Forgive the Beast

Published by: eXtasy Books

ISBN :978-1-4874-3963-7

Page :218

Word Count :65932

Publication Date :2023-09-15

Series : #

Heat Level :

Available Formats : Forgive the Beast (epub) , Forgive the Beast (mobi) , Forgive the Beast (pdf) , Forgive the Beast (prc)

Category : Contemporary Romance , Romance

Product Code: 978-1-4874-3963-7

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Sergeant Mags is on her own among the enemy on a strange planet except for someone she is not comfortable with—a shape-shifter warrior.

Sergeant Mags turned down a chance at a desk job to go out with into space and join others in discovering the answers on a different world. She was more interested in what was still out to be discovered than tracking and training others.

But this time she may have discovered too much as she and a group of Marines and a shape-shifter warrior are trapped back behind enemy lines and cut off from rescue. Now, against her better judgment, she must trust the man who came from the distant planet Veld and can do the impossible: change his body.

Sometimes action is better than words, especially under stress and enemy fire.

No thank you, Sir. I regret that I feel it will be necessary for me to refuse the offer to train on the privately owned satellites. I’m in the military to serve my country and my world.

Sergeant Margaret Bloom was trying to pay attention as she pushed her anger aside while she was being taken on a tour of the Micon Mining satellite. The words of her failed refusal were like a drumbeat in her brain that wouldn’t stop.

She had spent the entire trip to this location cussing out her officers, her teachers, and the military. She added any other idiots who couldn’t understand that she had a talent that should be used on Earth, not out in distant space helping money grabbing companies or aliens.

She was known by the nickname of Mags by her fellow workers and friends. The name might have been shortened from her first name, or perhaps it was because she often had magnifying lenses floating around her workplace.

Mags’s talent was to look at small items that needed to be fixed and see precisely what she could fix. Some of this was her eyes that spotted wires or contacts misaligned. But she also had a feeling within herself when she needed to look deeper to find the problem.

A new mental device had been developed that would allow the military to fire weapons using their minds. Sergeant Bloom was leading a team that was installing these devices on some weapons. The problem was that it wouldn’t work on all weapons, and not all personnel seemed to understand how to make it work.

Mags knew the problem was with the personnel. They didn’t believe it would work, and if they didn’t believe, then their minds wouldn’t connect with their weapon.

She had two major problems as she walked through the privately owned satellite. One was that she hated anything that took her away from the damp weather of Florida, and the other was that she didn’t want the mind control rocker to belong to anything but rather to be her little baby. She could put it to military use. After all, she’d gone into the military for altruistic reasons. But she had real problems helping greedy private companies.

Walking through satellite, she had another problem. She had been sure that with her degrees and experience, she would always remain on Earth, serving the military in the Science Division. She had worked out of the old NASA facilities on the coast of Florida that had been turned into a military installation when the actual space flights had been moved to Texas and Michigan.

By now, Sergeant Margaret Bloom had worked inside this metal tin of a satellite for over a month and was starting to shed some of her anger. She could walk down to the end of the hall and through a large porthole see her home world.

Her refusal had fallen on deaf ears, but she still could work within this floating area above Earth.

* * * *

“No thank you, Sir. I that it I feel will be necessary for me to refuse the offer to transfer to a distant satellite. I understand that there might be some problems out there with the mind control rocker, but I could fix anything better if I was back on Earth.”

In the echo of the metal satellite, no one could hear the Commander and the company manager, but they heard the sergeant’s voice.

Loud and clear was Mags’s voice. “No, no, no. I don’t do off world, I don’t do company stuff and I sure as hell don’t work with alien shifters.”

The guys in uniforms in the hallway all shifted uneasily. They knew the sergeant was on the way to being busted and possibly doing some dirty duty time.

* * * *

Mags woke up as the deep spaceship was being unloaded.

For hours, she had provided explanations why she couldn’t depart from Earth. Eventually she’d decided to speak to a field doctor. He’d given her a shot, and now she opened her eyes in an unfamiliar capsule shaped ship. Her mind told her she was in deep trouble.

A private looked in the bunkroom where she was trying to shake off the last of the shot.

“Oh good, you’re awake. Ma’am, your gear is in the first locker and you need to dress for appearance at a briefing on the satellite in twenty minutes.”

Mags waited until she got her tote from the locker and had her shoes on before she began kicking a blank wall and cussing. She knew where she was. She was on the end of a short ride on a deep spaceship called a Grabber.

With her background and intuition, she was probably one of the few people who rode this type of ship and knew about special magnetic engines that had been developed. They actually grabbed the thin magnetic lines that crossed the universe.

The engines and deep space were an accident discovered by astronomers who were studying the skies with small satellites strung out around Earth and sending information back to the offices of educated men interested in finding out if the stars talked to each other.

They had help when there was some talking going on out there. But it seemed danger sometimes came with some discoveries. There were others out there, and some were not friendly.

After the development of the grab engine, which made traveling to anywhere possible, it soon became evident that the military was as necessary as explorers. It was made aware that there were riches to be had. That meant that those big companies that were spending so much money fighting each other for resources on Earth to spend that same investment to go in a different direction.

Dedicated:

To Ruthe and the Tuesday night Chat Group of TARA the local Tampa, FL chapter of RWA. Without their

help I wouldn’t have found the right Title and the reason to finish this story.

Note:

A special thanks to my two special nephews who not only served to protect our country (thank you for your service) but also went on to work at jobs that continued to help people. Their military experience has helped me with the right terms and correct attitudes of the marines in this story. I love these two men: Richard Bucklew and Robert Bucklew.