Ok, for this book you need to brush up on your Norwegian and Finnish. There are probably other languages used in this book, but I just skip over those words anyway. If you’ll remember, you are an American Marine Raider, that is if you are considering yourself as the main character, Gunnery Sergeant Wolf Mathison. He and four of his Marines were in stasis aboard a starship headed for Europa when something malfunctioned. He and his small crew woke up about four hundred years in the future. They had a long, long sleep.
In this world, the United States is no longer. It was destroyed by its enemies and the land that once was America is now a nuclear waste land. And, that means, there really is no longer a Marine Corps. That’s a concept that GySgt Mathison isn’t ready to accept. One primary reason is that the people who woke him up were holding him prisoner and threatening to execute him and his other three Marines. That obviously didn’t set well with the Gunny.
So, not to go over the entire first three books, these Marines were eventually rescued by another faction which appears to be a Norwegian/Finnish group that are fighting against the Social Organization Government (SOG). This SOG has taken over all of Earth and most of the discovered planets. They are a militant organization that suppresses their citizens “for the greater good”. Obviously, GySgt Mathison wants nothing to do with them so he allies with the Vapaus Republic.
Now the Republic military is made up of two groups, the Vanir (the Navy) and the Aesir (ground forces). GySgt Mathison has allied him and his Marines with a special ops team of Aesir led by Lojtnant Skadi. They have subsequently been joined with another special operator who goes by the name of Sif and looks to be about thirteen years of age. Why she looks this way is explained in the first or second book. This arrangement was going well when the whole team of various players joined together to fight the SOG. But, everything changed when the Vanri turned against their own kind and imprisoned the Aesir and the Marines. They finally got out of that situation and have been operating on their own for a short while.
Gunnery Sergeant Mathison managed to capture a small fighting starship which his Chief Warrant Officer Diamond Winters can operate in space. They rename this starship the USS Eagle and claim it for the US Marines. Still, most of this came about because fighting the SOG has turned into something different. They now seem to be fighting against crazy creatures that appeared to formerly be humans. These humans, in some cases, were previously thought to be dead, but now are acting like crazy zombies.
Whatever is changing these civilians into murderous creatures is also effecting some of the military starships that zip through space. In order to go long distances, they have to use a Shorr space drive. It is not believed that something is happening when in Shorr space using this drive. It is creating a tear in our dimension and allowing things that aren not human to cross over and they are causing this insanity in those they can reach. This is what the Marines are now fighting against. The need to convince the rest of this civilization that they have a bigger fight in store if the human civilization expects to survive.
One such person is a Colonel Commissar Feng, a SOG commander of an ODT battalion that has been devastated by these unknown creatures from another dimension. He has come to realize that the Vapaus Republic is not his enemy and now needs help in convincing others. He’s joined with GySgt Mathison, Skadi, and Sif, but it is an uneasy joining since they are not used to trusting each other.
So, that’s the situation in this book. This small group has to stay alive and convince others that the real enemy is coming from another dimension and using the Shorr drive opens that dimension and creates an opportunity for more deadly creature to come through. They need to find something that can stop these creatures from infecting others and find a weapon that will prevent those infected and apparently dead to be turned into zombies. There are two fleets somewhere in space, a SOG fleet and a Vanri fleet, that must get together without destroying each other. But how can that be done with so much hatred already between the two and how does Gunnery Sergeant Mathison and his Marines fit into this whole picture? Good question and only some answers in this book.
The next book will be just as interesting. I’m looking forward to book 5, “Genocide of Mankind”, currently available on Amazon. It’s on my reading list.