Sacred Planet: Book One of the Dominion Series (23 page)

Radovan’s drones zigzagged and dodged with precision only attainable by computer-minds, rarely caught in the nets of spattered shuttle rounds. Even then, they recoiled from the hits and recovered quickly. Drop troops fired armor-piercing rounds, but the drones were fast and smart. Sharp aim wouldn’t be enough to take them down.

Kastor waited for one to get close and then unhooked and let himself drop away from the flyer in a tussle of sudden movement. Once he’d regained his sense of direction, he fired his boot thrusters to catch up with the speedy drone, jerking this way and that to avoid gunfire. The drone curved left, and he closed the gap, grabbing its knobby tail rudder and hauling himself onto the body. In seconds, he had his blazer out and back to full heat. He stabbed it into the middle of the machine, burning through mechanical guts, spraying a mist of hot sparks all around him. Kastor dragged his blazer across the drone as burning pinpricks splashed his face and melted his breather mask. It sputtered and lost power.

In one fast movement, Kastor swiped out the sword, leaped off the dead chunk of metal, and burned his thrusters in the opposite direction.

The canyon gap had transformed into a true dogfight: a flurry of shuttles and drones zipping in all directions, blasting each other apart. For every drone that fell, a handful of shuttles went down in flames. Commoners jumped out the back of a tattered craft as it nosedived into the river.

Kastor arched his back and curved upward, raising his blazer at a drone coming in fast. The blade tugged in his hand and made a short sizzling sound as it severed the drone’s wing.

Hendrik’s voice cut through the chaos, blaring from speakers in the neck of Kastor’s nanoflex suit. “Push forward, Kastor. Let the Upraadis distract the drones.”

“The drones’ll tear them apart!” Kastor replied.

“Radovan is our target,” Hendrik said. “The drones are a distraction. Ignore them.”

Kastor ground his teeth as he watched a pair of drones pour a relentless stream of bullets into a weaving shuttle, trying desperately to escape. The shuttle crashed and broke apart against the canyon wall, and the drones moved on to another target.

Beyond the dogfight, three flyers bejeweled with drop troops went on, chasing the superyachts as they approached another bend in the river. Kastor growled in his breather and adjusted course to follow his drop team.

Why did it matter that commoners would die? They knew what they were up against, yet they loaded up anyway. They were revolutionaries. Their comrades’ deaths would only invigorate their ranks.

Hendrik was right. A warrior targeted the most important objective first. Always.

Kastor pointed the hot blade of his blazer behind him as he surged forward, mashing down his toes, pushing faster. Probably a hundred and fifty kilometers an hour. Hundred-eighty. Two hundred. He couldn’t know the precise number without a helmet, but he felt it. Wind blasted against his face, whipped his hair. He remembered the feeling from the academy back on Tyrannus. Training had taught his feet how to control thrusters as naturally as it was to walk.

Upraadi noblemen in full armor manned machine guns mounted on three descending decks at the back of the superyacht. Other armored figures, armed with heavy rifles, waited behind cover on the echelon of decks. A few seconds after Kastor passed the flyers, the machine gunners opened fire. Other Upraadi noblemen fired semiauto rifles, blurring lines of air all around Kastor as he zigzagged. Nanoflex-piercing rounds—graphene-coated carbon nanofiber, so powerful they created a split-second vacuum in their trail.

A metallic
crack
rang from above, and a drop trooper’s body splashed into the water a few meters to Kastor’s right.

Kastor pulled his pistol and aimed unsteadily, focused more on dodging.

KAH. KAH.

One shot dinged the hull. The other went into an Upraadi nobleman’s shoulder piece, knocking him back but doing little harm. Kastor holstered his pistol. It could cut through normal armor, but nanoflex was another beast altogether.

The Upraadis’ machine gun fire punctured the flimsy wings of a flyer and caused the troopers to bail, relying on their boot thrusters instead.

Kastor swooped up from a meter above the wake, along the slanted white hull, and over the railing before kicking off his thrusters and landing hard. His mind overloaded as he tried to grasp the number of armored bodies surrounding him, eight black faceplates turning simultaneously. No, ten. Couldn’t think. Had to move.

His blazer slashed a smaller body, mid-back, creating a muffled, feminine yelp from inside the helmet. His blade twisted upward, sparked and sliced through another nobleman’s armor at the forearm. Blood sprayed through blackened flesh, half-cauterized by the blazer. Kastor rolled to evade gunfire that blasted through the yacht’s deck, wrapped his arm around a nobleman’s helmet, and tugged back, making way for his blazer at the neck, cutting and burning to the spine.

The suddenly limp body became a convenient shield, shaking as a dozen rounds penetrated nanoflex and lodged into muscle or bone. Kastor threw the heavy arrangement of metal and meat onto the nearest nobleman, distracting long enough to skewer his new prey. His blazer flashed out with a spume of burnt blood, then cut through the barrel of a rifle and into a kneecap, wedging between bone. Kastor rolled in front of another stack of armor and leaned to avoid a deafening shot just over his shoulder—a shot that went into the waist of an Upraadi instead of him. The Upraadi doubled over, and Kastor claimed a new rifle, firing without aiming. His shots weren’t pretty, but they landed. Bullets penetrated nanoflex, ripped through flesh, knocked noblewomen and noblemen alike onto their asses. The rifle’s kick punished Kastor’s hipbone as he fired, dodged, fired, dodged, methodically taking down Upraadi warriors, until—

A hot punch in the arm spun him around and dropped him to his knees, disoriented. The hit stripped his armor at the elbow and numbed his entire arm. He could barely move his fingers.

A familiar, blond-haired figure stepped out of a nearby hatch holding an anti-nanoflex rifle and bearing a wide grin. A blond girl followed after him, eyes slit like a cat’s. Kastor’s old Swan comrades. A fit of rage swelled in his chest. He grunted and tried to lift his rifle one-handed. Guarin fired into the body of the gun, shredding it.

Kastor watched the two black holes at the ends of their rifles as the Swans approached. Guarin crouched, keeping his weapon aimed at Kastor’s forehead. Satisfaction had nowhere to hide on his face. It tugged at his lips and brightened his eyes like a feral snake coiling around its dinner.

“Radovan was right,” Guarin said. “You chose the wrong side.”

“If mutiny is the right way, I’m glad I did.”

Guarin’s smile twitched in amusement. “Says the new leader of the commoner rebellion.”

“How will you explain to Zantorian that you allowed his champion to die?”

“He’ll be too busy rejoicing that his original choice has ascended.” Guarin laughed, then let his joy fade.

The two warriors shared a moment of recognition, a tacit acknowledgement that the one was about to end the life of the other. Machine guns kept up their rhythmic thumping. Anti-nanoflex rifles kept up their shrill racket. Armored bodies fell from the deck above. Wounded Upraadis writhed. Shouts filled the air. But Kastor felt nothing, thought nothing. If anything, he wondered why he felt so empty, as if the bullet would have nothing to pass through as soon as it pierced his skin. He wondered if Pollaena had felt that way before she died—before he killed her. Instantly, he knew this wasn’t how she’d felt. Pollaena had felt an infinity of emotion, thought a million thoughts in the moments before her death. Kastor had seen it.

Those, he realized, were the last few moments he had felt anything.

And then he knew why he felt nothing now. The heart inside him—whatever felt things, longed for things, found humor and joy in life—had died along with Pollaena.

That black hole at the tip of Guarin’s thick-barreled rifle, wielding the power of nonexistence deep inside, moved down to Kastor’s armored chest. The muzzle rested in the dip between his pectorals, rising and falling as he breathed.

Guarin scowled, eyes ablaze, embracing his chance to avenge.

“Goodbye, Son of Eagle.”

BANG.

Kastor heard the wet thump of a round ripping through flesh—but not his own. Guarin’s muzzle hadn’t flared. Nothing had penetrated Kastor’s nanoflex.

Time slowed; movements quickened. Guarin’s face registered panic. Kastor’s heart resurrected, pounding a thousand kilometers per hour. Guerlain coughed and choked out blood as she stumbled, gripping both hands around her neck, crimson seeping through her fingers. A sylphlike, ebony-haired girl in a pleather corselet stepped out the hatch door, aiming a long-barreled pistol at the Swan girl’s neck.

In that moment of Guarin’s hesitation—eyes flicking over his shoulder to investigate—Kastor’s instincts kicked in. He slapped away the thick barrel of Guarin’s rifle and rolled the opposite direction. The rifle went off with a bright flash and an ear-splitting
CRACK
, punching through the steel floor. A sharp, high-pitched ringing replaced all sound. Guarin refocused on Kastor and fired again.

The Royal Champion dipped his shoulder to dodge and drove himself into Guarin, picking him up and slamming him into the steel deck. The gun clattered out of reach. Guarin clenched his teeth, elbowed Kastor hard in the back, and kicked him away. The two warriors scrambled to their feet and squared up, fists out, close to their chests. Then, simultaneously, they spotted the ‘Gooner princess haul Guerlain to her knees and press the long-barreled pistol against her head.

Seraphina, wearing pleather from splayed collar to knee-high lace boots like a true frontier noblewoman, held Guerlain at the nape of her nanoflex and glared at Guarin. Guerlain degenerated fast, blood staining her hands, streaking from the corners of her lips, matting her blond locks. Fear grew in the Swan girl’s eyes as she struggled for air. The sight broke Guarin. His fists fell, and his face went pallid.

“Get off my ship, Swan,” Seraphina demanded, voice muffled from the ringing in Kastor’s ears.

Guarin stayed frozen in place. His eyes flicked to the anti-nanoflex rifle on the deck and then back to Seraphina. Kastor saw his move before he initiated it. Both warriors sprang for the weapon, slamming into each other, shoving, jerking, vying for control of it, before—

BANG
.

Guerlain’s body slumped into a lifeless pile on the steel floor, her blond head a gory mess.

A pause stretched between both warriors—a brief respite of shock and horror, seconds frozen in time, heartbeats marking the swelling recognition of how the world had just changed. Unspeakable pain swept across Guarin’s face. Warmth drained from his skin. Life fled his eyes. Then he let out a pained howl, straight from the lungs, louder than Kastor thought possible from a human being—loud enough to hammer his still-ringing eardrums.

Guarin head-butted Kastor against his cheekbone and wrenched away the rifle. Kastor staggered as stinging pain blossomed across his face. Guarin’s rifle rose, aimed at Seraphina, but her pistol was already trained on him.

BANG
.
CRACK
.

Seraphina’s weapon went off a fraction of a second before Guarin’s. The rifle clanked onto the deck as the Swan warrior, hit in the shoulder, stumbled backward and tipped over the railing, falling out of sight. Kastor rushed to the edge of the deck just in time to glimpse Guarin’s body splash into the river. Seraphina appeared beside him, pistol at the ready, watching, waiting. Thirty seconds passed. A minute. No body came up.

“You were just going to let him kill you?” Seraphina asked.

“‘Let?’” Kastor repeated. “There was no ‘let.’ They jumped me. I would’ve killed them if I could.” His own words made him wince.

Kastor didn’t understand the things he felt—the doleful ache of loss, the sense of profound waste. Two nobles in their prime, fine warriors in their own right, snatched from existence in mere moments. Yet Kastor hated them as living, breathing creatures. At times, he wanted to kill the vile, duplicitous pair. Part of him wished he’d done it himself. Even so, another part of him wished the two could’ve been his allies. The three of them, working in concert, could’ve been a force to reckon with.

“Kastor!” Hendrik’s voice called from the deck above. The drop team leader studied Seraphina, faceplate open.

“She’s with me,” Kastor said.

Hendrik seemed satisfied. “We’ve taken this one, but Radovan’s ship is speeding up. We need to go. Now.”

Kastor turned to Seraphina and nodded, unable to show his gratefulness any other way. She nodded back in recognition. It was enough.

“Make your own way, Champion of Triumph.”

“Perhaps our paths will cross again.”

A smile flickered on the frontier princess’s lips. “I’m quite sure they will.”

Kastor took a few steps away and was halted by the sight of Guerlain—what remained of her, anyway. A once great warrior lying in a sloppy heap of blood and exposed flesh, face distorted—frozen in the moment of death. What a waste. What a terrible damn waste.

Kastor blasted his boot thrusters and directed himself to the higher decks.

Orion Arm, on the planet Agora . . .

Jimmy Powers shared his spacious, high-ceilinged, white marble-floored office with only a handful of other desks. A curving wall of big window panels gave a sweeping view of South Apex, the manicured sands of Virgin Beach peeking through buildings, and the colorful kelp farms beyond. White sailboats whisked between islands as long, skinny harvester vessels drifted through orange- and brown-hued blocks of water. Meanwhile, sparsely-clothed young men and women played volleyball at Virgin’s shorefront—pretty, little ladies who didn’t leave much to the male imagination and young bucks who worked out just enough to prance around like reindeer in rutting season.

Davin refocused his attention inside the window at the semi-circular arrangement of desks with arcing poles where lanterns dangled overhead. He waited in the lobby—not much more than an alcove of the main office room—where huge, chrome block letters stuck out of the wall, forming the company name: “GOLDING COMMERCIAL AEROSPACE CONSULTANTS.”