Antimatter Blues

Antimatter Blues: A Mickey7 Novel, Book 2 by Edward Ashton

The Mickey7 series continues to show it's Ender's Game influence. The first book witnessed contact and "victory" over the hive-mind aliens. In this second one, the hero attempts to better befriend and understand the aliens.

Mickey had told the gruff colony leader that he had made a truce with the aliens and given them the antimatter bomb. This has bought him his freedom and the end to "death missions" as an expendable. However, he didn't mention the whole story. While he had given them the bomb, he later asked for it back and then hid it under a rock in one of the alien caves.

Two years later, the colony runs into energy problems. He is asked to get the bomb back from the aliens to use as a power source. He is conflicted. He feels he could go pick it up, but this will reduce the leverage that he has. He and his girlfriend eventually decide to get it, however it is not there. They reach out to the aliens and finds they have traded it to another group to the south. After negotiations (which go south in due to the forwardness of his girlfriend), they  get one alien to come with him to try to get it back.

Half the novel consists of the quest to get the bomb back. They get a few people from the colony to accompany them. Mickey's friend Berto has a paragliding device that comes in handy. They try negotiations and eventually use warfare to defeat the aliens and get the bomb back. Mickey is willing to be an expendable again to inject the bomb's fuel into the power reactor. However, before he can do it, the colony leader loses his life doing it.

The "fights" are fairly typical. The sentient life on the planet are two primary species. One is the friendly aliens that adapt to many different shapes using metal and other sources. The others are parasitic and have adapted to the lifestyle of the friendly aliens. They are both "hive"-type live forms that think of most of their members as ancillaries that are somewhat expendable. They also have fairly developed technology and are able to learn human language by monitoring radio transmissions. However, they do have difficulty understanding concepts that are foreign to them.