Well, this book was about the opposite of the previous book. While “Convergence” seemed to roam all over the place, this book takes place on the planet Kima. Oh, it starts out with Captain Aeson Keel getting a lead from none other than the pirate Lao Pak as to the whereabouts of his missing crew and the Indelible IV. He’s also clued into a meeting with Donal Makaffie who is a Kill Team Ice member and a veteran of the Savage Wars. He has information that Keel needs about the whereabouts of Prisma Maydoon. All that plays out in the very beginning of this book, but none of it leads any where.
Where we do go is to planet Kima and we’re going with former Legion Commander and now “just” General Choen Chhun, task force commander. He’s going to that planet to take it back from the Mid-Core Rebels (MCR) who surprisingly took over several Republic bases and one in particular, Fort Blake. These MCR soldiers are acting kind of strange in that they seem to have some competent leadership and are not screwing up everything they attempt. Now that they have control of the planet, they have ground based guns that can eradicate any orbiting capital ships that don’t belong to them. So, taking those guns out is the first objective for Kill Team Victory lead by First Sergeant Bombassa. They have to also secure any air defense assets that might be employed against Republic aircraft which there will be a lot of!
General Chhun has trained this new Legion back to their original standards. He’s gotten rid of all the “Points” or officers appointed to their positions by the old House of Reason. He now knows that those under his command are competent and capable of dealing out the destruction he wants on Kima. He’s not out to punish the native Kimbrins, but he’s there to ensure the MCR understand that they are not wanted on the planet and will not survive this coming battle. He plans on massive death and destruction to the MCR and any Kimbrins allied with them. But as with any plan, things actually happen that were not planned for and reacting decisively and quickly needs to be the calling card of the Legion. General Chhun and his Kill Teams are going to KTF (Kill Them First) with prejudice!
While this war is starting and going on, Sergeant Master, Dark Ops legionnaire, has been running around on the backside of a mountain trying to stay alive. He was on top of the mountain when the MCR decided they didn’t want him there and blew him off along with the other members of his unit. Those were all apparently killed because he’s the only one alive that he knows of and he questions how long he’ll be among the living. He’s seen the Legion invasion and hopes they may have time to come and get him although without any way of communicating with other Legionnaires he’s going to have to fend for himself for a while. That he’s been doing occasionally finding small groups of MCR Kimbrin patrols which he eliminates. He’s been doing this a lot and is very short on rations and getting weaker as time in the jungle marches on. With an entire war going on on the planet, will anyone take the time to go find a single Dark Operator some where on the planet? Oh, and there are Zhee in the area that Masters is running around in. These are nasty aliens that would like nothing better than to capture a Legion Dark Operator.
I really liked this book. It has a lot of tactics and explanations of what’s going on by each team. Not everything goes according to plan, but that’s when you have to adjust as do the Legionnaires on the ground. Having the ability to put up drones over the battlefield to actually see where your enemy is or might be has to be a huge advantage not something I experienced in my military time. The book doesn’t actually finish the war on Kima and there is an off-shoot mission taken on by Sergeant Major MakRaven that should be very interesting.
There’s more to this story in book 15, “Last Contact” that is now available on Amazon. It’s on my reading list, of course!