Book #68 - Battle Pod

Book 3 of the Doom Star series. Again, at $2.00, I grabbed Battle Pod before I was done with book 2. In this one Marten is heading for Mars, drifting slowly and trying to decide if he can make it to Jupiter. He can’t and when Omi recovers, they decide they must stop at Mars and try to bargain for fuel.

Meanwhile Social Unity has a last gamble, cyborgs from the Neptune station that are headed for Mars. Earth launches a massive supply convoy that manages to make it past the orbital Highborn defenses around Earth. The supreme commander of Social Unity is gambling and thinks it has paid off.

However the Highborn have anticipated it, and we see that they are expecting this to be a battle at Mars that will destroy the last Earth defenses. They send 3 battle stars, along with their own secret ship that is flung from an orbit around the Sun, out to Mars.

We jump around as Marten trains free Martian troops briefly before they are overwhelmed by the cyborgs. He’s almost killed, but one cyborg’s training and programming fails, and she joins them, helping them to escape. The great Mars battle takes place, with us being unsure who will win. The Social Unity battle fleet is decimated, but they destroy a Doom Star. The cyborgs are mostly destroyed, and we leave the story with Marten, Omi, and Osadar the renegade cyborg back in their shuttle heading for Jupiter. We don’t know who owns Mars, or what the Highborn will do. I can’t wait for the next book.b