This is kind of a strange book. I’m new to the author, but he states at the beginning of his book that this is a re-write of a previous book/series. The re-write was done to take out some of the “childish” humor that previous reviews indicated wasn’t welcomed. Well, he didn’t take it all out, but he did a pretty good job of making this a semi-serious science fiction story.
We’re on Earth during a time when our planet was trying to unify into a world government. They had turned what was the United Nations into the United Earth led by Thomas von der Hagen, the first President. He was helped a great deal by his son Kurt von der Hagen who also happened to be the best friend of Major Jim Harrison, USAF. That Presidency didn’t last long because they made the mistake of appointing General Zheng as director of the Security and Counter-Terrorism Unit. The General began to amass his own power and eventually planted a bomb in the car or Kurt’s parents thereby killing the United Earth President. Zheng immediately took power and has never relinquished it since.
Kurt von der Hagen went underground and formed the Resistance and was doing quite well in assassinating key people in Zheng regime. But, he’d run into some trouble this last time and was found in Jim Harrison’s living room bleeding all over the couch. It was going to be the end of a very nice evening Jim had planed with his fiancée Elizabeth (Liz) Lopez. He had planned on proposing to Liz that very night, but things changed when he saw his best friend bleeding in his living room.
Kurt had just managed to pull off an assassination of Mike Palermo, Director of the SCTU for General Zheng. But it obviously didn’t go as well as his fourteen previous assassinations. Jim was concerned for his friend, but he was also concerned that he might have lead the SCTU to his house. He certainly didn’t want to get tangled up with those guys especially with Liz in the house. Jim assured him that he wasn’t followed so Liz patched Kurt up and then she went to bed while Jim and Kurt talked. It wasn’t long before the house blew up almost knocking Jim unconscious while he heard yelling that the SCTU had the house surrounded and they were under arrest.
Justice is swift under the Zheng regime. Kurt, Jim and Liz were all declared guilty of treason and ordered shot. Once lined up against the wall, they all assumed this would be how they ended, then the shots rang out and everything went dark.
They woke up in a very clean, all white room. A door opened and Jim walked out of his room only to find Liz and Kurt also walking into the all white hallway. Here’s where the real story begins. They meet an alien name Traq. He was a Akakie and a member of their military and went by the name of Commander Traq. His assistant was Lieutenant Barook. Both had holographic images showing them as humanoid to the humans. He had just saved the lives of Jim, Liz and Kurt while killing most of the guards and others in the prison which they had been held.
Of course everyone wanted to know why. Commander Traq had his reasons. His system and his home planet had been recently attacked by the Xortaag. This was a very militant alien civilization that was bent on destroying everyone and everything that was Xortaag. They had attacked Commander Traq’s system, but since the Akakies had superior technology they fought them to a draw. Traq knew that eventually the Xortaag would break the peace treaty and attack his civilization again and they would loose because the Akakies were not warriors. He needed warriors so he had come to Earth to find some. Only Earth was next on the Xortaag’s list of civilizations to conquer.
Since Earth wasn’t in space yet, they were defenseless against the Xortaag but Traq was willing to help but it was going to cost the humans a great deal of pain. He hoped he had found the right people to help pull his plan off and not only save his own civilization, but what would be left of the human civilization also. But nothing is ever guaranteed.
So the story is good and does have touches of humor. It is also very short. I was surprised when I had already reached the end of the book. There are two additional chapter from book 2 but they are chapter 2 & 3 which I can’t figure out why to just include those at all. I guess I’ll continue reading this series and see what happens in book 2, “Indomitable” now available on Amazon.