This book has a lot going on and it was kind of hard to follow, at least for me. We’re back on Amir, the planet humans reached after what was supposed to be a forty year trip in stasis, but turned out to be something like 400 years. The colony ship Boone was one of three that was sent out by the USA (Americans) with two of them crash landing on the planet. They had not received any further support from Earth since it was just about to kill itself off in WWIII. So, for 400 years, the survivors did what they could to survive. They had some assets, one of which was an Android who went by then name of Brody. He’s a little bit eccentric, but he is also a very good defense weapon and has kept the survivors alive all these past centuries.
Now that the Boone has landed, they have went about establishing the original settlement which was named Ohio. They met the survivors of the other colony ships, who have become known as the Osay, and together are trying to make a new life on Amir. The only problem is that the planet is far from peaceful. It has a native fauna population that is quite dangerous to humans. Then there is the RUPAC or Russian-Chinese Pacific Alliance. They also sent colony ships and they did meet the same fate as two of the American efforts except their two failed missions resulted in very desperate, starving soldiers roaming about the planet killing anything they met. The Osay have been able to fight them off, but they are just barely hanging on themselves. With the help of the Boone’s people, they thought they had finished the RUPAC off on Amir.
That didn’t happen. The RUPAC wasn’t giving up on Amir so they had sent additional new forces to capture the planet and start harvesting its resources. The Ohio settlement is now ran by Captain Boas who was the head of the military contingent on the Boone. He wasn’t supposed to be the leader of the colony. When the Boone did make it out of long trip, the found most of the civilians dead. That’s all covered in previous books. There is one civilian that has kind of taken a leadership role from the Boone colonist and that would be Jared Reach. During stasis, he was modified by Dr. Roman where the military crew would automatic look to him for leadership. He didn’t understand why since he was not in the military although he had been a former Marine. Dr. Boone also enhanced some of Reaches physical abilities so he was faster and stronger than most of the humans. This made Reach a very valuable asset to the Ohio community.
AS for the Osay, they are now learning a lot of new things. One of which is they have a new leader. She is the daughter of their former leader and her name is Liana. While she was officially elected by the Osay elders, everyone initially thought that Jared Reach would become the leader of both communities. That didn’t happen and he’s just as glad as it didn’t. Once stipulation in placing Liana in her leadership position is that she and Jared would marry at some future point. Nether one really objected to that idea, but they weren’t quite ready for that step yet.
Their main problem was fighting these RUPC forces. They seemed to have a lot of different locations from which they sent out soldiers. There was also one group that seemed to have been experimenting with controlling the native fauna. They also seemed to have created a monster known as a Bangor. This thing had terrorized the Osay for years and almost couldn’t be killed. Reach and Brody are going to eliminate the last one or die trying. After that, they would concentrate on driving off the RUPAC if that was possible.
Then came the sudden revelation of a group of very highly skilled soldiers from the RUPAC that were called “Ghost”. They had amazing technology that almost made them invisible. Reach and Brody came upon them only to find out that they didn’t want to be enemies. They wanted to form an alliance with the Americas and help drive away the other RUPAC. Why they wanted to do this is part of the story you’ll have to read about. The fight to rid Amir of the RUPAC contingent isn’t going to be easy even though they did surrender. That’s where things get confusing.
Lots of fighting and lots of leaning what Rangers are about. More to come in “Wayward Galaxy 4”, now available for pre-order on Amazon. Supposed to be released on 20 Feb 2022.