Starship: Rogue

Chapter One

December 17th, 2602, the Battle of Hosk

Rowan had never been a believer in heaven and hell. For one thing, she had yet to see anything in the galaxy that could even remotely be described as heavenly. The entire Colonial Network of Planets was at war, and everything had become a series of studies in the meaning of the word 'hellscape.' But even in hell, there was something to hold onto.

Rowan had been serving in the Intergalactic Ranger Corps since she was fifteen. She had seen firsthand the damage wrought upon humanity in what people had begun dubbing the 'Robot Wars.' And humanity had been losing. Badly. Until today. A group of army scouts had stumbled onto the robots' power source, here on Hosk, and ship Rowan served on, the IRC Horizon, had been closest.

She paused behind a pile of rubble to survey her surroundings. What had once been a colonial outpost burned. Carcasses both human and robot dotted the landscape, and, by the power station, a fallen shell that had once housed artificial life made the perfect cover to storm the place.

She caught sight of her squad leader, Evander Stark, dashing towards her. Across the battlefield, a robot–a massive hulk of twisted and deformed metal–aimed its fist at him. Rowan levelled her own plasma rifle–a weapon more powerful than the regular army-issued laser guns–above the edge of her cover and let loose a single shot that punctured through the robot's armor, melting its metal core.

Stark slammed up against the rubble where she crouched, breathing heavily. Rowan kept scanning their surroundings, on the lookout for trouble while he took a breather. A trio of cyborgs were stalking towards them, simply blasting their way past any obstacles, and Rowan felt a wave of revulsion slam through her body.

So many cyborgs were veterans who had had some body part replaced, and then switched sides. Rowan had seen it a thousand times. So, as she aimed her rifle at them, she didn't feel even the smallest grain of remorse for eliminating half-humans. The cyborgs had surrendered their humanity when they sided with the robots, to her way of thinking.

She took them out without hesitation. They would have done the same to her. Stark moved up behind her, and she glanced over her shoulder to see a pair of androids bearing down on them. Stark raised his own plasma gun, a handheld canon, and took aim. Trusting him to watch her back, Rowan looked for her next target. An industrial bot moved towards them, its wheels crushing cars and structures like they were made of paper. She smiled grimly and shot it.

Stark had held off his targets, but they'd attracted attention. "We have to get to the wreckage by the station," she shouted at Stark. "Otherwise we'll be fucked."

"Let's go," Stark said without hesitating. Rowan glanced around, trying to locate any of their fellow squad members, but she couldn't make them out in the dust and smoke. For now, it seemed like it was just the two of them.

Together, weapons raised, shooting at any of the robots who went after them, they broke away from their shelter and pelted for the smoldering carcass. But, no matter how fast Rowan and Stark acquired and dispatched targets, there was no denying the robots were closing in. Almost in unison, Rowan and Stark leapt over the corpse of a cyborg, this one with over half his body replaced with metal appendages.

Rowan was glad, strangely, for it seemed that there was nothing to be glad about. But she and Stark had served together for years. She'd started off training for the army, but, since the Rangers didn't have a training program of their own and they poached from the rest of the military, Stark had recruited her straight after their first meeting for Fox Squad. At the time, he'd been the second-in-command, and, over the past five years, their bond had solidified. At first, he'd been her mentor, helping her to acclimate to Ranger life and to fit in with the rest of the squad. Later, he'd been given command and he'd selected her as his second. Now, after so much time spent together, they could practically read each other's minds.