Sabotage flings the spaceship Colonel Ray Longknife and Marine Captain Mary Rodrigo are travelling on thousands of light-years away from home where they discover a planet settle by the descendants of a spaceship lost 300 years earlier.

While the ship's captain and crew try to find the way home, Ray and Mary are on planet trying to be ambassadors to the castaways. They discover a planet that seems peaceful and prosperous until they look closer. The descendant of one of the settlers, who claimed all the mineral rights on this mineral poor planet, is getting ready to make herself the ruler of the world.

But what is more troubling is that the humans are not alone on the world. There is a massive computer in the ground that has been tampering with the new settlers since they arrived - engineering them to survive on the planet and encouraging the growth of a new organ in their brains.

Ray has been tampered with which is actually a good thing because it means that he can communicate with the computer that calls itself Teacher. But after a million years of isolation, the computer is going insane. It has decided that the humans infesting it have to be eliminated.

It is up the Ray with three young human children and nodes of the disintegrating computer to fight against the large piece of the computer that wants humans dead. While he is battling, Ray learns a lot about the jump gates that humans use but don't understand and which were built by the three long-vanished races that the Teacher taught.

This was a fast-paced and engaging space opera. I liked getting to know more about Ray, Mary, and the Marines who were on planet with them. There was a lot of intriguing stuff about war and fighting and making choices. ( )

  This review is written with a GPL 3.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at Bookstooge.booklikes.blogspot.wordpress.leafmarks.tumblr.com by express permission of this reviewer.  Title: They Also Serve  Series: Jump Universe  Author: Mike Moscoe  Rating: 3 of 5 Stars  Genre: SF  Pages: 357     Synopsis: Trouble and Crew get their ship sabotaged and in jumping end up at a Lost colony from the first lost jump ship. The world is being run, in the background, by an ancient supercomputer. Only problem is, it appears to have gone insane and is now splitting part into separate entries. So the crew must figure out a way home, solve the domestic squabbles their presence has created AND fight a super computer that wants to kill every human on the planet.   My Thoughts: I think I've had enough of Mike Moscoe/Shepherd. There has never been 1 big thing that has annoyed me, but just a series of little pinpricks and this book pushed me over the edge.   False guilt, internal melodrama, people acting like idiots for apparent reason, are among some of the reasons I won't continuing with this author. Another big one is characters who deny they are good at something so that others are forced to say so. I HATE it when people fish for compliments or pretend to be modest.   Au revoir Mike. You always rubbed me the wrong way and now I don't have to deal with it any more. Ahhh, it feels good.   " ( )

This book is notable as an exception to the general rule that military SF authors seem to worship libertarian ideals. Instead, in this book our heroes encounter a planet that was settled three hundred years ago and has developed in complete isolation. The settlement was founded on strong libertarian principles, and when things start going wrong, the fragility of that foundation becomes clear. Indeed, they already have an urban/rural divide when Ray Longknife lands, as well as a capitalist family whose current underhanded, greedy leader will stop at nothing to maintain her wealth and monopoly.
Don't get me wrong; the book is by no stretch of the imagination a political screed...but it was nice to see those elements dropped in. It's a nice counterpoint to the books where The Free Market can fix everything.
Now to wait until February for the fourth book... ( )