This is military sci-fi, so expect a certain level of violence. The story is about his squad, learning to fight, learning to work together, learning to fight the system… and facing their greatest fears. That is why they are called cry pilots.Īs you might guess, Maseo survives his initial experience, and then is assigned to a special training program for infantry to fight a new bio-menace. The inscrutable AIs invented CAVs – automated flying machines that require human pilots. The AIs were asked to come up with a weapon to defeat these enemies. An unfortunate side effect is that the goo sometimes 'restores' bio-engineered creatures from a previous age, which seem driven to kill everyone. While the AIs were still around, they initiated a program to restore the world's ecosystem (most of the world is now covered in goo). Three AIs have achieved sentience, but then were mysteriously destroyed. But… if he commits a crime… his punishment will be assignment as a cry pilot. The challenge is that they won't accept candidates from his low social class. The now-grown Maseo wants to enlist in the military as a way of paying for his past actions. (There's more to the story, but you won't know that for a while…) His grandmother, leader of the resistance, ordered him to do it. It also means that I can't completely explain what the book is about, because that would ruin the fun for you.Īs we learn on page one, Maseo Kaytu as a child befriended the occupying soldiers, then led them into an ambush. This is one of those sci-fi novels where the author explains the background story piece by piece as he tells his story, which works well to keep up the reader's interest. In the end, all you can do is the job.Rating: (7.00) 409 pages. Then a vicious counterattack teaches him another lesson: you can't save everyone. There is no line he won't cross to protect his squad. When the search for the Hatchery shines a light on Kaytu's insurgent past, he faces a terrible truth. While the squad is winning battles, Earth is losing the war.

Kaytu's battle-tested squad tracks the enemy from remote bases to elegant cities to subterranean caverns, but the lampreys start hitting harder and faster. The updated mission is simple: pinpoint the Hatchery, the “spawn point” of the lampreys, and blast it into a fine powder.

In this incendiary new military science fiction novel, an infantry squad crisscrosses the globe on a search-and-destroy mission against a relentless foe.Īfter cry pilot Maseo Kaytu's white-knuckled victory over the mysterious lampreys at Ayko Base, military command develops new weapons and a new strategy.

Cry Pilot by Joel Dane