Longshot Hypothesis

by Blaze Ward

  Longshot Hypothesis

  Shadow of the Dominion, Book 1

  Blaze Ward

  Knotted Road Press

  1

  Valentinian

  It started in a bar.

  Didn’t it always? Exciting things in space never began in a station library or a barber shop, although Valentinian wasn’t about to say that too loud, even in his own head. Tempting the gods, and all that.

  Valentinian had never really been a reader type so he hadn’t ever spent that much time in libraries. Still, that always struck him as the far end of places from a bar, when it came to thinking up dumb ideas. Starting an adventure in a library, as it were.

  Best not to push his luck too far, ya know?

  Coming to this station had been a dumb idea, but what was he, if not a living example of bad decisions in life?

  How many other people had managed to get themselves kicked out of the Gymnasia Dominia? He had heard somewhere that more than ninety thousand applicants filed paperwork each year, for one thousand slots for students. Sure, half those would wash out in the next three years before they became officers in the Dominion Armada, but Valentinian hadn’t exactly washed out.

  Been kicked to the curb, more or less. The one guy they could pin it all on, when he’d only been one of the ring-leaders. Can’t have the kids of important people sullied by scandal now, can we? Oh, heavens no.

  Valentinian nursed the drink in his hands, scanned the rich and important people around him, and tried not to snarl too loud or dwell on the distant past. Well, three years. Twenty years old and he had thought he had it made. Top quarter of his second-year class on grades and points. Gonna be a star.

  Nobody had counted on the White Hats, the Dominion’s Internal Security Bureau, suddenly getting involved. It had only been a little contraband, nothing even illegal on about half the planets of the Dominion.

  But enough to open a space in the roster when he got frog-marched out the side door and tossed into the metaphorical street on his ass.

  Valentinian suppressed the growl.

  Coming here had been a bad idea. Not just this bar, but this system, let alone this station. Normally, he would have said you couldn’t pay him enough to come to Dominion Prime, the so-called Winter Palace Orbital Station of the Dominator himself. Security checks at damned near every frame and hatch. Places off-limits to everyone most of the time.

  But yeah, he’d apparently been lying about no price being enough. Someone had offered him a stupid amount of money to come here. To pick up a cargo, well, whatever you called it. A charter, he supposed. The contract had been stupidly long, but Valentinian had always had a head for legal mumbo-jumbo and esoteric accounting.

  Had gotten him into Gymnasia. And probably gotten him kicked out, too, one of those times when the dice rolls just fell the wrong way when he had already pushed his luck too far.

  He still didn’t know, three years later, where his scams had fallen apart. Didn’t really matter. Just being here, smelling the scent of these people, brought it all back to the surface.

  He took another tiny sip and kept his face calm.

  Being around the beautiful people had him grouchy. And he missed Artaxerxes.

  His now-former first mate had been, was, would always be a doughy, goofy, engineering-type. And probably more than twice Valentinian’s age. Into his fifth decade, anyway, although the man never really talked about it. Beard all gray coming in now and wrinkles etching themselves into that laughing forehead.

  Artaxerxes had gone and found himself a woman. Worse, a woman who owned a bar and had decided to marry herself a partner. Bed or business was a little fuzzy, but Valentinian hadn’t seen the marriage contract. Didn’t really care that much.

  It had been enough that the man had packed his few belongings at Tuska Station and departed with a skip in his step.

  Normally, Valentinian would have remained on Tuska Station for longer than a day, looking for his next cargo run somewhere, and doing more than putting up a couple of help wanted posters, but a chandler had gotten in touch with him. Had a contract for Valentinian, was he interested? Total stranger personally, but the man had good reviews on the public boards and no major lawsuits that Valentinian had been able to find in the records.

  Not that that mattered as much in the Dominion as other nations, like Qetesh or Lei-Zu. Even beyond those in Wildspace, out among the true aliens, you weren’t going to find anyone as militantly crazy as the Dominion.

  Nobody was.

  A caste of warrior monks dedicated to the military arts and surrounded by nervous neighbors. A meritocracy in the hardest sense, where your birth would only get you as far as your family might lift you, with the understanding that your screw-ups might bring them down as well, so nobody was going to do you favors that didn’t make them look good in the process.

  A place where a kid from the wrong side of the tracks, with the right kind of mind, could score a place at Gymnasia on his brains, since he was nothing like those blade-fighting lunatics. At least until the day he screwed up and didn’t have the sorts of family support network his unindicted co-conspirators had been able to hide behind, when it came time to sweep it all under the rug and find a scapegoat.

  But he was here. Dominion Prime itself, don’t you know. With the promise of a contract paying way too much cash for something as simple as a straight charter.

  Valentinian didn’t believe for a moment the story that his ship, the Longshot Hypothesis was exactly the perfect one to hire for six months.

  For one thing, the ship was a cargo transport that had been modified to have a half-dozen cabins for paying customers, not a dedicated pleasure yacht. And the contract specified that he would be hauling nearly twenty people, so that upper deck would be crammed full and then some.

  Granted, the semi-famous girl-band/dance troupe Solaria Femina had nine members these days, all ethnically and physically identical girls aged sixteen to twenty-two, answering to the woman in charge, plus a Dancemaster, a Songmaster, and a Chastitymaster, whatever the hell that was. Throw in a couple of costumers. And we can’t forget the a Nutritionist, however nice it would be, since part of the contract involved them bringing their own food aboard and feeding his crew. If he had one beyond himself at that point.

  Working on that.

  Valentinian had almost talked himself out of the contract, in spite of the money he would make, but something just wouldn’t let that kind of cash go by the wayside. His profit margin after operating costs alone after six months would cover him for at least two years of pure goofing off afterwards, if he wanted.

  Not that he would. Every single spare Solar would go into a series of investment accounts, mostly in Laurentia or Lei-Zu. Never places where the good folks of the Dominion who had screwed him so bad already could get at it easily.

  Brains and luck only got you so far. And Valentinian had learned the value of hustle. It had gotten him back on his feet after the fuck up. Had gotten him into a crooked card game where he wasn’t the mark, and could score enough collateral damage on the final few hands to buy himself a broken-down, vintage cargo transport.

  The good ship Longshot Hypothesis. Because him being any kind of success at that point in his life had only been that, a longshot hypothesis.

  But luck and hustle also found him Artaxerxes as a crew to help get it into pretty decent shape. Gave him a future.

  Gotta save funds at all times.

  Even this drink cost more than he would have spent, normally, but he was waiting for the woman who represented Solaria Femina to arrive with executed contracts that had been filed with the authorities.

  The Dominator, leader of the Dominion, might be a crazed berserker intent on taking over the universe, but the
government itself was run by the Solar Party, and they were all about legal contracts. Maybe the only way to keep the warriors in check.

  A Dude walked into the bar and almost everybody at least glanced over at him. Noise didn’t stop, but it hiccupped, even with the jaded denizens of a high-class joint like this. Nobody came to Dominion Prime without a reason, and a lot of Solars in their pockets.

  And this dude looked like trouble.

  Big man, just a little shy of two meters tall. Broad shoulders. Intense face.

  Valentinian had a good view of the guy, as he was facing the door with his back tucked into a booth in the corner. Monster. Valentinian was a little over average height and had acquired a few muscles from moving pallets and boxes around.

  Stranger had half a head on him. And muscles on muscles. Like maybe he could bend nails with his fingers.

  Older. Maybe fifty. Blond hair cut short enough to start to show the gray hairs through. Clean shaven, with a jaw that would probably make women swoon.

  Valentinian was expecting blue eyes when the guy locked on him across the bar. That was the most common genotype among the warrior nobility of the Dominion. Not dark-haired and dark-eyed exotics like Valentinian was.

  Instead, eyes like molten bronze focused this way. Valentinian suddenly regretted ever setting foot on this station. Tuska, or other places, and he would have a shock pistol on his hip, everywhere he went. Didn’t prevent ruckus, but sure tamped it down a lot when people wanted to get out of hand.

  But nobody was allowed to be armed around here except the Solar Guard. And maybe any White Hats he ran into.

  This would have been a good time to have a weapon. Dude looked serious about whatever was crossing his mind. Troublesome serious.

  Staring at Valentinian.

  And walking this way.

  Crap.

  Valentinian considered the booth. He should have picked a standing table to wait. That would have at least given him something to knock over at the guy, but this booth was attached to the floor and wall, and somehow, he didn’t think a face full of cheap whiskey would do much more than just piss that monster off.

  Hopefully, one of the bartenders or waitstaff had their hands near a panic button right about now. Bad day to get your ass kicked.

  Monster got closer. He was wearing baggy gray pants tucked into tall, leather boots. Blue tunic, belted and long sleeved, was half-hidden under a light jacket in the same gray and fabric as the pants. It was the kind of outfit you wore shipside when you left the heater down a few degrees or so to save money. Like Valentinian routinely did.

  Rough hands. Gnarled and scarred, like the man had done decades of work with his hands in rough circumstances, except his face didn’t have the matching battering Valentinian would have expected.

  The man did have a scar on his face. Faint enough to be almost invisible, so old.

  Started just inside the hairline on his left forehead and came inward on the cheek diagonally, just missing the eye and fading before it got to his beard. Only thing Valentinian could think of that made a cut that straight and that clean would be blade-fighting, the kind you did without sparring armor. What the craziest of the craziest warrior monks of the Dominion did to prove they were tougher, meaner, better than everyone else.

  What the hell did I do to warrant this guy’s attention?

  The man stopped about a body length away. Somehow, Valentinian knew it was the proper distance to greet someone, just before combat broke out on the training floor.

  “Valentinian Tarasicodissa?” he asked.

  Man had a rich voice. Baritone. Sure of himself. Hard as nails.

  Probably mean as a hungry snake, too.

  “That’s right,” Valentinian replied with the faintest nod. No point denying it or trying to weasel his way out of whatever trap he had stepped into this time.

  He would have liked to see if the bartender was calling for help, but taking his eyes off the stranger sounded like a bad idea. Not that he could have done something to prevent getting his ass kicked by this stranger, but Valentinian still wanted to see it coming.

  Dude reached a hand inside his jacket and pulled out something as Valentinian tensed. Looked like a wad of paper, folded over a couple of times and kinda mashed into a pocket too small.

  The man pulled it more or less flat and stepped close enough to place it on the tabletop in front of Valentinian, leaving him no choice but to take his eyes off the stranger and see what it was.

  HELP WANTED. FIRST MATE POSITION.

  Shit.

  I put that up at Tuska Station. And a couple here when I landed.

  Valentinian looked up at the monstrously-huge man towering over him. The man did not look anything like an engineer. Not that Valentinian really needed one. He could do most of the technical work himself by now, after Artaxerxes had taught him the right systems.

  Maybe a pretty good stevedore, with all those muscles.

  “You know how to tune a solar engine?” Valentinian asked pointedly.

  Might as well cut to the chase. Anything to get rid of trouble like this.

  “When I was about your age,” the man answered with the faintest hint of a gleam in those bronze-colored eyes. “Not since, but I figure I can pick it up again. Got more experience programming them.”

  “Job doesn’t pay much,” Valentinian offered, hoping something would drive the man off.

  Being a tramp freighter crewman on a starship always sounded way more alluring and rewarding than the squalid realities of broken life support fans, bribes at stations to not get roughed up by local hoodlums, or the monotonous boredom of travel between stars.

  “Got some money saved up,” the man replied easily. “Really looking for something different in my life.”

  Oh, goody. Mid-life crisis has hit and dude wants to grow his hair long and hang out with babes, rather than deal with a shrill harpy of a wife and kids he doesn’t know. Isn’t that the Dominion Dream?

  “Warrants in any systems?” Valentinian pressed, hoping to find a lever on the man. Anything. “Prior convictions or powerful enemies I should know about?”

  “No warrants,” the man’s shoulders came down and back. “No convictions. No enemies I know about, but I’m sure there are people out there looking to do me wrong for something I’ve forgotten about by now.”

  Valentinian was about to ask for paperwork he could use to look the man up, when a small commotion at the door distracted him.

  The pictures did not do the woman justice. Any of them.

  Tall and elegantly thin, she looked like she had been built out of anger and barbed wire and covered over with expensive beauty cream and mascara.

  Slightly-oversized chest was mushed up in a royal blue top a little too tight, but he doubted that was an oversight on her part. Focused the eyes at the center of her body rather than her face. Tight waist below that just emphasized amazing hips as well.

  She spotted him and started to cross the bar, clacking on high heels as most of the eyes in the place followed her. Like you could miss the waves of frustrated anger radiating off the woman like a short-range sensor probe.

  Lianearia Cleray. The woman in charge of Solaria Femina.

  Valentinian had looked her up and gone pretty damned deep when the first contract request came through. She had been with that very first batch of girls, when some music mogul put together a girl-band dance troupe, nearly twenty years ago. The list of ex-members who had been chewed up and spit out since then was amazingly long, but few ever lasted until they were even twenty-two.

  Somehow, this woman had clawed her way back in years later, on the business side of things, until she was running it now, too old to be part of the in-crowd, at all of thirty-six, if the bio wasn’t lying about her age.

  Up close, lines and shadows out of place suggested some amazingly-expensive work on her face and neck, the parts not covered by the blue bodice and matching skirt.

  Valentinian guessed her hair was naturally a mousy b
rown, based on her eyebrows, but the rest of her mane was a lush strawberry-blond that came down to her shoulders and framed her beauty.

  She could stop traffic with that body on any planet or station he’d ever visited.

  “There you are,” she snapped as she came to a halt beside the tall stranger, her eyes locked on Valentinian.

  The woman registered the giant next to her with a look of such calculated disdain that Valentinian was pretty sure he’d be rich, if he could figure out how to bottle and sell it on the black market.

  “Go away,” she commanded the giant in a shrill, waspy voice.

  For the briefest moment, Valentinian saw a rage of immense depth appear in the giant’s bronze eyes. Volcanic, in every sense of the word. Trouble.

  The guy surprised him by silently nodding to Valentinian and bowing slightly to Madame Cleray. He withdrew to the bar, and Valentinian lost track of him as the woman stormed his booth and whistled loudly for a waitress.

  “Cheval,” she demanded.

  Valentinian hoped that they didn’t put the single most expensive brandy in the bar on his tab. That was the sort of thing that killed profit margins, and he didn’t even know if he had a deal with the woman yet.

  “Is your ship ready to load?” she demanded as the waitress left.

  Gods, the woman was gorgeous. And that smell. Being this close just made it all the more obvious. That scent of something sharp and sweet and sexy emanated from her like chemical warfare agents. His brain noted that it was almost pheromonic in nature, and not just intense.

  Not a woman who let any possible edge elude her.

  He had wondered why the music industry hadn’t given her a second career, after Solaria Femina was done with her, but those girls were supposed to be bubbleheaded bimbos who were interchangeable. Not sharks. Nothing like Cleary.

  “It is,” Valentinian answered simply.

  “Good,” she snapped.

  The bodice apparently had a pocket across the front, almost like a kangaroo’s pouch. She reached a hand inside and pulled out a thin sheet of plas-paper and slid it across the table to him.