Sacred Planet: Book One of the Dominion Series by Austin Rogers

detected confusion on the scavenger’s face. “The Unification Party. They’re against war with the Sagittarians. My father promised not to provoke any conflict with them. This must be the Abramists’ way of changing his mind.”
    “Are there that many Abramists?” Davin asked. “Enough to cover every border gate?”
    Sierra shook her head again and cradled her face in her hands. “I don’t know. Maybe. They’re a fast-growing sect. The Dominion Party is huge now, third biggest in the republic.”
    “Wait, wait,” Davin said, waving his hands. “What’s the ‘Dominion Party?’”
    “Sounds like some freaky orgy,” Jabron rumbled across the room.
    “The political arm of the Abramists, basically,” Sierra responded. “Now that I think about it, most Space Force officers I’ve met have been Abramists.”
    Jai Lin’s eyes lit up: “That explain how they guard space gates.”
    “ And how they can keep a few frigates roaming outside their space a secret,” Jabron added.
    Davin tilted his head back and let out an aggravated sigh. “So are you telling me these people have access to the entire Space Force?”
    Sierra felt nausea building in her stomach. She didn’t answer, just stared at the Carinian frigates inching across the screen.
    Sydney soared into the living area from the cockpit. “Cap, I tried resending the message. Sent it through a different path. Same thing. Rejected at the first Carinian gate.”
    “Can you send it directly to Baha’runa?” Sierra asked.
    Sydney laughed. “Sure, if you’re cool with waiting about three hundred and fifty years for the message to get there.”
    “I mean through the spacebend gates,” Sierra said, stretching her brain to think of how it would work. “Programming the message to send directly from an Orionite gate to the Baha’runa gate.”
    Davin shared an amused look with his crew, as if humored by a little girl’s naïveté.
    “No can do,” Sydney said. “Gates don’t align accurately past thirty lightyears. You’re talking about sending it three hundred fifty.”
    Sierra panicked. A lump formed in her throat. She was becoming desperate. “What if we spread the video around Orion? Got it on the news? It would be a big deal, right? It would have to leak through the border. I’m sure my father would hear about it.”
    Davin’s eyes widened. “No. Hell no.”
    “We’d have thousands of bounty hunters looking for us,” Sydney said. “And trust me, you’d rather be with us than them.”
    “Oh yeah, we real friendly on the Fossa ,” Jabron muttered in a dry voice.
    Jai Lin gave Jabron a light backhand on the arm. “She our guest!”
    “It’s bad enough that we’ve got Carinian warships hunting for us,” Davin said. “But at least they’re helping us keep it on the low. We tell the world, and our problem gets a shitload worse.”
    Sierra’s heart sank, even in weightlessness. Her insides sagged in an unwillingness to function, to keep going. The universe never seemed so incredibly vast—home so endlessly far away—and at a time when her people needed her most. Carina needed someone credible to carry on the message of peace. Without Sierra, even as small and insignificant as she was, the racket of war drums and saber-rattling would deafen the people’s ears to any voice proclaiming galactic peace and brotherly love. The Abramist calls for war would get louder and more persuasive. She felt as if she might drown in her own hopelessness.
    “Alright,” Davin said. “We gotta get out of this system before they realize we’re not on Chandra. Strange, think you could get us out without being seen?”
    Sydney bit her lower lip and cracked her neck. “See what I can do.”
    “Take us to Agora,” Davin said. “The scenic route. Couple extra nexus points in case they spot us.”
    “Aye, Cap,” Sydney said and hurled herself back toward the cockpit.
    “And Strange,” Davin said, halting his pilot at the entrance tube. “Send a ping