This definitely not a military science fiction book. If I had know what it was about (I don’t read reviews, go figure) I probably would have passed on this series. It’s not that it’s badly written, but I don’t go in for “vampire” stories, although these aliens aren’t necessarily vampires.
Secondly, the main character is a truck driver, David “Jackknife” Osage. He’s seems to be traveling from Motor City (Detroit) to Loveland (Colorado) via I-70 westbound. You’ll here all this on his CB radio (if you’re old enough to know what a CB radio even is!). Anyway, he’s advised not to pick up a young lady standing near a lamp post at a local truck stop. Of course, David doesn’t pay any attention to this but does stop and pick up the young lady.
You’ll also get warned to “watch the sky” from a lot of the other truckers on the CB. That’s kind of an odd warning and David certainly doesn’t know what it means. As I mentioned, David does pickup this young lady and her name turns out to be Diamond Dust, well, that’s her stage name. She’s got a gituar on her back and she looks to be abouty 18 or 19, but she’s not exactly giving David the vibes that she’s just some runaway teenager.
Not too far along their tavels on I-70, they start getting reports that the Kansas State Troopers have the highway blocked and are turning people around. Nobody knows exactly why and it’s too late for David to turn his rig around by the time he comes to a stop. David is going to be in for the shock of his life and finds out that his passenger might not be whom or what he things she is.
Meanwhile, David has a sister, Laura Osage, that’s a cop back in Chicago. She’s been called about a forced entry to a warehouse. So she responds and six what appear six men, six armed men taking things from the warehouse. These guys seem fairly large, tall and skinny, but she swears one appears to be seven or maybe even eight feet tall. She calls for backup since there’s no way she’s going to take on six guys much less six heavily armed dudes. Of course, backup isn’t immediately available, but Lara has a job to do so while doing it she’s spotted. What finds her sares her half to death. She manages to scamble away firing her service pistol several times maybe hitting one of the guys. They chase her until she’s caught, but one manages to bite her on the leg. This is the beginning of a nightmare for Laura and she has no idea how much worse things are going to get.
Then there’s Charles Osage, brother to David and Laura. He’s been working as a programmer for Warfighter Games Company. He’s normal work place is a bunker type building which he thought was kind of interesting when he first starte working there, but not he’s not so sure this wasn’t planned. He knows for a fact that Earth is being invaded by aliens. He has acess to the HardNet and there are reports of alien ships coming down and killing indiscriminately. Humanity has a war on their hands and they don’t appear to be fairing very well. It’s obvious from first reports that these aliens have a higher technology level than Earth shown by the meer fact that they came here in starships.
Previously, when the invasion started, the company told all its employees to gather their families and come to the facilities. So Charles isn’t concerned about his family since they are secure. Charles is invited to a meeting where there are a number of hight ranking military officers and probably some ranking civilians and they are all watching the demo screens in the operations center. This isn’t a demo. His company specializes in warfare strategy and tacticts which is part of they embed in their games. They try to make the gaming warfare as hard as it could realisticly could be so now the military want their expertise to observe what the military is planning to do against this alien invasion.
A large combined fleet has gathered to launch an attack against a concentration of the alien starships. The attack doesn’t go as planned nor as hoped. Humanity finds itself clearly out gunned with technology they can only dream of. The military is soundly defeated. Charles doesn’t know what’s going to happen now, but he thinks it might be time to try and find his brother and sister and maybe go off the grid at their father’s cabin in Colorado.
At about the same time, David and Laura both come to the same conclusion. They think they’d be better prepared for whatever the future has in store for them if they are together. They both begin heading towards Colorado (I think that’s where they’re heading). Neither one of them are going to have an easy time of it. They’ve just about got to fight their way through.
David also finds out something about the young girl with him. She’s not human, but she’s not one of the aliens. Unfortunately, the aliens do know about her and they want her now! David’s not willing to let them have her although she says it’s best for him if he doesn’t get involved. David’s going to get involved, guaranteed!
So, this first book went pretty fast. I thought about not finishing it, but each page seemed to come and go quickly until I was finished. I’ll probably continue reading the series with book 2, “Ristance Day” now available on Amazon.