Outermost

by Blaze Ward

  Outermost

  Shadow of the Dominion: Book 3

  Blaze Ward

  Knotted Road Press

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Read More!

  About the Author

  Also by Blaze Ward

  About Knotted Road Press

  1

  Glaxu

  Well, that sucked. Nothing could be done to fix this ship, either. At least not with the parts available on this stupid, forgotten planet, that was sure.

  Glaxu considered kicking something in frustration, but he’d either break whatever was his target, or his foot. And it would never do for him to be as lamed as his fightership. He let the profanities roll out of his beak as a distant second choice to keeping the rage inside his head.

  Not that he hadn’t brought this on himself. His ship was named Outermost for a reason. Always the widest ship on the combat wing of the formation, closest to the enemy. At least, back when he flew with the rest of his nest and they were the scourge of the spaceways.

  How many months had it actually been since he had even seen another Mondi warrior? Six? Eight?

  Glaxu closed the housing over the left-hand engine’s injector coils carefully and cursed some more. He’d been so close! Now he was stuck on this damned planet until someone came along that could fix his warp array. Good luck, when the stupid, hairless monkeys that dominated this sector could barely make a warpbubble in the first place, let alone something as sophisticated as a Southern Chain.

  The ones on this planet were even worse, such a weird collection of shapes and colors that somehow all got classified as human, regardless of everything else. Incompetents and barbarians, the lot of them. And the next human that called him a roadrunner to his beak was getting arteries ripped out with a dewclaw. He didn’t care if they were two or three times his size. Their balance was all wrong anyway, and they were practically harmless if they didn’t have a knife or a beam weapon in their hands when they started getting mouthy.

  How had those worthless shits managed to conquer or colonize most of known space with their eggs?

  Trick question, they had always been here, and the Mondi had only started to explore this section of the galaxy in the last eleven lifetimes. Just long enough to settle in, and get himself separated from his nest when his warpstream chain failed mid-flight, dropped him off the formation, and left him here.

  Rooters. Sentient bastards with their heads nevertheless stuck in the ground.

  Glaxu gave up and kicked his toolbox with an outer toe as he went by. Not enough to break anything, just skid it across the deck a little in frustration. He could head forward and maybe check the cockpit of Outermost, but he already had his personal radio programmed to receive signals from the ship, if anybody capable of real technology actually happened along.

  Pink, blue, purple, or green humans notwithstanding.

  Grumbling, he gripped the wooden deck with all eight toes for a moment and then pivoted aft. Through the rear airlock and down the ramp to the sand where he had sat Outermost down when it was clear he was lost.

  Before he realized he was also trapped on this planet with several tribes of xenocidal monkeys still amazed by indoor plumbing, to say nothing of electricity. Okay, maybe that last one wasn’t fair. Those killers were right on the bleeding edge of sophistication when it came to modern weaponry.

  It was only their social organization that left much to be desired. At least they had left him alone after he had killed three of them in personal duels. Idiots thought bulk made them impressive, fighting someone half their size, a tenth their weight, and twice their brains. With built-in dewclaws.

  So he had ended up moving Outermost into the deep desert to try and fix the ship. At least it reminded him of the home he wasn’t going to see anytime soon. And they even had several species of snakes native on this planet, so he’d never go hungry or lack for entertainment. Better, since the dumb snakes didn’t see him as a predator.

  Kinda like the stupidly-large humans.

  The sun was extremely hot, even for him. This place probably never should have been colonized, regardless of your need. Mondi as a species liked heat, whereas most of the human derivatives got even less capable after being out in it for a while.

  But they’d fought a huge war here at some point. The whole sector, and not just this planet. Something called the Urlan Empire had claimed most of what everyone called Wildspace now. Back when it was supposedly civilized.

  He’d also known enough Urlans in his time to put paid to that silliness as well. Those people were only polite when you had a gun on them, or a dewclaw resting on a throat.

  Glaxu looked up, but nothing had changed since yesterday in this remote valley where he had landed. He walked over to the chair he had unfolded, adjusted his squatting cloth, and dropped down into it to think. Somewhere on this planet were folks who could get him off of it. Or at least find the parts he needed to fix his ship. He could limp someplace more civilized at that point, and then find his way to…

  Where? He’d wanted to stay in this sector when the rest of the nest had voted to head for home instead. Or at least where there were a few Mondi. Didn’t have to be home. That might take years, but over yonder. Losing his warp bubble coils hadn’t improved his humor.

  Sounded no more appetizing now than it had then. He needed a new nest. Which would be a trick, when he might be the only Mondi left in this sector. Maybe this octant, depending on how fast everyone else moved, once they got their Southern Chain linked up and pushing.

  Crap.

  And he’d hunted out all the snakes dumb enough to live around here, at least until more moved in. Maybe he’d go hunting tomorrow for something to do.

  A beep broke his concentration.

  Damn it, now what’s broken?

  But it wasn’t another engine warning signal. None of those beeped politely. They were programmed to make obnoxious noises until you reset them or fixed whatever had gone wrong when you decided to push the damned envelope a little too far.

  Like usual.

  Glaxu looked around, craning his long neck until he realized that the sound was coming from one of the pockets on his bandolier. He stared at it kind of cross-eyed down his beak for a second, and then stuffed a hand into the pouch and pulled out the radio unit.

  Well, duh.

  He opened the channel, but whoever it was had stopped transmitting. Or passed over the horizon. But Praise The Gods, someone had come.

  Now he just needed to sweet talk these sentients out of some parts to fix his warp engine.

  Or steal them.

  2

  Valentinian

  “All hands, this is your illustrious and overly-awesome captain speaking,” Valentinian said as he opened an intercom line and let everyone hear his voice.

  Just ’cause, ya know? They’d all been behaving reasonably well, including Bayjy, who he figured would probably be the most stir-crazy at this point. Dave was quiet even at his loudest. Kyriaki was…

  She was still a cop.
He had a hard time getting past that point, even if she was as much a fugitive with a price on her head as he was. Maybe more, since she was also now a traitor to the Dominion’s Security Bureau. The White Hats.

  Dave was just the man who many suspected as having assassinated the previous Dominator, a new one having finally been crowned by now, even if they were so far from Cronus Prime that the news would be months getting here. Valentinian was merely the criminal scum who had helped the assassin escape from justice several times. But Kyriaki used to be a cop. The one chasing he and Dave.

  Before she saved their lives. Again. And pissed off Dave’s now-ex-wife, the representative of the Dominion Household itself, the woman sworn to chase them up to and through the gates of hell itself. And, according to Dave, she was the sort of woman who would do exactly that.

  Which left Bayjy. She was the most innocent one here, but that wouldn’t protect her if they did end up getting caught. Everyone would go under a good dose of truth serum, and none of them would ever come out the far side.

  Or worse, they might. On Cronus Prime.

  “Did you have news, or just wanted to make sure we were all awake?” Bayjy layered the sarcasm on like a puff pastry over the internal radio. She was good at that. “Some of us might have been napping.”

  “Oh, well far be it for me to interrupt that,” Valentinian replied. “But if you opened an appropriately-facing porthole, you might notice that we just dropped out of warp over Kryuome.”

  Checking his boards, she had been in her cabin up a deck, but he heard her racing across the steel deck and pounding down the stairs at a high rate of speed, getting closer like an avalanche. Fortunately, he had the rear hatch open as she came barreling into the rec space, one step ahead of both Dave and Kyriaki, interestingly enough.

  “How is this possible?” Bayjy demanded breathlessly. “According to the sailing directions, we shouldn’t be here for at least four more days.”

  “If it would make you feel better, we could sit in orbit for a bit, and then land like a regular cargo transport,” Valentinian snarked at her.

  “Don’t you dare!” she said right back with a smile.

  Valentinian just grinned. From the surly and occasionally angry salvager he had first met, her irrepressibleness had finally taken hold again. This was probably more like her default setting, before her previous captain had screwed her out of a major payday and then abandoned her on Bohrne Station.

  Of course, that man, Butler Vidy-Wooders, captain of the salvage freighter Hard Bargain, had gotten his. Bayjy and Kyriaki had snuck aboard his ship and stolen all her gear back, plus the six other storage crates from crew Vidy-Wooders had abandoned, before turning the internal ship’s temperature up to forty-five degrees, and then breaking the controls.

  As well as spiking open his refrigerator and freezer so all his food spoiled.

  That had been the signature move. Bayjy was one of the Variant Humanities known as Pranai. Almost ten centimeters taller than his one hundred eight-five, with muscles in places Valentinian didn’t even have places. Bald, save for eyelashes and thin brows, plus almost no body hair at all. No body fat either under light purple skin that was somewhere darker than lavender, but not much.

  The Pranai had been genetically engineered by the Urlan millennia ago for work on ultra-hot planets. Bayjy’s idea of comfortable was at least forty degrees, sometimes warmer. Among the things she had stolen back had been her heatsuit, a powered body stocking, skin tight, that kept her at whatever temperature she preferred, when Valentinian liked to keep his ship, the Longshot Hypothesis, down around eighteen degrees to save on heating bills.

  When he had first met Bayjy, he hadn’t even been sure it had been a woman at the core of all those layers, sweaters, and sweatshirts. Today she was in simple, black pants that showed off her bottom running up and down stairs. On top, a white shirt sporting red, three-quarter-length sleeves, with a whiskey advertisement on the front, over those inner heatsuit sleeves down to her wrists. Around her neck, something maybe approximating a cravat, just so she didn’t have to wear a knit cap all that often.

  “Oh?” Valentinian smiled even larger at her. “So you’d like to head down to the planet and maybe enjoy the day a bit?”

  Behind her, he could see Dave and Kyriaki grinning as well. Bayjy was irrepressible, but she was so easy to tease.

  “Now, mister,” Bayjy demanded. “Gimme some sun.”

  “Coming up,” Valentinian said. “You swap with Dave so he can fly.”

  There was a moment of shuffling around as bodies moved like a chess board. The cockpit of Longshot Hypothesis had two seats and just enough room for maybe a third person to stand behind them. From the brief look of surprise on Dave’s face, over Bayjy’s shoulder, Valentinian guessed that she had rubbed herself against the taller man while sliding by, like a purring cat.

  She might have. Stir-crazy and all that.

  Nobody on this ship had fooled around, that he was aware. Dave had two kids Valentinian’s age, give or take. Mid-twenties, at least, although he hadn’t looked them up. Bayjy and Kyriaki were both closer to thirty, if he had to put a number down. Both in fantastic shape only heightened by the need to run up and down stairs on this ship all the time.

  While Bayjy was bald and purple, Kyriaki was a Standard Human with brown hair and blue eyes. He had considered it. Come close a few times, before circumstances or other crew had interrupted.

  He still wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. There was something there in her eyes, at least when she didn’t think anybody was looking. But he was the captain of this ship, and she was crew, at least for now.

  He really didn’t need all those troubles as well. If Bayjy was feeling frisky, let her drag Dave into a closet and snog some.

  “What’s ground control like?” Dave asked as he finally got settled.

  “Non-existent,” Valentinian replied. “Pinged the ground a few times, but nobody answered anywhere. That fits with what Stephaneria was able to track down about the planet. The war disrupted it and it’s never really recovered.”

  “How bad?” Dave turned and looked at him.

  “Spots of radiation here and there suggest someone used big nuclear weapons at some point in the distant past,” Valentinian shrugged. “Background radiation is higher than probably safe, if we were going to be here for a year or three. Not planning that, so we’ll be okay for now.”

  “And no planetary government?” Dave seemed aghast at the concept.

  But he had also spent twenty-five years leading the government of the Dominion. Law and order, plus a healthy dose of lunatic warrior monks intent on conquering the entire galaxy, given the chance.

  Was it any wonder the man had suffered a mid-life-crisis, faked his own death, and run away?

  “None,” Valentinian said. “We are out in Wildspace, big guy. Which reminds me.”

  He turned to look at the two women, both standing at the doorway and looking in expectantly.

  “Everyone will be armed from the moment we hit the ground here,” Valentinian ordered. “You will take it with you everywhere, including the bathroom and the shower. The law in places like this is what we bring, so don’t trust anyone local, even if they are wearing a badge. And shoot to kill if you have to. I will be swapping my shock pistol for a flamer, and I will be adding a shock rod to my gear. I suggest you do the same.”

  He liked the way Bayjy’s always-expressive eyes got really big. Kyriaki grimaced, but nodded. Dave just shrugged, but Valentinian wasn’t sure he’d ever met someone as lethally dangerous as Dave Hall. Especially when the man popped out his telescoping baton and wielded it like a sword.

  Death was probably jealous. Valentinian had seen Dave kill or cripple four men so fast that two of them died before they started falling over. And without using a cutting edge.

  “Dave, you land us,” Valentinian said. “Best you get the practice on a rough field. I’ve marked some coordinates that seem to be a small city, at le
ast from Stephaneria’s notes. It’s not that close to our final target, but close enough for now to scout the terrain.”

  “On it,” the big guy put his hands on the controls and began nudging the ship onto the right glide path.

  Valentinian studied the world below them as they headed in. Dry and brown for the most part. Wide and dangerous wastelands.

  Somewhere down there, on the southeastern portion of the hemisphere-spanning big continent, there was supposedly a ship. At least according to the treasure map Valentinian had memorized. The one he won in an honest, crooked poker game.

  Now he just had to go find it.

  3

  Athanasia

  She would chase them to the ends of the galaxy and beyond, if that was what it took to get her revenge. To see the man who now introduced himself as Dave Hall pay for everything he had done to her.

  She could never go back to what had been her palace on Cronus Prime. As Dowager, she might rate a good suite of rooms on Dominion Prime, away from the Household itself and the center of government, but never again would she be a source of power herself.

  Better to just never return to the Dominion at all.

  Athanasia suspected that the crew of this ship had been given explicit orders to that effect, the kind that might keep them away from home for years as well. Perhaps forever. Idly, she wondered if the captain of Dominion-427, the assault courier she had been given, had done something to anger the powers that be, the Solar Party Mandarins, back home.