by G J Ogden
Urgent shouts then combined with the rumble of the ship’s engines, and Hallam turned to see twenty or more CSF heavies approaching. They opened fire and bullets pinged off the hull of the fighter, but Hallam knew it would take more than sidearms to take it down. Then the side hatch of the ship hissed open, and a figure stood in the threshold in black armor with a sleek, full-cover helmet, holding a powerful rifle. The renegade unloaded at the enforcers, causing them to scatter like startled pigeons. Some dove behind whatever flimsy cover was available, while others panicked and jumped into the heated water of one of the many pools.
“Get in!” the helmeted figured shouted, though the voice was heavily modulated through the mask.
Hallam pushed himself up and saw that there was a two-meter gap between the edge of the roof and the ship’s open hatch.
“Any time now!” came the modulated yell from the renegade pilot.
Hallam clenched his teeth together and ran, launching himself at the opening like a long-jumper. Time seemed to slow down as he sailed through the air, fifty meters above the neatly trimmed lawns and hedges of the campus grounds, before he collided with the renegade ship’s dimpled metal deck. Bullets rattled off the inside walls as the hatch closed behind him, then he felt hands grabbing him again, except this time, they belonged to the Darkspace Renegade.
“Get strapped in; we’re going to have to fly hard,” the voice said as Hallam was hauled into the cockpit and dumped in the second seat.
Heart still thumping and still gasping for breath, Hallam pulled the harness over his shoulders, a millisecond before the renegade ship blasted away from the HQ building with bullets zinging off its hull.
“Trust you not to follow a simple instruction,” said the voice from the pilot’s seat.
This time, it wasn’t modulated, and he recognized who it belonged to. Hallam shot a glance across to his right and saw that the pilot had removed their helmet.
“Hey, Hal,” said Dakota Wulfrun, smiling cockily. “Seems like you’ve been a naughty boy.”
18
Hallam peered back at Dakota with open-mouthed astonishment. Even if his overworked lungs could have furnished him with enough breath to speak, he would have still had no words. Yet there she was, smiling back at him as if everything that had occurred in the last week hadn’t happened at all, and they’d never been apart. Even Bob the bear was present, in its usual place on Dakota’s dashboard. This was surreal, but not unexpected, Hallam realized. Given Dakota’s superstitious nature, there was no chance she’d abandon the stricken armored tanker without her lucky mascot.
“Surprised to see me?” asked Dakota, clearly enjoying having Hallam on the back foot.
“Surprised?!” Hallam repeated, almost yelling the word back at her. “Dak, they told me you were dead!”
“Yeah, sorry about that,” Dakota replied, keeping the renegade craft flying fast and low over the lush terrain of Vesta’s southern continent. “It was Dr. Rand’s decision, and I fought her on it. But she wanted to be sure you could be trusted, and that you were ready to pick a side.”
“You knew that I met Dr. Rand?” Hallam said, still struggling to believe what he was he hearing. “You knew about all of this, and just let me believe you were dead?”
Dakota smiled again and raised an eyebrow, “I heard you cried when they broke the news,” she said, coyly adding, “I think that’s kinda sweet.”
Hallam had always found Dakota’s combative playfulness endearing, but on this occasion, it was driving him insane.
“Cut it out, Dak. This isn’t a joke!” Hallam snapped. “Have you any idea what I’ve been through?”
A panel on Dakota’s console bleeped and she scowled down at it. “We’ll have to save the happy reunion till later,” she said as her impish mood was swiftly traded for one of more somber focus. “There’s a fighter squadron closing in on our tail.”
Hallam checked the instruments in front of him and confirmed Dakota’s reading. Three contacts were approaching fast.
“Can you punch us out of the atmosphere and beat them to the bridge?” asked Hallam, switching gears exactly as Dakota had done. Suddenly, it was as if they were back in the cockpit of their armored tanker, working as a team again to fight off Darkspace Renegades. Except this time, they were the Darkspace Renegades: outlaws fighting against the establishment in pursuit of a noble cause. It was a heel-turn of epic proportions.
“We’re not going for the bridge; I have something else in mind,” Dakota replied mysteriously. “But we have to break atmosphere at the last possible moment. In space, we lose our maneuverability, which will make our ship a sitting duck for their missiles.”
“I’m surprised the CSF managed to scramble their fighters so quickly,” said Hallam, watching the three contacts as they quickly closed the gap between them. He knew that a squadron was always kept on station at the HQ’s private spaceport, but it seemed unlikely they would have caught up with Dakota’s fighter in such a short space of time.
“I’m afraid they’re not CSF,” replied Dakota, activating the fighter’s weapons, and turning hard toward a coastal mountain range. “It’s the Blackfire Squadron; you met these jokers before, if you remember, back on the Centrum.”
Hallam scrunched up his brow, trying to think back to their last visit to the fortress-like refinery, but it seemed like years had passed since that time. Then he remembered the incident in the bar and cursed. “You’re kidding? Not the comedian with the sword and his two mistresses of evil?” he said, hoping he was wrong, but Dakota just nodded. “Damn it, Dak, no wonder you were so eager to start a fight with them!”
This time, Dakota shook her head. “Hey, I wouldn’t be much of an undercover operative if I went around picking fights with Consortium mercs, would I?” she hit back, scowling at Hallam. “I genuinely just lost it because that face-painted oaf, Draga Vex, knocked my damned pizza onto the floor.”
Hallam laughed, remembering the Hawaiian monstrosity that Dakota had ordered. “Honestly, I think she did you a favor.”
The console bleeped again, redirecting their attention back to the approaching squadron of mercenary cutthroats. Dakota quickly adjusted the flight settings and aimed the nose of the fighter into the valley ahead of them.
“How about you do something useful and stand ready to deploy the countermeasures,” Dakota said as a weapons-lock warning droned inside the cabin. “I’m going to snake through this mountain range until the calculations have been completed.”
Hallam snapped into action, motivated by the impending threat of a missile blowing them into a million tiny pieces. “Calculations for what?” he asked as he prepared the first volley of electronic countermeasures before bringing up the virtual HUD for the rear rotary cannon turret.
“Our entry into bridge space,” Dakota replied, for once without a cocky grin on her face.
Hallam stopped dead again. “You’re telling me that this little fighter can create its own bridges?” he asked, hoping the answer was no.
Building the bridges between star systems required months of meticulous calculations before a dedicated bridge-builder ship ten times the size of Dakota’s fighter finally engineered the passageway. The bridge-builder ships were fitted with the most powerful and sophisticated Shelby Drives ever designed, but even then, it still took months to safely construct a new bridge. Attempting to create a bridge on-the-fly – literally, given their current situation – was more likely to end up spewing their atoms across half the star system.
“Dr. Rand upgraded the drives on all these renegade fighters,” Dakota answered, though her responses were becoming stilted as piloting the ship occupied increasingly more of her concentration. Then she added, “Relax, Hal, it’ll all be fine” with an off-hand casualness that did nothing to reassure him.
Suddenly, the tone of the weapons lock warning shifted up an octave, and the pitch of Dakota’s voice switched up a notch to match it. “That is, unless the missile they’ve just fired destroys us fir
st!”
Hallam set aside his still undiminished concerns about creating a bridge and focused on launching the countermeasures. The missile had locked on to the ship’s drive signature, but for some reason, the electronic jamming system hadn’t thrown off the weapon’s guidance system.
“They must be using some pretty high-grade tech,” said Hallam, switching to manual control on the rear rotary cannon. “The jammers are having no effect; I’m going to have to take this down the old-fashioned way.”
Hallam aimed the crosshair at the rapidly approaching missile and programmed the cannon for a pattern burst, where it would automatically pepper the area around the aiming point, a bit like a shotgun blast. He fired in short, controlled bursts, tracking the target as best he could. However, the controls were twitchier than the flak turret in the tanker, and his bursts flew wide.
“I thought you were supposed to be a crack gunner!” Dakota called out as the tone of the missile warning continued to rise. “Can you shoot it already?”
Hallam ignored Dakota as best he could and compensated to account for the faster tracking system of the fighter’s nimbler weapons. He fired three more bursts, leading the target by different amounts each time, and on the final burst, the missile exploded. Debris peppered the rear of the fighter, and the shockwave buffeted them like a car rolling too fast over a cattle guard. Yet after the rattles subsided, they were still flying, and to Hallam, that was all that mattered.
“How about we get out of here so I don’t have to do that again?” said Hallam, gasping out the breath he’d been holding in.
Dakota was now weaving the fighter through the valley, the muscles in her face taut with concentration.
“They’re too close for missiles,” she said through gritted teeth, banking hard and skirting the side of a mountain. “We should be fine so long as we can avoid their guns for another ninety seconds.”
Suddenly, another alarm blared out, startling both of them. Hallam focused on his console and saw that a second missile had locked on, but he couldn’t make sense of the enemy fighter’s position.
“Where the hell is that coming from?” cried Dakota, arcing her neck, trying to get a visual on the mercenary fighter. The alarm tone rose again, and Dakota cursed, “Missile launched, but I don’t see it!”
Hallam shook his head. “I don’t either…” But then he had an idea and looked directly up. Shadowing their maneuvers far above the mountain range was a Blackfire Squadron fighter. “It’s above us!” Hallam cried. “They’ve dropped the missile like a bomb. We have to get out of here!”
Dakota banked hard and immediately pulled up as the missile screeched past their wing, missing them by less than a meter before it detonated in the valley. Another shockwave buffeted the renegade fighter like a kite in high winds and, for a moment, Dakota lost control before battling to get the ship level again.
“The other two renegades are right on us!” Hallam called over, watching the fighters close in on the rear cannon’s virtual HUD. The weapons lock tone hummed again, and Dakota threw the fighter hard right, narrowly avoiding a concentrated burst of cannon fire.
“How long till we can enter bridge space?” cried Hallam, returning fire with the rear cannons, but the automatic targeting system was still jammed, so it was like shooting while riding a bucking bronco.
“Not soon enough,” answered Dakota, still throwing the ship around in a desperate attempt to avoid the gunfire. “And we can’t bridge while we’re still in the atmosphere, but those assholes will get us before we even bust through the stratosphere.”
Another alarm blared out, and Hallam saw that one of the mercenary ships had dropped back to open up enough distance for a missile lock.
“It’s another missile!” shouted Hallam. “Pull up now; we have to climb!”
“Wait, there’s another contact heading right at us!” said Dakota, pushing them higher.
“Another of the Blackfire Squadron?” asked Hallam, but he’d already counted three ships on their tail.
Dakota cursed and slammed her dash. “No, it’s one of mine…”
Hallam frowned, not understanding Dakota’s response, but then the radio clicked on, and a voice filled the cockpit.
“Wolf One, this is Wolf Three, climb now; I’ll hold them off!”
“Kien, get the hell out of here!” Dakota cried back, looking and sounding furious.
“Negative, Wolf One,” said the voice on the other end of the comm. “Get the prize back to base. Kien, out…”
“Kien? Kien!” Dakota yelled, but the channel had already gone dead. She growled and pulled the fighter into a sharp climb, just as the missile lock alarm switched to the launch tone.
“I’m on it!” shouted Hallam, focusing his attention back on the virtual HUD for the rear turret. “Just keep us going straight up like a rocket.”
Dakota pushed the throttle to maximum, and Hallam was suddenly pressed into his seat as the pressures on his body increased.
“Missile closing…” Dakota called out. “Five seconds to impact.” She glanced across to Hallam. “Hal, tell me you’ve got this!”
Hallam filtered out everything other than the crosshairs on his HUD. A red marker highlighted the missile’s position, coming at them straight and level, like an arrow. Hallam aimed the turret and squeezed the trigger, knowing he’d only get one burst, and a fraction of a second later, the missile erupted into flames.
“Got it, we’re clear!” shouted Hallam.
“We’re through the exosphere,” Dakota called back. “Calculations complete, bridging in thirty!”
Dakota made the final adjustments to the flight controls before configuring the fighter for bridge flight. Hallam could hear the pulse of the Shelby Drive system begin to build, but the cadence and timbre of the drive was different from any drive he’d heard before.
With the fighter rigged for bridge flight, Dakota restored the communications link to the second Darkspace Renegade fighter. “Wolf Three, we’re clear. Kien, get out, now!” There was no response, and Dakota repeated the order with frightened urgency, but still there was no answer. Then one of the four contacts on Hallam’s scanner disappeared.
“Kien!” Dakota yelled again, but Hallam knew that there wouldn’t be a response. The renegade fighter had been destroyed.
The pulse of the Shelby Drive rose to a crescendo, and the cockpit was bathed in a vivid crimson light. Hallam glanced across to Dakota as the fighter entered bridge space, but her eyes were closed, teeth gritted, and fists clenched. He’d seen the look before; she wasn’t just upset – she was raging.
19
Cad Rikkard rapped his knuckles on the massive oak double-doors of Damien Doyle’s office at his private retreat on Vesta. The office itself was as big as Cad’s entire house on Feronia, yet it occupied only a small portion of the east wing of Doyle’s palatial estate. Cad had only been there once before, when the job – at that time, the high-profile assassination of a competitor’s CEO – was too sensitive to discuss over regular communications channels. It followed that this summons meant that whatever Doyle wanted Cad to do, it was big.
“Come in, Mr. Rikkard,” came the sonorous voice of Damien Doyle.
Cad pushed open the door and stepped inside the opulent space. To call it an office didn’t do justice to the grandiose scale of the room. Doyle had modeled it on Trinity College Library, in Dublin, Ireland. While it didn’t quite have the capacity of that library’s seven million volumes, it still contained enough books to comfortably service a small city. To Cad, the most amusing aspect of the office was that it wasn’t even Doyle’s actual library. The multi-trillionaire business tycoon also had a dedicated library building on his estate that was ten times the size of his comparatively modest office.
“Thank you for coming, Mr. Rikkard,” said Doyle, who was standing in front of his stately-looking oak desk, which was fit for a president.
“No problem, boss,” said Cad, as if he'd actually had a choice over whether to
come or not.
Doyle was six-two, and for a man in his late sixties, he still looked lean and hungry. He never wore suits, and as on the other occasions Cad had met him, he was wearing black slacks with a black mandarin collar shirt that always had the top two buttons left undone. Both were exceptionally dull garments, despite being hand-crafted by Doyle’s favorite celebrity designer – a name Cad could never care to remember. However, if Doyle’s clothes were unremarkable, he made up for it in his choice of footwear. Besides his collection of swords, whose uses were not merely decorative, Cad didn’t care for material possessions. However, Doyle’s shoes, which were crafted from the waxed skin of a now-extinct alligator-like creature found only in the swamps of Tellus, were a work of art. They were the only object in Doyle’s entire gluttonous hoard of possessions that Cad actually coveted.
“Please, come closer,” said Doyle, apparently noticing Cad’s reluctance to step further into the office.
Cad had good reason to be cautious, though. As he stepped forward, he glanced up into the corners of the high ceiling and saw at least a dozen small, turret-mounted weapons. However, far more concerning was the personal protection bot that was stationed by the bookcase to Doyle’s right. It was a humanoid-sized, bipedal unit that was illegal on almost every other planet, due to the model’s propensity for violent errors. Doyle didn’t trust any actual human being enough to be his personal bodyguard, not even Cad. Yet, because of his enormous wealth and power, the tycoon still took no chances with his own security. There was enough high-grade weapons tech on his estate to level a city.
