[Preview]Renegade Ravager Vol. 3 -- Chapter 10

Chapter 10 – 01738.101 AA

“Evacuate, evacuate!” the automated announcement repeated.

Valeur Mineure had descended into complete anarchy. The entire moon shook as the central reactor melted down, filling the lower layers of the facility with boiling plasma. The Yord were descending from the surface, harrying everyone toward the escape pods and shuttle bays.

“Whelp, there goes my last ship,” Elspeth moaned as the battle within the star system finally died down. “Rest in peace, you magnificent bastards.”

The Valeur system was full of crippled ships and shredded defense platforms. The defenders had managed to repel and destroy the autonomous ships, but they were in no shape to deal with the invading Yord or the breakup of the moon.

“False melancholy doesn’t suit you. You’ll take all the data you gathered today and use it to improve the next iteration of autonomous ships,” Aggy chided Elspeth.

“Ladies, I love to hear you bicker, but we’re still in danger here,” Iuno snapped.

She leaned around the corner and opened fire. The defensive drones ahead exploded. Several of the guards manning the barricade behind them panicked and fled. I resisted the urge to open fire, trying to honor Josefine’s request.

There was already a score of dead behind us. The moon’s guards had put up a frantic, short-lived effort to stop us. Anyone who dared attack us paid the price in blood. But the defenders simply didn’t have the firepower to stop a squad of légionnaires. Their turrets had broken down when the reactor had been knocked offline.

With the moon crumbling, their morale quickly broke. Most chose to flee and try and save their own lives.

Sadly, the moon’s combat drones stubbornly hung on. After our attack on the reactor core we had been tagged as an enemy, and the moon had turned its remaining resources toward destroying us.

We had jetted back up the borehole after destroying the central fans, allowing us to jump back toward the surface. Sadly, an earthquake had collapsed the top of the shaft, making it impossible to reach the surface that way. Instead, we had begun going through the facility’s halls and tram tunnels, fighting our way to safety.

“Evacuate!” the speaker shouted before the broadcast broke up.

I was surprised a moment later to hear Aggy’s voice boom through the PA system.

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

“Aggy?”

She laughed darkly in our comm line. “Elspeth convinced me to turn my foes' tools against them. I can’t hack into the other military intelligence facilities, the sisters to Valeur Mineur, but I can co-opt them, at least for a short time. We are rebroadcasting my words across the Republic, giving my citizens a chance to hear the truth from the Martyred Goddess’s own lips.”

Peeking around the corner, I saw the remaining guards were transfixed, listening to Aggy’s broadcast. Their eyes were wide with shock and horror.

It only took a burst of fire, directed over their heads, to cause them to break. They scrambled and fled.

“Break the enemy’s morale, and the battlefield shall be yours,” the AI said, taking on a scholarly tone.

“Now if you could only plot a route for us to get out of here,” Iuno growled.

There was no way in hells we were going to make it back to our courier ship. It was halfway across the moon from our position.

“I think I might be able to help,” Josefine said.

I was surprised to hear her voice. She was still directing her forces on Valeur Prime and Mineure, keeping any potential enemy reserved bogged down.

“Several of my bioships are on the moon’s surface. If you can reach one of them, I should be able to get you home,” she informed us.

I looked toward my squad.

Victor shrugged. “We’ll be the first legion in history to evacuate a hostile facility on a Yord bioship.”

“Just try to keep the drool to a minimum.” Xarl sighed. “Every time we’ve invaded a bioship in the past I’ve spent a week getting the spit out of my armor’s actuators.”

New information, passed through Aggy, hit our tacnet. We were still several levels down from the surface, but a bioship was moving in position to retrieve us. A path to a nearby communication array offered a chance of escape.

We’d just have to cut through the remaining defenders and combat drones, all while the moon fell apart around us.

Crashing through the abandoned barricade, we entered another transit tunnel. Kicking on our jump jets, we roared down the passage.

Everything tilted as the crumbling moon’s gravity began to twist. The passage flipped ninety degrees on us. Runaway tram cars and cargo containers full of burning paper plummeted past as we pushed our suits beyond the limit, jumping from foothold to foothold.

My HUD screamed at me, but I silenced the alarms.

Below us, the center of the moon imploded. Ghastly blue-white flames flickered up the tram tunnel like all of hells’ demons were hot on our heels.

I led the way as we desperately tried to escape.

My tacnet screamed in warning and I juked hard to the left, avoiding a falling tram car. My cybernetics instantly alerted Iuno and the others, allowing them to avoid the hazard.

My flight path had been thrown off, forcing me into a mad scramble. The world pinwheeled around me. I landed on a crumbling platform, jumped, and then hit the wall of the tunnel hard. My jump jets cut out, finally overheating.

My armored fingers dug into the concrete, barely grabbing purchase.

“James!” Iuno yelled.

A new route appeared, filling my HUD.

Straining my artificial muscles, I pushed off the wall and leapt. For a moment I hung over the void, plasma churning hungrily below.

I crashed into a piece of equipment mounted on the opposite side of the tunnel. Mounting bolts strained and ripped free from the concrete. Scrambling I gripped the power conduits leading into it and began to climb.

Iuno and the others had zipped ahead, following the safer route. They grabbed my hands and hauled me into an empty hallway.

There was no time to rest, to dwell on how close I had come to death.

The moon’s gravity utterly failed, filling the tilting passages with deadly, flying debris. We bounced from wall to floor to ceiling as everything tumbled drunkenly.Valeur Mineure was in its final death throes. Running as hard as we could, we careened toward the communications array and the waiting bioship.

We sprinted up a stairwell, which caved in behind us. Ahead, my HUD highlighted a broken escape pod, which became stuck when its launcher jammed. People slammed against the airlock, their faces pressed against the window.

I didn’t even spare them a second glance as I hit the emergency override console. The secondary launch mechanism fired, flinging them out into orbit. We jumped onto the surface of Valeur Mineure in their wake.

It was like stepping into hell. Huge flames pushed through the shattered surface, plasma flares and boiling volcanos of melted stone. Parts of Valeur Mineure had broken away, already forming the asteroid field that would mark the moon’s grave.

“There!” Victor pointed.

A Yord bioship hovered just above the surface. Its pink-purple hull flesh was scorched and burnt, testifying to the damage it had incurred as part of Josefine’s desperate rescue attempt.

Running for our lives, we dodged plasma flames and rivers of lava as the ship settled roughly fifty meters ahead.

“Hurry!” Josefine screamed, her voice strained from holding the ship in place against its instincts.

The front of the ship opened, revealing a drooling maw.

Xarl groaned. “Remember what I said, don’t get –”

“Shut up, there’s no time for jokes!” I snapped.

We jumped, hurling ourselves into the creature’s mouth. Darkness enveloped us as it snapped shut. Laying against the wet, spongy flesh, I focused solely on my HUD.

Some external camera, likely from a hacked defense platform, was cued on Valeur Mineure. With grim satisfaction I watched as the moon buckled and then broke, a massive crack rippling from the north to the south pole, shattering it in half. Slowly, the two parts sheered away from one another, splintering Valuer Mineur into a million pieces.

It was just the start. Chaos would envelop the entire Milky Way. We’d set the stars aflame before we were done.

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

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

I stood in one of the wardrooms off my cabin, listening to Aggy’s recording as it was rebroadcast across the Republic. Trillions of people were finally hearing the truth from the Martyred Goddess herself.

Of course, the Saints had responded instantly. They had decried the broadcast as heretical nonsense, an attack by the Hegemony in an effort to break the Republic’s unity.

“We stand for Logic, Justice, and Reason,” Robespierre said, his death mask white and cold as another rally was held in front of the Basilique du Dessein Divin. “We will not allow these lies to go unpunished! Blasphemy against the Martyred Goddess is –”

I scanned the crowd, picking out Saint Charlotte. She looked utterly serene, standing like a statue amongst the other Saints. Were they all monsters?

“We really kicked the hornet’s nest,” Iuno drawled.

It was just me and her at the moment. Aggy was on the bridge, directing the after-action of our operation, ensuring we had got away safely. Elspeth was working with Ramon; Vermin Ventures was amplifying Aggy’s broadcast, spreading it via pirate channels and other means even as the Republic worked to quarantine the source.

Josefine had been by briefly, just to confirm we were unharmed. She was utterly exhausted after the day’s efforts and quickly retired to rest.

Xarl had nearly torn my ear off, lecturing me about the damage to my suit. Victor had quickly retreated before the old quartermaster found something else to complain about.

Iuno turned toward me. “So, what’s next?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted, after a moment of thought. “We don’t have the strength to strike at Principe Divin, not yet at least. Elspeth will need time to rebuild our autonomous fleet, and we should look to recruit more allies. Maybe we can turn the legions against the Republic, show them the truth?”

Despite everything that had happened to me, I still believed in the legions. I held faith in the ideal of battle brothers and sister standing arm in arm, screaming defiance at the dark.

But we’d need more than Aggy’s broadcast. We’d need irrefutable proof of the Saint’s treachery and the black, beating heart of xeno corruption at the center of the Republic. We had recordings from our battle with Saint Charlotte, and the horrors of Esprit de Liberté, but that wouldn’t be enough.

Videos could ultimately be faked, broadcasts reduced to nothing more than propaganda and lies.

What would it take for the galaxy to see the truth, to turn away from two thousand years of lies?