Dominion Rising: 23 Brand New Science Fiction and Fantasy Novels

by White, Gwynn

  She was halfway to her station in the far back of engineering when she knew what she had to do. As soon as she reached her station, she dismissed the ensign who’d been covering her duties before she could change her mind.

  After scanning the area to ensure there was no one nearby who would be endangered, she allowed her telepathic gift to unfold.

  Pushing her abilities farther, she reached out toward the nearest access hatch, where the shield protecting the sensitive parts of the ship was thinnest. She reached deeper into the conduits that encased the bio-circuitry in a protective gel. Neural impulses flashed down those conduits, acting as the ship’s nervous system.

  Liv followed one nerve cluster down a side branch where she found the transit engines’ cooling systems. Perfect. They were already under stress from all the transit jumps. A small malfunction could easily be explained without looking too suspicious.

  She redirected a tiny amount of power from a subsystem and fed it into the branch of the coolant system. Before the fail-safes could kick in, she neutralized them then disabled the warning alarms. A cascading system failure caused a sudden spike in energy levels in the nerve conduit.

  A simple power surge overloaded the neural pathways, killing a small section of Vengeance’s bioorganic nervous system, temporarily rendering him blind to what was going on in that area. Now hidden, she tore apart relays and ruptured conduits so it would look like an uncontrolled pressure buildup had led to a blowout.

  Warnings lit up her energy webs and flashed schematics in pulsing reds and oranges, denoting a critical heat buildup in the main transit engines while screeching alarms did their best to shred her eardrums. Liv ignored them and tapped on her handheld energy web.

  “Vengeance, this is Journeyman Engineer Hawthorne,” Liv said as she accessed a storage locker to grab a repair kit. “I have warnings and error reports coming in from the port-side engine coolant system. Looks like we’ve had a blowout. It’s not life threatening yet, but repairs will require the port engines to be taken offline. I’m on my way to the nearest access panel.”

  “Are you hurt?” Vengeance’s voice echoed through her small work area. “My sensors in that area were damaged by a secondary power surge. I’m sending a sentinel and a drudge unit to your location.”

  “I’m fine,” Liv insisted as she ran toward the location of the blowout. “But the drudge will be helpful if the entire relay is fried. Have him bring a spare, just in case. It’ll save time.”

  “Both units are on their way.” There was a long pause before he continued in a more uncertain tone. “You’re sure you’re not hurt?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine, really.” Please stop worrying about me. I already feel so guilty. “I’m sorry this happened on my watch. I don’t know why I didn’t catch it before the malfunction evolved into a blowout.”

  “Don’t blame yourself. It was likely my abuse of my own engines that caused too much stress on an aging part.”

  “Still, I’m really sorry the pirate ship got away,” Liv said as she turned down a side corridor. She came to a closed bulkhead door, scanned the nearest terminal for environmental readings of radiation levels, which were acceptable, and palmed open the hatch.

  “My hunt was a success. The pirate ship didn’t escape me.”

  What the hell? How had he captured the ship so quickly? “Really?” Damn it. Surprise and disappointment were evident in her voice so she added, “That’s good news.”

  From somewhere behind her in the corridor came the heavy tread of a sentinel as it neared her. The twelve-foot-tall, lethal machines were surprisingly fast on their feet. The hatch was still sliding back into its housing as the sentinel halted next to her.

  Liv glanced behind the massive sentinel, looking for the more useful drudge, but there was no sign of the slower repair unit yet.

  Vengeance continued his conversation, using the sentinel’s voice capabilities instead of the ship-wide comms. “When my sensors went dead in this area, I determined that it was likely a relay overload which would compromise my engines. I targeted the pirate ship and took out its engines.”

  Liv’s throat tightened. “Did you destroy the ship?”

  “No.” The sentinel stepped through the hatch and scanned for dangers on the other side. “And I’ve already dispatched transports with sentinels to collect the pirate ship’s crew.”

  Damn. Double damn in a black hole. Liv hurried to the access panel and found she didn’t even have to unseal it. The access cover, which was taller and wider than she was, had been blown off its mounting brackets and clear across the hall. Inside the panel was a jumble of twisted metal, fried relays, and the burned stench of super-heated bio-gel.

  “What a mess,” she murmured. “This is going to take a while to fix, but after my shift, would I be able to see the crew of the pirate ship—once you’re finished interrogating them, of course? If it’s the same crew who murdered my family, I would appreciate the chance to finally put a face to the darkness that’s haunted my dreams for so long.”

  The sentinel’s red optic sensors studied her for a moment, but he finally answered her. “While your request is outside of normal procedures, it isn’t violating any regulations. Once I have the prisoners in custody and have assessed the situation, I will make a decision and advise you.”

  That was the best she was going to get from a rule-following, three-thousand-year-old AI. “Thank you, Vengeance.”

  “You’re welcome, Liv.”

  Three words spoken by a twelve-foot-tall killing machine shouldn’t have sounded so intimate… sexy-as-hell voice notwithstanding.

  Unaware of the inner turmoil he’d caused, the sentinel walked to the next panel and scanned it. When he seemed satisfied with what he’d learned, he moved on to the next panel, repeating the procedure for each one in the hall. Once he’d finished those, he turned down an intersecting hallway.

  While he surveyed the extent of the damage, Liv pulled apart the fried components before her so she could repair the injuries she’d caused. She heard the sentinel returning long before it reached her side.

  “What’s the damage?” Liv asked, already knowing it was worse than she’d intended.

  The sentinel’s “dreadlocks” shifted as some of the appendages separated from the rest and reached forward, infiltrating the panel directly in front of him. “This is going to take the better part of twenty-seven hours.”

  “Twenty-seven hours,” she repeated quietly. “Seriously?” How had she miscalculated so badly?

  “I’ve never seen this type of cascading failure in all my 3125 years. I only have nine relays in storage. I’ll have to fabricate the other twelve myself.”

  Why the hell did he sound so happy about that?

  “Twelve relays,” Liv sighed. “That’ll take a long time.”

  “Yes, but Renee will be happy.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, she wanted you and me to spend some time together and form a friendship. Twenty-seven hours should be time enough for you to get to know me better and relax in my company.”

  Liv choked on air but managed to form a reply. “Right. I suppose that’ll do it.”

  Vengeance’s drudge came lumbering up to them, hauling what was likely to be the first of nine new relays. The repair unit’s arrival broke what might have been an awkward moment otherwise.

  While part of her looked forward to the next twenty-seven hours, there were likely women aboard that scout ship about whom she cared deeply, and her only plan to allow them to survive had failed.

  And she couldn’t do this to Vengeance again. Keeping her telepathy hidden for so long meant she was out of practice, unskilled, with a tremendous power that could kill him if she weren’t careful.

  Ultimately, no matter what she did now, she risked losing someone she loved, and she already feared she’d have to make a choice between betraying a sister or the one AI she’d risk her life for.

  And in the end, she could lose them both.

 
10

  When Vengeance first boarded the enemy ship, the lack of resistance surprised him. After the chase the pirate ship had given him, he’d expected his sentinels to come under heavy fire the moment he stepped onto the other ship’s deck.

  Instead, it was empty. He carefully approached the door leading to the next room, but it was completely unresponsive. Upon closer inspection, all the controls had been fried by weapons fire. Unfortunately, the door was designed to be blast proof, so he would have to wait until another transport could bring one of the ion-torches to cut through the door.

  While he waited, he performed repeated deep scans of the ship, but he could only find one life-sign on board. Whoever it was had gone to a lot of trouble to make Vengeance’s job as difficult as possible. That spoke of a deeply rooted stubbornness and an unwillingness to admit defeat.

  That almost sounded like one of his brothers and sisters.

  It took the better part of an hour to get the supplies he needed and cut through the first door, only to find all the rest of the scout ship’s doors similarly sealed. It would serve the stubborn fool right if Vengeance left the pirate to starve.

  But now, his curiosity was piqued. He would get to the bottom of this mystery no matter how long it took.

  Almost ten hours later, he extracted a swearing, laser-blasting, kicking, screaming hell-cat from the depths of the ship. She continued her tirade the entire flight back to his warship body.

  As days went, this had been an interesting one. And although he liked solving a good mystery, he found he enjoyed fixing fried relays with his favorite Journeyman Engineer more. The ten hours he’d spent in Liv’s company had turned out to be extremely pleasant. Likely too pleasant, but he didn’t care. He deserved the enjoyable distraction as a reward for dealing with the spitfire female pirate.

  Vengeance finally dismissed Liv an hour after her shift would normally have been over, ordering her to find something to eat before he started her new evening chess lessons.

  Even though he knew she had to be starving, he was still disappointed when she quickly acknowledged his command and left him without as much as a smile. But he didn’t wallow in self-pity for long. Tracking showed Liv wasn’t heading toward the mess hall. She was making her way to the brig.

  * * *

  As Ven’s sentinel dragged the battered captain of the pirate ship aboard to throw her in the brig, Liv peeked around a corner, her curiosity once again getting the best of her. Liv’s breath caught in her lungs as she whispered, “Amelia.”

  She couldn’t help it. Her telepathy immediately reached toward her childhood best friend, and Amelia’s head snapped up, her dark brown eyes immediately settling on Liv as she cowered against the wall. Amelia shook her head quickly as if reprimanding her for using her gift, and realizing what she’d done, Liv reined it back in like rolling thread around a spool. But Amelia was here… the girl who’d once played with her on Nualla, the girl who’d helped her keep her sanity after they’d been kidnapped.

  Liv made an impulsive decision and darted around the corner, stopping Ven’s sentinel by holding out a hand. The red warning lights along the sentinel’s face twinkled as if blinking at her then Ven’s voice asked, “Journeyman Hawthorne?”

  Liv nodded toward her friend. “May I speak to your prisoner?”

  “Didn’t I order you to eat?” Ven asked, clearly confused. “Extracting this human from her ship took much longer than planned. I haven’t even had a chance to question her yet. And I promised you I would share what I’ve learned later tonight during the chess match. What’s so important that it can’t wait until you’ve eaten, and I’ve had a chance to do my job?”

  That’s a damn good question, Liv thought.

  “Since I told you about how I lost my family in the pirate raid, I haven’t been able to think about anything else. I just need to know if this pirate is the one who took them from me. If she is, then there’s some unfinished business between us,” Liv lied.

  God, that’s the best lie you can come up with? She would have been a child during that raid!

  And, of course, Vengeance immediately pointed out the fallacy in her lie.

  “She couldn’t have been one of the pirates, Olivia. She’s far too young.”

  Liv bit her lip as she scrambled for a better lie and hastily added, “True, but she had their ship. She probably knows something about the pirates who destroyed my colony.”

  “I’m bringing her to the brig for now,” Ven told her. “My interrogation will likely take far longer than it should if her temperament is as bad as I think it is. If you’d like to speak to her, it’ll have to wait until morning or perhaps after your shift tomorrow night.”

  Ven’s sentinel began walking again, dragging Amelia beside him, and Liv’s heart beat wildly. How would she be able to help Amelia once Ven threw her in the brig? Her friend would be brought back to Teutorigos, the home planet of the Spire, and put on trial. And then, she’d almost certainly be executed. Or they would discover she was a telepath and that not all of the telepathic girls lost on Nualla were truly as “lost” as they’d thought. They were both painfully aware that being forced to link with an AI was far worse than death.

  Liv followed closely behind Ven’s sentinel, and when he reached the end of the hallway, he stopped again and twisted his head around so those red optical sensors could blink at her. She swallowed and stood up straighter, challenging the sentinel, which she already knew could land her in the brig as well.

  “I could watch the interrogation from the sidelines,” Liv pointed out. “I won’t interrupt or be a distraction.”

  “You’re exhausted and hungry,” Ven countered.

  She was, and Ven already knew that, but Liv was convinced if she lost sight of Amelia, she’d lose her forever. “With all due respect, I might sleep a lot better if I knew whether or not she had any information about the pirates who killed my family.”

  Sentinels couldn’t actually sigh, but she could have sworn Ven sighed quite loudly at her. “Fine,” he relented. “Follow me to the brig. I’ll even let you be the first to speak with her, but don’t expect much. She’s shown herself to be nothing but hostile and uncooperative so far. You can have ten minutes.”

  Ten minutes. Ten short minutes to determine why Amelia had raided a Spire space station and how she would rescue her friend.

  11

  After prisoner processing, Liv watched helplessly as guards led Amelia to a small cell that contained nothing more than a toilet, lavatory, and a small cot to sleep on. Her stomach soured as she stared at the dull gray ground, remembering the seven-year-old girl who had held her hand as they’d entered a hell beyond their worst nightmares.

  Much to Liv’s horror, Ven didn’t leave. His sentinel returned to the doorway at the end of the hallway and stood there… waiting for her.

  She wouldn’t get the semi-privacy she desperately needed. If she used her telepathy, Ven might sense it, and if he discovered her secret and turned her into the Spire, she’d be facing the same fate as Amelia.

  Liv cleared her throat and approached the cell, but the captain refused to look at her. “Whatever you want,” Amelia spit out, “I don’t have it.”

  “I recognized your ship. I realize you weren’t a crew member at the time, but your ship attacked the colony world of Hebrides 4,” Liv replied. She’d been memorizing her fake origins for twelve years and could recite every little detail in her sleep. Her survival had depended on it. Now her freedom hinged on Amelia playing along. “Even if you weren’t a member then, you are now. I want all the names of those responsible for the attack.”

  “No idea. Before my time.” Amelia tossed her chestnut brown hair over a shoulder and lifted her chin in the air: defiant, angry, unafraid. “But if you want, we can talk about traitors,” her old friend added silently along a private link.

  Liv had to lower her eyes because she had broken the pact. She hadn’t revealed her telepathy, but she’d come to work for a Warship of the Spir
e regardless. However, any admission of guilt would have to wait. They had bigger problems—like finding a way to free Amelia. Liv decided she was only bluffing anyway and called her on it.

  “You can give me your name, pirate,” Liv said as she jerked her chin toward the sentinel. “Or he can drag it out of you, which I might enjoy watching.”

  “Harper,” Amelia finally answered. “And I’ve got no business with a journeyman engineer.”

  “Harper,” Liv repeated quietly. “My name is Liv. And I’m just…”

  Just what? She was completely out of lies. She glanced at Ven’s sentinel, which kept his attention on her. Liv took a deep breath. She couldn’t talk to her friend aloud. She had no choice.

  “Please,” Liv begged. “They’ll kill you. Let me help you escape.”

  Amelia’s eyes grew wide, and she sucked in a quick, hissing breath. “Have you lost your mind?”

  “Probably,” Liv admitted. “I already interfered with Ven’s engines so you could escape, but he fired his weapons and crippled your ship before I could do anything to stop him.”

  Amelia backed farther away from her, narrowing her eyes at her old friend. “Ven? You already have pet names for each other? I don’t need help from a traitorous bitch. But thanks.”

  “I’m not a traitor. But we don’t have time to argue about this now. You need to play along if you want to get out of this alive.”

  Liv continued her pretend-interrogation aloud. “When pirates killed two-thirds of the colonists of Hebrides 4, my family was among the dead. Your ship has the same identification marker as the one who attacked us. Are you sure you don’t know anything about that?”

  “I’m not talking to an ass-kissing guild-brat,” Amelia hissed. “The thug over there will just have to torture whatever he wants out of me.”

  The sentinel stormed forward and in a thunderous voice ordered, “Do not speak to my engineer that way again.”