Homeworld: Beacon 3

by Valerie Parv

  “Or of being captured or killed.”

  “That happened anyway.”

  “Not on every world. Some of the beacons returned with useful knowledge.”

  “But if the Prana are still trapped in the flux, they can’t have found all the answers.”

  “No,” Guy admitted. “And the flux is growing weaker.”

  “Supporting an entire planet would do that to you.” Garrett didn’t try to keep the irony out of his voice. He wondered if knowing their real mission could have increased their parents’ chance of helping Prana. Now they’d be lucky if they could help themselves.

  “How long have you known where we were?” he asked Adam.

  “I didn’t at first,” Adam admitted. “I found myself in a deserted city, emptied by the threat of the tsunami. Then I met Cate and realized where we had to be.”

  “Then nothing we experienced since you disappeared was real?”

  Adam’s mouth tightened. “Reality has never been adequately defined.”

  Garrett’s fist crashed down on the table. “Not good enough. I saw the suffering, the death resulting from Zael’s attacks. If they were illusions—”

  “As long as we believe events to be real, they are. The mind can’t tell the difference,” Adam observed.

  This was getting Garrett nowhere. The tsunami and the rest had happened, or they hadn’t. Either way, they had to be treated as real. The consequences certainly were.

  A new thought occurred to him. “We saw your calculations. You found a way for one beacon alone to access the flux.”

  The scientist shook his head. “That didn’t work.”

  “Then how …” Garrett’s glance went to his niece standing a few feet away. “You as messenger, Cate as listener.” Still only two out of three. “Elaine’s unborn child?” he asked, hearing the wonder in his own voice. “When she lost her memory, you contacted the baby instead.”

  Adam nodded. “Her watcher sense is strong from being nourished by Elaine. After birth, she’ll lose that awareness until she’s old enough to deal with it.”

  Remembering when Garrett’s own beacon sense had kicked in, he said, “All right, you found a way to create a new beacon triad. You still haven’t explained why.”

  Adam’s response was drowned out by a jet-engine roar growing louder and louder until Garrett sank to his knees, his hands over his ears.

  Chapter 29

  With Arrafin docked however precariously with the Kelek ship, Garrett had no need of a space suit, any more than Elaine would. Getting through the docking mechanism was still no picnic, the lack of gravity hindering as much as it helped.

  During astronaut training, he’d had some experience of working in zero G but Elaine had none. Keeping his thoughts as calm as he could, he shared a view of the docking mechanism with her, and mentally guided her through the steps.

  Only when she was safely on board did Garrett realize he was looping again. They’d already rescued Elaine and the adept, Kam, who’d chosen to follow her to Earth rather than face the Kelek captain he’d betrayed.

  Still, Garrett’s mind insisted on dealing with perceived reality. What they were to do with the adept, he didn’t know. Kam already looked as if he regretted his impulse to join them. Maybe he could lead them to Adam, although Garrett wouldn’t bet on that. Kam might have helped Elaine to appease his conscience, but he was still an enemy alien.

  No, Garrett thought, annoyed with himself. He knew how this script went. Kam was about to die, murdered by Zael using some long-distance means beyond their understanding.

  As if on cue, there was a groan from the adept. Twisting as far as his harness allowed, Garrett saw the man turn bone white. The adept’s head thrashed from side to side against the headrest.

  “Something’s wrong with him. Help him,” Elaine cried.

  Garrett wracked his brains for a solution. The adept had died the first time. He sensed it couldn’t be allowed to happen a second time. Was this how the flux worked? Change the scenario until the humans got it right? And who or what defined right? Damn, but Garrett hated the notion of being a pawn of whatever controlled the flux.

  All the same, he couldn’t let Kam die again. “Zael’s doing this. We have to shield him from her.” From a pocket in his flight suit he fished out the credit-card sized dampening field, wondering, as he did so, whether he’d brought it along originally. No matter, he had the device now. He passed it to Elaine.

  She stared at the object blankly. “What is it?”

  “Look into it using your special vision. Read what’s on it and activate it, part of you remembers how,” Garrett urged. “Kam doesn’t have much time.”

  Her gaze went from the device to the adept, clearly in his death throes. A familiar look overcame her as she turned her vision inward, reading the device down to the quantum level. At least, Garrett hoped that’s what she was doing.

  No sound, no vibration signaled a change but something was working. Kam’s tension eased visibly. He began to breathe more evenly as color slowly seeped back into his face.

  “Keep going,” Garrett urged her.

  This time when Kam slumped, it was from exhaustion. His chest rose and fell steadily in sleep.

  Elaine also looked exhausted as she handed back the device. “I don’t know what I did, but he’ll live, won’t he?”

  “Thanks to you.”

  *

  The implant wasn’t working. On board her cruiser, Akia Zael fought the urge to beat her fists against the control panels in frustration. She was too far from her ship to risk being stranded if she damaged something, although she wanted to very badly.

  She blinked hard. Either she was going mad or she was reliving these events. She clearly remembered being back aboard her ship before turning the implant against Kam. What was happening to her? Some new beacon devilment?

  Whatever was going on, she couldn’t try again to vent her wrath on Kamarg Iroi. Her head already pounded from using the implant for a task outside its intended purpose. Kam’s betrayal hurt, but he wasn’t worth risking her own life to take his. The implant was a strange device, she thought. Before the surgery, they’d warned her to expect a range of possible side effects, visions and emotional disturbances until the implant settled down. She’d almost forgotten about them until now. Gargantuan headaches were a given, but far worse were the visions the implant had given her.

  For two days after the operation, she’d found herself experiencing other realities. Even knowing they were caused by the surgery hadn’t lessened the impact of existing on multiple planes. The after-effect of using the device to kill took her there now, her vision blurring.

  In one reality, her son lived and they were partners in a scientific research endeavor. In another, Gath was still her husband and vetoed such foolishness for his soldier son.

  In the most vivid of all, she was aiming her geoengineering devices at a planet, but not to destroy. To regenerate. In a scene too perplexing to unravel, she found herself inside the flux, among glowing beings who welcomed her. Didn’t they know that her duty was to kill them?

  Scrubbing a hand over her face, she drove the visions away. Only one reality mattered to her, the one where she wiped out the humans to buy back her son’s soul.

  *

  “We’re under attack.”

  At the controls of the shuttle, Lyle Chenard didn’t raise his voice, but Garrett heard the fear. “We’re a shuttle, not a warship.” He reeled as blasts of energy bloomed against their hull.

  He was still looping. Last time, they’d escaped before the Kelek captain returned to her ship. By saving Kam’s life, had they also changed the outcome of the mission? What else might change before they got back to Earth? Not their survival, he prayed.

  “Get us out of here,” he told the pilot.

  The shuttle bucked as Chenard fought the controls. “Doing my best.”

  No more energy blasts came their way. “Are we out of range of the cruiser’s weapons?”

&nb
sp; “We can only hope.”

  The attack had awakened the adept, whose eyes were wide with alarm. Elaine had her eyes closed and the fingers gripping the armrests were white. Since this was a different version of the rescue, Garrett had no clue what might come next.

  *

  “The governor is expecting you,” her aide, Jules, told them when they reached Government House. They weren’t shown into Shana’s office but into a large reception room where tea and coffee had been set out.

  This time Garrett brushed the man aside. He was out of patience with reliving history. “Yes, yes, refreshments are available and there are showers across the hall if I want to freshen up.”

  The aide’s mouth gaped. “How did you …”

  Garrett ignored the man, making a beeline for Guy Voland, leaning, as expected, against the side wall. This time, Elaine was with him. Garrett imposed himself between them. “How do we get off this merry-go-round?”

  Guy’s shoulders lifted slightly. “It’s your reality. You’re in control.”

  “Then why am I slipping between different realities? This is my third go-round here.”

  “Perhaps you have more to learn from this reality.”

  Garrett’s fists bunched. He ached to take on the other man, although he suspected it wouldn’t do any good. Guy was only an avatar for whatever lived in the flux.

  Elaine looked troubled. “Garrett, none of this is Guy’s fault.”

  He swung toward her. “How do you know? Have you remembered something?”

  “Glimpses. Nothing tangible. Each time we loop back through a previous reality, I remember a little more.”

  “Kam?” he asked.

  “Over there, resting.”

  Seeing Amelia perched on the edge of the couch where the adept lay, Garrett felt a stab of something akin to jealousy but drove it away. The story was the only thing that mattered to Amelia. She was bound to find the alien of interest. The reasoning didn’t help as much as Garrett thought it should.

  At his approach, she looked up. “Kam says you and Elaine saved his life.”

  Mollified at being the subject of their conversation, Garrett gave a small nod and switched his focus to the adept. “Captain Zael has a way she can attack from a distance. Do you know what weapon she’s using?”

  Kam’s teeth clenched. When he spoke, his voice was thready. “It is personal between her and me.”

  “Not something she can use against us?”

  “Unlikely. The … weapon … takes a toll on her. Recovery requires considerable time.”

  If more weapons took a personal toll on their user, wars would be briefer and a lot less bloody, Garrett thought. He let the subject drop for now. “Do you know where we are?”

  Amelia looked as if he’d taken leave of his senses. Before she could point out that they were in a reception room at Government House, Kam spoke.

  “We are in your flux.”

  “We’re what?” Disbelief colored the TV presenter’s voice.

  “Kam is right. The flux evidently sensed the threat to us and helped us the only way it knows how, by moving us inside its energy field.”

  “Then Adam’s disappearance …”

  “Was the first step, yes.”

  He waited for her to ask about the other events but she simply nodded. “Of course. It makes so much sense.”

  Not to me, he thought, grudgingly admiring. “How do you figure that?”

  “I study history. Every so often a pivotal figure arises, a Buddha, a Moses, an Adam Desai, and reality coalesces around them, changing the direction of events, in this case, within your flux.”

  “We know it’s affected by the kind of energy around it,” Garrett said. Overloaded by negative energy after the destruction of the first Kelek vessel, the flux had taken Garrett and Elaine into a nuclear winter version of itself. Adam had died there, Garrett remembered grimly. Only when they’d shared with the flux the positive energy of human lovemaking had it recovered.

  Kam sat up, the effort obvious. “Sometimes the energy becomes too negative and you get a life-and-death struggle, good against evil.”

  “And the Akia Zaels become the focal points.” Garrett warmed to the idea even as he recoiled from thinking they could be engaged in such a struggle now. “A world war, a Ragnarok …”

  “The Norse legend about the death of gods and the end of the world,” Amelia said, looking pale. “When you think about it, it’s been coming for a long time.”

  Garrett’s gaze went to Kam. “Is that what’s happening now?”

  The adept looked uncomfortable. “I know only what you know. I am not a seer.”

  But Elaine is. Perhaps not in the paranormal sense, but certainly as a beacon. Garrett stood and went to her. After he told her about the Ragnarok theory, she looked as if her knees wanted to buckle, but she straightened up and squared her slim shoulders.

  “How can I help?”

  Damn, but he was proud of her. After all she’d endured, and with a barely functional memory, she was ready to take on whatever she needed to do.

  “I think the Kelek captain is at the center of whatever’s going on. Can you see what she’s up to?”

  Again, he saw Elaine’s face go blank as she directed her alien vision elsewhere. When she came back, she looked shaken. “Kam’s defection has unhinged her a bit. She’s aiming her cruiser at this building.”

  He swallowed the fear welling up. “Not at the volcano?”

  “As I said, she’s not entirely sane. She told her guards she wants to take us on directly.”

  They needed to get everyone out of here. “How much time do we have?”

  The roaring sound he’d heard before registered again, not in his alien hearing, but through his human ears. The sound was like an animal howl, almost beyond bearing. He understood immediately. They were out of time. Zael was here.

  Armed to the teeth, she blasted the doors open and surged in with her bodyguards, their weapons trained on the horrified people in the reception room.

  Garrett saw Kam struggle to his feet and approach the captain. With the barrel of her assault weapon, she smashed him away. The adept went down but stayed conscious. Blood rivered from his hairline and he shook his head like a wounded bear.

  There had to be something they could do. Garrett tried focusing on a different reality but the scene stayed stubbornly the same. Great. When they desperately needed a switch, he couldn’t make it happen. What could he do? His mind whirled as he considered and discarded options. He felt as if he were in the cockpit of a jet fighter, his hand hovering over the eject button.

  Then he saw Elaine moving. She was herding the other people in the room toward Kam. Suddenly Garrett knew what she intended, and went to the adept, hauling him to his feet and holding on to his arm when he swayed.

  “Get away from him, all of you,” Zael ordered, looking as if she was about to open fire. Why didn’t she? Was Elaine’s plan already affecting the Kelek captain’s actions?

  He saw Shana Akers and Timo Rooke emerge from a side door, alerted by the commotion. “What’s going on, Captain Zael?”

  “I’ve had enough of your tricks and your lies.”

  “Captain, I don’t—”

  “Enough, I said. Order your people to back off now.”

  Garrett saw Shana take in the semicircle of people Elaine had pushed and cajoled into standing shoulder to shoulder in front of Zael, buffering Kam with their bodies. He saw defiance in many eyes and plain terror in others. But nobody moved.

  There was a moment of relief then joy on Shana’s face as she found Adam in the crowd. The joy lasted a second before she recovered and became the governor again. Silently, she joined the circle, Timo following, inserting himself into a space between the governor and Elaine, and looking glad to be there.

  “We can mow you all down where you stand,” Zael rapped out. Still, she didn’t open fire.

  Then Garrett’s reality finally shifted and he saw the group out of the Kelek cap
tain’s eyes. Some of the people were glowing.

  The governor’s aide, Jules, took a half-step forward. His silhouette rippled, distorted by an aura of light surrounding him. This wasn’t the Jules that Garrett knew. His slight air of subservience had vanished. “You have no power here, Captain Zael.”

  The weapon didn’t waver. “Who or what are you?”

  “I am of the Prana.”

  Chapter 30

  The Kelek’s eyes bulged. “All of you are Prana?”

  “Not all, but many of us.”

  Garrett couldn’t suppress a shocked gasp. He’d expected the Prana to show up, but having Jules – or whoever he really was – admit they were here rocked Garrett to his boots.

  Zael’s expression hardened. “You are the ones who exiled my people to a ball of rock barely capable of sustaining us.”

  Jules inclined his head fractionally. “Yet you did survive.”

  “Driven by our need to destroy you in retaliation. I expected better from you than to put yourselves into my hands so readily.”

  She sounded almost disappointed, as though she’d looked forward to the coming battle between Kelek and Prana. What did a commander do when her enemy capitulated, cutting her thirst for revenge off at the knees?

  Opened fire, of course. Flames spat from the Kelek assault weapons, spraying across the tightly packed mass of people. Concentrated energy stitched a painful line across Garrett’s chest. He looked down. His shirt was a smoldering ruin. But the beam should have cut him in half.

  The same for the people around him. He saw them look at each other, as surprised as he was to find themselves still standing.

  Zael looked as if she would burst into flames herself. She reset her weapon, presumably to maximum force, and fired again. The result was the same.

  “Bring me the adept and the beacons,” she ordered her guards.

  Garrett was dragged to the front of the group along with Elaine, Adam and Kam.