Well, this book is pretty short. That’s not unusual for the books in this series, only this one seemed very short. And, it doesn’t have much to do with invading Pluto as the cover leads you to believe. Yeah, they do go to Pluto, but there’s really no invasion; more like a desparate landing and finding a place to hide!
Gold Squadron has been split up. For some reason, Brigadier General Asquew has decided to send Commander Solomon Cready with Ambassador Ochrie and Imprimatur Rhossily to Earth so they can convince the Grand Council of the coming war with an alien race. Solomon has no idea why he has to go other than he’s obviously going to provide escort services to these to dignitaries. Still, he would rather have gone with his squad. He’s also given his real mission and that is to find out if Taranis Corporation is involved in creating the cyborgs employed by the Ru’at. How he’s going to do this all by himself is something of a mystery to Solomon.
At the same time, his Gold Squad, minus himself are heading out to Pluto. The giant Ru’at ship in stationary orbit over Proxmia had just launched about thirty smaller vessels who immediately jumped towards Pluto. Gold Squad aboard the CDF Oregon will attempt to get to Pluto before the aliens and then stop them from setting up any kind of base on Pluto. Whether or not Gold Squad can actually do anything against the aliens is highly unlikely, at least to Sergeant Wen, now temporarily promoted to First Lieutenant and made the temporary field commander. She would sure prefer to have Solomon leading the squad. That’s what he was trained for, not her. But, orders are orders, and they must be carried out.
As it turns out, Solomon and his charges never reach Earth. Someone has just destroyed the New York space elevator just prior to his shuttle docking so they have to divert to the moon base. It’s commanded by Major General Hausman. At least they will have a safe haven while they wait for another means of getting down to Earth. Or so that’s what they were thinking. It didn’t turn out that way at all.
So, the whole Solar System has gone up in chaos. Mars has just been nuked; well, not the domes, just the deserted plains near the domes, but the after shocks has almost been as bad as dropping a nuk directly on the dome. It is hoped the Martian rebellion will have something more serious to worry about beside fighting the Confederation. And now, aliens of an unknown capability have began invading Earth space. They appear to be much further advanced than Earth and are using some kind of human/machine cyborgs to do their fighting. These cyborgs don’t die like normal soldiers. The keep fighting until you sever their spinal column of decapitate them.
There’s obviously more to come since the war with the aliens has just started. Let’s hope Earth and humanity can get its act together to fight back at least a little!