Rogue World: A Military Sci-Fi Series (Darkspace Renegade Book 3) Read online

  ROGUE WORLD

  ©2020 GJ OGDEN

  This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Any reproduction or unauthorized use of the material or artwork contained herein is prohibited without the express written permission of the authors.

  Aethon Books supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  www.aethonbooks.com

  Print and eBook formatting, and cover design by Steve Beaulieu. Artwork supplied by BRoseDesignz.

  Published by Aethon Books LLC. 2020

  Aethon Books is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead is coincidental.

  All rights reserved.

  Contents

  ALSO IN THE SERIES

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  FROM THE PUBLISHER

  ALSO IN THE SERIES

  Also by GJ Ogden

  Readers' Favorite, 5-stars

  About the Author

  You can connect with me here:

  ALSO IN THE SERIES

  Darkspace Renegade

  Wolf Squadron

  Rogue World

  Rikkard’s Revenge

  Renegade Resurgence

  Centrum Incursion

  The interstellar bridges provide a lifeline for billions of people. To save humanity, Hallam Knight must tear them all down.

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to Sarah for her work assessing and editing this novel, and to those who subscribed to my newsletters and provided such valuable feedback.

  And thanks, as always, to anyone who is reading this. It means a lot. If you enjoyed it, please help by leaving a review on Amazon and Goodreads to let other potential readers know what you think!

  If you’d like updates on future novels by G J Ogden, please consider subscribing to the mailing list. Your details will be used to notify subscribers about upcoming books from this author, in addition to a hand-selected mix of book offers and giveaways from similar SFF authors.

  Subscribe for updates:

  http://subscribe.ogdenmedia.net

  Other Sci-Fi series by G J Ogden:

  The Planetsider Trilogy

  The Contingency War Series

  The Star Scavenger Series

  1

  Two bullets pinged off Cad Rikkard’s shoulder armor and ricocheted into the dusty soil, kicking up tufts of dirt. Cad peered up at the building to his left, his visor system highlighting the offending gunman with a red halo. He was hiding next to an upper-floor window of the drab-looking store. Cad guessed that the gunman was probably feeling pretty smug, having successfully taken a pot-shot at him without being seen. I’ll wipe that smug look off your face… Cad thought to himself.

  Cad switched his rifle to precision-aiming mode and waited for the targeting systems to lock on before firing a single burst through the wall. He watched the highlighted figure spasm as the bullets cut through the masonry and sank into the gunman’s body. The figure then slid slowly down the wall and onto the floor. Cad would have preferred that the now dead gunman had seen his killer, if only for a fraction of a second, before his demise, just so that he knew who had bested him. However, he was already growing tired of the contract and wanted to wrap things up as quickly as possible. Suddenly, the thunderous boom of a semi-automatic shotgun ruptured the momentary stillness in the air, then Draga Vex drew level with Cad.

  “The rest of the bandits are holed up in the vault,” said Draga, reloading the shotgun then stowing it on a magnetic mount on her back.

  Cad grunted, peering down the long, dusty high-street of Sandown, a small mining town on the bridge world Minerva. It was one of dozens of such towns dotted around Deep Three, the planet’s third largest gold mine, which sank a full kilometer below the surface. The main mining operation spanned an eighty-square-kilometer block, around which towns like Sandown had sprung up in order to accommodate the miners. However, Minerva was a sparsely-populated planet with relatively few resources, compared to the more established bridge worlds. As such, the local enforcers were spread thin and unable to deal with heavily armed raiding parties, such as the one Cad had been contracted to eradicate.

  Ordinarily, Cad would have never taken a simple cleanout job like this. The pay was mediocre and the fighting skills of the typical bandit groups were similarly unexceptional. Simply put, there was no challenge. However, Cad had needed a way to let off some steam. The sight of Hallam Knight tossing Alexis Black over the railings in Damien Doyle’s Consortium data bunker on Fortuna still consumed his waking thoughts and his nightmares. It was the first time that he’d ever truly feared for Alexis’ life, and it was not a feeling he wanted to experience again. That Hallam Knight and Dakota Wulfrun had escaped was simply salt in the wound. It was an insult as grave as spitting in his face, and the shame of his failure gnawed at Cad, day and night.

  On top of this, Cad had also been forced to endure a humiliating verbal assault from Damien Doyle, who – as he had fully expected to be the case – had blamed Cad for the theft of the data. With Alexis still heavy on his mind, Cad had lost his cool and told the multi-trillionaire where to stick his contract before abruptly cutting the holo transmission and hanging up on the magnate. Ordinarily, he would not have acted in such an undignified manner, and he regretted his actions, though only because he thought it unbecoming of him. Cad couldn’t care less about Damien Doyle’s mission any longer, and he was prepared to face the repercussions should the vindictive entrepreneur make good on his threat to slander his name. However, he was not about to allow Hallam Knight and his meddlesome partner to get away with what they’d done. And so he would continue to hunt the Darkspace Renegades, until he had his revenge.

  Taking the job to clean out a group of bandits who had clumsily stormed the town in an effort to rob the gold vault seemed like a good way to work out his frustrations, Cad had thought. He’d reasoned that it was preferable
to kill people with the blessing of the local authorities, rather than murder someone out of irrepressible rage in a random bar.

  “This isn’t as much fun as I thought it would be,” complained Cad, reloading his rifle, then slinging it.

  “Then let’s do the vault the old-fashioned way,” said Draga, her level tone making it hard to know whether she agreed or disagreed with Cad’s assessment. “Fun” was not something Cad ever associated with Draga, even when it came to killing. To her, brutality was simply a necessity, as vital to her existence as breathing or sleeping.

  Cad grunted again, though his mind had already begun to wander. He’d sought a distraction from his concerns about Alexis, who was still in an induced coma in the top private hospital on Fortuna. He was unaccustomed to feeling vulnerable and detested the emotion. Cad believed that it made him weak. However, as much as he’d tried to fight the swell of feelings assaulting his mind and body, he’d been unable to shake the disquieting thoughts from his head. So, instead, he had chosen to occupy himself with an activity that would not only provide a diversion from his anxieties, but also allow him to sharpen his killer instincts. The bandits holed up in the Sandown gold vault would serve as a suitable whetstone.

  While Cad had been lost in his own thoughts, Draga had been quietly planning their next assault. If she had also been concerned for Alexis’ wellbeing, she had not shown it. Cad did not hold this against her, however – in many respects, he envied Draga’s cold objectivity. It was what made her so effective as a mercenary. In her own way, Cad knew that Draga cared for Alexis, and that she would be on Draga’s mind, just as she was on Cad’s. It was not anything so trite as sisterhood, or even friendship. Both women had been forged in fires of a different kind. Alexis’ fire had come from within, from a desire to break the chains of her staid, privileged upbringing, and give herself over to her baser instincts, where her warrior persona could run wild. Conversely, Draga’s fire had been kindled in the ghettos of Vediovis, where, from an early age, she’d had to fight in order to survive. However, like different metals mixed into an alloy, together the two were always stronger.

  “What are we dealing with in there?” asked Cad as the wind kicked up some dust and whipped it around the ankles of his power armor.

  “Amateurs,” said Draga plainly as two small drones landed on the back of her shoulders and sank into the armor. “There are four outlaws on the roof and six inside, all in the main foyer of the vault. None are carrying weapons that pose a serious threat to our armor.”

  Cad nodded and drew his Black Prince sword. “I’ll take the lower level,” he said as the outlines of the bandits flashed up in his visor; new data that had just been fed through from Draga’s drones. Though she would never openly question his orders, Cad knew that if Alexis were here, she would have commented on the wisdom of tackling six armed bandits by himself, using only a sword. However, he also knew that Draga would offer no such concerns. Her only qualm would be that Cad got more people to kill than she did.

  Draga took the lead as the two mercenaries marched down the deserted, dusty road, toward the vault. The residents and store owners of the town were either holed up inside their buildings or had already fled, only to return once the bullets stopped flying. As such, the place had an eerie, ghost-town feel to it.

  Cad observed Draga entering a sequence of commands into her wrist computer. In his own visor display, he saw that she had increased the power assistance of her suit by fifty percent and enabled her jet thruster systems. The shotgun had remained stowed on her back, however.

  “Aren’t you going to need that?” said Cad, pointing to the high-powered semi-automatic weapon.

  Draga shook her head. “No, it would be over too quickly,” she replied before jogging out ahead of Cad. “Let me know when you’re done with the other. I’ll be waiting.”

  Cad huffed a laugh, guessing what Draga had in mind, then watched as she ignited the thrusters and jetted into the hazy sky above Sandown. The crack of small-arms fire soon followed, but the bandits’ aim was as poor as their tactics. Cad halted his advance toward the vault and enhanced the view in his visor, curious to see how his ruthless companion dealt with the group on the roof.

  Sparks flashed on Draga’s body as the bandits finally zeroed in on her, but their meager firearms had no effect on her advanced armor. Then the mercenary cut power to her suit’s thrusters and dropped like a meteorite, directly onto one of the bandits. It was like an elephant stomping on a snail, and Cad heard the organic crunch of bone through his enhanced audio sensors. The three remaining bandits all opened fire at close range, but Draga had rolled through her fall and was on top of the second man within seconds. Catching the bandit by his throat, Draga hurled the man over the wall, sending him soaring through the sky like a javelin. The bandit had barely smashed into the dusty road below before Draga had moved on to the final two outlaws. Both unloaded their pistols at her at near point-blank range, but Draga advanced with undiminished ferocity, smashing her fist into the nose of the first bandit. The punch was delivered with such brutal accuracy that the woman’s face caved in from the impact. The grim sight was clearly too much for the final bandit to stomach, and she dropped to her knees, throwing down her weapon. Arms raised in surrender, the woman began to beg for mercy, but Draga had already clutched her hands around her throat and raised the woman into the air. The bandit’s legs flailed helplessly as Draga suspended her above the roof, her clasped hands acting as a noose around the woman’s neck.

  Cad let out a huff of appreciation and continued on toward the vault entrance, while Draga finished strangling the female bandit on the roof. Cad had always enjoyed watching Draga work, especially when she was at her most sadistic, and witnessing her craft had whet his own appetite for blood.

  Grabbing a grenade from its magnetic stow on the rear of his hip, Cad launched the explosive at the door leading into the vault. Prior to Cad’s arrival, the bandits had blockaded it with wooden cabinets and even mattresses in a pathetic attempt to fortify their position. It reminded Cad of the barricade that the rebels had erected in Les Misérables. However, this barrier would prove as futile as the one built by the revolutionary students of Paris, Cad thought.

  The grenade exploded, kicking up a thick plume of dust and smoke, and showering Cad’s iridescent black armor with a fountain of debris. Cad drove on, deflecting the rubble like hailstones bouncing off a windshield. He continued his calm and measured advance, taking careful note of the locations of the bandits inside the vault. Panicked shouts and cries filtered through the smoke, and gunshots rang out. Two bandits tried to run, shielding their eyes with their hands and coughing bitterly as the acrid dust entered their lungs. Cad flourished the Black Prince then swung hard through the man’s body, slicing the bandit in half above the hips. Continuing in one fluid move, he then slashed the sword down at the next fleeing bandit, cutting through her collar bone and driving the edge of the blade deep into the bandit’s chest. Dust from the grenade explosion was beginning to settle and some of the frenetic gunshots started to land on Cad’s body, but his armor withstood the impacts as effortlessly as it had deflected the rubble from the explosion.

  Thrusting the tip of the sword through the neck of another bandit, Cad was then confronted with the barrel of a pistol. He caught the attacker’s wrist, leaving the Black Prince sword impaled through the bandit’s comrade, and deflected the weapon’s aim. There was a sharp crack as the pistol fired, sending the round flying inches to the side of Cad’s head. He then snapped the attacker’s wrist, enjoying the man’s howl of pain before yanking the sword from the neck of the first bandit and slicing the arm clean off above the elbow. Hot, red blood splashed over his black armor as the bandit staggered into the dust, staring at his bleeding stump in shock and disbelief.

  Having witnessed the scene, the final two bandits threw down their weapons, and one dropped to his knees, begging for his life. The bandit’s feeble cries offended Cad, and he launched a kick at him, driving th
e man’s head into the stone wall. The remaining bandit blabbed a similarly incoherent plea, as a bag filled with gold bullion spilled to the floor. Compared to the dust and death surrounding him, the shimmer of the metal was like sunlight filtering through clouds. Cad picked up one of the larger bars and admired it, while the man continued to beg for his life. Cad cared little for material possessions, but the gold bar was something he could appreciate. It was pure and perfect, and impossible to improve upon. It was everything he sought to become.

  “Here…” said Cad, thrusting the bar toward the bandit. The man frowned, taking the gold into his trembling hands, looking down at the bar with terrified, quivering eyes. “You died for this, so you may as well die with it,” Cad added. And before the bandit could again raise his gaze to meet Cad’s eyes, Cad had swung the sword down with all his augmented might, cutting through the bandit’s body and slicing the gold bar clean in half.

  Cad sighed and cleaned the blade of the Black Prince sword on the clothes of one of the dead men, then slid it back into its sheath. Even close quarters action hadn’t given him the satisfaction he’d been craving, though it had at least distracted him from thoughts of Alexis. Thoughts that were already flooding back into his mind as his heart-rate began to slow.