The mission might be their last.Humanity can’t win. Lieutenant Daniel West and his soldiers will never overcome the crushing odds of a direct assault against superior alien forces. Every simulation test they’ve run ends the same way—in death. But they have no other choice. It’s either obliterate the entire Gresian race or destroy the ancient Shaldine gate system.Forever.Good thing Daniel has no … system.
Forever.
Good thing Daniel has no problem eradicating an enemy that shows no mercy. He won’t risk standing by and allowing the Gresians to enslave those he loves. So when orders come down, he’s ready to take the war straight to the enemy’s home turf.
But the Gresian’s planetary defense systems destroy half their platoon before they can even land on the alien world. And when a counterattack is launched against Earth, the support ships are forced to pull back from Gresian space, leaving the team stranded with orders to finish the mission—by any means necessary.
There’s only one way to give his team a slim chance at survival and restore hope for humanity’s future.
But it will require Daniel to make the toughest choice of all.
This novel contains violence and profanity.
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Having read the first two books, this book was received with the excitement it deserves. I loved the action even if over the top at times, enough to make my head spin. I love the action and the characters are wonderful! I would love more!
I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.
I could have given this book only 3 stars, but that might have not been really fair. There is a lot of action in this book, a very lot! It is exciting the way the action is described, but I think there’s just too much of it to be a really great story.
Our hero, Lieutenant Daniel West and his platoon/section of Mozari EXO-suited soldiers are given an impossible mission. Although he and his team have successfully completed every mission assigned to them so far, he’s obviously not thought about well enough to be promoted to at least Captain. That’s a little strange. Still, his now girl friend, Hope, is already a Captain although she’s a Chinese fighter pilot that seems to have had some extensive Army training. Dan and Hope have developed a way of reading each others thoughts over almost unlimited space. While they previously hadn’t told anyone about this connection, it has been discovered and both were threatened with imprisonment for not telling their superiors about this new ability. Yeah, like they would have really done that! Not!
Anyway, the original mission to land Daniel and his platoon on the home planet of the Gresians has been cancelled, but they have another mission to take it’s place. It appears to be a suicide mission as well. There’s nothing wrong with just throwing away some highly valuable assets just because they caused the high command some embarrassment from the previous mission. Right?
This time they’re supposed to land NEAR an ancient underground laboratory built by the Shaldine. This planet they are attacking seems to be an out of the way Gresian planet that is lightly defended if it’s even defended at all. That’s according to the latest Intel which obviously happens to be completely wrong. Daniel has a relationship with a Mozari AI, artificial intelligence, which doesn’t seem very intelligent most of the time. While it or she has reams of information stored in her data banks, she doesn’t have the intelligence to provide useful information when it’s needed. She always falls back on the notion that you didn’t ask for that information so I didn’t give it to you. That’s just dumb!
Ok, so their mission is to infiltrate a Shaldine underground lab and send a signal through the gateway system that will cause every Gresian every where to drop dead! Thus would end the Cresian problem and prevent them from destroying Earth. Earth has always thought genocide was a good war outcome, rght? Now if only everyone would follow their orders!
The mission starts off badly in that their shuttles are attacked on the way down to the planet. They crash land some four hundred kilometers from their objective. That right there should have caused a mission cancellation. To expect this small group to trundle over 400 kilometers through enemy territory should have been a clue that the mission wasn’t going to go very well. While they still have comms with the Earth starship, they should have just requested pickup and more air transportation to move them closer to their objective. This time give them adequate air protection or escort. But, that’s not what happened. Can’t make heroes out of easy tasks.
So now we read about one battle after another for the next four hundred kilometers. The Gresians are not easy targets especially when they figure out that every Gresian on the planet is a trained military warrior; there are no civilians! Oh, and the Mozari AI knew this before the mission was even planned!
Again, I’ll say there is a lot of action, but it’s very highly improbable that Lieutenant West and his bunch could have ever survived such a mission. With the number of encounters they have with the Gresians every one of them should have been killed very quickly, superman suits or not. Bu the time I got to the end of the book, I was just thinking that this was dumb, nobody could have survived all that! I’m just relieved this series is over.
Coltrain bluntly illustrated one of the most difficult downsides of being an active soldier – the emotional effect on moral convictions. If you had gone through the things he endured, lost the friends he lost and believed that the survival of humankind was on his shoulders as he did, what would you choose – genocide or prevention of active warfare? Could you make that decision in the middle of a botched offensive while you were losing? Daniel West is given orders to kill off the opposing race, down to the kittens, and he has to decide whether to follow those orders to the letter while he is trying to keep his team alive. This book is full of action, chaos, and emotional strain that ends in an unexpectedly beautiful way, just like David Weber’s “Echoes of Honor”.
I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.