Horns of the Ram (Dominion Book 2)

by Austin Rogers

  Drazen’s lips twitched into a wry smile. “As you said, my lord, he’s no fool. He knows what he’s doing.”

  “And he knows I’m powerless to stop him.” Zantorian propped his elbow on the starkly black obsidian table and rested his chin on the base of his palm, staring off at a diamond statue of one of their forebears. So strong. So unyielding. It made the words rattling in his head even more bitter than they already were. “I have to offer him all of Lagoon.”

  Drazen’s face twisted in disgust. “No, my lord. Don’t reward his defiance.”

  “I have no choice,” Zantorian said. “Velasco’s holding out for a better deal. He knows I don’t want war to start like this, with the whole galaxy against us. And he knows he stands a breath away from provoking Carina into war. All he must do is outstretch his hand to Earth.”

  “Why should we care if Swan and its cohort destroy themselves provoking Carina?” Drazen asked with a scowl, truly fearsome when broken out of his calm demeanor. “Let them burn on their own.”

  “Were it possible to let them burn on their own, I would. But Carina’s ambitions are greater than taking down a mereportion of the Regnum. They want to break it all down. A strong faction of them see me as the ‘Heathen King’ and our Regnum as the ‘Empire of Satan.’” Zantorian couldn’t help but be amused uttering those words. “How can one wage a limited war against the agents of evil itself? How could one be satisfied exterminating a few of the Devil’s deputies but leaving their lord alive?”

  Drazen sat back, nostrils flaring in withheld anger. “Your knowledge of their religion is greater than mine, so I defer to your judgement about that, but about Velasco . . . I beg you, do not empower him any further. If all of Lagoon falls into his hands, his sphere of influence will cover half the Regnum.And he’ll face no serious threat from Orion. My lord . . . he would be in a strong position to mount a coup for the Diamond Throne.”

  Zantorian let out a long, conflicted breath and gazed across the lawn at the diamond statue, hoping its essence might impart some timely wisdom.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Carina Arm, approaching Nexus Point CR 6572 . . .

  Somehow, by the grace of Jesus and Vishnu and all the others, theFossa had stabilized into a forward position inside the warp bubble. The next step was figuring out how to use the engines again once they shot out the exit gate.

  Hence why Davin found himself in the hot, cramped, dim mechanical access compartment at the aft of the ship, fingers smeared with grease, scouring a shit show of damaged parts. Something was whistling like a kettle. He reached a hand between two aluminum pipes and felt burning steam sizzle his skin.

  “Gah!” he grunted, keeping his teeth pinched over a small flashlight. He took out the flashlight and maneuvered his nexband wrist to his lips. “Found the leak in Z Fifty Five. Patchin’ it.” He slid a sealant gun out of his hip holster and navigated it through the latticework of pipes and tubes, aiming the flashlight with his other hand. A gob of sealant later, the whistling mercifully stopped.

  A few meters to Davin’s left, faintly lit from the scattered orange bulbs, Kiki let out a grateful sigh and muttered, “Thank God.” She was also arm-deep in a press of pipes, searching for a different, quieter leak. “How will I know when I’ve found it?”

  Davin thought of the still-smarting burn on his hand. “You’ll know.”

  “Got it, Cap!” Strange’s voice blared through the nexband’s tiny speakers. “Still leaks in Z Sixteen, Z Eighty-Seven, and Z Eighty-Nine.”

  “Kiki’s feelin’ up the eighties,” Davin replied into his nexband. “I’ll look for Sixteen. How’s our exterior look?” He holstered the sealant gun and pulled himself through a narrow gap between thick tubes.

  “Bad,” she said. “Our ass end got chewed up by the debris. Main nozzle’s damaged. Rudder’s damaged. Maneuvering thrusters took some damage. Stabilizers are Swiss cheese.”

  Davin let out his breath. Adrenaline kept his heart in overdrive and his muscles taut. “How much time we got left to the exit gate?”

  “Less than three minutes,” Strange said flatly.

  Davin closed his eyes for a second and whispered a curse, then opened them again, shook off the beads of sweat forming on his forehead, and scoured the dark space for a pipe labeled Z-16.

  #

  Davin was still wiping off his hands when he flew through the cockpit tube. Strange worked her fingers busily over the control board, switching her touchscreen back and forth between animated renderings of various ship functions. She flipped through pages so fast, Davin didn’t know how she could get anything from them.

  She sniffed. “You smell like a chimpanzee after a turd fight.”

  “You been in a lot of turd fights with chimpanzees?” Davin asked as he pulled himself into the copilot’s seat.

  Strange brushed a few loose strands of her bangs behind her ear. “Oh yeah. Nothing like a good turd fight to blow off steam.”

  Davin ripped a rubber water bottle from its velcro attachment on the structural steam beam slanted over his head. “I’ll have to start saving up.” He patted his belly. “Gonna have a helluva lotta steam to blow off after all this.”

  “Tell me about it,” Strange said quickly before glancing at the dashboard timer. She mashed a button on the center console. “Five seconds, Kiki!” Her voice reverberated through the ship. “Get to a seat and strap in!”

  “Ready to go!” Kiki shouted back from the common room.

  Davin squirted a stream of water into his mouth then stuck the rubber bottle back against the velcro patch on the beam.

  A dazzling, new star pattern appeared out the windshield. In the corner, the bright, orange-tinted local star cast long rays, reflected against a scattering of small planets visible only as slivers of diluted orange.

  “Moment of truth,” Strange said, hand on the forward thrust lever.

  She pressed the thumb safety and plunged it forward. A deep groan bellowed from the rear of the ship as the main engine heaved to life. They lurched forward. Everything shook as the gees picked up, but this wasn’t the same shake as before. Something rattled in the dashboard. The hull creaked a horrible grating sound like two solid masses of metal rubbing against each other.

  Davin opened his mouth to make Strange stop the engines, but a resonant, metallic belch from behind cut him off. The engines shut off automatically, and theFossa twirled wildly. The stars spiraled in the windshield.

  “Shit!” Strange exclaimed, working her hands between the controls and the touchscreen. “Main engines are down.”

  “What? What does that mean?” Davin asked in utter panic. He knew exactly what it meant, but it didn’t register in his brain.

  “We’redead in the water, Cap!” Strange yelled angrily. “I can’t accelerate. We’re moving too slow. We’re not even going the right direction.”

  “What happened?” Davin asked. “Something break down?”

  “What’s going on?” Kiki shouted through the connecter tube. “Why aren’t we moving?”

  “Shut up!” Strange exclaimed. “Both of you! I can’t hear my own damn thoughts!”

  The timer counted up: 28, 29, 30, 31. Davin breathed heavily, watching his pilot helplessly as she cycled through various ship function displays on her screen. Finally, she closed her eyes and concentrated, mind clearly racing as fast as his. The timer continued pitilessly: 52, 53, 54, 55, 56. The Carinian gunship would be coming through in a minute or so. Maybe two or three if they were lucky.

  “Shhhhhhhit,” Strange cursed in defeat. She opened her eyes and pulled up a planetary layout of the local solar system. “Fuel inlet to the main engine is blown. No way to bypass it. We gotta get to a planet. Might be able to hobble there with the secondary thrusters.”

  Davin took a breath, feeling the knot tighten in his gut, then shooed her hands away from the positioning screen. “I’ll find the planet. You get us moving toward the local star. There’s gotta be a Goldilocks planet in this system.”


  “What about that one?” Strange asked, pointing out the windshield at a bluish crescent. “Looks the right size, right distance from the star.”

  Davin zoomed the map screen down to the system’s inner planets and tapped on the one closest to theFossa’s blinking dot. It pulled up an information box with data from the Galactic Registry—the name of the planet and some specs.

  “Santa Maria,” Davin read off. “Zero-point-eight-five the size of Earth—”

  “That’s good,” Strange interjected, nodding and moving the steering stick to align them toward the blue crescent.

  “Hold up,” Davin said. “Its surface is ninety-four percent water. Are you sure you can steer us onto land?”

  “As long as we can find it from orbit,” she said, brushing her forearm over her brow. “And a relatively flat piece of land about fifty meters long, forty-five wide. Without trees or rocks.”

  “That’s a lot of conditions!” Kiki shouted from the common area.

  Davin hadn’t realized she’d been listening in. With the main engine shut off, the ship was much quieter.

  “That’s also assuming we can make it there without being blown to bits,” Davin said. “Can you push us any faster?”

  “I can use the rear maneuvering thrusters, but . . .” Strange grimaced.

  Davin got impatient. “But what?”

  “The maneuvering thrusters use compressed oxygen,” Strange explained. “They’re only supposed to be used for short bursts, a few seconds at a time. I’d have to burn through everything we got to get any decent speed. Without fuel for the maneuvering thrusters, theFossa wouldn’t be able to fly again.”

  Davin let out a heavy breath, sweating anxiously. The knot in his stomach constricted even further, making his insides roil. He opened the rearview camera on the copilot’s screen to check the spacebend gate from which they’d come. Soon, the Carinian gunship would emerge and would spare them no more mercy than it did before.

  “Do it,” Davin ordered.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Kiki hyperventilated as Davin tightened the cinchers at all of her dermasuit joints in the locker room.

  “Ow!” she exclaimed, hand quivering as she gripped a handlebar beside the locker to stabilize herself. “Does it have to be so tight?”

  “Yes,” Davin replied emphatically before yanking a cincher behind her knee. “You know how much atmospheric pressure there is in space?”

  “None,” Kiki said grudgingly.

  “You know how much the human body needs to keep the air from exploding out of our lungs?”

  Kiki closed her eyes as Davin continued tugging on her suit. “No.”

  “Well, I don’t know either,” Davin said. “But it’s a helluva lot more than zero.”

  Kiki tried to stay calm, taking long, deep breaths. She started murmuring, “Protect me, God. Please protect me. Please, God—”

  “Ya know, I wouldn’t mind having some of that divine protection myself,” Davin said, tugging the last cincher on Kiki’s suit and twisting it locked.

  She opened her eyes. “You believe in God?”

  Davin thought about it. “I don’tnot believe in God. But . . . I don’t know. Never seen his signature in the stars or anything like that.”

  “The starsare His signature,” Kiki replied, training her dark but sincere eyes on him. Her hand had stopped shaking. “Where do you think they all came from if not from God?”

  Davin grinned. “That question’s a little above my pay grade.”

  He planted his boot against the side of the locker and launched himself to a pair of winches thick with a wound, metal wire. He grabbed a carabiner, clipped it into a loop at the back of his dermasuit, then grabbed the other and pulled it out. Kiki watched as he propelled himself back to her and grabbed hold of her shoulder to stop himself. He clipped the carabiner into her own suit’s loop.

  “Davin,” Kiki said. She looked at him with a strange genuineness—compassion, maybe. “Think about it. Please.”

  Davin stared back at her, not knowing what to say. The words had caught him off guard, as had Kiki’s face. It was the first time she actually seemed to care about him. He nodded. “I will.”

  Thankfully, Strange’s voice, speaking through Davin’s nexband, cut off the uncomfortable moment. “Cap! Gunship just fired off a bunch of missiles!”

  Davin patted Kiki on the shoulder. “Showtime. Helmet on.”

  While Kiki devolved back into fidgety nervousness, Davin kicked over to his locker, slid his helmet snug and twisted it onto the ring around his neck. He pulled out a long, thin rifle with a scope as thick as the barrel and turned to Kiki. She was still struggling to seal her helmet into the ring of her suit. He launched himself over to her, the wire attached to his back staying taut.

  “Never worn a space suit before, huh?”

  “Never . . . been . . . off . . . planet Earth,” came her muffled reply as she fiddled with the helmet.

  Davin finally grabbed it, jammed it down onto the ring’s slots, and twisted. It made a light, quick hissing sound.

  “Don’t freak out,” Davin said brusquely. “You’ll waste oxygen. Open Jabron’s locker behind you. You can use his gun.” He watched as she clumsily turned her body to face the lockers, pulled open the one with Bron’s name stenciled onto it, and wrapped her stubby glove fingers around the barrel of the rifle. “Magazines are in the side pockets there.”

  Davin returned to the other side of the locker room and switched on his mag boots, instantly clunking to the floor, while Kiki clumsily loaded the magazine into the opening at the bottom of the rifle barrel. He listened to her huff into her helmet mike.

  “Your boots,” Davin said. “Twist the switch on the sides.”

  She bent her body to comply, one foot plunging down to the floor, then the other. Davin considered asking if she was ready for what came next but decided against it. No time for a pep talk.

  He slapped the button to initiate the opening sequence. A spinning red light came on in the ceiling to signal the air being cycled out. All sound went with it, leaving nothing but the rhythmic puffs of Kiki’s breath. When it cut off, the ramp door automatically eased open to reveal the vast, star-studded expanse of space. Nothing separating them from the nothingness now except their suits.

  Kiki panicked. “Oh, God. Oh, sweet God in Heaven.”

  “Kiki!” Davin exclaimed, positioning one foot behind the other for stability and nestling the butt of the rifle into the hollow of his shoulder. “You’re fine. Breathe through your nose. I need your help. Look for the missiles. If we don’t take ‘em out, then you’llreally have something to worry about.”

  He peered through his scope for a second, pulled away to scan the expanse with his naked eye, then peered through the scope again. In the corner of his eye, he could see Kiki aiming her rifle even as her nose strained from hard breaths. She fired first. Davin watched with his naked eyes. Nothing. Kiki fired again. Still nothing. Kiki grunted angrily and adjusted the rifled against her shoulder.

  “The kick throws off my balance,” she complained.

  “One foot behind the other,” Davin said. “You have to press down your toes and pull up your heel to pick your foot up.”

  He peered through his scope again and came across the glint of a missile. A flickering flare pushed it along in the back. He’d barely lined it up behind his reticle when he heard a rifle crack—through Kiki’s helmet mike—and the missile blew up into a flurry of debris.

  “Not bad, rookie,” Davin said as he scanned for another target.

  “It’s not the first time I’ve shot at a moving target,” she replied in a gruff tone.

  Soon, multiple targets became visible, mere shooting stars at first but growing into candlelights. Davin tracked one down in his scope and centered his reticle on it . . .

  CRACK.

  The missile flared in a quick explosion before dying out and transforming into a flying mass of debris. Davin felt a little burst of pride
but was quickly sobered by the sight of so many others inbound. He counted five.

  “Strange, how close are we to insertion?” he asked.

  “Couple minutes, give or take,” she said. “Keep off the missiles! I wanna make it down in one piece.”

  “All over it,” Davin replied, following another metallic glint in his scope.

  CRACK. Crack. He fired, and Kiki fired right after him. Her shot landed, causing one of the missiles to explode in a flash and break apart. His shot hit nothing, so he searched in his scope for the missile again, lined it up, reticle right where it looked like the tip would be. Hard to make out the shape of it only seeing a glint and viewing it from the front instead of broadside. He fired again.

  Success! It flared and blasted into bits. Three to go. They were growing, creeping closer, their shapes getting more defined. Davin’s heart rate picked up, the blood surging in his veins. This would be the end of the line if they didn’t take out those missiles.

  Davin found another halo of flickering light surrounding a dark spot, obviously the body of the projectile. His reticle wavered around it, his hands and arms trembling from nervousness. Kiki continued to shoot beside him, apparently not hitting anything either.

  “They’re three hundred twenty meters out!” Strange exclaimed. “Shoot ‘em!”

  Come on, Davin. He sucked in a breath and held it, steadying himself, focusing on the dark spot.

  CRACK. Nothing. Panic gripped him seeing that flickering halo expand in his scope. He could make out the silhouette of the body now. He sucked in another breath, held it, tightened his grip on the rifle. Squeezed the trigger . . .

  The halo of light turned into an angry, fast-burning cloud of fire, much bigger than the others. Davin felt a burst of energy but wasted no time searching for another target. Two more left. They weren’t difficult to find, their ominous points now barely visible with the naked eye. Davin scoped another one, breaths short and rapid in his helmet. He concentrated on the tip of the missile.

  Without pulling the trigger, the missile exploded in his scope, creating a flare bright enough to leave a sunspot in Davin’s vision. Kiki. He blinked a few times and searched for the last one. It was terrifyingly close, a silent killer soaring through the darkness. His reticle found it but wobbled wildly as he aimed.