Cooper Ridley, a disgraced Navy
SEAL with anger management issues, needs to get away from it all. So, he embarks on a twelve hundred mile solo
sea kayak journey down the Baja peninsula.
When an alien ship crashes into
the Gulf of California, Ridley’s life takes a sudden and
dangerous turn. Led to a sub-tidal
marine cave by a pod of bottlenose dolphins, Ridley discovers an injured
alien. The dying traveler’s fate is in
his hands.
Ridley is not the only one
interested in the quirky stranger from the planet Delfinus. The clandestine Phoenix Project will stop at
nothing to acquire the alien and his advanced technology.
The alien Azrnoth-zin discovers
clues that may link his people to earth.
Now on the run, Azrnoth-zin tells Ridley of a deadly threat to earth. Invasion by an alien armada is imminent.
Their purpose: the complete consumption of every form of biomass
available.
Ridley and Azrnoth-zin must run a
gauntlet of sinister agents from the Phoenix Project in order to deliver the
alien to his rendezvous point. In a
remote volcano in the rugged Sonoran desert, Ridley must make a decision that
could impact every living being on the planet.
John R.Gentile,
when not writing, works as a physical therapist. He has been an E.M.T. with Mountain Rescue
and a rock climber. As a sea kayaker and
a SCUBA divemaster, he has explored many locations
around this blue planet. For the past
six years, he has worked with his marine biologist/artist wife, Katie Iverson,
on a pilot study identifying resident bottlenose dolphins in the upper reaches
of the Gulf of California. (Their inflatable boat is the R/V Collapso.)
John and Katie live in Tucson,
Arizona with an offbeat chow dog named
Marley, and two desert tortoises, Eduardo
Rapido and Mama.
Blue Planets is his first novel.
Drawing closer, he could detect a
ledge just above the waterline. Below
it, the dolphins were milling. Ridley
thought it odd that they were floating like a logjam, bodies in close
contact. They seemed to be looking at
something.
Something stirred on the
ledge. It was a subtle, almost
imperceptible movement. Ridley’s already
frazzled autonomic nervous system got jump-started one more time. He switched his headlamp back on. Nothing. The batteries were spent and replacements
were in one of the dry-bags stowed away in the front compartment. Where was that damn pink bunny when you
needed him the most?
The creature on the ledge stirred
again. The light intensity
increased. So did the vibration in
Ridley’s ears. To his horrified
amazement, he saw the orb was not hanging from the cave wall, but spinning,
suspended over the now motionless form.
Ridley was within ten feet of the
ledge. The raft of dolphins moved
quietly out of the kayak’s path as he landed against the rocks. The air was humming all around him. The vibrations pulsated within him down to
his core. He felt as if he were inside a
large turbine engine.
He reached under the deck,
detached the Sig Sauer, and stuck it in the waistband
of his shorts. The form on the ledge did
not move.
Ridley transferred his feet from
the kayak to the ledge, slowly placing one foot, then
the other onto the rock. Pushing to
stand up, he realized that he had no feeling in his legs. His legs crumpled beneath him and he fell
hard onto the rocks. Panicked, he scrambled
to his feet and drew the semi-automatic, engaging the slide mechanism.
The figure was lying in a
semi-recumbent position, propped up against a small boulder. From this distance, it appeared to be human,
but even in this diffuse light, something was wrong about the stranger’s
appearance. The proportions of the face
were not right. The clothing was odd -
something like a tunic that appeared to shimmer beneath the orb. Ridley saw that the right leg was bent at an
odd angle. Something whitish was poking
out of the clothing where the thigh would be, a large, dark stain surrounding
it. The orb continued its revolutions,
the spin and hum increasing as Ridley drew nearer.
Ridley took another step
forward. In the next instant, he was
thrown backward, the air driven from his lungs.
