Sacred Planet: Book One of the Dominion Series (43 page)

“Maxwell is not here,” she said. “I’m in command now.”

Gable grunted and shambled back to his crew. They talked in a tight circle, using low voices, some glancing back at Rumaya. Her auditory sensors picked up every word, every expression of doubt and distrust. But Gable raised his cuff and spoke into it anyway, having no other choice but to trust.

Rumaya
, Andrews dispatched her privately.
We’ve got an incoming wave of Sadge shuttles.

Another one?
Rumaya brought up the rendered map in her subvision. Across the canyon, on the far side of the bombardment-cratered plains, an echelon of twelve winged craft arced around a mesa, flying close enough to the ground to kick up plumes of dust. Rocket cannons hung between engine turbines and fuselages. Dark windshields spanned the front.
Those aren’t landers. They’re fighter planes.

And they probably carried boulder-cracking caps on their rockets.

Andrews had the same realization simultaneously.
They could waste us
, he dispatched.
Blow us out the other side of this mountain.

Rumaya processed. Andrews was right. From even several kilometers out, boulder-crackers could turn the palace mount into a scrambled rockslide. The Sagittarians had no regard for their commoner troops; they would sacrifice a few hundred to end the battle quicker.

She still had sixteen functional autodrones at her disposal.
Order the riverside team to send up the remaining drones and engage them
.

Those were supposed to cover our escape,
Andrews shot back.

We won’t escape this room if we don’t stop those fighters. Send the order.

Rumaya switched channels to include all teams besides the riverside team.
Attention all teams: Change of plans. Teams Two, Three, and Four cover the platform. All other teams punch through the tunnels to Rally Point Charlie. I will send the first plane for pick up. Be there in eighteen minutes.

She was not sure it would be possible to break through the tunnel combat and make it a kilometer into the mountains in that time, but her teams would give it their damnedest. She watched in her subvision as they changed course, merged together, and slithered through the tunnels. On the other side of the palace mount, a trickle of autodrones ascended into the open air like a swarm of angry wasps.

Sagittarian shuttles still hovered over the surface, pouring relentless punishment on the near-worthless clusters of Upraadi militia. They packed together instead of spreading out. Rounds tore through them in seconds, and they went down in droves, most before they even fired their expensive foreign guns. Every time more Upraadis emerged from a surface entrance, a shuttle would shift its guns and chop up a generous diameter around the spot.

How the hell did these poor fools defeat a trained Sagittarian army before?

Of course, Rumaya’s own orders were partly to blame—the natives were trying to hold the surface and keep the invaders fanned out. She almost admired their blind faith, and she almost felt guilt over their tremendous losses. If only this civilian rabble knew
a few
basic combat tactics, perhaps they could have repulsed the Sagittarians, or at least held them at bay and taken a few more with them.

Her focus snapped to the echelon of fighters across the canyon as their cannons fired a salvo. The autodrones opened up on them, blasting a few rockets out of the sky, then swerved to avoid the rest. Two were hit anyway, breaking into flaming debris in midair. Her autodrones mixed with the fighters and curved between them. Rounds only occasionally made contact, but they provided enough of a distraction for now.

Andrews,
Rumaya dispatched privately.
Get ready to remote-pilot Plane One to Rally Point Charlie.

Without aerial protection?

That’s right,
she dispatched.
It doesn’t have to be pretty. Just get there and get our teams out
.

Andrews didn’t reply further. He knew exactly what she did—that their plane had almost no chance of making it through the field of enemy shuttles. But he said nothing. Neither did she. The human locked away inside Rumaya’s armored cranium still held onto that tiny chance. As long there was
some
hope, she would keep fighting.

But that hope dwindled fast. With each new deviation from their original plans, Victor’s final directives to her and Maxwell became more prevalent in her mind:
Do not allow yourself to be captured. Do not allow anyone under your command to be captured. Do whatever you must to ensure that doesn’t happen.

Rumaya began to wonder if Sorenson ever intended them to escape this planet . . .

Kastor’s shoulders lurched into the husk’s padding as he launched from the
Aegis’s
aft hold. He clamped his teeth onto the rubber mouthguard. His armored hand flicked sideways to feel for his blazer in its casing, thinking for a moment that he’d forgotten it. But no, it was there, waiting to lick the blood of his enemies. It had tasted Swan blood before, and now it craved more.

A small vengeance on the path toward the ultimate one.

The husk rattled, blurring Kastor’s vision as he concenrated on the screen glowing before his eyes. The three-dimensional map showed a few dozen other husks—shaped like long, thin raindrops—raining down on the Swan orbital blockade. The battleships’ railguns opened up, spraying slugs at them through the expanse. Gee-forces crushed Kastor against one side of his body padding and then the other as the husk’s navigational thrusters blasted. The screen showed his husk zigzagging to avoid lines of rounds. They would have been invisible to the naked eye, but the screen rendered them as if they were clear as daylight. Some husks weren’t so quick, being torn to bits by the guns.

The
Aegis
should have been firing by now. Kastor focused on the screen as it showed the
Aegis
firing its forward thrusters, deflecting incoming slugs, absorbing incoming lasers with its energy shields, but
not
returning fire. Guns completely silent. The ship was adjusting course, turning away from the battle. Vanora was fleeing. She was leaving Kastor and his drop teams to face the Swan armada alone. Kastor almost bit through his mouthguard, quivering with rage inside his suit.

The Swan ships shifted all their fire to the husks. Kastor watched as one after another—each holding a trained nobleblood—splintered into a shower of space debris. Detritus of steel hull and reinforced carbon tiles and nanoflex armor pelted the cylindrical battleships. Kastor lost focus as the husk jerked him sideways to avoid a line of fire. His brain smashed against his skull, and the husk’s hull groaned under the gee-forces. A slug slammed the tip of the husk over his head and sent him twirling, suddenly bottom heavy.

Glimpses at the screen revealed his husk hurtling toward one of the battleships. It tried to correct course but couldn’t. Kastor wobbled straight into the aftward opening of the cylindrical body and whizzed only meters from a swinging, steel rotor arm. His angle still took him straight toward the concave inner wall. Thrusters not adjusting. He was going to collide.
Hard
.

Kastor broke a plastic seal and yanked the lever behind it. A third of the husk blasted away and took Kastor with it. A heartbeat later, the rest impacted. Metal crumpled against metal without sound. A torrent of steel shards followed after Kastor as he somersaulted endlessly through the cavernous space inside the battleship’s body. Finally, he seized a dense chunk and threw it behind his helmet, slowing his spin enough to get a grasp of his whereabouts. Another rotor arm was coming up, swinging the opposite way as the first. Somehow he’d passed by two others during his tumble.

The hulking, carbon-steel stalk charged toward him but perhaps not close enough. A tantalizing ladder ran down the side. Kastor kicked to shift his position in weightlessness and reached his hand as far as he could. His gloved fingertips brushed the first vertical rail, but it passed too swiftly to catch. Kastor extended his arm until his shoulder strained and hooked three full fingers onto the second vertical rail. It jerked him along with it as it continued along its rotational axis. Fingers slipped down to one knuckle and slid toward the ship’s body, following centrifugal force. Kastor inched one hand up the smooth stalk until he could grab the ladder rail with it, then pulled himself against the ladder rungs.

Through the foreward opening of the ship, he saw a spattering of husks—the lucky ones that got through—burning into the atmosphere. Kastor loosened his jaw from the mangled mouthguard and let out his breath. How would he ever get down to Canyon City? If he was going fast enough to stay on target, he’d probably burn in the atmosphere. But if he drifted slowly into Upraad’s gravity, he’d either end up a thousand kilometers away from Canyon City, or the Swan ships would blow him away before he hit the atmosphere. Kastor slammed his fist against the carbon steel. His own drop team would have to fight his battle for him.
Without
him.

Then a glint at the front end of the hollow cylinder caught his eye—a particularly large hunk of space debris. He focused on it, squinting to adjust his eyes. The door of his husk! The outer hull of it was coated in heat shielding. If he could hang on to it, the thing might keep him from dissipating in the atmosphere. No other option presented itself, so Kastor planted his boots against the ladder rail, fixed his eyes on the twisting husk door, and launched.

He soared through the vast, open space, passing fragments of wreckage, zooming past a rotor arm as it swung behind him. He backhanded a piece of wire-ridden scrap out of his way. Passed by another rotor arm. Eyes fixed on the husk door.

As Kastor flew beside the bridge capsule at the front of the Swan ship’s central spine, out of the corner of his eye, he glimpsed helmsmen and technicians and officers in pristine white armor, strapped into their seats or standing with magnetic boots. He focused ahead on the spin of the door, its speed and rotation. The interior side of the door shifted to face him as he approached. He pinpointed spots to grab hold of, and . . .

CLUNK
.

He collided hard against the interior side, forgetting handholds and bearhugging the entire metal slab. A burst of excitement erupted through his body as he realized he’d gotten it. He’d stuck the landing. Now he had a shield to pierce the atmosphere. He felt he’d earned a breather.

Hardly a minute passed before his hands grew hot and the convex exterior side of the door adjusted to face downward at the source of the oncoming pressure. Kastor found handholds on the interior side of the door as it began to vibrate. Soon he heard fire crackling through the shielding and into the armor of his suit. Flames licked up all around him, first small and quick, then long and fluttering. The rushing air pried Kastor’s legs away from the door. They dangled behind as he plummeted. His arms strained, hands aching as they crushed the handholds to hang on. Weightlessness gave way to freefall.

He became the nucleus of a fireball. Scorching heat soaked through his suit. Its cooling system went into overdrive to compensate, but it couldn’t work fast enough. Sweat dampened his skin everywhere. Blisters formed where the suit clung the tightest.

Wind whipped by like the whirl of a tornado. Kastor grew lightheaded as the sky turned from black to deep crimson to blood red . . . and finally to the rusty orange that he remembered from before.

The plastic handholds crumpled under his viselike grip. He willed them to hold together. Upraad’s horizon grew on every side in his peripheral vision. The atmosphere would slow him down soon. He hoped.

A wave of relief spread through him as the flames died down and the door’s vibration tamed. He maneuvered his helmet enough to assess where he was. The canyon snaked down between his legs and over his head. He couldn’t see the palace mount in either direction, so it had to be under him, hidden by the door. That was good.

The landscape magnified. Blurry colors and shapes evolved into textures and details. Individual mountain peaks and mesas became visible. Kastor waited until Canyon City had grown huge above and below his feet, then he tilted the door to steer himself toward the river. A gust of air rushed into his shoulder from the lower edge, threatening to pry his hand from its hold. The familiar shape of the palace mount came into view overhead. Lines of soldiers exchanged fire from one side of the river to another. Once he felt sure of being squarely over the river, Kastor let go of his makeshift heat shield and let it drift away.

He positioned his body straight with ankles crossed and feet pointed down, arms hugging himself over his chest. Every muscle flexed. Jaw clenched hard over the rubber between his teeth. He hoped the muddy beige water below was deep.

It surged toward him, swelling wide like a gaping maw. Kastor sucked air through his nostrils, held it, and—

PLUNGE
.

He hit hard, even in water. Darkness devoured him and sapped his senses. All thought, all feeling, all life drained away.

Abelard stormed after the half-machine offworlders, Seraphina trailing behind. Their leaders had abandoned the throne room without warning and now hurried down the central spiraling stairwell toward the landing platform. Rippling gunfire bled through the surrounding tunnels and levels as their party streamed downward. Abelard limped fast, trying to keep up, each step a shot of pain through his leg and hip.

“Just like that?” he asked feverishly. “You’re just up and leaving?”

“Yes,” Rumaya responded.

“After all this?!” Abelard exclaimed. “All you’ve sacrificed—all
we’ve
sacrificed? Why? I demand to know why!”

“We’ve done all we can do,” Rumaya said in her stoic voice. “But we lost.”

Abelard grabbed the iron guardrail and thrust himself down the steps faster. “Not yet, we haven’t!” He felt himself grow more desperate by the second.

“What of our independence?” Seraphina protested from behind. “Victor said our benefactors wanted to help us secure our freedom!”