Hank Spears and Lara Shen, Bounty Hunters, are headed back to the Conclave or Bounty Hunter HQ with their prisoner, Shep, a cyborg they found leading a sect of the Peacers. He was actually using these people to supply bodies to the evil AI who turned them into cyborgs like him. This person was pure evil who had lived over 200 years building an army for the evil AI. Right now he was secured on the *Buzzard* in their makeshift jail.
Then Imogen, the former Inquisitor Acolyte, quietly sneaks out of her room and proceeds to the prisoner holding area. There is quickly stabs and kills the cyborg only to be caught by Hank and Lara! Lara has never trusted Imogen and can’t stand that she’s allowed to travel on the *Buzzard.* This incident proves that she shouldn’t ever be trusted, but Hank still isn’t convinced. When he questions Imogen as to why she did the killing, she says the cyborg was pure evil and deserved to die for what he had done and was doing. Hank didn’t disagree, but he would have like to had some time to interrogate the cyborg to see if he could locate any more of his kind. That option is now dead also.
So, Hank and Lara take the small sect of Peacers that were being led by Shep, to their secret space station being ran by Libby. The space station has gone from an empty scary place to one partially full of busy people. They have cleaned up and rehabilitated several areas of the station so these people now have a secure place to live. They also have indicated they want to help Hank, Lara and Ned in their pursuit of the evil AI.
Now that Imogen’s Aunt and Uncle have been rescued, it’s her turn to identify her high level political contacts to see if they can get someone in the Consortium to listen to them. Edwin, the anti-social genius, has been formulating data on the actives of the various actions of the evil AI and the weapon Codenamed: Extinction. With this information they hope to present it to Uncle Vince, governor of the planet Parm. He’s an elitist who governs the richest planet in the galaxy. It’s also the most populated with most of the people living in squalor on the planet surface while the rich live high above in skyscrapers.
Uncle Vince seems to love Imogen very much, but he did nothing when he knew that she had been forced to join the Inquisition as an Acolyte. But, he was willing to listen to Hank who presented him with a disc of all the information they had gathered. Still, Vince needed more if he was to present this to the Consortium High Council. Then Uncle Vince gets attacked by an unseen assassin. He hires Bounty Hunter Hank Spears to find who attacked him and deal with it. If he does this successfully, Vince will do even more towards helping Hanks cause. So Hank has to find an assassin that seems to be nothing by vapor!
This is where the Ghost of Korfuu comes into the picture. This seems to be a legend about a race of aliens that can transform from solid matter into a gas. So how does one kill something they can’t even see. Hank has to find a way. Meanwhile, Lara and Alex are elsewhere trying to follow up leads on the whereabouts of the cyborg labs. They think they have such led when a group of people report that their children are being abducted at various times without any trace of their kidnappers. This sounds like something the cyborgs would do in order to modify and grow their on cyborg warriors.
As you’ll read, Hank, Lara and Ned have a lot on their hands. They don’t seem to be getting much closer to solving this Codename: Extinction weapons location than they did before, but everything leads to something new they need to explore. They finally get a break, but it doesn’t end the way they want. Imogen has been captured, at first on purpose, but later by a huge mistake. She might have to pay for this mistake with her life.
The series continues in book 5, “Inquisitor’s Wrath”, now available on Amazon.