Exclusive Excerpt!

Today’s excerpt is from my upcoming New Concepts release, FLIGHT OF THE VALKYRIE. FLIGHT was the second novel I ever wrote [the first one is the one I will keep in a drawer forever]. I’m thrilled that it’s going to have a home with NCP. Look for FLIGHT OF THE VALKYRIE in April 2006.

Blurb:

Arrested for the murder of thirty members of the High Council of the planet Carnelia, Sienna McCade could face a hundred years in cryogenic suspension, the maximum punishment allowable by Galactic law. Jordan Dane is the Courier assigned to transport Sienna’s cryo-stasis tube to a prison ship, where she will remain until her trial.

When his ship crashes and Jordan is injured, he finds himself at the mercy of the beautiful assassin. He knows he owes her a debt of gratitude for saving his life, but he can’t ignore his mission. Should he deny his growing feelings for her and turn her over to the authorities, or risk everything to help her prove her innocence and spare her a hundred years in cryo sleep?


FLIGHT OF THE VALKYRIE

The journey out of cryo sleep took a lot longer than the journey in, but the process was no less unpleasant. Sienna exhaled the breath she’d been holding forever and gasped convulsively on the intake of the next. She smelled and tasted the cryogen gases but the sweet aroma was fading. How long had she slept?

Sienna wasn’t sure if what she saw was real. A green haze surrounded her and the world had a glassy, liquid appearance. Wires and panels of telltale lights flickered at the periphery of her vision. She couldn’t move her eyes or her head, so her whole world consisted of what she saw through the small rectangle of glass inches in front of her face. After a moment, the images began to blur and Sienna realized her own breath was fogging the window.

I’m trapped, she thought, and bit back a scream. Her lungs could not have complied anyway. They were still thick with the remnants of the gas. Someone had turned off the cryogen agents, but had not yet opened the stasis tube. It seemed she had been awakened only to slowly suffocate in her metal prison.

Sienna tried to control her breathing as feeling returned to the muscles around her lungs. Each breath she drew was deeper but more labored than the last. She wouldn’t last long in the tube, and as far as she knew there was no way to open one from the inside. When she was able to move her arms again, she brought her hands up to the glass and pushed. Her muscles felt like rubber. Even if she could open the tube, she didn’t have the strength to lift the lid.

“Help me!” she called, but her voice sounded distant even to her own ears. With almost no air to carry it and thick layers of protective glass and metal around her, no one would hear her anyway.

She kicked her legs and heard a dull metallic thud. At least her legs worked now. The tingling in her limbs faded rapidly as the paralysis drained downward. Just as the cold snake had wound its way through her system when the technicians put her under, it slithered away now and left an empty feeling in its wake. A dull ache began at the back of her neck, but she didn’t have time to wonder what caused it. Blackness descended for an instant and in that brief moment when the nothingness returned, Sienna panicked.

She kicked as hard as she could and pounded on the glass in front of her to no avail. She hauled shuddering breaths of stale air into her tortured lungs. It was pointless to try to breathe carbon monoxide. She might as well have been breathing in a vacuum. Points of light pinged against her eyelids like fireworks. She realized that if she blacked out now, there would be no one to revive her.

“Please!” she cried with her last full breath. “I’m awake in here…”


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To find out more about Flight of the Valkyrie stay tuned…

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Starting tomorrow for the BACKLIST BLITZ! Read exciting excerpts of NCP books published in 2005!