Loving a Stranger Read online

  Reeve stared at the pulses. A handful would easily fit in the pocket of the spare uniform he was wearing (Viceroy had been right, Harryx did keep a spare in his office) without even leaving a bulge. The remote was scarcely bigger, he could hide it in his other pocket—no problem.

  Reeve scooped out a bundle of the pulses and examined them critically. For all of their megalomaniac, misogynistic ways the Hascions had good tech. If he was correct about the little devices, setting one off near any kind of computer equipment would fry it like a jarva egg in a hot-wave skillet. It would scramble the data and ruin any delicate tech too—just like a solar flare from space would.

  In fact, he might even be able to blame the resulting chaos on a solar flare and get away clean. If he could take Harryx’s body with him when he went back to the Mother Ship, he could be certain the bastard wouldn’t wake up and try to come after Nallah while collected his own body and went back to Hascion Five to get her.

  If she’ll even come with you, whispered a little voice in his head but Reeve pushed it away as he methodically pressed the red switches on the tiny devices, arming each one. He would make her understand, he told himself. He would prove to her that he loved her and beg her to come with him. He would—

  “Parokk, where are you? We’re about to enter the lab,” called a voice from the far end of the hall. “Hurry unless you want to be left out. I haven’t had time to add your retinal scan to the security clearance yet so you’ll need to come in while the door is open.”

  Shoving the armed electromagnetic pulses deep into his left pocket and the remote into his right, Reeve walked rapidly to the door and looked out to be certain no one saw him exit the armory. After he relocked the door, he called out, “Coming!” and made his way back to the Inner Circle conference room.

  It was time to do what he had come for.

  Chapter Twenty

  “So you see, this is where we keep all of Dr. VanProkk’s research.” The chief scientist, a young scientist named Dr. Delbokk patted the ancient comu-monitor with its cracked screen reverently as he gave them the tour of the lab. “Of course, we have it backed up on the main storage banks…” He nodded at the glowing bank of computers behind him which ran along one wall. “That goes without saying.”

  Considering they had developed wormhole tech, Reeve thought, the Hascions’ information and communications technology was fairly primitive. Still, that was fine with him—it meant the equipment was that much more vulnerable to sabotage.

  “Isn’t Dr. VanProkk the one who came up with the idea of Temporal /Spatial Displacement Avenues in the first place?” he asked the scientist, while unobtrusively placing one of the armed pulses right behind the old comu-monitor.

  “He was.” Dr. Delbokk nodded eagerly. “Without him, none of this would have been possible. Of course…” He gave Grand General Viceroy an uneasy look. “He was very adamant that his discovery should be used for exploration only, not conquest.”

  “Well, that’s why you leave the strategy to the professionals.” Viceroy laughed heartily. “You scientists just keep coming up with the concepts and the tech and leave the implementation to us.”

  The other males laughed as well and Reeve pretended to join in but inside he felt even more justified for what he was doing. Even the scientist who had invented their wormhole tech knew it was dangerous in the wrong hands! He was certain that if Dr. VanProkk was still alive, he would condone what Reeve was doing. What he was about to do, anyway…

  He had already placed dozens of the tiny pulses in unobtrusive hiding places as Dr. Delbokk led them around, giving them the tour of the lab. He had at least fourteen or fifteen saved back, however, for the moment when they saw the finished wormhole drive, which was supposedly housed somewhere in this lab. Once he placed those and pushed the remote control, all the Hascions’ hopes of going forth to despoil the universe would be fried along with their equipment. He hoped.

  “Well, gentlemen—are you ready to see the drive itself?” the young scientist asked, as though reading Reeve’s mind.

  “Yes—yes of course!” Viceroy was already rubbing his hands together eagerly. “Let’s see it, Doctor! Lead the way!”

  “Through here.” Dr. Delbokk led them through a thick metal door and into a small antechamber. “Now, gentlemen,” he said as they filed in. “You might want to put on some protective glasses before we proceed. Otherwise the drive may injure your vision.”

  He gestured to a table where rows of protective glasses with dark lenses were lying. Reeve picked up a pair and put them on like everyone else. He might not care if he made Harryx Parokk go blind from staring at the wormhole drive but it would look odd not to wear the glasses.

  “All right—if everyone is protected, let’s go in.” Dr. Delbokk gestured them through yet another thick metal door and into a room the size of a sports stadium back on Earth. Hanging in the middle of the room and pulsing with a soft green light was what looked like a young star.

  It was only about the size of a soccer ball from Earth, Reeve thought, but it gave off an intense heat and light. Despite the heat shields around the perimeter of the glowing green ball, he could feel his host’s body breaking into a drenching sweat.

  “Behold—the Temporal/Spatial Displacement Device!” Grand General Viceroy exclaimed, as though he had built the damn thing himself. “With it we can rip holes in the Space/Time Continuum and place our ships anywhere in the known universe. Our conquest has begun!”

  “Amazing,” several of the Inner Circle murmured.

  Reeve made the correct noises of awe himself as he walked around the perimeter of the vast floor, pretending he was examining the wormhole drive from every angle. In actuality, he was placing his remaining handful of pulses at intervals all around the small, green star. By the time he got back to the place where he had started, he had only the remote left, still hidden snugly in his right hand pocket.

  The question was now, when should he trigger the pulses? Ideally it would be good to wait until he was far from the offices of the Inner Circle but he didn’t know the range of the remote he held. Looking at the thick metal doors, he wondered about the shielding in the room. Possibly the remote wouldn’t even work once he left the wormhole lab. Reluctantly, he decided he’d better do it now and then try to get out in the ensuing confusion. He would have to trust to his luck that it would work.

  Reeve felt pretty good about that. He’d been lucky so far—Goddess-damned lucky in every respect. Though he’d been forced to spend the night with Harryx’s odious boss and the rest of the Inner Circle, at least coming in with Viceroy meant he hadn’t had to get a retinal scan to enter the building. Likewise, he had been able to go into the lab without being scanned, so Harryx Parokk was still slumbering in the back of his mind, oblivious to the events going on around him.

  If his luck would hold just a little bit longer, Reeve reflected, he could fry the Hascions’ tech and get his host body out to the docking bay around the side of the Inner Circle headquarters. Once he grabbed a ship and was up and away from the planet, he could fly back to his own body leaving Harryx’s comatose body stranded in space.

  Normally, he would have felt bad about leaving a host to die like that but after seeing what the bastard had put Nallah through, Reeve thought he was letting Harryx off lightly. If anyone deserved a slow death of comatose starvation and dehydration, it was the abusive asshole whose body he was currently inhabiting.

  After retrieving his own body he could get in his own ship and come back to Hascion Five to sweep Nallah off her feet while everything was still in confusion. As long as she would go with him, that was. But Reeve wouldn’t allow himself to consider any other possibility. He would convince her to come, he told himself. He had to.

  He straightened his shoulders. All right—he had a plan in place: fry the tech, make an escape, come back for Nallah. And he needed to get moving. Some of the members of the Inner Circle were tugging at their collars and wiping sweat from their brows. It was cl