Rise of Renegades Read online

  RISE OF RENEGADES

  ©2021 BEN HALE

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  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 SERIES

  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

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Epilogue

  Thank you for reading Rise of Renegades

  More In Sci-Fi

  ABOUT BEN HALE

  ALSO IN SERIES

  Books by Ben Hale in the Timeline of The Augmented

  Listed in relative chronological order

  —The Augmented—

  Empire of Ashes

  Rise of Renegades

  Galaxy of Titans

  —The Augment War—(Coming 2022)

  Alliance of Outlaws

  Beacon of War

  Throne of Ruin

  —The Age of Oracles—

  The Rogue Mage

  The Lost Mage

  The Battle Mage

  —The Shattered Soul—

  The Fragment of Water

  The Fragment of Shadow

  The Fragment of Light

  The Fragment of Fire

  The Fragment of Mind

  The Fragment of Power

  —The Master Thief—

  Jack of Thieves

  Thief in the Myst

  The God Thief

  —The Second Draeken War—

  Elseerian

  The Gathering

  Seven Days

  The List Unseen

  —The Warsworn—

  The Flesh of War

  The Age of War

  The Heart of War

  —The White Mage Saga—

  Assassin's Blade (Short story prequel)

  The Last Oracle

  The Sword of Elseerian

  Descent Unto Dark

  Impact of the Fallen

  The Forge of Light

  To my family and friends,

  Who believed

  And to my wife,

  Who is perfect

  Chapter One

  In the dead of night, Siena glided through the shadows, breathing deep of strange and new scents. Trees towered above her, the canopy blotting out the light from the single moon. Small creatures darted away at her passage.

  She knew it was a risk to come out at night. Ero, Skorn, and the dakorians had yet to fully determine the dangers on this new planet. But as a lifelong slave, she relished every moment of the intoxicating freedom.

  Breathing hard from her run, Siena slowed and came to a stop at a ledge. The warm air was rough on her throat, and she touched the hollow of her neck. The scar of her brand was bumpy, the skin white and hard. The dreaded ferox mark should have meant her doom. It had proven her salvation.

  Kensen appeared behind her and leaned over, gasping for breath. “Racing an augment isn’t fair.”

  “You only say that because you’re losing,” she said.

  He pointed to her body. “Your body augment lets you increase your speed. How is that fair?”

  “Because I’m not using it.”

  He leaned against a tree, still breathing hard. “Liar.”

  She smirked and extinguished her body augment. The sense of power seeped from her limbs, bringing a sense of weakness. She sank onto a stone at the back of the ledge and allowed the now familiar fatigue to pass.

  “Is it getting any easier?” Kensen asked.

  “Some,” she said. “I don’t feel like I’m going to throw up when I stop the augment, but maybe that’s because we haven’t gone as far this time.”

  Kensen peered into the darkness in the valley below. “We’re already two miles from camp. I don’t like the idea of going any farther, especially since Reklin spotted a drake out this way.”

  She’d seen it as well, only much better than Reklin. She’d enhanced her eyesight and her vision had quadrupled. The drake had been beautiful and terrifying. Forty feet in length, red scales covering its body, two leathery wings, able to fly and breathe fire. The beasts were every bit as dangerous as the initial survey had indicated. But then, most of the survey team had been eaten, so having the report describe them as dangerous felt like an understatement.

  “We went southwest this time,” Siena said. “I think we’re safe for tonight.”

  “I still think we should be doing this closer to camp,” Kensen said.

  “And risk getting caught?” She shook her head, a forceful dismissal. “I’m an illegally augmented slave owned by a member of a fallen krey House who thinks I only possess four abilities. I’m not about to let them see what I really am.”

  “A supreme augment,” he said with a nod.

  She didn’t like the name, but had to agree it fit. Of the other seven slaves that had been augmented with Siena, five had shown one ability, one had two, and one had shown no new augments. So far, Siena had discovered eight, and Kensen had suggested she had somehow absorbed all the energies in Telik’s experiment.

  She shuddered and looked to the starry sky, recalling the experiment:
A glass-walled cell, power conduits attached to her body, and a burning white light erupting from her skin. It had felt like her bones were being ripped apart and sewn back together.

  “Don’t let Ero hear you call me a supreme augment,” she warned. “We both know he’ll find it amusing.”

  Kensen leaned back against the warm rock. “I still don’t understand he treats you the way he does. It’s like he’s your friend.”

  “He sort of is,” she admitted.

  “He owns you.” He pointed to the earring in her left ear, commonly referred to as a leash. Its blue color marked her as owned by the House with blue eyes. “Krey and slaves are never friends.”

  “He doesn’t treat me like a slave,” she said.

  “I can’t argue with that,” he said. “And I think the dakorians are still angry that Ero lets you train with an energy blade.”

  She smiled at the image of the ten-foot-tall, horns-growing-from-their-heads, bone-armored soldiers, glowering like petulant children. Even Reklin—who’d seen her augments up close when she’d saved his life on a space station—still didn’t like seeing her learning how to fight. Not that she could blame him. The entire dakorian race had been bred for combat. They served as soldiers in the Empire’s military, as guards for the krey Houses, as protectors and killers. In normal situations a dakorian would kill a human bearing a weapon.

  “Can you imagine what Laurik would do if she saw me fighting?” she asked.

  He laughed lightly. “She would have had her Bloodwall kill you in front of the other slaves. And then had your body strung up as a reminder.”

  “Probably,” she said.

  They were quiet for a moment, both staring into the dark forest. Siena felt like they were the only two people on the entire planet, inspiring a strange sense of freedom that she’d never experienced. The planet had been unoccupied before their arrival, so it was just rugged and raw land across every continent, an endless vista begging to be explored.

  “Does it ever get easier?” he suddenly asked.

  “Does what get easier?”

  “Feeling like you’re constantly in danger of being killed?”

  “You feel that way?” she asked, turning to face him.

  With black hair and dark eyes, Kensen was handsome and young. They’d been friends when Laurik had been their owner, back when they’d been owned by Laurik Zeltil’Dor on the planet of Verdigris. Then he’d been sold to House Kel’Ray. Siena had been branded a ferox for dumping roak guts on Laurik, and subsequently sold to Ero Bright’Lor. Siena had convinced Ero to find him. Kensen was the closest thing she had to family.

  “I feel it all the time,” he said, his eyes staring into the dark valley without seeing it. “I feel like Skorn could decide to eliminate me because I’ve seen too much, or the dakorians could decide that a House with augmented slaves should be destroyed. Or maybe the Empire finds out about House Bright’Lor’s breaking of forbidden laws and they show up to slaughter everyone involved.”

  “All of those are possible,” she said. “But is it any different from what it was like in Laurik’s House? At least right now, we have a measure of freedom.”

  “Freedom is dangerous,” Kensen said, finally meeting her gaze. “It makes us feel like we can do anything, but we both know the Krey Empire isn’t going to let augmented slaves exist. We pose too much of a risk.”

  “Maybe the Empire needs to change,” she said.

  “You want to change the Krey Empire?” His expression was dubious.

  “I said it needed to change,” she scoffed. “Not that I could be the catalyst.”

  “There are a trillion krey and dakorians that think the human race is nothing but a beast of burden,” Kensen said. “That’s never going to change.”

  “And there are a trillion humans that could become augments. If that happens, it will change everything.”

  She smiled wistfully at the prospect. A trillion humans with abilities that rivaled krey starships and dakorians ion hammers. She knew it was madness, and yet she could not stop the sliver of hope. Maybe someday.

  “It’s never going to happen,” he said. “We are all just slaves.”

  “I hate that word,” she said.

  He shook his head. “You’ve lost your mind. You’re talking about a galaxy-wide rebellion. It’s just not possible.”

  She snapped her fingers, igniting a tongue of flame that burned on her skin. The sudden light caused him to recoil and shield his eyes, while she smiled and pulled more heat from the surrounding atmosphere. She drew it into her skin and funneled it up through her flesh to her fingers, pushing the fire brighter.

  “This is impossible.” She pointed her other hand at a nearby stone and warped the gravity around it, lifting and throwing it over the cliff. It soared into the night and plunged into darkness. “That’s impossible. I know it will probably never happen, but you cannot deny that it could.”

  “There are thousands of occupied planets in the galaxy,” Kensen said. “Hoping for real freedom is only going to lead to disappointment. Or death.”

  “I don’t know,” she sighed. “I just know that what we endure isn’t right. People are not meant to be slaves.”

  Siena knew it beyond madness to have such hope, and yet from the moment she’d discovered her augments, she’d dared to dream. The Empire had too much power. It was too big. The krey had too much technology. She’d told herself all the reasons it was impossible, but each time she felt the augment energy coursing through her body, she knew.

  She didn’t want to be a slave.

  “What about Ero?” he asked. “He may like you, but he still thinks we are just slaves. He’s planning on putting ten thousand augments on this planet and selling them to rebuild his House. We’re still just objects to him.”

  “Don’t take my hope, Kensen,” she said, staring at the stars. “It’s all I have.”

  He sighed. “I’m sorry. I wish it could happen.”

  Siena relished the cool wind brushing against her skin. Laurik had rarely permitted her to go outside, on account of preferring brown-haired girls and males as her personal attendants. To stand in a forest and listen to the leaves rustle was a true delight. If Siena closed her eyes, she could picture her passing through the forest without a leash in her ear or a krey calling her property. She knew it wasn’t real, but here, she felt free.

  Kensen stood and stepped away from the boulder. “So what do you want to practice tonight? Fire? Light? Or more gravity?”

  She smiled. “You know we’re not supposed to practice our augments without supervision. Telik will be furious.”

  “If he finds out.”

  She marveled at how much he’d changed. When he’d first set foot on the Nova, he’d wanted to turn Ero and Skorn over to the Empire. Now he was breaking rules and helping her practice her augments in secret.

  “You have to promise me one thing,” he said.

  “Anything.”

  “You have to promise me you’ll be careful.”

  “You don’t think I’m careful?”

  He laughed, and then stifled the sound and glanced around nervously. “That isn’t the word I would choose to describe you.”

  “Oh?” She raised an eyebrow. “What word would you use?”

  “Formidable. Intelligent. Beautiful. Reckless.”

  They stood so close she could feel his body heat, and his eyes were soft as they searched her face. A spark of desire ignited in her chest. Kensen had already tried to kiss her before, and he would not resist if she drifted a few inches closer. He would welcome it.

  But before the idea could take root, she withdrew. “Perhaps we can start with gravity manipulation?”

  “Deal.”

  She picked up a rock and activated her gravity augment. It was easier now, and the gravity responded to her will, warping and lifting the stone off her palm. As it floated above her hand, the sounds of the forest gradually faded. The twittering of birds, the rustle of critters, even the wind d
ied, leaving an unnatural silence.

  “Did you have to silence everything?” Kensen whispered uneasily.

  “That wasn’t me,” she said.

  He stared at her, and his voice dropped to a hiss. “But if it wasn’t you . . .”

  Siena gradually lowered the stone back into her hand, a touch of fear prickling on the back of her neck. She tried to catch Kensen’s eye, but he was scanning the trees, his posture tense. After growing up as slaves, they’d both become attuned to the presence of a predator.

  She searched the trees, her fear mounting. At the base of a nearby tree, the roots were shaped in such a way that they could squeeze beneath. She darted to it and wormed her way under the large root until she was wrapped in darkness. Kensen found a spot at her side, his leg braced against a cracked stone.

  “Drake?” His voice was so soft she could barely hear it.

  She scanned the trees but wasn’t sure. They didn’t understand enough about the winged creatures to know. The seconds bled away in nervous fear, and sweat beaded on her neck and back. Nothing appeared. Nothing made a sound. It seemed the entire forest huddled in terror. Then a large, clawed hand reached over the edge of the cliff.

  The claw appeared so suddenly that Siena jumped and almost slipped out into the open. She clung to the roots as it was followed by an arrow-shaped head, a long neck, and then a massive body. Covered in dark red scales, the beast ascended over the lip of the cliff. It prowled the edge, its large head turning one way and then the other.