Shadow of the Scorpion

Ian Cormac grows up as the war between the human Polity and the alien Prador winds down. He carries two burdens from childhood: the memory of a scorpion-shaped war drone that frightened him, and grief for losses he cannot recall.

As an adult he joins Earth Central Security, which sends him to worlds wrecked by the fighting. His task is to help bring order back to places still littered with the ruins of wartime genocides.

The Prador are as murderous as ever, yet they turn out to be less treacherous than some of the humans around him. A few of those people stand closer to Cormac than he would like.

This is science fiction with a military and security edge, set among devastated planets. Cormac finds a cold capacity for violence in himself and learns hard facts about his own past, while staying alive long enough to pursue the vengeance he has chosen.