Today we announce the fourth book in the Loralynn Kennakris series!* Enjoy the sample chapter below! Want more sample chapters? How do you feel about mailing lists? Sound off in the comments!
“Go in harm’s way? Like Hell! I’m gonna put them in harm’s way!”
The war has flared up again, and Senior Lieutenant Loralynn Kennakris is thoroughly pissed off. On the walking-wounded list with a paralyzed arm and unable to fly, her superiors have decided to give her a meaningless promotion and send her off with a diplomatic mission to Iona. For years, tensions have been ramping up between the Nereidian League and its increasingly powerful former colony. It’s the diplomat’s job to defuse them before they explode. Kris’s job is to act as the mission’s ‘military advisor’—which really means looking decorative, fetching coffee, and keeping her mouth shut.
That is, until someone screwed up.
Caught on the wrong side of a military disaster that threatens the League’s whole war effort and forced into a role she never desired, Kris knows she didn’t start this fight. But she’s sure as hell gonna finish it . . . one way or another.
Part II, Chapter One:
Recon Flight Viper Fox, on patrol
Phase Plane Anvil, Mirandan Space
“How many bogies you got, Tanner?” Her voice was cool and smooth, but the med-monitors showed that her blood pressure was already ramping up.
“I got five—that’s five—at tango one forty, nine hundred kips closure.” His voice was thin and tinny over the burst link.
“You got that, Baz?”
“Roger that—got five, I say five. Bearing okay, closure okay.”
Her own T-Synth showed five too—five little red dots starting to spread out in attack formation in T-Synth’s holographic volume. It chewed on their energy profiles and declared them hostile, but she already knew that. “Baz, I make ‘em Halith heavy attack craft. You concur?”
“Oh, they’re Doms all right. Emissions signature looks like Talon-3s.”
“Okay, go to attack pattern delta. Suck it in Tanner, you’re too low.” Obediently, one of the three little blue triangles that indicated her and her wingmen snuggled closer to her port quarter. “Good. Now don’t break it up until I tell you.”
“You got it, Kris.”
The blood chemistry monitors started to light up yellow with stress compounds as her fighter eased down and left. The sphere of the T-Synth rotated as it began to carve maneuver envelopes and velocity vectors through the volume. “I have intercept in four hundred thirty seconds,” she said with a calmness that the med-monitors didn’t reflect.
Continue reading…
