[Americas Galactic Foreign Legion 14] • Embassy War

Colonel Joey R. Czerinski’s back ... like a bad penny. The Hero of the Legion and Butcher of New Colorado is assigned to the Arthropodan Empire home world to guard the lavish United States Galactic Federation Embassy in Capital City, while also acting as a spy for General Lopez and the CIA.

Things start out reasonably well, considering Czerinski’s reputation with the spiders. During a Harlem Globetrotters exhibition game, the usual sports betting ensues, despite staunch spider resistance to Americanized cultural contamination. Things get out of hand when a spider riot erupts. Later, an old ‘friend’ stops by Czerinski’s office and creates mischief that burns down the embassy. Immediately Czerinski blames the spiders. But real trouble’s on the table when a legionnaire and member of the scorpion-persecuted Mantidae disappears at the Scorpion Embassy right before the Scorpion Ambassador invites the USGF Ambassador and staff to an Old Earth ‘traditional’ Thanksgiving meal with all the fixin’s – including what they assume is turkey.

Later, Czerinski’s reassigned to a plum job back on New Colorado, watching a volcano. His former terrorist girlfriend and their teen son show up. Like father, like son, Joey Junior proves to be a handful of disciplinary problems looking for a place to happen – just in time for the imminent birthing of a new hybrid exoskeleton species. Eventually Czerinski discovers the spiders are tapping the volcano’s power to develop a new technology that could change everything.

With the usual inappropriate aplomb, Czerinski and crew take political incorrectness to a laughably absurd level in this fourteenth installment of the mind-damaging military space opera.