Del Rey and Bantam Books 2015 Sampler: Excerpts from Upcoming and Current Titles

Excerpt

Del Rey and Bantam Books 2015 Sampler is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Compilation copyright © 2015 by Random House LLC

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Del Rey, an imprint of Random House, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.

Del Rey and the House colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.

eBook ISBN: 978-0-8041-8156-3

This sampler contains excerpts from the following books:

Excerpt from The Shadow Revolution copyright © 2015 by Clay and Susan Griffith

Excerpt from Emergence copyright © 2015 by John Birmingham

Excerpt from The Hammer and the Blade copyright © 2012 by Paul S. Kemp

Excerpt from Red Rising copyright © 2014 by Pierce Brown

Excerpt from Half a King copyright © 2014 by Joe Abercrombie

Excerpt from Uprooted copyright © 2015 by Naomi Novik

Excerpt from Clash of Eagles copyright © 2015 by Alan Smale

Excerpt from Assassin’s Apprentice copyright © 1996 by Robin Hobb

Excerpt from The Elfstones of Shannara copyright © 1982 by Terry Brooks

Excerpt from The Lies of Locke Lamora copyright © 2006 by Scott Lynch

Excerpt from Old Venus copyright © 2015 by George RR Martin and Gardner Dozois

Excerpt from His Majesty’s Dragon copyright © 2006 by Naomi Novik

Excerpt from Children of Fire copyright © 2013 by Drew Karpyshyn

Excerpt from Warded Man copyright © 2009 by Peter V. Brett

Excerpt from Hounded copyright © 2011 by Kevin Hearne

Excerpt from The Abyss Beyond Dreams copyright © 2014 by Peter F. Hamilton

Excerpt from Outlander copyright © 1991 by Diana Gabaldon

Excerpt from Mercy House copyright © 2015 by Adam Cesare

Excerpt from Consumption copyright © 2015 by Heather Herman

Excerpt from Liesmith copyright © 2014 by Alis Franklin

Excerpt from Star Wars: A New Dawn copyright © 2014 by Lucasfilm Ltd.

Excerpt from Star Wars: Lords of the Sith copyright © 2015 by Lucasfilm Ltd.

This book contains excerpts from the following forthcoming novels: Alive by Scott Sigler, Lightless by C. A. Higgins, Three Moments of an Explosion by China Mieville, Sleeping Giants by Sylvain Neuvel, Zero World by Jason M. Hough, Green Earth by Kim Stanley Robinson, Bombs Away by Harry Turtledove, and ClownFellas by Carlton Mellick, III and Star Wars: Dark Disciple by Christie Golden. These excerpts have been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming editions.

www.delreybooks.com

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Twitter: @DelReySpectra

Dear Reader,

This is not a book.

It’s a time machine: Clay and Susan Griffith’s The Shadow Revolution will take you back to a Victorian London where an Avengers-style super-team of wizards, monster hunters, and a teen-girl werewolf battle the forces of darkness. Alan Smale’s Clash of Eagles will transport you to an America that never was, one shaped by a battle between Native Americans and an invading force of ancient Romans. And Harry Turtledove’s Bombs Away will reveal his visionary reimagining of the 1950s after the devastation wrought by a nuclear war that turned the Cold War very hot.

It’s a new friend. You’ll meet Dave Hooper, a hard-drinking blue-collar dude turned legendary monster slayer who’s one part Jimmy McNulty and one part Vin Diesel, in John Birmingham’s Dave vs. the Monsters. And FitzChivalry Farseer, one of the most beloved characters in fantasy, in Robin Hobb’s Assassin’s Apprentice. And Yarvi, a diabolically clever young king who could match wits with Tyrion Lannister, in Joe Abercrombie’s Half a King.

It’s a magic mirror, the sort in which you’ll see the world both reflected and transformed.  In an early preview of Sylvain Neuvel’s Sleeping Giants, a little girl discovers a giant metallic hand in a forest—a discovery that changes her life and the world forever. And in a short story from Three Moments of an Explosion, the insanely brilliant China Miéville breaks and remakes reality in strange and beautiful ways.

It’s also a mystery box bearing three books so full of shadows and surprises that they defy easy description. In Scott Sigler’s Alive, a young woman wakes up amid the darkness of what seems to be a coffin, having no memory of who she is. In C. A. Higgins’s Lightless, a top-secret spaceship conceals a mystery even darker, and more destructive, than the black-hole engine that powers it. And in Jason Hough’s Zero World, a super-spy is sent on a mission that will uncover the future of the universe—and the dark secrets of his own past.

And that’s just the beginning—you’ll find excerpts from thirty-one new books, from Star Wars, to horror, to science fiction, to fantasy, to the wonderfully uncategorizable.

Like all books, it’s more than a book: It’s a pathway to experiences you’ll never forget!

Happy reading,

Tricia Narwani

Editorial Director, Del Rey Books

Alive by Scott Sigler

On sale 7/14/2015

I open my eyes to darkness. Total darkness. I hear my own breathing, but nothing else. I lift my head . . . it thumps against something solid and unmoving. There is a board right in front of my face. No, not a board . . . a lid.

A teenage girl awakens to find herself trapped in a coffin. She has no idea who she is, where she is, or how she got there. Fighting her way free brings little relief—she discovers only a room lined with caskets and a handful of equally mystified survivors. Beyond their room lies a corridor filled with bones and dust, but no people . . . and no answers.

She knows only one thing about herself—her name, M. Savage, which was engraved on the foot of her coffin—yet she finds herself in charge. She is not the biggest among them, or the boldest, but for some reason the others trust her. Now, if they’re to have any chance, she must get them to trust each other.

Whatever the truth is, she is determined to find it and confront it. If she has to lead, she will make sure they survive. Maybe there’s a way out, a rational explanation, and a fighting chance against the dangers to come. Or maybe a reality they cannot comprehend lies just beyond the next turn.

Alive is available in hardcover and ebook on July 14, 2015.

Click here to find out more information about the book.

Chapter One

A stabbing pain jolts me awake.

It hits quick but deep, a here-then-gone stinging where my neck meets my shoulder.

Did something bite me?

No . . . just a dream. A nightmare, maybe.

That’s not how I should wake up on my birthday. I’m twelve. I can hardly believe it—I’m twelve, I’m not a little kid anymore. I should get to sleep in, I should get to sleep all day. There should be cake, and my friends, and I shouldn’t have to go to school.

School.

The thought of that place chases away my excitement. I’m so tired. Feels like I’ve never slept at all. If I missed my alarm, I’ll be late for classes again. Mom will kill me. I don’t want to go. At school, the tooth-girls and the stars always make fun of me. And I shouldn’t be teased on my birthday. I hate school, I hate them, I . . .

A tingling coolness on my neck, right where I felt that sting. Tickling, spreading . . .

. . . am I bleeding?

I open my eyes to darkness. Total darkness. I hear my own breathing, but nothing else. And . . . and I can’t move. Curved bars, cool and rough, hold my wrists by my sides. I roll my hands, trying to slip free, but the bars are so tight they scrape against my skin.

Mom?

The word sounds too loud, almost a scream. Something is wrong. My voice sounds odd . . . kind of muffled.

Mom doesn’t answer.

Dad?

Nothing.

I pull harder, but it’s not only my wrists that can’t move—something holds my ankles, and my hips are pinned so tight I can’t even turn.

This isn’t my bedroom. This isn’t my house. My parents aren’t here.

My chest seems to squeeze in, as if it is clamping down on my hammering heart. My body tingles, every ounce of me screaming Get up! Getupgetupgetup!

Is anyone there?

Still nothing.

Someone help me. This is . . .

My breath catches.

I don’t know my own name.

I thrash and pull, yank desperately at the unforgiving bars holding me down.

"Someone, help me!"

No one answers.

I scream so hard it tears at my throat. Someone had to hear that. Someone has to come get me, come help me.

I wait.

Still nothing.

I lift my head—my forehead clonks against something solid and unmoving. That’s why my voice sounded funny: there is a board right in front of my face.

No, not a board . . . a lid.

Padding beneath me and at my sides.

I am in . . .

. . . oh no, oh no . . .

. . . am I in a coffin?

Help! Somebody get me out of here!

The pain that woke me plunges into my neck again, a sting so deep it locks me up, all tight-eyed and rigid and frozen.

I am trapped in the dark and something is biting me.

(If you run, your enemy will hunt you. Kill your enemy, and you are forever free.)

That thought seems familiar, a memory that stuck. Rage blossoms, gives me the focus to move despite my agony, gives me the strength to try harder. I pull and push, lift and twist. I focus all my strength on my right hand—pull, dammit—the skin of my wrist tears against the rough material, but I have to get out. . . .

Pull, push, twist, yank, harder and harder until my coffin rattles.

Above my right wrist, I feel the bar crack. I can move that hand more. Only a little, but I can move it more.

The sting slides deeper into my neck, and I cry out.

No one came before, no one will come now.

Will it hit a lung? Pierce my heart?

Will I die?

I jerk so hard the bones in my wrists grind against the bars holding them down. I hear another small crack, then another—my right hand flies free.

I slide my fingers up my body to my neck, blindly grab at the thing slicing into me. My hand locks down on wetness, slickness, a cold snake that moves and wiggles. It’s trying to slither away, but I have it and I won’t let go. I yank it to my mouth and bite down, taste something horrid, crush my teeth together so hard my jaw hurts. I thrash my head, I bite harder—something inside of it crunches.

It falls limp in my hand and mouth. I fling it aside, then spit, trying to get that vile taste off my tongue.

Right hand to left wrist. I grab the restraint. Its surface crumbles at my touch, powder falling away to reveal pitted hardness beneath. Right hand yanking, left fist lifting, the cracking sound comes quickly and my left hand is free.

Both hands grab the bar that curves across my waist. I attack it, push-pull-push-pull-push-pull, making the whole coffin shake around me. The bar breaks.

Now for my feet.

The lid is so close to my face and chest that my hands can reach down only to my thighs. I’m wearing some kind of short skirt? I must reach farther, must keep trying. I have to get out, whatever it takes. I twist to my right hip, use the ankle restraints as resistance to wiggle my body lower, reach down with my left hand. My shoulder and face drag against the coffin’s smooth lid, pulling at my cheek and nose and closed eye, but even then my fingers barely touch my knees.

I must pull harder, harder, I must keep fighting, must get out of the darkness. If I can’t reach my feet, I will die here alone and screaming and—

—my fingertip brushes the rough bars pinning my ankles. So close, just a little farther. Contorted muscles and twisted bones vibrate with pain as I wedge in even tighter, but finally my left hand grips a bar. Grab and shake and yank, must get loose . . .

Crack, crack—both feet come free.

I slide up the coffin until I am again flat on my back. I press my palms against the lid.

I push: it doesn’t budge. I’m not strong enough.

Think. THINK. You have to get out. . . .

I need to use my arms and my legs, use all of me. . . .

I twist and turn until I’m lying on my stomach. There isn’t enough room to get all the way to my hands and knees, but I push down as hard as I can while I arch my back against the lid. Sweat drips into my eyes, sweat and maybe blood. I press until my back screams . . .

. . . something in the lid snaps.

A sliver of blinding light hits the bed of my coffin, so bright it burns to look at it. I close my eyes and push even harder. I feel the lid lift, just a little, enough for me to slide my knees all the way beneath me.

(Attack, attack, when in doubt, always attack, never let your enemy recover.)

I take a breath, focus, and shove upward with everything I have left.

The shuddering complaint of something bending and tearing. At the end of the fight, the strong lid breaks like a brittle shell—I am up and out and standing . . .

. . . and falling.

I land hard, kicking up a cloud of something powdery, so thick my heaving lungs suck it in. The floor spins and whirls beneath me, and there is light everywhere, so bright it stings even through clenched eyes.

Lying on my side, I blink, trying to see. I cough, trying to breathe. I wait for my eyes to adjust, hoping they do before whoever locked me in the coffin comes to put me back inside once again.

Chapter Two

The light blinds me, makes my eyes water. Grainy dust on my tongue, coating my raw throat, so deep in my lungs it makes me cough again and again. The noise might bring the people who did this to me, but I can’t stop. I can’t see, I’m too weak to move.

I am helpless.

The coughing fit eases. My body relaxes enough for me to sit up. I pull my knees to my chest, wrap my arms tight around my legs. I rub my wrists; the rough bars ripped my skin raw.

My coffin was warm. I broke it open, hatched from it, and now I’m in this cold room. I’m shivering. I’m out, yes, but alone, exhausted and terrified.

Where are my mom and dad? Why aren’t they here? Where is here, anyway?

I smell things I don’t fully recognize. Dry odors, stale scents. This place smells . . . dead.

The light still stings, but not as much. I can finally see a little.

Gray. The dust is gray. It blankets everything, hangs in the air, floating specks that spin with my every breath.

My neck throbs where that thing bit me. I reach for the spot. A shirt. I’m wearing a shirt, and a tie. I slide my hand inside the collar, feel the wound . . . my fingers come away with a pasty mix of dust and blood.

I look at what I’m wearing: white button-down shirt, the short skirt—which is red and black plaid—black socks that end a bit below my knee, no shoes. My shirt feels tight. The sleeves end halfway between my elbow and wrist. The tie is red, embroidered with a yellow and black circle of tiny images. White thread in the middle of that circle spells a word: MICTLAN.

I have no idea what that means. And these clothes . . . are they mine?

My vision is blurry; I can’t see anything but my coffin. Sitting on the dusty floor, I’m too low to look inside it. The lid split evenly down the middle, from top to bottom. The half closest to me slid neatly against the side. The far half sticks straight up. Maybe I broke that half, bent something so it can’t move like it’s supposed to.

Parts of the lid gleam under the lights—bloody finger streaks, I realize, from where I grabbed it, wiping away the thin layer of dust that clings to the surface.

Why won’t someone come and help me?

The thing that bit my neck . . . what if it’s still alive? What if it’s in the coffin, coiling, getting ready to slither out and attack me again? I don’t want to look inside, but no one else is here and I need to know it’s dead.

If I don’t, it could hunt me.

I reach for the coffin’s edge, use it to pull myself up. My legs don’t want to work. They tremble and twitch as I rise and look inside.

White fabric, torn in many places, smeared with long streaks of wet red and a few light spots of powdery crimson. Loose padding shows beneath the rips.

A bloody, white pillow. Next to it, a limp, white snake.

No, not a snake: a tube.

A tube that ends in a long, glistening needle. Its white skin is torn where I bit it, showing some kind of black fibers beneath.

I watch the tube for a little while. It doesn’t move. It’s dead, because I killed it.

I pick up a piece of the bar that held my waist. The surface is deeply pitted, crumbly with that crimson powder . . . rust, maybe? Rust that ate away much of the metal, making the bar thin and brittle. Had it been solid, there is no way I could have broken free.

My eyes aren’t stinging anymore. They’ve stopped watering. I can see the rest of the room.

There are eleven more coffins. Two parallel rows of six, lined up end to end. A wide aisle filled with a flat sea of untouched gray separates the rows. The thick dust coats the coffins, makes hard edges look like soft curves.

I was in the last one in the left-hand row. I can see it clearly now, see all the detail. It is decorated with intricate carvings: cartoonish people with big noses and huge, wild headdresses; squat pyramids with lots of steps; simple versions of the sun; big cats with exaggerated eyes and tooth-filled snarls.

This room is long and narrow, like it was made specifically to hold these coffins. It doesn’t seem that bright in here now that my eyes have gotten used to it—the arched ceiling has only a few lights that work, barely enough to illuminate stone walls that are covered with gray-coated carvings.

At the far end of the room, I see an archway. In that archway . . . doors, maybe? They look heavy and solid, but I don’t see any handles.

Something at the foot of my coffin catches my eye. A flat area, about the size of my hand, surrounded by dozens of small bumps, all of it hazed in puffy gray.

I reach out, trembling, and brush dust from one of the small shapes. It’s a jewel: deep orange, glowing like frozen fire.

I wipe clear the flat area. It’s engraved with seven letters and one period.

M. Savage

Is that my name?

I hear something. A small sound. Very quiet, very faint. It makes me think of being trapped in the dark, and then I realize why.

It’s a girl’s scream, coming from inside another coffin.

Chapter Three

My wobbly legs still can’t quite support me. I lean on the coffins to stay on my feet, stumble my way toward the scream.

Each step kicks up a small cloud of dust, as if I am the first person ever to set foot here.

The noisy coffin is halfway up the left-hand row. As I get closer, I can make out faint words coming from within.

Help me! Mommy, get me out of here!

I put my hand on the dust-caked lid. I feel tiny vibrations: the girl inside is struggling. I think of that long, bloody needle jutting from the white tube.

With big swipes, I brush the dust from her coffin, accidentally creating a brief fog. The polished carvings gleam under the lights.

I rap my knuckles on the lid; her screaming stops.

Calm down, I say. I’ll try and get you out.

There is a pause. Then she speaks, the coffin cutting the volume of her words but not the desperation they carry.

Who are you?

Who am I? No idea. Somehow, I don’t think telling her I’m Savage is going to make her less afraid. I don’t even have a first name, only an initial, but maybe that will work.

"My name is Em. What’s yours?"

I . . . I don’t know.

A feeling of relief explodes inside of me, so intense I almost fall down again: I’m not the only one.

I have to get this girl out.

Are there bars holding you down?

Something is, she says. I don’t know what, I can’t see anything. I can’t move. It’s so dark in here, please help me!

"I told you to stay calm." My voice echoes off the stone walls, and I hear how harsh it sounds. She’s afraid, she’s trapped; yelling at her isn’t going to help.

It’s okay, I say in a softer tone. Listen, you have to break those bars.

Break them? Her voice cracks. I tried, they’re too thick!

Try harder. I broke mine.

Another pause. I listen to her grunting and struggling, then hear the raw terror carried on her words.

"I can’t break them, I told you I’m not strong enough. Get me out, please get me out!"

I slap the lid, hard.

Be quiet, I say. I’ll find a way to open it.

Why can’t she get out like I did? Is she weaker than I am? Her fear is contagious, radiating from the coffin and coiling inside my chest. At first I was afraid I would die in the dark, but if this girl dies, I will be alone—somehow, that is even worse.

Not knowing what else to do, I push against the lid. Nothing happens. I slide my fingertips under what feels like the edge and I lift—gently at first, then with what little strength I have. Still nothing. I feel the long seam that runs down the middle, that separates the lid halves . . . too tight to get my fingers in there.

I look around the room. Across the aisle, I see something leaning against a coffin, a fuzzy gray shape maybe as long as my forearm and hand together. Five steps take me to it. I reach down, grab the shape, lift it and shake free the dust.

I hold a golden bar. Jewels of different colors and sizes dot its length. At the end is a C shape: the stubby prongs are silver, not gold. The bar is heavy and solid.

A weapon. I have a weapon.

Suddenly I am not quite as afraid.

I start to turn back to the girl’s coffin when something catches my eye . . . the lid of this one, it’s as dusty as the others, but it’s not sealed tight like hers. It’s slightly open, showing a thin line of deep shadow no wider than my pinkie.

I can’t look away.

My right hand holds the weapon. My left hand reaches out. I slide my fingers through the there-but-not-there dust, into that shadow, curl them under the lid-half closest to me. The polished wood feels cool against my skin. I grip tight,and pull. It moves a tiny amount, then resists. I broke my lid and when I did it opened; maybe if I can wedge the golden bar in that space, I can—

Em, are you there? The muffled voice comes from across the aisle, from the girl. Then, bordering on panic: Did you leave me?

I rush back to her coffin.

Sorry, I’m here. I found something I can use. I’m going to try and break the lid and get you out. It will be loud. Hold on, okay?

Okay. Just please hurry.

I lift the weapon over my head, then smash it against the lid. It makes a dull thud when it hits, denting the dark material, making the whole lid vibrate off a hovering sheen of dust.

It feels good to hit something. Really good. I swing again, harder this time, feel my lip curl into a snarl as the metal strikes home. Again and again, each time harder than the last, smashing a carving of a big cat, crushing a stepped pyramid, chipping away the polished surface to reveal white wood beneath.

Finally, something breaks: the lid splits down the middle. The long halves slide to the coffin’s sides, revealing an older girl with long, thick, curly red hair spilled across her face. Her eyes squeeze shut against the light. Crimson bars pin her down. She’s wearing a white shirt that’s too small for her, an embroidered red tie, and a short plaid skirt.

She’s breathing fast. Her face is wrinkled up and her head is twitching a little, like she thinks someone is about to hit her but she can’t see the blow coming and can’t run away.

Em? Is that you?

I take her hand in mine. Her grip is weak, but her skin is warm and soft.

It’s me, I say. It’s okay.

"Thank you, Em, oh, thank you. Can you undo these bars?"

I can. Stay very still.

A couple of carefully aimed strikes from my weapon are all it takes to shatter the brittle old metal.

She lifts her hands to her chest, rubs at her wrists. The skin there is barely scuffed at all—did she even try to fight her way free?

Hold on, I say, let me help you out of there.

I set the weapon down.

I help her sit up, help her ease out of the coffin. It’s a challenge, because she’s so weak and I’m barely stronger than she is. She puts one foot down to stand, but her legs won’t hold her—she falls into me, sending us both tumbling. We land in a dust-puffing heap, still holding each other.

We don’t move. We lie there for a moment, shivering, clinging together, coughing slightly. She holds me tight, so tight that I know we feel the same way: neither of us knows what’s happening, but we are not alone, and for that we are deeply grateful.

Lightless by Caitlin Higgins

Like Gravity and The Martian, C.A. Higgin's debut novel sets a deeply human story against the epic backdrop of outer space. It is the story of Althea, a young female engineer fighting for survival in desperate circumstances--her ship has been invaded by two mysterious men with a dark mission. It is also the story of Ivan, a so-called terrorist who might be a revolutionary--but whose secrets run even deeper. Set over the course of just three days in a small, claustrophobic ship, with the tension and suspense of Alien and the galaxy-spanning adventure of Leviathan Wakes...but its darkest mysteries lie in the hearts of its characters.

Lightless is out in hardcover and ebook on September 22, 2015. And look for the thrilling sequel, Supernova, in 2016!

Click here to find out more information about the book.

Chapter 1: Initial Conditions

When there was something wrong in the Ananke, Althea knew.

The Ananke was a special ship.  The Ananke was a miracle—a miracle of engineering, a miracle of physics, a miracle of computing.  The Ananke was beautiful, its gravity-producing mass nestled in its center, contained by a cage of sparking magnets, and the rest of the ship curling out over that core, the lights of windows studding its black spiral like bioluminescence.  When it drifted through black space it looked like an extinct creature of Terran ocean depths, a creature out of time and into space.  The Ananke was Althea’s, in heart if not in law, and Althea knew her every inch.

And for that reason, when there was something wrong in the Ananke, Althea knew.

Scan of the filtration system reports no abnormalities, said Domitian from behind her.  The crew of the Ananke was so small that even the captain had to aid with System-mandated tasks.  He sat on the opposite end of the control room, running scans on the other end of the U-shaped control panel.  The room was narrow enough that Althea could have turned around, stretched out her arm, shadow cast on the dull metal tiles, and touched his broad shoulder with the tips of her fingers.

Right, muttered Althea, her eyes tripping from line to line on the code scrolling up the screen.

Did you finish the atmospheric check? asked Domitian, his voice a low rumble from behind her.

I’m running it again.

Domitian said, steady, solid, Is there something wrong?

Althea didn’t answer him, only continued to scan the results displayed before her.  I’m okay, said the scans, in the language of math and code, but they were wrong, she knew it.

Althea became aware of movement behind her, the scraping of a chair against the metal of the floor, the sound of Domitian’s boots against the deck.  She felt him lean over, hand braced against the wall.  The underlighting from the display making his cragged cheeks, covered with grey stubble, look rough like old stone.

Show me what you’re seeing when you see it, he said.  The System wants a report of anything that might be wrong.

Althea knew.  That was why she was running this scan again—for the third time, not that she would tell Domitian—on the faintest feeling of something off.  The System kept order, kept peace, and something that great could not be afraid— and yet, the System had sent down a mandate for increased security, and if there were enough cause for the System to enforce these kind of countermeasures, then Althea was worried enough about her ship to run the scans a third time on a distant suspicion.

Do you think it’s that terrorist? Althea asked, as the scan scrolled on.

She felt rather than saw Domitian glance up at the ever-present surveillance camera in the corner of the room.  The Ananke would record everything that camera saw, and then would send a copy to the System.  All ships did, System or not; all locations on planet or off, public or private, did the same.

It’s not for us to speculate, said Domitian.  "Just make sure the Ananke is fine."

The orders to increase security had come on the heels of a System-wide raise of the terrorism threat level.  Althea didn’t think it was too far a leap to connect the two, but Domitian was right.  They were probably not supposed to know.

Althea saw the error before she consciously recognized it.  There, she said, and paused the scan.  It was small, so it had passed by too fast for her to notice twice before, but now that she saw it was glaringly off, glaringly wrong, clearly stitched together with two disparate pieces, like someone had sewn the head of a man to the body of a dog.  Someone else’s code had been inserted into her own.  Whoever had done it was skillful, anyone else wouldn’t have noticed; Althea almost had not.

She read it through.

It’s the docking bay, she said, and then rose, knocking into Domitian’s chest in her sudden urgency.  Someone’s boarded.

Domitian was already moving before Althea had finished the last word, checking his sidearm, any signs of paternal patience vanished from his face.

Go to the armory, he said, terse.  Arm yourself, and take the spares as well.  Then join me in the docking bay.  Lock the control room after yourself and be on your guard.

Should I wake Gagnon?  Althea had half to chase him; he was already out the door.

No time, said Domitian, and then he was stalking down the hall with his gun out, one hand ready to fire, the palm of the other beneath to brace it.

Althea took a breath—adrenaline was making her hands tremble.

Then she did as she was ordered, and let training take over.  She locked the door to the control room, sent an advisement to the System of their situation, went to the armory and took the three guns inside, clipping two to her belt and taking just a single magazine of ammunition, which she thrust into the frame of the gun she’d chosen for herself with only the faintest tremor still in her fingers.

Then she headed back up the Ananke’s single long, winding hallway, the spine of the ship, feeling the pull of gravity lessen the further she got away from the ship’s lightless core.  It was because she knew the Ananke so well that instead of going directly to join Domitian in the docking bay, she paused in front of the door leading to the physical location of the Ananke’s mission databanks.

If someone wanted access to the most highly classified System information that the Ananke knew, this was where they would go.

Althea took a breath, flexed her hand around her gun—brought up her other hand to brace it—and then pushed the door inwards, bursting into the data repository, a steely dark room filled with computer towers flashing dim blue lights..

On the opposite end of the room, bent over the room’s one direct computer interface, stood the figure of a man.

Don’t move! said Althea, and he raised his hands into the air.

He was slender, on the short side but taller than Althea, with pale blonde hair cropped close.  He was wearing cat-burgling clothes, a tight black turtleneck and fitted black pants with black boots, so well-worn that they didn’t creak as he slowly straightened up, black-gloved hands upraised.  Althea stepped carefully into the room, eying the corners for accomplices.  It would be difficult for anyone to hide among the dense-packed wires and data towers, the neurons of the ship, that covered the steely grey of the walls and even stretched to the gridded ceiling, but Althea would take no chances.

The man started to turn around.  Althea snapped, I said don’t move!

The man completed the turn, and Althea was briefly struck silent.  The most brilliant blue Althea had ever seen had been in the sky of the equatorial region on Earth, where she had gone for a brief vacation from her studies.  That did not compare to the brilliant color of the man’s eyes.  His appearance in the Ananke’s databanks was as unsettling as if the one who had been the most beautiful of God’s angels had stepped out of the ether onto the Ananke and started to fiddle with the computer.

It’s always a pleasure, said the stranger, and his accent was strange and shifting, Terran now, Martian then, a trace of icy Miranda in the vowels, to be held at gunpoint by a beautiful woman.

He smiled at her.  He had a smile like a wolf.

The sight of that smile loosened Althea’s tongue.  Who are you? she said.

A passing traveler.

What do you want with my ship?

"Your ship?" said the stranger, with keen interest, but before Althea could respond her name was barked down the winding hall of the ship.

Althea!  It was Domitian.

In here.

She heard not one, but two sets of footsteps, and saw Domitian shoving another man in front of him.  There were only three crew members on the Ananke; this man was not one of them, and with a sinking heart Althea realized that this was a second intruder.  The new stranger was taller, darker than the blue-eyed man, with a fringe of brown hair hanging into his eyes.  He had one arm tucked up against his chest, his other arm holding it in place, and Althea’s eyes lingered on the swollen portion of his forearm, oddly bent, that indicated a violent and recent break.  It was nothing a session in a System medical brace would not heal in a matter of days, but it had to be painful.

At the sight of him, the blue-eyed stranger’s jaw grew tighter, and tighter still when Domitian shoved him ungently forward to join the blue-eyed man at the back of the room.  Seeing them together, the familiar way they traded glances, Althea realized that they knew one another.  They must have boarded together.

Empty your pockets, said Domitian, with his gun trained on both men.  Turn them out.

The man with the broken arm scowled, seemed about to protest, but the blue-eyed man, with expression inscrutable, immediately turned out his pockets, letting a knife, a few small tools, and a variety of data storage chips clatter onto the floor like flakes of steely snow.  The man with the broken arm followed suit, similar items appearing, but slender twisted bars following.  For a moment Althea could not think what they might be, and wondered why he was carrying twisted bits of wire.  Then she realized that breaking onto the Ananke would require more than picking electronic locks, it would require opening physical doors as well.  The bits of wire and metal must be lockpicks.  She lifted her gun back up.

I want them in separate rooms, said Domitian to Althea, in his calm, even voice.  The two men watched him closely, like dogs sizing each other up.  Althea was faintly relieved to have been excused from the blue-eyed man’s attention.  One in the ship’s brig, one in the storeroom nearby.

And what if we don’t go? said the blue-eyed man.

Your friend tried to resist me, said Domitian.  I snapped his arm.  What do you want me to do to you?

The blue-eyed man smiled, white teeth showing.

I mean if we think getting shot would be better than going into your brig, he said, clarifying with a show of false politeness that perfectly matched his Terran accent.

Althea’s hand twitched around her gun.  For a moment she was afraid Domitian really would shoot him, or order her to fire herself.

She was not the only one; the man with the broken arm was very tense, as if he were getting ready suddenly to move.  Domitian didn’t do anything for a breath of time, his face as cold and set as stone, but then his gun twitched very slightly, angle of its trajectory changing from the blue-eyed man to the chest of the man with the broken arm.

The blue-eyed man scrutinized him for a moment longer, then glanced at his friend and nodded very slightly.  Domitian led the way out of the room, the two strangers following, and Althea keeping up the rear, her finger slipping from the trigger guard to the trigger and back again.

There was no trouble putting the strangers in their cells.  Domitian must have judged the blue-eyed man to be the more dangerous of the two, and so he ended up in the Ananke’s one genuine cell, and the injured man in an empty metal room with the door locked from the outside.  Both rooms were near the very lowest part of the ship, in the very last part of the Ananke’s spiraled hallway, where the gravity and the tidal forces were at their strongest.  It made even Althea, accustomed to the Ananke, dizzy to stay too long down here.

As soon as the door had shut behind the blue-eyed man, blocking out his disquieting gaze, Domitian turned to Althea and said shortly, Wake Gagnon, send him to join me.  There may be more intruders.  You go back to the control room.  Lock yourself inside, update the System of our status, monitor the computer and the cameras.  Find out their identity.  We’ll communicate via the intercom, but keep chatter to a minimum.  Clear?

Yes, sir, said Althea, and left.

Three Moments of an Explosion

by China Miéville

For readers of George Saunders' The Tenth of December and Karen Russell's Vampires in the Lemon Grove comes a new and provocative collection of short stories from the beloved New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of The City & The City and Kraken.

Miéville has long been a darling of the mainstream media; here is the collection that will appeal to the mainstream reader that made bestsellers of George Saunders and Karen Russell. Eight years in the making, this collection bristles with staggering concepts and unforgettable images. By turns speculative, satirical, heart-wrenching, and spooky, fresh in form and language, these stories reveal an alternate version of our own universe: one in which art not only reflects humanity's violence but causes it, and nature has turned the tables, making mankind the endangered species.

Three Moments of an Explosion will be available August 4, 2015 in hardcover and ebook.

Click here to find out more information about the book.

The 9th Technique

The Precise Diner was on the outskirts of Rhode Island, near the interstate, at the end of a strip mall that had seen both worse and better days. The diner’s name and its better-than-necessary food, its posters for vampire films from Turkey and Vietnam, the worn toys that filled its wall nooks, combined to ensure that a good proportion of its customers were students. They would come in and haul chairs from un- or underoccupied tables and crowd them around their own in large boisterous groups.

Alongside that young clientele, and the quieter locals who indulged them, were a few muscular men and women, all sitting alone. They were not many, but there were enough of them, and they were distinctive enough, to be noticeable. Each sat and ate and waited for something.

There was one woman who was clearly no soldier, as it took little in their bearing for her to gather the other solitary diners were. Her name was Koning. She was not old, though she wore her hair in a way that one generally only saw on the old, and rarely even on them these days. She wore drab clothes, not quite convincingly. She was heavy and heavy-browed and well-made-up. She had been sitting alone for a long time, watching everyone who came in while slowly she ate first a bowl of oatmeal, then at last a lunch of salad and pasta as small and as late as she could get away with without infuriating the staff. She was unique in the room in being a buyer waiting for a seller, a civilian hanging on for a soldier.

Every hour or so, a customer would come in and tentatively approach one or other of the soldiers’ tables. He or she might glance at a picture on a phone, or a scribbled description, to make sure this was the right contact. The newcomer would sit opposite the waiting diner and whisper. The students never let up speaking and laughing loudly, insufferably, a useful braying camouflage.

At the quieter tables, the new arrivals would pass envelopes into which, with varying degrees of insouciance, the off-duty soldiers would peer. In exchange they might hand something over when they passed the salt (if their companions ordered food for appearance’s sake), or nod at gym bags stashed ready by their visitors’ chairs, or reach across the table and put objects gently in top pockets. The buyers would always exit quickly after such handovers.

Some of the shouting young must have been paying a bit of attention, but most were genuinely oblivious, Koning thought, watching them and the exchanges they missed. The symbiosis between those students and the sellers of illicit wares they thought of, if at all, as local color, was, on the former’s part, mostly sincerely blind.

The soldiers did not acknowledge each other. They would arrive, be ushered to a table at the room’s edge and wait and eat while those who had contacted them worked up the courage to come in. Few of their buyers were local, and caveat emptor, they would think, as they hedged and hemmed and hawed outside and made their dealers wait, as they fussed about the wards and protections they suspected surrounded the venue, the investigators watching. Which there were. The Precise was a locus for attention, but attention quite unconcerned by such as them.

Koning watched many exchanges. Even caught one or two eyes, and dropped them again. At last, mid-afternoon, and the most patient of her servers growing curt with each offer of more coffee, each refill of iced water, a tall massive man in his early thirties came in, looked around, ran a hand over his stubbled scalp and nodded at her. He sat and ordered the special without asking what it was.

You’re very late, she said.

Go fuck yourself, he said. Both spoke mildly. He ate whatever it was that came enthusiastically. She did not look at it either. They eyed each other.

Koning pushed a book across the table at him. He picked it up, raised an eyebrow and nodded. It was an old leather-bound edition. Gotto, the cover read. Lafcadio Hearne.

Classy, he said.

Instead of an envelope, she said.

Yes, I get it, he said. He opened it and flicked through the first pages.

He went to Japan, Koning said. It’s about Japanese ghosts.

I know who he is, the man said, and added, Not just ghosts. He looked closely at the book. You might think him a dealer. He thumbed more pages, until halfway through the volume he reached the point where they were painstakingly glued together, solidified, hollowed and made into a box. In which, though he did not open it to look, was money.

It’s all there, the woman said.

What if I want to read it? he said. He sounded mournful. What if I get halfway through this book and want to know what happens next?

There was more silence. Then you can take the money out and buy yourself another copy, Koning said. He grinned like a boy.

Yeah, he said. Philistine. He closed the book without ever checking its hidden compartment or its contents. He put it in his bag, and brought out a small, stoppered bottle. The woman glanced around and back at him.

Should you be . . . ? she said quietly, indicating the surrounds. He made a disdainful noise.

Come on, he said. He waggled the bottle and something tiny rattled within. The woman winced and took it from him. She held it up to the light.

In the glass was a clot like dark earth, finger-sized and studded, gnarled with tiny things impossible to identify, that did not look as if they belonged in the ground. She breathed out in reverence. Her heart was going fast and she wanted to keep staring, but she put the bottle away. The man continued to eat. Koning had expected him to leave.

So it was you who got it? she said finally.

Me. I pulled it out. Right out of the box. I took it out.

How long have you . . .? She spoke carefully. She stopped, struggled and went on. How long were you stationed at Guantánamo?

The man looked at her with some kind of inscrutability. Chewed slowly. After a long time he shrugged and swallowed and wiped his mouth with his napkin.

Long enough, he said, to go get that. It was a long time ago.

Koning had mined the bulletin boards, hacking secrets, sniffing sources. She’d spent years on her investigations. She knew how to track things down. In this particular economy to be a shopper took effort and arcana. She could have made an informed attempt at identifying several specific transactions occurring at the Precise while she was there: these commodities were not anonymous.

Across the globe, in dark places of the earth, secret lairs were rarely caves of monsters or marvels but markets. Shops. The worst-kept secret in circulation was that certain activities invested items in their proximity with certain affects, effects, and powers, and made them hugely valuable. And that thus it was imperative that they be sold. That, certainly, had been the case for as long as there had been people and things, but there were always fluctuations. The occult economies of charged items were always jostling. War had flooded the market.

Helmets that remembered the last sounds heard by those who died. Melted iPods pried from burnt-out tanks—if you could make them play again, they would infuriate djinn. What you wanted, the level and the type of item, would dictate where you went to buy. If you were doing business with a soldier in the eastern third of the U.S., the Precise was one of few possible venues. An illicit economy, of course, but equally of course one tacitly permitted. Like looting, like rape, so long as it was conducted within limits of plausible deniability, a degree of witchery, theft, and fencing was a perk of service, and it relied on the black market in artifacts.

You have asked for this office’s views on whether certain proposed conduct would violate the prohibition against torture found at section 2340A of title 18 of the United States code. Koning could recite the passages. She had recited them. Why would you not? That was what they were for.

There were ten techniques to run. Attention grasp. Walling. Facial hold and slap. A brilliant document. Yoo and Bybee, prophets without honor, martyrs and Crowleys of the State Department. Lists make magic, the rhythm of itemized words: you do not list ten techniques, numbered and chantable, in austere prose appropriate for some early-millennium rebooted Book of Thoth, and not know that you have written an incantation.

Actions of unpersoning, and positions, deprivations, and the waterboard. Quite stuffed with fret, that last one. That was the locus of attention, in and beyond the mainstream. Abomination from one perspective, it was advertising copy from another. Koning could never have afforded that cloth, that first soaked cloth. It was, she understood, still wet all these years on from that first questioning. It could now do all manner of things towels wet or not had no business being able to.

But hidden, like Bybee behind Yoo, was a less celebrated spell. Behind number 10, the crescendo, that water, was the 9th technique.

9. Insects placed in a confinement box. You would like—Again these were the words of the lawyer-magi. Koning was never without the memo on her person. Quietly she read again the words she knew and emitted a bad guttural sound to speak the black redactions. She wrapped the bottle in the printout. You would like to place Zubaydah in a cramped confinement box with an insect. You have informed us—those plurals and the consummate second person, talking across time, addressing all the later scandalized readers of those pieces declassified in a brilliant act of exonerative amplification, making everyone complicit. All purveyors of the demand post facto, all part of the collective. This you have informed us, they whispered. You have informed us that Zubaydah appears to have a fear of insects. In particular, you would like to tell Zubaydah that you intend to place a stinging insect into the box with Zubaydah. You would, however, place a harmless insect into the box.

He was crammed in there, the man soldier told Koning. You have orally informed us that you would in fact place a harmless insect such as a caterpillar in the box with Zubaydah.

That’s what it was.

A small room, a soiled and wet-legged man hauled away without care. The confines of the chamber seeming still to vibrate with his recent screams. Koning imagined the man who was now gathering his money-stuffed and reconfigured book then reaching into the box past piss-pools, reaching for the bewildered, peristalsising, miraculously uncrushed little government weapon in the war against terror.

The little motherfucker cocooned up a couple of days after I got it out, the man said. He was standing, pulling on his jacket. He made no effort to lower his voice. A couple of the other customers glanced at him. Koning waited for her magic pusher to continue. When he did not, she said, It isn’t dead. She looked closely at what she had bought.

I know, he said. No. He held up a finger. I don’t care what you want it for. I can see it about to come out of your mouth. He smiled. He winked in friendly fashion and walked out, leaving Koning gazing at the chrysalis, to leave when she was sure he had gone.

Koning was a self-made expert. She snuggled what she’d bought in the nest she had made of shredded grimoire and scrunched-up rules of engagement. She watched it. It did nothing.

She tended it insofar as anyone could tend a carapace, hard outlines, inert edges. It did not have the look of something spun: it seemed accreted. From bits of things organic and not, a scab of metal and soil leavings. She strove for patience during the thing’s slow becoming.

Metamorphosis is death. Inside a pupa larval flesh breaks down utterly, as if in chemical spill. Eyes do not become other eyes nor mouthparts mouths. All parts are lost in a reconfiguring slop, as absolutely formless as a salted slug, that ex liquid nihilo self-organizes into a quite other animal. A cocoon is not a transformation pod but an execution chamber, one that doubles as a birthplace, and is parsimonious with matter.

Saturated with the specifics of Zubaydah’s moment the caterpillar, or whatever it was now, was bloated with more than physical calories. Nurse that right, how could it not on its intricate and extruded emergence unfold not only new limbs, not only many-hinged jaws and paper wings burring with stiff motion, but time too. It shared its matter backward. Insects are echoes: that’s always the secret. They are translations of screaming hinges into bug-body form, sound for chitin-point manifestation. Push a big door right, it opens in all its iterations.

The flea, the ghost of which Blake celebrated and traduced. The killer of Alexander. The jiggers that infected the Santa Maria’s crew, exiling them on their ruinously invaded feet. How to reach through history to such as them, to all the insect bodies like holes drilled in time? How to yank at them and make changes?

Koning had a plan. Who doesn’t have a plan? As if the power of insect time-tinkering in general was not enough of a draw. For her there was a scheme of lunatic and grandiose scale. It had for years had her spending family money on sideshow nonsense and impossibilities. A mention of the para-economy of war-wrought artifacts and a long chain of connections later, and here at last she sat, in her room, watching the chrysalis of Zubaydah’s tormenting unstinging insect, waiting for it to hatch, to open into the insect road.

It barely matters what she wanted, though it mattered vastly to her. Something had gone wrong: something had got us here. Something had been—this was her wager—truncated. Insect-fouled, interrupted, deflected to this insect telos. That she had bought, a first step to a fix. She wanted to reach down the opening it would hatch. She had a vampire to swat. A complicated long-gone politics to finesse. How, but down the insect road, could she tussle with the mosquito hungry for Lord-Protector blood, the parasites of which had spittle-ridden into the body of Cromwell, at last in his sweats to kill him? A complex ambition to reshape history, to tweak the development of the Mother of Parliaments, by nudging the date of a regicide’s malarial death.

Koning stared for many hours at what she had. She would bend over the bottle, stroke its glass with her nail, lift it up occasionally, shake it very gently. She tried to resist the urge, to let it be.

She slept in her study where she would wake abruptly and repeatedly throughout the night and go to where she had left the specimen, beside the powered-down monitors and unused equipment to which she had originally intended to attach it. When she sat up in the small hours of the third or fourth morning of her ownership, she felt something very faint move across her face. When she turned on the light it was swaying as if something had pulled it back on its flex, and just released it. She stood underneath and, though