Now that Hank has lost his “ceremonial weapon”, his spear given to him by Imogen, the former Acolyte Inquisitor and even more so, his friend Imogen, he has his mind set on getting both back. He couldn’t act as a bonafide Bounty Hunter without his spear and he needed the information Imogen had about the evil AI Codename: Extinction. But he knew that both were being held aboard the High Cloister, an impenetrable starship that was build like a space-station. There was only one way that he knew of to gain entrance to that starship and that was to be an Inquisitor!
But first he had to find out how to acquire Inquisitor weapons and armor. He had a lead that led him back to Bussel, his and Lara’s home planet. There they met a contact in a bar, of course, but she wanted something before she would give up her information. That did what she asked only to be led to another contact which was a rat-like alien called a Vekrass. He was supposed to be the ultimate super thief that was known as the only one who had ever successfully stolen from the Inquisition and lived to talk about it. And of course, he was hidden on a remote planet and that’s about all they knew about him.
So, they went to the nearest Conclave outpost to see what they could find about Clynt Nameless, Master Thief. Obviously Clint had bounties on him and they were quite large. But, as Lara checked the records she saw that the bounties were already claimed by Bounty Hunter Mane Malik. He was the most notorious of Bounty Hunters, of the highest rank and a thorn in Lara’s side at every turn. Still, they found out that Clynt Nameless was located on planet Královna, so that’s where they headed.
Of course, catching a master thief was going to be easy for anyone. Apparently, Nameless had been living on this planet for some time. This was a water planet with most of the inhabitants located around one large floating platforms with other connecting platforms held by individual families. Getting from one place to another was going to problematic since the planet didn’t have a lot of technology so they had to rely on local transportation capabilities. And of course Nameless knew the place like the back of his hand. So, they spent some time trying to capture Clynt Nameless only to see Mane Malik supposedly capture the thief.
So, this book describes one difficulty after another for Hank and Lara. Still, they have a capable crew and nothing seems to stop them for long. Hank has a way of talking to people that solves a lot of their problems, but if that doesn’t work, Alex can bring the muscle. Then Lara, as Kilara Vex, can also be very mean and efficient in what she does.
All this is still not getting them closer to their ultimate goal and that is finding Codename: Extinction. They have no idea when or if this evil AI will be activated, but it’s going to go off someday and probably soon. Hank also knows that his friend, Imogen, is probably under going a lot of torture at the hand of Inquisitor John Gregory.
This book is very exciting and reads very smoothly. I enjoy the story-line but there are a lot of twist and turns getting to where they always seem to go. And a lot of this is just stuff that has nothing to do with getting to the evil AI and stopping its activation. One of these books is going to have to focus on that objective. Maybe it will be cover in the next book, “Hunting Extinction”, now available on Amazon.