Homeworld: Beacon 3 Read online

  About Homeworld: Beacon 3

  Leaving Earth may be the only way to save it.

  An alien warship looms over Earth, and the only beings with the power to stand in its way are scattered to the winds. The beacons’ messenger, Adam, has mysteriously vanished, and the watcher, Elaine, is a prisoner aboard the alien ship. Only the listener, Garrett, remains, and he must use any means available to reunite the beacons and save the planet.

  Enlisting the help of celebrity Amelia Takei, Garrett is determined to answer the alien threat, but the warship’s captain has demands. Convinced that they played a part in condemning her race to a barren planet, the captain intends to force the beacons to take her to their home planet to seek revenge.

  The beacons have an impossible choice – surrender to the alien captain’s demands, or put their adopted planet at even greater risk by fighting back. In a last-ditch attempt to turn defeat into a chance for the planet’s survival, Garrett and Amelia risk a daring raid on their enemy in space, where they make a startling discovery. Sometimes those you trust most can destroy you.

  This thrilling story of aliens living among us is perfect for fans of A.G. Riddle, Rysa Walker and Linnea Sinclair.

  Contents

  About Homeworld: Beacon 3

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About Valerie Parv

  Also by Valerie Parv

  Copyright

  If light is in your heart

  you will find your way home.

  Rumi

  Chapter 1

  Garrett Luken stood up from the couch and stretched. Having a stack of pages under his belt felt good. He’d missed the act of writing. Of course, he had been distracted lately. Saving the world did that to a man. Working on his book in Adam’s newly built house, Garrett felt himself shedding those burdens at last.

  Pleased with his morning’s work, he ambled into the kitchen, heading for the coffee machine. As he fed a batch of Kona beans into the grinder, the fragrance teased his nostrils.

  While he waited, he switched his alien hearing to the glass walkway below the house where Adam’s tour had taken him and TV presenter Amelia Takei, who was planning a story on the house. The scientist was explaining the technical aspects of the walkway that cantilevered out over the ocean. As a listener, Garrett couldn’t see Amelia’s eyes glazing over, but he pictured it as he heard her gently rein Adam in.

  Teaming up with Adam had enhanced Garrett’s skills and these days, he felt almost psychically linked with the scientist. Garrett debated using the link to ask Adam if he was ready for coffee. Saving humanity wasn’t all the beacons’ skills were good for.

  Before he could act on the thought, Garrett felt a wave of nausea grip him. He stumbled, grabbing the countertop. On the verge of blacking out, he fought the heaving in his gut, clinging to consciousness when everything in him wanted to shut down.

  When his breathing finally steadied, the clocks in the kitchen were flashing. Still dizzy, Garrett watched them reset as his mind caught up. There’d been a power outage but unlike anything he’d ever experienced.

  Then he heard Amelia scream.

  He raced back through the living room and plunged out onto the balcony spanning the width of the house. Leaning over the glass balustrade, he saw Amelia alone on the walkway. He called to her but the sea breeze snatched his words away. Forcing himself to a calmness he was far from feeling, he tuned his hearing to Adam but heard … nothing. Their sensory link had snapped as though it had never existed.

  Without conscious thought, he ran down the levels to the walkway where Amelia stalked from one end to the other like a predator quartering for prey. “What happened?” he called when he was close enough for her to hear him.

  She spun toward him. “We were talking when Adam vanished.”

  “He went over the edge?”

  “No. I didn’t lose sight of him. He was there one minute and gone the next.”

  Thinking of his experience in the kitchen, Garrett asked, “Did you feel any nausea, or other unusual sensations?”

  She planted her hands on jeans-clad hips. “I’m not ill or crazy. I know what I saw.”

  The sea wind wasn’t strong enough to drag a man over the chest-high glass balustrade, but Garrett looked over anyway. He didn’t expect to find a shattered body, but he was still relieved to see empty rocks washed with foam.

  Had the flux taken Adam again, and if so, to what purpose this time?

  He had seen Adam die once before inside the energy field they called the flux, the tunnel in space their parents had used to travel from Prana to Earth. “Tunnel” wasn’t entirely accurate, as the beacons had all sensed that something sentient lived in the flux.

  Garrett had first experienced the being’s power during a space shuttle mission to stop a race of slavers known as the Kelek from reaching Earth. During the mission he’d wondered aloud if they could take the shuttle behind the flux. Somehow, they’d found themselves there, shielded from the thermonuclear device Garrett had deployed against the Kelek ship.

  The effect of the explosion had closed the flux, cutting the beacons off from contact with Prana until Garrett and his friend Elaine, the watcher to his listener, were transported into the flux. Finding themselves in a blasted nuclear wasteland, he and Elaine had stumbled over Adam’s horribly burned body. He’d died in front of them. Later, Elaine’s alien sight had found him alive and well at the space center. They’d worked out that Adam’s apparent death was the flux’s way of sending them a message.

  Hell of a way to communicate.

  All the energy directed toward the flux up to that point had been negative, draining it of life, so it made sense that positive energy would revive it. In the nuclear wasteland, Garrett and Elaine had made love, hoping to restore the flux. Their decision enabled the flux to begin to heal and the energy field had opened again in a rainbow coruscation of power during the shuttle’s second mission after the pilot, Lyle Chenard, had transmitted the code Adam had discovered.

  Amelia’s voice retrieved his attention. “You won’t find him down there. He didn’t fall.”

  Garrett turned his wary gaze to her. “What do you think happened?”

  “You tell me.”

  He kept his expression impassive. “I was in the kitchen making coffee when I heard you scream. I didn’t see anything.”

  “And you don’t know anything, either.”

  “What?”

  Her glare intensified. “You, Adam and your astrologer friend, Elaine, are ordinary human beings who just happen to be around when extraordinary things are happening.”

  He concealed his shock. Amelia might be fully human, but she was an unusually perceptive one. “Look, I realize you’re upset,” he offered.

  “Hardly surprising. I’ve seen many things in my career, but never a man disappearing before my eyes. You’re remarkably calm about this. I want to know why.”

&n
bsp; Facing her furious look, he struggled for control. Bad enough to lose Adam without having one of the best known media figures in Atai as an eye witness. “What can I say? I’m as bamboozled as you.”

  Her lip curled. “Then why aren’t you calling for help? A normal person would by now.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “What can I tell them that wouldn’t get my sanity called into question?”

  He thrust a hand through his hair. “You’re right though. Adam’s … disappearance … should be reported.” As soon as Garrett figured out what to tell the authorities. If his alien instincts were correct, Adam wouldn’t be found easily – if at all.

  He saw Amelia reach the same conclusion and some of the anger went out of her stance. “Where do you think he went?”

  “If I knew, I’d tell you.”

  “Would you? Or would you fob me off with another asteroid tale?”

  “What does the asteroid have to do with Adam’s disappearance?” Garrett demanded.

  Amelia leveled an assessing look at him. “Only that any explanation you give me is likely to be as fictitious as that story.”

  “Then there’s no point me saying anything.”

  “No,” she agreed. “Unless you want to tell me what really happened on board the shuttle.”

  He let his anger show. “My friend is missing and you’re chasing a story?”

  “I want to know where Adam went as much as you do. I think the answer starts with the shuttle missions. It can’t be coincidence that you flew the first one while your friends ran things from the ground, and that the three of you were involved in some strange goings-on with the second one.”

  “Was that what you came here to find out?”

  She wrapped her arms around herself as if she were cold, although the sea breeze was warm. “I’m not that devious. Adam’s house was destroyed in an attempt on his life. The structure he built to replace it is as remarkable as he is. His unusual history and the rebuilding of the house are the story I want.” She gestured around her. “This location and Black Tree Space Center will make great television.”

  She might be a TV presenter now, but the mind of the investigative journalist she’d started out as was still in evidence and Garrett knew she wasn’t going to settle for less than the truth. Whether he was the one to give it to her, he didn’t know.

  He mentally scanned the surroundings for any sign of Adam, and heard nothing, either by normal means or the beacons’ own special brand of communication. He suppressed the feeling of defeat.

  “I think you know we won’t find anything down here. Let’s go back upstairs and we’ll talk.”

  Chapter 2

  He left her in the living room, saying he’d make some coffee. She seemed reluctant to let him out of her sight, but nodded agreement. She probably needed time to process what had happened as much as he did.

  In the kitchen he stood still, a thought nagging. Where was Lurid, Adam’s ginger-colored cat? At Amelia’s scream, the cat had jumped off the couch. When Garrett returned with the TV presenter, Lurid was nowhere to be seen. She’d survived the destruction of his house, even living with Adam and his partner, Shana Akers, at the governor’s apartment while the house was being rebuilt. Lurid had swiftly reclaimed the new house as her territory. These days, Adam and Shana divided their time between the governor’s mansion and Adam’s house, but there was no doubt where Lurid reigned supreme.

  Had the cat vanished with Adam, or sensed something Garrett couldn’t and gone looking for him? If he found the cat, he might find Adam. Meanwhile, there was something else Garrett needed to do.

  “Elaine, are you following this?” he asked to the air as soon as he was out of earshot of Amelia.

  I’m here, she said, more a sensation inside his head than an actual voice. As he’d guessed, she’d been alerted by Adam’s disappearance, waiting for the right moment to make contact with Garrett. Although she was in Maui with her Hawai’ian prince, Timotea Rooke, Elaine could see Garrett from Timo’s ranch as easily as if they were in the same room. Her watcher abilities couldn’t be explained by physiological means any more than Garrett’s hearing could. After teaming up with Adam, their sense of connection had notched higher, almost to the level of telepathy, although the three of them were still working that out between them.

  “Did you see what happened to Adam?” he asked her, enunciating carefully so she could read his lips as he prepared the coffee. The sounds covered his quiet appeal to Elaine.

  “I was aware of him talking to Amelia Takei before the link was severed. It felt as if a conduit had been cut.”

  “My experience as well,” he agreed. “Do you think he was taken by the flux?”

  Her shudder reached him down their link. “God, I hope not. When I think of the last time …”

  “He’s alive, I’m sure of it,” Garrett cut across her, as reluctant as she was to revisit the bleak memory. “Like you, I lost the link when he vanished, but I’m positive we’d know if he was dead or injured.”

  “If he’s in the flux, there must be a reason. Can you sense anything?”

  Garrett shook his head, aware that Elaine would see the gesture. “I have a vague sense of unease, but that could be leftover from … before.”

  By unspoken agreement, they hadn’t discussed their lovemaking since it happened. Both knew they’d had no choice to prevent Garrett’s out-of-kilter hormones from killing him. The experience had been enough to prove once and for all that they couldn’t share that side of their lives. Elaine had gone back to Timo, her long-time lover, their relationship evidently stronger than ever; after she and Garrett had made love, she’d told him she was expecting Timo’s child.

  Garrett was glad for her. She deserved to be happy, and their abilities didn’t make conventional relationships easy. He didn’t know how much Timo knew about her alien side, or if he credited her visions to her so-called psychic talents. That was between the two of them.

  “I feel edgy, too,” she admitted, “as if something’s about to happen, but I can’t see what.

  Coming from Elaine, this was a huge admission. Trained by her watcher mother, Elaine’s skills were more powerful than Garrett’s. “Do you think the Kelek are back?”

  “We’ve always believed they’d come. Blowing their ship out of space was an engraved invitation.”

  The militaristic Kelek also came from Prana stock, blaming the Prana for sending them to an inhospitable world many generations ago. They’d come to Earth to force the beacons to guide the Kelek through the flux to their common homeworld. The Kelek had been stopped but not before managing to send out a last message.

  “Did you feel anything else before Adam disappeared?” he asked.

  “We had a power outage for a second or so. Why?”

  “Same thing here. Ours was barely long enough to measure, but while it lasted I almost blacked out.”

  He heard Elaine drag in a breath before going on, “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.” The nausea and dizziness were gone but something felt wrong. He decided against sharing this with Elaine. They had enough problems for now.

  “It’s odd that the power went out in two countries at the same time, right before Adam disappeared. Could they have been caused by the flux taking Adam?”

  Garrett thought furiously. “Or the Kelek. They could have technology we don’t know about.”

  He imagined Elaine nibbling her lower lip as she often did when deep in thought. “If only we knew more about either of them.”

  Their first encounter with the Kelek had revealed a rigidly militaristic culture driven by a generations-old hatred of the Prana and the beacons, whom the Kelek regarded as pawns of the Prana. One of the Kelek soldiers had survived the destruction of their ship, and had come to Atai to hunt the beacons.

  They’d had no way of knowing whether he’d contacted his people after reaching Earth. As it was, the beacons had headed off the soldier’s attack on them by the skin of their teeth
and the cost of his life. Garrett shuddered. The Kelek were far from done with them, and he wasn’t looking forward to their next confrontation.

  “Even if they took Adam as a hostage, we’d still be aware of him,” he pointed out. “I have no sense of his existence at all, except the conviction that he’s still alive.”

  He pictured Elaine nodding, her face shadowed with grief. As a listener, he shouldn’t be able to see her at a distance at all, but he felt sure the image was real, a product of their deepened connection since teaming up with Adam.

  Her voice roughened. “How are we going to find him?”

  Garrett finished making the coffee. “If the flux has done this, we have to hope he’ll find us.”

  “What will you tell Amelia?”

  “Damned if I know, Elaine. She’s worked out that the three of us are more than we seem. Should we take her completely into our confidence?”

  “It’s about time somebody did,” said a voice closer to hand.

  He felt Elaine shut down the link. She would have seen Amelia come into Adam’s kitchen, her expression grim. Even in this mood, she was beautiful, Garrett thought, startled to find his thoughts going there. Her Japanese–Carramer ancestry showed in her golden skin, wide-set almond eyes, and black hair that spilled down her back like silk. After being on her show promoting his books, he was used to her petite size and slender build. And he’d experienced her quick mind when she’d interviewed him. He wasn’t getting out of this with less than the truth. For the sake of the other beacons, he couldn’t give it to her.

  He picked up the tray. “We’ll be more comfortable in the living room.”

  Moving with the assurance of the Aikido expert he knew she was, she barred his way. “I’m fine right here.”

  His mind racing, he put the tray down and offered her one of the mugs. She ignored it and he placed it on the counter near her. On her show he’d seen her confront murderers, crime bosses and corrupt politicians. They mostly came off second best to the gimlet gaze and razor sharp interrogation she was capable of employing.