Bio Rescue

Book excerpt: S.L. Viehl’s novels have featured some of the most memorable heroines in the history of the genre: the “wonderful” Cherijo Torin of Stardoc and the “spunky yet vulnerable” Jory Rask of Blade Dancer. Now joining their ranks is the compassionate and heroic interstellar paramedic Dair mu T’resa. Lieutenant Dair mu T’resa heads up a squadron of SEAL (surgically enhanced/altered lifeform) pilots. They provide planetary patrol for the Pmoc Quadrant, including Dair’s home planet Kevarzangia Two—a world populated by the underwater dwelling ’Zangians. Saved at birth by a radical surgical procedure that introduced human DNA into her body, Dair has been able to survive for brief periods of time outside her aquatic habitat—opening her mind to the wonders of the universe’s other races and cultures, yet closing her off from her own people. She finds a true home when her SEAL squadron teams up with medical personnel as a Bio Rescue unit, formed to respond to off-planet emergencies. But the altruism Dair embraces finds opposition among her fellow ’Zangians—and the Skartesh, a lupine alien species who fled their own dying world to settle in the dry land colony of Kevarzangia Two...