The Dead Sun (Star Force Series Book 9), page 38
I never did learn exactly what had gone wrong inside our barn. I don’t think my parents ever figured it out either. But they were sure pissed off.
They threw Marvin roughly off our property. I found a tentacle, which my dad had ripped loose. My parents weren’t standard issue humans. They were ex-Star Force. That meant they’d been nanotized, and in my dad’s case, genetically enhanced.
The tentacle was blackened and still smoking hot. It continued operating, whipping around in the ashes long after the flames had died down. I picked it up when it cooled enough and took it to the porch to fool with it, snapping it around like a whip.
Mom had gone inside to find her first aid kit. She wasn’t too happy to discover I had a squirming memento in my hands as she came out to patch me up. She made me drop my prize in the dirt near the porch.
I wasn’t too badly hurt. Sure, I had half a dozen nail-like splinters in my back. They hadn’t gone in more than an inch, and they didn’t really hurt. I think Mom was more upset than I was about my injuries. She picked at the splinters and fussed over the puncture wounds as if they were bullet holes.
My parents had always known there was something unusual about me physically. Microbial baths had changed my dad forever, and he’d passed some of that altered DNA down to me. As a result, I was a tough kid who’d always ignored the kind of pain that brought others to tears.
While Mom stitched and salved me with nanite sutures, I stared at that tentacle. I watched it whip around like it was alive. Which I suppose it was, in a way—as much as the rest of Marvin was alive, anyway.
Over the next hour, the barn burned down to black sticks. The chickens were transformed into little round heaps of ash. I can still remember the smell—a campfire-like mixture of wood smoke and burnt feathers.
I wanted to keep the tentacle as a souvenir, but my mom wouldn’t let me. She took it away, and I never saw it again.
When I asked if Marvin would ever come back, Dad told me Marvin was always up to some kind of mischief and couldn’t be trusted to do anything quiet and normal. He said if Marvin did come back, it would be because times had changed and events were going badly for humanity again—in other words, because we needed him.
I didn’t quite understand at the time. I do recall Dad trying to explain that the robot was a devil and an angel all wrapped up into one. I guess the devilish side had risen to the forefront that day. It was years later before I really understood what he was talking about.
END of OUTCAST EXCERPT
To purchase the entirety of the tenth book in the series, search for OUTCAST on your Ebook Seller's website, or go to BVLarson.com
More Books by B. V. Larson:
STAR FORCE SERIES:
(in chronological order)
Swarm
Extinction
Rebellion
Conquest
Army of One (Novella published in Planetary Assault)
Battle Station
Empire
Annihilation
Storm Assault
The Dead Sun
Outcast
The Undying Mercenaries Series:
Steel World
Dust World
Imperium Series:
Mech Zero: The Dominant
Mech 1: The Parent
Mech 2: The Savant
Mech 3: The Empress
The Black Ship (Novella published in Five by Five)
Other SF Books:
Steel World
Element-X
Technomancer
The Bone Triangle
Z-World
Velocity
Visit BVLarson.com for more information.
B. V. Larson, The Dead Sun (Star Force Series Book 9)
