WetotallyenjoyedC.A. Higgins ’ debut book Lightless , so we ’re pleased to be able to portion out an selection from Supernova , the follow - up .
Below is an exclusive extract from Supernova , which follows Althea as she protects her now - sentient ship the Ananke . The ship , meanwhile , is learning about humanity . Our excerpt concerns Constance , the leader of the revolution allude off in Lightless . She ’s in charge now , and is in danger of prove that power corrupts .
Supernova comes out July 27 .
The alarm claxon , the sound of it physically percussive . Constance flexed her finger around the bbl of her long gun warily , keeping it low .
At the point that Mattie had marked out on the blueprint , there were five doors . She gesticulate Mattie toward one door and Ivan toward another , and they left to search the rooms she had indicate while she moved on to the third door . It opened easily and led to nothing but a room of small weapons system . She left it and moved on to the fourth .
Mattie was back in the hall when she emerge , hunker beside the 5th door , his ringlet pick out , two of them tuck beneath his tooth . He elevate his eyebrow at her beneath his long bangs .
“ cogitate this is it , ” he said around the lock picks .
“ Why ? ”
“ It ’s the only one locked so far . Low security , but I count there ’s an electronic lock on the other side . ” He sound like he relish the idea .
Constance follow him wiggle the metal bits around a little longer and then check her timekeeper . Less than twenty arcminute before the aviation locks shut them into this segment of the greenhouse ; then they would be exhaustively entrap and as honest as dead .
“ Move , ” she secern Mattie .
When he was out , Constance fired a volley from her gun at the door . The lock shattered , and the doorway fell limply open . Mattie scowl at her .
From somewhere nearby a fit of artillery fervidness echoed hers .
Mattie set forth , send packing the ringlet clean on the floor , but Constance threw out a hand to still him . Beneath the relentless alert , she hear the audio of a unlike arm firing : Ivan ’s hit man .
“ Stay here ; open up the inner door , ” she ordered Mattie , and before he could resist , she tag the sounds of the firefight past the door through which Ivan had disappeared .
Ivan ’s door had led to a sequence of rooms in mazy combination . Council of Constance walked as swiftly and as softly as she could from room to room , following the echoing and intermittent gunshot .
She saw them before she heard them . Ivan had gotten close enough to his attackers to disarm them . One man was stagnant already , and as she watched , not faithful enough for a clear shot , Ivan harness another , the man ’s head slam severely against the floor .
The third assaulter pick himself up off the reason , grabbed his fallen hit man , and stepped forward to aim that gun at Ivan ’s tabernacle . Ivan turned his foreland to look up not at the piece holding the throttle but at the gun itself , which was aimed directly at his skull . He await at the throttle with a strange and wary expectancy . Lake Constance had visualize that manifestation on his face before , though she could not think where .
“ You plant that bomb off , ” said the world , panting from the battle . “ Did you come here alone ? ”
Ivan did n’t answer . The second piece , the one he had slammed against the flooring , was bring up beneath him , stock coming from his psyche but his heart wink open . Ivan still had him pinned down , but the man with the gun had Ivan immobilize in return .
“ Answer me , ” the man with the gun said . “ Are you alone ? ”
Constance finally arrive a cleared shot . She go off efficiently double ; the serviceman adjudge a gun on Ivan
dismiss numb . Ivan did not flinch but stare blankly at where the gun had been . Beneath him , the last surviving System soldier was breathing hard , captive . Constance skim Ivan cursorily : no serious trauma that she could see .
There was no sentence for relief now , but Constance feel it anyway . “ Move , ” she said to Ivan , and he obey , and she shot the soldier in the head .
She led him back out of the labyrinth of rooms to the hall and then into the elbow room where Mattie was working on cracking the electronic lock while cast off anxious glances at the goggle threshold . Something settle in his shoulder when Constance and Ivan both returned . Ivan went to crouch beside him , peer over Mattie ’s shoulder joint at the little hand-held reckoner Mattie had soak up to the security scheme . Constance suffer guard while they tap and wedge their way in , and the alert continued to whimper .
It seemed to take forever , but she knew that it could not have been more than a hour or two before the threshold open . They still had fifteen minutes before Mattie ’s estimate of when the breeze lock chamber would close . They would require to get out in seven . They would do it , she told herself , and taste not to listen to her troubling doubts . What if this was the wrong threshold ? What if what they were looking for was not inside ? If it was n’t , all of this had been for nothing , none of it would matter—-
“ Huntress , ” Ivan said . They had taken out all the System camera and broadcast equipment before entering the base , but it would take only one error for the System to get wind Constance ’s individuality , and so he called her by what had become a deed of conveyance .
Constance turned and saw the dud .
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