Very interesting story that doesn’t really tie-in to the military science fiction that I like, but it has its moments. There is one character that’s a Space Marine so I guess that kind of counts. But really, this is a cop or law enforcement story since the main character, Griffin Theodore Brooks, is going to be a Ranger, I.e., as in animal control, wildlife protection officer. But, before that job falls on him, he’s diving at night some place off the cost of Cape Town, South Africa. Griffin is a Marine Biologist and he’s searching for his favorite cephalopod he’s name Oswald. To me, not the greatest way to open a book.
Griffin, who we’ll later find out goes by the nickname of “Fin” (thank goodness) is accompanied by his golden retriever Jacques. The dog isn’t the brightest animal around, but he does seem to obey Fin pretty well. He has to because something has come out of the water and it doesn’t appear friendly at first. Fin doesn’t know what it is, but it came out of the water just after something huge had made a tremendous splash not far from where he was diving. Of course Fin has to go investigate and this is where he finds a sunken spaceship. Something or someone has opened a hatch and didn’t close it so the water was pouring into the ship getting it deeper and deeper.
Fin has to come up for air and that’s when he see Jacques messing with something straight out of a horror movie. He tells Jacques to get away from whatever it is but of course the dog doesn’t obey at first. He tries to bite the thing only to get a mouthful of something tastes absolutely horrible. Jacques finally backs off and Fin gets to him to help defend them both from this “monster”. About that time to huge figures come out of the dark and they tell Fin to stop messing with the Grenlian Lablud or better known to aliens as a “gooey”. At least that’s what the two huge aliens in spacesuits conveyed to Fin after that sprayed him with some kind of white mist. He could actually understand what they were saying!
Now this is where the story begins. It seems that the spaceship had erroneously crashed on Earth and that was a big problem. These two aliens were actually Rangers Harry and Charn of the Accord Protected Species Division. They had been assigned to monitor Earth since it was considered a Registered Life-Class Wildlife Preserve Planet. They said that Fin was in serious trouble for attaching the gooey and for finding the sunken spaceship. They had no choice but to eliminate Fin and Jacques (they didn’t know Jacques couldn’t talk). But first they wanted Fin to go back into the spaceship and see what happened to the Ranger that should have been in control. Fin did as asked and found another alien dead with a hole in his chest. The other two Rangers helped Fin get the spaceship closed up and then raised to float on the water.
They then told Fin that his life was over since they couldn’t allow him to retain the knowledge he had about this night’s events. He told them that on one would be him even if he could remember all that had happened. He also explained to them what a dog was and tried to convince them that Jacques wouldn’t tell a sole about this night. The Rangers also told Fin that the gooey was a protected species and was being returned to another sanctuary and that still had to get done, but they couldn’t leave their assigned post of watching over Earth. So, of course, Fin says he’ll take the gooey to where it needs to go, no problem, except he doesn’t know how to fly a spaceship.
Still, the Rangers said that might work. He’d need to take the body of the dead Ranger with him and eventually report back to this Division HQ with the ship and a report on what he had done. They also said the on-board AI could fly the ship to where it was to go and bring him back to Division HQ. But, he was in no way going to come back to Earth. Once he left, he would find out that the galaxy was full of life, but Earth wasn’t ready for that knowledge so it was protected. They said they could make Fin a temporary Ranger Recruit and let him finish this mission if he agreed to do so. Fin didn’t have anything holding him to Earth. He’d recently gotten out of the Army, finished his Marine Biology doctorate, and was just kind of wondering around. So, he said he’d do the mission.
And now we have Ranger Recruit Fin going off to who-knows-where without much knowledge of the galaxy he was about to join. His adventure starts quickly and doesn’t turn out any where near as easy as he thought. Oh, he does take Jacques with him and Jacques adapts to space just about as good as Fin does. I think Jacques is actually the first dog in the galaxy. The story does get very interesting in that there are a lot of poachers trying to steal protected species off various planets. Some of these animals are very dangerous while some make perfect pets. It’s the job of the Protected Species Division of Rangers to stop that kind of business. Ranger Recruit Fin doesn’t realize what he’s got himself into.
The book is pretty good, but it has a lot of editorial problems. There were words that didn’t belong in sentences or the wrong word was used as thought the author was writing in their native language. It did distract from the story because this occurred frequently. I’m not much into wildlife preservation, it’s just not my thing either. I don’t have pets or particularly fond of animals so this story doesn’t appeal to me all that much. Still, book 2, “Terminal Pursuit”, is available on Amazon now.