This series keeps getting better every book. We started out with an orphan name Hank Spears. He had lost track of his best friend, another orphan name Lara Shen. Hank got adopted by a Scrapper name Lutch Spears who began teaching Hank the trade. Meanwhile, Lara later got adopted by a Bounty Hunter whom she doesn’t talk much about. Hank was out scrapping one normal day when he found a cube in amongst some scrap. He picked it up and brought it back to his ship, the Buzzard, only to find out this cube was a military-grade AI and very, very illegal to have in the Commonwealth! Anyone associating with, talking with or even have knowledge of an AI were being persecuted by the Inquisition. Usually the penalty for any form of association with an AI was death.
So, Hank unknowingly got himself listed with a Bounty on the Bounty Boards. Fortunately, one of the Bounty Hunters that went after him was Kilara Vex, a.k.a., Lara Shen. When she recognized Hank, she immediately forgot about the bounty and helped him escape back to the Buzzard and leave the space station. Now, they have joined together with Lara teaching Hank how to be a Bounty Hunter. They are doing this because the AI, named Ned, has told them there is an old weapon built during the war two-hundred years ago that could be made operational now. That weapon was Codenamed: Extinction! Ned believed it had to be found and destroyed or all of humanity would be lost.
Meanwhile, the Inquisition had found out about Hank and Ned and had assigned Inquisitor John Gregory and his Acolyte Imogen Hush to capture/kill Hank and anyone else associated with him. So, in the process of staying away from John Gregory, Hank and Lara had set out to make some money by serving bounties on various criminals. In their journeys through books one and two, we read where Hank got shot and had to go to Alex, an old friend and mob doctor. Alex patched up Hank and then asked to join his crew aboard the Buzzard. That made for a good fit as long as Alex understood that an AI was aboard the ship. Alex had no problem with this since he hadn’t been real cozy with the law for a long time. They eventually found a remote space station that had been deserted after the war. It was thought to be haunted so know one ever docked with it, but Hank and Lara needed some place to rest and recuperate. They found this derelict space station actually being ran by another AI named Libby. She welcomed them because of Ned and told them they could dock with her any time they felt like it, but they had to bring her back some kind of companion since she was very lonely.
That’s when Hank, Lara, Ned and Alex went to an abandoned space station looking for leads on the Extinction weapon. What they found was another AI of evil intent who almost wrecked Ned. They fled that station back to Libby and then had to find someone who could restore Neds coding. That person turned out to be an eccentric scientist name Edwin Stern. He fixed Ned and decided that he wanted to stay with Libby on the space station and continue his research. So Hank, Lara, Ned and Alex set off again in search of clues to finding Codename: Extinction.
Along the way, they continue to be harassed by the Inquisitor. He was a vicious man, very evil and let nothing stop him from tracking down Hank and Lara. His Acolyte Hush seemed just as evil as him and had gone out to seek Hank and Lara on her own. She managed to track them down and pretty much had the dead to right, but the Acolyte surprisingly asked Hank and Lara for help! She hated what she was doing and wanted nothing more to do with the Inquisition or especially John Gregory. She had been forced to become his Acolyte by her parents after getting into trouble on her home planet, Emortium, the capital planet of the Consortium. She said she had some political connections that could help them get someone to listen about their mission to find and destroy Codename: Extinction.
Of course she also wanted something in return other than her freedom. She wanted Hank, Lara, and Alex to rescue her only living relatives, an Aunt and Uncle, who currently resided on Emortium. Imogen was afraid that the Inquisitor John Gregory would go after them because of her recent actions. So, they had to come up with a reasonable plan to rescue these people even though Lara wasn’t all that sure about Imogen and thought she was setting up a trap. That’s what the majority of this book is about. Hank, Lara, Ned, Alex and now Imogen are about to set off on some dangerous activities that could very well get them killed. They are planning on going right into the heart of the Consortium knowing that everyone is out looking for them. I’m not sure hiding in plain sight is all that great.
Finally, they also need to find others like them to help their cause. They do know of a group called the Peacers that might be such a group. One contingent is on a deceased planet name Vache I led by a guy named Shep. If they can get there, they might be able to find some allies, but not all is as it seems, even on Vache I. It smells of death!
Nothing ends with this book. In fact, there are more dangers ahead and no one to really trust. More will be reveled in book 4, “Deadly Ghosts”, now available on Amazon.