Sacred Planet: Book One of the Dominion Series (28 page)

“I promised not to
start
a war with Sagittarius,” Falco corrected.

“That is precisely what Morvan is trying to do.”

“How can he start the war if Sagittarius fired the first shot?” Falco asked.

Riahn could almost hear Morvan in those words.

“I know everything in you cries out for vengeance,” Tahn said, “but this isn’t only about you, Elan. I’m sorry to be harsh, but I must. If you let this lead to war, you won’t be the only parent grieving over a lost child. There will be mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, wives and husbands on
every
planet of Carina grieving their lost loved ones. Young people will be walking around with artificial limbs who have witnessed destruction on a scale far greater than you or I can imagine. And death—more death than is seen in a hundred lifetimes.”

Tahn spoke with infectious conviction, almost desperation. It moved Riahn in his heart of hearts. For a moment, the Minister of Unity saw a glimpse of a long and bloody future, funerals conducted on windy hills, mothers weeping for their sons, planets laid waste by missiles from the sky, all of it captured for the newsfeeds. It would be the hard path, yes, but what great nation ascended without choosing the hard path?

“Elan,” Tahn said, sitting forward. “This won’t be another colony war, limited to a few remote systems. This will be galactic superpower against galactic superpower. Billions of men and women bearing arms or supporting the ones who bear them. Sagittarius’s nine hundred worlds against our six hundred. Do you understand what that means? We stand at the edge of a chasm, and we have no idea how deep it goes.
Please
, Elan . . . don’t take us over the edge.”

Riahn had to remedy the newfound softness in Falco’s face, as well as the sudden weakness he felt in himself. “Should the unknown be our only reason for avoiding war—or casualties? Should we allow the convicted murderer to walk free because we don’t want to inflict further pain by executing him?”

Tahn eyed him in disgust. “The Sagittarians are not convicted, though, are they?”

Riahn sipped holly and returned his cup to the table. “Not yet.”

* * *

Minister Tahn looked silly striding so fast across the Dewvine Promenade in his swishy white outfit. House of Justice councilmen were supposed to embody peace, yet Riahn detected streaks of rage in the minister’s eyes. Riahn couldn’t blame him, but he enjoyed the irony all the same.

The minister caught up to him in front of the Prime Minister’s mansion, a sturdy building of old, dense, gray stones, an austere castle reminiscent of the gothic designs of medieval Earth.

“Since when did the Minister of Unity,” Tahn said between breaths, “become the Minister of Backroom Dealmaking?”

Riahn smiled defensively, clutching his tablet against his chest. “It’s always been the role of Unity to make deals between party leaders. I’m just better at it than any of my predecessors.” He turned to walk back toward the shuttle landing area, Tahn in tow.

“It seems as if you are acting with an agenda.”

“I take my cue from Bismarck.”

Tahn fumbled over words. “Excuse me? Bismark, the German dictator?”

“He was Prussian,” Riahn replied. “But yes. I admire him. He united his people in a time of severe internal strife.”

“Through the brute force of militarism and despotism.”

“Through compromise,” Riahn corrected. “He gave both the socialists and the liberals enough to quiet them. Without him, Prussia would’ve never
become
Germany.”

Tahn’s eyes fluttered like aggravated moths. “Would it have been such a tragedy for Germany not to form? Not to ascend into the military state that eventually bred Hitler and the Nazis?”

“Such a simplistic view of history.” Riahn felt himself smirk. “I’m afraid you and I will never see eye to eye.”

Tahn huffed. “I pray we do not.” They walked a handful of steps in silence. “What I want to know is your endgame.”

“My endgame?”

“Yes,” Tahn demanded.

Riahn paused at the entrance to the landing area and smiled. “What is best for Carina, of course.”

Carina Arm, on the planet Zygur . . .

Morvan’s shuttle broke through ashen clouds on its descent. Below, the hot, craggy surface stretched from horizon to horizon. The planet Zygur slowly melted in on itself, streams of creeping lava making the air shimmer and blurring the scorched landscape. Black cliffs gave way to glowing lavafalls, where plummeting lumps of molten rock solidified on their sluggish descent. Zygur’s easy gravity and abundant metals made a fine location for TransTek’s research and development lab. The planet was perfect for cheap industry and little else.

Nothing else.

The Carinian shuttle tilted until its nose aimed toward a steel structure lodged into the top of a cliff. The South Hemispheric Experimental Tech Lab, colloquially called “Shetland,” was the central hub of a semi-circle with spokes of half-buried tunnels branching out to other stations. Communications relays pointed at the sky, beaming invisible but high-powered rays of information through Zygur’s cloudy veil. That veil provided a convenient feature for TransTek: secrecy. They owned the entire planet and controlled every person who set foot on its volcanic surface. But more than that, Zygur’s thick cloud shield allowed them to control every bit of information that left their protected facilities, especially Shetland.

Morvan had come to find out what exactly had been prevented from leaving.

* * *

Victor Sorensen led Morvan through the severe, metallic corridors of his facility. Sorensen, short in stature but beaming with slick confidence, was the chief executive of Shetland and TransTek’s liaison with the Carinian government. Curves of muscle projected from the man’s plain black shirt, and his knowing grin never seemed to fade.

“We’ll skip the part where I give you the tour and try to induce shock and awe,” Sorensen said. “I figure you’re here to do business, not rub elbows.”

“You’re correct that I’ve come to do business,” Morvan said, eyeing the backlit signs above the doors, labeling each room and hallway an apparently meaningless spree of letters and numbers. “But there’s always a bit of networking to do, isn’t there?”

Sorensen grunted. “I could live without it. I’ve made my career in the military, twelve years in the Space Force, six years in the Corps, eight now at TransTek. I like to get things done, not just talk about getting things done.”

“I’m afraid you could never be a politician,” Morvan said.

Sorensen let out a hearty laugh. “Got that right.”

They stopped in front of a door labeled “ETB1741.” Inside was a small, dim room with a computer panel in front of a wide window, reminiscent of the antechamber of a recording studio. Morvan couldn’t make out what lay beyond the window—too dark.

Sorensen tapped a button on his nexband and spoke into it. “Send Maxwell to bay seventeen-forty-one. Again, that’s Maxwell to seventeen-forty-one.”

He gestured to one of two rolling chairs in the room. They both sat. Sorensen interlocked his fingers behind his head and leaned back, narrowing his amused eyes at the Minister of Arms.

“Tell me one thing.”

Morvan crossed his legs and folded his arms over them, a habitual position for taking questions. Defensive, perhaps. “I’ll answer as honestly as I can.”

Sorensen’s grin flickered. A laugh rumbled from deep in his throat. “Honestly as you can . . . I watched your speech. The one on the Upper House floor. The part about the Sacred Planet made me scratch my head, wonder what the hell that’s got to do with anything.”

Morvan took a breath in preparation for a long answer. “Well, Earth is—”

“Nah, nah.” Sorensen waved Morvan away like a fly. “That’s not my question. It made me wonder, but then I think I figured it out. You’re a minister of
arms
, after all, not a minister of God. Men devoted to God don’t rise as high in the ranks as you have, if you don’t mind my saying.”

Morvan pursed his lips. “I’m curious to know where you’re going with this, so I won’t object.”

Sorensen turned to the computer panel and lit up one of the main screens. “See, I’ve got this theory that you and I aren’t so different. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I don’t have the time or patience for religion, and for you, apparently, it matters more than anything. But part of me still thinks we see things the same way.”

A detailed map of the Milky Way showed up on the screen. Sorensen tapped a button, and glowing outlines appeared, highlighting Sagittarius, Carina, and Orion. Orion space touched both Sagittarius and Carina, but an empty gap hung between the two great powers. A few hundred lightyears separated Sagittarius from Carina, and Carinian territory covered more space than Sagittarian.

“Two hundred years ago,” Sorensen continued in a professorial tone, “the Sagittarians were just a curious group of highbrows with their worker lackeys. Three, four hundred planets. A threat, but not an existential one. Now . . .” He tapped the button again and the map shifted. Sagittarian space blew up like a cancerous tumor, while Orion and Carina filled out only a little. “Sadge’s ballooned into a giant, and we’re inching along like a tortoise.”

“You know what they say about the tortoise,” Morvan said, a feeble attempt to deflate the tension. “Slow and steady.”

“I don’t think the Sagittarian rabbit intends to take any naps in the foreseeable future,” Sorensen said with that same knowing grin. “And neither do you.”

Silence unfurled between them like a Persian rug. Their equally hard eyes didn’t part from each other.

“I haven’t heard a question yet,” Morvan said.

“Not finished.”

Sorensen tapped the button again. This time, only one thing changed: a red dot popped up, nearly a bullseye of the three local galactic arms, labeled “Earth.” The screen zoomed in on the local region around Earth and the border between Sagittarius and Carina.

“I worked in Strategic Planning for a year and a half. Wasn’t my cup o’ tea, but it taught me some things, all those endless contingency formulas and models and probabilities.”

“For instance?”

“For instance . . .” Sorensen sat forward to get a better angle on the screen. “If one were to execute a full-scale invasion of Sagittarius, the mid-border planets would be a terrible place to start.”

Morvan couldn’t hold back the smirk. This man knew a hundred times more about the real world than the majority of Carina, more even than much of Morvan’s staff. Sorensen
did
think like him, and the realization was liberating. Tension eased from Morvan’s shoulders.

“There’s not a single valuable planet in Sagittarian space for at least two dozen gates,” Sorensen continued. “Nothing with a population higher than fifty thousand. Nothing with a decent resource spread. Nothing that would hurt Zantorian to lose. If you had to invade that way, it would take months to get anywhere of real value. By that time, the Sagittarian armada would be mustered at full strength around the
real
border planets, the ones they’d actually fight for.”

Morvan’s smile grew. “If only there was another way.”

Sorensen let out another growling laugh. “Clever bastard.”

“What’s the solution?” Morvan asked. “I want to hear it in your own words.”

“Earth is the linchpin.” The screen made distorted ripples where Sorensen’s finger tapped. “Take Earth and the twenty-some systems around it, suddenly you’ve got a fast track to the guts of Sagittarius.”

“The same could be said on their side about us,” Morvan admitted. “He who controls Earth controls the galaxy.” Somehow, in the darkness of this small room, such a confession felt safe. “But you left out a crucial piece of the strategy.”

Sorensen lifted an eyebrow. “Did I?”

“Move the map inward.”

The screen shifted up, away from Earth and toward the center of the galaxy, pausing over the innermost border region between the great powers—the systems around Lagoon Nebula.

“Lagoon,” Sorensen said, connecting the dots. “The commoner uprising A second bridge into Sagittarius.”

“The Horns of the Ram,” Morvan said. “Onto which God will pour His wrath.”

“Horns of the Ram, huh?” Sorensen muttered. “What’s that from?”

“Wisdom of Abraham.” Morvan didn’t detect recognition on his interlocutor’s face. “The Abramist holy book.”

“Ah.” Sorensen leaned back and returned his hands to the back of his head. “That gets back to what I want to know.”

“Oh?”

“You talk a pretty slick game about the Abramist God,” Sorensen said. “God wants this, God wants that . . . So slick it almost makes me think you believe it. Do you?”

Morvan smiled. It flattered him to think that other intelligent men—people who knew him only through newsfeeds and video clips—expended their time and mental energy trying to understand his private beliefs. Such a phenomenon marked great leadership. No mere fame could inspire such curiosity in strangers. If Morvan were a vain man, he would allow himself to enjoy the flattery.

“I’m an Abramist,” he said. “What do you think I believe?”

Sorensen’s throat rumbled in that same pseudo-laughter. “Spoken like a true politician. Dance a little sidestep. But seriously. I want to know.”

Morvan took in a long breath. “I hold enough in common with the Abramists to ally myself with them. I share their fervor, and if the Abramist God exists, I deeply admire Him. Beyond that, I have nothing meaningful to say.”

Sorensen’s grin grew until it split his face cheek to cheek. Then he wiped it away and nodded. Something beeped in the small room.

“
Sir, I’m in the bay
.
Good to go
.” The military-disciplined voice intoned from a speaker in the panel. It sounded hollow, metallic.

Sorensen flicked off the screen. “Ready to see our secret weapon?”

“Of course,” Morvan replied, then caught himself. “Ah, before you do . . . I trust you have the insight to realize this conversation never happened.”

“What happens on Zygur stays on Zygur.” Sorensen turned to the panel. “Now, for the main event.” He brought up the lights inside the room beyond the window.