Military science fiction with the throttle wide open. A powered exosuit. Four combat drones. One mercenary with no one left to trust.

Earth won the alien invasion. What came after were the Functionaries: corporations that own whole sectors and everyone breathing in them. In Neocrest City, Tiberius Novak takes their contracts because the registry that keeps him legal is the same leash that keeps him owned. One extraction job. One scientist. Simple work, until the thing guarding that lab turns out to be wearing human skin.

Then his registration is pulled and a price goes on his head. No legal protection. No contracts. Nothing left but a battered suit, an engineer who should have walked away, and Spark, a salvaged drone he named after a promise he could not keep.

Tiberius wasn't there when his own son needed protecting. He has never stopped trying to earn that back.

The scientist knows what Aegis Solutions is really building: soldiers who feel no fear, need no orders, and never come home in a box. Bury it and Tiberius survives another year on contract scraps. Expose it and he takes on a company that owns the city, the law, and everyone breathing in it. Either way, the leash comes off. He just has to live long enough to choose which.

Book one of the War Dogs series.