Royal Recruit - Susan Grant Page 0,1

selected as consort to the queen.” The poor bastard, he almost added. Years ago, the goddess-queen almost killed a man who’d tried to take her by force by castrating him with a smart-sword. After she had sliced off his bullocks, she’d kept him on at the palace as a eunuch—and as a warning for those who might be tempted to take similar liberties. Perhaps Caydinn’s untimely demise was a lucky break—it had saved him from a similar fate. “I find it troubling that someone wanted the top contender for the goddess-queen’s hand eliminated. More, a code inserted in the kill order will cause the REEF to self-destruct once it reports the mission is completed.”

It struck him as barbaric, inserting a self-destruct sequence, if there were traces of humanity left in the engineered soldier. Though if one didn’t want tracks leading back to the source of this heinous crime, better to kill the killer and eliminate any messy evidence.

The minister lowered his voice. “As all this was transpiring, there was a spike in communications between sources inside the Drakken Empire and our government. I have only partially decrypted the messages, but I believe I have uncovered a plot, an unthinkable plot, to take control of Her Majesty’s Sakkaran lineage.” Divine rule—it was the purest of all powers. It would bring anyone who controlled that power superiority over the entire galaxy. “This is why they wanted Caydinn eliminated.”

He couldn’t quite get over the sudden coldness in his superior’s eyes. You look as if you could do the job with your own two hands.

“A very thorough briefing, minister. You have saved us all. I will be sending your report up the chain of command immediately. You are dismissed.”

The minister opened his mouth to protest the sudden discharge then clamped it shut. He was only the interim minister. If he wanted to keep the position, he needed to know his place. Likely, his superior would get all the credit for his hard work.

As he brought his fist across his chest in a show of respect, he heard the door open behind him. Reflected in a crystal sculpture on the desk was the image of a gun being aimed at his back.

Terror engulfed him, his stomach plummeting. His mind raced, thoughts moving at lightspeed. Briefly, he thought about his predecessor. The woman’s death had been ruled an accident, but perhaps she had assisted with this dreadful plot—and then was eliminated for knowing too much.

Or, perhaps she refused to cooperate, as he had made clear he would do.

But he wasn’t as stupid or naïve as his superior thought. He’d left a warning to be triggered in the event of his disappearance. When the REEF opened his sec-comm to report the kill, it would connect to the royal direct line, alerting Her Majesty that something was amiss. He only hoped it happened before it was too late.

The image of the wild and willful goddess’s likely reaction to the arrangements being made behind her back was so satisfying that when the fatal shot was fired, the minister died with a smile on his face.

Chapter Two

Earth

Jared Jasper felt as if he’d been run over by a truck. An eighteen-wheeler. Fully loaded.

His aching head and dry mouth weren’t from a hangover. The single bottle of beer he’d sucked down twelve hours earlier had metabolized out of his system so long ago that he barely remembered drinking it. It was post-saving-the-world syndrome, he decided, reaching for a little elusive humor to carry him through the day after another night spent tossing and turning.

Saving the world wasn’t for the weak, especially when it was followed by losing a grandfather whose passing would leave a gaping hole in his life. Not to mention having to make an appearance in front of a cheering crowd of thousands outside the hospital an hour later. After losing a loved one, you craved privacy; it was only human. But his family didn’t enjoy the kind of privacy others did. The Jaspers were a political dynasty. Senators, congressmen, governors, both at the national and state level, they were called California’s “First Family.”

No fund-raiser or election victory party had ever come close to matching the spontaneous celebration yesterday in front of the capitol building in Sacramento, where his sister and father had given speeches, a celebration Jared would love to have shared, but he knew too much.

He knew the aliens were coming back. He knew they were so territorially ravenous that they combed the stars scooping up habitable worlds,