Well, Samuel Hyst has just been screwed over something terribly! He turned himself into Recovery Agent Trask who was working for the Grotto Corporation and had already captured Samuel’s son, Orion. Samuel was the swap to get his son out of captivity, but now Samuel is truly back where he didn’t want to be and that is under the thumb of Grotto Corporation.
Back a long time ago, Samuel was part of Tango Platoon, Reapers, who managed to get the Grotto Corporation to sit down and talk about a union. Well, Grotto Corps. sent an Anointed Actuary to arrange the unionization of the Reapers. They willing did so mainly because they figured it would cost them less than killing and replacing all the Reapers. Now this same Actuary was the reason Samuel found himself in Grotto’s captivity.
While aboard the *Rig Halo*, the supposed independent mining ship ran by Captain Dar, Samuel knew very well that Dar and his ship had participated in some activities that bordered on piracy. Samuel had reluctantly participated and now he was going to have to pay for those transgressions. Along with paying for his willingness to stand up to the Grotto Corps. during the union thing.
Yet, at least the Actuary recognized that Samuel Hyst was worth something to the corporation. So instead of killing him, they sentenced him to a prison moon called *Nemesis*! This is where his fighting talents would be put to use for the corporation since the only way out of this prison was to fight or die. These prison legionaries were the lowest of the low when it came to enforcing Grotto Corporation edicts.
At least Samuel was comforted with the thoughts that his wife, Sura and his son, Orion, would be safe and out of the Grotto Corporations control as they lived onboard the *Rig Halo*. Captain Dar had a liking towards Sura and she didn’t react to this attentions, because she was married to Samuel. Now with Samuel out of the picture, maybe things would change between Sura and the Captain. Samuel knew he couldn’t do anything about that, but he did love the idea that Sura was safe. He vowed that someday he would come back to them.
Upon arriving at *Nemesis*, Samuel is treated as expected, he was a prisoner in a vile prison along with thousand of others. Life on this airless moon with the prison carved out of rocks wouldn’t be easy. Still, he found out that there was a way out of this misery. He met his Line Warden Daesa who was a battle hardened veteran that controlled everything the prisoners did while under her supervision. And what she controlled was what they did in battle.
The whole reason for this prison was to provide cannon fodder for the Grotto Corporation so they could collect assets they wanted. Usually this involved removing colonist from Grotto property where they had tried to illegally settle. These people were just as human as Hyst but they did not want to be controlled by a huge corporation. It was up to the prison legions to eradicate these people from Grotto land. They also were told that they didn’t take prisoners since the prison planet they lived on could only support the prisoners that were there.
The Samuel found out that if you survived six battles, you might be given your freedom. That as the current rule and Line Warden Daesa restated that rule every time they went in to battle. Samuel found some of his fellow prisoners had survived one or two battles so far, but there weren’t many who had made it alive to finish six. He was soon to find out why!
This book seemed kind of short. There are two major battles that Samuel gets involve in and they flow pretty rapidly. The author writes a pretty smooth book describing everything very well. I was surprised I was going through it so fast. Previous books in this series seemed to kind of bog down in places. Not this one. Since this is an eight book series, the final book, “Metal Storm”, is now available on Amazon.
==[Note 1 (12/23/2025): I’m no longer associated with Amazon and will no longer provide any links to books from that website. You can usually find books that you like at your usual source.]==
==[Note 2: As of 12/03/2023, this will not be posted on Amazon since I have been banned from posting reviews for some unknown reason. ]==