Title: Supernova Soul
Series: Roche Limit, Book Two
Author: Matthew J. Metzger
Publisher: NineStar Press
Release Date: July 27, 2020
Heat Level: 1 - No Sex
Pairing: No Romance
Length: 41900
Genre: Science Fiction, LGBTQIA+, science-fiction, lesbian, space travel, discrimination, character study
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Synopsis
The Swift is gone.
Weeks after the catastrophic power
failure that triggered the evacuation in the first place, the ship has powered
up and taken flight, abandoning its jettisoned escape pods deep in uncharted
space. Stranded with dwindling supplies and no way of calling for help, Hélène
LeFebvre needs a plan. Or at least somewhere to bury the dead.
Hélène isn’t a people person at the best
of times, and trying to build a new comms array on a hostile alien moon is
definitely not the best of times. Her only help is a nurse who won’t stop
praying, a pilot whose attitude adjustment could take several centuries, three
maintenance crew gambling with coffee beans to pass the time, a homicidal cook,
and a medical officer convinced that the unseen monsters that stalk their pods
at night are there for him personally.
All too aware they’re running out of
time, Hélène doesn’t have time for their flaws, or to examine her own. She
can’t afford to be human if she’s going to save them.
But perhaps she needs to remember she’s
human in order to save herself.
Excerpt
Supernova Soul
Matthew J. Metzger © 2020
All Rights Reserved
“You’re a work of art, supernova slow.”
The airlock hissed and jettisoned its
load with a dull thump. Through the tiny viewing window, the foil blanket that
had served for a funeral shroud faded away into the abyss and winked out of
view.
Nobody said a word.
“Between the devil and the sea, you’re
colouring for show.”
There had been eight of them in the
beginning. Now, three stood by the door, warped shadows in the emergency
lighting bidding a silent farewell to the fourth. In the dark, they were all
the same shape. Tall ghosts, two with glittering eyes.
The third turned away.
“Maybe you’re bursting open, maybe
you’re falling shut.”
It took four steps towards the cockpit
door before a noise cut across the vigil. The whisper-soft voice crackled up
the walls like fire and singed the air. The crisp consonants bracketed soft
vowels, refusing any temptation to blur into a softer tone. Quiet did not mean
gentle. Not here, and not now.
“Where are you going?”
“Maybe you’re the knife, and maybe
you’re the cut.”
For a moment, it worked. A stillness returned,
and for a split second, it seemed as though the semicircle of sentries at the
airlock door could be rebuilt. But then the footsteps continued, creaking along
the gantry towards the cockpit door.
“Work.”
“Nobody’s gonna know, supernova soul.”
As though it were a scene from a play,
the shadows balanced the edges of the stage that had become their prison. The
detractor at the cockpit door. The speaker in the centre. And the sentry,
sinking to his knees in front of the airlock and murmuring the funeral prayer,
a soft music bubbling up to join the pop song bidding farewell to the brainless
corpse of Maintenance Technician Edward Sanders.
“They’re staring at the glitter and not
the centre of the hole.”
Brainless because said brains were still
splattered up the wall of the toilet where he’d shot himself. A single
deafening boom and the being known as Edward Sanders was gone. All his hopes
and dreams, all his history and possible futures, everything. Gone. The sparks
of life buried in his neurons had been plastered up the shower tiles, and that
had been that.
But Hélène LeFebvre was not gone, and
she let herself back into the cockpit without a trace of sorrow. Eddie had
died. His husk had been flushed into space so its decomposition wouldn’t harm
the rest of them. Now she had a job to get on with.
She had to find them a way out of this
mess.
“I know your little secret, supernova
slow.”
Hélène LeFebvre, the best navigation
officer in the company, had also been the best in the military before she was
enticed away by a higher salary. So they were in deep space. So they were weeks
from any mapped trade routes. So what? She’d been trained for this. She’d
successfully tracked their ship ever since the evacuation, even through a
ship-wide power cut and a compromised communications array. And now—
“And you’d give all the world so I would
never know.”
Hélène swallowed as she sank into her
seat and glanced at the navigation console. The sensor screens stared back at
her in the dark, empty and mocking. Every time she blinked, she could see the
neon green of the mass they’d been tracking for weeks—but it existed now only
on the backs of her eyelids. The mass—the ship—was gone.
“You’ve got all your secrets, wrapped up
in the dark.”
They evacuated weeks ago after a fire in
the engine room had taken out the entire power supply, including the emergency
generators and the solar batteries. It should have been a simple affair. They
were in the middle of a drill, so the evacuation itself had been orderly. The
duty engineering team would remain behind to repair the damage. It should have
been over in a matter of hours.
Eight weeks later, and they were still
locked into the escape pods with dwindling supplies and draining batteries.
Eight weeks they’d been following the ship, waiting for someone to light her up
again and welcome them back on board. Eight weeks.
“And I know every one, and I’ve never
missed the mark.”
Following the ship had been child’s play
for a navigator like Hélène. She’d even fixed their comms array and been
broadcasting instructions to the other pods. Nobody ever replied, but they’d
followed her. They couldn’t speak back, but they could plainly hear. If there
had been a higher-ranking officer out there, they’d fallen into the chain of
command dictated by the only working array in the fleet. And until the early
hours of the morning, Hélène had been in control.
“You’re a little stupid, supernova
soul.”
Until the ship had lit up like a
Christmas tree across all sensors, not just mass. Until it had turned instead
of drifted. Until a vapour trail had bled out behind it as if they chased a
harpooned whale in a vast sea.
And then it was gone.
The flash of hope as EU-404 had powered
up and corrected course had been snuffed out mere hours later. When she’d
turned again, her engines burned like the surface of a star, and she had
vanished into the dark.
Gone.
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Meet the Author
Matthew J. Metzger is an ace, trans
author posing as a functional human being in the wilds of Yorkshire, England.
Although mainly a writer of contemporary, working-class romance, he also strays
into fantasy when the mood strikes. Whatever the genre, the focus is inevitably
on queer characters and their relationships, be they familial, platonic, sexual,
or romantic.
When not crunching numbers at his day
job, or writing books by night, Matthew can be found tweeting from the gym,
being used as a pillow by his cat, or trying to keep his website in some
semblance of order.
Website | Twitter
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