Kate of Kratos by Robert Appleton
http://www.eternalpress.ca/kateofkratos.html
Science Fiction, Adventure, 29,000 words
$5.95 US
Heat Rating: 1 flame
Cover Art © 2009 by Amanda Kelsey
Edited by Diana Rubino
Copyedited by Erin Cramer
Layout and Book Production by Ally Robertson
ebook: 978-1-926647-78-4
print: 978-1-926647-86-9

Summary:

The final installment in Robert Appleton’s sci-fi survival trilogy.

Jason Remington has been abducted by a monstrous creature. Having barely survived the ocean crossing, Kate Borrowdale must track him through an alien forest and over its low gravity roof. She finds him alive, but he is not alone. Two men and a woman, also survivors from the Fair Monique's crash, have rescued him and killed the creature. How? Kate senses they're hiding a secret and doesn’t trust them. Things look up when she finds a mountain cave for them all to live in. But procuring food proves tricky, as it means venturing back into the heart of the forest, where Kate and Jason find themselves being stalked...by the real inhabitants.

Excerpt:

Basking for a moment in the warm sunlight, she placed her free hand over her chest to still the heavy throb inside. The pursuit had now lasted half a day—a marathon in itself under normal circumstances, but too Kate, on Kratos, merely the latest leg in what had become a punishing pentathlon. Hiking for minerals in the snowy mountain peaks; skydiving for dear life, in tandem with Jason, for eleven gruelling hours; traversing a desert; sailing across an un-crossable ocean; and now this, a grim chase through woodland straight out of a Gothic nightmare: her survival had been nothing if not varied.

But as her heartbeat softened, the thought of being alone spring-loaded and shot her aloft. Out onto a wonderland.

The forest roof rippled and groaned as a stiff breeze swept across it. Translucent, skin-like membrane, a giant sheath, heaved and settled in segments, as though it was the fallen canopy of a circus Big Top. Gashes in the skin here and there gave entry to the wind, which flexed acres in creasing, channelled waves. Kate pulled herself up and looked again. The entire ceiling seemed alive, an ocean with pulsing veins and gasping airways.

Time’s running out. So how the hell do I track them over this? ( )