The Complete New Dominion Trilogy

by Drury, Matthew J.

  Xam Bahr nodded, taking deep breaths, trying to compose himself.

  “There is a world far outside the Terran Alliance,” Sai’bot continued. “The planet Reria, which does not appear on any star maps. Lord Damarus has a secret stronghold there of those loyal to him hidden within its atmosphere. You will be safe there, Patriarch. If the Resistance Movement succeeds in overthrowing the government, you will need to escape, to avoid imprisonment. You know how desperately Ammold Paramo hates the Church.”

  “I have no problem with that,” Bahr said. “The survival of the Holy Orthodoxy is my number one priority. But how are we going to get off planet?”

  “Don’t worry about that, Patriarch. I know of the ideal transport. The Holy Emperor’s personal shuttlecraft is in a docking bay near the Sacred Palace. If you can pilot it, it can get us free of Earth.”

  Xam Bahr nodded. “Very well. Then let us make haste.”

  They moved off in a different direction, sharing hope like the first taste of food after a long fast.

  Emerging from the secret ways late that night, the two alien figures found themselves in a quiet docking bay, empty of other people. Before them, a Demon-class shuttle crouched like a white bird with its wings folded. Sai’bot motioned for Xam Bahr to stay put, then he walked up to the open boarding ramp that beckoned invitingly.

  “Sai’bot, His Holiness’ personal assistant, SGW0027, deactivate defence systems.” He turned back to Bahr. “It’s all right now, we can get on board.”

  Bahr climbed the ramp, looking nervously around him. “What would have happened if I had attempted this alone?” he asked.

  “You would now be dead,” Sai’bot told him. “This ship is equipped with the computer programs necessary for travel to Reria, and an Alcubierre-Sel’varis Drive for travelling through hyperspace. It would not do to let those things fall into the wrong hands.”

  Bahr followed him into the cockpit of the little craft. He immediately began activating the ship’s systems and monitoring communications from the City. “I’m getting some information you should know about,” he said to Sai’bot after a minute. “There’s a total blackout on transmissions, and traffic to and from Earth has been prohibited. That might slow down or even prevent any pursuit from the ground, but listen to this. A lot of the surviving capital ships from the Battle of Laputa are now in orbit. There are a lot of very angry, very confused Captains up there demanding to know what’s going on down here. And no one’s answering them. The news of Lord Damarus’ death hasn’t gotten out. Things haven’t fallen apart yet, but they could at any moment. We’ll have to fly right through a fleet of capital ships to get away from Earth - ”

  “And they could easily capture us or shoot us down, depending on their mood, which is no doubt poor,” finished Sai’bot. “Don’t worry - I said this ship could get us away from here and it will. Our Master has given us a little insurance.”

  Xam Bahr finished preparations for launch. “All right, Sai’bot, here we go. You’d better know what you’re talking about.”

  The shuttle rose up, wings unfolding into a triangular configuration, and shot out of the bay into the night sky of Laputa. The Silver City spread out below them like a glittering tapestry. Bahr pushed the shuttle for all the speed he could coax out of it, and, as he had guessed, nothing rose up to intercept them. Driving towards the upper atmosphere, he powered up the weapons systems. The scanners registered no less than twelve capital ships directly above them. His skin prickled as he pictured their hundreds of Dual Heavy Beam Lasers locking onto the tiny craft. Sai’bot was completely calm. He touched a switch with his long, thin finger, and sat back in his seat, smiling slightly.

  The shuttle continued to climb, leaving the atmosphere behind. The stars became sharp pinpoints of light as they came within visual range of the enormous battleships. Bahr fought the urge to turn and flee. The seconds passed excruciatingly slowly, as the capital ships seemed to grow until they blocked out the stars. Finally, they hurtled past the fleet, at a distance of less than ten kilometres from the closest one.

  Then the gigantic ships with their hot white engines were dwindling behind them, and they were in the clear. Xam Bahr let out a sigh of relief and called up the coordinates for the hyperspace journey to Reria.

  “You see,” said Sai’bot, “this ship broadcasts a code that tells the computers of any other ships in the area not to fire, and not to lock on a tractor beam. Lord Damarus never wanted to be in danger of becoming the victim of a quick and easy coup by an ambitious admiral while he was traveling in such a tiny vessel as this. So, they may have tried, but they couldn’t shoot at this shuttle. We were perfectly safe.”

  Xam Bahr stared at Sai’bot as the stars out of the viewport flared, a kaleidoscopic rainbow hue of dimensional transcendence as they blasted into hyperspace. “I’ve got to hand it to you, Sai’bot,” he said with admiration, “this is some rescue.”

  The Holy Emperor’s shuttle emerged from hyperspace over the planet Reria, surrounded by a glorious profusion of stars. The closest was a binary, a blue star and its blue dwarf companion, and Xam Bahr immediately plotted a course for the tiny ocean world orbiting them. So they came at last to Reria, a world of perpetual lightning storms, where Lord Damarus and his servants had built Reria City, a group of shard-like floating structures suspended in the atmosphere, huge in size, able to accommodate entire fleets of warships.

  They flew over the Control Sector, which dominated an entire shard, then approached the Main Citadel, an enormous spire several kilometres high. Sai’bot informed Bahr that, were it not for the recognition codes being broadcast by their ship, they would never have penetrated the defensive zone of the Citadel alive. As it was, they registered the tracking signatures of hundreds of particle cannons as they sailed smoothly into Damarus’ private docking bay. Three hundred Holy Guards were ceremonially lined up in the bay to receive them.

  Sai’bot and Xam Bahr descended the ramp and stood wearily before one of the Holy Emperor’s trusted servants, Kelan Hesas. Hesas was visibly shocked to see the dirty, exhausted looking pair, and he could not suppress his anxious questions. “Patriarch! Where is Lord Damarus? We have heard rumours of his death, and indeed, we have felt the weakness in the Power of the All. You have come in His personal transport. What can you tell us?”

  Sai’bot summoned as much dignity as he could. “Our Lord Damarus is dead, Kelan, but there may yet be hope. His last wish was for Xam Bahr to be brought here as soon as possible. For what purpose, I am not yet sure.”

  Hesas nodded. “I understand. The Holy Orthodoxy must survive.”

  “At all costs,” Xam Bahr added.

  Sai’bot stared out at the city of lights, glistening under the constant violence of the lightning storms above. “I would love to stay and help,” Sai’bot said sadly, “but I have unfinished business to take care of.”

  Bahr frowned. “Where will you go?”

  “I must return to Earth,” Sai’bot said, “as instructed by our Lord and Master. I’m not sure why. The Lord works in mysterious ways. I do not pretend to understand them.”

  Hesas nodded, smiling. “Hallowed be His Name.”

  “May God be with you, Xam Bahr,” Sai’bot said, and went back up into the shuttle. “Something tells me we will meet again, soon enough.”

  “May God be with you, Sai’bot,” Bahr said softly, after him.

  A while later, the shuttle lifted off gracefully, and climbed for the stars.

  10

  202 ND

  PLANET JUN’KO

  CONSTELLATION SCORPIUS

  The Thunder reverted from hyperspace smoothly and began a long arc in toward the planet Jun’Ko. Machiko Famasika liked how easily the aging prototype ship handled. It was nothing like a modern Alliance fighter or a Nommos bioship, but it didn’t feel as if she were flying a planetoid either. “Estimated time of arrival is eight minutes,” she said, smiling. This was the first opportunity she’d had to pilot the legendary Thunder - the only
ship that had travelled through the Heaven’s Gate wormhole and survived intact - and she was enjoying every moment of it.

  Lorelei Chen barely grunted an acknowledgment of Machiko’s comment. She stared intently at a trio of overlapping holographic data windows, projected by the Zara’moth computer interface. One showed Jun’Ko as a khaki ball with slender stripes of blue radiating out from a large ocean in the southern hemisphere. Ice caps covered either pole, with the one in the south extending out into the ocean. Atmospheric readings and other data filled the space around the world. A second window showed a group of images of flora and fauna native to the world. Third and finally - and the window Chen was studying hardest - was the image of an ancient communications relay satellite of unknown origin that appeared, to Chen, to have lost its antenna array centuries, if not millennia, ago. It was considerably ancient, yet appeared to be fantastically advanced.

  The Thunder, which was a decades-old experimental bioship originally commissioned by Lord Damarus himself, had a flat semi-saucer shape with a squared-off aft that enabled Machiko to slide it into the Jun’Ko atmosphere without a lot of difficulty. The ship’s mass meant the atmospheric entry didn’t bounce it around too much. Machiko had adjusted the inertial compensator down to ninety percent, just to give her a better feel for how the Thunder flew. The storm did manage to bump and drop the ship a little, but Machiko didn’t mind. She waved a hand over the controls, lowering the landing gear, then glanced at the altimeter and cut in the thruster engines to settle the ship down easily. She got a bump four meters above where she felt the ship should have touched down, and then the Thunder continued to descend. It sank until the bottom hull pressed against the ground.

  Wind-whipped sand hissed a tan curtain over the viewport. The sand slid away, providing a brief glimpse of a distant horizon, then another layer coated the image. Darker shadows loomed nearby, but the shifting sand gave Machiko no chance to see exactly where they were. “Looks like we’ve sunk into the sand,” she said, “so we’re not going out through the landing ramp.” She pointed a finger up toward the ceiling. “Topside hatch.”

  Chen nodded and handed Machiko a pair of goggles and a rebreather that had a comm. link built into it. “There are sensor readings to the west, about three kilometres. Some kind of artificial structure.”

  “No life?”

  “Life, yes. Human, no.” Chen’s eyes scanned the holographic computer readings in front of her, then she nodded. “Fairly small lifeforms. Nothing to worry about.”

  “Okay. Let’s do this.” Machiko stood up, checked over her Rãvier suit, then moved into the companionway that gave them access to the top hatch tube. She mounted the ladder, disengaged the interlocks, and shoved up on the round hatch, which popped open like a flap of skin.

  A brown curtain of sand poured down over her. Machiko reflexively ducked her face away and felt a kilo of dirt stream across her hair. Because the rebreather filtered only the airborne sand, she could still smell the dry scent in the air. What surprised her about the wind was how cool it was. She scrambled up the ladder and pushed herself through the top hatch, then looked down to see Lorelei Chen following closely behind her a moment later.

  Machiko walked across the organic metamaterial of the Thunder’s hull to the very edge and looked down at the sand piling up against the craft’s port side, at least thirty metres below. Beyond it, she saw a large forest of massive trees dominating the westerly landscape, with thousands of different varieties reaching kilometres in height. The trees appeared to be so big that entire ecosystems could live within their hollowed-out trunks, like immense caverns. And beyond this colossal forest, barely visible, she caught a hint of colour - a small, reddish black pyramid set within a vast and ancient city of ruined stone - which she assumed marked the location of the Easesash Stone, as promised by the Samán of Monsula. Blowing air from her mouth, she crouched down and grabbed a handful of sand, letting it dribble out through her gloved fingers.

  Chen stood above her. “Not that far down.”

  “Be my guest, Lora,” Machiko smiled. “Show me how it’s done.”

  Without hesitating, Chen leapt from the ship’s hull, plummeted thirty metres, and landed in a crouch. She sank to ankles and wrists in a trough between two little sand dunes. Rising up a bit, she started walking toward the immense trees of the nearby forest. She looked back at Machiko and waved her forward, grinning. “Come on. Your Rãvier suit will absorb the impact.”

  She heard Machiko crunch down behind her, but a gust of wind raised a cloud that obscured the younger woman. At that moment, she sensed something larger lurking at the fringes of her awareness.

  Something… big.

  Shaking the thought aside, she pushed on toward the outskirts of the giant forest and reached it with relative ease after a several-minute trek. A couple of rocky outcroppings defined the western edge of the forest. Long, dark-grey boulders thrust up through the sand like the fingers on a drowning man’s hand. She looked around, then climbed up onto one of the rocks. “This planet could be hostile. Do we walk or take the Zat’utpyt?”

  Machiko frowned. “In its current state I think we’d have trouble getting the Zat’utpyt out of the ship’s vehicle hangar. We’ll have to walk, I guess.”

  Chen took a deep breath, and nodded in agreement. “Very well.” She climbed down and started off toward the northwest. Machiko followed. The exertion of marching through sandy mud made her sweat profusely, despite the enhanced strength fed to her by her suit - and the dry, cool air sucked as much moisture as it could from her.

  As they made their way across the rocky outcropping into the shade of the trees, Chen stopped. “I should have thought to bring water.” She frowned, then her head came up as something tickled her awareness. Something was moving out there, under the sand. She glanced at Machiko. “Do you feel that?”

  “Yes, coming towards us along this sand dune, coming fast.” Machiko pointed. “The sand is shifting a bit there.”

  Chen turned and fingered her disruptor pistol. Sand moved, ever so slightly, falling from the crest of dunes and down. Something, some kind of animal, was definitely speeding within the lighter, dusty layer of sand near the surface. Chen took a half step back by reflex.

  The thing burst from the dune. Nothing more than a grey and white blur, it shot past Machiko and dived into the next dune. Its powerful flat tail snapped back and forth, then disappeared within the sand. The beast shot off to the south, and both women watched the sand shift in its wake.

  It wasn’t until Chen turned to look at her that Machiko felt the stinging across her left thigh. Unbelievably, her Rãvier suit had a neat gash slashed in it, and the pale flesh below was smeared with blood. The wound wasn’t deep and didn’t hurt that much, but if she’d not recoiled, it would have taken a huge chunk from her thigh.

  Chen’s eyes grew wide, and she pointed to Machiko’s leg. “Is it bad?”

  “No, but it could be.” Machiko turned and pointed to the south. “It’s coming back.”

  “Two of them, and another starting from the north.” Chen pulled her disruptor pistol from the holster on her hip and set the output to maximum. “We can stop them.”

  “I have a bad feeling about this,” Machiko said. “Run for the trees! Now!”

  The things - and that was about the best Machiko could do in making up any sort of name for the grey blur that had slashed her - came on fast and oriented on the two women as they made their dash for the safety of the vast tree trunks. Machiko threw herself up over a dune and did a shoulder roll down the other side. She saw the sand rippling in a line toward her, so he dropped into a crouch.

  The thing burst from the dune and dove straight at her. She brought up her pistol and fired; the sizzling golden energy bolt caught the creature behind the jaw and right in front of its shoulders, at what should have been a neck. Grey fur combusted into acrid smoke, and black blood splashed over the sand. The creature then kept snapping and rolling across the ground until life drain
ed from it. The body, stuck halfway into a dune, whipped the tail back in slackening slashes.

  The creature’s snout was long and tapered back into a wedge-shaped skull that was entirely covered in chitin or keratin, like fingernails, but much thicker and polished smooth by moving through the sand. Short but powerful limbs sprouted long claws, clearly designed for digging. The creature’s grey fur was little more than down except for a fringe at the back of the skull, and the long flat tail was covered with keratin scales. Its side-to-side undulation obviously helped propel the supple body through the sand.

  As striking as the creature’s physical presence was the horrid stink it gave off. It smelled to Machiko like vapour from rotting meat mixed with the sourest ale and harshest tobaccos she’d ever tasted. She choked back a desire to vomit and didn’t terribly mind the scent of the cauterised gorge from her energy weapon burning the creature’s odour from her nostrils. She leapt past the thrashing body and sprinted as fast as she could along the dune trough, toward Lora.

  Lorelei Chen flattened to the ground as the second creature burst from the dune to her right and dived at her. Its attack missed, and the creature’s flight took it into the dune where its fellow was dying. Its jaws closed hard, cracking bones and making wet popping sounds that inspired Chen to get up and run again without looking back. She went over another dune, and another, with Machiko pacing her slightly to the south, leaping dunes in prodigious bounds. The beast arced from dune crest to dune crest, like an infernal fish leaping from the waves, and let loose with undulating little cries that made it sound like a feral Sentinel robot on a rampage.