Reverent (Rev) Pelletier is now a Pegasus Union Marine. He’s not a normal Marine as we would know one (is there such a thing as a “normal” Marine). Corporal Pelletier has been enhanced to a make him able to do a lot of things mere civilians couldn’t dream of doing. Most of those enhancements also allow him to stay alive on the future battlefield of which he was becoming more and more familiar with. Except his current mission wasn’t actually on a battlefield. He was in a city or town and he was in civilian clothing. As a Marine Raider, his job was to find out as much about the enemy as he could and then kill them when the time came. Only this time, he and his battle buddy, Corporal Tomiko Reiser were clandestinely inserted into the city of San Cristobal on the Planet Tenerife. That planet had been captured by the Centaurs (Tin-Asses) not long ago and surprisingly, the human civilian population hadn’t yet been wiped off the face of the planet.
Corporal Pelletier and Corporal Tomiko were to blend in with the civilian population and attempt to notify the city leaders that a Marine rescue mission was coming soon. They needed to get the civilians to moved to a safe area when the human assault began since there was going to be some massive orbital bombardment in order to cleanse the planet of these Centaurs. This job was going to be very different than what they were trained for since they had to go in basically unarmed until just prior to when the operation began. Also, the civilian population couldn’t know what was coming since that could trigger the Centaurs to do what they normally do and that’s exterminate every human on the planet.
The two Corporals did their jobs and did them well even thought they found something quite disturbing. While the Centaurs hadn’t killed all the humans, they had enlisted the help of the cult group known as “The Children of Angels”. These idiots thought that the Ancients had sent the Centaurs to “uplift” humanity in the next level or whatever that meant! These people were deadly fanatics. And, they were put in charge of other humans on the planet Tenerife and in the cities. Rev and Tomiko couldn’t believe there were humans aiding the Centaurs, but they were there and they had to work around them. They also didn’t know if other humans were just acting as informants to the Centaurs so all their planning had to be done very secretly.
They got the job done for the most part. They human traitors or “Angel shits” as the Marines called them, were taken care of by the general population once the Marine invasion and liberation started. To the surprise of the military, there weren’t as many Centaurs on the planet as expected. They were using the humans to assemble some kind of weapons, but they never seemed to get them finished and they didn’t stop the invasion. So, that was a good job by the two Corporals which seemed to be a lot of responsibility laid on two very inexperienced Marines.
This next mission was going to be very difficult. While most all the battles to date were against the Centaurs, that cult group had been growing way too much. Now, they had commandeered a planet called Alafia and members of the Children of Angels where flocking to it. They were also thought to have been contacting the Centaurs and openly inviting them to the planet. That wasn’t going to be allowed since this planet was in the human domain and could be come a very dangerous staging area for the Centaurs if they did get on the planet. The Marines job was to get the Children of Angels to stand-down in their efforts to join with the Centaurs. Unfortunately, there were a lot of these cult members and even some with prior military service. It was now estimated the planet Alafia contained sixty-five million members of the Children of Angels with an estimated three million having law enforcement or military experience. The Council of Humanity couldn’t allow this cult to exist right in the middle of the human civilization.
This was an exciting mission and one that not everyone survives. As a Marine, you expect to see casualties and even you buddies will get wounded while others get killed. That’s part of being a Marine in combat. Yet, in this case they were not fighting Centaurs, but now were fighting other humans, something that hadn’t been done in a very long time. Rev didn’t know how he felt about this. Killing Centaurs was one thing, killing civilians, even those acting like militia, was entirely different. He was also to find out just how fanatical some of these cult members were. Where or not Rev survives might come into question. I really like the way this story developed.
So far this has been an excellent series. This is only the second book and I’m already looking forward to book three, “Song of Redemption” scheduled out for the 16th of June, 2021. It’s on my list!