A snippet from Scavenger's Mission

Sometimes trouble can be a good thing...  A change in the weather caused Alisha's catcher to deflate at 5,000 feet. For any other flyer, this would have meant floating the chute like a parachute into the Cully River only to be devoured by meateaters, but Alisha deflates her chute entirely and rides the winds, focused on the bank. Only to survive the impact, she will need to re-engage the chute to act like a break before she hits the ground. (She's never tried this before, but it's the only chance she has at surviving.)

Alisha focused on her desired landing site, estimating her speed and mentally calculating the time she’d need to open the chute. Trusting her intuition, fifteen feet above land she pulled the toggles to reopen the catcher.

Within less than a second, she felt the jerk of the harness as the chute opened and slowed her descent. Unfortunately, the catcher was pulling her back toward the river.

Damn it! I opened it too soon.

Collapsing it again, she stretched toward the shore and hit hard on the soft, marshy edge of grass.

The grasses softened her impact, but it still took a few moments to regain her senses. She lay precariously on the riverbank with her feet dangling over the edge. Careful not to wiggle her legs or feet, lest she entice a meat-eater to jump from the water for a tasty morsel, she reached out, grabbed the bottom stalks of the tough river grass, and slowly pulled her body forward.

***

“Flyer in trouble,” the old toll-taker yelled, pointing into the air. “One of yours?”

“Damn well better not be,” Logan said as he watched the flyer with a collapsed catcher soar at an angle over the Cully River, heading toward the left bank. Logan saw no way this would end well. Yet through some incredible manipulation of the collapsed catcher, the flyer actually landed on the edge of the bank. Unfortunately, his legs dangled over the water.

“Poor fool,” Logan muttered, knowing the inevitable tragedy about to occur. At the first wiggle of those legs, the meat-eaters prowling this section of the river would break the surface and pull him under.

Logan watched in amazement as the flyer slowly pulled himself onto the bank without seeming to move at all. Only when his legs were two yards inland did the flyer stand. Logan followed the direction of the flyer’s attention and saw his catcher had fallen on the east side of the river.

“Damn lucky fool,” Logan declared as he hurried to the catcher.

Only later does he realize the 'fellow' is a young woman....

The SkyRyders Series

Sci-Fi Romance

Scavenger’s Mission

Scavenger Falters-coming 2017

Scavenger Vanishes-coming 2017

Liza O'Connor shares a snippet with pics of Scavenger's Mission

This scene occurs after Logan's rogue Captain DC attempts to kill Alisha during her first day as a cadet. He clearly doesn't like showoffs & young women who refuse him sex. Until this occurred, Logan did not realize the danger his entire crew had lived with for years under DC's reign. He rescues Alisha and has her soak her injured knee in his tub while he opens a case against DC, only not one of his crew will tell what really happened. 

In his entire career, Logan had never felt so completely disgusted with himself. He had let this bastard terrorize his squad for three years. There had to have been signs if he’d only looked.

He sighed. He might as well have spent his days fishing the Cully for all the good he had done his squad.

He shut down the interview program. Briefly looking over his emails, he saw MAC had also issued him an order to report for assessment, probably triggered by the stress levels of his squad. MAC, no doubt, wanted to know what the hell he was doing to the poor flyers.

Nothing—that’s what he’d done for them—not a damn thing.

He forgot to knock when he entered the bathroom to check on Alisha, but she didn’t complain. In fact, as he knelt down to check on her leg, she reached out and touched his cheek.

“You look like hell.”

“That from a girl who’s black and blue,” he muttered.

“Actually, I feel pretty good now. Except I’m starting to prune up.”

Logan gently tugged opened the gash on her knee and studied it under his laser light.

“Are the interviews not going well?”

“What makes you ask that?”

“Well, you’ve looked gloomier every time you’ve come in to check on me, and now you look downright bleak.”

Logan turned the mirror he was using to assess the wound onto his own face. “This is how I always look.”

“No, there’s a difference. If you want to talk about it—”

“If I had anything to talk about, I sure as hell wouldn’t be telling my problems to one of my crew.”

 Logan regretted his words. Had she struck him in return, he wouldn’t have blamed her. He’d sent her out to die today. If she had the charity to care about his day after the one she’d just had, it didn’t give him a reason to bite her head off.

Logan eased her leg back into the water, shut down the Jacuzzi, and opened the drain. When he reached down to help her out, she gave him a sulky glare.

A well-deserved glare, Logan conceded. He sighed and knelt down so he faced her. “I’m sorry for being short. I’m about as angry with myself as I’ve ever been, but that’s no reason to bite your head off.”

Alisha put her arms around his neck. For a moment he thought she was hugging him, but finally realized it was so he could lift her out of the tub. He placed his hands on each side of her waist and raised her until she could stand on her good foot. He tried to step back, but Alisha held firm to his neck.

“Why would you be angry at yourself?”

All too aware of her beautiful naked body, he attempted to unclasp her arms from around his neck.

“It wasn’t your fault,” she insisted, resisting his tugging.

Logan increased the pressure, finally breaking her grip and detaching her, being careful he didn’t cause her to lose her balance and fall. He handed her a towel, which, to his relief, she wrapped around herself.

(That should give you a hint as to how terrible life is for  debutante...)

SCAVENGER'S MISSION

by Liza O'Connor

AMAZON