Sten Adventures Book 1: Sten

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Sten

Author	Chris Bunch and Allan Cole
Cover artist	Ralph Brillhart
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Science fiction novel
Publisher	Del Rey Books, reissued by Orbit Books
Publication date	1982
Media type	Print (Paperback)
Pages	279 pp
ISBN	ISBN 0-345-28503-4
Preceded by	First in the series
Followed by	The Wolf Worlds

Sten is the first book in Chris Bunch and Allan Cole's The Sten Adventures.

[edit] Plot

After Sten's family is killed in an industrial cover-up, Sten rebels against the law of the artificial factory world he grew up on, called Vulcan. For several years he runs with the Delinqs, the band of young outlaws that have rejected the ideals of The Company.

One day he meets an off-worlder, Ian Mahoney, that offers Sten and his gang a chance at life. Ian is the head of Imperial Intelligence and is trying to gather information on the head of The Company. If Sten and his gang get the information for him he will take them all off world.

Unfortunately, during the mission they are discovered and Sten is the only one who makes it back alive. True to his word, Ian takes Sten off the hellhole of his birth, but instead of letting him go free, Ian enlists him the military. Sten proves to be square peg for the traditional military, and perfect for the super secret CIA-type covert branch of intelligence that Ian heads, called Mantis.

While there, Sten excels and becomes the head of Team 13, with Alex Kilgour, a heavy worlder from New Edinburgh, (who has a rather ill-tempered view of the Campbell Clan) as his second in command. Eventually, Team 13 is assigned to bring down the tyrannical government of Sten's homeworld of Vulcan, which they do by organizing a rebellion, that gets out of control and almost tears apart the factory world in a heated frenzy. Sten and Team 13 finish the job up with sneakiness, judicious violence and a few well placed explosions.