Sacred Planet: Book One of the Dominion Series Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Map

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  Chapter Sixty-Seven

  Chapter Sixty-Eight

  Chapter Sixty-Nine

  Chapter Seventy

  Chapter Seventy-One

  Chapter Seventy-Two

  Chapter Seventy-Three

  Chapter Seventy-Four

  Chapter Seventy-Five

  Chapter Seventy-Six

  Chapter Seventy-Seven

  Chapter Seventy-Eight

  Chapter Seventy-Nine

  Chapter Eighty

  A Note from the Author

  About the Author

  Sacred Planet

  Austin Rogers

  Kindle Edition

  Copyright 2016 – Austin Rogers

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. The book portrays real religions, but it is not the author’s intention to denigrate any religion or its adherents.

  Cover Illustration by John Harris, www.alisoneldred.com

  Formatting by Rik – Wild Seas Formatting

  Connect with Austin online at:

  http://www.austinrogers.net

  https://www.facebook.com/ScienceFictionStream/

  Subscribe to my email list for updates on the Dominion series and more at this link:

  http://eepurl.com/b65VLD

  For Trey, my first writing teacher.

  The Scavenger

  Chapter One

  Carina Arm of the Milky Way, somewhere near the Owl Nebula . . .

  Davin’s eyes almost flew out of their sockets at the scene outside the porthole. Never in all his life had he gazed upon a more beautiful sight.

  Light gleamed off a massive heap of jagged, floating scrap metal, prime for the picking. But this time, it was what lurked within the scrap that drew him.

  The Fossa punched through an ocean of space debris that had once been a hull and solar panels and wires, closing in on the intact half of a ship—an enormous, flamboyant yacht with three of its blue-green tail fins still clinging to the bulbous fuselage. The colors signified Carina—a Carinian merchant or general, maybe. The flashy tail ornaments served about as much purpose as a peacock’s ass feathers, so the ship must have belonged to someone important. Davin pictured a white-mustached man in a top hat smoking a fine cigar behind the glossy wooden steering wheel of his space yacht. He went giddy imagining the contents of this floating treasure chest.

  They had made it to the wreckage before any other scavengers. Lady Luck had smiled upon them.

  Sydney Strange, Davin’s peerless pilot, piped in some smooth reggae over the comm. “Nice tail on this one, eh Cap?” She sounded as giddy as Davin felt.

  “Keep it in your pants, Strange,” he replied as they drifted between tail fins twice as long as the Fossa. He shifted around to look through another porthole in the airlock hatch.

  “Don’t care what you say this time,” Strange replied. “We’re about to score. I can already see it: Lounge chairs on a white beach, clear, turquoise water hittin’ the sand, and two hot bitches on either side of me.”

  Davin smirked. Her lesbianness was, alas, as unyielding as her stellar bod.

  “And lucky bitches they will be,” he said with a wistful sigh.

  Jabron, the Fossa’s main muscle, slapped Davin on the shoulder of his dermasuit as they passed over a glass bubble in the middle of the yacht. “Check it, boss. Weightless dance floor. Those rich bitches was gettin’ they groove on, then—” He made a loud suction sound, amplified by his helmet mic. It was like a hurricane in Davin’s ears.

  “Easy on the sound effects, buddy.”

  Jai, also suited up and floating upside down—or maybe downside up—pointed at a gaping, chaotic hole blown in the yacht’s hull. “Whoever attack, tear this ship new asshole,” he said in his Mandarin accent.

  “Who’s ready to see some bodies?” Jabron exclaimed.

  The Fossa plowed through a tight cluster of frozen scrap and passed over the saw-toothed front side of the yacht. It looked like a cross section in an informational booklet. The projectile, whatever it was, had severed the nose off the ship, leaving an open view of the main capsule’s three levels. Crew quarters, staterooms, lavatories, and kitchenettes were splayed out for all the galaxy to see, all shiny chrome and marble.

  Strange flicked on the brights, and Jabron burst out in a half-gasp, half-laugh. It turned into a full laugh.

  Dozens of bodies floated in the vacuum, their skin, hair, and clothes flash-frozen into crystalline frost. One woman drifted through the nothingness completely naked except for an icy towel clinging to her leg.

  “Frozen at the peak of ripeness,” Jabron lamented.

  Jai slapped Jabron’s bulky arm, a harmless gesture. “Have no respect for dead?”

  “I got a helluva lot of respect for the female body, my friend.”

  Jai huffed. “You must learn to lust in silence.”

  Strange came back over comm. “You think this was the Sagittarians?”

  “Wait, what? War’s already started?” Jabron asked, suddenly serious.

  “About damn time,” Jai added.

  “Simmer down, people,” Davin said. “This is a yacht, not a warship. If the Sagittarians wanted to fire the first shot, why would they do it at a harmless target like this?”

  “Could’ve b
een a military officer on board,” Strange suggested.

  “Or a weapon,” Jai added. “Transporting to front line.”

  “Bastards was probably just trying to freak the Carinians out,” Jabron said. “Make ‘em think twice about hangin’ around these border systems.”

  Davin stared out the porthole at the bodies drifting ever so slowly away from the yacht’s messy interior. In one of the bigger, mid-level rooms, amidst all the fine, floating paraphernalia, a faint, blue light blinked every few seconds. Davin pressed a button on the side of his helmet, and a circle in his visor zoomed in on the light. The source was an inflated black bag about six feet long that looked like a burnt sausage in the dim light.

  “What the hell is that?” Davin muttered.

  Jabron and Jai pressed their faces close to their respective portholes, trying to spot whatever Davin was looking at.

  “Mid-level,” Davin said. “Big room.”

  Jabron recoiled. “Whoa, that’s a preserve bag.”

  Davin shot him a glance, suit joints whining with the quick movement. “Preserve bag?”

  “My money says there’s something more than a bunch of mangoes in there,” Strange said.

  “Let’s go, fellas,” Davin ordered as he initiated the depressurizing sequence. A red light spun in the ceiling—or the floor, from Jai’s perspective. “Jai, fleece the place of small valuables: jewelry, salvageable electronics, that sort of thing. Jabron, siphon the water and fuel. I’ll get the preserve bag. Strange, I need you in the DJ booth.”

  “Aye aye, Cap,” she replied, turning up the reggae.

  Davin pressed the button on the control pad, and the airlock doors cracked open with a muted rumble.

  * * *

  The giant burnt sausage wafted around the Fossa’s mostly empty cargo bay. Jai pushed a packed duffel bag into a storage nook as Davin whipped a knife from his boot and slashed the jet-black phallus. It popped like a balloon and crumpled around a body.

  “No surprise there,” Davin said to his crew, each clutching handholds as they watched the procedure.

  He sheathed his knife, then grabbed both sides of the ripped preserve bag and yanked it open. The tear spread wide enough to send its weightless occupant—a petite girl with nut-brown hair and goose-bumped copper skin—flying right into Davin’s arms. Definitely Carinian. She was curled into a fetal position with a plastic oxygen mask suctioned to her face. Freckles peppered her cheeks and nose. Davin’s eyes slithered down her graceful, curled body and came to rest on a nice section between her slender legs and lower back. Her spandex shorts and tank top gave a rather intricate depiction of her parameters.

  Davin positioned the girl in the middle of the hold and set her into a slow spin so they could examine all sides of her. He felt his crew gawking. He would’ve gawked too if six other eyes weren’t doing it already.

  “Alright, let’s be professional about this,” Davin said.

  “She’s fine!” Jabron declared.

  “Yep,” Strange seconded.

  Jai shook his head. “Too rich for my blood.” His fixed gaze said otherwise.

  “Really, guys?” Davin said. “You’re gonna go there?” He glanced back at the floating, unconscious girl and felt an odd protective urge. “I found her. That gives me right of first refusal. I’ll decide what we do with her.”

  “I recognize her,” Strange said in a more serious tone. She pushed herself off the wall and floated closer to their unconscious guest. Strange grabbed her in midair to examine her face, half covered by the breather mask. “Oh, God. Wow.”

  “You know who she is?” Davin asked.

  Strange looked at the others in shock. “This is Sierra Falco.”

  The three of them stared.

  Davin scratched his head. “Sounds familiar.”

  “Heard the name,” Jabron added.

  “Actor?” Jai asked.

  Strange rolled her eyes. “Do you guys know nothing about politics? Do you even read the tabloids?”

  Blank stares all around.

  “You know the Carinian prime minister, Elan Falco?”

  Her crew mates’ faces lit up.

  “She’s his daughter!”

  “What?!” Davin pushed off the wall to check for himself. He’d read headlines with her name in them and seen pictures of her, but here her face was half-hidden by the breather. He examined the visible parts. “Huh. Yep, that’s her alright. Didn’t recognize her in the volleyball outfit.”

  “Damn!” Jabron exclaimed. “Famous girl on the Fossa?”

  Davin let go and drifted toward her—thinking, pondering, connecting dots. Besides being in Carina’s most powerful family, this young lass must have also been an object of contention. Somebody wanted her dead, enough to destroy her ship. That increased her value, especially being alive. Right now, Davin had a monopoly on a product in brutally high demand. He kept connecting dots until the picture in his head formed a gigantic sharebuck sign.

  He pointed at his newfound treasure. “This girl could make us rich,” he murmured.

  Strange’s nexband vibrated and beeped. She raised her wrist to see the small screen on the underside of the band. Davin knew what she would say before she said it.

  “Moving targets inbound.”

  Not surprising there. Lots of scavengers in the area, everybody waiting and hoping for the war to start. War meant battles. Battles meant debris. Debris, to a scavenger, meant riches.

  Davin pointed at their resident bio-med expert. “Jai, get the princess to the med bay.” He slapped a button on the wall, and the the inner airlock door slid open. “Bron, you and me are going back out. Jai missed some gems. I can feel it. Strange, how much time we got?”

  “Uh . . .” She looked at her wristband again. “They’re about twelve thousand klicks out, so you might have fifteen, twenty minutes.”

  “Be ready to hightail it as soon as we get back!”

  “Aye, Cap.”

  The Prima Filia

  Chapter Two

  Sierra’s eyes fluttered open in a dark tube. For a few minutes, she let herself float, too lethargic to move or assess her situation. Then a green light flashed, and a thick ring around the cylinder let out a mechanical moan. She realized she was breathing easily and freely, nothing over her face.

  She extended her hand and was met by hard plastic, not tarp material. She wasn’t in the preserve bag. She was somewhere else. A ship, not her own. And she was being scanned.

  Who did this? Who were these people? Sagittarians? No, couldn’t be. They wouldn’t assault her private yacht unprovoked. They were more strategic than that. Only one candidate fit the bill for this kind of attack. She hoped it was somebody else, even tried to rationalize it in her head, but no—couldn’t be.

  The Abramists. It had to have been them. They must’ve followed her through the spacebend gate and fired from a distance. Probably with a solid tungsten projectile, the untraceable sort.

  It amused her, in a wry sort of way, how the military courses her father had made her take popped into head at a time like this. She wouldn’t have known the word “tungsten” otherwise. Not much use now. Not much use ever. She knew from the beginning she’d never use them. Even if all the power of the Carinian armada was placed in her hands, military knowledge was wasted on her.

  Barely visible in the faint light, the ring crept from her head to her feet. Sierra shivered in fear. She remembered little from the attack. In the silence of her sleeping hours, something had hit the ship, made a horrible, explosive, deafening crash, knocked her out of bed. She remembered smacking the far wall of her bedroom, then two prima guards rushing in, inflating the preserve bag, and stuffing her inside before she could ask questions. Her blood had been rushing, her mind slurred, half asleep and distracted by a pounding ache. Something in the preserve’s air mixture must’ve put her back to sleep. The entire episode seemed like a few hazy, fleeting moments now, maybe even a bad dream.

  But this scanner tube was no dream.
<
br />   How long had she been out? A few hours? A few days? She had been captured. That much was clear, but by whom? The Abramists? The equipment, even dimly lit, felt foreign—not a Carinian design.

  The ring stopped a few feet below her exposed toes and went silent. She curled up in a ball and held herself, an intuitive and lifelong habit. Ever since she was a little girl, when her parents were too busy or formal to hug her, it had been her instinct, a small symbol of emotional independence.

  The round, heavy door below her feet wheezed and swung open. Light poured in, making her squint. A scrawny Asian face poked into the opening, upside down from her angle. He made an “okay” sign with one hand and stretched a cheery smile over his gaunt cheeks.

  “Scan say you okay.”

  Sierra remained at the far end of the tube, staring at him and holding onto skepticism. She felt like a cornered animal, vulnerable and about to be consumed. But the young Asian staring at her seemed harmless as a dove.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  “Shu Jai Lin,” he said with a renewed smile. “Welcome. You can come.” He motioned for her to come out.

  “Why did you attack my ship?” she demanded, holding herself in place against the far side of the tube.

  Jai Lin shook his head. “Not attack your ship. No, we find you. Rescue you.”

  That eased her mind a little. This mild fellow wasn’t the Abramist type anyway.

  Still, Sierra didn’t move. “Whose ship is this?”

  Jai Lin glanced over his shoulder, then motioned her to come out again. “I show you. Come on, I show you.”

  She moved to the opening and peeked out. It looked like a typical, small, zero-gee-equipped med bay, but not Carinian. The style resembled Orionite craftsmanship, all pastel colors and rounded corners. The amenities seemed less than top of the line: stains on the walls, half the tool slots empty, rust on the metal lining of the sink—the kind of thing she’d expect to find in a decommissioned shuttle bound for the scrap field. Probably a small, sporty clipper. But belonging to whom?

  Sierra pushed herself out and to a porthole, where Jai Lin hovered. He pointed out into space, and she gasped at the colossal wreckage of her ship. The once beautiful, majestic vessel had been splayed into a million shreds of polymeth and chrome. Amidst the fray, the bodies of her crew rolled slowly through the nothingness. Her attendants, her staff, the ship’s captain and technicians. Russell and Michaela, the chefs, held each other in frozen unity as they twisted in the darkness. Sierra blinked away warm, bitter tears as she pressed her fist over her battered heart.