Dominion Rising: 23 Brand New Novels from Top Fantasy and Science Fiction Authors

by Gwynn White

  He rested his cheek on the top of her head, the mask making the movement a little awkward. “I didn’t know if you made it.”

  Keva took a step back. “Are they still jamming the signal?”

  “I don’t know, honestly. But if you’re all business then I guess you’re okay.” He held her arms for a long moment. “Besides, we’ve been a little busy.”

  “Us, too.”

  He glanced at Dottie, his dark eyes crinkling in what might have been a smile. “Glad to see you’re still with us, Princess.”

  Dottie didn’t reply.

  “Sparrow.” Hale’s voice lit with surprise as he released Keva and wrapped her in a hug too. “You made it.”

  “I did,” she said, her voice muffled by his shoulder.

  “Hate to break up the reunion,” Keva said, wishing she could just remove her mask. She could. But then her body would be fighting the toxins in the air, and she needed to be at peak fighting strength for when they made it to Heliac Nine. “But Wilmur has thirty-eight more of those bombs.”

  Hale disengaged from Sparrow. “No.”

  “Yes.”

  “Where are they?”

  “Heliac Nine.”

  He paused, his chest still for a moment. “Shit.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Plan?”

  “ARO has Wilmur stalled for the moment. He took out the propulsion systems and slip drive.”

  “I want to steal his slip drive.”

  “I’m sure everyone does.”

  “If I get my hands on his ship, that is exactly what I’m going to do.”

  Nice to know, but unhelpful. “ARO’s trying to hack into Wilmur’s system to get the location for Heliac Nine.”

  “That would be something to have.” Hale glanced around, though, for what purpose, Keva didn’t know. “A lot of people have been searching for that base.”

  And it was the one place in the universe Keva didn’t want to go. “When we have that location, we’re heading out. We can sneak on, destroy any trace of Batch D-65 or research on the compound, and blow the base all the way back to Earth in teeny tiny pieces.”

  Sparrow turned to her and frowned. “I wasn’t aware of that part of the plan.”

  Dottie’s brow furrowed as she looked at Sparrow. “I thought that was self-evident. If we do not destroy everything related to Batch D-65, he will launch all thirty-eight of them on other dissident settlements. If we do not destroy the base, he will have the ability to simply create more.”

  Sparrow held out her hand, palm up, toward Dottie. She tipped her head at Keva as if asking where that spit-fire had come from.

  “If you can get me onto the base, I will locate the security system and attempt to initiate a self-destruct sequence.”

  Keva narrowed her eyes at Dottie but chose to say nothing. If Dottie could do that, it would be very helpful, and so far, her technical skills made Keva think she probably could. She just hoped that Dottie wasn’t getting herself into a situation she might not be able to handle because Keva had pushed her into it.

  Because… Keva had been pushing.

  “That’s all well and good,” Hale said, “but how do we get past the damn military?” He pointed to the sky. “They’re shooting us down like we’re skeet practice.”

  “We leave on the darkside of the moon.”

  The dark side simply referred to the side of the moon Terra HUMP Joy never saw. The craters were larger and deeper. The mountain range they stood on was actually a crater rim.

  “And they’re going to allow that?”

  Keva shrugged. She didn’t know, but it was the best idea she had.

  He looked around hands on hips, then let out a heavy breath and nodded. “Let me go talk to a few folks and finish unloading people from my ship.”

  “Mine is faster.”

  “That it is,” he said over his shoulder as he walked away. “But you disabled his speed, and my ship’s got cannons.”

  Something they might need if they were taking on Heliac Nine. Suddenly, Hale Reeve looked mighty attractive indeed.

  29

  Keva sent Dottie to the Tencendor to have Reach look at her wrist. He doubled as the medic when he wasn’t on mercenary duty while she settled back in on the Scarlet Harpy. Most of the ships had unloaded survivors onto the flat plain. People from local settlements Keva didn’t have a name for came and started carting the injured away.

  Red Sky wasn’t the only settlement on Bittermoon, but it was the largest and most densely populated due to the sky elevator. The surface of Bittermoon was littered with mining settlements, some only as large as a single-family. Keva didn’t have to spend any real time with the HUMPers to know mining was a hard life, but it awarded people with the most freedom available to spacers and terrans.

  Freedom the Elite were attempting to squash.

  Who were the Syndicate? Where did they stand? With the Elite? With the Families? With the military? The spacers, terrans, pushers? Who?

  Why had it taken this long for her to ask questions? She felt extremely stupid for trusting them so completely and never even asking what their real purpose was. She thought of herself as smart, cunning even. But here she’d failed herself, and maybe the mishmash of people and AIs she was for the first time considering friends.

  “Keva,” ILO said over the speakers of the bridge. “ARO has a location.”

  About damned time. “Where?”

  The navigation map lit up.

  Keva leaned forward to see it better. Just on the other side of HUMP Push Station Two. She could make it there with hard burn in three hours. “Call Hale.”

  It only took a moment before the vidscreen to her right lit up, and Hale’s face beamed down at her. He was covered in red dust, but the dark sheen of his skin glowed through it. “I feel like you and I just talked. Miss me?”

  “Stuff it, Hale. We have a location.”

  “Great.” The man didn’t even blink. “We have a plan to get through the military blockade.”

  Keva didn’t even know what to make of the military blockade. Regulations required at least some kind of justification to enforce a blockade like this on a terran settlement. Things like a viral outbreak or a bacterial insurgent, something that could be transmitted easily from one host to the next and required full quarantine. So, what were they doing? They wouldn’t risk peace just because the Elite asked them to. They prided themselves on being separate from the Elite.

  But what were the Elite willing to pay? Did the high-ranking military officers want something so bad they would risk this to help?

  “All you have to do,” Hale said, “is follow me.” The vidscreen went blank.

  “ILO, can you inform Sparrow we’re taking off?”

  “Of course,” ILO said over the speakers.

  Taking the yoke, Keva pulled Scarlet Harpy away from Bittermoon, following the Tencendor’s lead.

  Several other HUMP mining ships launched with them.

  Keva kept her eyes on the radar screen, which was practically useless until they broke atmo.

  “ILO.”

  The AI didn’t answer immediately, and when she did, her tone was filled with careful patience. “Yes, Keva?”

  “I—” How to say it? “I’m starting to wonder if we shouldn’t have just left Dottie on Terra Qar.”

  ILO sighed. “I think you’re having a difficult time figuring out why you saved her.”

  That was true.

  “Saving people is what you do. You couldn’t have left Dottie there after promising to rescue her, no matter how many times you told yourself you could.”

  It did. It made her feel better knowing she wasn’t ruled by her emotions.

  “But you chose to help them both. Because no matter how much you try to keep everyone one, that’s who you are.”

  Keva bit her lips but nodded.

  They broke atmo, and eight blips showed up on Keva’s radar. The military vessels should be in sight within moments.

  The
HUMP mining ships veered off at an intercept course.

  “Quite cunning, Captain Reeves,” Keva said to herself.

  “I know,” Hale said as the vidscreen blipped back on. He looked over his shoulder at her. “I am a quite cunning man.”

  She wanted to punch him in the face. Or maybe kiss it. She hadn’t decided yet.

  They pushed the ships at a hard burn, and the blips fell off the screen.

  Keva breathed a sigh of relief. Now, all they had to do was to find a way onto Heliac Nine, a heavily secured and guarded military research station. Easy.

  “What the hell is this?” Hale demanded.

  “What?” Then Keva saw. A blip appeared on radar. Keva turned on the rear camera. “It’s Vulture IV.”

  “That doesn’t sound ominous at all.”

  “They used slip to get behind us.” Though, behind them? Why not slip themselves in front of them and then blow them out of the sky?

  “How big are their guns?” Hale asked.

  “That’s a Class I Destroyer, Hale.”

  “So, my little cannon is pretty worthless?”

  “You might scratch the paint.” Realistically, his cannon could inflict a lot of damage, but they’d have to get damn close for that and close meant dead.

  “For whatever reason, it’s staying in the rear.”

  Hale was right. It was. Though, why?

  The ship trailed them, firing on occasion before backing off, letting Keva believe they may have gotten lucky for once and managed to slip away, but it always came back.

  “We’re being herded,” Keva said.

  Two smaller ships appeared on either side of them. Fighters launched directly from Vulture IV. They stayed in the Tencendor’s wake, impossible to shoot and able to maneuver faster than Hale’s hauler.

  A warning blast that could have easily ignited the ship’s engine if they had been trying to destroy them shook the hold. Domino swore from the cargo hold as a clatter of materials fell and shot around the room.

  “Stekil, get that shit lashed down!”

  Every time Hale tried to break away from the military ships the shots got more and more deadly. “I can’t shake them.”

  “I know,” Keva said, her eyes on the vidscreen tracking their escorts.

  “We’re going to have to go wherever they’re taking us unless we want to get blown into the Black before we even have a chance to fight.”

  “I can knock out the little ones on our sides.”

  “Not both before Vulture IV fires. No way, and I can’t maneuver away from them fast enough to shake the trail. Even if we did take both fighters down, there’s no way I’m gonna run as hot as a slip drive ship.”

  Keva frowned and dug her nails into her thighs. She needed to fight.

  “Shit!” Hale slammed both fists against the navdash, causing it to light up like a meteor shower. “Shit!”

  Soon, a large moon drifted first onto their radar, and then into view.

  “What the hell is that?” Hale asked.

  Keva knew exactly what it was, though she’d never seen it before. “That’s Heliac Nine.”

  “That’s not a station, Keva. It’s massive.”

  Something about this didn’t feel right. “Why didn’t they jam our signal even though we were obviously talking to one another? This isn’t the location from Wilmur’s system unless ARO screwed us.”

  “I don’t think he did,” ILO said, grudgingly coming to his defense. “The information he gathered seems legitimate.”

  Hale looked into the camera. “This is a trap.”

  Keva continued to watch the station grow larger in the plasteel window panes. “It is a trap.”

  “Okay.” He popped his neck. “Is there any way to back out now?”

  “What do you think our chances of getting our hands-on Batch D-65 are?”

  “Zero if we run.”

  The station’s weapons systems didn’t come online as they approached. A wide bay door opened and autopilot was initiated as both birds landed.

  Keva met Sparrow in the cargo hold.

  “Keva?” ILO asked.

  “I have no idea.”

  “Be careful.”

  Just knowing she had a friend who cared helped the gnawing feeling in the pit of her stomach. She wanted to return for ILO, help her, watch her grow. She wanted to come back for Dottie, to see what kind of woman she’d eventually become.

  She wanted to return to Hale and see what might be between them if there might be something real. If such a thing even existed.

  Sparrow stared out the cargo door, one hand on her pistol’s grip. “This seems hinky.”

  “That’s what we’re all saying.”

  “Keva,” ARO called from the shuttle still taking up most of the cargo bay.

  “Yes, ARO?” Though, Keva didn’t want to hear what the AI had to say. “What do you need?”

  The door opened, and a mechanical hand extended with the puck she had used to take him with her to the beach on Terra Qar. “Take this with you.”

  She stared at it but didn’t move to pick it up.

  “Just in case. Two AIs are better than one.”

  If ILO was a lesser person—

  “I heard that, ARO.”

  “I didn’t mean anything negative by it,” ARO said. “I just want to offer my assistance, to help in any way I can. You helped me. You got me off that planet, and for that I am grateful. Let me help.”

  Keva didn’t have time for this. She grabbed the disc from the mechanical hand and stashed it in her pocket. “Don’t make me regret this.”

  “Of course not,” his voice said from the shuttle and from Keva’s pocket.

  “That’s not going to get awkward at all,” Sparrow said under her breath.

  Together, Keva and Sparrow stepped down the ramp.

  Hale, Domino, Dottie, and Reach joined them, looking around.

  “Stekil?” Keva asked.

  “Manning the ship, this isn’t exactly his scene.”

  There were no other ships in the large bay. No people, no robots or equipment.

  The dock door closed.

  Hale narrowed one eye at it. “I could probably blow it open.”

  Dottie raised a blue-bandaged hand. “I could open it with the intense brilliance of my mind.”

  “Don’t get ahead of yourself,” Keva said, absently. “No guards.”

  “Can’t be good,” Hale said, bringing himself into the moment. He returned his pistol to his holster and let his rifle fall against him on the end of its sling. “I don’t like it. Do we know where we’re going?”

  “I am picking up a reading,” ILO said over Keva’s communication pin. They’d decided that if ILO needed to talk to the team, it might be best if the communication wasn’t directly in Keva’s ear.

  “Well, that’s one good thing for us,” Hale said with a smile.

  Reach flattened his lips.

  Domino sighed.

  “I just need to know where to go,” Dottie said. “The sooner I can find a console to dig into their security system, the better this will go for everyone.”

  Keva nodded curtly. “Domino, you’re with Dottie. Find an interface or something and keep her safe. When she’s completed her task, return to the ship.”

  “Roger,” Domino said with a two-finger salute. “And if you two aren’t back within two hours, I have orders to leave.”

  “Who’s issuing orders around here?” Hale asked, his expression cross.

  “I am,” Keva said.

  “You are not the captain of my ship.”

  “No. I am not.”

  “But,” Domino said, gesturing for Dottie to follow, “I’m still going to follow it. It’s the sanest command anyone’s given yet.”

  Following ILO’s directions, Keva led the rest of them out of the bay and into a wide, long room filled with metal tables and empty canisters.

  Sparrow didn’t even take notice. She kept her gaze forward and sighted down her pistol. Like K
eva she’d seen rooms like this before, even been strapped down to a table just like that a time or two. Engineered humans were no stranger to the depravity of scientists.

  Reach glanced around and shook his head.

  The next door led them into a room bigger than the bay had been. Inside of this resided tech that resembled tall robots, but with plenty of space for a person to stand inside them. There were hundreds of them, and they dwarfed all of them in height and girth. Keva could stand on top of Hale’s shoulders and only just barely peek inside one of the robots’ plasteel domes. They were loaded with weapons of varying sorts, each model slightly different.

  They passed through into another room filled with rows of cages stacked one on top of the next, so the space was filled from floor to ceiling. Each cage was shorter than a man standing at full height but large enough for someone Keva’s size. They each had one cot and a small stool. Not meant for animals then, at least not wild ones. No this was a storage space for human experiments.

  The next room was lined with beds.

  With people on them.

  If they could be described as people. They didn’t even appear to be engineered humans like Keva or Sparrow, instead what laid before them, was a display of the worst kind of cruelty.

  The man closest to the door had an extra arm growing from the top of his head. It lay limply above him, crooked at the elbow, one finger twitching in time with the left side of the man’s otherwise slack face.

  The woman next to him had skin a sickly green shade with red splotches all over her exposed skin. She didn’t even have a sheet to cover the raw wounds all over her body and oozing pale, creamy pus.

  In front of them, a woman sat up in her bed, leaning against the headboard with a lopsided smile. Her gown hung open down the front and revealed one giant breast in the center of her chest. The skin was stretched thin and appeared as if someone had attempted to fill it like a floatation device.

  What was the point of these experiments? What had they been trying to manufacture with consequences like this?

  Keva followed Hale and Sparrow down the pathway through the brightly lit room.

  “What happened to them?” Reach asked.