Publisher's Synopsis
The story of The Mercurial Mercenary is based on Eric Gipping's personal account of his experiences and observations fighting for the All-Species Volunteer Militia and subsequently the joint armed forces of the insurgent government on the side of the Commonwealth Republic of Equality during the Cheyesamoul Civil War. The story is largely based on an eyewitness account of two fragments of that civil war, presenting at first a vivid account of the experiences of a foreign militia trooper on a remote sector of the front. The memories of Eric Gipping are evoking the fear, the cold and, above all, the squalor, excrement and pestering assaults of myriads of insectoids of the muddy trenches. The second part offers a vibrant description of inner-city urban combat, house-to-house fighting and political intrigues after discrepancies between different factions of the insurgents and their foreign supporters break out and lead to much friendly fire. Eric Gipping's account of the poisonous atmosphere in the major city of planet Amouley Courab during and after the worst days of infighting among the factions is invaluable. The Mercurial Mercenary is a story involving the physical and mental journey of a man who is at the wrong place; and that because he chose to be there in order to escape some other calamity. He is getting into a civil war which is led with the utmost ignorance and incompetence. Deployed to locations of minor significance, where keeping the equally under-equipped and under-supplied enemy is the main task, Eric Gipping and his fellow troopers suffer more from the environment and the carelessness and neglect of their own leaders than from the enemy proper. At the same time, conspiracies and perfidiousness are mushrooming in the safe hinterland. Politicians and resurgent bureaucrats play their games and foreign nations intervene. Far behind the front lines, power-grabbing, graft, and unjust personal enrichment mushroom, going along with rampant corruption. Being only a foreign infantry mercenary among other such volunteers, Eric Gipping is deployed without the government and military leadership considering him in the least. Hardly surviving a sniper assault, he is cast into a witches cauldron of violent political intrigue, proscriptions, hunted by a merciless secret police, and herd-pressed to navigate the rapidly changing political landscape, while at the same time trying to save several of his friends from deadly danger, and taking care of his wife.
