After the Storm just posted the first chapter of my novella Bone Rush. (The rest will follow on a monthly basis.)
The genre is sci-fantasy (i.e., science fiction with a tinge of fantasy). Here’s the tagline: “A newly graduated astro-archaeologist discovers a lost planet, dead legends, and a hidden killer.”
The opening is below. I hope you like it!
Mika sprinted down the Mantis’s narrow passageway, barely restraining herself from hurdling over Neto as he stumbled out of his quarters. But the ship’s gravity generator had spun back up to full strength—significantly reducing her chances of clearing the tall biologist—so she steadied him instead, then squeezed by.
“Why did Desmond end the brownout early?” she panted.
He yawned. “What?” The next section of overhead lights flickered on in a new, dimmer pattern that suggested another motion sensor had failed. “What time is it?”
“Too early for a full power cycle!” Desmond was a stickler about fuel use—and for good reason. They’d had to submit not one but two extraordinary-resource-allocation requests to get this mission approved. And even then, Fleet had granted the bare minimum. The tiny surplus that included was for emergencies only.
So for Desmond to prematurely end a regularly scheduled brownout, one of two things must have happened. Either a KI patrol had found them, and the Mantis was about to tap that surplus so they could run for their lives …
Or they’d finally reached Virendell.
Read the rest on After the Storm.
