Silver Master

Silver Master Read Online Free PDF Page A

Book: Silver Master Read Online Free PDF
Author: Jayne Castle
arrogant, heavy-handed, and corrupt.” She gave him another chilly smile. “Just my opinion, of course.”
    “Sure.” He gave her an equally wintry smile. “You’re not the only person who has some reservations about the way the Guilds are run.”
    “They certainly have had some bad public relations problems in the past,” she agreed with alacrity.
    “Which they are working hard to overcome.”
    She thinned her smile out a little more. “Got a long way to go.”
    The Guilds had been established during the Era of Discord when the colonies had faced the threat of tyranny from a megalomaniac named Vincent Lee Vance. Until that turning point, there had been no necessity for the four struggling city-states that had grown up around the original colonies to establish militias. Regular police departments had been all that was necessary to maintain law and order in the new world.
    When Vance and his fanatical minions had begun to terrorize the city-states, they had staged their assaults via the network of underground alien catacombs that crisscrossed the planet. The strange alien psi energy that radiated throughout the maze of tunnels rendered conventional weaponry unreliable at best and, at worst, extremely hazardous to those who used it.
    But the underworld labyrinth provided its own natural artillery in the form of highly volatile, potentially lethal balls of fiery, acid-green energy technically known as UDEMs. The acronym stood for unstable dissonance energy manifestation. The balls of eerie green fire were called ghosts, because they drifted erratically and unpredictably through the tunnels like so many lost specters.
    Certain individuals with unusual parapsych profiles—commonly known as ghost hunters—could control and manipulate the ghosts, transforming them into weapons. The vast majority of ghost hunters were men, because the paranormal ability to handle the unique energy storms generated by the UDEMs was linked to certain male hormones.
    Every schoolchild knew the story. Vincent Lee Vance recruited ghost hunters into his renegade army. The city-states responded by creating the militias known as the ghost-hunter Guilds. In the end, the colonies were able to put down the rebellion, thanks to the admittedly heroic actions of the Guilds.
    After the Era of Discord, the Guilds were never disbanded. Instead, those in charge saw a golden opportunity to corner a booming new market. Exploration and excavation of the alien catacombs was rapidly becoming big business. Hundreds of academic, corporate, and privately financed companies were eager to go underground to compete in the search for valuable alien antiquities and the quest for long-lost secrets. And they all needed ghost-hunter teams to protect the crews from the wandering balls of alien energy. It took a ghost to kill a ghost, and only ghost hunters could do the job.
    The Guilds contracted the services of their members to those who wanted to hire them. Over the years the organizations, led by a series of shrewd, ambitious men, had become powerful, secretive institutions bound by mysterious traditions and Guild Law.
    History was repeating itself once again with the recent discovery of the vast, underground rain forest. Within the last few months the Guilds, led by Cooper Boone, the boss of the Aurora Springs Guild, had moved swiftly to position themselves as the primary source of guides and bodyguards for researchers, para-archaeologists, treasure hunters, and others who wanted to explore the jungle.
    There were those—Celinda counted herself among them—who considered the Guilds only a notch or two above criminal mobs.
    “I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me why the Cadence Guild is interested in my relic,” she said.
    Davis smiled his faint smile. “One of the things that I offer my clients is a guarantee of confidentiality.”
    “Why did the Guild hire you?” she asked. Then she held up a hand to stop him from responding. “Wait, let me guess. Guilds
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