K.C. Neal
I am really excited to be able to share an excerpt
from Part one of K.C Neal’s new Starlight Age Series Helia’s Shadow.
Goodreads – Twitter – Facebook – Amazon - website
Goodreads – Twitter – Facebook – Amazon - website
Synopsis: When the aliens arrived, they were
hailed as the saviors of a dying Earth and dwindling human race. But the aliens
didn't come to help. Now, one human girl's ingenious invention and one alien
boy's awakened heart are humanity's last hope... Nineteen years ago, aliens arrived on a barely habitable Earth with advanced technology and the promise of ensuring human survival in exchange for a place to settle. They were hailed as the saviors of humans and Earth.
Today, 16-year-old Helia wants two things in life: to step out of her over-protective mother's shadow and become an engineer, and to stop hiding her relationship with alien boy Kalo. But the world definitely isn't ready for a human-alien romance. And worse, the human-alien partnership is crumbling. Humans are arrested without explanation. Some of them are never seen again.
When the alien leader imprisons her mother on a false charge, Helia discovers the aliens never intended to help humans at all. Now, she must join forces with alien rebels. If she succeeds, humans have a chance at survival and she has a chance at love. If she fails, the dwindling human race dies out in slavery.
"[A]n amazing
story filled with adventure and intrigue.... so full of action and emotions
that you cannot help but be captivated. I highly recommend Helia's Shadow Part
One to anyone who liked Divergent or The Hunger Games. Helia
reminds me of strong heroines like Tris (Divergent) and Katniss (The
Hunger Games), but she is her own amazing character." –Ivey Byrd (The
Hopeless Reader review blog)
HELIA’S SHADOW is now available for Kindle. Pre-order before the book releases on November 23 and get 50% off the release price!
Excerpt from Helia’s Shadow Part One by K.C. Neal
Even without the newsfeed to report the forecast,
today was obviously going to be a Good Air Day. There were no signs of storms
or pollution clouds looming over the Outlands. During the worst storms, she’d
have to follow the emergency protocol, sealing all doors and windows with the
flexible strips that were provided to all citizens, and stay in until the Head
Administrator of Environmental Quality broadcast a message that it was safe to
come out. She could remember only three times that storms had come close enough
to warrant a lockdown. Two of the storms had lasted a few hours. The third had
raged for eight days. But today, only a faint ozone tang wafted past every so
often, and for once the breeze was blowing the earthy scent of the decaying
compost heaps away from this side of the city. Most of Haven’s air scrubber
towers must be online for the air to smell this pristine. Maybe it was a good
omen.
Ellerine glanced down at Helia. “How’s your arm?
Any more numbness?”
Helia flexed her fingers. “A little bit earlier,
but it’s gone.”
“You really should tell your mom it’s come back.”
Ellerine was watching her, but Helia skirted her friend’s gaze.
“I will, but not now. She has enough on her mind
with her new position. And Arrival Day. Besides, it’s not bad, just irritating.
Nothing like the episodes I had as a kid.”
“Then you’ll tell her after Arrival Day?” Ellerine
said pointedly, not at all apologetic.
“Yeah.”
“Helia?”
“Swear I will. She’ll probably confine me to my room
for a month.” Helia gave Ellerine a mock scowl and bumped her arm with her
elbow. “Do you know where you’re going to watch the Arrival Day speeches?”
“Yeah, Kimiko’s. Raeka, Monty, and Tylen are
going—probably some others too.”
“Ah, Monty.”
Helia lowered her lids cloyingly at Ellerine, whose cheeks pinked. “I’m sorry
I’ll miss out.”
She envied Ellerine’s freedom. Unlike Helia’s
mother, Ellerine’s parents rarely objected when their daughter wanted to be
with friends or go to a different part of the city.
“Why?” Ellerine said. “I wouldn’t be sorry if I
were you. You’re so lucky—I’d love to have entry to the live event. Plus, you have to go. Kalo will be there.”
Helia let her gaze roam to the Talan cityship. It
was both the vessel that brought the Talans to Earth and their home now that
they’d settled here. It sat apart from nearby Haven structures, a lone
monolith. Kalo was in there somewhere. She shook her head. “He’s not going to
be thinking of me on Arrival Day. He’ll be busy with official business. We’ve
only seen each other a few times since the academic term ended and he joined
Tal-Reku’s Council.”
“Oh, I bet he’ll be thinking of you,” Ellerine said
in a knowing tone. “Arrival Day was the first time you met.”
“Ha. Not exactly.”
“Okay, your eyes
met. And your hands.” Ellerine was grinning now.
Helia laughed. “You’re making way too much of it. I
was, what, six years old? Kalo was already the equivalent of a teenager.”
“He winked at you. I was right there. I saw it. And
later, when you let go of your mom’s hand and just about took a nosedive off
the stage, he pulled you back.” Ellerine was starting to build up some steam.
She lifted her palms to the sky and raised her eyes. “A Talan boy reaching out
to a little Earthborn girl. It was historic,
Helia. The symbolism, the innocence of it—it touched people, it changed the way
Earthborns viewed Talans.” She dropped her hands and gave Helia an earnest
look. “That picture of the two of you gets pulled out of the archives at least
once a year, for grit’s sake. You have to admit it’s a big deal. Talans and
Earthborns never touch each other. And now the two of you have . . . whatever it is that’s going on between
you, and it’s almost like—” She flicked the back of her hand against Helia’s
arm a couple of times, her eyes wide and bright. “You know what it’s like? A
modern day Romeo and Juliet!”
Helia grabbed Ellerine’s wrist and pulled it down
to her side. “Shh!” she hissed.
If only she could allow herself to get swept up in
Ellerine’s exuberance. Instead, she peered at the citizens nearby, watching for
any reaction or sign that someone had overheard. It wasn’t against the Treaty,
but . . . Talans and Earthborns didn’t mix. Not like that, anyway.
“Don’t worry, no one heard—” Ellerine started but
left off midsentence. Helia followed her gaze to the commotion that had drawn
her attention.
They were still a few blocks away from the Research
Center, but citizens were streaming toward it. Many more than usual for this
time of morning. Several of them were running.
Helia squinted. “What’s going on?” She pulled out
her folio just as Ellerine did the same.
Ellerine was faster. “Newsfeeds have updated.”
They both picked up their pace, jogging and
watching their folios at the same time.
An upbeat story about the progress of the Starlight
technology transfer, delivered by an Earthborn feedcaster, began to autoplay.
Helia canceled it and switched to the daily reports reel, which had just
finished. She restarted it.
Production at the lunar Helium-3 processing plant
was up sixteen percent over last month. Helia grimaced. The rise was probably
due to the recent increase of people sent to the lunar prison. The ration
forecast had slipped 0.7 since yesterday, down to 72.4 days. The estimated
global environmental toxicity index was steady at 8.5. The Haven air quality
forecast was Good to Very Good. She waited impatiently as the rest of the daily
report numbers scrolled by.
Finally, a male Talan feedcaster came on to deliver
the crime and security report, including the arrests from the last twenty-four
hours. There were forty-three in all.
Forty-three takings?
Helia switched over to another reel, which listed
the arrests in alphabetical order by last name. First there was a mug shot of a
teenage girl with a dirt-smudged face, wild hair, and coarse features that
marked her as an Outlander. Text flashed under her picture showing her name,
age, and the crime she was accused of. Unauthorized
attempted entry into Haven. Probably a red-handed taking, where the
criminal was caught in the act and sucked up into a sentry ship like a drop of
water through a straw.
No doubt the girl would get sentenced to the moon
to do labor at the Helium-3 refinery. A flash of pity tightened Helia’s chest.
Outlanders shouldn’t trespass. They should know better by now.
A few more pictures of Outlanders flashed across
the screen; then came a face that nearly caused Helia to drop her folio.
“Oh no,” she whispered.
It was Madel Flume, Head Administrator of Food
Production and Distribution, and a close friend of her mother’s. Her crimes
included three counts of conspiring to violate the Talan-Earthborn Treaty and
one count of conspiring with known enemies of Haven.
Enemies of Haven . . . ? Helia had never heard the phrase before.
She and Ellerine slowed, mixing with the crowd
gathered outside the Research Center’s main entrance and slowly funneling through
the huge plexi doors. There would be a wait to get past security.
“What could a Head Admin do to get taken?” Ellerine
stared at her folio as if it would answer her. “It’s hard to imagine. The
Administration and the Talans have always worked so closely. It must have been
something bad—really, really bad.”
“Not necessarily,” Helia said under her breath,
remembering Gordon’s suspicions about the recent arrests.
Ellerine swiveled her stare to Helia, her eyes so
wide the whites showed around her irises. “Why would you say that? Tal-Reku has
never imprisoned someone without just cause.”
Helia gave a small shake of her head. “Later.”
She tuned into her folio again, just in time to see
Professor Hale’s mugshot. It set off a queasy wave of confusion and sadness
that curled through her stomach. Again, there was the unfamiliar charge:
conspiring with enemies of Haven.
Ellerine gasped. “I can’t believe it. Gordon was
right. But . . . Professor Hale?”
Helia tapped the shoulder of a woman ahead of her.
“What’s going on? Why is everyone rushing over here?”
“Two entire domicile complexes had their residents’
folios crash just as the feeds updated. There was some panic, probably over the
number of takings,” the woman said. She wore a light brown maintenance uniform
and cap. “They came here hoping to get more information, I’m guessing.”
Nearly everyone outside the Center had their folios
out as they waited, but now Helia noticed that some were listening to the day’s
news while others were swiping at their folios in frustration or peering over
at someone else’s. She rose to her toes and jumped a couple of times, trying to
see inside the Center. Past the security stations, a huge wallscreen showed the
newsfeeds all day. A few dozen people were gathered under it, heads tilted
back, watching.
On her own folio, the Talan feedcaster was only a
third of the way through the list of new takings. Helia half-turned, trying to
listen to the report and take in the low chatter around her. She caught
snippets of hushed conversations.
“. . . she was taken. She didn’t seem like a
criminal. But Tal-Reku would order someone arrested only if it were truly
warranted . . .”
“The Talans say they’ll power up the Starlight
system by year’s end. You know they’ve been saying that . . .”
“. . . just read the new long-term ration
forecasts, they don’t line up with previous calculations, but maybe . . .”
“. . . Tal-Reku will come through for us. We’d be
dead without the Talans.”
The crowd continued to grow behind them but
narrowed to a single-file line ahead at the Center entrance. Ellerine and Helia
moved with the group, lining up and taking slow steps forward.
Helia glanced up as they drew closer to the
entrance. The sign high over the doors read:
Cooperative Research
Center
Leading the way into the bright future of the Starlight
Age, together
The Starlight Age was the period since the Talan
Arrival, named for the technology the aliens had brought with them. The Talans
had explained that it used the light of faraway stars to generate energy, but
they had remained secretive about exactly how it worked. Supposedly, once it
was established on the scale the Talans envisioned, it would be powerful enough
to clean up Earth to better than its pre-War state.
Her mother had told her that long ago, before the
Final War and the Collapse, the Research Center was called the National Center
for Advanced Energy Studies. Generations later, when the surrounding area
became the city of Haven, it was changed to the Haven Center for Science and
Research. The sign had been changed again soon after the Arrival, in a ceremony
Helia had been too young to remember but had watched in the city’s vid
archives.
She looked up again. The word together was larger and etched with facets that made the letters
sparkle when viewed from the right angles. She’d never realized it before, but
the tagline seemed quaint somehow.
She turned away from the sign and toward the
pristine white cityship and the curls of smoke from Outlander cooking fires in
the distant foothills beyond. Was Kalo in the cityship with Tal-Reku right now?
She tried to imagine him discussing official business with the imposing,
crinkle-skinned alien leader.
Someone inside the Center cried out, and Helia
turned back to the doors as a murmur spread from inside to those waiting
outside.
She raised herself to her tiptoes again, craning
her neck. “What’s going on? Why did that woman scream?”
A man in a white lab coat up ahead turned. “She
just learned her daughter was taken this morning,” he called over the din of
the crowd.
Helia looked down at her folio, and Ellerine’s arm
pressed against her shoulder as they watched. There was a mug shot of a
curly-haired young woman not much older than them. Her face was familiar. When
Helia read her name—Naura Veng—she remembered. The girl had graduated in the
class two years ahead of theirs and now worked under the Head Administrator of
Air Quality and Renewal. She vaguely recalled Gordon mentioning her name a
couple of times.
Helia and Ellerine exchanged a long glance.
“She’s barely out of school,” Ellerine whispered.
Helia blew out a slow breath through pursed lips.
“It doesn’t make any sense.”
When it was their turn to go inside, Helia went
first. She picked up her folio on the other side of security and moved forward to
wait for Ellerine under the only decoration in the entry, a plexi plaque that
was dedicated to Dr. Lander Schiff. He’d been her mother’s mentor and one of
the most renowned scientists in Haven’s history. He’d disappeared not long
after the Talan Arrival.
Her folio dinged.
It was a text comm from Gordon: Still think everything’s going to go back to
normal?
She frowned at his message. He was so smug
sometimes. But she couldn’t deny that his suspicions seemed more and more
warranted. She wrapped one arm around her stomach. Her insides felt like they’d
been laced up and pulled too tight.
HELIA’S SHADOW is now available for Kindle. Pre-order
before the book releases on November 23 and get 50% off the release price!
