If the cash is there, we do not care….

Aamon Savage, an elite commando and clandestine operative of the Union of Terran States Navy, had been betrayed and left to perish on the Axis-occupied world of Starkwelt by an intelligence agent from his own star nation. He'd survived the experience, albeit a good deal less trusting of his birth nation's espionage establishment.

Out of uniform after having resigned his commission, and running his own successful private security company--Solutions LLC--from the relative safety of neutral New Switzerland as storm clouds of war gather between the Eugenian Central Nations-led Axis and the UTS-dominated Alliance, he is offered and accepts a lucrative contract from a former lover....a representative of the same Union intelligence service that had previously betrayed him. The job: return to Starkwelt under a false identity then get close to, kidnap and bring alive to the Alliance a high-ranking official in the Starkwelt Occupation Authority while she visits her flame in the tropical holiday-resort city of Karnivaal. He neither knows nor cares why; the offered compensation is far too generous for him to pass up or pry too deeply into his client's motives.

He'll get quite a bit of help: his former lover, an ambitious operative of the Union's premiere intelligence outfit: a young New Swiss diplomat, recruited by the Starkweltean Resistance and risking her country's neutrality--and her own life--by working for it: a Starkweltean military intelligence agent, an old friend-turned-foe from Aamon's sordid past: and many more.

Aamon knows that his tasking will be far from easy, especially with the Starkweltean security services and their more terrifying Axis counterparts on the job and likely discreetly clocking his every move. And as an 'undesirable' Neo-Human Hybrid trying to pass for Eugenian in a country whose regime is collaborating with its occupiers to exterminate his kind, Aamon knows that any foolish mistakes on his part could have lethal consequences.

Whether exploiting friendly assets, manipulating and eliminating potential threats, or trying not to make the sorts of errors that could land him in jail or end his life, the wily ex-Commander will need to draw upon every bit of his own extensive training and acumen as a gunfighter and spy, use every shred of guile and charm that he can muster, and employ every nasty trick at his disposal in order to survive his mission in Karnivaal, let alone successfully fulfill his contract and reach his payday.

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