Bleeding Rock – Sneak Peak

This is a sneak peak of my latest book Bleeding Rock now available everywhere books are sold!

Mauve, a talented mechanic, always dreamed of leaving her satellite home. So she didn’t think twice before signing up for a routine planetary survey.
When Mauve awakes from the landing hanging upside down it is clear something went wrong. She will need all her mechanical knowledge to get the mission back on track.
But the crash landing is only the start of her troubles.
With her AI assistant Mauve must use everything she discovers on this alien world to escape it.
If you enjoy science fiction exploration stories with elements of horror then you’ll love Bleeding Rock!

Chapter 1

The seat belts of the driver’s seat cut into Mauve’s shoulders. The cockpit seemed fine as Mauve glanced over the control board. Something was off, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. It felt like the ship had just done a high-g maneuver and she was on the wrong wall of the ship. In a ship she would only have to wait a few seconds and the artificial gravity would return to normal or the ship would do a high-g maneuver in another direction . Instead, she was just stuck in this state of being wrong. She hated it.

On top of this, her head was throbbing as if the padded headrest had hit her too hard, but it wasn’t quite that. Her head hurt from the inside like a balloon that was about to burst. Then it clicked.

“Franton,” she addressed the ship’s artificial intelligence, “am I upside-down?”

“Affirmative,” it responded in its androgynous voice. “The rover you took shelter in sustained some damages but stayed connected to the floor of the dock. Unfortunately, the dock has sustained considerable damages and seems to be inverted in its orientation.”

This is fantastic, Mauve thought. Her first taste of life planet-side and she was already experiencing the effects of a planet’s natural and full gravity. Life on ships and satellites had gravity, but they were artificial and manipulatable. This was the constant and unchangeable force one got to experience when standing on the surface of a massive rock in space. It was effects like this that she’d been waiting all her life to experience, and here she was seated in an upside-down rover in the dock of a crashed spaceship. How many other mechanics I apprenticed with would ever get to experience this? she wondered. Unfortunately, the throbbing continued, and if she were going to continue to experience the beauty of this natural planet, she would have to figure out how to get her orientation corrected.

“Fran, what can we do to get me upright again?”

“I am trying to re-establish communication with the ship.”

“Have you done any biometric scans on me?” Her body felt alright, a little sore here or there, and her head was killing her by now. Franton would know for sure if she’d broken any bones or sustained any serious internal injuries.

 “I’m running that scan right now.”

“I can’t stay suspended like this for much longer.”

“Affirmative, I just want to make sure that you haven’t sustained any serious damage before you move.”

Mauve gripped the arms of the driver’s seat and hooked her foot around a piece of metal that it found. She grimaced as her back tensed with pain, but she powered through. With her free hand, she punched the emergency release of the seat belt. She was free from the straps and was only being held in the chair by her own muscles. The low ceiling of the cabin wasn’t far from her, and she imagined doing a summersault to land on it. It was a maneuver she could have done in the artificial gravity of a satellite’s gym, but there were dampeners there to protect her from her mistakes.

Gripping the armrest with both hands, she let go with her foot. Her body twisted around her shoulder sockets, and she was oriented correctly with gravity. The strange position pulled her hands off sooner than she’d anticipated, and she fell to the roof of the cockpit. She cursed as her knee caught the brunt of her fall before her legs could soften her impact.

“Mauve, I haven’t completed your biometric scan. That maneuver could have worsened your internal bleeding.”

The blood drained from Mauve’s head, and she began to be able to focus on her situation. “I suspect your biometric scans would have told you there was too much blood in my head and my back was hurt. I can now add that my knee isn’t in great shape and my back is definitely not loving that fall.”

“I will have my sensors focus on figuring out what’s wrong with your back.”

“Can we have you focus on how to get out of this mess?”

“I am currently trying to establish communication and see if the crew can come to your assistance.”

Mauve snorted some laughter at the idea of the crew of scientists being able to get her out of the inverted dock. The bulk of the ship’s weight was in the dock along with any serious machinery that would help them help her. Nevertheless, having communication set up with an outside party was always helpful; she had no clue what the planet around her was like.

“How’d we get into this mess in the first place?” she asked, figuring Franton could hold a conversation, scan her, and try to establish communication at the same time.

“I’m sorry, Mauve, that is my fault.”

“You crashed the ship?” Her tone was more impressed than anything. Franton was a network of high-density computational nodes that created an artificial intelligence that had helped humankind for years. Anything from engineering and navigating starships to helping brew a cup of coffee in the morning. A single marble of Franton had more computational power than humanity’s first starship, so the idea of Franton making a mistake wasn’t something Mauve had expected to experience in her lifetime.

“The black box hasn’t been recovered, but reverse-engineering the crash data, I believe that I miscalculated the trajectory and velocity of our atmospheric entry.”

“Well, that’s interesting, but this is where we’re at. How do we get out of here?”

“Wait for the crew to come.”

“You don’t really think that’s going to happen, do you? We’re going to have to do this on our own.” She began to point out all the reasons the crew, even if they did want to see her, wouldn’t be able to help.

Soon enough Franton conceded with the caveat that Mauve take things easy until they understood the severity of her injuries.

“Great! What are the rover’s scanners saying?” 

During the crash, Mauve had decided to take shelter inside of the rover she was in now. It was an A class Tichenowa research rover that was standard for all planetary missions and was known for being over-engineered to handle the tough unknown scenarios of planetary exploration. Mauve remembered joking with her mechanic friends someone could survive a crash landing in one of these things if they had to. She was looking forward to bragging to them that she’d done just that when she got communication with the central system back. Although the pain in her back was proof that it was less superior to the crash-couches that the crew had taken shelter in. 

Odds were good they were feeling great after the landing and were already establishing communication with the mothership to get them rescued. She could be out there with them, safe and comfortable in her crash couch, if she hadn’t been banished to the dock during the landing. Well, she hadn’t actually been banished; the crew had told her to be somewhere besides the cockpit. They likely meant her small bunk room, where there was a crash couch for her to take cover in, but the landing was supposed to be simple and routine and the dock was far more comfortable and spacious. By the time the alarms went off to take cover in a crash couch, she didn’t have time to get to hers, so she’d done the next best thing and taken cover in the rover.

Franton presented what the rover’s scanners were showing of the dock on the screen embedded in the rover’s console. The image was inverted, but with Mauve sitting on the ceiling, it looked more similar to the dock than she’d expected. Some crates had become unstrapped and were now resting on the roof, but most of them had stayed in place. “Where’s the door? Can we just open it and get out of here?”

“The door will not open; I’ve attempted it a few times now. But I’m not sure why. It could be internal damage that I’m not reading or something external since I don’t have communication with the hull sensors.”

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If you enjoyed this and want to keep reading you can buy Bleeding Rock as an eBook or Paperback wherever books are sold.