This has got to be one of my most favorite series. There is so much subtle humor and craziness going on that I get a real kick out of reading each book. I hope they continue forever!
James McGill is back to his old hilarious stuff. He’s a Mercenary if you didn’t know and why you wouldn’t know that is only if you started reading this series with this book which is just wrong! Anyway, McGill hasn’t actually been called back to active duty yet, but he gets a late night visit by a young lady, which isn’t that unusual, except she has contacted James via his tapper. She happens to be one Abigail Claver who James had met briefly in one of his past exploits. She’s also one of the many, many illegal clones of the one and only Claver.
Back to the late night call, Abigail was definitely on a distant planet using an illegal deep-link transmission just to talk to McGill. Yet what she wanted was a face-to-face meeting with him on this strange planet upon which she stood. It turns out that what was thought to be a planet was actual a pretty intact Skay starship that had crashed on Green World. Anyway, she wanted McGill to speak to Praetor Drusus about settling their quarrel with Earth and the Claver clones, the ones that didn’t want to destroy Earth and had separated from the original conniving Claver. They had some abilities to offer the Earth so she was trying to get some exclusive contracts and McGill was her contact with the Praetor. Except McGill had forgotten all about his promise to do this for her.
Still, Abigail had something she needed to show James and he had to come to her location to see it. There was no way he was going to get the Praetor to send a ship to do this so he thought the next best thing would be to use the deep cast device his daughter, Etta, was working on down in Grey Deck at Central. The only problem with his plan was that Grey Deck was highly classified and he definitely didn’t have the clearances. Not only that, but the Hegemony Hogs (Guards) who provided security, would just love to catch James trying to break into Grey Deck.
So, James put on the old charm with his daughter and she got him in muct to her discomfort. She also managed to send him out to meet with Abigail, but she was pretty dead by the time James got to her. But James did some snooping around gathered some samples of the world he was on and got back to Grey Deck. Unfortunately, he had been injured on Green World and soon died of his injuries!
Galina Turov, MaGill’s Tribune, had him revived. So now that Galina is invovled she obviously wants all the glory to come her way. It seems that McGill has stumbled upon the very planet where the Rigellian’s made their super tough armor clothing. This stuff was much, much tougher than the armor worn by Legion Varus mercenaries so if they could find how this stuff was made and make their own, they would be unstoppable.
And that’s the rest of the story. How James McGill shows Legion Varus where and how to manufacture their own impenetrable armor. It wasn’t as easy as it sounds, but he got it done and almost got a promotions out of it. Yeah, Centurion James McGill was going to be a Primus, well, almost. And that’s another story!