Sacred Planet: Book One of the Dominion Series

by Austin Rogers

  Strange had been his pilot for six years, since the day he bought the old junker—when he hit on her in the bar despite her insistence that she wasn’t attracted to men, then found out she was a pilot and spent the next half hour trying to convince her he wasn’t a male chauvinist. It was a debate that continued to the present, one he often felt like he was losing.

  Davin couldn’t get a better pilot than Strange. Even if he could, he wouldn’t want anyone else.

  “I’m not gonna choose her over you guys,” Davin said.

  Strange gave him a look. “The hell?”

  “I’m just saying. In case you were worried.”

  “I wasn’t,” she said. “I’m worried about her. She seems nice. But . . . you know . . .” She paused for a long time. “Gotta do what you gotta do.”

  Davin nodded solemnly. “Yeah. Gotta do what you gotta do.”

  The Executive

  Chapter Eighteen

  Orion Arm, on the planet Agora . . .

  Emma leaned back and unbuttoned the top of her suit vest.

  The numbers on the conference table screen were good. Damn good. But the digital model of the ship rotating on the screen beside the numbers tied her stomach in knots. Mainly the torpedo ports. Also, the empty slots along the hull, obviously meant for turrets. And the expanded hangar bay bothered her as well. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what these ships were going to be used for. With a little make-ready work, these would serve as fine gunships.

  But that offer . . . hot damn, that offer!

  The Carinian gentlemen, dressed to the nines in black suits and black ties like bouncers at a fancy nightclub, sat quietly across the table. The most senior among them, polished and calm with facial features of indeterminate race, rested his interlocked hands on the conference table as Norman Fritz and Patricia Kobold examined the proposal on the table screen. Emma didn’t take notes, just tapped her trimmed fingernails on the wooden rim of the table and studied the Carinians.

  Emma Scarlet, CEO of Halcyon Aerospace Systems, couldn’t turn down a meeting with representatives of the Carinian government, if for no other reason than curiosity. Now she was obliged to take them seriously. She wished she’d rejected their offer to meet outright.

  Fritz, the chief financial officer, almost gaped at the proposal, tapping notes on his tablet without taking his eyes off the table screen. Patty, head of operations, synced her own tablet with the conference table and brought up the schematics of the proposed ship.

  Mayson Andel, the senior member of the Carinian Ministry of Arms, latched onto Emma’s gaze. He wore a slight smile. “Do you have any questions, Miss Scarlet?”

  Emma tapped her fingernails against the table a moment longer, then took in a breath. “What will be the purpose of these ships? And why so many?”

  Andel’s smile tightened. “I’m sorry. We can’t give specific information.”

  “How about general information?”

  Andel allowed himself to look amused for a brief moment. “They’re going to be used by the Carinian government, and Carina is very big. Therefore, we need a number of ships commensurate to our size.”

  “And Carinian manufacturers can’t handle this project . . . why?”

  Emma knew she wouldn’t get a straight answer, but she couldn’t help herself. The answer was obvious. If the Carinian government was coming to Halcyon for their production needs, that had to mean their Carinian manufacturers were maxed out. And their manufacturers would only be maxed out for two possible reasons: the government was launching a new colonizing effort for which they needed colony ships, or Carina was preparing for war. The ship design indicated it was not the former.

  “Oh, they could,” Andel replied in a slightly higher pitch. “But we’ve heard very good things about Halcyon’s products. We’re hoping this contract will be the first of many.” His relaxed smile returned.

  Emma glanced at the decorative screens lining the walls, showing enhanced images of Halcyon-produced vessels in orbit around various Orionite worlds or in front of an orbital shipyard. Beautiful ships of all shapes and sizes. Freighters, cruisers, clippers, yachts. But no warships.

  “You do know we’re not an arms manufacturer,” Emma said.

  Andel recoiled, as if shocked she would bring that up. “Of course. We aren’t interested in entering a military-industrial type relationship.”

  “Then you can guarantee these ships will be used for strictly peaceful purposes?”

  One of the other Carinian gentlemen leaned over and whispered something to Andel. It made Emma wonder which of them was really in charge.

  Andel straightened and cleared his throat. “Since we aren’t allowed to divulge any classified information, we cannot guarantee that.”

  The stiff, formal statement would make whatever lawyer or team of lawyers who crafted it proud. Maybe Andel himself was a lawyer. Maybe the other two were lawyers. In any case, Emma felt more tense than she did before.

  Patty looked up from her tablet. “What kind of timetable are we looking at?”

  “As soon as possible,” Andel replied, seemingly happy to address someone besides Emma. “We were hoping you could provide a preliminary estimate.”

  Patty rubbed the back of her hand and stared at the ceiling, calculating. “Well, don’t quote me on it, but if we freed up some shipyards next month—”

  Emma raised a hand to stop her. “Patty.”

  Patty stopped and, noticing the look on Emma’s face, closed her mouth tight. Fritz, who had been at Halcyon far longer than Patty, knew better than to speak.

  “We’re going to need some time to come up with estimates,” Emma said and stood.

  Fritz and Patty stood as well. The Carinians followed suit. Emma forced a smile. She had a good fake smile.

  “Been a pleasure, gentlemen. We’ll give you a ping when we have something for you.”

  Emma extended her hand. Andel clasped it.

  “Shall we draw up a contract?” he asked.

  “We’ll handle that,” Emma said, “if we come to an agreement. It’ll make arbitration easier.”

  “Arbitration?”

  “We have a close partnership with our arbitration company,” Emma clarified. “We don’t do any contract enforcement outside Orion.”

  Andel smiled. “With all due respect, Miss Scarlet, we are the Carinian government. We do our own contract enforcement.”

  “You came to us, not the other way around. If we come to an agreement, it’ll have to be on our terms.” Emma gave a curt smile and let go of Andel’s hand.

  After a short pause, Andel nodded. “Alright. Let’s meet again tomorrow afternoon. Two o’clock work?”

  Emma exchanged a glance with Patty, who gave a slight shrug. One day seemed a rather short time to analyze the massive proposal, but Andel seemed serious.

  “We’ll see you then,” Emma said. Andel had conceded something to her. She would concede this to him. Nevertheless, the moment she said it, she realized the magnitude of the concession. The deadline became a huge, imminent burden.

  * * *

  Emma planted a hand against the wall and gazed out the wide window of her corner office. High-rises of glass and steel ascended into the low, misty clouds and glistened in the sunlight, each building a unique design. No two buildings the same. Some curled upwards like flower buds before bloom, some reached sharp points at their peak, some bore large alcoves for airship landing pads, one was shaped like a thick double helix. Each of them bore garish signs at the top displaying the name of the building and some of the big-name companies and brands that operated out of it. Only a few, like the nearby Cornerstone Tower, housed only one tenant.

  The Cornerstone Jurisdiction building, a few hundred meters away, rose a few dozen floors above eye level. It featured an echelon of garden platforms atop escalating offshoots of the skyscraper. The highest garden sat at the ninetieth floor, nine floors below Emma’s office. Sometimes she people-watched while she thought. Nobody was doing an
ything interesting at the time—only a few suits with cellular headsets pacing around by the entrance, gesticulating.

  Far below, in the space between the Cornerstone building and their own, traffic and tourists shuffled through the bright lights of Oasis Square, where thousands of screens, vendorbots, street performers, and promodrones all competed for attention. From high above, the people looked like masses of colorful ants. Each flashing billboard could fit cleanly behind Emma’s thumb.

  “Does this mean they’re preparing for war?” Fritz asked from behind Emma, seated in a chair in front of her desk. His voice was soft and levelheaded as usual. “Maybe this is just a deterrent.”

  Emma ignored the question, though she knew it was meant for her. Patty answered instead, theorizing about possibilities. Emma didn’t really listen. Fritz hadn’t been fishing for possibilities. He was the analyst. He wanted hard facts, of which there were currently too few.

  In any case, Emma recognized the real issue in effect here. The Carinians were no desperate fools. She could see that from the moment they sat down at the conference table. Carina didn’t just need Halcyon. They had come to recruit Halcyon. If Halcyon contracted with Carina, the VN would have skin in the game.

  Was Carina trying to make inroads into the Voluntarist Network elsewhere as well? The thought startled her, opened up all kinds of possibilities.

  “We need to find out if they’re trying to contract with other companies,” Emma said, halting the other conversation.

  “They haven’t yet,” Fritz replied. “First thing after you told me these guys were coming to Agora, I had my lead analyst do some digging.” He shook his silver-haired head. “Just us.”

  “So far,” Emma added.

  Patty rubbed her hand and frowned. “What does it matter if Carina contracts with other Orionite companies? They’ve done it before.”

  Emma closed her eyes. Her young chief of operations had a thick skull about almost everything outside of mass spacecraft production. “Because it’s going to their military. If Carina gets in a war and we’re a supplier of their gunships, then we become a target.”

  Patty’s face registered understanding, then she relaxed and sat back. She returned to a frown. “Then why don’t we just turn them down? Say we can’t do it? I mean, sure, the numbers are good. They’re overpaying on practically everything—all the materials, the labor, the overhead—”

  “The numbers aren’t just good,” Emma said, annoyed. “They’re fucking amazing. They’re paying the GDP of a small planet for less than a hundred ships.”

  Patty held her ground. “So? Our shipyards are already operating at full cap. We’re growing every quarter. We can hardly keep up with the smaller orders. I mean, I’m not in my office seventy hours a week because I like the view.”

  Fritz, who had been sitting with his legs crossed, waiting patiently for Patty to stop asking stupid questions, cut in. “We’re a publicly traded company.”

  “I know,” Patty replied. “But like I said, we’re growing every quarter. We’re down to, what, below forty percent debt? We don’t need this.”

  “Shareholders won’t see it that way,” Fritz said matter-of-factly, not taking his folded hands off his knee.

  Patty recoiled as if he had suggested the sun wouldn’t rise the next morning. “Oh, come on.”

  “He’s right, Patty,” Emma said, stepping away from the window and dropping into her desk chair. “Carinians submitted an official proposal. It’s in our system.”

  Fritz nodded. “Which means if we reject their proposal outright, the singular topic at the next shareholders’ meeting will be, ‘Why the hell didn’t you make a deal with the Carinians?’”

  Patty shrugged. “Explain it to them then. They’ll understand our position.”

  “Not all of them,” Fritz said. “Forty-six percent of Halcyon is owned by Carinian-based individuals or funds.”

  “Who gives a rat’s ass what they want?” Patty objected.

  “They could sue us for negligence,” Fritz replied.

  “Oh.” Patty sat back and processed that. It hit hard. She rubbed the back of her hand and stared at something on the ceiling. “How much stock do we have within the company?”

  “Eighteen percent.”

  There was a long silence, then Patty let out a heavy sigh. “Well, shit.”

  “Patty, you’re a valuable asset to Halcyon,” Emma said. “But you should really stick to operations.”

  The young COO threw up her hands and looked away, disengaging from them.

  “Fritz, is there any way we can appeal to the nature of the spacecraft?” Emma asked. “Maybe give us a rational basis to reject the proposal?”

  Fritz shrugged and shook his head hesitantly. “We could take it to legal, but I doubt it. They’re gonna say we don’t have anything solid.”

  “Even though the ships are clearly not meant for peaceful purposes?”

  “Cornerstone won’t be able to determine that,” Fritz said. “And the Carinians will deny it.”

  Emma pursed her lips and rocked her head back against the chair. The room fell silent for a long time as each sat in focused thought. Emma knew Fritz was right. Cornerstone Jurisdiction, their longtime arbitration company, was by far the biggest in Orion. They followed their legal system with machine-like precision and crystalline transparency. For a suit this high-profile, Halcyon wouldn’t be able to sway their decision. Too much money on both sides. Too much public attention. It would attract all kinds of media. Every news conglomerate on Agora—hell, in Orion—would be watching like hawks. Cornerstone wouldn’t do anything that hinted at corruption.

  “Guess that leaves only one other option, huh?” Patty said.

  Fritz looked at her with a quizzical expression.

  Emma narrowed her eyes. “What other option?”

  Patty spread her hands. “The obvious one.”

  Emma felt her cheeks flush with impatience. “It’s not obvious to me.”

  A smile crept onto Patty’s face. “I know something you two don’t. How does it feel?”

  “For God’s sake!” Emma exclaimed. “Just tell us!”

  “Well . . .” Patty took in a long breath. “If we want to reject the Carinians’ proposal, we better have a higher bid. Somebody who’s willing to pay more for the use of our shipyards.”

  Emma almost laughed. The idea of someone—anyone—outbidding the Carinian government sounded ridiculous. But Fritz didn’t seem so amused. He crossed his arms and let his jaw go slack as he stared fixedly at his knees—a sure sign his brain was computing.

  “Pay more?” Emma repeated. “Do you realize how crazy that sounds?”

  “Crazier than getting sued by the shareholders?” Fritz countered. “Being in debt the rest of our lives?”

  Emma glanced between Fritz and Patty, neither of whom seemed the least bit humored. They were serious. And they were right. A higher bid was their only viable alternative. Emma sank back into her leather chair and let out a ragged sigh.

  “Who do we call?”

  The Minister of Arms

  Chapter Nineteen

  Carina Arm, on the planet Baha’runa . . .

  Deep in the Izowood forest, nestled amidst giant tan stalks and tangled masses of kudzu leaves, sat an ancient shrine. One of the first built by the early settlers, refurbished by devout Abramists hundreds of years prior. Its faded, white limestone dome poked above the surrounding overgrowth of vines and bioluminescent mushrooms glowing in the shade like emeralds. At the dome’s peak, an oculus pointed heavenward, allowing a beam of light to pour in and illuminate the vast, pentagonal chamber. A continuous mosaic of age-worn tiles stretched across each of the five interior walls, exhibiting the story of God’s prophets.

  On one wall, panels showed Abraham lifting the blade to strike Isaac, the Son of Promise, on an altar of sticks, over which an angel hung, calling out God’s mercy. On another panel, Abraham gazed upon the twin cities of Sodom and Gomorrah as God’s fiery judgeme
nt rained down. A last panel portrayed him as an old man, the father of great nations, surrounded by children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.

  On the next wall, a panel displayed humble Moses standing before the heathen Pharaoh as ten plagues wreaked desolation upon Egypt. On the next, Jesus the Prophet-Messiah stood on a hill preaching to the masses with a wooden cross looming behind him. The next showed Mohammed outside the once-heathen city of Mecca, grasping a sword in one hand and the Qur’an in the other. The last wall portrayed Baha’u’llah in the darkness of Sìyàh-Chàl, overwhelmed by the light of God’s maiden messenger, come to inform him of his mission.

  Muddled, greenish light filtered in from clerestory windows, illuminating the hundreds of believers sitting in the ring of space between two concentric rows of marble columns. At the center, bathed in a cone of flaxen light from the oculus, a venerable man in white robes stood on a dais beside a stone altar, his eyes sweeping over the quiet congregation. Zekiel Valaxis, the Abramist vicar, placed a hand on the stone altar, on which a single Izowood knife rested. He lifted his old eyes heavenward and led them in the Prayer of Supplication.

  “God of Abraham, of Isaac, and Ishmael,” he enunciated in rhythmic cadence. “We testify to your truth and your justice.”

  The congregation replied in unison: “God is mighty. God is great. All of creation is His.” The chamber echoed with the voices of the faithful.

  “God of all ages and all people,” the vicar intoned. “Have mercy on us, creatures of stardust.”

  Again, the congregation proclaimed together: “God is mighty. God is great. All of creation is His.”

  “God of the everlasting covenant, teach us, guide us, empower us.”

  The congregation replied one last time: “That we may be children of the promise.”

  After a silent moment, Valaxis let his eyes drop to the hundreds of faces surrounding him, watching him. His wrinkled, gray eyes were hard and stern. “Why do we recite that prayer again and again?” His voice resounded in the ancient chamber of stone and tile. “Abramists have prayed that prayer for as long as our faith has existed. It is the keystone of our liturgy. Why?”