Today, I wish to share some of the characters from my upcoming new sci-fi romance called Scavenger's Mission.
Meet Alisha: A young woman who refuses to live the life her parents want.
In a single month, Alisha Kane has gone from a wealthy debutante to street girl to scavenger. While testing her new flying skills in the Cully Canyon, Alisha incurs a near-death crash landing. She’s “rescued” by a colonel of the SkyRyders and her life changes forever.
Meet Logan: A SkyRyder colonel in charge of a sleepy fort with little to do other than arrests the occasional scavenger.
For the first time in his life, Logan’s attracted to a young woman, only she’s probably a scavenger and he’ll have to arrest her. But first he offers her a shower and food while he checks on his crew. His videographer has captured her extraordinary flight through the Cully and her flying is astounding!
He forgoes arresting her and puts his career at risk by asking MAC to assess her skills and integrity as a potential SkyRyder. If he can get Alisha into the SkyRyders, it will be his greatest contribution to the Corps.
Meet MAC: The Artificial Intelligence that runs the SkyRyders Corps.
Upon seeing her arrival, MAC upgrades Alisha’s test. Her flying skills are not just excellent; they exceed what was previously thought possible. MAC classifies her as its top asset and soon she proves her value.
But…the SkyRyders remain a male-dominated Corps where Alisha’s sense of right and wrong often clashes with her superiors. How long can a rebellious young woman survive in a regimented Corps?
To be honest, her survival looks dubious on her first day as a cadet. Her new captain is pissed.
DC, the squad captain does not like having a newbie out fly him. So he has his squad stall her out over a ridge...at three hundred feet. For anyone else that would be a death sentence, but Alisha's arsenal of flying skills is beyond an average flier, so she manages to survive with only a damaged kneecap.
However, when he tells her to do it again, she realizes he's not going to stop until she's dead, so she takes a huge risk and flies into the wind farm. If her chute catches on a single blade, she'll be dead in a seconds, but it is her only chance of surviving.
DC and Ollie go in after her with laser rifles, but they never find her thanks to Philly giving them wrong directions as to which was she has gone.
Finally, DC gives up finding Alisha and the squad goes back to the fort. When Logan discovers they have lost Alisha, he makes Philly go out on a rescue mission with him to find Alisha. When he discovers his captain attempted to kill her twice, he opens an inquiry and soon discovers his crew is far more afraid of DC then they are of him.
MAC is alerted to the stress levels of his crew and requires them all to report for assessments. MAC can probe a Ryder's mind and discover everything they think. While it can't verify what they think is actually true, it can determine what they think is true. (Humans have faulty memories that are unreliable at times.)
Since all the crew submitted complaints (by DC's orders) that Alisha was not a qualified flier and caused her own accidents, MAC calls her in, even though she is injured.
Upon recording her landing at the testing center, and assessing the previous video received from Logan, MAC upgrades her test to a captain's exam.
She flies the exam impossibly well...so good that MAC thinks its database might be corrupted. So it asks her to run the test again, this time using her own catcher. With her own modified catcher, she flies even better, beyond what had previously been thought possible.
MAC makes her a captain and lists her as essential personnel in a battle plan General Powell has planned for the next day.
The old general is furious with MAC's meddling. Like many, he does not like being bossed about by a damn computer. Nor does he want a female Ryder anywhere near his battle. He doesn't approve of females in war. They should stay home and bake cookies. They do not belong in the SkyRyder Corp!
Since MAC listed Alisha as essential, Powell can remove her. But when she offers to fly into a headwind to get video to prove the ridge is better protected than his strategist, Colonel Sparkes, thinks, the general goes ballistic. Even a one-day cadet knows you cannot fly into a headwind, but Alisha insists she can and MAC agrees.
Colonel Sparkes is now fascinated with this young woman. What she claims she can do is impossible, yet both Colonel Logan and MAC says she can do it.
Powell is outraged and livid, but MAC outranks him, so he lets her fly out. She'll no doubt be shot out of the sky, but at least then they can get on with this battle.
But to his shock, she gets the video and returns unharmed from what for any other Ryder would have been a suicide mission. Next, she shoots down Colonel Sparkes battle plan and offers a better plan, only it requires SkyRyders to learn new skills in a single hour.
Can they do it? Will they even listen to her?
You can find out here:
