Darkspace Renegade Volume 1: Books 1 & 2: (A Military Sci-Fi Series)

by G J Ogden

  “That’s all, you can go,” Cad obliged brusquely before Draga arrived at his side. Her face was streaked with dried blood from cuts that had already partially scabbed over, and it looked like her armor had repelled numerous bullet hits too.

  “How is Alexis?” Draga asked with her usual clinical coolness as the small army of bemused enforcers dispersed.

  “She’s alive,” replied Cad. He couldn’t elaborate, because that was all he knew.

  “I don’t care what the mission is anymore,” said Draga after a few seconds of silence had passed between them. “Those renegades must die.”

  Cad Rikkard nodded then looked up into the sky, now bright and perfectly cloudless. The heat of the Fortunan sun had burned away the morning gloom, but its warmth brought Cad Rikkard no comfort.

  “We’ll need to handle Doyle too,” said Cad, unconsciously resting a hand on the pommel of his Black Prince sword. “The renegades escaped with data from his facility. Doyle will blame us.”

  “I know a way,” answered Draga coolly. “But I will need Alexis.”

  Cad’s grip on the pommel tightened at the mention of her name. He needed Alexis too, but for more than just her fighting skills and technical abilities. He hadn’t realized quite how much he needed her until that moment. Then his grip tightened further as the memory of how Hallam Knight and Dakota Wulfrun had almost taken her from him invaded his thoughts. The pommel pierced his skin and blood began to run down the handle and onto the cross-guard. Knight and Wulfrun would both pay the price for what they had done, he swore to himself. Even if he was forced to tear down Damien Doyle’s empire in order to reach them, Hallam Knight and Dakota Wulfrun would die on the edge of his sword.

  27

  By the time Hallam had set Dakota’s fighter down on the deck of Dr. Rand’s Darkspace Renegade hideout, the ship was on the verge of breaking down. The damage they’d sustained during the aerial battle with Draga Vex and the CSF had been amplified during blast-off from the planet, and exacerbated further by travelling through bridge space. As Hallam stepped onto the deck and peered back at the pock-marked fighter, its metal panels chiming like a cooling kettle and smoke rising from its engines, he realized how lucky they’d been to make it back at all.

  “The cosmic dice rolls landed in our favor this time,” he said out loud, patting the fighter as if it were a thoroughbred racehorse.

  “I thought I was the one who hit my head?” said Dakota, moving up beside him. Medics were already rushing to their location. “But here you are, talking to my fighter…”

  Hallam turned around and smiled at Dakota. “Can you blame me? I get more stimulating conversation out of this hunk of metal than I do from you.”

  Dakota jabbed Hallam in the ribs, but the act seemed to hurt her more than it did Hallam. “Anyway, our survival has nothing to do with cosmic dice rolls,” Dakota said, also resting the palm of her hand on the fighter. “We have our own lucky mascot, remember?”

  Hallam snorted a laugh. “You’re giving Bob the bear the credit for my incredible combat flying?”

  Dakota shrugged. “Most of the credit,” she said sassily. “Though I guess you did okay too.”

  The hideout’s medics rolled a stretcher up alongside Dakota, but she brushed it away as if it were a casket. “I can walk; I’m not that bad,” said Dakota, clearly uncomfortable with being made a fuss over. One of the medics then checked her head wound, while another began asking her a string of questions, which Dakota answered curtly, barely falling short of sounding downright rude.

  Suddenly, a loud whoop rose above the noise in the docking bay, and Hallam saw Ruby Rivas strutting away from her fighter toward them.

  “Yeah, that’s how it’s done!” she yelled before letting out another whoop, which startled a nearby mechanic who hadn’t seen her swagger past him. “Notch up another few strikes for the Wolf Squadron!” she said, while performing what Cad considered to be a fairly crude victory dance.

  Dakota brushed off the medic attending to her wound as if she was trying to swat away a fly that had been buzzing around her head, and moved over to Ruby.

  “What the hell took you so long?” said Dakota, adopting her rigid squadron-leader stance and standoffishness. However, the curl of her lips gave away her true feelings.

  Ruby shrugged. “I had to stop to pick up some gas on the way,” she said, also trying to keep a straight face, but she was clearly too pumped up to do anything other than grin like a Cheshire cat.

  Then the two women embraced, laughing and slapping each other on the back before pulling away and gazing at each other like long-lost sisters. Ruby’s eyes then landed on Hallam.

  Oh boy, here we go again… thought Hallam, bracing himself for another string of insults or cocky one-liners from the hot-headed pilot.

  “You’re actually a pretty good combat pilot,” said Ruby without any irony or snark. “Who’d have thought it?”

  “Well, you kept missing, so I thought it best if I stepped up and carried the can…” replied Hallam, hamming up his response accordingly.

  Ruby smiled then grabbed a packet of purple gum from her pocket, popping a couple of sticks into her mouth. “I guess I can tolerate you as a member of the Wolf Squadron for a little longer,” Ruby added before starting to chew the gum. A pungent, artificial fruit smell filled the air around them. However, Hallam was more taken aback by the renegade’s unexpected and surprisingly convivial comment.

  Is this her way of extending an olive branch? Hallam wondered as the pilot continued to stare at him, chewing noisily. Or is she just trying to get me to lower my guard before punching me in the balls? There was only one way to find out, he realized.

  “That’s good to hear,” said Hallam, as a purple bubble momentarily obscured Ruby’s face before it burst with a satisfying pop. “I’ve chosen my side, and where I belong.”

  Ruby nodded and, surprisingly, didn’t follow up with a cutting comment, straight-up insult, or – much to Hallam’s relief – a punch to his balls. Hallam rubbed his tired face, feeling that it wouldn’t be right to let the conversation fizzle out without offering an olive branch of his own.

  “I guess this makes you the only renegade to have ever shot down a member of the Blackfire Squadron, right?” Hallam said, offering a little shrug and adding, “Not bad…”

  Ruby sniffed and continued to regard Hallam for a few seconds before she then offered up the pack of gum. Hallam glared down at it, as if Ruby had just offered him a snotty tissue to eat, before glancing across to Dakota. She was silently urging him on with her eyes, as if they were both at high school, and she was encouraging him to ask someone out.

  Hallam sighed and slid a stick of gum out of the packet, slipping it into his mouth. The intense, fake-fruit taste assaulted his palate like a scotch bonnet chili pepper, and it took all his restraint not to gag.

  “This is good,” said Hallam, pointing to his mouth, though from the snickering expressions on the faces of both Ruby and Dakota, he imagined he must have looked like someone who was chewing nettle leaves.

  Ruby finally caved and laughed out loud before slapping Hallam on the shoulder. “You’re not such a huge asshole after all,” she said brightly.

  Hallam scowled but decided to take this as a compliment. Then they were all distracted by the appearance of Dr. Rand, walking across the deck toward them. Ruby and Dakota both spun around to face her, and as soon as their backs were turned, Hallam spat the disgusting purple goop out of his mouth. It splatted onto the boot of one of the maintenance workers and stuck there like a brightly-colored limpet on the hull of a boat. Luckily, the man didn’t spot it, and Hallam was quick to make himself appear innocent.

  “Well, well, the Wolf Squadron, all back together again,” said Dr. Rand, offering each of them a warm smile. “Just as it should be.”

  Dakota removed her backpack and rummaged around inside it, plucking out the data storage device and offering it to Dr. Rand.

  “I hope whatever is on this thing
is worth all the trouble,” said Dakota. “Because I think our chances of getting within one hundred thousand miles of Fortuna again are pretty slim.”

  Dr. Rand took the device, pressed a button on the end, then slipped it into her breast pocket. “It won’t take long to find out,” she said, slipping her palm computer out of another pocket.

  “That’s all there is to it?” said Hallam, frowning at the little computer in Dr. Rand’s hand. “You can unlock the data just like that?” he added with a snap of his fingers. He was half-expecting Dr. Rand to have built a thirty-foot-high supercomputer somewhere on the base in order to crack the device.

  “I’m sorry if you were expecting something more dramatic, Mr. Knight,” replied Dr. Rand, flicking her eyes over the top of the computer screen as she spoke.

  Hallam laughed. “No, I think I’ve had enough drama in my life, at least for one night.”

  Dr. Rand didn’t answer and continued to work on the palm computer, while the device in her pocket flashed chaotically. Then she stopped and let out a surprised huff.

  “Have you found something?” asked Dakota. If they had been sitting down, they’d have all been on the edge of their seats.

  “Indeed I have,” said Dr. Rand, the tone of her voice conveying a suitable level of mystery and intrigue. “It seems that Damien Doyle has been keeping a rather large secret,” Dr. Rand continued. “A planet-sized secret, in fact…”

  Dr. Rand let the sentence hang in the air for a moment, but the suspense was already too much for Hallam to bear. “Come on, Doc, out with it!” he said, throwing his arms out wide.

  Dr. Rand raised her eyebrows and sighed. “For someone who isn’t looking for additional drama, you are certainly acting dramatically, Mr. Knight,” she said, peering down at the screen again. “Some time ago, Damien Doyle explored several other star systems, accessed via bridges engineered from his Consortium planet, Vesta,” she went on, leaving Hallam reeling from her stinging comeback. “However, the planets he discovered were all supposedly uninhabitable.”

  “That’s news to me,” said Dakota. “I’ve never heard of there being other bridges from Vesta, or other star systems.”

  “It would be news to most people,” replied Dr. Rand. “I learned of this expedition shortly after I escaped Doyle’s assassination attempt. However, it seems that Doyle was able to deceive even me.”

  “So there is a habitable planet out there after all?” asked Hallam, beginning to see where Dr. Rand was leading. The scientist nodded. “And that’s where he’s hiding this alien probe?” Hallam added, as usual having to work hard to extract the finer details from the scientist.

  Dr. Rand nodded again. “It’s somewhat ironic that we built our hideouts on moons orbiting rogue planets,” she said wistfully. “Because Damien Doyle himself is keeping the greatest secret in human history locked away on a rogue world of another kind. A planet set apart from all the others by a veil of secrecy.”

  “You never did say how you escaped Doyle,” said Hallam. The mention of Doyle’s attempted assassination of Dr. Rand reminded him that the scientist had never explained how she had gotten free. Nor had she explained how she managed to gather the armada of super-freighters that she’d used to create her bases.

  “No, I didn’t,” replied Dr. Rand. Hallam waited for her to continue, but it soon became apparent that this was the extent of the scientist’s response.

  “Come on, Doc, just a hint!” said Hallam. Like Ruby, he was on a high from the victory and felt like pushing his luck.

  “Let’s just say that there are other members of the galaxy’s ultra-rich elite that are more useful than Damien Doyle, and leave it at that,” replied Dr. Rand.

  Hallam shrugged and nodded. The scientist’s answer was characteristically mysterious, but he was grateful for an answer at all, no matter how vague.

  Ruby Rivas had been blowing a huge purple bubble while Dr. Rand and Hallam had been talking, and it popped like a firecracker going off.

  “So when do we head out to this rogue world?” Ruby said as startled eyes all turned to her.

  Dr. Rand smiled. “Get some rest first, Miss Rivas,” she said, looking at Dakota and gently touching her fingers to her bandaged head. “We’ll discuss the plan in the morning.”

  Ruby blew out another bubble, let it burst, and then nodded before turning to Hallam and Dakota. “I’ll see you twerps in the bar in sixty,” she said, as if their ordeal had been nothing more exhausting than a friendly weekend sports match.

  Ruby then strode away, accompanied by Dr. Rand, the excitable pilot wasting no time in regaling the scientist with tales of her derring-do.

  “Are you ready for this?” said Dakota, glancing up at Hallam. “Another wild and crazy ride into the unknown, I mean?”

  Hallam shrugged and smiled. “I’ve honestly got nothing better to do, so what the hell.” Then he became more serious, and added, “Besides, you’ve made me realize how important this all is. This is the most important thing I’ve ever done in my life.”

  Dakota smiled before pointing to the medic who was still loitering close by, waiting to attend to her wound. “Give me chance to get cleaned up, and allow Florence Nightingale to stop me from bleeding out all over the deck, and I’ll see you in the bar in an hour, okay?”

  “You’re buying, remember?” said Hallam, but he’d only managed a couple of steps toward the exit before Dakota protested.

  “What the hell? How come!” Dakota cried as the medic again set to work on her injuries.

  “I won the bet, of course,” said Hallam, though Dakota’s confused frown prompted him to elaborate. “I made it back to the fighter first.”

  Dakota shook her head, eliciting an annoyed tut from the medic. “Fine, I admit it. You did win that one,” she replied before her eyebrow raised up a fraction. “Though you do know everything here is free, right?”

  “Really?” said Hallam with mock surprise. “I guess I’m still learning this renegade stuff.”

  Dakota smiled again. “I think you’re doing just fine, Hallam Knight,” she said warmly. “In fact, I couldn’t want for a better partner.”

  “So does that mean you’ll stop whipping my ass with a wet towel in the showers?” Hallam asked, feeling the need to crack a joke before the tone of the conversation made him choke up.

  “Not a chance in hell,” Dakota replied.

  “I didn’t think so,” said Hallam, turning and walking back into the renegade hideout that had oddly become his home.

  He was tired, battered, and bruised, and still a little daunted by the scale of the task that lay ahead. However, he’d finally come to terms with who he was. And more than this, for the first time in as long as he could remember, Hallam Knight actually liked himself.

  He’d been tossed headfirst into a fight to save humanity and come up swimming. However, he also knew that the fight was a long way from being over yet. Their next mission would truly take them into the unknown, and the prospect of this should have terrified him, but it didn’t. He was a Darkspace Renegade, and a member of the Wolf Squadron. And with Dakota Wulfrun at his side, he truly believed that they could do anything.

  FROM THE PUBLISHER

  Thank you for reading Darkspace Renegade Volume 1.

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  ALSO IN THE SERIES

  Darkspace Renegade

  Wolf Squadron

  Rogue World

  Rikkard’s Revenge

  Renegade Resurgence

  Centrum Incu
rsion

  Also by GJ Ogden

  If you enjoyed this book, please consider reading The Star Scavenger Series or The Contingency War Series Both are free to read for Kindle Unlimited subscribers and available as Audible boxed sets.

  THE STAR SCAVENGER SERIES

  THE CONTINGENCY WAR SERIES

  "Highly recommended - sci-fi fans will not be disappointed with this novel." Readers' Favorite, 5-stars.

  Readers' Favorite, 5-stars

  The Contingency War Series

  About the Author

  At school, I was asked to write down the jobs I wanted to do as a "grown up". Number one was astronaut and number two was a PC games journalist. I only managed to achieve one of those goals (I’ll let you guess which), but these two very different career options still neatly sum up my lifelong interests in science, space, and the unknown.

  School also steered me in the direction of a science-focused education over literature and writing, which influenced my decision to study physics at Manchester University. What this degree taught me is that I didn’t like studying physics and instead enjoyed writing, which is why you’re reading this book! The lesson? School can’t tell you who you are.

  When not writing, I enjoy spending time with my family, walking in the British countryside, and indulging in as much Sci-Fi as possible.

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