Very interesting new series and not what I expected. Seems like a lot of the new series I’m starting to read aren’t what I’m expecting. Doesn’t mean they’re not good, but I guess book covers can be somewhat misleading. Still, this is a very intense and interesting story that really brings some of the brutality of war fighting to the front. Except this wasn’t war, or not yet at least.
The gist of this story rest with a Marine Lieutenant Hastings and his platoon of twenty-three Marines. Those Marines included Staff Sergeant Thomas, Corporal Biagini, Private Wallace and Private Sheridan and the others which you’ll briefly hear about. Those four cover the main story-line. The LT and SSgt. had argued about taking the entire platoon, but the LT won out and they only took the twenty-three. That probably was a mistake, but the LT was working on the very small amount of situational Intel he had.
Their mission was simple, go down to the planet, locate the Alliance Embassy and evacuate the Ambassador and as many of his staff as possible. They were give two Albatross aircraft but did expect to encounter much enemy air or even ground fire. The assumption was that this would be a simple grab and run. So how did this mission go sideways with only three of the twenty-three Marines that went down, coming back alive?
Well, the job of figuring that out belonged to Special Agent Jackson Fischer and Special Agent Aniyah Eliwood, of the Alliance Security and Intelligence Directorate. They were called in after everything had happen with three of the Marines now in the a secure hospital begin treated for their wounds. Their wounds were extensive and it wasn’t sure all three would survive. Corporal Biagini was a female and she had gone through the worst as you’ll unfortunately have to read about.
Agents Jackson and Eliwood have the highest clearance possible to cover every aspect of this mission gone back. A lot of good people had been killed including not only good Alliance Marines, but a lot of supposedly civilians on the planet Stonemeyer and the city of Calibri City. This planet and this city were what was called an independent planet not alined with either the Alliance or the Pegasi Empire. The two Agents were initially allowed to interview Corporal Wallace who was still in considerable pain, but was the most capable at the time to tell his story.
So, the rest of this book is really about the survivors of this ill-fated mission telling about their part of the mission and how things went down. Not everyone was telling the truth and that potentially started with all three of the survivors. But things become very complicated for Agent Fischer when all three stories and all three lives end unexpectedly, even while in a secure facility. It just didn’t make sense.
Still, there was potential lead that Agent Fischer needed to follow, except he couldn’t go there since the planet and the city had been placed off limits to all Alliance personnel. There was even a blockade by the Pegasi Empire preventing any vessels from either living the surface or going down to the planet.
Yet, you can be sure that Agent Fischer doesn’t always play be the rules. Even when he and his partner are told that they are now off the investigation at the order of an Admiral Young, Fischer has other ideas and he doesn’t stop just because some Admiral told him to. Admirals tell people things they shouldn’t all the time, don’t they?
This is what I’d call a typical military science fiction book, but it sure has a lot of mission activity going on. It gets right down to the Corporals and Privates and how they might react in such a situation. Some act honorably others not so much. It’s also very difficult for a small unit to act correctly if they have conflicting orders. That’s doubly troubling since Marines are always taught to follow orders no matter what.
It will be interesting to see how this story continues in the second book, “Echoes of Valor”, now available on Amazon.
==[Note: As of 12/03/2023, this will not be published on Amazon since I have been banned from posting reviews for some unknown reason. Once the ban is lifted, assuming it does get lifted, I’ll go back and post this to Amazon.]==