Dominion Rising: 23 Brand New Science Fiction and Fantasy Novels

by White, Gwynn

  ANKH. Egyptian symbol of mythology later picked up by the Ancient Romans and other cultures. Etymology: Egyptian.

  ANTIQUA MEMORIA. Ancient memory. Etymology: Latin.

  ARTAVUS. Original meaning: “quill knife.” In the context of this book, it refers to a ritual knife. Origin: Author.

  ATRIUM. An open-roofed hall near the entrance of an ancient Roman house. Etymology: Latin.

  CAUL. A close-fitting, netted cap that wraps around the hair. Etymology: French.

  CHARON. The mythological ferryman who carried the departed across the river Styx. Etymology: Greek.

  ELYSIUM. The dwelling place of the blessed after death. Etymology: Latin, Greek.

  ERA. The lady of the house. Etymology: Latin.

  ESSENTIAE. Enclave of vampire immortals who kill by drawing the life essence from their victims. Led by Petra Valerii. Etymology: Latin-based; meaning “essence.” Origin: Author.

  ETERNAE. Enclave of immortals. Etymology: Latin-based. Origin: Author.

  KAFFA. A 14th century Genoese port and flourishing trading settlement on the southeast coast of the Crimean Peninsula. Known also as Theodosia, Caffa, and more recently, Feodosiya. Etymology: Various origins.

  LARARIUM. Household religious shrines in entrance halls of Ancient Roman houses. Etymology: Latin.

  LATIFUNDIA. A large farm or villa in ancient Rome, typically worked by slaves. Etymology: Latin.

  LUCIPOR. Literal meaning: Lucius’s boy. A naming construction used for slaves. Etymology: Latin.

  MA CHÈRE. My dear. Etymology: French.

  MON ANGE. My angel. Etymology: French.

  MORTANINE. A deadly poison made from mortanine flowers. Used for the purpose of turning immortals. Etymology: Latin-based. Origin: Author.

  NOBILDONNA. Milady. Noblewoman. Etymology: Italian.

  PARDONNEZ-MOI. Forgive me. Etymology: French.

  PATER. Father. Etymology: Latin.

  PORTCULLIS. A fortress gate made of grated wood and/or iron. Etymology: Anglo-Norman.

  POSTICUM. A servant’s side entrance in an Ancient Roman house. Etymology: Latin.

  PRAENOMEN. An Ancient Roman's forename. Etymology: Latin.

  PRIMA SANGUIS. First blood. Etymology: Latin-based; meaning First Blood.

  RENASCENTIA. The Rebirth. The renewal of all the immortals by way of Petra’s healing blood. Etymology: Latin-based; meaning “rebirth.”. Origin: Author.

  SALLYPORT. A small opening in a fortress used for making a sudden charge outside against an enemy during a siege. Etymology: French and Old English.

  SANGUINEA. Enclave of vampire immortals who drink blood. Led by Clarius Avidus. Etymology: Latin-based; meaning “bloodly” or “blood-stained.” Origin: Author.

  TABLENUM. An Ancient Roman house’s finest room. Etymology: Latin.

  TRICLINIUM. Dining room in an Ancient Roman villa.

  VELLESSENTIA. The Drawing. The Essentian or Sanguine draw of any immortals who wish to gain skill or knowledge from another immortal. Etymology: Latin-based; meaning to “tear out life essence.” Origin: Author.

  VINDICATIO. The Punishment. The act of being punished for crimes against one of the eternae. Etymology: Latin-based; meaning “avenging wrong.” Origin: Author.

  VOLUPTAS MEA. My delight. Etymology: Latin.

  Infinite Waste

  Dean F. Wilson

  An action-packed space opera adventure.

  An eccentric, trigger-happy captain and a level-headed commander vie for control of the starship Gemini, but are forced to mix their two very divided crews when they encounter a space barge full of militarised waste.

  1

  Wait

  The alarms aboard the Starship Gemini were deafening. That's how Skip Sutridge, Captain Exquisite, liked it. He wanted his thoughts drowned in the endless stars. He wanted the panic of his crew to overwhelm his mind, until all that was left was instinct. The instinct to pull the trigger, to push the button, to start a war—or end one.

  The Starship Gemini hung in orbit of Sonata V, its twin Infinite engines turned off. It drifted around that blackened globe, burned to a crisp in some ancient battle. The weight of the weaponry on the left rocket made it coast that planet with a slight tilt. The weight of a decision to act rested with Skip alone. He'd been made to share this vessel, but he wouldn't share command of a battle. Maggie Antwa, Commander of Gemini Right, had no authority there.

  The space barge came into focus on the viewscreen, with most of it extending far off out of their field of vision. It didn't drift. It sat in the stillness of space, unmoving, exerting a subtle gravity of its own. Its grey metal was shrouded in shadow. Its lights were off. That was always a bad sign. It either meant the crew were dead or they were planning to kill you. More often than not for Skip Sutridge, General Extraordinaire, it was the latter.

  “Wait,” Maggie said over the intercom. He didn't like her voice, her calm, her certainty. The only surety was in the trigger. Shoot and shoot later. Never ask questions. Never give answers.

  “It's a threat,” Skip replied through gritted teeth. He kept his finger dangling. The only thing that held it back was the knowledge of how this had panned out last time. His crew were starting to listen to her, listen to “reason,” whatever that was. He remembered the awe with which they viewed him when he first came on board. That was fading fast.

  “We don't know that yet,” Maggie pointed out. She liked pointing out things, everything but the enemy's weaknesses. She always wanted to know more, to probe further, to prod deeper. Skip thought a laser could do that just fine.

  Even from this far off, Skip could see the giant storage containers piled high across the space barge, held in place with a powerful magnetic hull. It was so potent it tugged even at the Gemini, threatening to separate the twins. Skip almost didn't mind. All the weaponry was on his side of the ship. Only the two giant fighters joined those rockets together, connecting the Infinite engines, letting them travel farther than one alone.

  “Just … give me a minute,” Maggie urged. He could hear the beeps of buttons in the background as her fingers worked frantically. Skip only needed one button. As the seconds grew old and died, his finger got a little closer. He wondered how many wars began with gravity.

  “There,” Maggie said, sending across a report from her scanners. The overlay added a lot of text and faded schematics on the viewscreen, making the colossal space barge look a little less daunting.

  “No crew?” Skip asked.

  “No life signs.”

  He didn't like how she said that, as if it meant something else. She was always correcting him. Life had been hell since she boarded. He wouldn't have been surprised if she picked up nothing from him as well.

  “What's in the containers?”

  More beeps and finger-bashing. “It looks like … some kind of waste.”

  “Waste?”

  “Nuclear.”

  “Oh.”

  “Just as well you didn't fire, huh?” Her smug laugh was cut short. “Wait.” She always waited. That was her trouble, and she was his.

  By the time she noticed the incoming missile, she barely had time to put up the shields on her side of the vessel. It was just as well Skip had noticed. It was just as well he'd fired first.

  2

  An Executive Decision

  Maggie Antwa hammered her fist down on the shield button. The generators were already primed and ready. Outside, a bubble of energy extended around the most vital parts of Gemini Right: the antennae, the specimen globes, the medical bay, the engine room, the crew quarters. The left rocket—Skip's domain—was left almost entirely defenceless. It was just as well he considered attack the best form of defence.

  The missile wormed its way from the space barge towards them, while Skip's answering shot—or questioning shot, even—wiggled along in return. They united in the middle with an explosion that shook the starship, but barely nudged the space barge at all.

  “So much for waiting,” Skip crooned over t
he intercom.

  Before she could reply, he ended the transmission. She knew what to expect next. No one fired at Skip Sutridge and got away without an answering barrage. If he had to, he'd use up every torpedo he had, and that was a lot. He'd make a lesson out of them. Anyone who knew Skip had learned that lesson early on.

  “We've lost steering,” her oarsman said.

  “I know.”

  Skip had used his one Executive Star of the month to take over the steering of the entire vessel. She could have used hers to take it back, but she was saving it. Petty vengeance was one of his tactics, not hers. She'd wait.

  The Gemini turned about until the left rocket, armed to the teeth, had its port side facing the space barge. The turrets rotated into place. Hatches opened. The volley began. The flak cannons boomed. The blaster rigs sparked. The torpedo bays were emptied. The dark canvas of space was momentarily splattered with light and colour. It was enough to down a lesser vessel, but the space barge was anything but. By the end of it, it seemed like no damage was inflicted at all.

  “Are you done?” Maggie asked, forcing open the comms again.

  “Never.”

  “I was going to tell you that they've got shielding.”

  “I was gonna tell you I don't care.”

  “It's a waste of weapons.”

  “Weapons are never a waste, Commander.”

  “Some of them are, Captain,” Maggie said. “That barge isn't commercial. Our latest scans have just come through. I'm sending them over.”

  “What am I seeing?” Skip asked. He never could read reports. She wondered if he could even read at all.

  “It's not just waste, Skip. It's militarised. This is all rigged to blow.”

  “All the more reason to destroy it.”

  “It'll destroy itself, and us, and everything else for half the galaxy.”

  She could hear him grumble. “Why is it here?”

  “I don't know.”

  “Why did they fire at us?”

  “I'm not sure. I think it's an automated system. You fired first, so—”

  “I always fire first.”

  “I know.”

  “We need to know where this is heading,” Skip said.

  “I agree. I can probably have an analysis done in a few hours.”

  “That's too long.”

  “It is what it is.”

  “I'm going over.”

  “Are you mad?” She wasn't sure why she asked.

  “We've got a powerful weapon sitting in our back yard, Commander. That'll be good for the Empire.”

  “Or bad for us.”

  Skip's voice deepened. “Or bad for everyone.”

  “We should wait. We should investigate.”

  “Sure thing,” he said. “But I'll use my own eyes for that.”

  3

  The Offspring

  Skip wasted no time explaining himself or justifying his decision. His crew didn't ask him. Even Maggie didn't, though she had done it plenty of times before. He never prepared a defence for such questioning. He just didn't answer. It was even better when he jammed Maggie's signals.

  “Do you need a team?” the oarsman of Gemini Left, Lieutenant Larsman, asked. Larsman was a good soldier, but an even better pilot. Skip was confident about leaving him at the wheel.

  “I will be fine on my own,” Skip replied, heading for the nearest transporter.

  Like a good soldier, Larsman didn't argue. He had only served once before with Skip, but he had learned then how well he worked alone. A one-man army, as the slogans often said. The Empire regularly broadcast footage of Skip wading through swarms of enemies, often with a smile on his face, earning him the nickname The Man of No Tears. Skip remembered posing for those shoots. They weren't quite as glorious as they appeared. The battles were fake, but the deaths were real. He wished he could jam the memories.

  The transporter took him to the boarding gate of the Offspring, the massive fighter at the front of the vessel. Its wings were clipped at the ends, allowing it to clamp into notches on the sides of both rockets, acting as a bridge between them. There were doors in the wings, and wiring and tubes that connected the fighter's systems to the rockets, allowing each part to support the other.

  Before he boarded, he pulled out his datapad and turned on the mirror. This was a little ritual he did before battle, one he rarely told people about, though he was sure many had seen him do it. He stared at his image for a moment, taking in the big, bright eyes, the square jaw and puckered chin, and that suave smile—which was often there even when he wasn't really smiling inside. He tidied up that single blonde curl that hung over his forehead, something he was known for, and was often exaggerated in the posters of him. His hair was thick, but combed neatly, except for that little curl, which he'd had since he was a boy. It was like a little rebellion, an escape from the order of everything else. He thought maybe that was why, despite military regulation, he insisted on keeping it. Some people thought it was narcissism that made Skip complete this little ritual so often, and maybe there was an element of that. Yet, really he was taking one last look so that he could remind himself of who he was, and where he came from. The ranks and armour changed that for many, but he wanted to make certain it never happened to him.

  He was about to board when Alex Primus, the sixteen-year-old member of the Empire's celebrated royal family, raced up, panting. He was allowed to board Gemini Left as a favour to his father, who predicted Gemini's voyages would become the stuff of legend—and thus the stuff of status.

  “Wait,” the teen said, resting against the doorframe.

  “I'm kind of busy,” Skip said.

  “I could come help … if you'd like.”

  Skip paused. “You?”

  Alex looked to the floor. “Yeah.”

  “I don't think that would be very fitting now, would it? Imagine what the Emperor would say if the royals were suiting up for battle.”

  “But I can help.”

  “You're serving the Empire by doing your duty as a royal.”

  “You mean a puppet.”

  “I'll pretend I didn't hear that.”

  Alex clenched his fists. Normally Skip liked to see that in a young man readying for battle, but not now. “That's what all this is, right?” Alex asked. “A pretence.”

  Skip grabbed Alex by the shoulder. “Cut out that talk, boy. You're dishonouring your name.”

  Alex shook off Skip's grip and backed away. “You can't dishonour what doesn't have any honour to begin with. It's all a sham. Why can't I fight?”

  “Because you don't believe in anything,” Skip replied. “You have to have something to fight for.”

  He turned and boarded the Offspring, quickly sealing the doors as Alex tried to race inside. He could hear the teen mumbling something through the glass. Maybe Alex had to have the last word. Skip often had the last word, usually because the other person was dead.

  Skip trotted down the long corridor that led through the wing of the fighter and into the spacious cockpit, with enough space to sleep a dozen people. His Second, Akt Ontri, was there, preparing the vessel for flight.

  If there was one person Skip could count on, it wasn't a person at all: it was Akt Ontri. Ontri was an android, more colloquially (and, some would argue, offensively) known as an aut, short for autonomous thing. He was ninth generation, the most advanced yet, and a bit of an experiment aboard the experiment that was the Gemini. Skip had no illusions that his mission was anything else, but knowing it didn't help with the feeling that he wasn't so much the most celebrated man of the galaxy, but just another guinea pig. He knew what the Emperor might say: why can't you be both?

  Ontri was humanoid in shape, but didn't look human at all. They'd tried that with seventh generation models, with disastrous results. People didn't like their androids blending in too much, looking too real. It made them uncomfortable. It made it harder to look at them as autonomous things. Most seventh generation auts were destroyed in the so-called El
ectric Cleansing of 2810, but a few of them were said to be around, in hiding somewhere. It was a crime to harbour one, though some, like Maggie, thought it was a crime to turn them in. It was no wonder she'd gotten on the wrong side of the government. Skip just wondered why he got bundled with her.

  “Good sir!” Ontri exclaimed on seeing Skip. That was his familiar, ever-enthusiastic greeting, just for him. The Captain didn't care if it was programmed. Stars, if he could programme all the crew to do it, he'd give the order now.

  “Ontri,” Skip said. Some people didn't respond to the “pleasantries” of auts, as if the pleasantries of humans were any more real. It always grated on him when he saw a crew member treat Ontri like he wasn't second in command. It reminded him a little too much of his childhood on Alpha Prime, where he was teased for being Rockborn, someone born on one of the galaxy's many asteroid colonies. His family moved to give him a better life, but he had to fight for it. It was no wonder he ended up in the military. No doubt it was a great wonder to the Alphans that he was so good at it too.

  Things were much different now. He had Alphans aboard the Gemini, like Larsman. No one dared call him Rockborn now. Few dared defy Ontri either. Skip liked to give his crew a regular reminder that his word was gold up here, and that Ontri spoke his word just as much as he did. He wasn't exaggerating. You couldn't get better programming outside a cult.