From MuseItUp it’s P.M. Griffin’s The Star Commandos Series, book 2: Colony in Peril.
Forget the jewels, I want a Gurry.
Forget the little green, pointy ear guy who speaks out of word order.
Forget that silly little furball you can’t get wet or feed after midnight.
The long fingered one calling home can go home and stay home.
You can even forget the seven foot walking teddy bear (you could always forget the three foot high minis).
I want a Gurry.
Betrayal of trust brings danger in space and near-certain massacre on-world should the Commandos fail to conquer almost insurmountable odds.
Back Cover:
Connor, Sogan, and Karmikel are on the planet Jade where Vishnu’s former colonists have been resettled. There, they have several encounters with the local animal life, some dangerous, some pleasant. They bond with a young gurry whom they name Bandit. They discover a plot by a high-ranking official to stage a murderous pirate raid to annihilate the colonists and appropriate the planet’s rare gemstones. In order to thwart that danger, Sogan and Connor must not only fight a space battle against vastly superior odds but also draw upon the massed telepathic powers of Jade’s wildlife.
Excerpt:
The remaining raiders were in flight, frantically seeking to put themselves behind their flagship before they, too, were blown from space and from life. Carelessness and overconfidence had exacted a fiercely heavy price. The fight was gone out of them for the moment, and they were content to let their huge companion take over the struggle from them.
That, the cruiser was well prepared to do. She struck at the Fairest Maidagain, this time hitting her squarely with such a wave of laser fire as should have blown the screens completely away from so small an opponent.
Jade’s little champion rocked as would a man struck by a giant’s fist, and her force screens buckled and deformed right against her hull, but the Navy designers had done their work well. Her defenses held firm.
Islaen Connor gritted her teeth. Another blast would follow fast upon that first, but she had sighted the cruiser’s ports. She would have to time her blow very carefully, but when the pirates attacked again, she would be ready.
All battlecraft were vulnerable at this one moment, when their force screens drew apart to allow their own weapons to discharge. A bolt could sometimes be sent through them to the enemy vessel’s grief, or, more commonly, the weak places could be noted and kept under heavy pressure until the seam between the two plates of energy were no longer able to bear the unremitting stress and tore asunder as had happened to the fighter they had just blown.
It was for the former that she must try. Even the Maid’s new lasers could not otherwise batter their way through this monster’s defenses.
The Commando’s fingers rested lightly on the laser controls, not those she had wielded moments before but on the new purple beams the Navy had installed.
The cruiser spat light, and in nigh unto the same instant, even as that terrible blast swept toward her, the Fairest Maid responded.
In the next fraction-second, Sogan jerked her sharply to the left, away from her foe’s fierce sending.
The cruiser remained on course. So confident was her captain in the strength of her screens that he made no attempt to evade the small ship’s fire.
Islaen had counted upon that. The bolt she sent against her foe was most strange, not a steady beam or lance of light but an eerie stream of minute, violet-colored sparks of almost unendurable intensity. Its speed and the force driving it defied comprehension. As quickly as the invader’s firing ports snapped shut, more quickly still did those wee, dire hunters come on, seeking out and penetrating every shadow of an opening.
Most were indeed blocked and ricocheted harmlessly into space, but some few found the trails left by the outgoing beams and followed them back to their ports. The tough solar steel was nothing to them, and within a breath’s space after the salvo had begun, the cruiser trembled in a manner terrible to any spacer’s eyes, enemy though he be or not.
The guerrilla’s chin lifted. Direct hit, and it looked like every port was taken out.
Disappointment swept her in the next moment. A smaller ship would be space dust after such a strike, but the invader had survived, although doubtless savagely mauled. She was big enough and her crew was well enough disciplined that she had been able to seal off the damage and fight on.
The woman’s eyes flashed. Perhaps, but it would be without her starboard batteries. They were fully and well silenced.
Her attention flickered momentarily from their major adversary, and she scanned the viewers, seeking the remaining fighters lest they regain their courage and come in at them at an inopportune moment, but the space around them was clear save for two rapidly dissipating clouds of glowing dust. Jade’s gunners were still very much and very effectively in the struggle. Of the final raiders, she could find no sign at all.
The cruiser remained a dark threat despite the loss of her escort and the injury she had sustained, and Varn Tarl Sogan felt the blood begin to race through his veins as the battlecraft’s screens brightened and swelled even further.Here it was, the final challenge.