Things are changing for the Undead Marines. Not surprising since you can’t really keep this kind of operation a total secret. Sergeant Paxton Alejo continues to explore his relationship with his mycelium which happens to occupy his brain. It’s a strange relationship to say the least but it seems to be growing. To Pax it feels like his “Mike” is becoming something of an intelligent entity that is trying to speak to him. It doesn’t seem to know a lot about humanity, but is constantly trying to understand the why’s and how come that Pax does things. Pax knows or believes that his Mike can connect with other mycelium embedded in other Undead Marines. He certainly knows that he has a very strong relationship with Olivia Saint Amons; they almost act like they’re reading each other’s minds and it has paid big dividends during combat.
Yet, the connection to Olivia and other Undead Marines came over time. There were some Undead that hadn’t been around very long and the connection with them wasn’t as near as strong. When “newbies” had to be integrated into the teams, it was difficult because they didn’t understand this mycelium condition and that they weren’t immediately connected to other team members. It took time and a lot of training.
The Tucanans, humanities current enemy, was busy stirring up trouble all over the galaxy. While the normal Marine Division were engaging, the Undead had to wait for someone higher to recognize that they had some supreme fighting power with these two undead Battalions so it took a while to get them into battle. Right now their Commanding General wanted to use the Undead as a reserve force so they were stuck behind the lines basically in an abandoned university campus. Still, the HQ Command was at this location so Pax and his Marines were assigned to guard the place even though it was pretty far from the front lines and no one thought the Tucs were capable of penetrating the humans defenses this far. Well, they thought wrong!
This is where everything starts going haywire for the Undead. The Tucanans have been tunneling for quite some time and now they were prepared to surface and obliterate the Command HQ for the Undead Marines. For some reason unknown to Pax, the Undead had become a high value target for the Tucs. While Pax was making his rounds of his guards, he notice a bulging area of the campus and before he knew it, Tucanans were barreling out of the ground. He actually was able to engage them before the first one broke ground which apparently surprised the Tucs. By the time Pax had fired his weapon, every one of his Undead Marines knew what was happening. They all immediately came to the fight and added their fire power just in the right places. The Tucs were fighting hard trying to come out of the ground but were also having to fight through their dead! Sergeant Alejo was right in the middle of the fighting.
At one point, a Tucanan jump forward right in front of Pax. He fired his weapon as fast as he could and then got help from those around him. As the Tuc died on top of him, he was trying to get back up with Tuc green blood all over his helmet. So, Pax took off his helmet so he could continue in the fight. Surprisingly, even though this turned out to be a huge number of Tucanans, Pax and his Undead Marines were able to stop the attack and save a lot of the HQ Command personnel. Oh, there were plenty of casualties both among the “Freshies” and the Undead. Most of the Freshies were officers and Pax knew they wouldn’t be revived. Yet, most of the Undead Marines, those they were basically still intact, would be resurrected eventually. But, something else had happened that was going to change their whole world. While Pax was fighting on a college campus in a moderately large city, there were Newsies all over the place flying news drones. Pax was caught by a camera drown just after taking off his helmet so his face was plastered all over the local news.
Soon, there were news stories about how a previously dead hero had now surfaced in this new place. They correctly identified Sergeant Paxton Alejo and wanted answers as to how he was alive. Pax figured he was in big trouble and really didn’t know what to do. He and a lot of the Undead felt that their program ought to be announced and not kept secret because it would then give them some of their rights back. As it stood, they were non-citizens, with no rights including any pay. They had recently be given a chit system to buy some essentials at a base PX, but that’s about it. They also didn’t get promoted nor recognized for their mission successes as did other Marines. Then the other shoe dropped when a news report had show information about the Undead program from an insider, a civilian technician that had came forth and spilled everything she knew!
It wasn’t long before Pax was notified that he and Captain Forte, the only Undead Officer in the two battalions were going to accompany a whole bunch of higher civilians and Marines to explain to the League of Humanity Council, why this program had been hidden from the Council and the public at large. The public perception of these Undead Marines was turning ugly. Some said they were clones, whiles others condemned them as demons. So, yeah, things were going to change and in a big, big way.
Well, it does appear that this is the end of the series. It was a pretty darn interesting one, that’s for sure. If I find additional books, you can be sure I’ll be reading them, but I don’t think that will happen.