Sacred Planet: Book One of the Dominion Series (13 page)

The glowing, oval monitor before Kastor showed a vessel inbound from the inner system—another royalist ship. Perhaps the reason for the delay. Kastor wondered but didn’t bother asking. For hours, he hadn’t moved from his seat in the upper lounge, a darkened room with entertainment screens, a scattering of suede couches, and a marble mini-bar. His servants and retainers passed by outside the doorway without sparing him a glance. They knew better than to disturb him. For a time after his appointment as champion, shock had dulled his senses enough to function. But on the
Aegis
, with little else to ponder, the shock faded, giving way to a perpetual headache and regular bouts of panic. At least solitude let the panic pass unnoticed.

The image of Pollaena’s lifeless eyes burrowed in his brain, frozen like a cruel work of art. He could still feel the horrifying warmth of her blood on his hands.

The monitor before him displayed a three-dimensional map of the area. The cylindrical shell of the
Aegis
rotated around its internal spine as the small shuttle approached. Kastor hoped it would pass them by and keep on to the spacebend gate. It did not. Instead, it blasted its forward thrusters, slowing itself as it closed the gap between them.

Kastor switched off the monitor and suddenly the room went much darker, lit only by blue emergency lights in the bulkheads. He’d have visitors soon. He needed to get up, to make himself presentable. But he couldn’t. His feet refused to cooperate, his mind paralyzed in slurred stupor. His headache worsened when he tried to think.

Minutes slipped away. The air scrubbers in the ceiling crooned their silent song.

A tall figure stepped into the doorway, blocking the light from the corridor. Kastor squinted and recognized the silhouette of Trajan, his personal retainer. Gold bands snaked up his forearms, and a gem-encrusted belt pulled tight over his waist. Posh and dandy as a noble—an identity he could never claim—Trajan bore no appeal to Kastor except his uncanny grasp of aristocratic culture. On more than one occasion, the servant had guided him through the excruciating parade of pleasantries that was second-nature to most nobles.

Trajan tapped his knuckles on the polymeth door. “An envoy from Triumph, Master.”

“Tell him to go back where he came from,” Kastor mumbled. He meant to speak in a normal voice, but it came out as weak and wounded.

Trajan cleared his throat and rested his spindly fingers against the doorframe. His frail wrists and slender form marked him as the lune-dweller he was, born and raised on one of the prominent moons of Eagle in gravity much weaker than average. His pale, thin lips pursed, then curled upwards in a wry smile.

“I only wish I could obey,” he said. “But that would be ill-advised. He was sent by the Royal Court to be your personal attaché.”

Kastor took in a lethargic breath and rubbed the base of his palms over his forehead. “Why in Nether do I need a personal attaché from the Royal Court?”

“Use your imagination, Master,” Trajan said. “It’s not difficult to figure out.”

Kastor let out a heavy sigh. “Send him here when he boards.”

“I will.” Trajan shifted away from the doorway, but stopped. “And Master, if you need anything—”

“I know that, Trajan,” Kastor snapped. “Now begone.”

Trajan dipped his head. “Of course.”

With that, his shadow disappeared.

The room returned to silence and despair. Murky shapes slumped in the darkness. Velvety couches and granite tables surrounded by padded gray walls. Separating each compartment, corridor, and level—an inner level of serene gravity for the nobles and an outer level of weightier gravity for the servants. An ever-whirling ship assembled by commoner craftsmen for their noble masters. Lords and ladies, eternally bonded, created for each other, unlike the archaic masses, who gestated in utero and raised their own offspring like animals. Unlike the promiscuous Orionites, who reveled in their polyamory, or the hypocritical Carinians, who preached purity as they bedded mistresses in secret. The noble bond separated them from all others in this brutish universe. It forged man and woman into something greater than mere competent animals. It distinguished them as highborn, as heirs of glory.

Where was the glory in killing one’s own maiden?

A clatter of footsteps picked up in the hallway, breaking through Kastor’s haze. He placed his hand on the monitor before him and turned up the lights. He squinted as the brightness made a stabbing sensation in his skull, fueling the headache. But the fog in his head would not cripple him. Kastor stood tall and waited to greet his attaché, exchange some pleasantries, and banish him to a private room.

Instead, a familiar face strode through the door—an athletic type with swirling, blond hair, gold swans pinned to his collar, and a suave, lopsided grin. Kastor felt his insides turn to stone. The Swan warrior flourished a bandage-wrapped hand and bowed.

“Hello again, worthy opponent,” Guarin said. “And congratulations on your appointment.”

Trajan came after and gave Kastor an apologetic glance.

“Come back for more, have you?” Kastor asked the runner-up.

Guarin let out a throaty laugh. “No, no, my friend. Our fight is over. You won fair and even. We’re on the same side now.”

“What a relief,” Kastor said. “Wouldn’t want to give you scars on both your hands.”

Guarin examined his bandaged hand. “This little scratch? I doubt it’ll leave a scar. Mostly healed already.”

Kastor shrugged. “Helps when it’s been cauterized.”

Guarin laughed, this time behind closed lips. He took a moment to size up Kastor. “Your strategy hasn’t changed. Still trying to bait me.”

“Worked the first time.”

Guarin stepped around Kastor and dropped onto a couch. His retainers stayed at the door. Trajan snuck out, probably sensing his presence wasn’t desired.

“Much to the aristocracy’s chagrin,” Guarin said with that same, lopsided smirk.

“Oh? Did some nobles lose money on the tournament?”

Guarin’s eyes swept over the lounge. “Quite a few, in fact. You were something of a . . . what’s the term? Dark horse.”

Kastor heaved a laugh and felt his headache flair. “Always embarrassing to be passed up by a competitor ten years your junior.”

Guarin curled his lips downward. “I wouldn’t say that.” He popped open the padded top of the couch arm and pulled a cocktail bulb from the cooler inside. “You’re a worthy opponent. If you weren’t, you wouldn’t have made it to the royal tournament. But that doesn’t make you any more popular with the nobility.”

“Good thing the royal tournament wasn’t a popularity contest then.”

Guarin peeled off the top of the cocktail bulb and raised it to Kastor as if offering a toast. “
Touché
.” The Swan warrior took a long swig then held it in front of his face with a surprised expression. “Fine choice of beverage, my friend.”

Kastor twitched in annoyance. “What are you doing on my ship, Guarin?”

“It’s been your ship for a day and a half, and you’re already territorial. How quaint.”

“Answer the question.”

Guarin set his cocktail bulb on a side table and stood to look Kastor eye to eye. “The Grand Lumis commissioned me to accompany you to Upraad. He trusts me. Swan has always been a loyal vassal.”

“Ah.” Kastor crossed his arms in sudden realization. “I see now. You were supposed to win. The tournament was fixed.”

“Not fixed,” Guarin corrected. “Predicted.”

“I’m sure Zantorian was happy to arrange the tournament to favor a cunning Swan warrior such as yourself. Decent reward for loyalty.”

“A lesson you’d do well to learn, my friend.”

“Which is why
you’re
here, I suppose.”

“Certainly not because I want to be.” Guarin lifted his bulb and drank.

Kastor let out a heavy sigh. He didn’t feel like fighting, much less doing whatever it would take to get his way. The Swan men were here to stay. “Trajan,” Kastor called out.

His willowy servant reappeared in the doorway, wearing a neutral face as if he’d heard nothing. Of course he’d heard everything. “Yes, Master?”

“Guarin will be joining us to Upraad. Make the necessary arrangements.”

Trajan dipped his head, mirroring Kastor’s lack of enthusiasm. “As you say.”

“Oh yes,” Guarin said with a laugh. “I nearly forgot. Someone I’d like you to meet.” He raised his wrist and held down a button on his cuff. “Come, my darling.”

Kastor traded a perplexed glance with Trajan, who gave a barely noticeable shrug.

“It’s a lovely thing,” Guarin said with pride, “to have a traveling companion. Especially when she is your—ah, welcome, my darling.”

A young woman, wrapped in an aura of sheer beauty, walked in wearing a lavish blouse with feathered sleeves like wings. Graceful form, silky blond hair, skin as smooth as river stones, pupils slit vertically like a cat—a genesmith’s masterpiece. She set her sly eyes on Kastor and offered her hand. He didn’t flinch to touch it, didn’t even consider it.

Guarin approached the young woman and kissed her on the cheek. “Behold. Guerlain, my maiden.” He surveyed Kastor, who remained still, paralyzed in misery and anger. Guarin put on an offended face. “Don’t snub my maiden, Kastor. She’s pleased to meet you. Aren’t you, Love?”

Guerlain arched a sandy brown eyebrow. She was as devious as her mate. A perfect pair, fit to be lord and lady. Kastor hated them both more than any other human beings in existence, besides the Grand Lumis. If it wouldn’t have destroyed his chances of retaining the title of Royal Champion, he would’ve thrown them out the airlock and watched the air explode from their lungs. Or perhaps he merely would’ve crushed their tracheas right then and there and been done with it.

“Trajan,” Kastor said flatly. “See them to their rooms.”

Kastor stepped past the black-hearted Swans and glided out the doorway, already conjuring ways they might “mysteriously” perish on their mission.

Sagittarius Arm, in the Lagoon Nebula, on the planet Upraad . . .

The viewing deck of Kastor’s shuttle was below the cockpit where he, Trajan, Guarin, and Guerlain sat in an echelon of seats. The brownish Upraadi landscape sped by like a fast-flowing flood beneath them. Mesas layered with yellows, browns, and maroons rose across the horizon. Time and warm wind had carved countless formations into the hard plains. Massive boulders, bigger than their shuttle, rested on top of each other at their narrowest points. In one of the tallest mesas in the distance, a gap snaked up almost to the top, where the closer of Upraad’s two suns shone through. Ahead, a thin bridge of clay-like rock arced hundreds of meters between two bluffs. The shuttle zoomed right under it.

The ancient, windswept rock never gave way to soft soil. Nothing was arable on this planet, at least nothing apparent.

Kastor glanced at the fighter drones on either side of them, matching their speed. Triangular and flat, save the metallic mound in the middle and weapons attachments on the wings, the drones moved with impressive precision, but they wouldn’t fire upon a champion, much less that of the Grand Lumis. Kastor had given them plenty of warning, broadcasting “ceasefire” the moment the
Aegis
passed through the spacebend gate and sending a request for an audience with the local lumis, Radovan the Gracious.

It appeared Radovan was living up to his epithet.

Coming up, Kastor saw a depression in the ground lined with smokestacks spewing black wisps into the atmosphere. The shuttle passed over a rocky rise and descended into a deep canyon, at least a kilometer to the floor. A scattering of shuttles and drones soared through the gorge, adhering to some sort of order. Below, transport rigs drifted along a glistening brown river bordered by lush greenery that crept up the steep canyon walls. Long sections of the verdant area were enclosed in arching glass, wherein the flora grew in tamed rows.

The Upraadis had built a city into the canyon walls, shelves carved into the rock for landing pads above and below a seemingly random dispersal of windows. Glass and stone structures rose above the cliffs here and there. They passed a gaping cave in the cliff face, where lights glared through a wide window. At one point, the canyon dipped, and a shiny glass structure spanned the gap from the top of each side. Communications towers, covered in an array of dishes and cables, pointed high into the air.

Guarin laughed and slouched in his seat. “I thought this place was supposed to be embroiled in a commoner rebellion. Must be a mild one.”

He was right. The Grand Lumis had assigned Upraad as Kastor’s first target due to its perceived weakness. For years, the Upraadi revolutionaries had been growing in numbers, elevating their attacks, adding more stipulations to the constitution they demanded from Radovan—the problems of a lone wolf lumis and an isolated regnum.

The dry, craggy, unruly planets under Radovan’s dominion would be easy to subdue. Easy enough to accomplish through simple negotiation, while Kastor approached unarmed and a fleet of gunships guarded the
Aegis
in orbit. Kastor hated negotiation. He hated the vulnerability of it—granting something in exchange for something else. He worked better in combat than dealmaking.

“Perhaps the commoners blew themselves up before they learned how to use weapons,” Guerlain mused, leaning forward to watch the boats below. She kept a hand on Guarin’s thigh.

“Maybe they starved once Radovan cut off the dole,” Guarin said, interlocking his fingers behind his head.

Guerlain giggled, an evil sound. “What a depressing thought. No one to fight.”

“There’s already no one for us to fight,” Kastor said, rubbing his temple. The headache still lingered, exacerbated by the sounds of Swanspawn voices. “If there were,” Kastor went on, “Radovan wouldn’t be escorting us through the middle of his city to his capital, where he still lives. We’d be meeting him at a secret moon base somewhere.”

Guarin shrugged. “Maybe he’s bluffing.”

“He wouldn’t bluff with his life at stake,” Kastor said. “No, he has the situation under control.”

Guerlain trained her severe gaze on the cliff face. “I’m holding out hope to break some commoner necks.”