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  Alara has spent her life under the radar, hiding her nature from the government and those around her. When it came to a choice of letting her cousin fall into servitude to their own government or live a life free in the stars, Alara stepped into the path of disaster and made sure that Tosha went free. Trapped and locked in a lab where other talents were incarcerated she meets a new friend and the man who has haunted her dreams for the last six months.

  General Brodin has fought wars and when his talent surged forward, the government of Dhema sent him to the Sector Guard. He has waited patiently to find his true mate, and when he was told to get himself captured on Dalpha he did it without question. Seeing Alara for the first time, he knows why.

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  Echo in Time

  Copyright © 2011 Viola Grace

  ISBN: 978-1-55487-896-3

  Cover art by Martine Jardin

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Devine Destinies

  An imprint of eXtasy Books

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  www.devinedestinies.com

  Echo in Time

  Sector Guard Book 20

  By

  Viola Grace

  Chapter One

  Alara J'tak watched her cousin whirled away by a member of the Sector Guard. The rest of her tour group stared at her as if she was a talent by proximity. She smiled tightly, she was a talent, but she wasn't going to divulge that information before its time.

  "That was a heck-of-a-thing, wasn't it? Freak storms weren't in the brochure." Alara tried to huddle back with the others, but they moved away.

  She sighed heavily and waited to board the shuttle. The rift that Tosha created was swallowing waves of homicidal bugs, but safety was not assured. Alara wanted to be behind metal before they figured out another way over the chasm, but this group of scared folks was not going to welcome her again.

  Her quick conversation with her cousin had been all they needed to convince them that she was too close to a talent for their peace of mind. The apprehension corps was probably already on their way.

  She was facing a life in a lab if her previous vision didn't come to pass. She smiled grimly as she waited for a Dheman from the stars to rescue her. It was an image that had haunted her dreams for the last two years and she wasn't sure if it was fear or anticipation that sent the curl of shivers down her spine.

  Their pilot emerged from the confines of the shuttle and barred entry to the only means of exit from the moon of Dalpha. "I have been in contact with the government and they are coming to examine the details of this situation. We will remain here until they arrive."

  Alara settled on a large stone and began braiding her hair. The green strands came together easily, but she started a repetition of weaving and unweaving her locks until the home shuttles were landing around them.

  Her foresight had shown her images of her cousin in the embrace of the vortex and her own fate in the labs of Dalpha. It wouldn't be forever, but it was not going to be a pleasant interlude. Seeing the future really sucked.

  The ground shook and the tourists scattered as the armed forces landed to question the only one of them to have contact with the talent who was swept away in the whirlwind.

  The pointing fingers made Alara smile self-consciously, but she got to her feet with her hands out at either side of her and in a relaxed pose. Three men swarmed behind her while others took statements from the witnesses.

  "Citizen, please submit to restraint. By the laws of the Dalphaic council, I bind you." The commanding officer stood in front of her while two of the three men gripped her arms and put the cuffs on her.

  Searing pain shot up her arms and she fell to her knees. "Damn it."

  The soldiers looked at her with concern while their officer helped her back to her feet. "It is the restriction field. Don't fight it and it won't increase in strength."

  She gritted her teeth. "How do I make it stop?"

  "Let us get you to the lab and we will remove the restraints. That is the only option open to you at this point." The commander was speaking in tones that only Alara and his men could hear. It was a very small kindness that helped her relax.

  "Then let's get this show on the road. This isn't really comfortable." She shrugged her shoulders and wiggled her fingers to relieve the tingling.

  "Come this way. What is your name?" The commander took her by one arm and walked slowly with her down the path to the military shuttles.

  "Alara J'tak and yours?" The pain was down to a dull ache as he helped her around rocks and up the gangplank to the shuttle.

  "Commander M'nir. You seem very calm for what you are going through."

  "The moment that Tosha ripped the chasm, I was expecting you to show up. The Dalphaic guard are rather predictable. Having a talent in my bloodline was not going to end well for me."

  "Tosha?"

  "My cousin, Tosha C'sar. We were on a tour when the flesh-eating beetles decided that we were tastier than any of the other wildlife. Tosh and I sent the others first and brought up the rear. She ripped a gouge in the ground and it was deep enough to contain and restrain those flesh-eating buggers."

  A special seat was elevated from the floor of the shuttle and her cuffed arms were tucked against the back of the armless stool while she was banded across her breasts and hips.

  It wasn't the most pleasant way to travel, but they could have used their stunners and knocked her out to transport her. This was not comfortable, but she was able to look ahead and watch the moon of Dalpha fade beneath her as they took her to her home world where she would face the sentence for being different.

  The Dalphaic race had spent the last hundred years trying to stamp out and confine their talents to useful veins of power. If the government couldn't channel it, it wasn't a suitable talent.

  Alara tried to relax as her world took up the front view screen. Her doom was approaching at an alarming rate and she hoped that she had made the right choice in contacting the Sector Guard. If her call had contained enough information, she would be boosted out of her confinement. If not, she would have to be satisfied that her cousin was safe and in the arms of the man meant for her.

  When they started through the atmosphere, Commander M'nir steadied her when she would have pitched against her restraints.

  "Thank you."

  "We are not trying to damage you, Ms. J'tak. Merely take you in for examination and assessment, as well as a debriefing of your cousin's talent."

  "Oh. Goody. I can't wait." Her normal flippant tone was dull. She felt far more dread than anticipation at what was stretching out in front of her.

  He shot her a look that she couldn't decipher until she remembered that she had seen that same look on her grandmother's face when she and Tosha were caught in mischief and her parent was trying to decide which one of them was at fault. It was a look of confusion with burgeoning judgement.

&
nbsp; She returned her gaze to the front screen as they entered the open spaces that surrounded the lab where she would meet her fate. The small thud of the shuttle made her flinch, but her trembling was internalized as the commander and his men unstrapped her and herded her to the exit.

  The lab techs were waiting for her and with her escort, they marched into the confines of the lab. The tingling intensified as she walked under the scanners and the moment that the gates to the building shut behind them, Commander M'nir removed her cuffs.

  Released, she sighed and rubbed her wrists as a scowling lab tech approached. "What do you know of your cousin's whereabouts?"

  "Wow, right into it. Interesting. She is in the arms of a vortex and hopefully far away from Dalpha." There was no reason to lie. The pale woman in the corner was a truth sensor. She had the calm and repressed demeanour of someone who was feeling a conversation.

  "How do you know this?"

  Alara grimaced. There were lights and scanners in every inch of the room, all trained on her. "I know it because I saw it. I told her to run with him rather than end up in a lab. She isn't the sort for confinement."

  It was complete truth and as long as Alara stuck to the truth, she would be fine. And as long as she kept her mouth under control, everything would be fine. It wasn't something she had seen in a vision, but sometimes common sense raised its ugly head.

  Commander M'nir spoke in low tones. "And you are? You had to have known that we would determine your status the moment that you were taken into custody."

  "I suspected, but Tosha needs to be out there and I am fine here."

  The truth sensor shivered a little as the lie came out into the open, but Alara wasn't going to collapse into tears of fear. She had her family's reputation and her own personal dignity to uphold. Sometimes having an ego was a pain in the ass.

  A physician came into the room and sneered down at her, his muddy brown eyes squinted in contempt. "Prepare for assessment. Let's see if you are of any use to your people or simply a drain on our resources."

  Alara fought her response, but it slipped through her tense lips. "Oh goody. Let's get the probing over with."

  Chapter Two

  Having a complete physical administered by complete strangers was not something that Alara had ever anticipated, but she thought she handled it well. She had only bitten two of the lab technicians and kicked the third in the groin. All in all, she was very proud of her behaviour.

  By the time they were through with her, she was exhausted, bruised, pinched, prodded and feeling a new appreciation for her personal physician that she had never anticipated. They escorted her to a private cell, which included a bed, small shower and lav, with the view screen embedded in one wall.

  "I can't help but feel the irony in being on my home world and no one knows that I'm even here." Alara continued talking to herself long after the techs had gone. She was sure her visions would continue as she slept for she was bound and determined to stay awake as long as physically possible.

  Keeping secrets had never been part of Alara's personality until she had begun to see through time. At that point, telling her friends and family everything that she saw went from being a good idea to a future-altering condition. It hadn't taken her very long to find out that people were terrified of the unknown and that if they found out about it, they would react violently in anticipation of pain.

  Each time she had let her personal manipulation interfere in the plan of the universe, a ripple had been created that swept through lives and changed everything. When her parents and those of her cousin, Tosh, were ended in a transport accident, Alara stopped using her talent or at least telling her family about it.

  Tosha would never know that because Alara gave her food poisoning with a sandwich, she stayed home and didn't break her arm. Because she didn't break her arm, her parents left her with their mother and took off with their siblings for a day at the beach, their daughter in good hands.

  Alara didn't see the accident in time and the storm that swept her parents into a river came up out of nowhere. Alara lived with that guilt every day. Her decision to save Tosha discomfort had ended with both of them being orphaned and only their Gran was left. It had not been her finest hour.

  The visions still came to her, still haunted her dreams, but she was able to determine what was tweakable versus what had to be written in stone. Getting Tosha to the Sector Guard was a major tweak but one that she was very proud of.

  Six months earlier, she had seen into time and met her match. At the same time, she had also seen Tosha standing next to a whirlwind and a group of uniforms. It didn't take much research to figure out that the Sector Guard was involved in Tosha's future. The skin-tight clothing was a dead giveaway.

  Alara watched the news and the report that two talents had been spotted on the moon of Dalpha. The reporter announced that both of the talents had been taken into custody and Alara wondered idly if they had bribed or wiped the minds of the tourists who saw Tosha fly away in a column of wind.

  Gran had told her granddaughters stories about the true purpose of the labs. They were not dedicated to researching the genes that caused power to surge. They were focussed on using it for the good of the Dalphaic people. Gran had laughed when she said that. "The good of the Dalphaic government is more like it."

  Tosha had always pressed her for details, but Gran had replied, "If you keep it to yourself, you never have to worry. If you start to use it in public, not even your cousin will be able to see your way out of it."

  They had nodded, never questioning their grandmother's knowledge of their talents. It seemed right and proper that she knew what they were. It didn't occur to Alara until years later that their Gran was probably the origin of their little talent gene.

  Smiling at the thought of her grandmother, she paced the length and breadth of the cell. Each step reminded her that she was locked behind walls designed to keep talents in and the normals out. Until those bugs broke free, she had been one of the normals. Suddenly, she was on the other side of the fence and it wasn't a horrible thing. She could still feel her future and it had nothing to do with the lab.

  She checked the nodes that were radiating psi blocks into her cell. Her mind felt tight as the signal swept over it, but she knew her talent. Nothing was going to hold her back from a future dream the moment that she relaxed.

  Alara rubbed at her neck with both hands, scowling at the pricks of pain left over from the tissue and blood sample sites. They had taken everything they could from her--brain scans, biological samples and ambient radiation measurements along with her height, weight and age.

  Parting with her age had peeved her more than the tech trying to draw blood with four different punctures. Her arm was bruised all to hell now and it was throbbing in an annoying beat.

  A short crackle alerted her to the com system. "Alara J'tak, lights out in five minutes, please enter your bed for safety. A sedative will be pumped into your quarters in four minutes and thirty seconds."

  "Crap." Alara shuffled to the lav and used the facilities, washing her face and staring into the polished metal with eyes that were dark with inner turmoil.

  She had just dropped onto the bunk and tucked herself into place when the hissing started. The air took on the tang of medicine and the lights in her small cell dimmed. It took a handful of breaths and full dark, but she slipped into a grudging sleep, the forward echoes in time awaited.

  She was standing on the future plane, images overlapping and stretching before her. Each choice she made would strengthen one future and fade another.

  Everywhere in her future, she saw the image of the Dheman. His horns gleamed silver and the smile on his lips was everywhere she looked.

  In every image, they stood together, side by side. In several images, Tosha stood next to them with her vortex at her side. Drai completed the image as they posed for some kind of group photo.

  Alara wished for the thousandth time that she could ask questions of the images, but
as she watched, she saw herself on foreign worlds with the Dheman at her side.

  She focussed her attention on the nearer events and saw the lab techs and the peacekeepers standing aside to let her and the Dheman leave the lab. They weren't happy, but they did it. A shuttle with graceful lines filled with more folks in body suits waited for them. Mechs stood guard as they boarded.

  The Dheman smiled and patted her hand as they took up seats in the shuttle. Their lab scrubs a shabby cousin to the flashy suit and implants of the woman plugged into the ship. They left Dalpha and beneath them, she saw a stream of talents leaving the lab to take places on shuttle after shuttle. Something was causing the government to free the talents and she had a feeling that it was the man next to her in the image.

  Alara sighed and watched pieces of her future, blushing at some and cheering for others. The administered sedative must have been powerful, because she saw her own grandchildren in one image by the time she woke.

  Jerking out of a sound sleep where she had seen decades into her own future was a bit of a shock, but facing the scowling peacekeepers caused her to cry out. "What?"

  The younger of the two was examining her with interest. "You are needed in interrogation."

  Alara sat up and checked her mouth for drool. She was pretty sure she had been snoring. "Fine, but I need to pee first and I really need a drink of water."

  He reached for his stunner and pointed it at her casually. "Use the lav, but you only have two minutes. Water and a meal will be provided for you."

  Grumbling and stumbling, she attended to nature, washed her hands and returned to her escort. "Shall we? I need to wash the taste of that sedative out of my mouth."