Undercurrents by Robert Buettner

Published by Baen on July 5, 2011

Undercurrents is the second novel in the Orphan's Legacy series. The Orphan's Legacy series is set in the same universe as, and is a successor to, Robert Buettner's Jason Wander series.

Kit Born, a United States Army colonel assigned to special operations, is violating the Human Union Charter by conducting surveillance upon the planet Tressel. She hopes to determine why military officers in Tressen (one of Tressel's two nations) are collaborating with military officers from the planet Yavet. Unfortunately for Kit, she's captured by the Yavi and held by Major Ruberd Polian, Yavet's ranking military officer on Tressel pending the arrival of General Gill. Point of view then shifts to that of Jazen Parker, a retired special ops officer who owns a tavern on Mousetrap. Jazen is recruited to complete Kit's mission on Tressel. He reluctantly agrees to resume his military career only because a secondary objective of the mission is to locate Kit. As far as Jazen is concerned, his mission is to rescue his former lover.

In the best tradition of action fiction, things go wrong for Jazen from the start. In a scene that is reminiscent of Starship Troopers, Jazen plunges to the surface of Tressel from an orbiting ship. His insertion doesn't go as planned, leaving Jazen injured and isolated as he struggles with amphibians that want to turn him into lunch. Soon after that he finds himself fleeing from Major Polian and the Tressen navy. At some point the chapters begin to alternate between Jazen's first person account of his actions and third person descriptions of the events surrounding Polian and Gill. The Polian/Gill chapters eventually reveal the reason for the Yavi's sudden interest in Tressel.

Tressel is a sparsely populated planet but members of its two nations -- the Tressens and the Iridians -- have hated each other for centuries. The Tressens oppress the Iridians by denying them the right to own property and to procreate. The Iridians rebel as best they can. Jazen needs Iridian support to spy on the Tressens and to that end he is assisted by a one-handed man named Pyt and an eleven-year-old girl named Alia. They are charged with leading Jazen to the Iridian rebel leader, Celline, who -- like Princess Leia -- is descended from royalty.

Unlike Pyt, Alia, and Celline, Polian and Gill are interesting characters. Polian has the sense of honor and duty that are standard in military science fiction, but he's also plagued by insecurity. Gill, unlike Polian, has reservations about Yavet's policy of controlling population growth by killing illegal newborns. Polian favors torture while Gill insists on playing by the rules. Neither one trusts the other and there may be good reason for the mistrust. The conflict between the characters adds a bit of needed depth to the story.

Jazen is less interesting. He is a "Trueborn" (his parents are from Earth) but he was born illegally on Yavet, never knew his parents, and spent his young life trying to avoid extermination. Despite that background, Jazen is a stock "reluctant warrior" character, unhappy to be uprooted from a life of relative peace and returned to the landscape of battle. Given his background (he identifies neither with the Yavi nor the Truebloods), Jazen is a surprisingly dull guy. Kit is virtually a nonentity; she's there to give Jazen something to do. Kit exudes a shallow idealism that is supposed to conflict with Jazen's pragmatic desire to keep her safe. It isn't convincing. As is usually true of military science fiction, however, the characters in Undercurrent are secondary to the plot-driven story.

Three minor gripes: (1) Gill asks Polian a number of basic questions about the reason for Yavi collaboration with the Tressens. While the ensuing dialog educates the reader, it makes no sense that Gill wouldn't have that information before assuming command of the Yavi operation. (2) Saddling Jazen with a wise-beyond-her-years eleven-year-old spying partner is an obvious contrivance that might appeal to preadolescent (maybe even early adolescent) readers but it didn't work for me. Despite an ending that attempts to make her significant, Alia adds nothing but empty chatter to the story. (3) The method by which Undercurrents sets up the next book in the series is a bit too obvious.

Gripes notwithstanding, I liked Undercurrents. The story moves quickly, the actions scenes are well done, and the plot is satisfying if unspectacular. Hardcore fans of military science fiction will almost certainly enjoy it, while fans of action-oriented sf will likely find it a pleasant enough read.

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