… is my favourite line from space opera horror book, Terminus.

Here’s the rest of the extract…

Almost compassionately the Thanaton extended his fingers so that the tips were touching the human. When they made contact, every nerve in Terminus’s body screamed in pain.

‘Kneel!’ the Thanaton commanded. Terminus did as he was told and the pain stopped.

‘I knew you would return. You are the boy from the new colony’s station. Once we touch a soul, it is ours. Destiny serves us and brings our harvest back to us.’

‘You remember me? From all those years ago?’

‘As if seconds have passed. But you are too late. Your place has been taken. Anwar has given his flesh for us.’ He nodded to the politico.

Terminus was nearly gagging at what he was hearing. ‘You were gonna do that to me? You were gonna cut me open if I’d come with you all those years ago?’

‘You would have begged us to. You would have been prepared, tutored. The darklight would have come to you and you would have torn off your own skin to serve us. Too late now. Your precious flesh has been contaminated by a woman’s fetid touch. But you can still have the honor of spiritual defilement by one of the very Thirteen. Stand and follow me, Terminus.’

His head began to swim, just as it did all those years ago. Choices sapped away until his legs brought him to a halt. But he needed to take action. Terminus used all his mental strength to break this spell. He turned and fired, the bolt taking the Lung-man’s head apart. Soft reddish goo exploded into the air as the body fell. In a sudden rush of inspiration he aimed the fire-blaster at the anatomically compromised politico.

‘You ganntas move aside or your experiment gets it.’ He shifted the sights more precisely to the politico and his mass of organs. Terminus knew this thing was mortal, was flesh, and could be destroyed.

The Arachnid stood firm. ‘You have to understand your destiny. We had great work for you. You weren’t the first of your kind we encountered but your destiny-line was so rich. You had to be harvested.’ The member of the Thirteen took a step closer. ‘We are older than your adopted world, older than your homeworld, Terminus. We are all-seeing.’

Click here for more information  on Terminus, including the author’s introductions to space-monsters and space-swearing. Click here to enter the Goodreads competition to win a paperback copy.

The second book of the Skyfire Chronicles, Unauthorized Contact, will be launched at Fantasycon 2012