by G J Ogden
“You won’t find her,” said Dakota, with matching resolve, “and now that we know you’re coming, you won’t find the other hideouts either. Our people on the bridge worlds are being moved to safety as we speak.”
Draga stopped and turned her head back to look at Dakota. To Hallam’s surprise, she was smiling. It was an unexpected and deeply unsettling look.
“I don’t need anyone else,” Draga said with an icy confidence. “I already have the base commander from the hideout we destroyed. He was very co-operative, eventually. Right up until he died.”
Draga turned away and descended the stairs to join the other two members of the Blackfire Squadron, before they walked out of the restaurant, with Cad Rikkard in the lead.
One of the security guards said something, then all three left, but Hallam didn’t hear his words or pay attention to their departure. His head was swimming, trying to make sense of what had just happened, and what they needed to do next.
“We have to get back to Dr. Rand,” said Dakota, rushing the words out and betraying her unease. “If the base commander was compromised, they could strike at any other hideout, at any time.”
“Even Dr. Rand’s personal hideout?” said Hallam, suddenly comprehending the extreme danger the renegade organization was in.
“No, only a few people know its location,” Dakota answered, and Hallam felt the tiniest swell of relief. “But we need to make sure everyone is prepared for the worst. And we need to step up Dr. Rand’s plan to recover the tech from the alien probe.”
Hallam rested on the railing overlooking the restaurant, noting that the other diners were still occasionally casting nervous glances in their direction.
“What does she even want with that thing?” Hallam asked. It was a detail that Dr. Rand had left out during their earlier meetings, but given what would have to come next, and the fundamental role Hallam knew he’d have to play, he wanted to know.
Dakota joined Hallam, standing so close that her bare shoulder pressed up against his. “To be honest, Hal, I have no idea,” she admitted. “All I know is that it has something to do with taking down the Centrum. The probe is the key to all of this. If we destroy the Centrum, then the supply of Randenite will quickly dry up, and bridge travel will end.”
Hallam thought for a moment, looking down at the rich and the socialites in the restaurant, all of whom had the money and power to afford interstellar travel. However, this was just the elite tip of an enormous iceberg. While the wealthiest in society floated above the surface, just as the Paradise orbited high above Feronia, billions more below the waterline depended on bridge travel. All the bridge worlds relied on the others to survive – none were entirely self-sufficient, not even Earth. Humanity’s home planet was an over-populated and polluted melting pot, unable to function without the supplies and services the bridge worlds provided. Destroying the Centrum would mean cutting every world off from the others. It would inevitably lead to conflicts, maybe even wars, and suffering on an interplanetary scale.
“Are you sure this is the right thing to do?” asked Hallam, turning to Dakota. He knew what would be needed of him, but lingering doubts suddenly overwhelmed him. He needed to hear that Dakota was absolutely certain. He needed her strength to lean on. “What if Dr. Rand is wrong about these bridges? What if they don’t collapse and screw up the star systems they connect to? If we take out the Centrum, we cut off a lifeline for literally billions of people. And not all of them are going to make it, Dak.”
Dakota sighed and met Hallam’s eyes. “You know as much as I do, Hal, and you’ve seen what I’ve seen. If Dr. Rand is right, and we do nothing, then everyone dies. I hate to make it a numbers game, but there it is.”
Hallam blew out a heavy sigh, then turned, resting his back against the railings. Despite telling Dr. Rand, Dakota, and himself that he was invested in the cause, the truth was he’d never fully committed to it. Dr. Rand had seen it, and it had been why she’d continued to question his conviction. Up until this point, Hallam had been like a twig in a river, just following the current downstream with no real idea where it was taking him. He’d wanted to prove to himself that he had the potential Dr. Rand saw in him, and that deep down he hoped he saw in himself too. His gut told him that helping Dr. Rand was the right thing to do; but now he had to make a choice. He had to choose whether to embrace the path he was on or let himself wash up on the bank for a second time. When he thought about it like that, Hallam knew there was really no choice at all.
“Do you still have an opening for another member of Wolf Squadron?” he asked, cocking his head toward Dakota.
Dakota also turned and rested on the railing next to him. “Why, do you have someone in mind?”
Hallam shrugged. “I might… He comes with a little baggage but is a trained combat pilot. And word has it that he scrubs up pretty well too.”
Dakota smiled, and for a moment, Hallam forgot all about Cad Rikkard and the Blackfire Squadron. He forgot all about the bodies in the Darkspace Renegade hideout, and he forgot all about the dangers that he was willingly putting himself forward to face. All he saw was Dakota Wulfrun, the only person he’d ever truly trusted in his entire life.
“Are you sure?” Dakota asked, turning suddenly more serious. “You can still walk away from this if you want. It’s not too late.”
Hallam shook his head and pushed himself away from the railings. “I’ve walked away before without a fight,” he said. “I’m never doing it again.”
Dakota nodded and stood beside him. “We’d better get back,” she said, glancing at the private table, which still had two thousand dollars credited to it. “Unless you want to grab dinner first, seeing as that slimeball Cad Rikkard is paying?”
Hallam knew that Dakota wasn’t serious, but even if they’d had the time, he still wouldn’t have done it. “Rikkard called it our last meal,” said Hallam, feeling anger surge through his veins at the memory of the mercenary’s brazenness and arrogance. “He’s going to find out that we’re a long way from being done with him yet.”
Dakota offered Hallam her arm, and he smiled before hooking his arm through hers. “Then let’s get to work.”
Hallam Knight and Dakota Wulfrun walked out of The Temple of Augustus and back along the ritzy central foyer of the Paradise toward the hangar bay, where their fighter was waiting. Their destination was the Darkspace, back to the hideout where Shelby Rand was waiting for their report.
Hallam climbed the ramp of Dakota’s fighter and pulled himself inside. Neither of them had bothered to change out of their glamorous hired outfits. In a strange way, Hallam felt his tuxedo was more appropriate here, because unlike in the restaurant, he actually did have cause for celebration now. He would step off the fighter and meet Shelby Rand again as Hallam Knight, disgraced former CSF combat ace and tanker gunner, who had settled for the cards life had dealt him. The next time he set foot on a fighter, it would be as a member of Wolf Squadron. Hallam Knight was about to become a Darkspace Renegade.
WOLF SQUADRON
BOOK TWO
1
Alarms wailed inside the cockpit of Hallam Knight’s Darkspace Renegade fighter as another barrage of flak detonated just off to his port side. Shrapnel pinged against the hull and Hallam took evasive action, but the tanker had anticipated his move, and he was soon heading directly toward another thick cloud of exploding shells. He cursed and retreated, pulling the craft away from the armored Randenite tanker. Within seconds, he was too far out of range for Dr. Rand’s prototype new weapon to work. The lights on the device turned red, and then it reset, ready for the next run. Hallam slammed his palm on the console and let out a growl of frustration. Thirty seconds within range of the tanker was all he needed, but this may as well have been a lifetime.
“Damn it, the gunner on this tanker is good,” said Hallam over the comm channel. “It’s probably Dane, or maybe Indi. Trust us to test this new can opener on a tanker with a decent crew!”
The “can open
er” was the slang name that they’d given to Dr. Rand’s latest invention, which had been based on the authenticator that Hallam stole from the Consortium HQ on Vesta. Dr. Rand’s official term for the piece of tech was a “brute force code decryption device,” but since that hardly rolled off the tongue, Hallam had coined a simpler and more descriptive name for it instead.
Another curse flew over the comm channel, this time from Wolf Two, otherwise known as the firebrand renegade, Ruby Rivas.
“This is crazy,” Ruby yelled over the channel. “We’re all going to get blown to hell if we stay out here much longer!”
Ruby Rivas and Wolf Squadron’s leader, Dakota Wulfrun, were engaged in combat with the tanker’s two Consortium Security Force fighter escorts. Hallam’s task was to approach the tanker and get within operating range of the can opener. If he could hold position for long enough, the can opener would decrypt the security codes on the tanker’s cargo of Randenite fuel barrels and trigger the containment seals. The tanker would then have no choice but to jettison its entire payload of precious fuel or blow up with a thermonuclear-level force.
“Stay on mission, Wolf Two,” said Dakota. “We need to give Wolf Three a fighting chance to prove this thing works.”
Dakota then cursed, and Hallam saw her fighter thrust hard away from a pursuing CSF ship, while at the same time launching a raft of countermeasures. A missile snaked past, thankfully pursuing the decoy, rather than Dakota’s fighter, before it swiftly vanished into the Darkspace.
“Though if you could hurry it up a bit, Wolf Three, that would be great…” Dakota added humorlessly.
Hallam took a deep breath and realigned his craft with the armored tanker, which looked like a giant flying armadillo thanks to its thick protective shell. In a couple more minutes, the tanker pilot would have reset their Shelby Drive system and jumped back onto the bridge to the garden planet of Tellus. If Hallam didn’t get confirmation that Dr. Rand’s new device worked before then, he wouldn’t put it past Ruby Rivas to blow the ship away instead.
Hallam accelerated and maneuvered his fighter below the belly of the enormous tanker, ready to start his third run. He knew the defensive capabilities of the Consortium’s armored brutes as well as anyone, having spent years as a tanker gunner himself. If he could approach at the right angle and pick off one or two of the gun emplacements, Hallam figured he’d get just enough of a window for the can opener to do its work.
“Sixty seconds, Wolf Three, or I’m switching to plan B,” said Ruby Rivas. “As in ‘b’ for blowin’ stuff up.”
Hallam had tried to ignore the constant prattle from the headstrong second member of Wolf Squadron, but she continued to grate on him. According to Dakota, Ruby Rivas had learned how to fly in the CSF academy, same as Hallam, but their reasons for signing up had been very different. Ruby had joined in order to infiltrate the organization, steal secrets, and ultimately execute a PR stunt to embarrass the Consortium’s multi-trillionaire owner, Damien Doyle. Hallam had done so in order to carve out a better life for himself than was possible on the polluted hell-hole that was Earth. It hadn’t worked out particularly well for either of them, though again for very different reasons.
Ruby had been a member of a radical action group that was trying to expose the Consortium’s monopolistic behaviors and political meddling. However, while she’d been a good choice for the job because of her natural aptitude for flying, she’d made a terrible spy, and was discovered and jailed nine months into flight training. Upon her release three years later, she’d proved to be an easy recruit for Dr. Rand, but Hallam considered her motivations to be suspect. She was more about revenge and “stickin’ it to the man” than safeguarding humanity by stopping bridge travel. As someone who had also fallen into the role of a Darkspace Renegade for initially selfish reasons, Hallam knew the risk of being blinded by personal feelings. And ninety percent of the time, Ruby Rivas was an exposed nerve of raw emotion.
“Stand by, I’m making my run now,” said Hallam, gently squeezing the trigger to release a burst of cannon rounds at the tanker’s gun emplacements. Several bursts landed wide, burying themselves harmlessly into the tanker’s thick, multilayered armor, but then he saw the gun emplacements explode, and he let out a celebratory whoop.
“I’ve made a blind spot and I’m going in,” said Hallam, teasing the ship closer to the tanker’s belly. “Just keep those fighters off my ass for thirty seconds…”
“Roger that, Wolf Three…” came the reply from Dakota. She was sounding frazzled and breathless; the dogfight was clearly taking its toll, and Hallam realized this would be the last chance he got.
Flak burst all around Hallam’s fighter, peppering the ship’s armor with shrapnel, but with the two most direct gun emplacements destroyed, the explosions were too distant to pose a serious threat. The tanker then veered away, trying to bring more of its guns to bear on Hallam’s fighter, but the leviathan lacked the maneuverability of Hallam’s nimble craft, and he managed to stay tight in its wake.
Come on, damn it, work! Hallam urged as the can opener flashed rapidly in the auxiliary module slot in the cockpit.
“Ten seconds, tanker man, or I’m blowing this thing to hell,” said Ruby Rivas over the comm.
“Clear the channel, Wolf Two,” Dakota hit back, her anger coming through clearly despite the crackly interference from the tanker’s many electronic countermeasures. “And use approved callsigns only; do you copy?”
There was a pregnant pause until Ruby eventually replied, more than a little sheepishly, “I copy, Wolf One.”
Suddenly, Dr. Rand’s decrypter device flashed green, and Hallam peered down at his console expectantly. The status readout read, “Decryption sequence successful. Randenite container release sequence: activated.”
“We got it!” cried Hallam over the comm channel. “The damn thing actually worked!”
“Wolf Three, take evasive action, now!”
Hallam’s eyes shot up from the console; in the excitement over the device working, he’d taken his attention off the armored tanker. Only a precious few seconds had elapsed, but it was enough to allow the tanker to bring more of its guns to bear on Hallam’s fighter.
Cursing for the second time that day, Hallam spun his ship around and thrust hard in the opposite direction. Flak detonated all around him, and Hallam began to kick out the fighter’s rear in multiple directions, applying short bursts of thrust with each new adjustment. His hope was that his erratic flying would be too unpredictable for even the Consortium’s best gunner to stand a chance of hitting him. He was wrong.
Alarms shrieked again and Hallam felt the rattle of shrapnel hitting the ship, sending vibrations through its bones and into the cockpit. He looked right and saw a chunk of metal dug into his wing. Another had chipped the rear of his canopy. The flak bursts intensified, and Hallam felt like he was in a car, driving through a hailstorm, except instead of ice, the projectiles were shards of metal. However, as suddenly as the clatter of impacts had begun, they disappeared again as the fighter finally moved beyond the tanker’s firing perimeter.
“I’m clear!” Hallam called out. “I might need a new paint job and I definitely need a fresh pair of pants, but I’m clear,”
“Way too much information, Wolf Three,” said Dakota, though Hallam knew that her response was simply a show of professionalism for Ruby’s benefit. He’d put a hundred on there being a broad smirk on Dakota’s face at that moment.
“Radiological alert,” cried Ruby Rivas, sounding unusually flustered. “They’re dumping the barrels!”
Hallam spun his fighter around to face the tanker and watched as hundreds of barrels of Randenite spilled out of the cargo hold.
“Everyone, break off and put some distance between us and those barrels,” ordered Dakota. “We don’t want to be anywhere nearby when those things go up.”
“What about the CSF fighters?” said Ruby Rivas. “We can’t just let them go.”
Hallam was now far rem
oved from the combat area, and so had the time to check his instruments. “The CSF are bugging out too,” he said over the comm, noting that the two Consortium escorts had rejoined the tanker, and that all three were now burning hard in a straight line to get clear of the barrels.
“Confirmed, the escort fighters and the tanker are leaving,” said Dakota. “Disengage and return to rendezvous Charlie. Our job is done.”
Hallam acknowledged the order and adjusted course accordingly before flipping the switch to spool up the fighter’s unique Shelby Drive. Unlike the CSF fighters and the armored tanker, which were limited to travelling along the established bridge routes, the Darkspace Renegade fighters had the ability to create their own temporary narrow bridges from point-to-point. This was a useful side-benefit of having the genius inventor of bridging technology – celebrity scientist, Doctor Shelby Rand – as the renegade organization’s leader.
Hallam sat back and listened to the whine of the Shelby Drive build, but then another alert blared out in the cockpit, contrasting sharply with the drive’s soothing pulse. He quickly glanced down at his console and felt his heart race.
“Missile launch!” Hallam cried out over the comm channel as he saw the new contact streak out across his scanner. Then he noticed something strange about the missile’s trajectory; it was heading toward the CSF escorts, rather than coming from them. The scanner resolved the contact fully, and Hallam couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
“It’s one of ours!” Hallam said, now peering out into space toward the rapidly diminishing shapes of the CSF fighters and tanker.
“Copy that, Wolf Three,” replied Dakota. “It’s not one of mine. Wolf Two, have you fired?”
There was an explosion in the distance and Hallam saw one of the two CSF fighters flash and blink out of existence on his scanner.
“Splash one CSF scumbag!” said Ruby Rivas, barely containing her elation.