This is a very, very good book. It is well written and very well edited. The characters are very well built and make you want to read more of them, only that might be a problem for me.
We start off with Captain Mark Warren working in a highly secret lab somewhere in the Canadian North. He isn’t your typical military guy since he’s not in anyway considered a combat soldier. No, his job is to use his highly advanced brain to figure out stuff. He’s an expert in exobiology and specifically in enhancing the man to machine interface, in other words, he improved cyborg enhancements. Earth hadn’t really advanced that far into cyborg development although there were a few humans defined in that category within the Terran Military Defense (TMD). Dr. Mark Warren was a major player in the further development of cyborgs, but he never excepted that to raise any issues with anyone.
Yet, his lab was under attack. The small lab room he was in was empty except for him. He didn’t know where his lab partner had gone to, but she certainly wasn’t with him and his lab room was now locked down tight. Alarms were going off and it sounded like all heck was breaking lose in the entire building. Then the calvary showed up in the form of armored troops of the TMD. One armored monster crashed into to his lab room, looked around and told Mark to come with him. Mark was led to another room with more armored troops until the “All clear” was given. They had found his lab partner, Dr. Beth Coulter, unconscious, but alive.
After the all clear, Mark was checked out by medical personnel, thoroughly interrogated by the TMD and finally released to his apartment. While there, he got a knock on his door and a Captain Eva Jackson, also a Ph. D. in terraforming and nano tech. She told Mark that she thought someone had been or was in her room. Mark went out to investigate when he spotted a man in an overcoat leaving Captain Jackson’s room. He yelled at the man only to have him take off. Mark ran after him and finally tackled the guy outside the apartment. When Mark tried to whack the guy, it didn’t seem to phase him on bit. The guy finally managed to know Mark down enough so he could get away. Mark later found out he had just attacked non-human cyborg!
It has become clear to the TMD that Mark and now Eva contain information that someone wants badly. It also turns out that the hospital that treated Dr. Beth Coulter, some how lost her! Where she went, no one knew. Upon further investigations, it was found that Dr. Beth Coulter wasn’t who they though she was and she might have been the reason the lab was attacked by vicious mercenaries. The TMD, Mark and Eva would later find out that Dr. Beth Coulter was to become their worst nightmare, a psychopath with no compunction about killing whomever she wanted dead.
So this turns into a kind of super detective mystery story, but Mark and Eva stay heavily involved. They’re joined by Sergeant Axel Von Radach and later by Sergeant Kamryn Fleming. The two Sergeants are charged with keeping the two Captains out of harms way, but that seems to be an impossible task.
A very entertaining story. I really liked the way the book flowed with one thing after another happening. I don’t know if real people could have kept up with all the injuries everyone suffered, but it was still interesting in the book.
Now, my only problem is with the way the series might continue. Mark Warren turns out to be a very smart guy with numbers and he manages to play the stock market very well. He intends to separate from the military and wants to take a number of people with him. I just don’t know if I’ll like the book well enough to see these people operate outside the military. Still, I’ve already got the second book and I’ll give it a read just to see how thing turn out.