Terraformars volume 10 - Yu Sasuga and Ken-Ichi Tachibana

 Time for another instalment of this awesome series, about an ill-fated expidition to terraform Mars, and find out they aren`t on the top of the food chain there.

Against a backdrop of political motivations and manoeuvres, the teams must see to overcome a swarm of Terraformars... as well as betrayal by their own.

 

With the teams all split up, it becomes a cat and mouse game to free Michelle and Akari, captured by the chinese division's Bao.  He meets severe resistance of thousands of Terraformars, and even using Alex and yaeko as a diversion, they keep coming.  Just when it seems all is lost though, Rome finally arrives with MARS rank 1: HUMAN!

 

He frees Michelle, Akari and the others (proposing to her as he goes) from a horde of cockroaches, making short work as well of Bao who underestimated his opponent.  In the meantime, Marcos, Keiji and the technicians from the US and Japanese divisions try to sneak aboard the Aneex, only to discover there are multiple Bao's, as his base operation is a selfreplicating ocean clamfish.  The cockroaches attack as well, but some of the technicians manage to get in together with Keiji in an effort to hack the communications tower.

 

 

But on Earth, masks fall off as every nation explains his ulterior motives for the MARS mission, none being actually finding a cure.  This leads to the formation of alliances and the planning of how to proceed, yet all depends on which of the divisions on Mars actually will manage to obtain their real objectives...

 

So that was another gory and fun read, now nearing almost halfpoint of the series.  Time to search myself volume 11 in the coming weeks!