You’ve got a fantastically powerful starship with amazing technology, speed, power and things only a starship captain could dream about, so what do you do with it? Well, the first thing is to try and find more crew. Your original crew of about two-hundred was fine when you only had to operate the S.D.F*Jericho*, but now you’ve got this humongous starship that could reasonably hold a crew of thousands! And, not only would it contain crew, but a whole population of civilians could live aboard the Arodoni starship called *“Renegade”*. So, where do you find more crew.
Marine Master Sergeant Remmy Steel has suggested they start recruiting aliens which isn’t a bad idea since that’s all they will probably have to recruit from, but it won’t be easy. So far the only aliens they have met are definitely not warfighters. Oh, they did find and defeat the Ashi both on-board the ship and on the planet Casasil, but the Casians weren’t exactly suited for war. They resembled Earth elephants, trunk and all, so even holding a weapon was going to be difficult for them. That is unless someone designed weapons specifically for their anatomy. That wasn’t impossible considering the advance 3D printers on the *Renegade*. But, there were only a few of Casians willing to leave their homes and travel aboard a strange starship. Still, some did volunteer and it was up to MSgt. Steel and his Marines to train these new troops. Some of these aliens even volunteered to work parts of the ship in order to give the human crew some down time.
But, they had to find more willing aliens to become crew. Nurek, a Dodonus and former slave to the Ashi Emperor, and now advisor to Captain Zeke Darius suggested they head to the Olotimbo system where they might find other aliens willing to help operate the *Renegade*. So that’s where they headed. Captain Darius was apprehensive about his command since he didn’t know this new ship that well. Everything about it was almost, well, alien, and all of his crew was learning as they went. They had successfully dealt with a flotilla of Ashi ships in the Casa system, but that was because the Ashi ships didn’t really know how to operate in battle since the Empire hadn’t been attack in thousands of years! Even their Emperor who thought of himself as a great warrior was captured by the Marines on the planet and was now in custody recovering from his wounds.
Captain Darius also had to contend with the knowledge that he didn’t know this Nurek very well. Could he trust that this former slave wasn’t leading him into a trap? Well, he soon found out when they went through the portal and arrived with five slaver ships sitting behind them. Now here a very interesting and strange facts about the *Renegade*, it had no rear-ward facing weapons! Not even missile launch tubes! I’m not sure why anyone would build such a fantastic starship that had such a weak spot in its defense. But, the Captain managed to use his Marine contingent in an unusual way and eventually destroyed or disabled all but one slaver ship.
That’s when they found humans aboard the remaining slave ship. So, if humans were on this ship, then they must be others somewhere and that’s what they wanted most, either to find more humans to help or free any that were taken as slaves. The one human slave that lived through the battle used a very ancient language that even GIGI (Galactic Information and Guidance Instrument) almost couldn’t interpret. Still, they did find out where other humans might exist so that’s where the Captain wanted to go.
But first he had to get out of the Olotimbo system. Here’s where a major battle is fought. The Ashi have found where the *Renegade* is and they send a fleet of one-hundred eighteen starships into the system. They initially block the portal accessing the system so the *Renegade* has no way out. So, Captain Zeke Darius has to fight his ship. Unfortunately, as powerful as the *Renegade* seems to be, Captain Darius manages to almost get it destroyed. I don’t understand that. It seems that he outranges the Ashi ships and has greater firepower, plus his ship is much faster than even their fastest ship. Still, it’s a close call. I guess the author had to make it exciting or this would have been a boring battle.
Still, the story isn’t over. Captain Darius still struggles with whether or not he should go home to Earth. He’s afraid that he’ll just lead the Ashi Empire right to Earth if he does so, but that doesn’t make sense since the already escaped one star system and entered another one without the Ashi knowing where they were. He should be able to do the same, just leave for Earth making sure there is no tracking device aboard and then he’d be bring a lot of advanced technology back to Earth. He’s going to have to do something because all his Marines are going crazy or getting killed and his crew don’t know how to rapidly repair this huge ship quickly enough to get back into the fight.
So, there will be more to come as the *Renegade* wonders around the Ashi Empire trying to figure out how to survived or whether they should go home. If you asked the crew, I know what they would do, but that’s not going to happen. We will find out what happens in book 5, “Independence”, now available on Amazon.
==[Note: As of 12/03/2023, this will not be published on Amazon since I have been banned from posting reviews for some unknown reason. Once the ban is lifted, assuming it does get lifted, I’ll go back and post this to Amazon.]==