Dirigent » Cybermage

This is the final Lon Nolan book. It starts just after Christmas. Lon & Sara have a family Nolan, Lon Junior has enrolled and are now Lieutenant, their daughter Angie is 16. And Lon is in charge of a regiment, the second in line for work.

The next contract is with Elysium the University world. Chancellor Alberto Esteban Berlino arrive on dirigent to hire two regiments and all the regimental support.

The Union and the Commonwealth are the superpowers of this time and Elysium have become the target of the Union. There have been raids by forces unknown and the union have been offering to help. When the chancellor left a major invasion had started.

Lon’s regiment is included in the contract with him as second in command.

Mercenaries from New Sparta have invaded Elysium. The Dirigents have to fight their way down to the planet and have some unforeseen events. The Colonel in charge of the operation gets shelled by enemy artillery and are out for the duration. So Lon inherits the command.

The Dirigents lost at least five companies in the LZ, around 600 men. The New Spartan surprise with having at least 50% larger force on the ground and their artillery continues to damage the Dirigents.

Lon is no super hero as a leader. He makes mistakes and he hesitates and he ponder his actions but in the end he and the Dirigents prevail.

Good reading, not awesome but definitely worth reading if you got the time.

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Lon Nolan just spent a five months on Earth as a spy before returning to his wife and two children. Back on home he gets a surprise promotion when his battalion commander retire. Lt Colonel Lon Nolan takes command of the battalion.

The Colonial Mining Cartel are back raiding on Bancroft again. And this time Governor Sosa wants to hire a substantial force to throw them out. Under the command of Lon Nolan of course. There are some concerns on the regimental staff that Earth might retaliate at Dirigent for helping Bancroft again. Lon have only spent a few weeks at home after being gone for six months and his unit is not in line for a mission yet, but the customer is always right.

I feel more and more thet it was a great pity Rick Shelley died in 2001. With the rate he is improving in these books he could have been one of the great Military SF authors.

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Lon Nolan begins this book as the proud father of Angie 10 months and Lon Jr 7 years old.His family evening is disturbed by a call from Regiment, there has been a murder and Lon is called in to sit judge. The victim is a bully that threaten to rape and kill the killers sister. Lon is the only one that vote manslaughter instead of guilty and the man gets 14 years in prison. Lon is happy he didn’t have to convict him to death.

Next Lon’s company gets a three months training contract on Bancroft. The training of their police force to regular military standards goes well and the relations with the natives are fine. The outlying mining operations and villages are being raided by forces unknown. Eventually the regime decide that enough is enough and hire Lon’s company to raid the raiders straight back.

I like this book even better than the last, Lon Nolan is even more of a human in this book, It’s still not David Weber class but it’s fair and entertaining.

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Lon Nolan have learned some of the social graces of the Dirigent Mercenary Corps. And when we meet again he is busy escorting Angelika.

He and his two platoons are sent to test a new logistical delivery system for field deployment at Nassau near the town of BascombeEast when he meets Sara Pine. He propose to her the same evening and she says yes.

Aldryn has two separate colonies, east and west. The council have been negotiating with them for an agreement and a peace-keeping mission, but negotiations have broken down and east have invaded west who promptly hired a Dirigent Regimental group to expunge the unwanted invaders and settlers.

Not comfortable with a war of aggression the Dirigents take on the role of peace keepers with a self limiting rule of engagement. They occupy Hope, a town with settlers from East that have been in place long before the current conflict in order to protect them from West and initiate a round of peace negotiations. But this time round it is West that don’t want to negotiate.When the Dirigents reinforcement regiment arrive in the system, still a few days out, West decides to attack Hope and the Dirigents there effectively forcing DMC to switch sides in the war. In the hard fight to defend Hope, Nolands Captain is seriously wounded and he is forced to takecommand. After the fight he is confirmed as the temporary head of the company until they return to base. He also receives approval for his marriage.

The west are not ready for peace yet. So the battalion Lon is in are sent to take out the West’s second largest airbase while its ground cover is up in the mountains involved in the fighting there. The Dirigents taking that Air Base tips the scale in the war and Lon can finally head home to Sara.

I liked this one better than the books before mostly because of the love story, the personalization is also better in general even if its still world war one tactics.

If i didn’t know better i would have guessed rick was older, he was born 1947.

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Lieutenant Lon Nolan is staging a coup to take over the government in Singaraja, New Bali’s capital. It’s only an exercise for the local Militia.

They return back to base only to find that they are bound back out. This time in regiment strength. Their mission is to Defend Calypso from Belletiene’s invasion and liberate them if they have been occupied. They arrive in the middle of the invasion and succed in fighting it off only to face a second Belletiene invasion.

I am not really happy with these books. I hope they will get better but I don’t expect them to. There is almost no science fiction in this. It is more or less infantery tactics from the Great War (ww1) with a vener of technology.

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