Started a new book with a new author, well, new to me. I’ve never read anything by A. K. Duboff but I’ll keep on reading this series. It’s very interesting and kind of unlike most of my other military science fiction books. This book really revolves around two people; Evan Taylor and Anya Rojas. They are two people thrown together under remarkable and dangerous circumstances.
You will learn a lot about their individual backgrounds as they gradually open up to each other. The situation they find themselves in is not one they anticipated nor desired in their wildest dreams. They are both members of a disastrous colony expeditionary mission that went wrong as possible with killing everyone. Their colony ship was hit by something while orbiting the planet Aethos. It broke apart with some of the crew and passengers able to reach emergency landing pods. Not many really made it through the landing. Some of the pods hit way, way too hard, others landed on ground not suitable to soft landings, some in the water and some just lost in the jungle. Evan and Anya were among the lucky few that managed to land in a relatively open field. They both managed to leave their pods but they didn’t want to stray too far. The pods did have some survival gear, although not much.
By searching around for other survivors, Evan and Anya found each other. Then they began looking for others. Some of the other pods had survived and people were just now stumbling out and starting to wonder around. Evan didn’t know the planet but fortunately Anya was a xenobiologist who had actually been on an initial survey of this planet. She knew something about the flora and fauna of the planet, enough to know there were dangerous plants and animals on the planet.
Right now she and Evan decided to round up the rest of the survivors and get them into organizing some kind of survival settlement. They didn’t have any of the colony gear that was supposed to be shuttled down. All they had was what was in the rescue pods until they did a search of the area. That resulted in finding one larger cargo pod that had made its way down and did contain some items the group were desperately going to need.
While searching, Evan and Anya had seen smoke in the distance. They figured that was the military escort starship that had accompanied the colony ship. They didn’t know why it crashed, couldn’t tell if it had been shot down or had some kind of sabotage. They also didn’t know for sure if any of the military had survived. So, they told the group that they would go find what was there and see if it had more equipment and supplies for the survivors. If there were any soldiers, that might help to defend any crude settlement that might try to establish.
So off Evan and Anya go into the dense jungle and mountainous region. They know the crash site is quite a bit away, but they feel the risk is worth finding out if there were any survivors and if there were any usable supplies. They also discussed why their colony ship had been destroyed and who might have done it. Of concern was that in their search for other pods, they have found one with a NovaTech representative aboard. He was dead. His job would have been to establish comms with his corporation after the colony was settled to arrange for more supplies and equipment. He was dead because he had been shot! Neither Evan nor Anya could determine if he was shot prior to getting into the rescue pod or after he had hit the ground. His pod was in a good condition, so it was more likely that he had been shot after landing. That was not good. Only a few weapons, pulse pistols had been found with the cargo pod.
As they traveled, Anya begins to tell Evan about the planet as she knows it from the previous survey expedition. They had determined there were edible plants they could eat and the soil would support human crops. They also found the wild life mostly harmless, except for one specific region where a survey team had ventured in a pretty large truck. That truck had been torn to pieces and not much left of its occupants. The region where this took place was put off limits even though no one alive actually saw the beast of monster that did the damage. Evan thought that was good news, at least Anya knew what area to avoid and right now they weren’t going in that direction. Still, she did caution him that there were other smaller animals that did hunt prey. That was not the best news since they only had one pulse pistol between them.
So this how the book goes. There is some mystery as whether there are other people on this planet. They didn’t think so but evidence says that their military escort was shot down from the planet. Evan was also soon to find out that a member or members of the Noche Syndicate were on the planet. How they got there was unknown, but he knew he had to stay away from them. He had fled his home planet to get away from that Syndicate, but now they were already here. He just hoped they didn’t know of his previous involvements with the Syndicate or he would be a very dead man.
I’ll continue reading this story because it’s going off on a tangent that I didn’t expect. Book 2, “Lost Planet”, 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. ]