Teaser Tuesday - Spooky Scenery Under The Sea #scifi #free

Because my two boys got a bonus day off school yesterday (drat those non-pupil days!) I'm sharing another excerpt for today as I'll only just have got back to work. This week it's the opening of my free scifi short and my first publication, The Bones of the Sea. Enjoy!

The place gave her the creeps. Myasi could admit that to herself now, as she made her third and final survey of the site. The morbid name given to the strange construction by early explorers couldn’t have seemed more apt as she sat in the flattened base and gazed up into the lurid green glow of the water. Above her head, the metallic legs of the structure curved up, round, and then slightly inward, like a twelve-legged spider hunched in on itself. Or a clawed hand clutching at nothing in its final, fatal spasm.

She shivered and checked her wrist display. She’d only been under a few moments, but it felt longer. The water chilled her despite the figure-hugging, bespoke thermal suit that encased her generous curves. Even if corporation regulations had permitted buying one off the peg, no standard suit would’ve fit her. Thanks to her height—above average even for a human male and with the bulk to match—all her equipment had to be made specially to order. A soft collar molded around her neck, its ugly protuberances housing the artificial gills that moved in machine-regular beats and fed modified air to the mask over her mouth and nose.

A visor covered her eyes, and in it, a bright schematic outlined the murk-dimmed pillars of the Bones of the Sea so that she could see her way, despite the gloom. The discoid base of the structure measured a modest ten meters in diameter, matched by the height of the twelve arched legs. Beneath the visible structure, buried in the soft silt of the seabed, the Bones formed a huge teardrop thirty meters long. The overall shape vaguely resembled an old Terran cephalopod—a squid. The klingeln framework, impenetrable to scans, had become encrusted with the native corals and small, static shellfish that summarized the typical level of life on Ulto Marinos—nothing more complex or dangerous than jellyfish and crustaceans. No one knew where it had come from or what it had been intended for…and no one cared. It was an obstruction to the seagrafters, and the corporation wanted it removed. Destroyed. Out of their way.

And so, they had recruited her.

A Scifi Short Story
Goodreads | Webpage
Available from... Amazon
Kobo | Omnilit | iTunes
Smashwords | B&N

Hopefully next week I'll have something more than an excerpt for you *pokes brain* :) In the meantime, the first two Portals volumes are also available to download for FREE.