The second book in Huff’s Confederation series follows on almost straight from the end of the first. Having got the attention of a two-star general (and having got him miffed at her), Staff Sergeant Torin Kerr is assigned to protect a scientific mission to a seemingly derelict alien spaceship of a type that isn’t known to the Confederation. Of course, the ship isn’t all it appears and it’s up to Kerr to get her team, and the civilians, out safely.
This is a fun story in the “haunted spaceship” genre. Apart from Kerr and general Morris, we get only a couple of cameos from any of the cast of the first novel, but that does give us time with a whole new bunch of characters to get to know. I don’t feel that the characterisation of these new marines was as good as those from the first novel. You didn’t really care as much which lived and died
This time round, Kerr gets a love interest, in the form of civilian salvage operator Craig Ryder, who was the one who found the (apparently) derelict ship in the first place. The relationship between them is practically stereotypical, starting from “get out of my way, civilian”, through, “well, he does have a nice smile” to, well, no bonus points for guessing. He does have some interesting characterisation though, which is brought through nicely by Huff.
There’s not an awful lot more learned about the Confederation itself (although we discover that its politics are the same as politics everywhere, as the expedition is led by a glory-hungry, media-friendly officer who’s only there because of political manoeuvring by his people in Parliament). I do sort of think that this might have moved the overall war plot forward a bit, however.
Like the first novel in the series, this came with a nice wee short story set elsewhere in the Confederation universe, following a different group of marines, not related to the main cast as they were trying to escape from an ambush and dealing with the lengths that soldiers will to go for their comrades.
So a good milSF story that definitely makes me want to read the next in the series.