by Michael Mammay
ISBN 978-0-06-269468-3
Disclaimer: I received a free review copy of this title from the publisher.
“You seem to think of Cappans as a homogenous group… I would suggest to you that they’re as diverse in their thinking as humans.”
Having walked free despite his decision to annihilate much of the population of Cappa, Colonel Carl Butler has started a new life on Talca Four, home to the galaxy’s military bureaucracy. Forced into retirement, Butler now has a nominal civilian title as Deputy VP of Corporate Security at a tech firm that mostly keeps him around for the optics. Divorced and living alone, Butler continues to grapple with his guilt, his infamy, and what the future holds for a man known as the Scourge of Cappa. Then his boss entrusts him with a secret assignment to investigate a rumoured security breach at a rival firm that holds important military contracts. Soon Butler’s sources are turning up dead, and he realizes that what he has gotten himself into is more than a simple hack, and that the stolen information may cost him his life.
Spaceside picks up about two years after the events of Planetside, when Colonel Butler found himself maneuvered between a rock and a hard place, and chose to take the fate of Cappa and its people into his own hands. He thought his decision would eliminate the hybrid super soldiers that were the result of secret military experiments on Cappa, but now, on the streets of Talca Four, he keeps thinking he sees humans with Cappan eyes. Is he finally succumbing to the guilt of all the murders he committed, or just losing his mind? A hero to some, and a pariah to others, Butler has few people he can trust to help him unravel the mystery, and find out whether any of the hybrids made it off Cappa.
Spaceside leans more towards sci-fi mystery or spy novel than military fiction, with only a couple of prolonged tactical engagements, one of which actually takes place in the context of a VR game. Most of the military elements of this installment come in the final pages, when Butler unexpectedly finds himself deployed with a private mercenary corps. Although two years have passed since the events on Cappa, it is clear that they still continue to profoundly affect Butler’s mental health, and cause him to question himself. While we do not land in the immediate aftermath of the mental health consequences of such a deployment, the reverberations are felt as he chooses a path forward, and ponders whether any kind of atonement is even possible in such a situation.
It is a tricky thing to keep a reader’s sympathy with a character who is arguably a war criminal. Butler has charisma, but he also continues to use people to get what he wants, even when that puts them in danger. That he begins to think about atonement, and to see the Cappans in a more nuanced light is small consolation for the continued casualties, even though Butler is merely a cog in an overall corrupt system. If Planetside showed the military in that light, Spaceside turns its attention to how corporate interests perpetuate and profit from the problems of imperialism. A third as yet untitled Carl Butler story is slated for a likely 2020 release.
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