Chapter 16: Luck Born of Desperation
Rain fell like ash, black and heavy, over the broken city of Kravoss. The skeletal remains of ruined hab-blocks loomed like tombstones against a bruised sky, the air thick with smoke, ozone, and the scent of blood and promethium. War had gnawed this place down to its bones. It was here, in this cursed place, that Lucien Artor Vale, now Lieutenant Cassian of the 191st Arcturan Infantry, would meet desperation—and find in it the next terrifying evolution of his fate-bound luck.
He stood at the edge of a shattered plaza, his carapace armor scuffed, visor cracked, and lasgun humming faintly in his grip. Around him, squads scrambled for cover behind fallen masonry and slagged vehicles, preparing for what they knew would be another hopeless stand. Vox channels crackled with static-laced shouting. The enemy was coming. Again. And this time, they had armor.
A battered Chimera transport burned behind him, one of its treads lying like a broken limb, smoke billowing into the blood-red clouds above. The column had been ambushed—again. Only half the original formation remained, and Lucien was the senior officer left breathing.
The PDF had broken. The Stormtroopers were dead. The rest…
He exhaled. His heart pounded in his chest, but not from fear—not entirely. There was something else. A pulse. A tug. A shift in the currents of chance that wrapped around him like a second skin. His curse… or his miracle.
"Sir," came a hushed voice at his side—Corporal Marek, face smeared with blood and dirt. "Auspex shows at least two dozen hostiles. Auto-guns, heavy stubbers, one tank. They're coming from the east street. We're outgunned."
Lucien's eyes narrowed. He glanced at the makeshift barricade his squad had thrown together from scrap and corpses. Twenty men. Maybe less. A few grenades. No heavy weapons. And now… a tank.
We shouldn't survive this.
Which means I just might.
He turned slowly, scanning the battlefield. Then, something in him clicked—not logic, not strategy. A gut feeling. A whisper in the storm. One he had come to trust.
"Tell Second Squad to shift right. That collapsed hab-unit—get inside it. Set charges on the ceiling and the access tunnel."
Marek blinked. "But sir, that'll—"
"Do it."
They moved. And as they did, the storm came.
Gunfire erupted as heretics surged forward—twisted remnants of what had once been human, clad in scavenged armor and blasphemous symbols. The tank rolled in behind them, its heavy bolter chewing through ferrocrete and flesh alike.
Lucien ducked a shot that whizzed past his head—by mere centimeters. Another las-round aimed for his chest struck the barrel of a fallen weapon beside him instead, ricocheting harmlessly. He returned fire with deadly calm, not questioning why his shots seemed to find targets even through smoke and poor angle.
Then came the tank.
It rumbled closer, its turret swiveling. The moment it locked on, Lucien felt it—the spike in danger, the flicker of fate shifting. A missile launcher fired, arcing toward him with perfect, lethal precision.
And then the building to the east collapsed.
Second Squad's charges, placed according to his instinct, triggered a cascade that buried the tank under a ton of rubble. The missile veered off-course at the last second, striking a broken wall behind him. The explosion knocked him down—but not out.
His soldiers stared. For a second, even the heretics hesitated. The enemy's advance had shattered.
Lucien stood up slowly, smoke clinging to his armor. He raised his lasgun high.
"FOR THE EMPEROR!" he roared.
The surviving guardsmen took up the cry, surging forward with renewed fury. In minutes, the heretics were driven into retreat, the square once again held by Imperium hands.
When silence fell, and the dead were counted, Lucien walked among them. His uniform was scorched, helmet missing, but he was unharmed. Again. And as he walked, he felt it—stronger now than ever before.
The luck.
The invisible thread pulling chance into his favor. Every step he took, he realized it had changed. It wasn't just reactive anymore. It was growing, shifting, responding to his will.
"Sir," Marek said quietly, "that call you made—the charges—it saved all of us. How… did you know?"
Lucien paused, gazing at the ruined street. He didn't answer for a long moment. Then, finally:
"I didn't. I just felt it."
Later that night, as he sat alone in a makeshift bunker beneath the ruins, he stared at his hands. They trembled slightly—not from fear, but from understanding.
His power wasn't just defense anymore. It was adaptation. Growth. It fed on risk. It thrived on desperation.
He wasn't just lucky. He was evolving into something else.
And deep inside, something whispered:
You are not just surviving. You are being prepared.
Prepared… for what?
He didn't know. But fate clearly had plans. And Lucien Artor Vale—Cassian to some, the Lucky Bastard to others—wasn't sure if he should fear them, or embrace them.
One thing, however, was certain:
The galaxy would remember his name.
And this… this was only the beginning.
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