Sacred Planet: Book One of the Dominion Series (18 page)

Guerlain flipped over a charging trooper, grasping his jaw on the way, yanking him with her as she landed, snapping his neck and letting him slump lifelessly to the floor. It was a universal tactic among noble military academies: life and death resides in the neck and above.

Guerlain positioned her feet around a repeater rifle and hopped, bringing it to her hands. Two troopers sprinted down the tunnel, attempting to flee. Guerlain put a stop to them with a few well-aimed bursts.

Kastor heard a fleshy
shrrnk
of blade escaping flesh and thick metal clatter against the floor. He turned in time to block Sylvan’s punch, deflect another, and roll away from a third. The Upraadi man seemed to grow larger and more enraged each second. His boot collided with Kastor’s ribcage and sent him into the wall. Then a line of fire sparked against Sylvan’s armor, knocking him away. He raised his forearms to block more bursts from Guerlain’s repeater rifle, crouching to cover more of himself as she approached.

In a swift motion, Sylvan blocked one more set of rounds and struck the gun out of Guerlain’s hands, then jabbed her in the jaw with the base of his palm. She stumbled backward as he swept his boot around and knocked her feet out from under her. Kastor snapped into motion, grabbing Sylvan by the neck of his armor and flinging him away from Guerlain. The Upraadi turned his momentum into force, shoving Kastor backwards into the curved tunnel wall. Kastor hooked an arm around his neck and tightened until he felt Sylvan’s trachea pushing against his forearm. Fists swung up and smacked Kastor’s head until he wised up and twitched from side to side to avoid them. But Sylvan lost his strength and resorted to tugging vainly at Kastor’s arm.

Across the landscape of scattered bodies, Guarin threw the brawny woman over his shoulder with a gut-deep growl and kicked her throat. She wheezed and grasped desperately at her neck until Guarlain put a bullet into her head.

Meanwhile, Sylvan lost steam. His face grew pale and paler as he struggled. Once Kastor had him subdued, he pivoted his arms with a hard jerk. A conclusive pop vibrated through the Upraadi’s body and made him go limp. Kastor pushed him off and took a knee to catch his breath and look over the scene.

Trajan emerged from the fortress of corpses he’d been hiding behind. “A little warning would have been courteous.”

Kastor smiled, wiping Upraadi blood off his cheek. “Would you have done anything different?”

Trajan grimaced, tiptoeing around the corpses in horror and disgust. Deep red blood slowly pooled out from the bodies. Guarin strode past the other two, seemingly no happier than before.

“We should get to our shuttle before they find out about this.”

Guerlain rushed to follow her mate, stooping to pick up another repeater rifle on the way. “It’ll be guarded.”

Kastor reached down for the metallic cuff on Sylvan’s limp wrist. “We aren’t going back to the shuttle.” He worked the cuff off Sylvan’s wrist as the Swans halted.

“What did you say?” Guarin asked, incredulous.

“Trajan, is the network still up?” Kastor inquired, ignoring Guarin’s question.

Trajan pulled the slate from his interior coat pocket. “Yes.”

“Give the
Aegis
the order,” Kastor said. “Weapons free. Destroy Radovan’s gunships, and send down the teams.”

Guarin planted a foot toward Kastor and sliced his hand through the air. “
No.
Enough tricks. You went off course once already with your clever
deal
with Radovan. I shouldn’t have stood for your trickery then, and I won’t now.”

“You’re one to talk about trickery, Guarin,” Kastor shot back.

“There’s a difference between shrewdness and sheer idiocy,” Guarin said.

“You don’t even know my plan,” Kastor replied, freeing the cuff from Sylvan’s hand and sliding it onto his own wrist.

Guarin shifted his stance, looking away and letting out a heavy sigh. “Alright, Master Champion, tell us your brilliant plan that apparently doesn’t involve us getting off a planet that’s destroying itself.”

Kastor aimed the cuff at a clear area on the rocky floor and projected a digital map of the capital: a series of tunnels, halls, and chambers buried in the rock. Various colored dots clustered and moved slowly in the open spaces. Kastor recognized the clump of royal blue dots surrounded by emerald greens in a long room below the Royal Court—Radovan and his retainers. More greens littered the halls around them and collected in passageways near smatterings of orange dots. The oranges—commoners—numbered in the thousands. More flooded into the palace hallways every second. Dots blinked out constantly, mostly oranges but some greens. The high, stalactite-lined ceiling of a great atrium collapsed in on itself, making a few dozen green and orange dots disappear at once.

Trajan stepped closer to examine the map, keeping the same grimace. “I’m afraid I agree with Guarin, Master. Radovan’s burned the bridge with us. If we aren’t leaving, what
are
we doing here?”

Kastor zoomed in on a huge cluster of oranges snaking through the crooked, natural corridors of the palace, headed toward the throne room. He grinned. “Finding our own way.”

Kastor traveled fast and light through the tunnels of rock, consulting the digital map from time to time. Guarin followed reluctantly. He yelled for Kastor to stop and be reasonable. Guerlain grinned as her feline eyes scoured their surroundings. She enjoyed the hunt, even though she didn’t know whom she was hunting. Trajan took up the rear, wide-eyed and gripping a pistol, probably hoping he wouldn’t have to use it.

They came across a group of commoners, short and sturdy and dressed in simple garb. One of them gasped and ran. The others hefted their guns and took potshots as they retreated. Guerlain and Guarin fired a handful of bursts, and the commoner bodies dropped. All save the first to notice them, who’d reached a tunnel without getting hit. Kastor sprinted after the short-legged man, hopelessly faster. Bullets whirred past his ears and pocked the cave walls, but Kastor’s fist connected before the commoner’s shots. The paunchy man rolled and groaned but pushed himself back up with admirable speed, charging. Kastor punched him in the doughy gut and sent him reeling backward, moaning heavily. The man’s gun lay on the ground before Kastor’s feet.

“Tell me who your leader is and I’ll let you live,” Kastor said. Looking down on the helpless creature, doubled over and gasping for air, Kastor realized he meant it.

“We have no leader,” the man said obstinately. The fire in his eyes and grit to his teeth told Kastor the commoner envisioned himself a martyr, seconds from some sort of paradise. His last words had to be worthy of eternity. “We are the free men of Upraad!”

“Who gave the order to attack the palace?” Kastor demanded.

The commoner stared at Kastor without answering. Kastor knelt and scooped the gun into his hands. The commoner stumbled backward in sudden panic, humbled before the great champion. Before imminent death.

“The chief foreman!” the common man stuttered. “Big boss in the nether levels.”

“What is his name?” Kastor asked through clenched teeth.

“Abelard!” The man weakened further every second. “His name’s Abelard.”

Kastor lowered his gun, and the commoner relaxed a little. Then gunfire rang through the tunnel, and the man’s face blew apart, blasting blood and brains behind him and leaving only a horseshoe of skull remaining. He flopped to the ground as Guerlain, at the other end of the tunnel, lowered her repeater rifle. Guarin stood beside her, unperturbed. Kastor shifted looks between the Swans and the commoner’s body, feeling disgust at the death and confusion at his disgust. Why should he care about the life of a common rebel?

“Abelard,” Kastor said, shaking off the pangs in his chest. “He’s the one we’re after. He’ll be in the throne room.”

“And what business do we have with him?” Guarin asked, still overtly bitter.

Kastor strode between the Swans. “The same business we had with Radovan.”

* * *

The heavy doors of the Royal Court, not as menacing as those of the Diamond Castle, swung open. Greasy commoner men wearing energy packs on their shoulders and powered exoskeletons down their arms escorted their Sagittarian prisoners into the throne room. Kastor, Guarin, Guerlain, and Trajan walked in single file, disarmed, fingers interlocked on top of their heads. Brawny men glistened with sweat as they stood guard. They held jerry-built guns, but Kastor got the impression their weapons of choice were their fists.

The commoners thought they’d captured a few fine prizes in the offworlders, but it had gotten Kastor into their inner circle. And in good time.

Dozens of hard, sooty faces glared at them as they marched farther into the captured throne room. Women stood alongside men, no softer and no more forgiving. Craggy, bearded men mixed with baby-faced boys and tomboyish girls, but the same fire persisted in all of their eyes—flames of retribution against the prisoners by virtue of their birthright. Grubby hands held crude weapons close to chests. Some wore baggy jumpsuits, others homespun tunics, still others pants and blouses produced in the factories in which they worked. Kastor knew what commoners looked like, but rarely studied them up close—their unmeasurable flaws: crooked teeth and extra weight and discolored burn scars. A picture of the old humanity, before the luminaries reinvented themselves into more glorious beings.

The air wafted heavily from the heat and moisture of damp skin. Bodies filled the cavernous chamber, obviously protecting someone important, the leader of their leaderless revolution.

Ahead, a wall of commoners parted. Mothers yanked their bold-faced sons to the side as the prisoners passed by. On the platform, where the throne once sat, stones formed a dusty pile. A pair of men leaned against sledgehammers, catching their breath, while another planted a foot on top of the rubble that had been the throne. His pant leg came up, revealing a dull grayness, a long metal device in place of a fleshy calf. The one-legged man wore a threadbare jumpsuit and held a long-barreled revolver level with his head, aiming it straight up. The confidence and exuberance on his angular, rat-like face indicated he served a greater role than agitator. This man was their leader—Abelard.

A one-legged leader. How proletarian.

“This is it, brothers and sisters!” Abelard yelled. “Upraad is free!” He jabbed his empty hand down at the rubble. “The elites are gone. Our time of servitude is over!”

The mass of commoners raised their weapons and cheered. Some clapped. Others wept. Little boys jumped up and down. Little girls danced. Joy pulsed through the crowd of damp, gyrating bodies. Kastor glanced over his shoulder at his nervous comrades. One of the commoner men shoved him forward, exerting considerable force with his exo-arm.

Abelard’s eyes widened above gaunt cheeks. He grinned as the masses quieted. His empty hand swept to the side.

“Look here, brothers and sisters!” Abelard shouted. “Now it’s the elites who come humbly before
us
!”

Half the commoners laughed. The other half shifted their feet and eyed the nobles nervously, as if they were wild beasts.

“Welcome, former aristocrats,” Abelard announced in an officious voice, “to the
new
Upraad!” One more cheer swept through the crowd, and Abelard gestured the commoner men to bring the Sagittarians forward. “On your knees.”

Exo-arms pushed the four of them down in a line before the dais. “They surrendered as soon as we saw ‘em,” a gruff, ragged-bearded man said, frowning at the nobles distrustfully. “Didn’t put up no fight. They’re up to some’m.”

Abelard eyed them with his wide eyes and spun the round chamber of his revolver absently. “Up to something,” he muttered. “What would three aristocrats and a gaudy servant want with the people of New Upraad?”

“An audience,” Kastor replied as Trajan rolled his eyes and murmured something in defense of his clothes.

More commoners quieted at the sound of Kastor’s deep, noble voice. A warm mist continued to swirl in the air after the crowd stilled.

Abelard spread his hands, pointing his long revolver to the side for a moment. “You have it. Speak, aristocrats. Unless you’d like to save time and submit to execution right away.”

This commoner was different. He bore the drawl of the nether men, but some of his words and phrases struck Kastor as noble. Perhaps he was once a servant in Radovan’s palace who’d grown resentful of the lumisian wealth, the dust-clad vases and tapestries, the pools of turquoise water sitting idle, drunk by no one save Radovan and his royal family.

“We’ve come to offer our services, should you choose to accept them,” Kastor said.

“Your services? Ha! I’m pleased you already know your new place.”

Abelard let out a quick, hearty burst of laughter. He didn’t want equality. He wanted to reverse the class structure already in place. And his every word played to the commoners’ anger. Their leader spun the cylinder on his revolver again, thinking. He looked up at the crowds, who awaited his next word. They didn’t know what Abelard would decide. They were moldable, impressionable—mere tools in his hands. Only one question remained: Was he one of them?

“Not in front of the children,” he said finally. “Behind the throne.”

The exo-armed men got them up and hauled them around the stone obelisk to the same table where Kastor had spoken with Radovan. Abelard walked with a slight limp, favoring his mechanical leg. Had he been born a noble, the doctors would have regrown his limb. He would’ve had to work out his good leg to be as strong as the synthetic muscles of the new one. Technology had no limits for those born worthy of it.

“Just you,” Abelard said, pointing his revolver barrel at Kastor.

The exo-armed men arranged themselves in a circle around the table, keeping the others huddled behind Kastor.

“Radovan is getting away,” Kastor said preemptively. He didn’t feel like playing games. No time for it. “If you let him escape, this whole uprising will have been useless. Many of your people will die. Probably most of them, including children.”

Abelard scrunched his ratty face. “You know where the former king is?”