Ok, to get kind of caught up, while Jack Bennett was trying to go after a bounty on one of the Pirate Worlds he came across a cultist group calling themselves the Predecessor Cult. You’re going to read a lot about them all during the remaining books in this series. They happened to be holding the bounty Jack was looking for so he went to investigate what they were about.
He found that these guys & gals were very serious about their worship of the Ancients believing the Ancients would one day return and uplift all those that believed in them. Meanwhile, the Cult leadership was doing their own “uplifiting” in making major modifications to their followers. They made ordinary men and some women into almost super-humans. These Acolytes were the muscle of the Cult and took their job of protecting the Cult very seriously.
Jack happened to intrude into one of the Cult compounds while looking for his bounty. Since most of the Cultist wore robes which covered their heads, it was kind of hard to tell who was who. Also the Cultist Guardians, those militant members, didn’t want Jack nosing around. But he did get a surprising of one Acolyte that shocked him. He knew her as Lieutenant Valerie Bolesky. Why she was there, he didn’t know, but it didn’t appear that she wanted to be there. So Jack made it his job to rescue Valerie even if it meant taking on the entire cultist operation on this planet.
He also found out that these cultist weren’t pacifist. In fact they were well armed, too well armed for a supposed religious cult. He didn’t know where they were getting their weapons, but he knew they had to be involved in some kind of gun running operations. Little did he know that this would be a problem that consumed the rest of his days.
So, Valerie was rescued only for Jack to find out that she was part of Fleet Intelligence working to inflitrate the Cult. She didn’t feel that she was being accepted when Jack showed up and he practically blew her cover right there. They had taken her to an interrogation room to find out who she really was so when Jack got her out, he probably did save her life.
Now back a Fleet Intell HQ, Valerie offered Jack a job that involved him looking for another person (Finn Burton) probably being tortured by the Cult or even the Corporate Council. Fleet Intell believed that a lot of the funding for the Cult was coming directly from the Corporate Council, but for what reason they didn’t know.
Jack’s new job was to find the Fleet Intel imbed Finn Burton and get him out of there. This would lead Jack to another planet in the Pirate Worlds and would involve him almost destroying another Cult domain. Jacks contact on this Pirate World was Rhonda Lebeck. She had a partner name Kan-Zin-Tel, a Tahni. Jack didn’t know why any human would work with a Tahni. Jack and the humans had just fought a bloody war with the Tahni and Jack didn’t know if he could stand this guy. He might just kill him on sight!
Of course that didn’t happen. But Jack did find a heavy involvement of the Corporate Council by Executive Cassady Duquesne. He also meets Max, one of the Predecessor Cults chief enforcers. It doesn’t seem anything is going to go easy for Jack and company. They have to do a job for the Corporate Council Executive before she will release Finn Burton. Once he gets the job done, Finn Burton is presented, but he’s almost dead. The Executive along with the High Priest of the Cult want Jack to kill Finn since he’s wanted dead or alive by the authorities.
Of course Jack’s not going to do this so another battle breaks out with Jack and his associates and the Predecessor Cult. Birdy in the “Anna” shows up with guns blazing. Rhonda and Kan-Zin-Tels ship the “Valkery” is destroyed so they all flee in the “Anna”.
Jack would also find out if the Corporate Council was indeed involved with the Cult. This mission that Val sent him on was going to be profitable since the person he was after did have a bounty on him, but also, Fleet Intel was now paying for his services. Only Jack wasn’t so sure he wanted to keep doing this kind of work.
Jack’s also find out that he has a bounty on himself set by the Predecessor Cult. Whether someone would come to collect, he didn’t know. More will have to be provided in book 3, “Cultist Bounty”, avialable on Amazon.