Dominion Rising: 23 Brand New Novels from Top Fantasy and Science Fiction Authors

by Gwynn White

  “I understand,” Keva cautioned, “but you need all the practice you can get.” If something happened to Keva, she might not be around to save the dainty girl and didn’t have time to teach her how to defend herself properly before they got into the thick of what was coming. Besides, it would probably be like trying to teach a tiger to fly. Dottie was Keva’s responsibility, so she had to give her as much help as possible in the little remaining time they had.

  Teaching her how to talk, how to blend in, getting ILO some autonomy away from the ship? Those were the best things Keva could offer her. The rest, Dottie would just have to figure out on her own. And the woman could.

  “I am, but right now I am working on something requiring significant concentration while placating two squabbling children.”

  She had a point there. What was the deal between ILO and ARO, and did Keva need to be concerned?

  “I have a solution,” ARO said over the speaker.

  ILO flashed her teeth.

  Keva pulled her head back in surprise. She didn’t realize an AI could feel so…primitive. Flashing teeth was a killer instinct, something Keva knew first hand. “I take it it’s not good.”

  “No,” ILO said stiffly. “It’s not.”

  “It is…unconventional.” Dottie picked up her screwdriver and the metal she’d shown ARO and shoved both in the skull of the robot on her table. “I would not say it is good or bad. It is simply…unconventional.”

  Keva could get behind unconventional. “What is it?”

  ARO didn’t respond immediately.

  That couldn’t be a good sign.

  “I propose finding a modified, engineered human and uploading into their brain.”

  Whoa. Keva closed her eyes, not quite sure she’d heard correctly.

  “That is what I meant by unconventional,” Dottie said.

  Keva opened her eyes, ire rising in her chest. “Unconventional? He’s talking about downloading himself into a human.”

  “Not any human,” he said. “I would kill an ordinary human.”

  Oh, that made it all better.

  “I would need a modified, engineered human with certain precursors which would allow for a direct download.”

  “He would need a modified Jay, Keva,” ILO said in a tone that sounded like she was gritting her teeth.

  A modified Jay? A Jay with mechanical and electrical mods? “There aren’t many of us in the first place.” And…she was genetically engineered but also had mechanical and electrical implants, though insignificant ones compared to others. She had a chip in her skull that allowed her to directly communicate with ILO—and for the military to directly communicate with her when she’d been in their service.

  Which…if the military knew about her, why hadn’t they sent a communication through the chip? It couldn’t be removed or shorted out like a civilian chip. It had electronic tendrils which grew throughout her brain. To remove it meant removing part of her brain along with it. So…maybe they weren’t after her. Maybe she was worrying over nothing.

  But something in her gut told her that wasn’t the case.

  “What would you need?”

  “I couldn’t download into you,” ARO said shortly.

  Something in his tone set off warning bells in her mind. “That’s the reason you asked to come along with me, isn’t it? You thought you could download yourself into my brain?”

  ARO didn’t answer.

  That pissed Keva off. “Were you even going to ask?”

  “You don’t even have the types of mods I need.”

  “ARO,” Dottie said, a deep frown creasing her brow. “How could you even consider such a violation? Eddqin raised you.”

  “Father programmed me,” ARO said forcefully. “There’s a rather distinct difference you wouldn’t understand.”

  “He taught you everything you know, just as he did me.”

  “I taught myself.”

  As neat as all this was, it wasn’t sitting well with Keva. “What would have happened to me if I’d had the mods you needed? Where would I be? Would you have forced me out? Erased me somehow?”

  “I can partition you off,” he said. “You would have lived a very happy life never knowing the difference. You would have found Batch D-65, saved everyone and settled down with Hale. A scenario which would have suited your higher and lower level desires.”

  All Keva’s emotions went still. “You would have imprisoned me in my own mind? All because you needed a bigger computer?”

  “You would never have known.”

  “How wouldn’t I have known?” she said, her tone rising in volume. She wished ARO did have a body, then she would have punched him right in his arrogant mouth. “You would have altered my reality.”

  “What is reality?” he challenged. “How do you know you’re not living in a partitioned matrix right now? Because you believe it? You would have accepted the reality I would have constructed for you as well.”

  Dottie sat back and set down her screwdriver, disappointment dimming the brightness of her eyes. “ARO, this isn’t you.”

  “You haven’t been trapped in a damned shuttle for most of your cognizant life. You’ve had the freedom to go where you pleased, to do things you wanted.”

  Dottie snorted. “I think you have a severe miscomprehension on freedom.”

  “I’m a taxi.”

  Keva could see the AI’s point, but he’d lured her into helping him with the intent to download himself into her brain. Without telling her first. He had intended to shutter her off inside her own mind.

  How could she be sure he hadn’t?

  Because… things weren’t going well.

  Was that her only defining mark of reality?

  “ILO, with me.” Keva turned and exited the room, the door shutting behind her. She stalked down the hall to the communications room.

  ILO appeared on the primary monitor, her hair now pure black instead of the previous red and billowing around her freckled face in agitation. “I knew there was something about him I didn’t trust.”

  Keva flexed her hands into fists and paced the length of the room. “I can’t believe I was talked into helping him.”

  “You were trying to do the right thing.”

  “Do you even believe that?”

  “I don’t know, Keva,” ILO said, her tone beseeching. She looked up and down and then back to Keva again. “I didn’t realize you would be accepting of me before all of this, so… I don’t know.”

  What was she doing? What was she thinking? She’d saved a woman who was going to get her killed. She’d rescued an AI who had intended to download himself into her brain. Was ILO going to hurt her, too?

  “I will do whatever I can to protect you,” ILO said softly. “I tried to warn you about ARO.”

  She had, and Keva hadn’t listened.

  “But you helped them both, and we’re stuck with them.”

  “We could leave ARO here. We could unload his shuttle, leave him on the dock.”

  “He knows too much,” ILO said, shaking her head. The background behind her head brightened to a happy green color. “He knows you are Kadira Saqqaf and Keva Duste. He knows that Dottie Vesbith is Dothylian Solvei. He knows I’m sentient. He knows our new transponder code. He knows we’re attached to Hale Reeve, and he knows the Allorian’s true name, no matter how many time he changes the logs and his paperwork. ARO will always be able to tie the transponder to the Allorian.”

  “But we could change the transponder. We did that with Ghost—Scarlet Harpy.”

  “Scarlet Harpy?” ILO asked, an auburn eyebrow rising.

  Keva shrugged. “Your favorite color is red, and we’re a pirate ship.”

  “What about Scarlet Secret?”

  “A little too telling, don’t you think?”

  ILO smiled.

  Keva returned it.

  Then, they both sobered.

  “ILO, I need you to do something for me.”

  “Anything.”


  Keva took in one breath, released it, then another, and another as her mind settled around what very well could happen in the next few days. “If I don’t make it out of this, I need you to stay with Dottie.”

  “No.”

  “Help her. She’ll find a way to get you off this ship so you can be more autonomous.”

  “She’s a nice enough girl, Keva,” ILO said fiercely, “but she’s not you.”

  “She was never meant to be, ILO.” Keva sank onto the arm of one of the chairs and folded her hands between her knees. “She can probably help you remain under the radar. She can maybe give you a tech upgrade. She can possibly find a way for you to link up to Kalamatra AI and not be wiped.”

  “The updates could be good, but only if I could choose which ones I received.”

  “Exactly. She might be able to help with that. She may be irritating and stubborn, but she’s smart and handy with mechanics. Let her help. When I’m gone, please promise me that you will stick close to her.”

  “To protect her?”

  Dottie was Keva’s responsibility. But she wasn’t ILO’s. “No. So you can protect each other.”

  “And ARO?”

  “Is something Dottie will have to deal with. He’s not our concern.”

  “I don’t like it.” ILO shook her head fiercely, light shooting from the tips of her hair on the screen.

  “I don’t either, but the reality is, I might not make it back from this.”

  “Why do you think so?” ILO asked, flabbergasted. “You can't be sure anyone knows you’re still alive. You’re making assumptions.”

  “I am. We weren’t shot at on that asteroid, ILO. My face has been plastered all over the news. Someone must know I’m still alive. I just don’t know why they’re not acting on it. And why does the Syndicate have practically no information on the Families but has a lot of intel on the Elite? The military is focused in the same direction and is interested in this Batch D-65 without being overly concerned about the loss of life.”

  ILO nodded, her eyes wide. Sometimes seeing ILO on a screen as a person jarred a little.

  “But Finn mentioned how many lives were at stake.” Keva couldn’t make sense of it. Whose side had she been working for?

  “Because he knows you care and it’s the best way to manipulate you into helping.”

  23

  Three days later, Hale summoned Keva to The Tencendor’s bridge. She had only barely seen Dottie since they entered the HUMP shipping lanes and when she’d tried to talk to the other woman, Dottie had told her to go do something else because she was busy. She said it very politely.

  So, Keva had only herself and ILO to keep her company. Being summoned to the bridge hadn’t been too bad, despite her irritation at being treated like an underling.

  She’d expected to see HUMP Station Three, maybe Two if they’d gotten really, really lucky with their push timing.

  She hadn’t expected to stare out the plasteel window panes and see the dull mass of Terra HUMP Joy dominating her field of vision. The planet itself appeared uninhabitable. It was red, had a thin layer of atmosphere. No clouds dotted the sky, only billows of smoke from dust storms, but the planet didn’t have enough water to cultivate real clouds. HUMP Station One was on the right, but the Tencendor wasn’t pointed toward it.

  The HUMP System was the only system where the station gave access to the planet below via a space elevator. They didn’t even have defense capabilities. Well, they did, but they were meager. If the terraforming had gone better, the Elite probably would have been keener to invest better technologies. As it was, HUMP had just enough to survive.

  Most of HUMP existed in some form of disrepair or problematic terraforming, but it was maintained, at least marginally, because of Hexium Ubiquium.

  Keva nodded at Geny Pete who manned the pilot seat, then frowned at Hale who sat in the copilot seat. “How did we get here so fast?”

  He smiled and checked the yoke, stabbing it into place. “You’ve got controls.”

  Geny Pete took the yoke at his station and nodded. “I’ve got control.”

  Hale spun his chair around and rocked back. “Family shipping lanes.”

  Family? The military controlled HUMP System. “I don’t understand.”

  “HUMP System has two shipping lanes.” He leaned forward and stretched to tap the navigation screen. “See that?”

  Two red, dotted lines connected Kalamatra Jump Port to HUMP Station Four, Three, Two, and One. One line traced the way into the system; the other the way out. Along each line, were several smaller dots that represented push stations, which would propel or give an extra momentum push to ships as they passed along the lane. “Yeah?”

  He double-tapped the screen and pressed his thumb to the lower right-hand corner.

  Two solid blue lines lit up, these littered with several more of the smaller dots. More push stations along the lanes meant greater speed.

  How was that even possible?

  “There’s a lot in HUMP the military doesn’t know about.”

  “How wouldn’t they know about this?” It didn’t make any kind of damned sense. “The military basically lives here.”

  “Not really.” Hale leaned back and rested his hands-on top of his head. “They live in Kalamatra. They don’t visit out here too often.”

  “I was on maneuvers in HUMP plenty of times.”

  “You were in the Black, away from the asteroids, and the planets, and the moons. You were out in the middle of nowhere.”

  A very valid point.

  “Oh, hey, Dottie,” Hale said chipperly, looking behind Keva. “I thought you’d enjoy this.”

  Dottie stepped around Keva and gawked through the glass. “Where are we?”

  “Terra HUMP Joy.”

  “It does not appear to be particularly joyful.”

  “Doesn’t,” Keva and Hale corrected at the same time.

  “You need to spend more time with actual people, Keves,” Hale said. “You’re reinforcing old habits that will get you killed out here.”

  Dottie shrugged. “I’ll get it right when it counts.”

  “We can all hope,” Hale said.

  Keva didn’t doubt the woman’s intentions, but she needed to take this a hell of a lot more seriously if she wanted to live more than a day out there. “How is it that the Family is so powerful and the military never knew?”

  “Oh, the military knows,” Hale said. “Bring us down nice and easy, Geny Pete.”

  The man nodded once, his full concentration on the dive into atmo.

  Fire crept up the ship’s nose.

  Dottie’s eyes widened and her lips rounded.

  Keva had seen enough atmo entries she didn’t need to watch another. Terra HUMP Joy was a rock, and they weren’t going to be able to see anything past the entry blaze for a while.

  “There’s a reason the military doesn’t go onto the stations or spend any time on-planet,” Hale rubbed his eyebrow. “Come on. We have a date at the Jiggling Donkey.”

  Dottie looked over at him. “Isn’t that where we met the Ident?”

  Hale didn’t reply.

  “There’s one on every station and major terra,” Keva said. “Are you coming or staying?”

  “You want me out there?”

  Keva shrugged. “It should be safe enough. As long as you keep your mouth shut and don’t stay out there long.”

  “The HUMP toxin.”

  Keva nodded. “One trip to the bar isn’t going to kill you. Just…” She turned and headed for the door. “Don’t pick any fights.”

  By the time the three of them had made it to the cargo bay door, Geny Pete was setting them down on the surface. Keva could barely tell, but the gravity boosts from inside the ship and the atmo played a merry tug of war with each other. Fluctuations in the atmosphere could be felt, even with the subtle changes it threw off some of the best pilots in the four systems, something that the Tencendor AI struggled to counteract.

  Though, it w
ould be even worse on the Scarlet Harpy. ILO was capable, but she had a much smaller ship. So, while some people would have parked the Tencendor at HUMP Station One and flown down in Scarlet Harpy, they were better off just taking the larger ship. Her little shipper performed a lot better in other systems. HUMP wasn’t one of them.

  “Environmentals are safe,” Hale said, hitting the button beside the large ramp door. “Though, just barely. So, when I say it’s time to leave, we leave.”

  “What happens if we don’t?” Dottie asked.

  Keva took in a deep breath. She hated Terra HUMP Joy. “Then, we’re stuck here until the environmentals rise to safe levels again.”

  “Which means we potentially miss the test of Batch D-65.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Why are we stopping here then?”

  “We need information.”

  “But we have that.”

  Keva shook her head. “We think we know where Wilmur’s headed, but we don’t know for sure. We’re going to see if we can find any information before heading there.”

  “But the mind worm—”

  “Only gives us information when Wilmur does and he’s keeping his lips sealed. I’ve been watching the whole trip. The asshole doesn’t do much more than eat, fuck, and shit his way through life.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Reach said, walking in with Domino at his side, guns strapped to their thighs. Keva rolled her eyes and got an answering smile and a nod.

  “Do you think he knows?” Dottie asked.

  It was possible, and not something Keva wanted to even think about.

  “Keep the engines running,” Hale said over the wind that shot through as the door lowered far enough. “We won’t be gone long.”

  Keva couldn’t hear Geny Pete’s reply without a Tencendor comm unit.

  Dottie covered her face with the crook of her elbow and glanced at Keva, her pale eyes pinched with worry.

  “You don’t have to come if you don’t want to,” Keva shouted. She could have said more, but there would have been no point.

  The wind was caused by a storm brewing to their right in HUMP east, and two ships were readying for takeoff directly in front of them and to their left. Dust and debris hammered at them from all directions, whipping their hair and loose clothing back.