[Preview]Renegade Ravager Vol. 3 -- Chapter 1

It's that time again!  I'll be posting the first three chapters up for everyone; paid members will get to enjoy the further previews after that.  I'll post up one a day till we get closer to release.

These chapters haven't been reviewed by my editor yet, so feel free to point out any major errors, plot holes, etc -- I always appreciate it.

Enjoy!

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Chapter 1 – 01738.075 AA

“Two hundred kilometers and closing,” Aggy warned us.

“Have they detected our presence yet?” I asked.

“Negative,” the AI answered. “They’re only doing passive sweeps at the moment, focused on Chorinth-F2.”

“Guess that secret is out,” Iuno chuckled darkly.

Iuno, Balan, and I were crowded together in the boarding craft, with barely any room between us. Most of the ship’s interior was taken up by the complex stealth equipment that kept us hidden from our targets.

Both Iuno and I were wearing légionnaire power armor, while Last Whisper was wearing a modified stealth EV suit. Her four mechanical, insectile limbs flexed and tensed as she prepared herself for battle.

Aggy, Xarl, and Victor were in another boarding craft, several thousand kilometers away, approaching our foes from the opposite side of the planet. Elspeth, manning the recently rebuilt Unfriendly Flier, was concealed behind one of Chorinth-F2’s moons.

“Weapons are hot,” the albino engineer reported. “Once we take out their engines they’ll be stranded.”

Closing my eyes, I glanced at my HUD, which had expanded from its normal, tactical view to encompass everything orbiting Chorinth-F2.

The gas giant filled most of my view. Never-ending storms churned across its surface.

Floating above the thunderous clouds were two Republic ships, heavily modified Audacieux-class destroyers. They were scanning the planet, likely looking for the UTG shipyard we had already retrieved, the Prométhée. As Iuno had said, it appeared the Saints were aware of Aggy’s survival and they were searching for signs of the empress they had betrayed.

I wondered exactly why they had started their search on the Chorinth System. Were they searching all the systems once suspected of concealing the Prométhée? Had something given away our trail, were they hoping to track us further?

“One hundred kilometers,” Aggy warned us.

Neither vessel could be identified based on their silhouettes or energy profiles. I had zero doubt though that they were black ops ships in service to Conseil Triomphant. The larger one was our primary target, while the one trailing it seemed to be a support ship

“Remember, we take the crew alive,” the AI reminded us from the other boarding craft. “They could just be press-ganged sailors, loyal to the ideals of the Republic but not its corrupt masters.”

“And if they aren’t?” Xarl pressed.

“Then we kill them all and throw their corpses out of an airlock,” Iuno finished.

I couldn’t help but agree with the sentiment. After the nightmare above Xiphon-8 and the grim discoveries we’d made onboard the Esprit de Liberté, I was in mind to simply blow the ships out of orbit.

Aggy had pointedly reminded me the ships might contain vital intel, including her missing memory modules.

“Elspeth,” I ordered, “light them up.”

Data flared across my HUD as the Unfriendly Flier emerged from hiding. Before the spook ships could react, two bursts of precision laser fire lanced out. Silent explosions bloomed from the afts of both ships as Elspeth disabled their engines.

I was slammed back into my restraints as the boarding craft’s engines flared. We had seconds till we rammed into the side of the primary vessel. I double-checked my gear.

Légionnaire First Class James Browning – [LÉGION SUPPRIMÉE]

Health: Nominal

Armor Status: Legion Déité Marques Quatre Power Armor - Heavy Plate (100%)

Shields (100%)

Jump Jets (100%)

Arms Status:

Custom .60 Caliber Assault Rifle - La Terreur (45/45)

Republic Navy 10mm Service Pistol (12/12 Rounds)

Breacher Plasma Grenade (6/6)

Outrider Blade

The boarding craft rang like a bell as it smashed into the side of the crippled ship. Combat stims filled my veins with icy calm as I stepped out of my crash restraints and activated the hatch mounted at the front of the ship.

“Glory and Honor, Brother James,” Iuno said through a private channel.

“Glory and Honor, Sister Iuno,” I echoed as I braced my rifle against my pauldron.

Balan crouched behind me. Four cybernetic limbs, each mounted with an Outrider Blade, tensed with barely contained violence.

With a shower of sparks, the cutting lasers on the front of the craft cut through the spook ship’s hull. The hatch snapped open.

My HUD lit up with targets.

Ahead of us were ten black-clad soldiers. Our boarding action had caught them off guard, but they were raising their weapons, preparing to fight.

“Kill them all,” I ordered as my finger squeezed the trigger of La Terreur.

My world was reduced to red targeting victors, blue data streams, and shadowy bursts of blood and gore.

Iuno and I marched out of the boarding craft, laying out a blistering salvo of fire. The soldiers were only wearing anti-ballistic medium plate. Good armor, but not good enough.

The bulkhead behind them was riddled by pass-through rounds.

A few shots slammed into my shields, but the ship’s defenders weren’t using arms heavy enough to puncture our defenses. They were only using light arms, guns meant to repel enemy sailors or pirates, not légionnaires.

Without a word, I turned and fired to our left while Iuno aimed toward the right, ripping apart the enemy’s flanks. To their credit, the soldiers didn’t panic or break even as they were brutally cut down.

Balan, nearly-invisible thanks to her stealth sheath, appeared as a blip across my tacnet as she dashed out of the room. She was going to the ship’s computer core in hopes that she could prevent the crew from erasing its data.

I executed the last soldier, putting a round through his head.

“Target One landing secure,” I reported.

I heard gunshots across the channel.

“Target Two landing secure,” Aggy confirmed a moment later.

“I’m jamming their communication systems, but you’ve got five minutes tops before they break through,” Elspeth warned us.

“We’re heading to the bridge,” I confirmed.

Our boarding craft had placed us on the port side of the vessel. Like the Esprit de Liberté, the ship’s layout had been heavily altered from typical naval design, but we had to assume the bridge was at the heart of the ship.

My tacnet tracked Balan’s bloody progress as she rushed toward the computer core, which should have been aft of the bridge. She was avoiding combat as best she could, but she had sliced apart several black-clad soldiers who had gotten in her way.

Stepping out into the corridor, Iuno and I were confronted with the gory aftermath.

“Shit, these Outrider blades are no joke,” she said, tapping the glaive strapped to her back.

After defeating Saint Charlotte, we confiscated the strange, green knives her bodyguards had used. The material the blades were forged from was beyond analysis, but their effect on flesh and armor was undeniable, slicing through them like they were paper.

Balan had retrofitted several to her cybernetic limbs, while Iuno had grabbed another for her upgraded polearm.

We passed by the bisected bodies as we reached the ship’s central corridor. Balan had gone aft, we needed to head toward the bow.

Ahead, we spotted sailors wearing standard Republican uniforms. They were scrambling to seal hatches and secure the ship.

“Ignore them,” I said.

“As long as they’re not stupid enough to shoot at me.” Iuno laughed.

I tracked Aggy’s assault on the other ship. It was smaller than the vessel we were on, but it had the same dispensation of black-clad soldiers. Our tacnet was smeared with dying men and expended shell casings.

We reached the main elevator lift. All the cars were locked down.

“Give me a second,” Elspeth said after I ripped the panel off the controls and jammed one of her relay devices inside.

A few sailors poked their heads around the corner, looking at us in shock and fear. Unlike the black-clad soldiers, they had enough survival instincts not to fire on us.

I imagined the idea of Republican légionnaires launching a hostile boarding action had never even occurred to them.

Légionnaires were the sharp swords and blazing brands of the Republic, standing at the forefront in the fight against xenos, heretics, and rebels. Our superhuman augmentations marked us as the elite of the elite, those who dedicated their lives to the principles of Logic, Justice, and Reason.

The idea of a légionnaire turning against those ideals, against the Republic, must have been impossible to them.

“We’re in,” the albino engineer told us as her remote hack broke the elevators open.

Stepping inside, both Iuno and I took the opportunity to load fresh magazines into our rifles.

“Computer core secured,” Balan reported.

“Good work,” I replied. “We’re on our way to the bridge.”

We were there to do more than give the Republic and the Saints a bloody nose and to punish them for their meddling. We wanted to know what they knew, we wanted to know how deep the Outrider’s influence ran through their ranks.

Just how far had humanity fallen and could it still be saved?

The elevator came to a stop. As the doors opened, a blistering barrage of fire slammed into us. I braced myself against the door, angling my shields to deflect the worst of the fire. As I did, Iuno crouched by my feet. With brutal efficiency, she mowed down the defenders holding the bridge entrance. Her rounds smashed through body armor, ripping apart the enemy soldiers.

In mere moments, the corridor contained nothing but mauled corpses.

“I have to give them some credit, the saints’ harems are dedicated,” Iuno said, scanning the area for more hostiles. “Most conventional troops would have just broken and run.”

Aggy suspected the soldiers that filled the saints’ harems were brainwashed or somehow mentally manipulated. The few we had examined from Charlotte’s entourage indicated severe cranial augmentation.

They were more like thralls, the mindless, cybernetic penal troops used by the Republic, than living, breathing men. The few, thinking, independent agents I had encountered in the past were likely outliers in their harems’ ranks.

“Target Two, secure,” Xarl reported. “Watch out, they were trying to overload the ship’s shredder drive, trying to cause some kind of subreality breach.”

The ship rumbled beneath us.

The hatch to the bridge was sealed. We didn’t have time for Elspeth to hack it remotely. I reached for a grenade, but Iuno stopped me.

“Let me try.” She unslung her glaive from her back.

Iuno had upgraded her weapon since her escape from the Diaspora Circus. It now featured a deadly, green blade.

She jabbed it into the hatch’s locking mechanism. The Outrider blade easily cut through the metal and armor plating, destroying the lock.

As soon as the hatch was open, we dashed inside. Our tacnet painting the bridge with possible targets.

I discounted most of them right away. Sailors hid behind consoles or ducked behind seats, only armed with their service pistols. Two black-clad soldiers defended the captain’s command console.

Iuno smashed the butt of her rifle into the face of the first soldier. His skull caved in with the force of the blow.

I blew out the kneecap of another defender. He fell to the deck, not even screaming. I finished him off with a round through the back of his head.

The last target in my HUD was standing over the command console. He looked like a standard Republican naval officer, but he wore a black sash over his uniform.

“Stand down,” I ordered, my voice amplified by my suit.

“For the Saints, for the Republic!” the captain shouted as he continued to hammer away at the controls.

I put a bullet through his head.

Stepping forward, I tossed his corpse away from the console, then smashed it with an armored fist.

The rumbling stopped.

Calmly, I regarded the surviving sailors, who stared up at us in horrified awe.

“Your ships have been commandeered,” I announced. “Surrender peacefully and we won’t shove you out of the nearest airlock.”

=======================

Things fell into practiced military procedure after that. Most of the ship’s crew surrendered peacefully. A few stubborn holdouts tried to barricade themselves in various holds, but with control of the ships in our hands, it was easy to ferret them out.

Nobody can survive long without oxygen.

Aggy docked Target Two with the larger vessel, and we gathered the survivors in Target One’s holding bay.

There were about sixty of them. Both ships had been operating with skeleton crews. There were only midshipmen and junior officers. The executive officers had all been like the sash-wearing captain I had executed – zealots to the end. None of them had survived the raid.

The survivors sat in the middle of the cargo hold, hands bound behind their backs, heads bowed. Fear rippled through them and a few shivered.

Xarl, Iuno, Victor, and I stood at the front of the room. Balan stalked through the shadows.

Aggy, still wearing her power armor, stood stock still in front of the crowd.

Carefully, she undid the seals along her helmet, then tucked it under her arm.

“My name is Brielle Agrippa Primus,” she announced. “In life, I was the first and last empress of the Imperial Republic. In death, I was declared the Martyred Goddess.”

The crowd murmured, unsure how to take her words. Several looked at the saber belted to her waist, recognizing the sacred weapon Chercheur de Sang.

She had argued against carrying the weapon, claiming it was little more than a ceremonial blade, but Josefine had finally convinced her. Her insistence was paying off.

Several drones hovered about, recording the event.

“I have been long gone from the world, sealed away by my enemies,” Aggy said, her voice resounding loudly in the loading bay.

Aggy’s consciousness was housed with the Liens Lumineux, an AI built by the greatest minds in the Republic. She had learned how to control an xeno pseudo-body, allowing her to walk the galaxy once more.

I was glad she’d learned how to adjust the hue of the pseudo-body. Her skin and hair still had an odd tinge, but her speech would be much more believable without the pseudo-body’s normally blue appearance.

Aggy gripped her sword. “But I have come back, brought forth my champion and our allies.”

I hefted an armored fist, and Aggy nodded my way, making my role clear.

It was easier to let Aggy handle these sorts of things. I wasn’t a man of words. Aggy trusted my judgment and conviction as I led our greater efforts.

“And I have returned to find my empire in ruins, held by corrupt monsters masquerading as my allies and advisors,” Aggy declared.

The prisoners were silent.

Aggy glared at them. “The Saints have abandoned the path of Logic, Justice, and Reason. Instead, they have fallen under the sway of xenos abominations. You have witnessed this for yourselves, haven’t you?”

One of the drones hovered forward. It projected an image, captured from the cabin of Target One’s captain.

The prisoners cried out in shock and horror as they saw the bloody graffiti covering the walls. Amongst the mad ramblings and heretical symbols was an image of a multi-armed creature, its countless limbs rising from its shoulders.

An alien – an Outrider.

“The Saints have lied to you, to everyone,” I said, my voice amplified by my armor’s external speakers. “They have sold our species out to heinous aliens. Their piety and righteousness are just masks they use to hide their true intentions.”

Aggy unsheated Chercheur de Sang. The saber’s mirror-polished blade shone brightly as she held it aloft.

“The Saints murdered me, then raised my image as a false idol – there is no Martyred Goddess,” Aggy declared.

The audience gasped.

“After nearly two thousand years, I have returned,” Aggy proclaimed. “And I’ve found that humanity’s glorious path has veered into idolatry and despotism. The brilliant future I first envisioned when setting out for the stars gone. Instead, my people languish in poverty and ignorance.”

“Humanity’s amazing history lays forgotten, our achievements and technology left to stagnate and rot. Our borders are beset by aliens and greedy opportunists while wars without end drain us dry.”

Aggy wore a mournful expression. “We were meant to inherit the stars. Instead, we suffer under the rule of vile traitors.”

She looked at her audience, who watched her with rapt attention.

“Serve me,” she said simply as she lowered her saber.

“Abandon your false vows, your tainted masters. Swear service to me and my champion, and we shall set humanity back on the proper path.”

She paused.

One of the sailors stood up. “My Empress!”

“No.” She shook her head. “I am simply Agrippa, I have no crown and I bear no scepter.”

She flourished Chercheur de Sang. “I only carry a sword, one dedicated to the ideals of Logic, Justice, and Reason. Together, we shall cut away the rot and ruin and bring about a new golden age!”