Undead Marine

Sergeant Paxton Alejo is a League of Humanity Marine Commando, the best of the best. After getting sent to oversee a batch of fresh conscripts, Pax makes the fateful decision to sacrifice his life to save his subordinates. He is posthumously awarded the Cross of Honor, the highest military medal . . .

The Undead have been blooded in combat. Now it’s time to prove their value. The huge cost and effort to reanimate them must be worth it. With no rights of their own, their very existence depends upon their return on investment. But as the Undead are finding their footing and discovering how to best fight the war with the Tucanan invaders, the aliens are not standing still. They are experimenting with their evolutionary past to create new ways to fight humanity’s military forces.

As more and more special operators are resurrected with their mycelia and joining the Undead, the powers that be begin to "borrow" the Marines for missions beyond their stated scope. Particularly galling to Sergeant Paxton Alejo is when they're assigned a mission against supposed human traitors, especially when the reek of politics belies the integrity of the missions.

Pax becomes a team leader as the Marines are developing new tactics, but the Tucanans aren't standing still, either. And they seem to have targeted the Undead. High on their list of priorities is to figure out what makes the Undead so dangerous, and they'll go to any length to get their foot-arms on a few of them. Pax has to ensure their military mission is accomplished while blocking the Tucanans from taking Undead prisoners to face a fate worse than death—even multiple deaths.

As the Tucanan war machine continues to evolve and try new tactics, all of humanity must evolve as well, and the Undead seem to be the guinea pigs for each dangerous mission. It isn’t just the alien Tucs who are a danger. Rumors of unholy science still bandy about social media, and when battalion counter-assaults on Chinook to take back the planet, one of the Marines is killed and recovered by the locals. When they perform an autopsy, they discover . . . they don’t know what it is, only that it isn’t normal.

The end of the Undead could be upon us. The Undead continue to take the fight to the Tucanan invaders, but it’s difficult to achieve such notable success without attracting attention. Rumors continue to surface about clones and zombies, sparking protests. Irrefutable proof surfaces that at least one of the Undead was previously declared KIA and buried with honors, and then an insider goes public, sparking uproar and calls for official investigation.