Honor Bound — Rick Partlow

Honor Bound returns to the star-spanning human Republic of Duty, Honor, Planet five years after the attempted invasion of Earth by General Antonov's Protectorate and their biomech army. The invasion was defeated, but in the aftermath, the Republic economy has collapsed, and President Jameson is defeated in the next election by former Senator Daniel O'Keefe. After O'Keefe ends the practice of allowing developing nations to dump their political and economic undesirables onto the star colonies to serve as cheap labor for the mines run by the monopolistic Multicorps, unrest begins to build in those nations and in the Colonial Guard military that represents them. The Multicorps are unhappy as well and pressure the government to allow them to produce biomechs of their own to replace the forced emigrants as a source for inexpensive labor. Rumors begin to spread of a mutiny by the Colonial Guard in the colonies and of a possible assasination attempt or even a coup against the O'Keefe administration on Earth. Amidst this turmoil, reports come in of a military outpost on the fringes of Republic space that has been completely wiped out, and all signs point to a return of General Antonov's Protectorate from wherever they've been hiding the last five years. Jason McKay, now head of Fleet Intelligence, takes a star cruiser to find out if the Protectorate is once again on the move; while Shannon Stark, his second in command, sends an agent in undercover to investigate the rumored coup. What they each find, light years away from each other, might mean that the two threats faced by the Republic government are not at all unrelated... Also look for the third book in the series available now: Duty, Honor, Planet 3: The Line of Duty