Sneak Peek - Ask Me Again Tomorrow

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In her first year of service as a pilot in the New Terran Galactic Armed Forces, Solyn Fae does not expect to see battle

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In her first year of service as a pilot in the New Terran Galactic Armed Forces, Solyn Fae does not expect to see battle. Terra has been unified peacefully under the New World Government for over twenty years-most of Solyn's life-and the Human race has been part of the Galactic Council of Peace since not long after. The old way of life on Earth has died, and now, under her new name, Terra has entered an era of relative harmony, trading with her numerous and highly advanced galactic neighbors.

Solyn's dream of flying one of the interstellar aircraft developed to patrol the solar neighborhood germinated in childhood, colored by fantasies of visiting the enormous Mars Station and transporting intergalactic dignitaries and policymakers to Milky-Way Peace Summits and Galactic Council meetings.

She has not for one moment-even during the months of routine in-flight battle training-expected to find herself shot to hell by intergalactic pirates and left for dead just outside of the Terra-Mars Highway Portal on her first official flight.

They tell her days later when she wakes to find her left arm gone, most of her ribs broken, and her skull deeply fractured, that she floated there in the twisted corpse of her ship for only three minutes before Captain Rylan C-5891 came to her rescue.

Captain Rylan.

She can't believe it.

He's there in the stark white hospital room when she wakes that first time: a tall, broad-shouldered silhouette in snug black officer's threads, standing eerily still behind the cluster of green-robed medics fussing over her battered body.

He looks at her with those impassive golden eyes and she wonders if he's a hallucination.

He's never once looked at her before-not that he's had any particular reason. Solyn was assigned to Special Air Company under 1st Lieutenant Gallan straight out of special training. Rylan captains the armored air cavalry. She saw him in person the first time during special training, in the company of the program's instructor, Sergeant Bane L-4327, the only other re-Gen officer in the airborne division.

Most of the other officers do not openly associate with the small number of genetically enhanced persons still employed by the TNWAF. Especially L-class re-Gens. Lupine DNA still carries a stigma from the first wave of re-Gen soldiers created during the Galactic war over sixty years ago. Their animal instincts and violence in battle are the stuff of legends. Or nightmares, depending on who you ask.

Rylan secretly resents her commanding officer for displaying quietly anti-re-Gen sentiments. Not that Gallan is a bad 1st Lieutenant-quite the opposite. But Captain Rylan has been around since the Galactic war, and Solyn, along with billions of Terran citizens, considers him a hero, despite his Lupine genetics. His starkly handsome face and powerful, lanky physique has featured on billboards and viz ads for NGAF recruitment the whole world round since Solyn's mother was a child.

And he doesn't look a day over thirty, even now, thanks to all the genetic manipulation.

It's the wolf DNA that made him a war hero in the first place. Re-Gens are designed for war. To fight battles humans are too weak to win. To survive environments and traumas a human body can't withstand. And Captain Rylan is the best of them.

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