by Sara King
“Yes, Anna.”
“Take us there.”
Bagham shuddered all over, his chopped muscles still twitching involuntarily as they tried ineffectively to fit themselves back together. Eventually, he felt the ship dock, heard the hiss of the airlock.
“Grab it, bring it inside. Yeah, set it up there. Perfect. Drop the head inside the bag. No, just as it is. I want them to have to open it. Better effect that way.”
Bagham whimpered as cruel hands grabbed him by the hair again and dropped him into a sack of blood and gore, then tied it shut and lowered the whole bag into the cushiony bed of a cryo chamber.
“You got the video?” the little girl asked.
“Right here, Anna,” the man said.
“Drop it in there. Hell, let me write a note first. Got a pen?”
“I can etch it into the glass, if you’d like.”
“Even better. Write this: ‘Take a good look. Kind of like this piece of meat, the Coalition isn’t long for this world. Sleep well tonight, ’cause tomorrow, the children of Fortune are coming to annihilate you.’”
“We are?” the man asked, over the sound of scratching glass. “I thought we wanted independence.”
Even through the sack, Bagham could hear the child’s smile. “No, Dobie. We wanted war.”
Then the lid was being shut, and Bagham heard a brief hiss before his world went dark.
-END-
Continued in Book 3, Children of Fortune! Click here for a sneak peek!
About the Author
My name is Sara King and I’m going to change the world.
No, seriously. I am. And I need your help. My goal is simple. I want to champion, define, and spread character writing throughout the galaxy. (Okay, maybe we can just start with Planet Earth.) I want to take good writing out of the hands of the huge corporations who have had a stranglehold on the publishing industry for so long and reconnect it to the people (you) and what they (you) really want. I want to democratize writing as an art form. Something that’s always been controlled by an elite few who have (in my opinion) a different idea of what is ‘good writing’ than the rest of the world, and have been feeding the sci-fi audience over 50% crap for the last 40 years.
To assist me in my goals to take over the world (crap, did I say that out loud??), please leave a review for this book. Believe me, every review helps.
Also, I have an email. (Totally surprising, I know.) Shoot me a line! [email protected]
You can also sign up for my mailing list, where I post beta reading opportunities and updates on all the series I’m currently working on, or check out my website http://www.kingfiction.com.
And, for those of you who do the Facebook thing: http://www.facebook.com/kingfiction (personal) or http://www.facebook.com/sknovel (my author page) or stay up to date on continuous new ZERO publications with The Legend of ZERO fan page: http://www.facebook.com/legendofzero
About the Artist
Lance MacCarty is a freelance digital painter focusing on science fiction and fantasy art for publication and game development. He prefers to paint the fantastical, dark and light, ethereal and otherworldly. From covers to book art and concept design he has worked directly with authors and game designers to help see their creations realized. Lance resides in Oregon with his family where he enjoys the outdoors, painting, gaming, and geekery of all sorts. Got art suggestions for the series?? Visit www.lancemaccarty.com to find out more, or email him at [email protected] to talk about his projects!
Outer Bounds Art and Swag
If you are an Outer Bounds fan looking to support the artist and author in their bid to take over the world, our delectable Outer Bounds goodies like T-shirts, mugs, posters, handbags, etc, swag can be found here:
http://www.redbubble.com/people/parasitepubs/collections/521859-outer-bounds
Lance MacCarty has generously posted free Outer Bounds desktop images and scenes from the books at: http://lancemaccarty.com/outerbounds.
SNEAK PEEK: Children of Fortune
23rd of December, 3006
Jungle near the Tear
Fortune, Daytona 6 Cluster, Outer Bounds
“Milar, come on, Babe says it’s up ahead!”
Milar, who was getting a really bad feeling about this, almost like he’d seen this section of jungle before, hesitated and squinted up the hill at Tatiana, who was being led through the sticky plant life by her striped runt of a ganshi. Even though he wasn’t growing as fast as a normal ganshi, his shoulder was already up to Tatiana’s waist. “Hey, Tat, sweetie, how about you come down here and we go back to the ship? This place is making me nervous.”
“Says the brute who insisted he carry the guns,” Tatiana snorted. “Come on. Do you want to figure out who’s been spying on us or not?”
Milar did want to know, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that they were walking into a trap. “Tat, I’m serious! I don’t wanna go further!”
Tatiana ignored him, saying something inane to her waist-high demon-kitty, who rumbled something back. She giggled. “See, Miles? Babe will protect me.” She then proceeded to disappear over the ridge without him.
“Damn it!” Milar clambered up the slick hillside after her. “Tat!”
“Babe says the smell is old, Miles,” Tatiana said, not slowing down. “Old, as in Aashaanti old. And it’s moving. That means it’s working alien tech.”
“All the more reason to avoid it, damn it!” Milar cried. He couldn’t get over the feeling that this was some elaborate scheme that Anna had put together to separate them and dissect them at her leisure. He had to remind himself—again—that Anna was dead. He’d watched her brains explode himself. They’d done an autopsy. The corpse was Anna.
But Tatiana, damn her, kept going as if she hadn’t heard him.
As Milar continued to climb the jungle-infested hill, his sense of foreboding increased with every step. Babe had turned off the ‘path’ and was now leading the woman of his dreams into a huge swath of bushes that could have hidden anything from an alley cat to an eighty ton soldier. And as much as he tried, Milar could not shake the feeling that he’d seen this place before. He was staring at a gnarled honeytree that was particularly unique, a strange memory tickling the back of his mind, when he heard something quietly slide through the foliage behind him.
Whipping out his Laserat, he spun to face their backtrail.
He saw nothing but a disturbed branch, sliding back into place.
Seeing the shuddering twig, Milar’s heart started to pound. “Tat, we’ve got contact!” he shouted over his shoulder. “Tatiana! I think it’s a shredder!” Then he froze, listening for the distinctive whipping whine of a member of the alien Defense Grid.
“It’s not a shredder,” Tatiana said, coming back to the ridge above him to look down. She was, however, frowning. “Wow, that’s…different…”
Milar was done playing guessing games with invisible alien tech in the jungle. “We’re going home. Right now.” He turned to face her.
Something solidified in the jungle to Tatiana’s left, only inches from her arm. It had a human head and partial face, but one half of its skull had been removed to show the blinking electronics of a Ferris underneath. The rest of its body was a strange amalgamation of Ferris and Aashaanti shredder parts.
“Tatiana, your left!” Milar screamed, twisting to raise his gun.
“Huh?” Tatiana said, sounding startled. She turned…
…and the machine grabbed her with its two human arms, yanking her close, then locked her in place with two of its four Aashaanti shredder arms. Then, as her eyes widened, the machine extended a probe from the missing section of its head, slipping it through the blinking hole in Tatiana’s forehead and into her brain.
Tatiana’s blue-violet eyes went wide and she stiffened all over, her body tightening in a violent spasm. Then she screamed.
It wasn’t a physical scream—no sound was coming from her open mouth—but it brought Milar to his knees. Nearby,
he heard Babe give a startled grunt and collapse into the undergrowth. Milar immediately felt the tug of the Wide washing all around him, yanking him from the rock that was his current reality.
Somehow, though, seeing Tatiana trapped in the arms of the alien machine, Milar made himself hold on. “Tat!” he slurred, crawling towards her. He’d lost his gun somewhere, but he no longer cared. All he cared about was reaching her, because now that it was actually happening, the memory was snapping back into place with horrifying accuracy. He knew what would come next, and he had to get there… “No, Tat!”
The robot retrieved the probe from her brain and Tatiana went limp in its arms, mouth open, eyelids fluttering. Then the machine turned its human head to look at Milar with unmistakable malice, the look a grocer would give a drawer filled with cockroaches. Then, just as Milar had dreamed, rows of lights flared neon across its head and body and the mental agony increased tenfold, once again threatening to sweep Milar away into the Void.
Milar groaned, but forced himself to stay conscious by seeing her, knowing what came next…
“Noooooo,” Milar slurred. “Please no.” He was crawling, but he was going to be too late. He knew he wouldn’t reach her in time. He knew he couldn’t—
The robot vanished, taking Tatiana with it. The agony in his skull disappeared as abruptly as if it had never been.
“No!” Milar shrieked, lunging to his feet and stumbling up the hill. Babe was already there, slashing at where the robot had disappeared, yowling.
“Tat,” Milar whimpered, slumping to his knees. The ganshi began doing a systematic search, swiping and sniffing the air, but Milar already knew she was gone. He’d seen it, more than a dozen times in a dozen different dreams, and he’d still been unable to stop it. He’d been too tired, too irritated, too preoccupied to recognize the signs. He’d been given warnings and he’d failed her. His soulmate… “Oh Tat…”
Milar lunged out of bed with a gasp, his heart pounding completely out of control. On reflex, he twisted and patted the other half of his bed.
Tatiana was there, sleeping, and his fumbling hand found her slender arm. She groaned and muttered something about ‘sleeptalking coalers’ and rolled over, so that he could see the line of metal nodes running down her spine.
Milar’s heart was still thundering as he sat there, gazing down on her sleeping form. Trying to calm his breathing, he glanced over at the ganshi.
Babe’s purple eyes were open, disturbed by his shouts. Giving Milar a total look of disgust, the ganshi got up from his usual spot in the corner and loped from the tent…
…his big gray shoulders passing through the doorway at about the same height as Tatiana’s waist.
-END PREVIEW-
Watch for Book 3: Children of Fortune to hit Amazon soon!
Other Titles by Sara King
(Try ‘em… You might like ‘em!)
Guardians of the First Realm: Alaskan Fire
Guardians of the First Realm: Alaskan Fury
Millennium Potion: Wings of Retribution
Outer Bounds: Fortune’s Rising
Outer Bounds: Fortune’s Folly
Terms of Mercy: To the Princess Bound
ZERO: Forging Zero
ZERO: The Moldy Dead
ZERO: Zero Recall
ZERO: Zero’s Return
ZERO: The Many Misadventures of Flea, Agent of Chaos
ZERO: The Scientist, the Rat, and the Assassin
ZERO: World Glimpses
The Aulds of the Spyre: Form and Function 1
