Page 1 of 3 Secrets to Love (Romance Tales from the Quadrants #2)

With a tap on their comm screen, Rae inputted the final file of crucial information.

It was then transferred into the computer chips linked to the brains of the bonded trio laying on the tables, the data the new clones were created to carry.

Rae had spent the last few lunar cycles holed away in their lab, working on the three of them without being detected.

But they knew their time was up.

Someone had found out.

Someone who didn’t want the information shared with others, especially with those on the planet Yatak, or with anyone part of the Council of the Quadrants.

The safeties they put on their comms had been triggered, as well as those protecting the perimeter of the lab.

The information they’d transferred into the clones would lead to Kalpier losing favor across the quadrants, and many individuals would be fined and forced to complete restorative justice.

But the secrets the bonded trio carried were destined for a future time, a period during which the secrets would be well received by all, and the one bearing the lineage they concerned would be ready to bring about change.

The transformative justice their home planet really needed.

Rae trusted their creations to determine that time period, when to share their secrets, for Rae would be long gone by then.

When the upload completed, Rae unplugged the neural wiring to the trio, leaving them with only their breathing tubes.

They didn’t have time to wake each of the three up before sending them to their individual destinations.

Rae simply hoped they left Kalpier in time and survived the journey.

One by one, they wheeled the lab tables over to a single propulsion jet then loaded one of the bodies inside.

Rae didn’t propel them into the cosmos after each one was loaded but waited until all three were ready and the jets had reached full launch speed.

They couldn’t let them go until they were sure each of them would survive.

Suddenly, red flashes lit up the room.

A perimeter line had been cut, not just crossed.

Someone was coming.

They didn’t have much time left.

Rae powered down all equipment except for the jet launchers.

Every joule of energy was redirected to the jets.

If they didn’t reach their destinations, Rae had sacrificed the last months of their life for nothing.

When the canopies closed on all three jets and the launch panels turned green, they breathed a sigh of relief.

They were so close to completing their mission.

An alarm blared through the room, piercing Rae’s ears.

They winced but resisted the urge to cover their ears.

Another perimeter had been breached.

It was just a matter of seconds before those trying to stop Rae reached the lab.

They had to move fast.

Rae slammed their palm onto the button that lifted the door to the hangar.

While the front of their lab was accessible by a winding road up the side of a mountain, the rear hangar gave way to a cliff straight down.

The perfect place to launch the jets from.

Rae double-checked the destinations of each jet then launched them into the skies and the space beyond.

“Goodbye, my children. May the universe be always with you.”

Rae waved as they watched the jets rocket past the limits of the atmosphere and into the galaxy beyond.

While they had helped create many other Kalpierenes in their lifetime, none had been a special as the last three.

The trio had a purpose, not made simply to fulfill a government contract.

When Rae could no longer see the jets, they turned back to the lab with the heavy exhale.

It was time.

They closed the hangar door then gathered all their comms and chips that held data into a pile in the center of the lab.

With the proper amount of alezenide alophorate measured into a large glass beaker, they moved the chemical to rest on the pile.

And with one final inhale, they lit their fire stick and dropped it into the beaker.

The blast hit so fast, they didn’t feel the shards of glass slicing into their body and killing them instantly before the heat of the fire could torch their skin.

The lab and all the information it carried burned up in a massive fireball, blowing out the walk-through door and speeding through the tunnel that led out into the light.

No one, including the two Kalpierenes who had been the leads in the party sent to stop Rae, had survived.

For several star cycles after, authorities combed the rubble left in the lab for any trace of the information Rae had shared, and the destination of the jets, but they came up empty.

They had traced the jets on radar while they remained within the atmosphere, but a cloaking shield had been activated on the three once they made it to outer space.

No way to track them after that.

And the Kalpierene government refused to get the Council of the Quadrants involved, fearing the backlash of the information contained in those jets.

They decided to keep the betrayal of their top scientists to themselves and quietly search for any sign of the destination of those jets and their cargo.

No matter how long it took.