Title: Destroyer (A Price of Talent Prequel)
Author: AK Nevermore
Genre: SciFi Romance, Military Dystopian
Publication Date: Aug. 2nd, 2024
Hosted by: Lady Amber's PR
Blurb:
On an alternate earth, a cataclysm has altered a subset of the population. Talents are persecuted for their psychic and physical mutations, giving rise to two conflicting societies based upon maintaining genetic purity. And the Source, a shadowy corporate entity dependent upon the exploitation of captive Talents, is hunting them…
Three years before the events in Breaker, Flynn Scot is restless.
Stationed with a mercenary unit in the Deep South on a suicide mission, the urge to return North is eating at him. Coming up against the Source as it tries to subjugate another portion of the globe is par for the course, but this time something’s different.
And it’s not just the ill-timed arrival of a survey crew from Glynfyls.
Saddled with babysitting the handful of Talents, Flynn discovers they’ve been sent down—and set up—to instigate a war between the Northern Territories and the Corporation. He finds himself being drawn into the North’s politics, and drawn out of anonymity. Then, when the operation goes sideways, he’s forced to make a choice: turn a blind-eye to the fallout, or come to terms with the fact that destiny isn’t done with him.
AK Nevermore writes Sci-fi & dark romantasy with spice. She enjoys operating heavy machinery, freebases coffee, and gives up sarcasm for Lent every year. A Jane-of-all-trades, she’s a certified chef, restores antiques, and dabbles in beekeeping when she’s not reading voraciously or running down the dream in her beat-up camo Chucks.
Unable to ignore the voices in her head, and unwilling to become medicated, she writes full time around a nest full of ravens.Her books explore dark worlds, perversely irreverent and profound, and always entertaining.
AK belongs to the Authors Guild, is an RWA chapter board member, volunteers for far too many committees, teaches creative writing, and on the rare occasion, sleeps.
Author Links:
“Ow! Shit!”
Flynn jerked back from the panel. Motherfucker. He shook out his hand and sucked on a singed finger. How many goddamned times was that glitchy wire gonna arc? He batted a beetle from his ear, sweat stinging his eyes.
Why he’d ever agreed to do this job on his day off—hell, to come to Diytan at all…Flynn snorted. Christ, this shithole was hell. Way the jungle rotted your balls out from under you, it was training for the big game, when he’d be sweltering in a pit infinitely hotter.
And being crammed into a goddamned hole contorted around a rock wasn’t helping his shitty mood. He strained to get a better grip on the wires, mashing himself against the spear of basalt. Any closer and his dick would be in it. This data transfer should’ve taken five freaking minutes. It’d been twice that to get behind the panel and mickey into the system. Now he was elbow deep in the underbelly of the downed craft’s fuselage, praying there wasn’t another big quake. He kicked at whatever was nosing at his ankle. It crunched and the potential foreshadowing didn’t excite him.
Fucking data transfer… He glared at the status bar. The yellow light flickered for the umpteenth time, then held a steady green. Finally. He sent back the codes to wipe the onboard, then disconnected the cache and shoved it into the side pocket of his fatigues.
“Dykes,” he called out to the kid crouched at arm’s length, peering under the wreckage at him. He nodded, yammered something, then scampered away.
Came back with a screwdriver.
You gotta be…Flynn worked his shoulders enough to poke his head out from under what was left of the heat shielding. Fraction of an inch more and everything in this crater would’ve been pissing neon. Pointing at his kit, he snipped his fingers together.
“No, dykes…ah, kinbago chi.” Legs spread. Close enough.
Kid snickered and passed him the right tool. Flynn went back under and clipped the wires connecting the stabilizer to the propulsion system. Almost done. He slid dark goggles over his sweat-slicked temples.
Goddamn, it was hot. Clicking on the arcfire torch didn’t help. He cozied back up to his igneous date and cut the last of the supports. The stabilizer dropped out, embedding itself into the humus-thick soil.
Flynn clawed out from under the craft and sat against a thruster. Tossed the goggles into his kit and grabbed a rag, mopping himself down. Fuck, he was filthy. He took a long swallow from his flask, wincing as it hit his empty stomach. He needed to eat.
The kid watched him, hopping from foot to foot. Probably eager to get back and collect his finder’s fee. They’d gotten lucky a local had bitten at it. Otherwise, the only way to find the wreckage in all this shit would be by a satellite they didn’t have. Jungle ate everything.
“Yo done?”
On so many levels.
Flynn rolled another bitter mouthful across his tongue. He flipped a unit from his pocket to the kid. Boy snagged it and was gone through the tangle of green, sending up a cacophony of cries from the troop of monkeys watching from the trees. Flynn kicked his kit closer to the craft. They hooted and screeched, acting entirely too uninterested. Mangey pricks had already snagged his pliers. His temples throbbed at their shrieking. Christ, he hadn’t been able to hear himself think in months…
…a vista of white. Sleet’s light-shimmered chime upon the crust, ringing clarion in the silence…
One of the shitheads threw a mango at him. It splattered over his boots. He bit back his temper, eyeing them capering through the new growth where the crash had shorn away the foliage. Another couple days and you wouldn’t be able to see the wreck if you were standing in front of it. Vines tangled around the scorched hull, well on their way to entombing it and the bloated body of the poor son of a bitch thrown against the plex. Man looked like he’d been inflated. Nothing kept down here.
… an imprint of a bobcat’s paw upon the grey-lichened stones of a brook, rime broken where it’d paused to drink. Its musk sharp amid the resinous pines…
Flynn ran a scarred, sun-browned forearm across his brow and capped his flask. All he smelt now was rotting fruit and himself. God, he hated this shithole.
He crouched, taking hold of the stabilizer and ripping it from the shallow grave it’d punched to pop its lateral panel. The board he needed looked intact. Nothing else on the damned thing was.
He snagged it, strapped on his kit, and headed back to town. Visually, the kid hadn’t left much spoor. Down-turned branch, scuff of mud…but he’d had durian for breakfast. Flynn’s nose twitched, following the grey-blue garland of funk.
…his prey was wounded, ruddy brown and scarlet ribbons of scent drifting in the breeze, he salivated in anticipation of that copper tang, the mineral flood of viscera…
He wiped a hand across his mouth. Mihao was a twenty-minute hike due east, just beyond the ridge. The Corporation was getting cocky gunning down air traffic this close. Front line was officially a dozen klicks away. Not that Flynn was particularly surprised. You don’t manage to annex half the globe playing by the rules, but last he’d heard, they’d brokered some kind of an agreement between the CFP rebels and the Diytanese government…He snorted. Then Yesho Province had been razed. Maybe their lawyers forgot to pass on the memo. Might be why Khi-gon kept hiring mercs—
Voices ahead. He froze at the crack of flesh and the kid’s cry, the jungle around him eerily silent.
Shit.
He pulled his sidearm and got low, edging up to a break in the trees.
The Corporation had definitely not passed on the memo.
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