Lucky Legacy – Raw Excerpt [Part 1]

Same Shit, Different World

“Fifteen Frontier Marines have gone missing planet-wide now.”

“Shit, wasn’t it twelve when we left?”

“Yep, lost 3 in the last 48 hours,” reported Rocky. “Two in the swamplands and one in some village that I can’t begin to pronounce.”

“You’re an AI. How can you not pronounce it?”

“Easy. I just didn’t.”

It was fair to say the transition from piloting an alien starship capable of transiting universal wormholes back to monitoring a few hundred drones that kept his ass from getting shot in the back wasn’t going over well with Rocky.

“Maybe that explains the big crew,” said Lucky, nodding as PFCs Aces and Tholcott walked by.

He preferred to work in smaller units. Four Frontier Marines were a typical unit. This unit was six plus the Sergeant. That was a crowd in Frontier Marine terms, considering their effective firepower in theatre spread over several dozen miles.

And that didn’t even take into account the squad of army regulars. Twenty little grunts that were good for a show of force and little else.

“I think it explains them,” murmured Jiang, nodding.

On cue, a dozen men and women in white uniforms strode past, not deigning to even look in Lucky and Jiang’s direction.

About half bore the red eyes that marked out clones.

Lucky gritted his teeth. It was just a knee-jerk reaction. He didn’t trust scientists in general and blood eyes were the purest form of the species known as “brainiac” in Lucky’s view.

Considering recent events, he wasn’t the only one.

“Damn blood eyes,” Malby said over his combat suit mic, loud enough for people on the other side of the world to hear.

A woman in the group gave him the middle finger. She had hazel eyes.

She started to walk on, then through better of it and stopped.

Here we go.

“Hey, dickwhistle,” she said. “Apologize to my colleague.”

“Excuse me?” asked Malby, with a slightly more appropriate level of volume this time.

Lucky was still trying to wrap his mind around hearing ‘dickwhistle’ and ‘colleague’ in the same sentence.

“You heard me, nut sack. Apologize.”

“I ain’t apologizing to nobody, lady.”

She walked up to Malby. The top of her head barely reached his chest plate. “Look at me, you little spunk experiment gone wrong. I’m not going to ask you again. Apologize.”

“I like her,” Rocky declared.

Malby looked around, his arms up. “Who’s going to make me, lady? You don’t outrank me. You don’t even …” he faltered. “… rank,” he finished.

The woman crossed her arms and waited. Malby stared back.

“But I do,” said Sergeant Nuchik, making her way from the front of the group.

Lucky hadn’t realized she had been leading them.

“Apologize,” she said to Malby, enunciating crisply, “to the blood eye.”

Malby snorted and turned to the woman. “Sorry about calling your blood eye a blood eye.”

The woman turned her rage to Nuchik. “Don’t encourage that shit, Sergeant.”

“Certainly, Ma’am,” replied Nuchik, coolly. “Shall we?” she asked, turning back around.

The group of scientists in matching white jumpsuits continued forward toward the evacuation center.

The woman took one last, long look at Malby, then turned to join them.

“Way to make friends, Malby,” said Lucky.

“What was that all about?” Malby asked, annoyed.

“It’s the investigation team,” said Jiang. “They found something down here.”

Lucky felt a huge sigh leave his body and he did nothing to stop it. “I’m having déjà vu all over again.”

Jiang nodded, sympathetically.

“Remind me how following a group of white coats turned out last time?”

“Same shit, different world,” observed Rocky.