Shadow of the Scorpion (Polity Universe #2)

This book introduces the character Cormac, a new recruit in Polity Earth Central Security forces (the ECS). Through flashbacks the reader is introduced to Cormac and his mother and brother when he was a child. He has known little of his father, a soldier on the frontlines of the war between the Polity and the crab-like alien Prador civilization. Some strange events that happened to him as a child involving a shadowy scorpion-shaped combat droid now seem to gain significance as Cormac's first assignment as a raw recruit soon entangles him in a terrorist plot by Separatists embedded within his own unit. After narrowly escaping with his life after being captured by Separatists, Cormac is recruited into a Sparkind unit made up of both enhanced human and near-human AI driven machine agents. Their goal is to hunt down the leader of the Separatist unit who escaped with nuclear-like explosives that can be used as terrorist weaponry against AI Polity governance. Cormac will see his first combat against the crafty Separatist who always seems one step ahead of his unit. At the same time he will move closer to finding out about the fate of his father.

some shameful beach reading