This is the start of a six-book series that I’ve now completed. I’m breaking down the reviews to two books for each review so as not to make one review extremely long.
We have a main character name John “Jack” Bennet. He starts off with his carrer as a Lieutenant Commander with the 104th Search and Rescue Squad, Commonwealth Space Fleet. His job is to go into where there’s been heaving fighting and rescue the surviving Marines and evacuate the wounded and KIA, no Marine left behind. This was a part of the Human-Tahni war that is prevalent throughout Rick Partlow’s books. This is also the end of this particular war. Jack has been doing his S&R job for six years now and while he’s good at it, he’s tired of war and everything that comes with it. So he’s going back home.
Jack’s home planet is Eden. It’s a beautiful planet which Jack sees as his home of the future with his fiancée, Anna. He’s also looking forward to using his using his share of the family’s shipping business to set himself up for a life without the military. But, six years is a long time to be away and people don’t just stand still while you’re gone.
As you can guess by my last sentence, things might not work out as well as Jack was expecting them nor did even had a glimpse of what he was going home to. Communications between his fiancée and himself had practically stopped during the war since he was often in places that he couldn’t routinely receive messages. The same when for his family or rather his parents. Jack was the youngest of several brothers and sister, but none were close and none considered the military a real occupation. They really had no clue as to what he did and didn’t really want to know anyway.
I’ll just say right now that Jack is going to be very, very disappointed in his home coming. He’s not going to be marrying his supposed fiancée, Anna. She’s definitely moved on, quite aways on. The same goes for his parents. Oh, they sold the shipping buiness, but Jack figured that he would get his share of the proceeds to get him a new start in his new life. He’s going to be very much disappointed in the outcome of this part of his life.
So, that brings us to the point of Jack trying to find some other way to make a living. From his parents, he did get a dilapidated old shipping freighter starship. He wasn’t even sure if it could fly. I had previously been a military transport of some kind but hadn’t received much maintenance in a long while. While he had the ship, he didn’t have a pilot and Jack couldn’t fly anything.
That took him to one of the local watering holes where he inquired about anyone who had flying skills that wouldn’t be too keen on being paid a lot. That’s where Robin Hartley or “Birdy” comes into the picture. Birdy can fly anything and can fix anything he flies when he’s not drunk! After Birdy gets to working on the new ship chirstened of all names the “Anna”, they take a test flight and find out that it does indeed fly.
Now Jack just needs to find them a job shipping something or whatever. He eventually turns to an old military buddy named Emil Ferreia, a.k.a. “The Scrounger”. This guy tells Jack that the he knows of a guy who needs something shipped to a destination that Jack isn’t going to like. Still, the money would be good and may get Jack additional jobs. Unfortunately, this guy is part of one of the Pirate cartels and his cargo is weapons supposedly for another cartel out in the Pirate Worlds.
Jack is desparate so he takes the job. The finds thsi guy Gordon Fallow who immediately doube-crosses Jack and threatens to take his ship. Jack and Birdy manage to outsmart this guy and place him in a holding cell aboard the “Anna”. They then transport him to Patrol Admin HQ and collect their bounty.
Jack then identifies another bounty named Tilly Harrel, but once again, this guy is located on one of the Pirate Worlds. It happens to be the same plaent and cartel that the weapon shippment was to go to. Jack thinks he can explain to the cartel what happened if he’s caught by them, but he doesn’t plan to be. He’s going to go in quietly, get his man and then get out.
Of course it doesn’t work that way. Jack runs into all sorts of problems, but he also runs into Valerie Bolesky. She’s infiltrated a Church of the Ancients, a cult group that seems to be dealing in weapons. Jack blows her cover not knowing she’s working for Fleet Intel. They both wind up captured by the Bashmaky Cartel, but Jack comes up with a plan to secure their freedom and then get the Cartel to take down the Church of the Ancients. It’s quite a plan and doesn’t always work out as he planned
This is not a typical military-type science fiction book. Jack isn’t in the military as he often states, but Val is and she thinks Jack can work for her just because she asks him to. Their relationship will develop more in book 2, “Corporate Bounty”, available on Amazon.