Time Raiders: The Seduction

Time Raiders: The Seduction

Cindy Dees

www.millsandboon.co.uk

The Beginning

Fifty thousand years ago, after discovering that human females carried a nascent genetic potential that might one day develop into the ability to star navigate, the Galactic Council planted a dozen pieces of a bronze disc, known as the Karanovo stamp across the Earth, hidden in darkness until mankind advances enough to travel through time and find them.

And then, out of the ashes of the mystery-shrouded Roswell Alien crash in 1947 arose a secret research project called Anasazi. Its improbable goal: learn to use the recovered alien technology for the purposes of time travel.

However, the discovery of an ancient journal, known as the Ad Astra, has given Professor Athena Carswell the information she needs to begin sending modern time travelers back through human history in search of the twelve pieces of the Karanovo Stamp. This stamp, when fully reassembled, will send a signal across the galaxy to the Council, indicating that mankind is ready to be introduced to the rest of the galactic community.

Threats loom on the horizon, both from humans who would see the project ended—or worse, steal its work and use it for nefarious ends—and from the Centauri Federation, which will do anything to stop humans from learning how to navigate the stars…

Chapter 1

Not long ago, in the early days of Project Anasazi

Red Rock University

Flagstaff, Arizona

Athena Carswell jolted upright in her leather recliner as a jovial male voice shattered the lab’s deep silence. “Sheesh! You guys look like you’re putting on a funeral! Who died around here?”

“You’re about to,” she snapped. “You just ruined two hours’ worth of data collection and a week’s worth of setup.” She carefully removed an elaborate headband with trailing wires from her head, then whirled in irritation to throw the intruder out.

Wow. She stopped abruptly. The intruder was a serious hunk. Her gaze swept down, then up again. He was tall, athletic and ruggedly gorgeous, with neat brown hair and a sportsman’s tan. But it was his piercing blue eyes that stopped her cold. He was going to make a beautiful corpse when she finished strangling him.

He had the gall to sweep his own gaze assessingly down her body. Abruptly, she was aware of her silk blouse and the way it clung to her curves, the constriction of her bra beneath it, the way her wool skirt hugged her hips rather more closely than she’d like at the moment.

His eyes lit with heat. And that was a definite smirk playing at the corners of his mouth. She didn’t know whether to fan herself or be mortally offended.

Pretty Boy snorted skeptically. “Didn’t seem much like data collection going on. Looked to me like you were sleeping on the job.”

She scowled, insulted at the insinuation that she’d been goofing off. She retorted, “I was trying to control my brain wave output and sync it up to the computer. Being relaxed and comfortable helps.”

He strolled over to the console that housed the powerful mainframe computer they were trying to program to duplicate and amplify human brain waves by several orders of magnitude. She watched him warily. He glanced up at her suddenly, catching her staring at him like a drooling idiot.

Collecting herself, she said sharply, “Uh, excuse me. But didn’t you see the big red Keep Out sign posted on the door? You’re not supposed to be in here.”

He spun to face her, flashing a thousand-watt smile straight off a daytime soap opera. “Ah, but I am. Supposed to be here, that is. I just inherited this outfit.” He made eye contact and purred at her, “Which is to say I’m your new boss.”

Athena stared. “Some colonel is being sent out from Washington to oversee our project.” This guy was altogether too young and…hot…to be a stuffy army colonel specializing in advanced sine wave resonance research.

“Colonel Peter Grafton, U.S. Army, Advanced Research Center, at your service.” He executed an exaggeratedly gallant bow that looked as if it belonged in a Cinderella movie. “You can call me Pete if you like.” His eyes twinkled devilishly as he added, “Or you can just call me sir.”

Hah! She retorted, “I’m a civilian. I’m not required to ‘sir’ anybody, thank you very much.”

He shrugged. “I’ve always thought being called sir is a sign of respect that should be earned, anyway.”

Athena bit back a snarky comment about the likelihood of his ever earning the title from her. But now this cocky jerk happened to control the purse strings to her continued research, and she couldn’t afford to antagonize him. She mumbled a curse under her breath. She’d hated the idea of going to the military for funding, but her team had had no choice. It was that or shut down. Their previous grant from the government was about to expire, and their work was too classified to take to the public sector to fund.

Project Anasazi was so close to success. Just a few more months, maybe even a matter of weeks, and she’d find the last remaining piece of the puzzle. And then…

…and then mankind would have mastered time travel.

With a little help from a piece of alien technology recovered from the 1947 Roswell crash, of course. It hadn’t taken sixty years plus to crack the technology…it had taken almost all of those years to figure out what the crown-like apparatus found on the alien pilot’s head actually did. But after that, it had been a simple matter of learning to interface with the crown. Well, not simple. The math behind brain wave amplification was horrendous. But today’s computers made the calculations possible, and at speeds rapid enough to make using the crown a possibility.

Her studies showed that if the user was a psychic of sufficient power, it should be possible to project an object, or even a person, back and forth through time.

“So. Is that the famous crown I’ve read about?” Grafton commented from shockingly close by. A faint whiff of his aftershave tickled her nose. The subtle scent was green and woodsy. And manly. And wholly addictive.

She tucked the crown carefully in its protective nest beside her chair, making sure not to catch the wires on anything. “Yup, that’s it.”

“Have you figured out how to duplicate it yet?” he asked.

She retorted, “First we have to figure out how the crown works. Then maybe I can build you another one.”

Grafton frowned. “So, there’s no backup if something happens to this one?”

She sighed. That worried her, too. “No. We’d be dead in the water as far as time travel goes. For a while, at any rate. However, we’ve learned the general principles of time travel from the crown, and given what we’re learning now about brain wave amplification, I’d think in another fifty years or so we could figure it out for ourselves.”

“But your report said you don’t think we have that long until something bad happens—”

She cut him off sharply. “My office. Now.”

His eyebrows shot up and he studied her far too intently for comfort. It felt as if he was all but stripping her naked with his burning blue eyes. And at the thought, her body suddenly felt entirely too hot.

She tried to cover up her gaff by adding hastily, “Cup of coffee, Colonel? I can give you an overview of the program and then walk you through where we are now.”

Thankfully, the good colonel was not slow on the uptake. “Coffee. Great. I had to get up at the crack of dawn to fly here this morning.”

Athena caught the curious gazes of a couple of the computer techs. She really hoped they hadn’t heard that ‘not long until something bad happens’ comment from Grafton. She’d deliberately kept that part of the project from her team. They were already under enough pressure what with all the funding problems they’d had. They didn’t need to know that the fate of the world rested on their heads, too.

The moment her office door closed, Grafton whirled to face her. “What’s up?” he asked shortly. Impatient energy poured off of him, and her breathing accelerated to match it. He was such a man’s man. Definite alpha male.

She replied, “The staff hasn’t seen the classified document you have. They’re not aware of the deadline looming over this project.”

“Why the hell not? They’ll work faster if they know what they’re up against.”

Facing him felt like trying to stand against the force of a hurricane. Lord, he was overwhelming. She was a scholar and an academic, and lived in a quiet world of study and thought. She wasn’t up to dealing with this tornado of a man. But she didn’t have much choice in the matter. Funding and Grafton…or no Project Anasazi.

She tried to explain her decision. “They already give me a hundred percent. And what we do takes tremendous attention to detail. Absolute precision. I can’t afford to have anyone racing through their work and making a mistake. Lives depend on us getting this right.”

“If you’re correct, the future of the world may depend on us getting this right.”

Athena knew that. She’d already bet her reputation and her career on that fact. And as soon as they tried to use the crown, she might very well be betting her life on it.

He made no further argument for the time being, but she got the feeling she hadn’t heard the last of it. After a moment he asked, “Where are we on the project?”

“Close, but we’re missing something in the algorithms, and my brain waves aren’t being exactly duplicated. We’re within a few microns of the right amplitude variations, but we’re not quite there.”

“Have you sent anything back in time yet?”

She jolted. “Good Lord, no. We don’t want to chance breaking the crown by using it incorrectly.”

“Seems to me that at some point you’ll just have to jump off the cliff and give it a go.”

Humph. Military thinking. “That might work when you’ve got a hundred more tanks to blow up where the last one came from. But we’ve got one crown. One shot at getting this technology right.”

“Nothing ventured, nothing gained. You might very well discover that last missing bit if you just use it.”

“Too risky.”

He gave her a long, hard look, then said tightly, “That’s not your call anymore, Dr. Carswell.”

She opened her mouth to protest, then closed it again. A surge of resentment warred with a wave of desperation in her gut. She’d known she was selling Project Anasazi’s soul to the devil. She just hadn’t expected to be confronted by the consequences so soon. She’d hoped to have a couple more weeks before Uncle Sam swooped in and took over. And she definitely hadn’t been counting on this force of nature landing in her lap.

Grafton startled her by saying, “Tell me more about you. The report didn’t say much about your talents beyond the fact that you’ve shown a knack for using the crown.”

She shrugged, embarrassed. “My particular skills seem specially suited to it.”

“You have the ability to astral project, is that right?”

She squirmed, abruptly aware of how perceptively that sapphire gaze was drilling into her. “Well, yes.”

“What exactly does that mean?”

“It’s akin to dreaming, but a great deal more vivid. I project my awareness to someplace other than my own body and experience it with exquisite sensory accuracy—as if I’m actually there.” Thankfully, he made no editorial comments on how whacky that sounded. She continued reluctantly. “With the crown’s help, I can project an image of myself to another location so that people there can see me.”

His eyes definitely widened at her assertion, but she pressed on doggedly. “I’ve recently mastered sending an image of another person to a specific site. When we perfect the computer program and can boost the signal more, I should be able to send not only the image, but the physical person. Eventually, we hope to parlay that into sending people into different times entirely.”

He responded, “That’s…incredible.”

“I know it sounds crazy. But it’s true,” she blurted. “Every bit of it. You can see for yourself. We’ve got an astral projection experiment scheduled for tomorrow.”

“I’ll be there.”

At least he was suspending judgment on her sanity—or lack of it—for now. Silence fell between them. Eventually, he murmured, “So. You’re unique, as well, then.”

His voice was a caress across the back of her neck, intimate, sensual. Surely he was only talking about her psychic ability. But something in his tone hinted at a deeper meaning.

“I highly doubt that.” Damn. Did she have to sound so breathless? “I’m sure there are other psychics in the world who can do what I do. Probably better, in fact.”

“Maybe. But none of them are here and involved in this project. What effect does the crown have on other types of psychic abilities?”

She blinked. That was actually an insightful question. “We have a telekinetic gal on staff. Using the crown she can zip stuff all over the room, but has had no luck sending an object out of her direct line of sight. Apparently, her skill is tied to seeing where she’s sending the object. We’ve pretty much given up trying to further develop her relationship to the crown.”

Grafton looked surprised. “Are you saying the device is sentient?”

Another insightful question. Athena frowned. “I’m not quite sure how to answer that. You’d have to try the headgear on yourself to know what I mean. Whether it’s some other part of my own awareness that’s being enhanced, or whether there’s actual intelligence—artificial or organic—within the artifact itself, I couldn’t say. But I’m definitely

not…alone…when I use the crown.”

“I’d like to try it.”

Alarm shot through her. Maybe it was fear that the crown would like the new boss too much, or maybe fry his brain. Or maybe she just felt proprietary toward it. Either way, she wasn’t comfortable with the idea of him using it. She answered quickly, “Most people who put it on experience a blinding headache for several days thereafter. The crown seems to have an affinity for certain brains.”

“Have you determined what it is about those brains that it likes?”

“Everyone it has not bothered has been strongly psychic.” She added with a certain satisfaction, “And everyone it has liked so far is female.”

Grafton’s gaze narrowed. “Are you jacking me around, or are you serious?”

She allowed herself a small smile. “Oh, I’m serious, all right. The crown likes women.”

He grinned. “Can’t say as I blame the thing. I like ‘em, too.”

A shiver rippled down her spine, leaving her body tingling with…something. Oh, good grief. She didn’t go for all that ridiculous boy-girl foolishness. She’d sworn off dating by the time she graduated from college, throwing herself into her research almost to the exclusion of all else. And as a result, her life was calm. Peaceful. Serene. Just the way she liked it. Severely lacking in annoying, overconfident males who oozed testosterone and sex appeal. At least until now.

He asked casually, “When will you be ready to try sending something somewhere? It looked to me like you’ve got all the equipment set up—the quartz booth to contain whatever you send, the computers, the amplifiers.”

She resisted an urge to wince. She’d known it would come to this eventually. Just not yet. She answered reluctantly, “We still have to figure out where we’re going wrong in the programming.”

He said briskly, “I think we should go for it. The numbers I looked at seemed more like minor tweaks than actual errors.”

“It’s your career on the line.”

He laughed, sharply and without humor. “Like I still have a career. I’ve been shunted off to a kooky research project in the middle of nowhere with zilch for funding and run by some crazy civilian chick who claims she can time travel. I’d say my career has effectively tanked, wouldn’t you?”

Damn. She’d been hoping the guy at least had a sense of self-preservation she could use to rein him in. Curious, she asked, “What did you do to get stuck with this assignment?”

He threw her a withering look. “Office politics gone bad. I tried to do the right thing, and took the moral high ground. I came out on the losing end.”

“Nothing like being a small, replaceable cog—with a conscience, no less—in a very big machine, eh? That’s why I could never have joined the military. I would’ve gone crazy or gotten court-martialed, or both.”

He made no reply to that.

She said quietly, “As tempting as it is to rush to the end result on this project, I think caution is the best course. We’re close. Let’s not blow it now.”

He bit out. “I’ll take your opinion under advisement, Dr. Carswell.”

She actually felt her teeth gnashing.

“Introduce me to the rest of the staff,” the colonel ordered briskly.

She was half tempted to argue further, but instead, behaved herself. “Let’s go. And call me Athena. Everyone else does.”

The staff was small: two graduate students coming out of the fields of physics and math to analyze brain waves and crunch numbers, two student programmers to translate the equations into computer code, and two hardware technicians to keep the computers up and running. At one time, the best scientific minds in America had worked on the crown in secret, along with the other artifacts recovered from the Roswell crash. And now they were down to this.

A handful of geeks in a basement lab, a crazy psychic chick and one outcast colonel.

Chapter 2

That night, Athena tossed and turned in bed, the sheets tangling infuriatingly around her legs and her pillow hot and lumpy. It was all Pete Grafton’s fault. He’d been gone for the rest of the morning, and then come back in the afternoon with a security system engineer who’d installed fancy new locks on the lab’s entrance and welded a massive safe to the floor of the tiny conference room next to her office.

The colonel had announced flatly that he was in charge now and things were going to change, starting with beefed-up security. As if that wasn’t bad enough, he had then proceeded to charm the socks off her staff. He’d taken them all out for happy hour, and of course, the drinks were on him. Apparently, he knew that the surest way to impoverished graduate students’ hearts was to give them free food, or even better, free booze. The cad.

She’d had to endure a noisy bar for nearly two hours and sip her way through several glasses of inferior wine because of him and his cursed glad-handing. Her hair still smelled like cigarette smoke even after a long, hot shower. But it had been that or let him steal the loyalty of her staff right out from under her nose. Damned if he didn’t look even better in a blue V-necked sweater with the sleeves pushed up, and a snug pair of jeans, than he had in his dress slacks and white shirt earlier.

Athena punched her pillow a couple of times and forced the tension from her muscles. She was going to sleep now, and Peter Grafton’s sexy smile and bedroom eyes weren’t going to pop into her head again! It was a hard fought battle, but with the help of the wine, she eventually conquered her errant imagination and dropped off to sleep.

And of course, promptly dreamed of him. His appearance in her unconscious mind was downright exasperating.

“What are you doing here?” her dreaming self demanded.

He looked around, interested. “Nice dream. Great decor. Is this your bedroom?”

She blinked and gazed about. They were in a palatial stone chamber lit by flickering firelight and dominated by a massive canopy bed curtained in burgundy velvet. The ceiling was dark wood crudely painted with a vine pattern that was shockingly phallic. One wall held a geometric display of swords and spears, and a pair of enormous tapestries covered two others.

“Sorry, my bedroom’s done in haute flea-market couture. Time travel researchers don’t make the big bucks, I’m afraid. Heck, I’m lucky to make a paycheck at all.”

“Why this whole castle motif, then?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

“It’s your dream. You must know.”

“I don’t have a clue. Maybe you remind me of Prince Charming, so I conjured it up.”

“Prince Charming, huh?”

She glared at the dream image of him. “Don’t let it go to your head.”

He grinned and went over to the bed to sit down on its high edge. “Dream a more comfortable mattress, will you?”

She scowled and did her best to imagine the lumpiest, most uneven mattress she could. With fleas.

Pete laughed unrepentantly. “So. Are we going to get naked and do the nasty?”

“I’m going to dream you tarred and feathered if you don’t behave yourself.”

“I like your wit. It’s snappy.”

She glanced down, and was appalled to see herself wearing little more than a filmy negligee of some white, sheer, floaty fabric like fine silk. Where did this gown come from? Surely she hadn’t imagined it! Worse, she was backlit by the fire crackling warmly behind her. It had to be rendering the silk all but transparent.

She looked up, and sure enough, he was devouring the sight as if she were entirely edible. Suddenly, she didn’t know where to put her hands. Her impulse was to cover her private parts, but she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing she was uncomfortable. He was so irritating!

“Come here,” he murmured.

Her gaze jerked up. His eyes were intense, glowing cobalt in the firelight. Mesmerized by the flames dancing in them, she eased forward, one hesitant step at a time, until she stood directly in front of him. He held a hand out to her. His fingers were long, his palm broad and callused. It was a strong hand. One that had seen hard work. And yet it hinted at a sensitivity that stole her breath away. She stared at it, overwhelmed by the offer implicit in his simple gesture. She didn’t have to be psychic to know that if she took his hand, there would be no going back.

What the heck. It was only a dream.

She laid her palm in his.

The stillness of the moment exploded into motion as he swept her into his embrace, pulling her up hard against him as his other arm wrapped around her waist, molding her to his muscular body. He turned and carried her down to the bed in a single swift move. He murmured, “I’ve been wanting to do this since the first moment I saw you lying in that chair with that ridiculous crown on.”

“It’s not ridic—”

He cut her off her words by kissing her. Cut off her entire train of thought, in fact. Her brain tumbled dizzily as his heat and strength pressed her deep into the soft mattress. Athena didn’t think of herself as a particularly small woman, but she was suddenly aware of how large and powerful a man he was.

And then his mouth moved against hers, and her whole world shifted. Oh, my. The man could really kiss. His mouth possessed hers with finesse. His tongue stroked her lips until they parted, then slipped between her teeth to taste the very essence of her.

The light shifted, becoming a warm glow all around them, as if they floated within the fire itself. His flickering tongue and the snapping desire within her made her feel weightless, hot. Made of flame. It was intoxicating. She spun up and out of herself, as bright and light as a spark, and Pete was right there with her, taking her higher and higher, spinning them up into the starry night that suddenly replaced the canopy over their heads, a limitless space as icy cold as she was scorching hot.

Despite the contrast, it was his fingers and mouth dancing upon her flesh that made her shiver uncontrollably. But he was there with her, his heat burning her until she relished the frozen void around them.