The Heart of Valor by Tanya Huff

Gunnery Sergeant Torin Kerr is a marine of the Confederation, fighting on behalf of the Elder Races in their ongoing war with the others. Recently, she survived a firefight on a world claimed by the Silsviss people, who had decided to join the Confederation, but, being a people where only the strongest lead, they decided to push the Confederation to see how far they could go before the Confederation pushed back. In the battle, she was one of the survivors, but because the Silsviss are so new to the Confederation, she is tasked with briefing the higher ups on the Silsviss and answering questions about the mission.

And she gives many, many of these briefings. So many that she is sick and tired of talking about what happened to her on the planet of the Silsviss. Her former officer, Major Svensson, was also in that fight, and had been reduced to a brain and spinal cord. But regenerating in a tank has brought him back to something like his old self. However, there was so little left of him that one of the doctors, Dr. Kathleen Sloan, had to use biological plastics to reconstruct his left arm.

Now, to test his new body, Svensson is being sent to Crucible, the planet where young marine recruits are tested and recieve their first taste of battle. Although the scenarios are supposed to be non-fatal, accidents can and do happen, so there is some chance of death or injury. To test Major Svensson's new arm, it has been decided that he go to Crucible with the latest round of Marine Recruits to test out his arm in relatively safe combat conditions. He asks Torin to go with him as his aide, and she, tired of what feels like endless briefings and questions and scrutiny, is glad to agree.

Before she leaves, however, she gets a visit from her lover who presents her with a real problem. When they left the planet of the Silsviss, they had captured an Other vessel called Big Yellow. They escaped in one of its escape pods. Since Craig Ryder, her lover, makes his living by salvaging, he wants the escape pod, which he brought back, as salvage. But nobody besides he and Torin ever seem to remember it existing. They can only conclude that, since the ship scanned them and passed them through one of its floors, it did something to their brainwave patterns that kept their knowledge of the escape capsule from being wiped from their minds, since no one else seems to remember it. But there was one other person with them on that ship, the reporter Presit a Tur durValintrisy, so she asks Craig to track down the Katrien reporter and ask her if she remembers the Pod. It is possible that one of the Elder Races has wiped the information from everyone's mind except for them. Craig doesn't like it, but he does what she asks, wanting to get to the heart of the mystery.

On Crucible, though, things go wrong very quickly. There is supposed to be an attack on the morning of the second day, but it never comes. Instead, it seems as though the computers that run Crucible have run mad, and instead of instituting the relatively safe scenario that they were supposed to run, it is instead shooting at the recruits with live ammo and doing its best to kill them all. Add to that the Senior Drill Instructor going through his version of puberty and becoming a breeder, which has him suffering epileptic shocks and seemingly going crazy, and Torin finds herself taking on much, much more than she ever counted on.

And the major's new arm is glowing at night... and a real honest-to-god missile has taken out the orbital platform that was their only hope of immediate rescue.

With no other choice, Torin, Dr. Sloan, Major Svenson and the other marines make for a nearby "town" that, in some scenarios, the marines must assault or take. They hope that the fake town has a real anchor, an indestructable building that carries the colony through space to land on a new planet. If they can hole up in there, they will have a nearly-impregnable place to hole up and be safe from attack until they can be rescued. But with the town full of drones representing enemy troops, and the inexperienced marine recruits around them, can they survive to get there, take the town, and find out who reprogrammed the computers before the attacking machines, and the cold weather, take them out first? She went along for a vacation, but this mission is turning out to be anything but!

It's been a while since I read the first two Confederation books starring Torin Kerr: Valor's Choice and The Better Part of Valor, but reading this book was like coming home to an old friend you had forgotten. Torin is a take charge, take no crap kind of woman who is amazingly competent at her job, and is an excellent leader.

Seeing her lead the marines and deal with yet another alien race is both a mix of the best science fiction and kick-ass and take names military writing. Because when it's all down to shooting, only she can keep the young Marine recruits alive and in one piece long enough to find the real enemy, communicate with it and be rescued, even if she takes damage herself from doing it. She's rude, crude and good at combat, and reading about her is completely refreshing.

So if you like military sci-fi, strong on the military aspect, this may be one of the best books you'll ever read, or for that matter, the best series. Try it and see for yourself.