Radiance

by Rick Chambers

Overview

The future of the human race depends on ten specially gifted people—but nobody knows who they are.

In the twilight of the 21st century, humanity seeks salvation from despair. Entrepreneur Eris Lateinos promises to create a happier, more prosperous new era with a plan to ferry resource rich asteroids into Earth orbit.

Tristan West, Lateinos’ embittered ex-PR man, suspects that the price of the era is far too steep. His suspicions put him at odds with the most powerful man in the galaxy and plunge him into a conspiracy that will determine the destiny of two worlds.

For West, discovering the truth requires an unlikely alliance with a zealous missionary and two mysterious strangers who harbor incredible secrets of their own. But all of them share the same goal—find the ten people who possess the Radiance before their lives, and the last hope for humanity, are destroyed.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781450253123
Publisher:	iUniverse, Incorporated
Publication date:	09/02/2010
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	290 KB

Read an Excerpt

Radiance

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By Rick Chambers

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2010 Rick Chambers
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4502-5310-9

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Chapter One

The huge metal door flew open and struck the old woman on the head. The force of the blow lifted her off her feet, and she collapsed to the cold tile floor in a spray of blood.

No one seemed to notice.

Scores of people poured through the open door, a mad river of humanity splashing against the Customs counter. No one took the time to help the elderly attendant. Few bothered to avoid stepping on her.

Dylan figured she deserved it.

Stupid old bag! he thought. Ever heard of automated door openers? Serves you right if you're trampled to death.

Seated at a broad marbled counter, Dylan sighed angrily and touched a button near his right knee. A kilometer away, an alarm sounded in the small, understaffed Modos Medical Center. A paramedic team would be dispatched to the spaceport-eventually.

Of course, any of the seven Customs agents who saw the accident could have helped avoid it, but rendering aid to foolish old women was not in their job descriptions. In fact, they had a very simple job-stamping passports and watching for troublemakers.

The first task was easy. The other required equal parts expertise and intuition. Just what constituted a "troublemaker" at a shady gambling resort like Modos? The agents could not say for sure, but they knew one when they saw one.

Wide-eyed faces peered through the Plexiglas shield towering above the Customs counter. Lips moved in rapid motion, but their words were unintelligible in the din. Suddenly, a recorded voice-a throaty, sexy female voice-echoed through the reception area.

"Welcome to Modos, your fantasy lunar playground. We hope you had a pleasant flight. We're looking forward to making all your dreams come true. Before beginning your stay, please bear with us as we process each of you through Customs. Thank you for your cooperation.

"Welcome to Modos, your fantasy lunar playground...."

The crowd's reaction to the voice, particularly among the men, was entertaining. Eyebrows lifted; lecherous grins peeled away from tobacco-stained teeth. They painted a mental picture of her-raven hair; steel-blue eyes; full, inviting lips. They didn't know that, in reality, she had blue-gray hair, a pot belly, and three grandchildren.

The Customs agents lining the counter let the greeting run three times before they moved aside portions of the plastic barrier and took the first passports. They interviewed each tourist in a monotone, their eyes usually locked on a point just above the interviewee's left shoulder. They needed only a glance to know whether a person was a troublemaker. Otherwise, they had no interest in one's origins or plans.

Dylan processed at least a hundred travelers before he encountered his first rejects of the day.

They were a strange couple. The man was just over six feet tall, his hair jet black and oiled, his skin the pale color of someone who rarely saw sunshine. He walked stiffly, as if his shoes were too tight. Although thin, he seemed strong and healthy. Dylan saw the man's hard biceps ringed by the short sleeves of his earth-tone bodysuit.

His female companion was startlingly beautiful. She was of average height, her skin creamy and flawless. Her angular face was framed by fine black hair, drawing attention to liquid-blue eyes gleaming with an intellect rarely seen in the tourists. However, she, too, walked with an almost imperceptible hobble, as if there were pebbles in her narrow boots.

They stood a meter or so away from the counter, talking quietly and frowning at the few people left in the reception area. They looked uncertain, as if they were lost. Dylan knew the look all too well, and he scowled.

He hated first-timers. Their nervousness grated on him. Although his primary mission was to turn away troublemakers, he had been known to hold up visitors for days and even send them home just because he did not like them.

Or, he thought, his scowl deepening, their nationalities.

"Hey, you two!" Dylan called.

They turned toward the agent, startled and confused. He crooked a finger at them. They seemed equally befuddled by his gesture until, after a moment, the woman whispered something to her companion. He nodded his understanding, and tentatively they approached the counter.

Dylan kept his scowl and added an edge to his voice. "You gonna check in or gawk all day?"

The man jerked his head sharply to the right, a motion that should have been painful. The stranger, however, was uninjured-only curious.

"Gawk?" he asked his companion.

The woman responded in a soft, musical voice. "A simpleton. A clumsy, stupid fellow."

"But he used the term as a verb, did he not?"

She shrugged. "It is not uncommon, particularly in spoken English, to use nouns as words of action. I believe 'gawk' is used frequently in such a manner. Essentially, this man has described his opinion of our behavior-that we have made ourselves simpletons through the act of standing and observing our surroundings."

"Then," the man said uncertainly, "we have been ... insulted?"

"I believe so, yes."

Now Dylan was scowling so hard that his face hurt.

They're not red-blooded Americans, not with that kind of talk, he thought, and not Brits, French, or Asians either. So what are they? Their accents sounded vaguely Scandinavian, but they did not look it.

Not that nationality should really have any bearing on entry to Modos, of course. The resort held a loosely independent status, answerable to the United Nations only in certain areas of law. Modos was intended to host all people, regardless of race or country of origin. However, the Customs agents made it their personal duty to sift out the undesirables, and Dylan found nothing desirable about these two-particularly not the man's reaction to Dylan's insult.

He smiled. No, he positively beamed!

Dylan did not like them, not one bit.

"Names!" he barked.

"My name is Payat," the man replied. He waved toward his companion. "This is Eucleia."

"First or last?"

Payat looked puzzled. "I believe I approached the counter first."

"I mean your names!"

"Payat and Eucleia."

Dylan clenched his teeth. "Is Payat your first name or your last name?"

"Well, it is the only one I have, so it could be considered either."

"Fine!"

Dylan would not pursue the argument. He would probably end up rejecting these two anyway.

"What is your nationality?"

Payat looked at Eucleia. They both shrugged.

"We have none, sir," Payat said.

Liberals! Dylan rapped the counter with a meaty knuckle. "Look, you two, don't pull that United Earth stuff on me, okay? Until the UN Council says otherwise, we still have distinct countries on our planet, I'm happy to say. That means you have to tell me which one you come from. Capiche?"

Payat looked at Eucleia again.

"Italian," she explained.

Payat nodded.

Dylan, misunderstanding the exchange, typed Italian into his computer.

"Okay, why don't you two show me your passports?" he asked gruffly.

The strangers' faces went blank.

"Passports, please," Dylan repeated in dripping sarcasm.

Eucleia's eyebrows lifted. "We have no passports. We did not know they were necessary."

"Then how in bloody blue blazes did you get on that shuttle flight?" he demanded to know. "They're supposed to double-check that stuff before takeoff."

"We did not arrive on the shuttle."

Eucleia spoke up. "Payat-"

"Look," Dylan continued as if he had not heard her interruption, "Modos is just like a country. You can't come in without a passport-so you're just going to have to march your little behinds on out of here."

Payat shook his head. "That is not possible."

"Believe me, it's very possible! Now you can get back on that shuttle, or I can have a couple of my friends show you that exit door over there, where there isn't a shuttle. You decide which way is healthier."

Payat turned and touched Eucleia's arm. "It appears we are going to need passports to remain here. Unfortunately, I did not learn how to secure one."

"Nor did I," she admitted. "Perhaps they must be purchased."

Dylan's ears tingled.

"Did you say 'purchase'?" he asked in a low voice, leaning forward slightly.

Payat turned back and moved closer to the counter himself, matching his tone to Dylan's. "Yes. Is that possible?"

Dylan threw a glance at his nearest co-worker. She was busy stamping a pile of passports from a large family. No one was paying any attention to him or his charges.

"Uh, yeah, it can be done. For the right price."

"And that would be what?"

The agent stared at the two strangers. On appearance alone, he would have guessed they had no more than a couple of credits between them. Their clothes were the kind one might find at a charity shop, at least a decade out of date. They certainly did not look or act like the high-roller type. On the other hand, shuttle flights were not cheap, yet they managed to swing one. Besides, they surely would not bring up the notion of bribery unless they could carry through.

"Two hundred credits," Dylan finally said. "Each."

"Each?"

"You need two passports, my friend."

Payat nodded. "I see. You have been most kind, sir. Do you have a Credi-cal?"

Looking carefully around him, Dylan reached into his pocket and slowly pulled out a palm-sized computer, thin as an old-fashioned credit card.

Payat produced a similar device, plugged them together, and tapped out a series of numbers. Then he separated the Credi-cals and returned Dylan's to him.

"Four hundred credits have been added to your personal account," Payat said.

The agent confirmed his new account balance, then turned a smiling face to the strangers.

"That's all the information I need, folks," he said pleasantly. "You can exit the reception area to your right. Have a good time on Modos."

Payat and Eucleia thanked him and walked toward the door leading to Baggage Claim.

As they left, Dylan noticed that they had no carry-on luggage, a rarity among tourists, and they did not seem to be hurrying to the luggage carousel as everyone else did. He tried to ignore the sudden pangs of doubt, wondering briefly if his greed got the best of him-again. What if those two were terrorists? Or worse, what if they were some of Lateinos's minions checking up on the efficiency-and trustworthiness-of Customs?

Oh, well. Too late now.

"Excuse me."

Dylan jumped in his seat. Turning, he half-expected to see a Lateinos cyborg preparing to hammer him into a bloody pulp. However, the figure towering over him, dressed in a medic's white jumpsuit, was no cyborg.

"You buzzed the Medical Center?" he asked.

"Oh. Uh, yeah," Dylan replied, swallowing hard, then waved a hand across the reception area. "The old lady by the shuttleway door. Took a spill and cracked her head."

The medic looked over, a mixture of boredom and annoyance coming across his face. "What old lady?"

Dylan turned. The heavy door was still open, but the elderly attendant was nowhere to be seen. He gasped in surprise. He was certain she hit her head, and hard. He had seen the blood running down her face. And what about the people who stomped all over her in their rush to the Customs booths?

"I swear she ... Rachel!"

The large woman in the next booth looked over. "Yeah?"

"Did you see the hag get it on the head over there?"

"Yeah. So?"

"Where'd she go?"

"Got up and left. No big deal."

"But she got whomped a good one! I saw the blood! Thought she was gonna die right there."

Rachel shrugged. "You're seeing things, Dylan. She got up and walked away. No cuts, no blood, not even a bruise."

"But I saw it!"

"Hey, go ask those two bozos you spent so much time with. They are the ones who helped her up."

Dylan gnawed his tongue anxiously. "Uh ... the two who?"

"The guy and gal in the bodysuits. They made over her head, then helped her up. She was as spry as I'd ever seen her, and no boo-boos, honest." A ghost of a smile passed over her lips. "You'd better get your eyes checked, Dylan."

Rachel turned back to her work, and the medic walked away, making angry clucking noises. Dylan, his heart racing, stared at the spot where a puddle of blood should have been.

"Set me up again, Hal," Tristan West mumbled into the counter.

Above him, the rotund owner of North Modos Bar studied the drunken man poured over the counter like a spilled drink. West knew what was running through his mind. Hal liked the income from heavy drinkers, but Tristan West was a friend-if a barely conscious one at the moment.

"I think you've had enough, Tris," Hal said, placing a beefy hand on West's shoulder. "How about some of my world-famous coffee instead? Guaranteed to sober a bottle of J.D. itself."

His left cheek still resting on the bar, West peered up at Hal and snorted indignantly. "You tellin' me I can't hold my liquor?"

"No one can hold as much as you've had tonight. Not even a robo."

"Ha! Shows what you know! Cyborgs are terrible drinkers. They got less blood to mix with the booze."

"Look, Tris, I don't need you to go wrapping your car around some support pylon. Plays heck with my insurance. Have some java, okay?"

"I'm not driving. Lateinos took my car as well as my job."

Hal sighed. "The coffee's good, Tris. Honest."

"Whiskey. Beer chaser."

The bartender scowled.

"Last one, Hal. I promise."

Finally, Hal gave that hey-I'm-not-the-guy's-mother shrug, produced a whiskey bottle from behind the bar, filled the man's shot glass, and a moment later placed a foaming mug of cold beer alongside it.

"Last one, Tris," he said firmly, "and then I want you to settle your tab."

West's face turned scarlet, matching his eyes. For the first time in at least an hour, he sat up.

"You think I'm not good for it?" he demanded to know.

Hal slapped the counter angrily. "It's got nothing to do with that, Tris, and you know it! You want charity? Go to the mission!"

West nearly stood up in his anger. "Tristan West doesn't take charity!"

The outburst was costly. Nausea and vertigo assaulted him with a vengeance. He fell back into his chair and grabbed onto the bar, steadying himself. When the universe finally stopped spinning, he picked up the shot glass with numb fingers and knocked back the coppery liquid. A slug of beer quickly followed.

Hal moved toward the far end of the bar, shaking his head. Tristan looked away, ashamed. He knew his old friend was worried. This drinking binge was unusual. In fact, West rarely imbibed because it interfered with his people-watching. The habits of a good journalist died hard. When he and Hal first met, West ordered nothing stronger than a club soda. Instead he filled endless pages in his little notebook with scribbles and scrawls, bits of overheard dialogue from the lives of Hal's customers.

"The reporter who makes the good contacts, who learns what turns people on or off, who gets the big stories-that guy doesn't spend his time at the bottom of a whiskey bottle," West had told him.

Of course, Tristan West was no longer a journalist. He had not been in a long time. Neither, apparently, was he Eris Lateinos's public relations man anymore.

West's fall from grace had its roots in Lateinos's recent spurt of bad publicity. It had been a little thing, at least initially-an unimportant story, one of those single-paragraph articles one found in a news-briefs column. Some no-name reporter, an old friend of West's, had sent a story over the newslinks claiming that Lateinos missed a loan payment over some asteroid-mining debacle. The entrepreneur had put up nearly everything he owned to fund the project, so any negative publicity was cause for concern.

Tristan went on the networks immediately, insisting that the story was untrue. But the damage was already done. Wall Street shuddered just enough to cost Lateinos a few billion credits-and Tristan West, one-time PR man, could now add "scapegoat" to his résumé.

I suppose I ought to be glad that Lateinos took my job and not some vital organ, West thought ruefully.

Tristan drained the last of the beer from his mug and set it down with an audible thunk. As he stood and wobbled toward Hal, the other customers in the quiet bar pointedly looked away.

"Settlin' my tab," Tris said, pulling a Credi-cal from his pocket.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Radiance by Rick Chambers Copyright © 2010 by Rick Chambers. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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