After two false starts, the Col Sec series kicked into high gear and the series really began to take form with Discovery, Book Three.

Discovery saw the return of who was to become the series protagonist, Kurt Stryder, the hero from Book One, Ronin. The book begins where Omega, the previous book left off at the memorial service for those who had died in the catastrophic attack on Col Sec Headquarters in New York. At the end of Omega Matt Hawk looks up across the sea of faces he thinks he sees an old friend, his hair was slightly longer and he wore a goatee but the cobalt blue eyes were the same. It was indeed Kurt Stryder who had returned to Earth to pay his respects to the dead and his friends in Col Sec. He was still struggling to make a decision with what to do with the rest of his life, how to cope with all the changes he was going through and what should become of him should the truth about the program he volunteered for ever come out.

Still not sure what to do he decides to go on a space cruise, little did he know that this would lead to a situation where he would be forced into making the decision he was so sorely putting off.

On board the Colonial Queen, the pride of the Colonial Line cruise ships Kurt was settling into what he hoped would be a relaxing cruise giving him time to decide his future when he came into contact with prince Aswan. Here was a man who was born to wealth and entitlement, someone who had never had to work for anything, had wanted for nothing and was used to getting everything he wanted simply because of who he was. Their first encounter leaves the Prince’s over zealous guards lying on the floor after a humiliating beating at Kurt’s hands. Aswan instantly takes a dislike to him for here is a man, just a man, who dared to defy him. All this is soon forgotten though as the Prince bribes the Captain of the ship to take a detour from the course which had been logged in and take him to view the legendary Tartaran Battlefield. This was the location of the last great battle between the Colonial Confederation and the Elysium Alliance. Fascinated by the sheer size of the wasteland that was left from the battle, thousands of starships destroyed and left to rot in a floating junkyard in high orbit close to the planet the war was fought over and because it was someplace he’d never been to  Aswan forced the Captain to take them there, regardless of the consequences. These consequences are soon met when on arrival at the battlefield they are attacked by a group known as the Outlaws, filth of the galaxy who congregated there to stake a claim on it as their home. The area had long been a Forbidden Zone and was clearly marked on all star charts as a ‘no fly zone’ but none of that mattered to the Prince who regarded himself as above the law. Consequently the cruise liner is attacked and unable to defend herself.

Kurt manages to save the Prince, purely by chance along with his Protector from Col Sec Diplomatic Corp, Natasha Garvey. The three of them escape while the rest of the passengers are slaughtered and the ship plundered. Their escape pod is chased into the atmosphere of the planet Tartaran and left as the chasers think it was about to crash.

landing on the planet is just one of the deadly perils facing the trio, the creatures that inhabit the planet are horrific both in size and their hostility toward humans. Kurt sends out a distress signal directly to General Sinclair at the new Col Sec HQ, Area 15 deep in the desert near Las Vegas, Nevada. The general mobilises his new unit, The Wildfire Team, named as such due to the cases they would deal with, the extreme events that not stopped would go through the galaxy like a wildfire. Captain Jake Riley, the leader along with Lieutenants Joseph Vance, Mack Cooper and Angelina Torres are despatched in their new starship, The Pulsar to help rescue Kurt and the Prince. This team is no ordinary team. Having met with failure with the program that Kurt Stryder volunteered for the general has a derivative of the same serum given to them to enhance their abilities which proves successful, they now have sharper reflexes are faster and stronger than normal humans and are capable of sustaining their efforts longer on the battlefield.

This is just the start of the story. It is a story of discovery in many ways. They discover some of the truth about the planet, a secret long held by both super powers. They also discover that some secrets won’t remain buried forever and finally after many other discoveries, Kurt finally discovers the truth he’d been hiding from himself, that his place always was and always will be by the side of his friends and colleagues in Col Sec.