She was silent for a long moment, then made a tsking sound. “And you still didn’t remember to bring flowers.”
Iris laughed, then she hugged him.
Dramatis Personae
Connor Brooks—Seaman
Miles Uma—Captain, Oilstar Zoroaster
Ed Dailey—Second Mate
Dr. Alex Kramer—Oilstar Microbiogist
Maureen Kramer—his wife
Jay Kramer—his son
Erin Kramer—his daughter
Dr. Mitchell Stone—Alex’s assistant
Jackson Harris—Environmental activist
Daphne Harris—Environmental activist, Jackson’s wife
Todd Severyn—Petroleum Engineer
Dr. Iris Shikozu—Stanford University
William Plerry—Environmental Policy Office
Emma Branson—CEO Oilstar
Walter Cochran—Oilstar executive
Moira Tibbett—Sandia, Livermore researcher
Dave Hensch—Stanford student
Officer Orenio—security guard
Jake Torgens—Environmentalist, radical activist
Reverend Timothy Rudge—Pastor, Holy Grace Baptist Church
Dr. Spencer Lockwood—Physicist, Solar Satellite project head
Rita Fellenstein—Chief technician
Dr. Lance Nedermyer—Department of Energy program manager
Dr. Gilbert Hertoya—Director, Electromagnetic Launch Facility
Juan Romero—technician
Dr Arnold Norton—Sandia scientist
Brig General Bayclock—Commander, Kirtland Air Force Base
David Reinski—Mayor of Albuquerque
Sgt Catilyn Morris—Helicopter mechanic
Colonel David—Commander, Phillips Laboratory
Colonel Nichimya—Commander, Base Personnel
Henry Holback—President of the US
Harald Wolani—Vice President of the US
The Honorable Jeffrey Mayeaux—Speaker of the House
Rita Mayeaux—his wife
Franklin Weathersee—Mayeaux’s Chief of Staff
General Wacon—Chairman, JCS
Heather Dixon—Insurance adjuster (Flagstaff, AZ)
Al Sysco—Manager, Surety Insurance (Flagstaff, AZ)
Dick Morgret—Gas station owner (Death Valley, CA)
Carlos Bettario—Rancher (Death Valley, CA)
Lt Bobby Carron—F/A-18 pilot, USN (China Lake, CA)
Lt Ralph “Barfman” Petronfi—Bobby’s wingman (China Lake, CA)
Copyright
© 1996 by WordFire, Inc. and Doug Beason
Originally published by Tor Books
Published at Smashwords by WordFire, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Look for these and other digital works by Kevin J. Anderson:
In the future, the dead walk the streets—Resurrection, Inc. found a profitable way to do it. A microprocessor brain, synthetic heart, artificial blood, and a fresh corpse can return as a Servant for anyone with the price. Trained to obey any command, Servants have no minds of their own, no memories of their past lives.
Supposedly.
Then came Danal. He was murdered, a sacrifice from the ever-growing cult of neo-Satanists who sought heaven in the depths of hell. But as a Servant, Danal began to remember. He learned who had killed him, who he was, and what Resurrection, Inc. had in mind for the human race.
They were prisoners, exiles, pawns of a corrupt government. Now they are Dr. Rachel Dycek’s adin, surgically transformed beings who can survive new lives on the surface of Mars. But they are still exiles, unable ever again to breathe Earth’s air. And they are still pawns.
For the adin exist to terraform Mars for human colonists, not for themselves. Creating a new Earth, they will destroy their world, killed by their own success. Desperate, adin leader Boris Tiban launches a suicide campaign to sabotage the Mars Project, knowing his people will perish in a glorious, doomed campaign of mayhem—unless embattled, bitter Rachel Dycek can find a miracle to save both the Mars Project and the race she created.
Atlas is a struggling colony on an untamable world, a fragile society held together by the Truthsayers. Parentless, trained from birth as the sole users of Veritas, a telepathy virus that lets them read the souls of the guilty. Truthsayers are Justice—infallible, beyond appeal.
But sometimes they are wrong.
Falsely accused of murder, Troy Boren trusts the young Truthsayer Kalliana… until, impossibly, she convicts him. Still shaken from a previous reading, Kalliana doesn’t realize her power is fading. But soon the evidence becomes impossible to ignore. The Truthsayers’ Veritas has been diluted and someone in the colony is selling smuggled telepathy. Justice isn’t blind—it’s been blinded.
From an immortal’s orbital prison to the buried secrets of a regal fortress, Kalliana and Troy seek the conspiracy that threatens to destroy their world from within. For without truth and justice, Atlas will certainly fall…
Book 1 of the Gamearth Trilogy
By Kevin J. Anderson
It was supposed to be just another Sunday night fantasy role-playing game for David, Tyrone, Scott, and Melanie. But after years of playing, the game had become so real that all their creations—humans, sorcerers, dragons, ogres, panther-folk, cyclops—now had existences of their own. And when the four outside players decide to end their game, the characters inside the world of Gamearth—warriors, scholars, and the few remaining wielders of magic—band together to keep their land from vanishing. Now they must embark on a desperate quest for their own magic—magic that can twist the Rules enough to save them all from the evil that the players created to destroy their entire world.
Book 3 of the Gamearth Trilogy
By Kevin J. Anderson
The finale to the Gamearth Trilogy. It’s all-out war between the players and characters in a role-playing game that has taken on a life of its own. The fighter Delrael, the sorcerer Bryl, as well as famed scientists Verne and Frankenstein, use every trick in the Book of Rules to keep the world of Gamearth intact while the outside group of players does everything possible to destroy it.
The Fantastic History of a Dark Genius
By Kevin J. Anderson
The life story of the enigmatic dark hero most readers know from Jules Verne’s novels 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and The Mysterious Island. A boyhood friend of Verne’s, Nemo goes off to explore the world, adventuring aboard sailing ships, crossing Africa in a balloon, exploring deep caverns that lead to the center of the Earth, and eventually building the Nautilus, the terrible submarine in which he wages war against war.