Sacred Planet: Book One of the Dominion Series (26 page)

Burnt carbon steel bent into his cauterized flesh. The spear fell to the carpet. An agonized howl escaped the helmet before Kastor plowed his sword straight through the Upraadi’s neck, just under the chin of his helmet. Steam sputtered upward, smelling like iron and acid and roasting flesh. Blood as black as tree sap escaped the wound. Kastor twisted the blade and slashed it out sideways, spraying more scorched blood across the fine carpet and couches and dead servants’ uniforms.

The first brute forced himself unsteadily to his feet and wound up. Kastor avoided the telegraphed punch. The brute’s momentum carried him straight into Kastor’s blade, slicing through graphene, carbon steel, nanoflex, and flesh. Kastor threw his sword down into the brute’s helmet, stopping halfway through his head. He heard the crack of something other than metal—like a giant knuckle pop.

When he pulled away his blazer, the brute’s body slumped over. Both metallic giants were dead. Now Radovan stood alone across the room, tightening and loosening his grip on his hatchets, adjusting his stance. Kastor blocked the only way out.

Kastor grinned. “Nervous, Radovan?”

“No.” Radovan’s fists gripped the hatchet handles so tight they made a squealing sound like the pulling of rope. “Only sad. You’re a fine warrior, Kastor. You could’ve been a great one.”

The Frontier Lumis let out a shriek and charged. A flurry of hard strikes rained down on Kastor, strikes stronger than the brutes’ spears. And brisk. Radovan moved with the swiftness of a bluntnose on the hook. Kastor had to adjust to his speed and dexterity since he’d been fighting slow behemoths with weaker attacks. With every few parries, Kastor had to leap backward out of melee range to avoid being struck. He had no chance of stringing together an effective series of moves that way, but at least Radovan’s hatchets weren’t chopping him to ribbons.

If Kastor was to alter the flow of the interchange, he’d have to separate Radovan from one of his hatchets.

He swung to the left, ducked to avoid a sidewise strike, then sent his sword diagonally into Radovan’s chestplate. The lumis dodged in time to escape with only a burnt crevice in his armor. He looked down at it, incredulous at first, then glowering. This time, he approached with tight, measured movements, hatchets up. They twitched every few seconds, making Kastor twitch in return as he matched Radovan’s footwork. His boot ran into something soft and fleshy—an arm. His eyes flashed downward, and that was all Radovan needed.

Another flurry of strikes pushed Kastor back as he stumbled past the servant girl’s blood-streaked body. Clangs accompanied flying sparks from each clash. The vibrations shot down the blade and through the hilt into Kastor’s hands. It quickened his heartbeat and his reactions.

Radovan slid Kastor’s sword to the side long enough to swipe a curved hatchet blade across the champion’s shoulder. Searing pain swept across his skin and flesh, followed by a hot sting as the wound parted and blood escaped. Kastor tried to haul his sword up to counter, but Radovan headbutted him square in the nose. Kastor fell backwards, catching himself only enough to keep hurdling in the same direction, until he smashed through a door and into a dim room—compact but glossy with fine materials and furniture.

A svelte figure—a smooth-skinned young man with flushed cheeks—stepped into the light gripping a stubby knife. He raised it over Kastor and plunged it downward, but with a flick of the blazer, Kastor sliced his hand away at the wrist. The knife and hand disappeared into a pool of shadow by a dresser, and the Upraadi nobleman stumbled backward into a mini-bar, knocking over petite glass bottles, pinning the nub of his forearm against his chest and screaming.

Kastor leaped out of the room before the lumis could corner him. Both of Radovan’s hatchets bore down on his sword, pushing the back of the blade against Kastor’s chest and forcing him against the wall. The blazer blades burned against each other, making the hissing grind of superheated metal on superheated metal. Kastor banged his forehead against Radovan’s stoneskin cheekbone, barely making the Frontier Lumis wince. He felt like granite. Kastor suspected the blow had hurt him more than Radovan. He was trapped, two curving blazers heating him inside his nanoflex like a pressure cooker, waiting for his blazer to fail and give way to their lethal finality.

A drop of blood trickled from Kastor’s hairline down his forehead. He felt it reach his eyebrow as Radovan leaned in close, eyes ablaze with vengeance.

“You chose to be Zantorian’s puppet,” Radovan breathed through clenched teeth in a rich, deep growl. “You earned this.”

One hatchet reared back, ready to slice into Kastor’s midsection. Radovan heaved, and as the hatchet swung—

BANG
. A gunshot rang in the room, stunning them both. Kastor heard a crack like an egg breaking. Radovan roared in pain and rage, dropping his blazer hatchet.

Kastor didn’t know what had happened, but he seized the opportunity. He shoved Radovan’s other hatchet away and whisked his sword against the lumis’s bicep, cutting through stoneskin layers and into dark, meaty tissue. Radovan bellowed again, dropped his other hatchet, and fell to his knees. Kastor noticed a wound in his side, under his arm.

Radovan turned to find Abelard standing in the doorway, spinning the round chamber of his long-barreled revolver. Grease streaks lined his face, arm, and hip. His pant leg had been torn enough to plainly reveal the mechanical leg. Signs that he’d been in whatever crash Kastor had heard above.

Abelard grinned and tipped his head to his revolver. “Made these bullets myself. Designed for one thing—to pierce stoneskin.” His grin grew. “Looks like they work.” He lowered his revolver, and it flared again with a
BANG
.

Radovan jolted and let out a long, groaning sigh. “
I showed you mercy
. . .”

“Regulations and pensions are not mercy,” Abelard said. “Not when I’m still a commoner.”

The Frontier Lumis tried to push himself to his feet, but Abelard fired again.
BANG
. This round cracked Radovan square in the chest and knocked him onto his back. Kastor watched as the lumis held stony hands against his breast and wheezed. Gasped. Wheezed. Gasped. Eyes afraid—
terrified
—as they rested on Kastor. The mightiest of men, laid as bare and helpless as a child before death.

A voice like a soft chime called from the stairwell. “Abby? Is he—?”

The finely carved features of Seraphina’s face appeared around the opening, eyes agape and apprehensive, knowing yet uncertain. Her delicate fingers came to rest on the glossy doorframe, as if she wanted to enter but knew she shouldn’t.

Abelard extended an open hand to stop her. “Stay back, Sera. Go back to the top deck.”

“Is my father—”

“
Go back
, Sera!” Abelard demanded. “Now!”

Seraphina disappeared, and Kastor powered down his blazer, contemplating the interaction he had just observed.
Abby
?
Sera
? Could it be? The two of them?

Abelard met his inquisitive glare, seeming to read his thoughts. Kastor felt his expression turn dour.

“The world isn’t as black and white as you think,” Abelard said in a low voice—the same thing Seraphina had said in his bedchamber—as he hobbled toward the downed lumis.

Radovan struggled, eyes alternating between fury and fear as he held back wellsprings of dark, viscous blood flowing from his wounds. More gasping. More wheezing. Then—

BANG
.

The air shivered, and the room stilled. Wisps of smoke curled up in disappearing trails from smoldering flesh and burnt carpet. The stoneskin’s movement ceased. His ragged breathing stopped. Radovan the Gracious was no more, killed by his commoner heir.

Perhaps Abelard was right. Perhaps the world wasn’t so absolute after all.

Sagittarius Arm, on the planet Triumph . . .

Zantorian’s study was perched in the highest room of the Diamond Castle’s central spire. Long windows stretched up the circular wall between pillars of woven diamond and steel. Warm, golden light flooded the chamber where Zantorian sat at his curved Touchdesk, Aermo pacing before him in the light armor of his fellow Guardians of Court. Agitation darkened the captain’s long features. His incessant movement vexed Zantorian, but the Grand Lumis chose to ignore it.

Instead, he remained in calm repose and perused data streaming in from the information hub. Spindly lines flowed on economic charts in real time. It was the sign of a healthy empire—dynamic movement of goods and personnel across the Regnum. The lord of a system with six rocky planets traded with a patrician a hundred lightyears away residing on floating platforms in the viscous clouds of his single world. Noble overseers of industry traded their technology and commodities throughout Sagittarius. Treated carbon steel for condensed deuterium gas. Nanoflex parts for anti-matter cells. Low-altitude shuttles for diamond notes.

The beauty of the diamond standard was that the Sagittarian currency never lost its value, only rose as the population grew. Demand exceeded supply. And Zantorian presided over the greatest supply in the Arm—Triumph: home to more than forty-five percent of known Sagittarian diamond deposits. Not only did the Grand Lumis rest atop a vast, natural reserve, he controlled the speed with which diamond notes appreciated. His diligent shepherding of the treasury and diamond industry enabled fortunes to accrue and remain with the nobility while making it mathematical impossibility for the commoner class to ascend above their natural place. It was one of the Grand Lumis’s quieter roles but perhaps his most important.

Zantorian looked up from his Touchdesk to the cityscape running into the distance. Dark steel structures came to rounded tops, buffered by wide streets of slick obsidian. In their midst, tilted spires covered in gray soot loomed high over the premises surrounding it. Dull gleams of raw diamond peeked through the volcanic ash—part of Zantorian’s future treasury.

Closer, in the immediate expanse, an ever-widening circle of crystal structures glimmered around the Diamond Castle. Each beautiful, uniquely designed building housed the office of a Lord’s Emissary, where the nobility’s representatives would schedule audiences with the Royal Court years in advance. They arranged gifts to be delivered to the Grand Lumis on occasion, especially when the court would soon decide on an edict related to their system. “Beseechers,” Zantorian called them when none were present. An entire city surrounded him that wished for just a bit more from his treasury. Sometimes he would grant their requests. His curiosity for their outlandish gifts would not allow him to cease all venality.

Aermo paced in front of the window out of which Zantorian gazed. It finally prompted him to speak. “Your incessant movement distracts me.”

Aermo paused and faced the Grand Lumis. The captain rubbed his palm against the hilt of his blazer sword, a mark of his irritation.

“With respect, my lord,” Aermo said, measuring his words. “I don’t see how you can sit calmly with the thought of rebels—
commoners
—controlling planets in our arm. It makes us appear
weak
. The Carinians will think we can’t even manage the systems in Sagittarius.”

Zantorian steepled his fingers and pressed them against his lips, ruminating. With the lack of response, Aermo found it necessary to go on.

“Kastor’s mission was to
subdue
Radovan, not
depose
him. He failed his mission, my lord. Kastor aided—he
placed
a commoner in charge.”

Zantorian took in a long breath and leaned back in his seat, allowing the silence to stay. Much wisdom resided in that silence. It chased away the foolhardiness of reflexive thinking. Outside the long window, shuttles glided to and fro in the sky, as they did every day. This incident at the edge of Sagittarius had little effect on the vast majority of the empire—no effect, actually, since Zantorian never controlled Lagoon in the first place.

“It’s good for the Regnum that Radovan is gone,” the Grand Lumis said. “If he would not submit at a time when his planets were in disarray, he never would have submitted.”

“Perhaps he would have if we’d not sent a brainless brute to negotiate.”

Zantorian felt a twinge of heat in his chest. “You will not disrespect my champion,” he said in a raised voice, then composed himself. “Kastor is not what I wanted, but he is creative. He accomplishes tasks, one way or another.”

“The way you would accomplish them?” Aermo asked.

Zantorian gave no reply, an acknowledgement of the Guardian’s point. Kastor fought like an Eagle. The way of the Fox stood in sharp contrast. Diplomacy could never be abandoned, even in the direst of circumstances.

“In any case,” Zantorian said, “this commoner rebellion in Lagoon is no threat. They pose no challenge.”

“What of the rebel leader?” Aermo asked. “This ‘Abelard?’”

Zantorian huffed. “Please. He’s a jacobin. He threatens only his surroundings. All interstellar ships in Lagoon have been destroyed.”

“The nobility will not stand for commoner control of an entire planet,” Aermo reminded him. “Much less an entire region. It’s shameful. We ought to summon the Lord Generals to council and formulate a plan to retake Lagoon.”

“They have no real military,” Zantorian said. “No space force. They’re miners and machinists with handmade weapons. They only managed to depose Radovan with the help of my champion.”

“For which I say Kastor ought to be punished,” Aermo insisted. “His actions were in defiance of you. As well as plainly dishonorable. Allying with commoners.” He heaved a dry laugh and shook his head.

“In due time,” Zantorian said. “When he’s no longer useful.”

He heard the breezy swish of silk in the doorway and turned to find Raza taking heavy breaths. Alarm tightened her brow.

“Have you seen the fleet map update?”

Zantorian wheeled back to his Touchdesk and brought up a holomap of the galaxy. The development immediately made itself apparent. A red dot blinked near the Lagoon Nebula. A Space Force fleet had amassed at the closest Carinian border planet to Lagoon, about two hundred lightyears away—less than ten spacegate jumps.