Titanic premonitions | Veronica Scott

VERY excited that the audio book version of WRECK OF THE NEBULA DREAM is now available so I’ll be doing my eight sentences from it today. The narrator, a terrific actor named Michael Riffle, caught the main character perfectly. And brings the rest of the cast to life really well too LOL. (Interviewing him on the blog tomorrow BTW.)

This snippet is from early in the book, as Nick rides the shuttle to the Nebula Dream. One distraught passenger wants OFF, endangering all of them in her attempt to open an escape hatch. Nick steps in to stop her since the husband doesn’t seem to know what to do. First Nick gently disarms her while she tries to stab him. This excerpt comes after that, as the pregnant woman collapses on the deck in tears.

He’d no idea what language her people spoke – he hadn’t heard enough of it to trigger any of his implanted linguistic reflexes. Cradling her, Nick tried a reassuring murmur in Basic. “It’s all right, madame, we’re in no danger – the shuttle flies normally. There’s no need for you to –“

“Fool!” She literally spat at him, twisting her upper body so she could see his face. “If we set foot on that cursed ship, we’ll all die! My baby will die unborn with me – we must not go there.”

The story:

Traveling unexpectedly aboard the luxury liner Nebula Dream on its maiden voyage across the galaxy, Sectors Special Forces Captain Nick Jameson is ready for ten relaxing days, and hoping to forget his last disastrous mission behind enemy lines. He figures he’ll gamble at the casino, take in the shows, maybe even have a shipboard fling with Mara Lyrae, the beautiful but reserved businesswoman he meets.

All his plans vaporize when the ship suffers a wreck of Titanic proportions. Captain and crew abandon ship, leaving the 8000 passengers stranded without enough lifeboats and drifting unarmed in enemy territory. Aided by Mara, Nick must find a way off the doomed ship for himself and several other innocent people before deadly enemy forces reach them or the ship’s malfunctioning engines finish ticking down to self destruction.

But can Nick conquer the demons from his past that tell him he’ll fail these innocent people just as he failed to save his Special Forces team? Will he outpace his own doubts to win this vital race against time?

A note: WRECK was loosely inspired by the events of the Titanic sinking and there were a number of people who had premonitions of disaster prior to her sailing.