify, I’m not dead, right?” he echoed.
“Your pod is compromised,” Rocky said. “And that was about the shittiest de-freeze of your illustrious career of shitty de-freezes, but no, you’re not dead.”
Lucky suspected that if he wasn’t a Frontier Marine with an AI monitoring his vitals, he might have been. “That’s comforting.”
Lucky searched his mind for some explanation of what was happening. He expected an info dump from Rocky. “I don’t have any info on this.”
“I didn’t have time.”
“You didn’t have time?” Lucky echoed as he struggled to sit up. “How does an AI not have time?”
“Don’t make me explain how hard it is to work with your meat.”
“This feels like time you could be giving me a sitrep,” he said.
As usual when he awoke from hypersleep, he was woozy. His legs felt like Jell-O. It would be minutes before he could walk properly, although he was used to the routine by now and was better than most at adjusting for the weak muscles and slow reaction times that came with—
Hector rushed back up again to the side of the pod and into Lucky’s face. “Move!” he screamed.
“Okay, shit,” Lucky said, pulling himself up to the lip of the pod. He could see now that he was in a huge recovery room. If it was a ship, it was a big one. He could also see that the lights were off. Most of the other pods were closed. “What the hell’s going on, Hector?”
Hector slammed a pulse rifle into Lucky’s hands. “No time,” he said. “They’ll be here any second.”
“Take it easy, chief,” Lucky said. “I can’t even walk yet. And I need to get out of my tube suit—”
“No time!”
The back wall of the recovery room exploded inward.
“Fuck a duck!” shouted a voice Lucky recognized from his right. Even in his freezer-burned state, he’d know that voice anywhere.
“Malby?”
“What the hell is going on?”
“Move,” shouted Hector, rushing away from Lucky and toward Malby.
Lucky noticed now that the big man was carrying two more pulse rifles. He threw one in the general direction of Malby. Lucky heard it clatter to the floor, followed by cursing from Malby. “Watch it!”
Lucky heard a thump to his right. Somebody slapped their hand against his own pod. He realized that the person in the pod across from his was dragging themselves up, having fallen out of their own pod.
“I think we need to move,” Jiang said, her voice husky and deep, still mired in the effects of hypersleep. She grabbed Lucky and jerked him down off the lip of his pod. His feet instantly collapsed under him, and he fell forward like a child learning to walk. He grabbed for anything he could get his hands on.
It was the lip of the pod opposite his. He latched onto it and used all his upper body strength just to arrest his fall and stop sliding down the side of the pod.
He glanced back at Jiang and realized they had swapped places. She was clinging to the side of the pod he’d been in, and he was doing the same to her pod.
“Why is it so warm in here?” Jiang asked.
Now Lucky could feel it. The recovery room was a sauna. “It’s not prepped,” he said. “I think Hector just decided to—”
Pulse fire smashed into the top of the pod that Lucky was clinging to. The impact jarred him loose, and he slid down the side and to his knees.
Jiang dropped next to him as more pulse fire smashed into the pods. “Stay where you are,” said a mechanical voice. “This is station police.”
Lucky knew a police enforcer unit when he heard one. The sturdy unmanned tank drones moved along the ground on treads. The MPs used to use them on his previous starship.
Lucky looked at Jiang and mouthed, ‘What station?’
She shook her head.
The last data Lucky had, he was on a troop transport headed for New Roma. If he’d arrived at a station, then that data should be available to him.
“Rocky?”
“I don’t have locust drones, but based on what I can glean from your shitty eyes, this looks like a recovery room on Five Corners Station.”
“Five Corners? How the hell did we end up out here?”
He passed the good news on to Jiang.
“For neutral territory, I’m not feeling the love,” she said succinctly.
From somewhere behind them, Lucky heard Hector whoop a war cry; then a grenade explosion came from the direction of the police tank drones. Lucky saw cryopods go flying, bodies dumped out. “What the hell, Hector? You’re killing people!”
“They’re already dead!” Hector screamed back. “They all are!”
More pulse fire exploded from the hole that had been blown in the side of the recovery room. Another pod to their right was blown right off its supports, and shattered in midair under a hail of slugs.
“Shit, shit, shit!” Malby screamed as he came crawling toward Lucky and Jiang, dragging himself forward, his rubbery legs dangling behind him. “That was my pod!”
Another barrage of slugs slammed into pods around Malby as Hector came rushing forward. The big man swept up Malby like a doll and threw him over his shoulder as he ran.
“Put me down!” Malby screamed. “I’m more of a target up here, you stupid asshole.”
“Then start shooting,” Hector screamed back.
Malby, hanging like a damsel in distress over Hector’s shoulders, started firing wildly with the pulse rifle that Hector had thrown to him. Lucky could generously say it was in the direction of the incoming fire.
Like Lucky and Jiang, Malby was wearing no armor: just the off-white hypersleep suit with a handful of tubes that ran around the exterior, meant to augment the freezing process that occurred within the pods.
A slug smashed into his upper thigh, ripping the rear of his sleep suit open. Malby howled.
“Oh, shit,” Jiang said. “I think I just looked right down Malby’s asshole.”
“Can’t unsee that,” Lucky said sympathetically.
Hector finally arrived next to Lucky and Jiang, and unceremoniously dumped Malby next to them. “Son of a bitch!” Malby shouted as he landed on his ass.
“We have a problem,” Hector said, breathing heavily.
“My ass got shot!” Malby said, as if that were the biggest problem they had right now.
Another barrage of pulse fire peppered the pods around them. It didn’t seem likely to stop any time soon. Lucky cocked his head. “You don’t say.”
Chapter 2
“Somebody needs to explain what the hell is going on!” Malby shouted.
“Well, Hector?” Lucky asked.
“These bastards are trying to kill you.”
“We got that part,” Jiang said.
“Hector?” strained a voice from behind them.
“Here!” Hector shouted back.
“You invited friends to our little party?” Jiang asked. Her cryosuit was slightly different that Lucky’s and Malby’s. It was a darker material that had two vent ports on it. It was the newer model, and Lucky told himself he was going to give her some shit for her privileged hypersleeping ways if they lived through this.
“Give him cover,” Hector instructed.
Lucky wasn’t loving any of this situation. He didn’t know where they were, at least not for sure. It was a safe bet that Rocky was right, but not a guarantee.
If she was right and they were on Five Corners Station, then shooting at the police drones was a bad move. The enforcer units would be a formidable opponent even if Lucky was in his combat armor and accompanied by his own airborne drones. “Where’s our armor?”
“They took it,” Hector said. “Now, covering fire!”
A man came running toward them, staying low. The police enforcers, focused on the small group in the center of the recovery room, didn’t spot the man initially. But they’d clearly made him out now as a barrage of pulse fire turned in his direction.
“He did already throw a grenade at them,” Rocky offered. “I think we’re invested.”
“Dammit,” Lucky said through gritted teeth. “Marines, covering fire.”
Jiang and Malby instantly popped up and started firing at the tank drones. Lucky and Hector took turns alternating fire until the man rushing toward them dove to the ground and slid the last few feet.
“This is a cluster,” the man said.
“Tell me something I don’t know, Tobin,” Hector said.
Lucky looked at the uniform the man was wearing. He was jealous. It looked like a decent combat suit. Unlike Hector, though, this man wasn’t wearing an Empire combat suit; it was clearly private design. It reminded him of an Alliance suit as much as anything.
“Are you Alliance?” Lucky asked.
“Not exactly,” Tobin said. He glanced at Hector. “Let’s just say I handle special projects.”
“Maybe we can make the introductions later?” Malby asked sarcastically.
Tobin was crouched between them, trying to catch his breath. He was wearing a combat helmet, something that the rest of them didn’t have. Why Hector wasn’t wearing his was a question worth asking, although his gear was so old and ill-fitting on his giant frame, Lucky had a feeling the answer was simply that he couldn’t find one that would fit.
“That’s what you get for being a giant,” Rocky said, seemingly reading his thoughts.
“So what’s happening?” Lucky asked.
Tobin ignored him. The police tank drones were reducing their fire now. They were slowly approaching, spreading out as they did so.
“We can’t hang out here long,” Jiang said. “Can we get out the way you came in?” she asked Tobin.
He nodded. “That was my plan.”
“Did you have a plan for getting us our combat suits?” Malby asked. “Because we could use some drones of our own.”
“They wouldn’t work in here.”
Station suppressors. Lucky was really growing to hate them. “Can we override?”
“That’s not how the station works.”
“I don’t give a shit how the station works,” Malby said. “I don’t even know what station this is—”
A tank drone, which must have been stealthily moving up on their position while the others were offering a distraction, burst up on the right of the group.
“Put down your weapons,” it demanded. “You have been charged with violating the universally-accepted treason codes of your native power. Once these charges have been adjudicated, you will be allowed a full defense.”
We hope you are enjoying the book so far. To continue reading...
Copyright © 2024 All Rights Reserved
Please log in to recommend or discuss...
