We’re back with Cameron Alvarez and Vicky Sandoval, Farmers! Yeah, they’ve taken their separation bonus from the Marines and left Earth to become colony farmers on a planet called Hausos. This planet is about as far away from Earth as you can get. They took this location since the Commonwealth Colonization Authority game them almost everything they needed to start their farm, except a lot of spare parts. After working this farm and hoping to get a profitable crop harvested by next summer, they were still replacing broken stuff with hard to get spare parts. Most were fabricated locally, but some and most everything else had to be imported and that was expensive! Still, Cameron and Vicky very much like the idea of not being shot at every single day!
Everything was going great, if you like farming. There wasn’t much of a town close by, but it did have something resembling a spaceport and they even had a few freight shuttles coming and going every so often. Most everyone around the town were also farmers. There were some shops keepers and other tradesmen in town so the community could keep itself running without a lot of trouble. There was one particular far ran by a guy named Klaus Hellnick. He wasn’t exactly the friendly type. He was alone on the farm as far as anyone knew; he had a few hired hands, but it didn’t seem like he was working his farm all that hard.
There was also interesting things happening regularly at his farm. Freighter shuttles were flying way to regularly toward Hellnick’s farm and everyone knew they couldn’t be delivering that much equipment to one place. The town’s people were very curious as to what was going on out there, but it was really none of their business, so far. Then one of those shuttles crashed on Dave Cline’s farm and a whole lot of stuff started happening real quick.
Cameron, Vicky, and Dave headed out to the crash since they were close. Once they got there, everything was in flames and it didn’t look like anyone could have survived the crash. Still, Cameron and Vicky pushed their way into the crew compartment only to find all but one person pretty much dead. The last guy didn’t look like he last too long and Cameron didn’t know if he should move him or wait until Emergency Rescue arrived. They got back out of the crashed shuttle and ran into Captain Eld. This guy looked definitely like the pirate type and didn’t deny it one bit. That wasn’t so bad and after getting a glimpse of the photon cannon inside the crashed shuttle, Cameron figure he was also a weapons smuggler. While that wasn’t all that great, out here in the “Forbidden Zone”, there wasn’t much in the way of law and as long as these guys kept to themselves and didn’t bother the honest folk, they wasn’t anything they could do about smugglers being in their community.
At least there didn’t first appear to be any reason to object to their being around until Cameron and Vicky spotted the Tahni Colonel and his solders there! That they definitely didn’t like. While the war was over, Cameron and Vicky still had strong memories of the killings the Tahni had done and the Tahni they had killed in return. Things had taken a turn for the very worst. Cameron and Vicky might not be just farmers for much longer, not with the Tahni around anyway!
Once again, very smooth writing. While this book seemed to tell a pretty comprehensive story, it seemed short after reading it. I don’t know if it’s the easy way it reads or what, but I kind of just moved along while reading the book and that’s good. The editing is excellent which always makes for a good book. I’ll definitely be reading the next book in this series, “Fire Base”, which is available for pre-order on Amazon right now. It’s expected to out by 16 Feb 2021. Better get it!