Sacred Planet: Book One of the Dominion Series (10 page)

“And . . .” Sydney looked over her shoulder at Sierra and nodded. “Go.”

A red light flashed on by the camera. Sierra swallowed and stared at the small, black lens.
Just the facts
, she thought.
The facts are enough.

“This is Sierra Loren Falco,” she said, keeping her voice steady. She sounded silly speaking so formally, but she needed to communicate the gravity of the situation. “The daughter of Elan Falco. About eighteen hours ago, on the outer edge of the Owl Nebula, my ship suffered several hits from large projectiles. My crew put me into an inflatable preserve bag, but no one besides me survived.”

She paused, feeling her throat tighten with the impulse of emotion. The image of floating bodies lingered fresh in her mind. Sierra swallowed and kept going.

“Only a few ships were in the surrounding area. Three of them were Carinian military frigates, and they did not identify themselves. The other was an Orionite scavenger ship.”

Davin smiled, seeming pleased she didn’t say “pirate.”

“I was rescued by the Orionites, and the Carinians promptly asked them if they had me onboard.” Close enough to the truth. “When the Orionites refused to give me up, the Carinian frigates fired upon us and pursued us, but thankfully, we escaped to the spacebend gate and are now in a safe place. The Orionite scavengers have agreed to take me to a planet of my choosing inside Carina.”

Davin waved his hand, prodding her to say the words he’d told her to say.

“For which they would appreciate compensation.” Sierra’s eyes flicked down a moment as she considered how to verbalize this last part. Strangely, these were the hardest words to find, the most uncomfortable to speak. “Mom, Dad, if you’re watching this, please know that I’m okay. I haven’t been hurt or injured. But some force inside Carina that wants me dead. They wanted to kill me while I was on my way to the border planets. Someone wants to shut down the message of peace. Please find who that is, and bring them to justice.”

That would be enough to implicate the Abramists. No other group in Carina fit the qualifications.

Sierra hesitated, wanting to say that she loved her mother and father. But it would’ve felt forced. It would’ve sounded fake. She didn’t say it, instead nodding at Sydney. The pilot flicked a switch, and the red light by the camera went off.

Davin smiled and nodded. “Well done. You’re pretty good at that straight-faced stuff. Ever thought about becoming a reporter?”

Sierra pulled herself back to the entrance, hanging onto the circular handlebar around the tubeway. “Yes, actually, for a while. In college.”

“Oh,” Davin said. “Didn’t expect that. Can prime ministers’ daughters become reporters? Don’t they have to do prime minister’s daughter stuff?”

“Listen . . .” Sierra said, closing her eyes and trying to summon the patience that Lydia had taught her. “I appreciate your kindness, but I’m not in a lighthearted mood. My people are on the brink of war. Maybe after this crisis is averted I’ll be in a better place to talk.” She grabbed the bar with both hands and pulled herself into the tube, heading back for the observatory.

“Princess!” Davin called after her. “I mean . . . Sierra.”

She stopped and looked back.

“You’ve already done all you can do for your people,” Davin said. “It’s just a waiting game now.”

Sierra felt her throat tighten again, and a sickening feeling seethed in her gut. “That’s the part I hate most.” She turned and propelled herself out.

The
Fossa
hung in orbit around an asteroid about fifty thousand kilometers from the nearest Aldebaran spacebend gate. Davin could see a bright, reddish orb glaring in the vast distance, and somewhere between it and the
Fossa
, a handful of planets lurked in the darkness, each of them belonging to the Voluntarist Network.

The pride and joy of Orion, the Voluntarist Network of planets had no government, no widespread system of laws, and
definitely
no regulations on how free individuals could get their freak on. Just the good old fashioned free market. Many times, Davin and his crew had made the trek to Chandra, moon of the supermassive, bluish purple gas giant Daksha, to take advantage of the moon’s sexually liberated culture. Many an escort had found her way into the
Fossa
’s private quarters from Chandra Station. Naturally, Davin had warm feelings for the place.

Soft music played from the cockpit speakers—some ancient Earth song.

“Acting on your best behavior, turn your back on Mother Nature. Ev-ry-body wants to rule the world . . .”

Strapped into the copilot’s seat, Davin tossed his rubber stress ball against the thick windshield, watched it bounce against the dashboard, and caught it on its way back. They decided to wait in orbit around a random asteroid close to the spacebend gate in case the Carinian frigates popped out of some other gate around Aldebaran. The giant star had six gates surrounding it—six points to watch on the monitor. So far, so good.

“Help me make the most of freedom, most of pleasure, nothing ever lasts forever. Ev-ry-body wants to rule the world
.”

Sage lyrics
, Davin thought. Still true after all these years.

In the pilot’s chair, Strange chewed her nails with nervous, narrow eyes. And chewed and chewed. Pulled back her fingers every once in a while to examine her work. Davin expected her to voice the reason for her anxiousness eventually. He ran out of patience.

“Alright, what is it?” he asked.

Strange withdrew her fingers and spat a tiny slice of fingernail. It pinwheeled through the air to an intake vent and got sucked in. Kinda gross in Davin’s opinion, but he let it go.

“I’ve just been thinking about all the stuff we’ve looted in Carinian space.”

“Yeah, so?”

“Well, if we’re gonna go back into Carina,
straight
to the Carininan government, don’t you think there’s a chance they could say, ‘Thanks for dropping off the prima filia. Oh, by the way, you owe us eleventy million sharebucks from looted goods.’”

“Psh, come on!” Davin laughed. “They don’t know who we are. There’re hundreds of scavenger ships in this region. They can’t pin anything on us.” He tossed the ball against the windshield and caught it off the bounce. “Besides, we've got the prime minister's daughter. And we're not even demanding a ransom. Not really. We're just saying, 'Oh, by the way, here's the market price for a prima filia. Donations to the Fossa Fund are appreciated.' Wink. They'll take the hint, trust me.”

“Yeah . . . I guess.”

She didn’t sound convinced, but Davin didn’t worry. He had steered his crew into much more perilous waters than these.

The dashboard emitted a short series of halting buzzes. It sounded bad. Strange sat up against her loose safety belts and checked the display panel.

“What was that?” Davin asked.

After looking over the data on her screen, Strange turned to him in surprise and confusion. “Sierra’s message. It didn’t deliver.”

“Something wrong with the relay?” Davin asked. “The encryption get corrupted?”

“No,” Strange replied, checking the comm systems. “Relay’s fine. Encryption was good.”

“Then what?” Davin asked.

“Looks like . . .” Strange paused, perusing data Davin couldn’t make heads or tails of. “The message pinged at the Aldebaran gate. Just fine. Zigzagged through a few more Orionite gates, then cut toward Carina from Delta Velorum and . . . that’s where it stopped.”

“Stopped?” Davin repeated, unable to think of anything better to say.

“It was rejected at the first Carinian gate,” Strange said, scanning her screen. “The message had an auto-notification for delivery or failure to deliver.”

Davin straightened in his seat and squeezed the life out of his stress ball, eyes wide open, hamster wheel turning in his brain. “Could they have decrypted it?”

“I don’t know!” she exclaimed, tapping the touchscreen. “Their spacebend gates are top of the line, so maybe. Maybe they’re blocking all incoming messages until they can decrypt them.”

“Blocking
all
incoming messages? Across
all
their border gates?” That sounded insane. “How many would that be? Like, eighty?”

“Ninety-four,” Strange spouted off as she tapped.

“There’s no way.” Davin shook his head in disbelief. “Your encryption was airtight, right?”

“Airtight,” Strange replied. “But if anybody could decrypt it, it’s the Carinians.”

“What?” Davin recoiled. “Why do you say that?”

“Geez, Cap!” Strange exclaimed. “Haven’t you seen the headlines? You
have
to have seen them, at least in passing.”

“What headlines?” Davin didn’t pay attention to galactic news, except the stories that involved wrecked ships somewhere in his stellar neighborhood.

“About the Carinians beefing up their border defenses?” Strange said it as if it might jog his memory. It didn’t. “Couple years ago, the Carinian military—the, uh, the Space Force—they took over operations of
all
spacebend gates in Carina.” She glanced over to find Davin scowling. “Oh, yeah. And they’re installing weapons systems on the border gates, building brand new battleships, the whole nine.”

Davin rocked his head back against the seat cushion. “Dammit. I thought they were supposed to be the kindly, old peaceniks.”

Strange shrugged. “Not all of ‘em, I guess.”

“But if these are the guys who attacked Sierra—these Abramist guys,” Davin said, connecting dots in his head. “If they’ve got lackeys in all
ninety-four
of those border gates, then . . .”

Strange stopped working and met his eyes, making clear she understood where he was going. “Then they’re a helluva lot more widespread than a few rogue frigates.”

“And a helluva lot more scary,” Davin said. He unclipped his safety straps.

“Where you going?” Strange asked.

“Tell the princess.”

“You mean Sierra?”

“
Yes,
I mean Sierra!” Halfway through the entrance tube, Davin shouted over his shoulder: “Get us to Chandra!”

“Uh, Cap, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

He stopped himself in the tube. “Why the hell not?”

Strange brought up a digital map on the dashboard screen. It showed the bright, orange giant Aldebaran surrounded by six circular machines—the spacebend gates. Two long frigates crept away from one of the gates and toward the planets. Strange pointed to it and looked at him in panic.

“Carinian ships,” she said. “They followed us.”

“Why
you
?” Davin asked. “I mean, why do
you specifically
have to die?”

Sierra thought about it as she levitated in the
Fossa
’s living area with Davin, Jabron, and Jai Lin. Jabron and Jai Lin held onto a handlebar by the entrance to the private quarters, while she and Davin hovered by the big-screen TV, on which the digital map showed the two Carinian frigates closing in on Daksha. From the rate they crept across the screen, Sierra estimated the Abramists would be at Chandra Station in a few hours. What they would do there—indisputably outside their jurisdiction—she had no idea. The blinking yellow dot representing the
Fossa
sat on the far side of an asteroid from Chandra. Hidden.

Sierra shook her head at the display. Her loose ponytail rocked back and forth. “Because of my father. He’s a Unificationist, so naturally—” She detected confusion on the scavenger’s face. “The Unification Party. They’re against war with the Sagittarians. My father promised not to provoke any conflict with them. This must be the Abramists’ way of changing his mind.”

“Are there
that
many Abramists?” Davin asked. “Enough to cover every border gate?”

Sierra shook her head again and cradled her face in her hands. “I don’t know. Maybe. They’re a fast-growing sect. The Dominion Party is huge now, third biggest in the republic.”

“Wait, wait,” Davin said, waving his hands. “What’s the ‘Dominion Party?’”

“Sounds like some freaky orgy,” Jabron rumbled across the room.

“The political arm of the Abramists, basically,” Sierra responded. “Now that I think about it, most Space Force officers I’ve met have been Abramists.”

Jai Lin’s eyes lit up: “That explain how they guard space gates.”

“
And
how they can keep a few frigates roaming outside their space a secret,” Jabron added.

Davin tilted his head back and let out an aggravated sigh. “So are you telling me these people have access to the entire Space Force?”

Sierra felt nausea building in her stomach. She didn’t answer, just stared at the Carinian frigates inching across the screen.

Sydney soared into the living area from the cockpit. “Cap, I tried resending the message. Sent it through a different path. Same thing. Rejected at the first Carinian gate.”

“Can you send it directly to Baha’runa?” Sierra asked.

Sydney laughed. “Sure, if you’re cool with waiting about three hundred and fifty years for the message to get there.”

“I mean through the spacebend gates,” Sierra said, stretching her brain to think of how it would work. “Programming the message to send directly from an Orionite gate to the Baha’runa gate.”

Davin shared an amused look with his crew, as if humored by a little girl’s naïveté.

“No can do,” Sydney said. “Gates don’t align accurately past thirty lightyears. You’re talking about sending it three hundred fifty.”

Sierra panicked. A lump formed in her throat. She was becoming desperate. “What if we spread the video around Orion? Got it on the news? It would be a big deal, right? It would have to leak through the border. I’m
sure
my father would hear about it.”

Davin’s eyes widened. “No.
Hell
no.”

“We’d have thousands of bounty hunters looking for us,” Sydney said. “And trust me, you’d rather be with us than them.”

“Oh yeah, we real friendly on the
Fossa
,” Jabron muttered in a dry voice.

Jai Lin gave Jabron a light backhand on the arm. “She our guest!”

“It’s bad enough that we’ve got Carinian
warships
hunting for us,” Davin said. “But at least they’re helping us keep it on the low. We tell the world, and our problem gets a shitload worse.”