Unfortunate Luck

A Snapshot of a Space Opera

I commissioned this fantastic piece from Volodymyr Yanovski. As my SFF stories continues to bring in more views and more revenue, I’ll continue to commission unique artwork for them.

“Aw man! These irronium-toed boots are brand new!”

“What’d you step in this time, Jack?” asked the elderly companion with a tinge of mirth.

“I don’t know, man. It looks like atelopus goomp, but smells more like a polypedates brand” Jack lamented as he scraped the unwelcome excreta off his boot on the nearest plasteel curb.

“These freakin’ megaherp keepers need to pick up after their consarned frogs! Stepping in swill with fresh boots straight outta the box is literally just my luck, Tim. Makes perfect sense” he groaned, looking up and down the sidewalk to make sure no one else was privy to his less than dignified predicament.

“Oh, come on now, Jack. It happens to all of us. You’ve got the same fortuity as any old bloke. I’m sure something will come along any minute to turn your kismet around. You’ll be even-Stevens in no time” said the elder man seeking to mollify his fellow. “Don’t let one little misfortune blind you to all this wonderful monotony around you.”

“Commander Clad? Sir? I hate to interrupt you… but the Grand Autarch has sent for you and all the men are stacked up in the concourse as usual.” boomed a voice from the clouds.

Jack stopped his meticulous scraping, took a deep breath, then looking up into the sky, pressed his right hand to his ear and let out a labored sigh.

“I don’t recognize your voice, son. You must be my new first sergeant?”

“Ye—yes, sir, Commander Clad. I’m Binder, sir” the voice bellowed from the heavens. “Johnson gave me the passcodes before cycling back planet-side. He told me you’d probably be in… well, ‘in’ there. And, well, I don’t mean to rush you, but like I said, the Grand Autarch has sent for you, and I—”

“Relax, Binder” Jack said as he looked back down at his sullied boot. “I’ll be right with you.”

Jack brought his left hand up to his other ear and then in a single motion, pantomimed the removal of a helmet.

The sunshine, sidewalk, and elderly companion gave way to a dark room, barely illumined by neon cobalt light strips outlining the perimeter of the chamber floor and delineating the walkway which lead to a heavy, metal hatch and the rest of the celestial-cruiser beyond it. At the opposite end of the chamber, a silhouette of Jack seated at his desk could be seen in front of a floor-to-ceiling portal to the stars made from a convex therma-glass window.

Jack placed his VR helmet on his right knee and swiveled in his lev-chair away from the onyx desk which housed his brain-computer interface. Facing his new, skittish first sergeant, Jack mustered a jovial-enough greeting.

“Well, hello Binder” he said, allowing a slight smirk to well up at the right corner of his mouth. “Hit the lights, would ya?”

Binder minced over to the light controls and gave the dimly lit triangle on the wall a half-rotation. Gradually the hidden chamber lights waxed to full power and the sparsely furnished chamber became fully visible.

In the full light, Binder could see Commander Jackson Clad in all his strapping glory. Clad placed his helmet on a side table and rose from his chair. Binder couldn’t help but notice that Commander Clad was even more impressive than the legends let on. His bulk was apparent even through the clunky silver colored standard issue imperial uniform. His face looked as though it had been hewn of granite, his chin was almost comically masculine, and his piercing sapphire green eyes were at once unnerving yet inviting.

“I’m sure you’re just bursting with questions for me, especially in light of what you’ve just seen and from what Johnson has surely divulged to you already. But I can see by your wince that you’re even more eager to get me on my way to the Autarch. So, let’s hold the questions and I’ll tell you whatever you’d like to know when we return” the Commander said as he gave Binder a good-natured but weighty *thump* on the back.

Clad strode to the hatch in half as many steps as it took Binder, pressed his massive hand into the center gel-nexus and rotated his hand fifteen degrees counter-clockwise. A deep click sounded from within. Clad gripped the gel-nexus into a ball and pulled the massive door open. “After you, please” he insisted.

Binder stepped into a crowd of shouting soldiers clogging the entire left side of the concourse. The whole lane was swamped from Commander Clad’s domicile down through the next two blast door checkpoints. At the opening of the hatch the men broke out into a full-blown cacophony.

“Commander Clad! Commander Clad! You saved my life on Asteros-6!” cried one of the frantic faces.

“All hail, Jackson Clad! Your victory on Nesperous was a God send! My home world would be vaporized without you!” cried another. On and on the men extoled Commander Jackson Clad and recounted his many heroic acts which had impacted them personally.

“Okay, okay!” Binder screamed over the clamoring mass. “Enough! You’ll see him plenty in due time, but he’s been summoned by the Grand Autarch! Now back off. Give us some space or I’ll be sure to report each of you to the G.A. when he asks what took us so long.”

Clad held back in the archway of his hatch, covering his smile with a hand as he watched Binder trying to excoriate the excited mass.

Presently, a hov-tram horn sounded from the right side of the corridor cutting through the chaos. Binder turned to look behind him and a wave of relief splashed across his troubled face.

“We’re in luck!” he exclaimed at the commander. “This hov-tram will clear a way through these sycophants for us.”

Clad stepped back into his chamber, allowing Binder to evade the tram by taking his place in the archway. Turning, Clad strode back to his desk and grabbed his dark brown invubu-donta leather pocket notebook.

“The Autarch probably wants to grill me on my latest campaigns. Wouldn’t get far without my notes.” Clad held the notebook up to assuage the anxious Binder. “This is the toughest leather in the galaxy, you know that, Binder?” Clad said as he walked back to the hatch. “You can’t get this stuff anywhere, but luckily I saved a beast-fusion farmer on Plaud-6 and one of his female invubu-dontas had died of natural causes the day before. He made this notebook cover for me from its trunk as a way of saying thanks. Told me it’ll be like a prosperity amulet for me.” Clad forced Binder to admire the leather-bound pocket notebook before slipping it into the left breast pocket of his silver jumpsuit.

“Wuh-wow, sir.” Binder feigned interest but it was apparent his mind was preoccupied with the tram and the next leg of his journey back to the Grand Autarch with Clad in tow.

After the tram passed, Commander Jackson Clad and First Seargent Binder were able to traverse the concourse unmolested as the hov-tram forced the crowd back up the main hall where their respective commanding officers were ready with admonitions.

“This really is lucky, Commander” Binder simpered. “You must be a good luck charm or something—or maybe that notebook is a prosperity amulet after all. This kind of thing never happens to me, sir.” Clad acknowledge the comment with a wince followed by a deep pensive stare, but he gave no verbal reply.

The two men walked in silence for the rest of their journey until they came at last to the oppressively large ornate blast-doors of the Grand Autarch. Binder stepped to the right side of the ingress and placed his right hand into the gel-nexus. Just then a tiny hatch slid up revealing a coin-sized blue bullseye in the wall at Binders eye level. A sliver of blue light beamed out from the bullseye and swept across Binder’s retinae. Apparently satisfied, the beam retreated into the wall and the hatch occluded the bullseye once more. Roughly three inches below where the bullseye had been, a new hatch slid up and a miniature orange horseshoe extended out towards Binder’s mouth. He slowly but firmly bit down on the horseshoe and once the impression was left, it too retracted back into the wall to be hidden once more.

The gel-nexus that held Binder’s hand turned green and a metallic voice from the door said “Identity confirmed, First Sergeant Nāḍī Binder. Entrance granted.”

Binder squeezed the greenly illuminated gel into a ball in his hand and rotated it fifteen degrees clockwise. Mechanical thuds sounded from deep within the doors and then they cracked open with a hiss and became inert once more.

“Yes” Clad exclaimed.

“‘Yes’ what, sir?” asked Binder.

“Yes, I am a good luck charm, Binder.”

Binder furrowed his brow in confusion but his stream of questions was leveed by the abrupt outward swinging of the ornate blast doors.

The massive doors could only be opened with biometrics and they open outward into the hall so that the praetorian guards inside the Grand Autarch’s Sanctorum can discorporate anyone seeking entry unbidden.

Fortunately, Binder’s biometrics were accepted and he and Clad were in fact bidden. The pair waited where they were until the two guards had opened the blast doors to full extension. Then from within the Sanctorum the Autarch’s voice boomed, “Come in, Commander Clad. You too Binder.”

The two subordinates stepped past the doors into the massive inner chamber of the Grand Autarch. On both their left and right stood a row of ten praetorian guards each. The guards wore their signature orange chitinous armor made from the exoskeleton of the sinistra scorpiones of the Cioran sector. The spikey, chitinous armor looked fantastical and out of place in the sterile technocratic aesthetic of the imperium but it had the natural advantage of being laser-phobic. As is their custom, the guards kept the facemasks of their helmets lifted to expose their grimacing faces, so that all could see the green sun tattoos encircling their right eyes—the telltale sign of a praetorian. Binder always thought they looked like giant orange crab-men and was ill-at-ease in their presence, surely a reaction the Grand Autarch had purposely cultivated.

The two rows of praetorian guards were staggered with each other, each leaving enough space between guardsmen for the two rows come together into a single file line of twenty guardsmen in the case that they needed to march out of the Sanctorum at danger’s beckon. Their zigzag pattern also served to protect one line of guards from the las-guns of their counterparts. If they needed to fire upon a potential threat, the guards could do so without their las-beams penetrating through the threat and hitting one of their fellow guardsmen on the other side. Their armor was naturally las-proof, but it’s always best to avoid taking straight las-shots when possible. Accidents do happen after all and you’d hate to find out your armor had a weak point through friendly fire.

Twenty yards past the staggered ends of the two rows of guards sat the Grand Autarch, sole head of the imperium, first citizen, and for all intents and purposes, king of the galaxy. He was adorned in an iridescent pearl robe draped over his black military garb with imperial orange accents stitched throughout. He wore a golden lev-crown which slowly spun four inches above his dark brown high and tight haircut in a slow clockwise fashion. He sat up straight in his platinum throne, which stood twelve feet off the ground from base to seat. His hands lay clasped together in his lap as he scowled down at his two subjects.

“Step to the line, gentleman” the Grand Autarch’s voice boomed through the hidden speakers in the Sanctorum. The two men stepped up to the red line painted on the floor at the midpoint of the two rows of guards.

“How will you explain it this time, Clad?” asked the Autarch. “You had no backup on Rigartum, yet you flew in half-cocked and on what? Your own authority!?”

“Sir, is Rigartum under imperial control today or not?” Clad retorted.

“That’s not the point!” the speakers boomed again. “You are my weapon, Clad! You are the tip of MY spear. You serve at my leisure and for the glory of the eternal imperium, of which I am the Grand Autarch! You do not serve your own vainglory nor are you to continue to carry out your own insane death wish.”

Clad tried to hide the smirk welling up on his countenance. “Your-uh, your Autarch-sy, Sir I—”

“You will address him as ‘Grand Autarch, subject” came the grim voice of the lead praetorian guard at the front of the left row.

“Your pardon. Grand Autarch, sir” feigning a bow, “I’ve done nothing from selfish ambition or vainglory. The truth is, I’m your best commander. No one else comes remotely close to my success rate in naval battles. I would think I’ve earned a little more leeway based on my record. I—”

“YOU’VE BEEN LUCKY, CLAD! THAT’S ALL! LUCK!” The Autarch screamed, almost maxing out his Sanctorum speakers.

Silence fell on the whole chamber—perhaps on the entire celestial cruiser—for what felt like an eternity.

Then, taking a deep breath, the Autarch regained a semblance of composure. “Commander Clad, luck is not a legitimate strategy in any military, let alone the greatest military in galactic history.”

It was at this moment that Binder, who had been too petrified to look up at the Autarch, let his curiosity best him. He looked up but unintentionally made eye contact with the leader of the known universe. He immediately winced and shot his eyes back down to the lead praetorian’s boots. There he noticed a shiny little silver tube on the floor.

Is that a… pen? No, it’s a… it’s a las-pen, Binder thought to himself. Did the lead guard drop it? They don’t carry las-pens. Praetorians always use overpowered las-rifles. Aren’t all weapons not held by the praetorians supposed to be secured in the armory immediately upon boarding the cruiser?

“I do not care how lucky you’ve been thus far, Clad” the Autarch continued, “I will not let the incursions in my battle plans be formed around your sheer luck.”

“Sir, you say my luck can’t be depended on, but I have years of data points proving that, actually, my luck is one of the most dependable known quantities in our entire military.”

As Clad was talking, the agitated Grand Autarch slammed his right hand on the arm of his throne in frustration. In doing so, he accidentally hit both the vid-phone button and the ship-wide telecast button, thereby streaming the events taking place in the Sanctorum out across the cruiser’s holo-displays as a ship-wide announcement.

“I’ll prove it!” Clad shouted, continuing his vindication speech. He reached for the notebook in his breast pocket.

“He’s got a las-pen!” cried one of the praetorian guards.

“Neutralize!” the lead guard screamed as he lifted his las-rifle and fired on Jackson Clad.

The purple laser beam shot out of the praetorian’s rifle in and instant, it would have struck Clad right through the heart but instead it penetrated his silver jumpsuit, struck his dark brown invubu-donta leather pocket notebook, and ricocheted back at the praetorian. The beam blasted through the unlucky guard’s face and hit the back of his sinistra scorpiones helmet, causing it to ricochet back out of the guard’s face at a slightly different angle than it came in. The indefatigable laser beam then proceeded to dispatch each and every praetorian guard by blasting straight through their ill-fated faces before ping-ponging off the back of each of their helmets and ricocheting across the ranks to the next guard. The staggered positions of the two rows of guards was meant to protect them from collateral laser beam damage but the zig-zag pattern had unwittingly been the perfect path for a rogue beam to do maximal damage. In a blink of an eye, all twenty of the Autarch’s guards were slumped on the ground. Dead.

Silence fell once again in the Sanctorum, and this time it certainly did fall across the entire celestial-cruiser as well, for the Autarch had unintentionally telecast the whole massacre out as a ship-wide announcement.

The Autarch sat, mouth ajar, transfixed by the sheer horror that had just taken place.

Jackson Clad looked down at his vid-watch which had been trying to alert him of the Grand Autarch’s announcement. Piecing together what had just happened, Clad let out an impassive, “huh.” He shook his head in mock-surprise, grabbed Binder by the arm and bellowed to the autarch, “Well, you’ve got your hands full here, sir. So, we’re going to go now, just hail me when you want to continue this conversation. You know where to find me.”

As Clad turned to leave with binder firm in his grasp, the two remaining guardsmen, those in charge of managing the Sanctorum doors, stood fast barring their exit. “Grand Autarch, Sir?” One of them asked looking for guidance from their shell-shocked ruler.

Finally regaining a small portion of his usual self-possession, the Autarch announced both to Clad, Binder, and the two remaining guards, as well as, the rest of the ship watching the tele-vid announcement, “Commander Clad, you have my sincerest apologies. It appears my lead guardsman had grown trigger happy and fired upon you by accident. It appears his punishment has already been swiftly dealt. Please return to your chambers while we remedy this tragi-comic mess. You are released.” The autarch quickly disengaged the announcement setting to cut the vid-send feed and called for his custodial staff and the reserve praetorians to immediately present themselves to the Sanctorum.

Clad dragged Binder past the guardsmen and the Sanctorum doors and out into the hall where they jumped on an empty hov-tram that just so happened to be passing by at that exact moment.

“Ummmm… what the hell just happened, sir?” Binder asked with a look of rabid bewilderment in his eyes. “How—how did that—I mean what just… what is going on!?”

“Get it together Binder” Clad said with stern resolution. “No need for hysterics, man. Just a little frame-job-assassination-attempt backfire, that’s all” Clad said with an all too jovial laugh.

“But I... they’re all dead! How is that even possible?” The still hysterical Binder squawked.

“Hey, you said it yourself Binder, I’m lucky.” Clad said with a knowing wink.

“But they tried to murder you.”

“Yeah, I know Binder, I was there, remember?”

“But why? You’re the most famous hero in the imperium. Why would the praetorian guard want to kill you?”

Clad furrowed his brow in confusion. “The guard? They didn’t want to kill me. Isn’t that obvious? They were just following orders. The Autarch wanted to kill me. He’s probably worried about his throne or something. The men’s love for me grows every day and his support amongst the men continues to wane. I don’t get that whole bit about claiming I have a las-pen though. I guess they would’ve planted one on my corpse and pretend like I had attacked the G.A.”

“Sir! Uh, commander! I think that’s exactly what they had in mind! The lead praetorian had a las-pen at his feet in the Sanctorum. I think he meant to assassinate you and then kick it under you or something so that it looked like, well exactly like you said. That you were trying to kill the G.A.

Clad tapped his breast pocket and fingered the newly singed hole. “Luckily I had my trusty pocket notebook, aye? Things could have gone a lot differently for us, Binder. Surely, they would have killed you too, as my accomplice. Pretty fortunate that the clumsy Autarch tele-streamed the whole ricochet thing to the rest of the crew or he could have pinned that fiasco on us too.”

“Sir, that’s too much luck. I just, I don’t understand” Binder said scratching his head.

Clad bit his lip. Compassion for Binder welled up in his heart. “Binder, old boy, when I say I’m lucky, I mean it. Luck isn’t just a word—it’s a cosmic fact. There are laws of luck that operate on reality.”

“Sir, I don’t think I believe that. I’m a God-fearing man” Binder managed to say with the last ounce of his courage and conviction.

“Sure, Binder. Who’d you think invented the laws of luck? Any law implies a law-giver. There are well-balanced equations governing all the constituent pieces which comprise ‘luck’, including chances, possibilities, necessities, volitional agentive causation, and probabilities. All this to say, for luck to be luck, good fortune has to be equally distributed at random across the universe and that takes a pretty fine-grained set of laws or algorithms or what have you, to bring that about. Right?”

“Uh, yes. I guess” Binder said, pretending to understand.

“Sure it’s right. So, there are laws to make sure that what we call ‘luck’ is equally distributed at random and diffuse throughout the created order. Make sense?”

“No, but okay…”

“Okay, well it’s true Binder” Clad said with a hint of disappointment. “On my first deployment we were sent out to dispatch some space sorcerer named Tychi Fortuna. It’s always some lunatic space wizard doing something crazy. Well, this one had discovered the laws of luck on assignment from the Grand Autarch but instead of reporting back to the imperial metaphysicians on his findings, he hoarded his research away. As it turned out, he was seeking to manipulate the laws of luck in his own favor.”

“Okay. I think I get it now. He was trying to like ‘hack’ the laws of luck so that he’d be more fortunate than he otherwise would’ve been?” the servile first sergeant exclaimed.

“Bingo, Binder! He wanted more than his fair share of luck. We didn’t know that at the time, but we were sent to drag him in for questioning before the G.A. No telling what kind of cosmic meddling a sorcerer like that could lead to, after all. But in my last spate of bad luck, I was sent out as lead breacher in the incursion into his fortress. But when I went to bust down the main entrance to the sorcerer’s facility, unfortunately, the door gave way far too easily. I ended up charging through the entrance, bumbled over the railing at the top of a stairwell and right smack dap into the sorcerer’s luck-manipulation contraption. In his shock, the ill-starred sorcerer dialed the intensity of the machine up to its maximum and I got hit with a full felicitous blast. BAM! I crashed right through the main oscillator tubes which made the entire process unstable. The manipulation contraption erupted in a blaze of turquoise light, glass, shrapnel and cogwheels. Luckily, the instant before the explosion I had been infused with a macro-dose of good luck or I never would have survived—the sorcerer and the rest of my team certainly didn’t. They were all either incinerated by the blast or succumbed to their injuries soon afterwards.”

“Woah. That’s, well, that’s pretty heavy stuff, sir. So, did the Autarch ever find out that you’re literally lucky?”

“Not yet” Clad chortled.

“Does anyone else know, besides me now?”

“Sure, lots of people. Johnson figured it out almost immediately after he was assigned to be my first sergeant.”

“But aren’t you worried your secret will get out? Wouldn’t this damage your reputation?”

Clad let out a staccato *tisk* *tisk* and gently shook his head. “Binder, you’re not fully grasping the reality here. I’m not worried about the truth getting out in the slightest. I am über lucky. Don’t you get that? If the story of my luck infusion gets out, it will work for my benefit. I don’t know how but I know it will. If it only gets out to a select few people, then that will be for my benefit as well. Luck is bent towards me, dear boy. What is there to ever worry about?”

“Oh yeah. That is pretty trippy sir. But how are you lucky. I still don’t quite understand like the mechanics of it all” Binder confessed.

“Well, that’s a tricky one, Binder. I’m no imperial metaphysician, mind you, but the way it’s been explained to me is that the web of luck that’s diffused throughout the universe—oh, uh first you need to think of that equal distribution of good fortune as like a spider web spread out over the universe and well, everything else in existence whatever that may be. Call it the ‘world’ and include the physical universe but also the multiverse if that exists, and abstract objects like the form of perfect triangles, if those kinds of things exist, and mathematical equations and like angels and all sorts of immaterial things as well. Okay? So, the web of luck covers everything in existence, everything in the ‘world’. Got it?”

“Yeah, sure. Sir.”

“Okay, so think of that web of randomly distributed luck as more like a trampoline than an old cobweb. Can you do that?”

“Yes, I think so, sir. It’s a web that’s flexible and springy like a trampoline and won’t tear or snap easily. Right?”

“You got it!” Clad exclaimed.

“Well, lucky thing you picked the trampoline as a metaphor. I basically lived on our family trampoline as a kid on Terra, you know, before the academy inauguration. But yes, I totally get what you’re saying.”

“Well, great then. So that’s the normal distribution. What the sorcerer Fortuna’s contraption did to me was ‘weigh me down’ so-to-speak, concerning the trampoline-esque web of luck distribution. I’m weightier, when it comes to luck, than anyone or anything else in the universe” Clad pronounced, trying his hardest not to sound grandiose.

“Like if you put a magnus droid popper ball in the middle of a trampoline it will weigh it down?” Binder said as he desperately tried to hold onto the thread of the understanding he just gained but which was slipping through his fingers like a thin ribbon attached to a hot air balloon.

“See, you’ve got it, Binder. I’m the heavy droid popper ball at the center of the trampoline. Any other ball you roll on the weighted-down trampoline will end up rolling to the center, to the droid popper. Imagine those chocolate wonderballs that they gave us as kids in the academy—”

“Sir! I loved those!” Binder couldn’t help but interject.

“Perfect. So, take a wonderball and roll it on the weighted-down trampoline. It will probably take a second or two but it’s going to encircle the droid popper in an ever-tightening circle until it’s finally inert and touching the popper. I’m the droid popper, luck is the wonderball. I’m the heaviest object on the web of luck. It’s drawn to me.

“That’s incredible, sir! But like you said, you haven’t been trained as an imperial metaphysician. So, how do you know all this?”

“The space wizard—ope, the space sorcerer, they really hate being confused like that—he explained it all to me before he succumbed to his injuries” Clad said triumphantly.

“Oh that’s lucky—oh, yeah. Right. That makes sense, the trampoline and all that. But, so, what now? What are you supposed to do? What am I supposed to do?”

At that very moment, the hov-tram was just arriving at Clad’s chamber door.

“Well Binder, now I’m going to hop off this tram, go back into my quarters, and continue my V.R. game. The only place I can still experience a taste of misfortune. You can do whatever you’d like.”

“But—but sir, you WANT to be misfortunate?”

“Being lucky gets pretty old, pretty quick, Binder. You’d be surprised how hollow life can be when you’re wholly at ease. Knowing that literally every situation will work out in the best possible scenario for you. A little luck goes a long way, son. A lot can be induce psychosis, believe me.” Clad hopped off the tram and gave binder a nonchalant salute before turning to the gel-nexus of his hatch.

Binder smiled. He was filled with a new sense of wonder, peace, and fortitude knowing that Commander Jackson Clad was on his side. Suddenly he remembered that this tram was taking him in the wrong direction from his own quarters. He quickly turned to make out the nearest concourse cross-section of blast doors but as he jerked his head around, he pinched a nerve in his neck. A lightning bolt of pain raced down his neck through his arm all the way into his pinky, leaving it numb after the pain had subsided.

“Great. A stinger just from turning my head. Just my luck.”

[ you can grab your own pocket notebook like Jackson Clad below! There are my special ParkNotes editions of the Murdy Creative no.2’s with a Leuchtturm1917 a6 notebook and a Parker Pen. They are super cool, check them out here and use promo code: PARKERNOTES at checkout for 10% off your entire order. No promises that it’ll deflect lasers though! ]