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.
Chapter Sixteen
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. I
t 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.”
Chapter Seventeen
“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.”
Sierra’s heart sank, even in weightlessness. Her insides sagged in an unwillingness to function, to keep going. The universe never seemed so incredibly vast—home so endlessly far away—and at a time when her people needed her most. Carina needed someone credible to carry on the message of peace. Without Sierra, even as small and insignificant as she was, the racket of war drums and saber-rattling would deafen the people’s ears to any voice proclaiming galactic peace and brotherly love. The Abramist calls for war would get louder and more persuasive. She felt as if she might drown in her own hopelessness.
“Alright,” Davin said. “We gotta get out of this system before they realize we’re not on Chandra. Strange, think you could get us out without being seen?”
Sydney bit her lower lip and cracked her neck. “See what I can do.”
“Take us to Agora,” Davin said. “The scenic route. Couple extra nexus points in case they spot us.”
“Aye, Cap,” Sydney said and hurled herself back toward the cockpit.
“And Strange,” Davin said, halting his pilot at the entrance tube. “Send a ping to Jimmy Powers.”
She looked surprised. “That greasy used spaceship salesman?”
“Yeah, him,” Davin said with confidence. “Just do it.”
Sydney shrugged and pulled herself through the tube.
“Agora,” Sierra said, a little panicked. “The anarchist planet?”
Davin grinned. “They’re all anarchist in these parts, sister.”
* * *
Davin flicked his finger over the peeling sticker of the Voluntarist Network flag on the dashboard while he waited for the messenger program to load. The simple flag was split diagonally with yellow on top and black on bottom with a red “V” in the middle.
The VN’s loose association of planets—governed by naught but the invisible hand of enterprise—commanded as much loyalty from Davin as anything. No taxes, no laws, no slimy politicians, and no big dramas over who got to rule the world. Everything agreed upon by contract, handshake, or wink and nod—hence the “voluntarist” part.
Davin rather liked the whole duty-free system. Whenever a scrap company tried to slap on extra fees in place of a tax, Davin had the option to say, “What the hell? Biggie’s Recycled Metals doesn’t charge bullshit fees like this.” And next thing he knew, the fee would magically disappear. Yes, for a scavenger, the free market worked just fine.
The dashboard screen lit up in an image of Davin’s favorite spacecraft broker: wide and magnanimous smile with unnaturally white teeth, slicked-back hair plastered into a glossy whole, and eyes that glittered with flecks of go
ld.
“Davin de la Fossa!” Jimmy Powers’ smarmy voice blared through the speakers. “How are ya, my friend? Been a while. Got a ping that said you wanted to talk. What’s the latest with my favorite scavenger? You know you’re my go-to guy for scrap, right? Go-to guy. Best in the biz.” He laughed and flashed a wide grin to show off his set of luminescent chompers. “What can I do for ya? You finally decide to trade in that old trash bin for something new?”
The recording ended. Davin shook his head with a grin. Jimmy.
“Record vizchat.” He put on a joyous expression. “Hey-hey, you old bastard! Have you gotten tanner? You look tanner. Listen, man, I came across something out here on the trail. Something in a fancy, wrecked-up yacht. It’s big, really big, but it’s something of a, uh, sensitive nature. You might be able to help me find a buyer. Think we can meet in person soon? End. Send vizchat at next available spacebend gate.”
“Send vizchat pending,” a sultry, female computer voice replied.
“So that’s why you wanted to contact him,” Strange said from the pilot’s seat. “You think he can sell her?”
“Jimmy could sell snow to a polar bear,” Davin said, glancing up at the windshield as streaks of light zipped past every few seconds. One big, bright streak whizzed by, briefly lighting up the cockpit in radiant white. A nearby star. Happened all the time in warp travel, but it never stopped being wild. “Hopefully, he’ll be able to contact somebody in the Carinian government so we can get this girl back home.”
“And if he can’t?” Strange looked at him with somber eyes.
Davin took in a long breath, an uneasiness nagging at some part of his brain. He suppressed it. “Then we’ll go with the next available buyer.”
He felt a twinge of guilt. They both knew what that meant. There would be only one other buyer.
Strange propped her feet on the dashboard, stretching out her long legs, and stared straight forward, stone-faced. Davin studied the strange symbol on the front of her backwards cap: a pair of long, red socks. Nobody on the Fossa knew what it meant, though they all had their theories.
Sacred Planet: Book One of the Dominion Series Page 8
