Homeworld: Beacon 3

by Valerie Parv

  Just as she could destroy a planet with her weaponized weather, she could also damage individuals with the implant. Neither was her choice. That was made by the people who challenged her.

  “It’s nothing to worry about,” she told Kam, easing the concern she read in his face. Post operative counseling had helped her manage the projections but she felt the temptation ticking like a time bomb inside her. The experience with Gath’s crewman had shocked her enough to make her careful.

  She stood, picked up the half-eaten meal and dropped it into a recycling chute.

  “Stay here and eat. It’s time I checked on the humans.”

  Chapter 9

  “I’m here as a favor to the governor, not to you,” Amelia Takei told Garrett.

  Her network’s news helicopter had landed on the only site available, a shale-strewn piece of ground where an old quarantine station had stood, about a kilometer from Adam’s house. Not a landing Garrett would have wanted to try in this weather, but he was grateful Shana had found a way to send help.

  The pilot stayed with the helicopter. In Adam’s living room, Amelia faced Garrett. The air between them crackled with tension.

  As soon as they’d spotted the station logo on the helo, Guy had shut himself away in Adam’s office. The last thing they needed was Amelia seeing Adam’s clone and asking questions. She had plenty as it was.

  “The broadcast that interrupted the governor’s speech was no hoax. Atai Observatory is still functioning and they tracked the signal to somewhere out in space.”

  “Amazing what some geeks can do when they put their minds to it.”

  Anger twisted her features. In her graphite gaze, he read her resolve not to let him bulldoze his way around this interrogation. She’d also made it clear she wasn’t taking him anywhere until she got some facts.

  “Are they your people, come to take you back?”

  Thinking furiously, he let the question hang in the air. She was too practiced a hand at her job to fill the silence for him.

  “Define my people.”

  “Are you one of these beacons the alien captain wants handed over?”

  He should lie, but he found he didn’t want to any more. And not only because Amelia was already closing in on the truth – he didn’t like adding to the barriers between them. “Yes.”

  Amelia gave him a look that suggested she thought they were getting somewhere. “Why do they want you? Are you a criminal from another world?”

  He pinned on a smile, the professional one he kept for book signings and sci-fi conventions. He may as well not have bothered, for all the effect he had on Amelia. He felt a grudging admiration for her. He’d seen his effect often enough on his female readers. That was why he kept the charm for business, preferring more honest dealings in his personal life. Neither was working right now.

  “You’ve seen too many science fiction shows. I was born in Los Angeles.”

  Her combative stance didn’t shift. “What about your partner in crime, Elaine Lovell?”

  “She’s from Sydney, Australia. You can check the records.” He’d bet any money she already had.

  “And Adam Desai?”

  Easier to answer. “He’s from Mayat stock, but where he was born, who knows?”

  “So you’re all perfectly ordinary humans who just happen to have a ship full of unfriendly aliens on your tails.”

  “You said it, I didn’t.”

  She crossed her arms and angled one shoulder against the wall. “When we’re done here, the governor wants our helicopter to return to the rescue effort, but that’s her problem. I have all the time I want.” She checked her watch. “You, on the other hand, only have until sunset, if I’m right.”

  He could have done without the reminder.

  “What do you want from me, Amelia?” What he wanted from her had nothing to do with the current situation. He was attracted to her intelligence, her drive, her beauty. He also knew how much chance he’d have of starting anything with her in this mood.

  “You could try the truth,” she snapped.

  Or be marooned on the cliff top until someone else was available to airlift him out. He didn’t doubt her seriousness. Cold steel would have been more flexible than she looked right now. So she got the truth.

  He didn’t pull any punches or dissemble about who and what he and the other beacons were. Or why the Kelek captain wanted them. With the deadline looming, there was little point. From her nods, she’d guessed a lot of the story anyway, needing only confirmation.

  Nevertheless, when he finished, Amelia looked pale, holding herself together with more of an effort than she wanted him to see. He admired her for that, too.

  “Amazing stuff,” she stated, “if any of it is true.”

  “You know it is.” He let his voice harden. “If it’s more than you can handle, you have only yourself to blame.”

  “I can handle it. I’ll fly you back to Reve,” she said after a long pause. “But there’s a price. When this is over, I want the story, all of it. Exclusively. “

  “I might not be here to deliver.”

  She gave a thin smile. “Then I’ll have to make sure I’m with you if you get picked up by the Kelek captain. That would make one hellacious story.”

  She may as well know what she was getting into. “Picking me up might not be on Zael’s agenda. She has more reason to want me dead.” He’d be lucky if death was the worst the Kelek planned for him. One step at a time, he told himself, suppressing a shudder.

  A flicker of something like distress lit her gaze before she squared her shoulders. “Whatever happens, I’m sticking to you like glue from now on.”

  The prospect didn’t disturb him as much as it should. They were oil and water, but he liked being around her. Not that she’d left him much choice. Whatever danger lay ahead, he would find a way to keep her out of it. If he couldn’t, she was forewarned.

  Guy had already indicated he wanted to stay at Adam’s house for the time being. Letting himself be seen by Amelia opened the way for questions with no answers. She’d dealt remarkably well with Garrett’s revelations. No sense burdening her with everything at once.

  So Garrett’s nod sealed the bargain. “You’ll have your exclusive. Let’s get out of here.”

  *

  Akia didn’t go to the control center but headed to her lab instead. She didn’t want Kam to see what she was about to do. The risk was huge, but hers to take as the captain. The thought filled her with excitement.

  With a sweep of her hand over a screen, she opened a link to the control center. Her second in command, Gath Danon, answered immediately. She hid a wry smile. Choosing a second with the same first name as her late partner was a small luxury. Every time she gave him an order, she felt as if she were giving them to the other Gath.

  By Nior, she was getting petty as she got older.

  She gave the order anyway. “Break Moon orbit and take us to within one-hundred-sixty kilometers of the Earth’s surface, equatorial orbit. And Gath, don’t hit anything on the way. This planet’s upper atmosphere is a dumping ground for old technology.”

  “At that distance, we will be monitored,” Danon cautioned.

  The proper advice to give, but she shrugged it off. “The time for stealth is past. Take us in.”

  “One-hundred-sixty kilometers equatorial, at once, captain.”

  Yes, it felt good giving orders to a Gath and having them obeyed instantly.

  Feeling the distant surge of power under her feet as they moved away from the Moon’s far side increased her satisfaction. By the time she was ready, Storm would be in position.

  She got to work.

  “You can’t do this.”

  She’d been so caught up she hadn’t noticed Kam come in and stand next to her, his eyes popping as he absorbed what he saw on her screens.

  “I am doing it.”

  He gripped her shoulder, unaware or too shocked to care if the last man to touch her without permission had ended up
as a smear of molecules on the deck. “The cargo grapple isn’t meant to transport living beings.”

  Without taking her eyes off her controls, she growled, “The weather isn’t the only thing I’ve been playing with in here.”

  He stayed silent for long seconds as he took in what she’d done. “You’ve managed to program a stable atmosphere inside the cargo net?”

  “Not a hundred percent reliable, and only for a short time, but it will work.” The cargo net itself was an energy field controlled from the ship and designed for planet-to-ship transport of materials and supplies. “The program is an extension of one of my rainmaking protocols. When you know what you’re doing, holding an atmosphere in there is no more challenging than keeping the surface tension on a globule of water.”

  Out of the corner of her eye she saw him digest this before he said, “When it can hold no more moisture, the globule collapses.”

  His rasping comment had her head turning a little more, in time to see the color drain from his face. Surely he knew enough to trust her by now? “Trying to teach me my job, Kam?”

  He drew himself up. “Never, but this is beyond anything our technology can do.”

  “Beyond what Kelek technology can do. Not beyond mine.” Her hands darted over the controls, calling up a view here and a refinement there until everything was in place. Locking the program in, she sat back. “Now I’m ready to contact the humans.”

  Signaling Gath again, she ordered a tightbeam broadcast to the surface. This time she would address only the leader of the area where Kam had found the first beacon.

  “It isn’t sunset yet. We still have an hour,” the leader said when contact was established. It pleased Akia to deal with a female, a reminder of her own position of power. The humans of Earth were backward in many ways compared to the Kelek, but they were alike in not squandering half their talent on the basis of gender.

  “Your name?” she demanded of the face on the monitor.

  “Shana Akers, governor of Atai Province.”

  Her slight nod acknowledged the other woman’s position. “You already know who I am and what I want. Are the beacons assembled as instructed?”

  The governor met Akia’s gaze unflinchingly. This one wasn’t easily rattled. “We survived your first weather weapon. We can survive more, but we won’t hand over our citizens to you.”

  “You’re mistaken. However they appear, they’re not human.”

  Akia had thought to shake this Shana Akers with her revelation, but the steady look didn’t waver. “Irrelevant. I will only release them to you if it’s in their best interests, and ours.”

  So the governor knew the beacons were aliens. Interesting. On most of the worlds the Kelek ships had visited, the people were astonished to learn what they harbored. Rikel Zimon and her own Gath had told her how eager some races were to eject the Prana cuckoos from within their nests. The attempt hadn’t saved their own skins, of course. To a Kelek slaver, all cuckoos were alike.

  “You don’t know what they’re capable of,” she challenged.

  “They’ve done us no harm.”

  And they had defended the humans against Zimon’s slaver ship. Akia didn’t care about the details. The mystique surrounding the beacons was Kam’s concern. All Akia cared about was her revenge, and possibly using the beacons to get her ship to the homeworld. Fortunately she relished a challenge.

  “You’ve barely tasted my weather weapons. I can shake your miserable islands apart if I choose.”

  “Somehow I don’t think you will.”

  Kam’s hand on her shoulder tightened. He was as surprised as Akia to meet resistance where they least expected it. Who was this human to challenge her? “I recommend against putting me to the test,” she warned.

  The governor gave a barely perceptible nod of acknowledgment. “You obviously need the beacons. You won’t risk destroying the people you’ve come for. And I’ve forbidden them to martyr themselves. They won’t be throwing themselves on your … mercy in a misguided attempt to save us.”

  The slight stumble over the word showed how little of the quality she credited to Akia. With some justification, as the human would soon find out. There was still the reckoning over Zimon’s ship. And the death of her son. The microburst message Zimon had gotten off at the last had warned Akia that, backward though these people might be, they were courageous and cunning. Not to be taken lightly.

  Neither was Akia Zael. “You still have your hour. You will surrender the beacons at your sunset. There will be no further communication.”

  She cut the connection and turned to Kam. “What do you sense from this governor?”

  “Exactly what you do. Strength, determination. And something else.” His eyes crinkled at the corners as he concentrated.

  “A death wish?” People determined to die for a cause were inconvenient. Akia hadn’t thought the Akers woman was among them, but it didn’t pay to make assumptions when dealing with an alien culture. Was she missing something here? On the way to Earth, she and Kam had studied the humans’ main language, but she could still be overlooking some subtlety.

  Kam shuffled his feet on the deck. “I sense she would die for the right cause.”

  “But there’s something else. Come on, spit it out.”

  “I also sense she has beacon blood.”

  Akia gripped the edge of her panel until her fingers whitened. “How is that possible?”

  The adept prowled around the lab, threading his way through her equipment as if through his thoughts. “I don’t know. I’ve never felt this kind of connection before.”

  “Could she have bred with a beacon?”

  “She is closely linked with the missing messenger, and she’s in turmoil over his disappearance.”

  “So that isn’t faked.”

  “Not from what I sense.”

  “This beacon blood, what do you think it means?”

  “I don’t know. Remnants of an early colony expedition, perhaps.”

  She flicked a control back and forth, then pulled herself up before she damaged anything. “A failed Prana colony? I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

  “Many records are a mix of myth, legend and half-truth. A great deal has been lost over the centuries.”

  Like the stories about the Kelek being sent off to die out. She’d believed Kam to be wrong about that, but what if he wasn’t? The Earth woman could only have beacon blood through Prana intervention in this world. And long before the present beacons got there. Because Akia didn’t know of any records didn’t mean it hadn’t happened.

  Hope boiled up inside her. “Do you think she could substitute for the third beacon?”

  Pausing, he leaned on her console from the far side. “I sense that she may have done so once before. Or at least worked with the beacons in the attempt.”

  “So we may have our triad after all.”

  Chapter 10

  The city was deserted. Adam had heard the mournful howl of the tsunami warning sirens but he’d seen no-one since finding himself in the park along the Reve foreshore. He had no notion of how he came to be here. He was too protective of his formidable brain to drink much or touch drugs. How the devil had he traveled from his cliff top home to the city?

  Stop and think, he ordered himself. Once before he’d found himself inside the flux, dying, he’d believed. At least this time he was fit and well. With luck he would stay that way.

  He dropped onto a park bench facing the sea and reached out mentally, searching for contact with Garrett or Elaine. They’d shared his experience in the flux, being forced to watch him die as a message to them all from the energy field. It would help if the flux was a bit less cryptic, he thought, as he turned his focus inward.

  Nothing.

  He’d lived most of his life without knowing about his alien origins. Until he’d met the other beacons and accepted his role in their lives, he’d been alone. He’d had his adoptive parents, but like everyone else in his life, they’d felt apart fr
om him. With no blood connection to them or anyone else, he’d been the loner, observing from the sidelines, alien in more ways than he’d ever imagined.

  Since teaming up with Garrett and Elaine, he’d learned that he was their messenger, the link between them and the Prana homeworld. The discovery had led him to do things he’d never dreamed he could do, like hijack the space shuttle to stop the Kelek slavers. For the first time in his life he’d become a risk taker, a rule breaker, ready to believe things his science couldn’t explain.

  That he could be the only person left in Reve was one more impossible thing he might have to accept. If he was indeed inside the flux, there would be a reason and he would figure it out. Being cut off from Elaine and Garrett was evidently part of the process, but he didn’t like the reminder of how alone he’d been for so long.

  The psychic link he’d felt with the other beacons was gone as well. He closed his eyes and thought of Shana. How was she handling his disappearance, if indeed, he had disappeared in her reality? The flux had created a duplicate of him in Guy Voland, but there was no way Guy could fool Shana into thinking he was Adam. At least he hoped not.

  He was surprised at the anger he felt as he imagined Guy and Shana together. Adam wasn’t the jealous type, and his past affairs had been more about shared pleasure than anything lasting. With Shana, things were different. He wanted more from her than sex. He wanted a future.

  Their early encounters had been antagonistic: she representing the establishment and he pushing the science barrow. But some quality in her had hooked his attention, keeping it ever since. He’d agreed to head up the space project as much to stay close to her, as for the challenge.

  Shana had left the establishment behind the day she’d aided Adam in contacting Prana. As a full-blooded Mayat, she followed her people’s ancient traditions. They helped her to take everything in her stride – the beacons, the threat from the Kelek, even contact with a world far across the galaxy. Most of all, she’d accepted Adam as he was. Loved him as he was. He might not show his feelings, but they ran deep. He didn’t have to be marooned in a reality that excluded her to know how much she meant to him.