I’ll start out by alerting some of my wounded warrior friends that the main character in this story suffers a very traumatic combat injury that leaves him with no legs! That should be said up-front so you know what you’re getting into by reading this story. I have idea what it’s like to live through something like that, thank goodness, but some of you unfortunately have. So be warned. Additionally, some you might not like reading about how this future he lives in can make him almost back into the soldier he was, almost, but not quite. Still it’s a good story.
Corporal Titus Briggs is a soldiers soldier. He’s Special Forces having been to three of the toughest schools/training programs the Solar Defense Force has available. He passed them all with flying colors and now is working his way towards staying alive on this current mission. They are right now fighting the “Moonies” or Gray Moon Rebels who are humans but have sided against their own kind with the alien invaders known as the Thephari. Somehow this rag-tag of militia fighters have gotten organized and are putting up one heck of a fight somewhere in Eastern Asia. Word is they are getting supplies and equipment through the Thephari who have been eradicated on Earth but are still wanting the planet.
I wondered why Corporal Briggs is still a Corporal with all his training and such and he’s also got some history behind him. He was in Vancouver, BC when the Thephari first invaded. The landed and killed everything. It seems they wanted to planet and had prepped it by releasing a virus a few months before. That virus was lethal but it hadn’t spread as far as the thought. So when they came to capture Earth, they found they had a fight on their hands.
Briggs was 17 when they started tearing up his world. He was at school as was his sister. He got himself and his sister home through all the mess to find his father and mother there waiting on them. The family was supposed to stay indoors. Robotic law enforcement drones were out and about in the neighborhood telling people to shelter inside, but Briggs’ father wasn’t one to always follow orders. He knew they had to get away from the city and into the forest. But, that didn’t happen and Briggs will have to tell you what did happen!
So, Titus Briggs has been fighting the Thephari and now the Moonies since he was 17. He’s now mid-twenties and has been part of the SDF for sometime. He likes what he’s doing and hopes to continue doing it until every one of these Moonies and especially the Thephari are dead. But, as it usually does, luck does go with him on this mission. He and the squad he got attached to during this particular fight found themselves in an ambush. The young and inexperienced LT didn’t have his guys immediately fight through it so now they were in a fix. The Moonies had the pinned with machine guns and now were lobbing mortars.
They got the machine gun shut down easily enough, but the mortars were still giving them fits. So Corporal Briggs takes it upon himself to get rid of that particular nuance. He lobs some grenades their way and it seems to do the trick, but the next thing he knows is that something has just blow-up right next to him! He’s out of the fight for sure.
Briggs wakes up in the hospital back at base. Now he’s going to have to face the rest of his life with somethings less than he had. He’s not a quitter so he believes he can get himself back into fighting shape even though the Doctor tells him that he’s going to be discharged from the SDF. But that ain’t the end of the story. A Colonel Douglas Reid pays him a visit one day. He gives Briggs a card with a phone number on it, nothing else. He tells Briggs that once he’s back to fighting shape and the doctor says she’s done as much as she can, he’s to call, if he wants to. That’s all he says and then he leaves.
So, does Titus Briggs make the call. What’s in store for him if he does? Find out in this first book in what could be a very interesting new series. I’m looking forward to book 2, “Able Bodies Soldier 2” now available on Amazon.