Former Staff Sergeant Paxton Alejo is back to being a Corporal. He and his squad mates took it upon themselves to rescue Captain Forte from the dead by switching names with another Marine. While the Captain had been a “Freshie” or not undead before, she was now one of them, but everyone involved were paying the price. That meant that all involved got busted down a rank or two. But since none of the Undead get paid, it didn’t mean much. Still positions changed among the platoon. Pax was still a team leader, but on with a very small team. Olivia had also been demoted but only one grade, although she hinted at being demoted previously. Pax wasn’t aware of that so he wanted to find out the story. But they had other things to do, like a new mission.
Their new company command, Captain Juhti was an unknown. Former Captain Forte was now a Lance Corporal which was very strange although most still treated her like a Captain. It was hoped that she would eventually be frocked back to Captain and put in Command of the company. But for now they had a new Captain, new/not new leadership and life went on. A new mission was coming down and not being in the upper leadership position left Pax wondering what was going to happen.
What the new mission entailed was something that they had never experienced before. Command had located a seemingly derelict Tucanan ship. They wanted it since there was very little they had been able to Tucanan equipment left for anyone to study. So it was up to the Undead Marines to board the ship, kill any Tucanans still aboard and abort any type of booby-trap the ship might represent. Of course even going near the ship could have been a Tucanan trap, but that possibility was far above Pax’s pay-grade. So he along with his fellow Undead Marines waited to do a space-walk and occupy the Tucanan ship one way or another.
The breaching teams were successful, some quicker than others. Each company and platoon of the Undead were assigned a breaching team and when the breach had been created, they rapidly went through it to find out who or what was still inside. They surprisingly found nothing. In fact, they found the ship almost sterile inside. There weren’t any dead bodies nor were there any indications that anyone or anything had occupied this particular ship. There was some equipment that appeared to be part of the ship attached at various places, but these parts didn’t appear to be powered up, in fact, nothing of the ship seemed to be powered up. Well, that was until one of the Undead Marines got a distinct “feeling” that something was wrong.
To the credit of the new Captain, he called the scientific team and reported what his Marine had told him about the compartment they were in. Once the scientist started an in-depth analysis of the ships structure, the realized that something was indeed wrong and everyone had to immediately evacuate the ship. Not a typical mission when coming into contact with the Tucanans. They weren’t usually this sophisticated with their traps.
That’s just one of the missions you’ll follow the Undead Marines through in this book. The rest get very interesting. While the Undead are in the situation they are, it’s because of their mycelium. There’s a long scientific reason behind the mycelium that Pax and the other Undead have in their brains. Let’s just say it keeps them alive. But, it’s also doing something else. Pax and his best friend, Olivia, have been living the longest with the mycelium attached to their brains. While they’re greatfull that’s it there, Pax thinks there’s more to it than the scientists know. He gets a kind of confirmation on their next mission.
Pax and Olivia along with his other team members (why aren’t they call “squad members”) are fighting in a pretty inclosed room of a three story building. The third floor unexpectedly collapsed trapping part of his team. The part that is left standing including him and Olivia. The fighting turns intense with everyone having plenty of targets. Pax sees a Tucanan behind Olivia which she definitely can’t see, but before Pax can engage, Olivia flips her weapon around backwards and obliterates the Tucanan! How she did that, no knows, and there isn’t time now to figure it out. Pax and Olivia turn back-to-back and become killing machines. When one has a target they each automatically know when to duck so they are engaging everything around them. The other team members still in the fight are astounded but too busy to comment.
After the fight is over, Pax obtains the visual recording of the action and goes through it by himself. He thinks he knows what’s happening but doesn’t know how to express it or even explain it. Still, he confronts Olivia with what they did. Olivia firmly believes she saw the Tucanan she shot with her weapon backwards, but Pax shows her the video. She couldn’t have seen it facing the other way, no way, no how. But Pax saw it! Is there something going on between Pax and Olivia that’s caused by their mycelium? That could be frightening, but if it protects them that much more then why fight it. Except they know that if the scientists find out, they’ll want to study it to death and that means the Undead will just become science experiments. Not going to happen as far as Pax and Olivia are concerned.
So the rest of the book begins to explore this new found ability or is it a liability? That’s to be found out, but only by the Undead. They don’t mind having an advantage in a fire fight, but they do mind become guinea pigs for the scientists. More will be found out in the next boo, “Dead to Rights”, now available on Amazon.