QSFer R,M. Olson has a new queer sci-fi/horror book out (bi, gay, lesbian, non-binary), The Dark Between the Stars book 3: Blackrock.
There’s something lurking in the caverns under Blackrock…
The pirate settlement of Blackrock depends for oxygen on the vast algae vats set into caverns deep under the surface of the rocky moon. But recently, vat workers have been turning up dead. And not natural deaths—they’re shooting their own friends, walking off 30-metre drops, stepping out into the path of a ghost to be torn to pieces, driven mad with terror. The overworked doctors at the small hospital can’t find any trace of what’s causing it, but everyone who’s come back alive swears there’s something down in the caverns beneath Blackrock. Something alive. Something unnatural. Something that wants them dead.
Jem and the rest of Puppy’s small medical crew answered the pirates’ distress call, and they’ve promised they’d do whatever they could to help. And Jem has spent thirteen years running from her own terror and guilt. But deep in the caverns below Blackrock, she and the rest of the crew will have to face up to a terror they can’t run from, unless they’re willing to let the entire settlement of Blackrock die.
And Puppy’s crew could never do that.
Set in the world of The Devil and the Dark, Blackrock is the third book in R.M. Olson’s gripping space-horror series, The Dark Between Stars.
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Excerpt
The four of them stepped out of the lift and into the mist of the small, low-ceilinged space beyond.
Jeb had been right—it was dark here. Rough corridors cut into the porous black rock led in half a dozen directions off the small room, and the overhead lights flickered, glowing eerily off the mist that coiled up around their legs in a thick white fog.
Irrationally, Shine wanted to step back out of the mist before it could touch him, his whole body shuddering at the contact. But Puppy was already in the centre of the room, examining the map on his comm. “This way, I think,” he said, gesturing down one of the corridors. “It isn’t far.”
Indigo, now that they weren’t leading the way, trailed behind, looking around them with interest, but Thaddeus stepped up beside Shine as they walked. “There are a hundred potential infection vectors here if this is an illness,” he said in a low voice. “Look at the walls, the ceiling, the mist…” He gestured, and Shine followed his gaze reluctantly.
Everything was dripping with moisture, even more than on the upper levels, and even in the dim light he could see the creeping lines of mold, the fur of oddly shaped mosses in the corners where the light barely touched. The floor was slick with a combination of moisture and slime that seemed to stick to Shine’s boots in a way that didn’t feel entirely natural.
“If it’s an illness?” Shine replied in a low voice. “What the hell else do you think it might be?”
Thaddeus hesitated, then shrugged. “It’s…not impossible that there’s something living down here. Something besides moss and mold and the algae in the vats, I mean.”
Shine frowned, but he could feel his heartbeat speed up in his chest. “What the hell are you talking about?” he hissed.
Thaddeus gave him a wry look, and there was something in his face that told Shine that even Thaddeus didn’t like this place. “I don’t want to think about it anymore than you do,” he said, lowering his voice more. “But I don’t know of any disease that can cut someone’s throat open.”
“It was probably just Jeb. He was obviously hallucinating. Probably found his friend fallen on the ground or something and slit his throat without knowing what he was doing. He could have dropped the knife on the way back, be easy enough to miss it.” Shine gestured at the mist choking the ground.
Thaddeus nodded slowly. “It’s possible,” he said. “We can hope.”
“I think we’re here.” Puppy’s voice echoed oddly in the mist.
Shine and Thaddeus glanced at each other and strode quickly up to join him.
He was standing in a small recess in the dripping walls—nothing out of the ordinary; the caverns down here didn’t have the well-worn look of the caverns on the upper levels, sculpted through years and years of human lives and footprints and needs. These were rough, smoothed a little with age, but looking like there had been little done to the natural caverns in the rock.
Puppy was looking around him, a frown on his face, and his forehead creased in something between concern and sadness.
“This is where the young man Holdfast told us about died. The one who was killed by a ghost.”
Shine frowned as well, stepping forward.
He wondered if he was imagining the traces of a darker colour staining the smooth rock surface when the mist eddied and swirled around his feet at his movement.
He glanced over his shoulder and shivered a little.
The lifts were in easy sight from here. He’d thought, when Holdfast told the story, that the kid had been lost somewhere. Maybe, if he’d been lost and hallucinating in the dark tunnels under Blackrock, he’d thought, maybe he’d take a ghost over a slower, more lingering death. But that hadn’t been it. The kid would have been able to see the lifts, even huddled in here. And the recess wasn’t a bad hiding place. Shine had lived with ghosts for as long as he’d been alive. He knew what you did when there were ghosts, and if he had to find a place to hide from a ghost, this wouldn’t be a bad one. If you were very, very quiet and still, there was a good chance the ghost would pass you by.
What had Holdfast said? He hadn’t even gone for his sparker?
Shine shivered.
Thaddeus and Puppy were inspecting the small space, taking swabs, talking to each other in low voices about technical things that Shine probably wouldn’t understand, and Indigo was standing outside the small recess, back to the wall. Even they looked uneasy.
Shine stepped back into the corridor and glanced down it. The corridor stretching away from the lifts went on for a while before turning, and the mist that swirled and drifted in unseen currents gave the illusion of motion, even when there wasn’t any.
At least, he thought there wasn’t any.
The words of the man in the hospital bed whispered in his ears: “Told you about the mist and the shadows. You get used to them. But it weren’t until then that I realized that this time…this time, there were something in the shadows. Didn’t know what it was. Still don’t know. But it were following me.”
He took a few steps down the corridor, running his gloved hand along the wall. He had to fight back a shudder—the gloves were thin enough that his skin still thought it was touching the wet of the walls.
It was rock, but there were spots where the water had eaten it away. He frowned and stopped in front of one of the spots, pushing his thumb into it gingerly.
It was deeper than he had expected, widening a little behind the wall. Like a nest or a hidey hole.
He snatched his hand out, heart pounding.
Author Bio
R.M. Olson writes feel-good space opera featuring diverse casts, found families, and loads of action. R.M. has ridden the Trans Siberian railway, jumped off the highest bungee jump in the world, gone cage-diving with great white sharks, faced down a charging buffalo bull, and knows how to milk a goat. Currently they reside in Alberta, Canada with their four children, three cats, and a dog the size of a small bear. R.M. goes hiking and skiing more often than they probably have time for, eats more chocolate than is probably good for them, and reads more books than is probably prudent.
| Author Website | https://www.rmolson.com/ |
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