Title: That Slow Awakening
Series: The Satura Trilogy, Book Two
Author: Laurel Beckley
Publisher: NineStar Press
Release Date: 04/11/2023
Heat Level: 1 – No Sex
Pairing: No Romance
Length: 75900
Genre: Science Fiction, Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Lesbian, Military, Military SciFi, PTSD
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Description
After a small yet memorable explosion that got him expelled from his academic studies and kicked straight to the Black Hells Army, Quernadenta Khelek was prepared for a quiet exile in the middle of the Dragonback Mountains. The worst he’d face were a few magical flare-ups, a bunch of blizzards, and his taciturn new partner.
He never expected to see one of the offworlder invaders—not so far north. Until an offworlder flying contraption slammed into one of the mountains, and Khelek and his partner were sent to investigate with strict orders to ensure there were no survivors.
Khelek never meant to disobey, but that was before his entire world became unraveled by what he found in the ice.
That Slow Awakening
Laurel Beckley © 2023
All Rights Reserved
A cold breeze brushed her cheeks, rousing her into darkness.
For a long moment, she thought she was back in the cryo-chamber, unable to open her eyes with long atrophied muscles. Her eyelids strained, sealed shut with a sticky substance. She managed to crack one open, ripping eyelashes from frozen skin.
Melin tried to move her right arm and couldn’t. Broken. It had to be broken.
Her other arm moved shakily, weakly, reaching through the shattered faceplate of her helmet to swipe at her face and forcibly peel both eyes fully open.
She blinked, trying to focus in the darkness. Everything was so fuzzy and tinged in gray, wrapped in flashing lightning layers of pain. Ringing clanged in her ears, broken by soft moaning. It took her a while to realize the moaning came from her.
It took her longer to remember where she was.
The shuttle overshooting.
Mountains.
Dar’Tan’s empty eyes.
Blue light.
Sorem’s screams.
Nothing.
She wished, briefly, that she were emerging from cryo, instead of wherever the hell she was, to face whatever came next. If anything came next after painful dying and nothingness.
She turned her head to stare at whatever was pinning her legs. It was so dark the switches and instruments of the shuttle console were barely visible. The cockpit was crushed, the console nearly embedded into her waist, and through the near-pitch dark light a trail of smoke rose from the blackened dashboard.
Her fingers shook as she untangled herself from the straps. She must have buckled herself in on top of the dead copilot. She didn’t remember doing that.
The straps released, and she fell against the ceiling with a thunk, whimpering at the pain shooting through her body. The shuttle must have landed belly-up. She struggled upright, her left foot unable to take much weight as she staggered into the main cabin.
It was a scene straight from a gore-vid.
A gaping hole had been ripped onto the floor-now-ceiling, shining light into half of the shuttle, and thrusting the aft half of the cabin into darkness. The edges of the gap were bent out instead of in, like a giant had pried it apart with two massive hands. Or, more likely, something had exploded from inside the hull. She rubbed her face, trying to remember what exactly the shuttle had been carrying on the floor that was now missing, and just couldn’t think over the ringing and the stench of death and the pain.
The ringing in her ears subsided, replacing by a crunching, slurping sound. Melin stepped into the light caused by the hole, instinct drawing her toward the sound, pulling her to check to see if someone—anyone—had survived with her.
One of the soldiers was hanging half-in, half-out of the opening, their body misshapen. The smell of offal and blood was overpowering, but not as much as she had anticipated. Bodies slumped in their seats, hanging limply. There was blood everywhere.
More crunching.
Please don’t let me be alone. Not again.
A body lay on the floor. It was missing an arm.
The noise from the rear of the shuttle stopped.
Her stomach clenched.
A shadow, lighter than the rest, shifted, detaching from the darkness. Melin stepped back, involuntarily. Her boot caught a shard of plexglass, and she fell with a thump. Her vision swam and everything became washed with gray and accented with dark blotches wavering in and out of existence, focusing on two spots of reflective yellow in the darkness beyond. Eyes.
She swallowed.
Something was alive, and it wasn’t one of her companions.
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Laurel Beckley has been writing ever since she started her first novel the summer before eighth grade—a hand-written epic fantasy catastrophe that has lurked in her mind and an increasingly ratty college-ruled notebook ever since.
She is a writer, Marine Corps veteran, and librarian.
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