Heirs of Avalon Read online

  Table of Contents

  Heirs of Avalon (The Outlawed Colonies, #2)

  GAIL'S OTHER BOOKS

  ABOUT THIS BOOK

  HARMONIC PORTAL

  A BIBLICAL LESSON

  FAREWELLS & NEW BEGINNINGS

  AN ISLE UNKNOWN

  OF MICE & MEN

  THE ARENA

  MURDER & MAYHEM

  MY FEET UPON THE MOONLIT DUST

  TRIALS & TRIBULATIONS

  THIS WAY WE WERE LED

  THE BLACK TEMPLARS

  THE ROOMMATE

  I CAPTURE THE CASTLE

  NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN

  I KNOW WHAT YOU DID

  VALLEY OF SHADOWS

  SEVEN DEGREES OF SEPARATION

  LAUGHING MOUNTAIN - THE PORTAL YEARS

  EARTH: GATEWAY TO OTHER WORLDS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  A NOTE FROM GAIL

  BONUS: EXCERPT FROM APEX PREDATOR

  COPYRIGHT

  ABOUT THIS BOOK

  HUNTING VARMITS

  Sign up for Gail Daley's Mailing List

  Further Reading: Game Theory

  HEIRS

  OF AVALON

  THE OUTLAWED COLONIES -BOOK 2

  GAIL DALEY

  GAIL'S OTHER BOOKS

  SPACE COLONY JOURNALS

  Options of Survival

  Destiny Rising

  Tomorrows Legacy

  The Interstellar Jewel Heist

  The Designer People

  Alien Trails

  Quantum Light

  Confederation Planets & People

  PORTAL WORLD TALES

  Portal World Notes (St. Antoni & the Outlaw Colonies)

  Rulari—Land of Myth & Magic

  ST. ANTONI – THE FORBIDDEN COLONY

  Warriors of St. Antoni

  The Enforcers

  The Gaslight Bandits

  The Portal Lawman

  Cradle of Fire

  The Clone Initiative

  THE OUTLAWED COLONIES

  Game Theory

  Heirs of Avalon

  Apex Predator

  Babylon Shattered*

  Cloned Ambition*

  MAGI OF RULARI

  Spell of The Magi

  Magi Storm

  Paladin

  NON-FICTION

  The Complete Modern Artist’s Handbook

  PAMPHLETS

  Introduction to The Internet #1

  The Hard Stuff – Handbook #2

  Art Show Basics – Handbook #3

  Framing on a Budget – Handbook #4

  Are You Making Money? – Handbook #5

  Just For Writers – Handbook #6*

  *Working Title. Release dates TBA

  Copyright © 2021 Heirs of Avalon by Gail Daley dba Gail Daley's Fine Art

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  e-Book ISBN: 978-1-68564-021-7

  Print ISBN- 978-1-68564-024-8

  HB ISBN; 978-1-68489-196-2

  ASIN:

  For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed "Attention: Permissions Coordinator," at the address below.

  Gail Daley

  5688 E Sussex Way

  Fresno, CA 93727

  www.gaildaley.com

  Ordering Information: Quantity sales. Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the "Bulk Sales Department" at the address above.

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction, and any resemblance to any persons living or dead is unintentional and accidental.

  Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

  Book Layout ©2017 BookDesignTemplates.com

  Heirs of Avalon Gail Daley—1st ed. Copyright © 2021 by Gail Daley dba Gail Daley's Fine Art

  Cover Art Copyright © 2021 Gail Daley dba Gail Daley's Fine Art Used with permission

  The name Barsoom which is used as the name of a colony in these books, BARSOOM(R) is a registered trademark of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. And Used by Permission.

  ABOUT THIS BOOK

  "A futuristic Science Fiction Thriller about stolen technology and murder."

  The theft Top Secret technology is the catalyst for a lab tech's murder and plunges two couples into a web of criminal activity.

  Returning home to Barsoom after a successful mission to earth, Randal brings an unexpected dividend with him: A data crystal with the formula for finding earth-type planets. When the data crystal is stolen and a lab tech murdered during the break-in, his father and his fiancée’s father come under suspicion. It’s up to him, his fiancée Judith, and some new friends to clear their fathers of murder and find and retrieve the stolen crystal before it falls into the wrong hands.

  The name Barsoom which is used as the name of a colony in these books, BARSOOM(R) is a registered trademark of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. And Used by Permission.

  Table of Contents

  GAIL'S OTHER BOOKS

  ABOUT THIS BOOK

  HARMONIC PORTAL

  A BIBLICAL LESSON

  FAREWELLS & NEW BEGINNINGS

  AN ISLE UNKNOWN

  OF MICE & MEN

  THE ARENA

  MURDER & MAYHEM

  MY FEET UPON THE MOONLIT DUST

  TRIALS & TRIBULATIONS

  THIS WAY WE WERE LED

  THE BLACK TEMPLARS

  THE ROOMMATE

  I CAPTURE THE CASTLE

  NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN

  I KNOW WHAT YOU DID

  VALLEY OF SHADOWS

  SEVEN DEGREES OF SEPARATION

  LAUGHING MOUNTAIN - THE PORTAL YEARS

  ONCE UPON A MIDNIGHT CLEAR

  EARTH: GATEWAY TO OTHER WORLDS

  BARSOOM*

  ANIMALS

  PLANTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  A NOTE FROM GAIL

  BONUS: EXCERPT FROM APEX PREDATOR

  COPYRIGHT

  ABOUT THIS BOOK

  HUNTING VARMITS

  HARMONIC PORTAL

  DEVON LOOKED up from his terminal with a welcoming smile as Tash Higgins walked in the door.

  Tash was worth looking at. She was about medium height for a woman, with straight, blue-black hair pulled back in a ponytail, an exquisitely sculpted face and a lush figure that would make any red-blooded man sit up and take notice. Devon fell into that category; he had been in love with her since the first day he met her nearly thirteen years ago.

  He was painfully aware she regarded him only as a friend. He knew he didn't have vid-hero looks. His ordinary features and limp brown hair certainly didn't rate a second glance from most women, and since he dressed for comfort rather than style, his loose pants and shirt concealed the hard muscles he had been at pains to develop ever since he realized his scholarly/scientific interests made him a target for school bullies. As an adult, he kept in shape by training with the Blue Moon Militia, the local militia group which kept the town of Laughing Mountain and the area around it safe from infringement of their rights by the state and national governments who ruled most of North America.

  "Did the mail pouches come in?" he asked, referring to mail pouches from the illegal colonies who used the town of Laughing Mountain to funnel goods
and services to earth and to each other. The colonies and the Portal who serviced them were illegal because neither Earth-Gov nor the Industrial Giants who ruled behind the scenes had given permission for them to exist. For a variety of reasons, chief among them being a dislike of conforming to someone else's rules, the colonies of St. Antoni, Barsoom, Arcadia, Shangri-La and Halcyon had been developed in defiance of the two entities who ruled post-apocalyptic earth. The town of Laughing Mountain, who had built the illegal portal to access them, sponsored the colonies out of economic necessity.

  Desperate for operating funds after a series of pandemics and global-wide earthquakes had devastated the planet, Laughing Mountain's economic base as an event town had been in deep financial trouble when Earth-Gov announced it would hold a lottery for places to develop the portals to new worlds. Towns were invited to submit applications. Laughing Mountain wasn't lucky enough to win a spot, but economic necessity forced them to go ahead anyway. A Portal was created in defiance of the draconian laws against operating an unregulated Portal.

  "Yes, the pouches came in. That's partly what I wanted to talk to you about," she said.

  "Flattery will get you anywhere," he told her with a smile.

  "Both Tally and Ivette sent letters and photos of the children and asked me to make sure Scarlet Jones gets a copy. I was hoping I could tag along the next time you went out to the Phoenix Spa."

  The Phoenix Spa was an abandoned resort purchased through channels by Napoleon Bonaparte the leader of the free clones. He had arranged for Devon to build a portal generator and blackmailed the clone industry into financing the colony, by agreeing to cease destroying their clone farms.

  Devon and Tash had first met Scarlet Jones when they were in college. The group of students they hung with had discovered a clone farm in the hills above the town of San Demos when they followed a group of male students there. Scarlet had been recently sold to the farm when her former owner died. Furious at being forced to serve as a whore, she had broken free and run for the electrified fence enclosing the property. Liam Brendan, Tash's brother-in-law to be, had fired into the transformer box electrifying the fence. The shot had blown out the power to the complex, allowing Scarlet to escape. The group had taken her in and helped her to reach her mate, Dagmar Ironroar, and his group of escaped clones. After she had left to find her friends, Tash and the others had discovered someone had murdered most of the inhabitants of the farm. They went in to search for survivors and found seven abandoned toddlers alone and starving. Ivette Hayes who was from Arcadia and her husband Mathias had adopted them. Tash's sister Tally had been in another room when six of the artificial wombs used to breed clones had decanted six babies. When the group left the complex, they had taken all the children with them.

  A second encounter with Scarlet and Dagmar hadn't been as friendly; they had broken into Liam's house to rescue the cloned babies because they feared what the 'Normals' intended to do with them. During the battle, Hogun Silverhorn, Dagmar's second in command, had been wounded by Randal Langeton a student from Barsoom. Barely escaping after losing the fight, Dagmar and the others had traveled to the Phoenix Spa to get medical help for Hogun.

  The Phoenix Spa was the location where Napoleon, the Free Clones defacto leader had established his headquarters. Once a destination for the rich and famous, it had gone out of business during the disasters and lain deserted until Napoleon had managed to purchase it through a subsidiary company to disguise his identity. He had recently hired Devon to develop a Portal for the new colony of Halcyon, where he intended to establish a clone colony. In consequence, Devon made regular trips to the Spa to check on the progress of the portal.

  "You're always welcome to come with me," Devon said, "you know that."

  "Thank you," she said. "Would you like to see what Tally and Ivette sent?"

  "Did you open the letters too?"

  "Of course not," she said indignantly. "The family got duplicates of the pictures and letters."

  She set the pouch she carried on a nearby desk and took out the set of folding framed oil paintings Tally had sent, opening it out to show the six babies.

  "These are really good," Devon said. "They look professional. Who did them?"

  "Liam's sister Jade is an artist," Tash said. "She did one set for Liam and Tally as a wedding present. Tally liked them so much she asked for copies for us and Scarlet."

  Ivette had sent something different; an eight-sided holo cube. Seven of the sections featured each of the toddlers in various activities, and the eighth was a base where it sat.

  When Tash touched it, it projected a holo vid of each of the children in turn. "Wow," Devon said, his professional curiosity aroused. "I wonder how this was made."

  Tash made a rude sound. "If that isn't just like you—wondering about how it was made, instead of looking at the kids!"

  He grinned at the reprimand. "That's me—a born nerd."

  "When do you leave for the spa?"

  "Day after tomorrow. I'm waiting for a part to come in. Can you be ready by then?"

  "Yes," she said. "When will you find them a planet?"

  "Oh, we've found one. Mark Connors Dad has been allowing us to run the search program in the early mornings during the week."

  She frowned. "I thought he was afraid having the Portal generator under power would attract attention from Portal Authority agents."

  "We've been running it about 3 AM," he said. "Commander Malachi agreed to do extra militia patrols during that time. After his people rousted a couple of agents out of the woods, they pretty much backed off." He grinned. "When the Portal Authority complained, Commander Sullivan told Agent Thomas the militia was doing night training and would be active in the area for the next couple of weeks. Plus, Sheriff Gonzalez had his officers threaten to tow any cars he found parked at deserted properties and charge the owners with trespass."

  "What's the new planet like?" she asked.

  "A little like St. Antoni," he said. "Geologically it's in the Pleistocene era. The Portal will be on the coast in the northern continent. We tested the soil, and it will grow human food, so that means the animals there will be compatible with human digestion. It's got broadleaf forests in the southern half of the Northern continents, plenty of rivers and streams. It also has prairies, valleys, and deserts. The drone map found large herds of herbivories, some of which can probably be tamed for food or riding animals. The oceans are salty, although less so than those on earth, and there seems to be an abundant number of fish and crustaceans. No monster sized predators the way we found on Lemuria—at least the drones didn't find any."

  "A new world," she said with a sigh. "I'd love to see all of them, and to visit there..."

  "I seem to have been elected as the Outlaw Portal expert, so I'll probably visit all of them sooner or later. I could use an assistant. Interested in a job?"

  "I'm not a programmer or a techie. What would I be doing?"

  "Personal contact with clients. I'm no good at it, and it takes time away from working on the Portals."

  "You've got yourself an assistant. Oh, I guess I should have asked. What does the job pay?"

  Devon burst out laughing. "I draw a pretty good chunk of change for what I do, so since you'll be relieving me of customer relations how does this sound?" He named a figure that had her mouth dropping open.

  "You can afford to pay that much to an assistant?"

  "Yes," he said. "And I do need someone to run interference with the locals while I work on programming and repairs."

  A BIBLICAL LESSON

  THE PHOENIX SPA was south of the town of San Demos, along what was left of the California Coast. The erupting volcanos and earthquakes had decimated a once prosperous area, and when half the coast range slid into the ocean, many high-end resorts catering to the rich and famous had simply been abandoned.

  When Devon and Tash arrived at the wrought iron gates, she simply stared. Beyond the gate, with is leaping Phoenix rising from the flames, she could see mass
es of weed-covered overgrown sidewalks and dead grass. Devon pushed a remote button and the heavy gates swung outward. The area leading to the hotel had once been a carefully tended park with flowers, fountains, and sculptured walkways. Now the flowers, although still beautiful ran wild. The fountains held pools of stagnant water and the sculptured walks were overgrown with weeds.

  The four-story red brick structure at the end of the drive was thick with ivy. The once white columns supporting the roof were stained and cracked. The graceful marble steps leading to the porch were no longer white; time had yellowed them as it had the porch.

  "It looks like something out of a horror vid," Tash said.

  "A little," Devon agreed. "But please don't say so, Napoleon is quite proud of it."

  He parked the van in front of the Spa and went around back to unload the parts boxes onto a small wrought iron cart.

  A tall, silver haired man descended the steps.

  "Morton," he said by way of greeting. "You know we don't allow strangers here. Who is this?"

  "Yael, this is Tash Higgins, my assistant," Devon replied. "Tash this is Yael, Napoleon's second in command."

  "Hello," Tash said, with a smile. "I'm pleased to meet you."

  Yael ignored her. "You didn't mention an assistant before this."

  "I hired Tash for her customer relation skills," Devon replied. "I realized the work would proceed faster if I didn't have to stop and chit-chat with customers."

  "I see," Yael said. "Does Ms. Higgins know we don't discuss our location with anyone?"

  "Yes, I do," Tash said. "We never discuss Portal locations, or any business done with outlawed colonies. If you'll grab the other end of the cart we can take these parts inside, and Devon can install them."

  Anderez scowled, but he grabbed the other end of the wire cart as requested and Devon followed him up the stairs.

  Tash looked around her with interest when they entered what used to be the lobby of the hotel, a wide triangle shaped room with tall, stained-glass windows. The late afternoon sun created colorful kaleidoscope patterns on the white marble floor. At the far end of the room sat an elevated gazabo. The man who occupied it was a sight to behold. He was tall, with broad shoulders, a flat abdomen and long, muscled legs. His sculptured features were barely blunted enough to keep him from being classed as pretty. Tash studied him as they walked toward him. There was strength there, coupled with the arrogance of a man who was used to getting his own way. For some reason she was reminded of the late Dan Simmons, the man who had stalked her older sister and was indirectly responsible for her and her sisters moving to Laughing Mountain.