Darik: A Badari Warriors Scifi Romance Novel (Sectors New Allies Series #4) By Veronica Scott – Guest Post with Excerpt

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excerpt, guest post, scifi romance, series, Veronica Scott

Are you among the number of readers that has been enjoying Veronica Scott’s Badari Warriors Novels?  If so, you are in luck.  Today, Ms. Scott is back to introduce her latest addition to the series: Darik.  Welcome Veronica Scott!

Thank you so much for having me as a guest today! (And thanks for your support of scifi romance too…)

I’m having fun with my first ‘real’ series, the Badari Warriors, about genetically engineered soldiers of the far future and the human women who love them. It’s been interesting to write each book and keep the storyline fresh, plus advance the overall arc of the series itself but my Muse seems to be enjoying the challenge so far. And equally importantly, the feedback from readers has been so encouraging.

My hero this time, Darik, is really a self-confident guy, which is understandable since he’s 7’, with fangs and claws and muscles, and a lot of military training and experience. I mean, who or what is going to tangle with him? Well actually, as the story progresses, it turns out a Badari warrior doesn’t necessarily always have the upper hand. Darik is in for some rough times.

The heroine, Nicolle, is a tough human woman (because I really can’t write any other kind of leading lady – sorry not sorry) who doesn’t realize how strong she really is in her own way. She also has some unexpected attributes that help her and Darik as the action unfolds.

And then there’s MARL12. Readers of the series know that in book one, MARL a stranded alien Artificial Intelligence who was around 10,000 years old was discovered. Grateful for being rescued from his predicament, MARL decided to throw his lot in with the humans and Badari as they fight the alien scientists. Now in this book Darik has been ‘honored’ by being sent on a mission with the first ‘mini MARL’, to see how well they can work together. Problems of course ensue!

The blurb:

Nicolle James is far from her home in the human Sectors, kidnapped by alien scientists to be the subject of horrifying experiments. Her only hope might be a mysterious soldier she’d glimpsed outside the laboratory fence. She’d managed to sneak a few words of conversation with him when her captors weren’t watching but now the aliens were taking her inside the lab to begin the experiments.

Darik, a warrior of the genetically engineered Badari pack, is on a solo recon mission to check out a mysterious new lab high in the mountains. His orders are strict – do not engage. But when he has a chance meeting with the woman who might be his mate, he vows not to abandon her, orders or no orders.

Can he get inside an underground lab, find Nicolle and rescue her without getting captured himself? And when he learns the lab’s deadly secrets, can he get word to his pack about the new dangers?

Because the ruthless alien scientist running the experiments wants to get her hands on him too and will stop at nothing to achieve her goals.

The excerpt: (MARL12 has refused to disrupt the force barrier around the zoolike outdoor area of the installation so Darik can rescue Nicolle, although he did drive away a huge predator threatening her. MARL12 gets the last word at the end.)

Darik took a step forward, halting abruptly as a harsh buzz emanated from the barrier, as if the power was building to repel or punish him. “I’ll do my best to get you out, I swear.”

Cringing as another wave of torment washed through her nervous system, Nicolle said, “That and a credit will buy me a cup of coffee, soldier boy. I don’t think Dr. Hidamarr is going to give us up easily. She said we wouldn’t ever leave her lab once we were taken inside.” Brushing tears off her cheeks, she stumbled into a clumsy run, heading for the prisoner shelter. Anger, fright, and regret battled for top spot in her roiled emotions. How could he stand idly by, knowing what he obviously did about the Khagrish, and leave her and the others to their awful fate? Darik sounded like a good guy, but his inaction left her livid. Even if the robot or whatever-it-was had authority over his actions, he’d indicated he could place a call to others for help. So why didn’t he? I wish I’d never met him. I wish he’d let the bearbeast kill me.

Darik watched her go, his own adrenaline and anger raging at his inability to help Nicolle. His heart pounded so hard it felt too big for his body and all the primitive battle instincts coded into his DNA urged him to fling himself at the barrier to get to her side. Letting her walk away from him while he stood and did nothing was like a Khagrish lash striking his exposed heart.

She’d obviously been angry and bitterly disappointed over his apparent refusal to help her. She must hate me right now. Even if he’d had time to explain matters more fully, her opinion probably wouldn’t have changed and the knowledge stung. Leaving others to suffer at the hands of the Khagrish ran totally counter to his deepest instincts. His self-revulsion applied doubly to failing Nicolle, for reasons not entirely clear to him. They’d barely exchanged a few words, he knew next to nothing about her. But I want to know everything.

The realization was unsettling and so unlike him that he drew a deep, shaky breath.

The Great Mother could not have been so cruel as to send him the woman who might be his mate under these dire circumstances, could she? But why else would he have this unreasoning, bone deep fury riding him?

He had to fight to keep his fangs and talons from deploying. There was no adversary for him to battle. He turned his head as MARL12 cautiously approached, its overall colors pale green and yellow. Darik bit his lip to avoid swearing at the AI or begging it to make a hole in the force field, enabling him to go after Nicolle. I never expected my ally to become an impediment. The primary MARL unit had willingly accompanied Jill Garrison and assisted her in freeing humans and Badari alike. So what was wrong with unit 12 causing it to constantly refuse to assist him in a rescue?

As he paced into the forest, sticking to the shadows, he pondered. Maybe the smaller units were equipped with a less agile intelligence pack, not as able to recalculate when conditions in the field took a radical change. Oh yes, his final report was going to be blistering, and he hoped he got to confront MARL’s main unit itself.

If MARL12’s recalcitrance cost him the chance to find his mate, then the AI wasn’t going to make it back to sanctuary valley.

But none of these iron hard resolutions would help Nicolle today. Giving up on her was not a choice he could bring himself to make. There was no way he was walking away from her but he had to be cagy if he was going to get MARL12 to do what he wanted.

“I’m going to retrace our path, maneuvering to where we can see the entrance to the lab,” he said casually after a few more minutes passed, and they were quite a distance from where he’d left Nicolle. “I want to observe while the humans are taken into custody, see if I can glean any useful intelligence about the staffing here. More data for our report home.”

“But we will not intervene.”

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Links

Add Darik to your Goodreads shelf:

Purchase Darik:

Amazon          iBooks          Nook

Google          Kobo

Purchase books 1-3 in the Badari Warrior series:

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About the Author

USA Today Best Selling Author

“SciFi Encounters” columnist for the USA Today Happy Ever After blog

Veronica Scott grew up in a house with a library as its heart. Dad loved science fiction, Mom loved ancient history and Veronica thought there needed to be more romance in everything. When she ran out of books to read, she started writing her own stories.

Seven time winner of the SFR Galaxy Award, as well as a National Excellence in Romance Fiction Award, Veronica is also the proud recipient of a NASA Exceptional Service Medal relating to her former day job, not her romances!

She read the part of Star Trek Crew Member in the audiobook production of Harlan Ellison’s “The City On the Edge of Forever.”

Find Veronica Scott at:

Blog: https://veronicascott.wordpress.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/vscotttheauthor
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Veronica-Scott/177217415659637?ref=hl

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Aftermath: Hathe Book Three by Mary Brock Jones – Feature with Excerpt and Giveaway

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book feature, excerpt, giveaway, scifi, scifi romance, series

Recently, Mary Brock Jones contacted me and wanted to know if I would like to review her new book in the Hathe series – Aftermath. I really would, but I have a long list of other books to review. But here’s the thing. I had already purchased books 1 and 2 of the series. I hadn’t read them yet, but there they were, waiting for me on my Kindle!

So I took that as a sign that I must to read the series!  Actually, it was very easy to convince myself.  🙂  So, yes, there will be a review of Aftermath later this summer.

Surely I am not the only one who has a few unread books on their e-reader? Are you collecting a series before diving in? Can’t resist the Bookbub deals? Are new releases impossible to ignore? Lately, have you read a gem that you forgot you had? Comment at the end of this post.  Feel free to comment on other subjects too, like maybe about the new book Hathe!.  On Monday at 7:00am Iowa time, I will draw two random winners who will receive a box set of Toil and Strife: Hathe Book One and Two. Thanks to Mary Brock Jones who has kindly provided these books!

Now, enjoy reading about the latest book in the Hathe series – Aftermath.

About Aftermath

War or Peace. It doesn’t matter. There is always an enemy.

Jacquel des Trurains, acclaimed hero of the resistance, has been charged with overseeing the restoration of Hathe after the Terran occupation.

But it won’t be easy. Years of oppression have left their mark on every dirtsider who stayed behind. And what of the Hathians who fled to the moon? The greed of a few for the sparkling jewel of the colonial worlds could destroy everything when they return.

So, Jacquel’s bosses decide he needs some help, and they send him Rheia asn Postrova. Rheia spent the war embroiled in twisted diplomatic games to protect the secrets of Hathe from the Terrans. Now she’s been sent to teach a stubborn man how to play nice with his fellow Hathians.

Together, they must find a way to heal their home.

But Rheia has secrets of her own, and Jacquel soon discovers that diplomacy is just a subtler war with a wiser enemy.

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Excerpt from Aftermath

Prologue

Jacquel des Trurains brought his flyer down in the courtyard of his home. He had raced down those steps and climbed that far wall, played in this courtyard with his friends. Childhood memories, lost in some half-remembered time before the war. He peered through his viz screen, trying to make the past match the present, but failed.

Whatever it was that had made this place home no longer lived here. Gone, waiting to be restored like everything else on Hathe.
What did he expect? Five years of abandonment. Five years living under Terran rule since any had set foot here. The fake radiation signals had kept the Terrans out of the City, but not even Resistance tricks could stop the erosions of time.

“Let me go in first,” he’d told his superior. “The parents don’t need to see the worst of it.”

“Do you?”

“No, but better than some unknown cleaning crew.”

Now, Jacquel wasn’t so sure. He opened the flyer’s hatch but couldn’t move. Not yet.

Weeds grew through the pavers, a wild vine sprawled over the upper colonnade roof and the air was filled with the skittering sounds of small animals frightened by his flyer, while a drunken mass of greenery over the entrance door warned of a buzzers’ nest.

At last, something he could fix. He threw himself down the steps, grabbed a broken bract from the hanging creepers and knocked down the old nest.

“My home now,” he said to the abandoned greenery. “My home.”

If he repeated it often enough, he might just believe it.

Up the steps and slam a hand against the door control on the massive front doors. A sickening pause, as if the house system needed to be shocked into life again, then the door opened to his palm print, still swinging smoothly on command. Inside was almost as he remembered, but overlaid with the stale whiff of emptiness. He coughed as a cloud of dust hit his face, scuffed up by his first step in the door. His step-mama was due to arrive in two days, back from her refuge on Mathe. She mustn’t see this. He called up central control and ordered a crew of cleaning bots.

“Please complete details of work required,” said the automated form.

“I’ve only just walked in the door.”

“Full analysis of most urgent work required before the order can be processed.”

Stupid anachronism. “Fine then. I’ll get back to you.”

He kicked at the rug, releasing another cloud of dust, then turned and flung wide the big doors, the front reception windows, any window within reach, letting in the sun and free air of Hathe.

“Make it better.”

There was a falafaux flowering in the garden and the faint scent of it whispered through the windows. He drew in a deep breath of the outside air and, for the first time, began to feel at home.

“Right. No point putting it off,” he said, his voice battering against the answering silence of the house.

He was a professional. This was a mission, a job that must be completed and in proper order. He made himself look at walls and structures, scanning and recording physical details, rather than memories and heartaches.

The main house systems had kept working throughout the long silence. There was dust, stale air, but no damage or water entry, no signs in here of the wildlife living in the garden. He checked each room, counting down his list. Reception rooms, main hall, living and dining areas, the great kitchen, staff quarters, his parents’ bedroom and offices. The staff quarters and kitchen would need to be restored before he let Manny, their old housekeeper, see them again. She would either read him a huge lecture or burst into tears, and neither could he bear.

Lastly, he came to a door at the end of a hallway. His own quarters. He stopped, laid a hand on the familiar whorls etched into the surface, then palmed the lock and pushed the door open. He could do this.

The outer room looked as if he’d just left. An antique book of poetry lay open beside his favorite chair, a sweater draped carelessly over the back of it, and his collection of book cubes on Alliance history sprawled untidily over the shelves above his desk. A drawer sat partly open and a broken stylus hung drunkenly over the lip. The room of a history student, forced to leave hurriedly.

He’d thought himself so clever when he’d put together the montage. He pushed open the bedroom door and saw the same carefully contrived scenario, untouched since the day he’d left. He pulled the bed covering straight, lined up the rare Antoni light on the bedside table with its opposite on the far side and set all to rights in the carefully ordered tidiness that he preferred in his private rooms. Only when the last piece was resting in its proper place did he approach the painting on the far wall. An interactive collage by asn Lucino, so expensive that surely even the Terrans would leave it untouched if they braved the radiation signals protecting this place. His fingers traced a whirl in the upper left corner, pushed a flower just so, then tapped on the lower frame panel. Beside it, a space appeared in the wall. A small cavity no wider than a hand’s breadth.

He pulled out the pack of info slivers and cubes and counted each one. All present; all still there. His personal files, research notes, and the cube of precious holo-vids. His family, his first day at school, a holiday on Phoebus. Then he reached right to the back, and his hand clenched tight around one more cube. He pulled it out and set it on the table beside his bed. Then touched it and stood back as the holo-image sprang to life.

Three figures, caught forever in perfect miniature. Two young men and a woman, standing on a hilltop in an eerie half-light. He and his two best friends, Bendin and Marthe asn Castre, on the night of their graduation, the miniature faces alive with the excitement and expectation of that day.

Bendin was at the front as always, big, strong and tall with shoulders already showing the promise of size to come. Head high and filled with the magic of his personality. Jacquel looked at his own figure, slightly back and to one side. Sun and moon, they’d been dubbed by the public, thanks mostly to Bendin’s golden hair and his own silver gilt. Bendin, the laughing golden god of them all, and Jacquel, the slimmer echo at his side. But not sad, never that. He was laughing in this holo-pic; they all were. His figure looked across at his friends, and he saw exasperation mingling in with the laughter. That wasn’t unusual in those days either.

Between them stood Marthe—so tiny, so vital, her dark hair touched with a shimmer of sunlight and wearing a smile that sat halfway between anger and glee. Now he understood the look on his figure’s face: he’d been caught in another of the asn Castre twins’ feuds. Something about a banged foot and Bendin teasing Marthe; but also a protective hand Bendin had shot out to his twin and the strength in the arm that pulled her up to the final summit.

Where were they now, those bright youths of yesterday? Those three laughing faces?

Jacquel couldn’t stop the twist of his mouth. Not here, and no longer laughing. Bendin’s grave lay far from here, a hasty wartime resting place. Plans were in place to rebury him with full honors in the memorial avenue of the main city cemetery. As for Marthe? Heartsick and hiding, her doctors and family all desperately trying to get her to fight back. Fight for her own life and that of her half-Terran child.

Only he had survived unscathed.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered to Bendin, and to all the other bright-eyed youths who could not come home. “I couldn’t protect her, and I couldn’t save you…but I did protect Hathe. We won our freedom back. Isn’t that enough?”

Suddenly the images were too much. He crashed the cube and slammed the holo to the floor. The three youthful images sprawled on the mat, lying drunkenly to one side.

Still they laughed up at him.

*********************

Links

Add books in the Hathe series to your Goodreads shelf:

Purchase Hathe:

AMAZON US          AMAZON UK          AMAZON CA

AMAZON AU          APPLE          KOBO

NOOK          OTHER

Hathe Book One and Two now available in a box set for all major ebook retailers. Marthe and Hamon’s story, complete in one volume.

 

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About the Author

Mary Brock Jones lives in Auckland, New Zealand but loves nothing more than to escape into the other worlds in her head, writing science fiction and historical romances. Sedate office worker by day; frantic scribbler by night.

Her parents introduced her to libraries and gave her a farm to play on, where trees became rocket ships and rocky outcrops were ancient fortresses. She grew up writing, filling pages of notebooks and filling her head with stories but took a number of detours on the pathway to her dream job. Four grown sons, more than one house renovated and various jobs later, her wish came true.

You can find Mary here:

Subscribe to her newsletter: http://eepurl.com/bbaKBv
Website: http://www.marybrockjones.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MaryBrockJonesAuthor
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MaryBrockJones
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Mary-Brock-Jones/e/B00BV3WKS0/
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7010352.Mary_Brock_Jones
See all my books at: https://www.books2read.com/ap/xKEN3n/Mary-Brock-Jones

Iced (Valos of Sonhadra, #10) by Regine Abel – Feature

Tags

book feature, Regine Abel, scifi, scifi romance, series, standalone

About Iced

The fate of his people rests in her hands.

When the penitentiary ship she’s incarcerated in gets sucked into an anomaly, Kira barely survives the crash onto an alien planet. Along with a handful of survivors, she finds refuge in the fiery city of Caldera alongside its Fire Valos inhabitants. But the sadistic experiments performed on her by the prison’s scientist make the heat intolerable for her. When the opportunity to go to the frozen city of E’Lek presents itself, Kira believes she’ll finally find her new home.

Duke is confused by the strange human female. Like him, she’s cold, made for the icy lands of the Northern Valos. Her resemblance with the Creators and questionable friendships raise their collective suspicions. Yet, only she can save their lost tribes condemned to an eternal slumber. As his heartstone warms for her, Duke is determined to prove to his people that despite appearances, Kira belongs with them… belongs with him.

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Links

Add Iced to your Goodreads shelf:

Purchase Iced:

Amazon US          Amazon UK          Amazon CA
Amazon DE          Amazon AU

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About the Author

Regine Abel is a fantasy, paranormal and sci-fi junky. Anything with a bit of magic, a touch of the unusual and definitely a lot of romance, will have her jumping for joy. Hot alien warriors meeting no-nonsense, kick-ass heroine give her warm fuzzies. Through her Veredian Chronicles series, Regine will take you to an exciting alien world full of mystery, action, passion and new beginnings. Follow Amalia and her Veredian sisters – enslaved, exploited and hunted – as they fight for their freedom and the right to love. In her Dark Tales series, Regine will make you rediscover the fairy tales of your youth in a sexy, dark, and twisted reimagining of the classics.

When not writing or reading, Regine surrenders to the other passion in her life: video games! As a professional Game Designer and Creative Director, her career has led her from her home in Canada to the US and various countries in Europe and Asia.

Follow Regine Abel here:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/regine.abel.author/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/regineabel
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/16289162.Regine_Abel
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Regine-Abel/e/B06W2MTBRV/
Newsletter: http://smarturl.it/RA_Newsletter
Readers Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/184551832176494/
Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/profile/regine-abel

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