Sacred Planet: Book One of the Dominion Series (48 page)

Silence took over the room. Davin wheezed and spat. “Dammit.”

Blood pounded in Sierra’s ears as she listened. Listened close. Heard nothing. Until—

A long, thin canister bounced into the center of the torn-up room. Sierra had seen one of them before, back at the mall on Agora. She covered her ears, pressed her eyes shut, and hid her face a split second before the flashbang went off. She saw the bright, blue flare even through her scrunched eyelids. It stole her hearing and replaced it with a high-pitched ringing. The vibrations of feet and handguns firing rippled across the ground and through the air.

She blinked away the sunspots as the grim-faced woman ducked away from Jabron’s blind potshots and fired a series of shots into his chest. Davin stood behind the couch, watery eyes squinting and ears bleeding, gun firing in the woman’s general direction, missing every time. She placed a shot in his upper thigh, then another in his shoulder. He collapsed.

Adrenaline and instinct took over Sierra’s motor functions. She lifted her stunner and aimed, keeping her arm straight like Davin taught her. The Abramist woman saw but not in time. Sierra fired the round into the woman’s chest just below the neck. She fell twitching, but calmed to utter stillness after a few seconds.

More activity swirled in the entryway. Jai fired blindly through the wall as he hobbled over Davin toward the stairs. But the Abramist officer—the same one from her yacht wreckage and the mall—dashed out from behind cover and planted a shot in the center of Jai’s back. Sierra watched him cry out and fall against the stairs. He struggled to pick himself up and crawl to the steps, but the Abramist leader put another shot in his back before he’d made it up the first stair. Sydney, watching in horror halfway up the stairs, crab-crawled backward to the second floor, staying quiet.

Sierra would only have one shot at the leader. She held herself perfectly still, waiting for him to come out. Soon enough, he did, sneaking back into the entryway. More of his soldiers entered, spoke to each other, glanced around. Sierra couldn’t understand them, but she didn’t think they saw her. Yet.

She doubted she could take all three of them. Not if the entire
Fossa
crew couldn’t. She looked at Davin as he writhed. The leader hadn’t seen him after Davin’s last few hits. The couch blocked Davin from the entryway.

The
Fossa’s
captain turned his head and gazed at Sierra helplessly, apologetically, fingers twitching in her direction. His lips mouthed the words,
I’m sorry
.

Sierra aimed her stunner at Davin’s leg, took a deep breath, and squeezed the trigger. The round shocked him a few seconds, then cast him into a deep stillness. Sierra thrust herself up, wheeled around, and shot two more rounds into the entryway, hitting no one. A muted gunshot blasted the stunner out of her hands and left her standing unarmed in the middle of the room.

The Abramist leader met her eyes and stepped toward her, across the destroyed living room. His men surveyed Jabron—motionless. Then Jai, lying against the stairs with one arm stretched upward, also motionless. And finally, Davin, on his back, eyes half open and jaw slack—motionless. They kicked him a few times, then stepped away, apparently satisfied.

Sierra tried not to show her relief. A small consolation in this grim affair.

Fear slid away as she saw her pursuers’ faces and their guns aimed at the floor. The fighting was over. The anxiety and anticipation of this moment gone. The chase had ended.

Their leader stared at Sierra as his lips split in a complacent grin. A predator having cornered his prey. After all this fighting, all this chasing, now he stood an arm’s length from her with no barriers, no hindrances, nothing blocking his path.

“
Almost, Sierra
,” he said, only understandable by the movement of his lips. “
Almost
.”

Carina Arm, Nexus DV 239, sixteen lightyears from the Sagittarian border . . .

The unmarked TransTek clipper drifted through a star-bejeweled expanse between spacebend gates. It was a brand-new shuttle, constructed by a shadowmarket shipyard and never registered with the Aerospace Safety Bureau on Baha’runa. A nonexistent ship on a nonexistent mission. A ghost in the dark.

Morvan shifted in the cramped cockpit. The two-room clipper had nowhere more spacious to stretch out, so he figured he would just stay in the cockpit with his pilot and wait for his expected message. He hoped it would come in before they hit the border gate. After that, communication would be impossible, at least until returning to Carina. If his agents had coordinated his travel path as flawlessly as they had assured him, the roundtrip should only take twenty-nine days. Less than a month in universal standard time, but only God knew what could happen outside the safety of Carina.

The minister ran fingers through his greasy hair and blinked away soreness in his eyes. He couldn’t remember how long he’d been awake. The lack of a planetary day-night rhythm played tricks on his mind. That and the persistent worries about hypotheticals, counterfactuals, unintended consequences, alternate plans, failsafes, and, of course, narratives—it was enough to drive away the temptation of sleep.

Morvan saw why Vyne and Reeger tried so hard to discourage him from going on this mission himself. “Send someone else,” they said. “Or activate a sleeper agent in the region.” But that wouldn’t work. Only Carina’s Minister of Arms could accomplish this task. Morvan wanted no one to think he was above putting his life at risk for his country.

The console beeped and flashed a blue light. The pilot reached up and accepted the incoming message, reading the text on his personal screen.

“That’s the green light from the border gate,” he said.

His voice startled Morvan. The laconic fellow went hours without so much as a word.

“We’re about fifteen minutes out.”

“Alright.” Morvan took a long breath through his nostrils and unbuckled. “Think I’ll crawl in that wretched tube and try to catch some sleep.” He added the struggle to achieve a comfortable sleeping position in weightlessness as another reason for his lack of sleep.

The pilot laughed under his breath. “Yes, sir.”

Just as he gripped the bar circling the hatch to the crew quarters, Morvan heard the telltale chime of a video message notification. He returned to his copilot’s seat and brought up the video on his screen. Tanger’s face appeared before him.

“Minister.” The semi-suppressed smirk told Morvan all he needed to know, but he waited for his agent to confirm it. “I have apprehended my target and have her on my ship. She is safe and unhurt. We are charting a course back to Carina. I await further instructions.”

The video cut off.

Morvan let out a relieved sigh in the quiet of the cockpit. His lips slid into an indomitable smile. He felt the unwinding of a tension so deep and so constant he hadn’t realized it was even there. How long had it been since the initial strike on Sierra’s yacht? Weeks? It felt more like months. There was such joy in the culmination of tireless work, especially now that his plan for Sierra had changed.

He pressed a button on the console to record a video message in reply and waited for the red light to blink on. His own face stared back at him on the screen.

“Well done, Tanger. Very well done. I will attach coordinates to this message as well as the route you are to take to arrive at them. A man named Victor Sorensen will meet you there. You will deliver your target to him. Message me once you have. I should be back in Carina by then.” He reached forward to press the
Send
button, but paused. “One more thing. Say nothing to the target, except that you rescued her from imminent danger and she doesn’t understand everything that has happened yet.”

Morvan typed in the coordinates from memory, sent the message, then pushed off his seat and maneuvered to the cabin for some well-earned rest.

Sagittarius Arm, on the planet Balamar . . .

Kastor, son of Eagle
. . . The words from Zantorian’s final video message reverberated in the vault of Kastor’s mind.
You have failed me. I release you from my service.

Kastor leaned back in the austere wooden chair inside his unadorned chambers—the barren, stone keep given to him as an act of charity by the Liege Lord of Balamar.

It was exactly the payment a disgraced former champion should expect: a long-abandoned tower of grayed limestone with bare living chambers at the top. No possessions to his name except a stiff bed, a table, a chair, a few cabinets of useless items, and a dresser bearing an assortment of plain, cotton clothes. Also a fireplace to stare into all day and night.

At least the surroundings were pleasant. A tall window in the wall looked down on one of Balamar’s hundred million lakes. An orange sun set on the far side of it, casting a funnel of light across the placid, umber surface. Around the lake sprawled a thick forest that Kastor was free to roam. The Liege Lord arranged daily meals delivered by flyer drone, and servants would come every so often to tend the keep, apparently doing little more than cosmetic work. Cracks in the stone whistled when the wind blew, and floorboards creaked throughout the keep.

Kastor returned to the sketch paper on the rugged wooden table before him. An imprecise likeness of Pollaena stared back up at him, drawn with a shard of coal he’d found in the cabinet. Lighter gray streaks fell behind her ears to represent her silky hair. Darker lines for her jawline and facial features. Her eyes were black and shadowy. Kastor couldn’t draw eyes.

Disappointing. Pollaena’s eyes were her best quality. Those brilliant, searching, sweet chestnut eyes, speckled with flakes of pale gold. Kastor preserved them in his memory, but nothing compared to the sight of those eyes directed at him. It inspired a feeling like none other. A power greater than defeating worthy opponents or winning tournaments or deposing a lord. Greater than any feeling in the galaxy.

Pollaena was made for him. She was his destiny, more so than any ambition or triumph. More even than the Diamond Throne. What was a lumis without his queen? What was a warrior without his maiden? So what if Kastor never claimed the title of Grand Lumis? He and Pollaena could still have risen in the noble ranks. They could have ruled a planet, perhaps even all of Eagle. Or they could have been vassals all their lives, never bearing titles, never ruling anything, but
living
, simply being together. Kastor would have been satisfied with that. At least, he
should
have been satisfied with it.

He wiped the dew from his eyes, sniffed, and steeled himself. No use dwelling on it.

The drawing was shit. Kastor had no skill with art. He crumpled the sketch paper, pushed back his chair, and walked to the waning fire. The ball of paper stayed in his hand a moment, as if pleading not to be discarded. Kastor couldn’t let it control him. Sentimentality would erode him from the inside out. He threw it into the fire. Watched the small flames nip at the edges and grow toward the center, eventually consuming it, turning it to crumbling ash.

The smooth wooden door squeaked across the room. Kastor’s eyes snapped to it, back straightening, adrenaline waking him.

“Who’s there?” he called. “Show yourself, servant.”

“I’m no servant,” a foreign voice replied behind the door. “But I hope you will accept my company anyway.”

The stranger pushed the door open wide and stepped into the room. It was a man with dark, medium-length hair swooping crudely to the back of his head. He wore gray tactical pants and a plain black shirt. He raised open palms as a gesture of peace, a request for armistice.

Something snapped in Kastor’s brain. He had seen this man before. Never in person and never in these clothes, but somewhere. On news reports. In video transmissions from Carina. He’d listened to clips of speeches given by that voice.

The man stayed a safe distance from Kastor. “Do you know who I am?”

Kastor wracked his brain, and finally a name emerged. “Morvan. Ulrich Morvan. Carina’s Minister of Arms.”

The Carinian seemed pleased. “I figured you would know of me.”

“How did you get here?” Kastor demanded.

Morvan pressed his lips together and took a thoughtful breath. “Well, let’s just say that all kinds of people are susceptible to bribery.”

“Who knows you’re here?”

“You, me, and my pilot,” Morvan said. “That’s it. And I’d like to keep it that way.”

Kastor clenched a fist. “Why shouldn’t I kill you right now?”

Morvan laughed. “Because you don’t even know why I’ve come. Aren’t you curious?”

Silence spread between them as Morvan’s narrow eyes probed Kastor, studied him. Eventually, Morvan closed his hands and let them fall to his sides. Kastor loosened his fist in reply.

“Why have you come? Speak.”

Morvan took a small step forward and opened his mouth. It took a moment to form the words. “Do you still want to be Grand Lumis?”

The question caught Kastor off guard. He glanced around his chambers. “Clearly, that’s no longer an option.”

“But if it were,” Morvan said soberly. “Would you?”

Kastor considered it, listened to the hushed crackle of the fire behind him, remembered Pollaena’s face, her eyes, her sacrifice. Through time and space, her quiet voice whispered in his ear.

Take what is yours.

“Yes,” Kastor said, the word surprising him even as he uttered it.

A slow, confident smile swelled on Morvan’s face. “You and I can help each other.”

It’s hard out there for writers, especially newbies like me. If you enjoyed this book and would like to help it reach a wider audience, the best way you can do that is to leave a review on the book’s Amazon page. I am deeply grateful that you have delved with me into the world of Dominion, and I hope you stick around for the adventures to come. Look for book 2 of the series,
Horns of the Ram
, in the Spring of 2017.