Fear Agent Summary
I'm going to summarize the Fear Agents books here as I go through them. I keep forgetting what happens between the volumes and hopefully this will keep them stuck in my memory.
Volume One - Re-Ignition
We start with Heath on a mission to clear out some monkey men, who end up being mind controlled by a "Class A Intellect" jelly brain. It gets blown up by Heath as it tries to escape, but all the destruction causes the monkey men to riot and Heath gets no money.
Heat and Annie (his ship's computer) escape and head to an interstellar truck depot. He's asked to check out why the depot isn't communicating. It seems deserted, but actually filled with Feeders, rapid growing beings that quickly overrun anywhere they set. In escaping, he meets and rescues Mara. In their escape, they notice Dressite's are at the depot (one of the creatures that attacked Earth), herding the Feeders and sending them to Earth for a final attack. Heath decides to race to Earth to warn everyone, but his fuel has been replaced by something extra strong, the final boost warping space and sending him through time, crashing onto a planet, and killing Annie.
This new planet is full of Yeti-men and robots with brains. Here we learn that the robots are Tetaldians, another group (the first) to attack Earth. Since they are in the past, Heath decides to destroy them before they get the capability to leave the planet and, in the future, attack Earth. He gets some new weapon that quickly grows plants, rallies the Yeti-men, and goes for the kill, but he gets double crossed by one of the Yeti's. He faces the leader robo-brain, but the double-crossing-Yeti has warned about the new weapons and robo-brain kills Heath. The End!
Volume Two - My War
Picking up where the first volume left off, Heath's body gets thrown out of a tower and falls into water. Under water live the jelly brains that we saw at the beginning of the first volume. They catch Heath's body, clone it, and stick his brain in. They do this purely to interrogate him to figure out where he comes from. The main jelly brain mind reads Heath and discovers that Heath kills him in the future.
Meanwhile, Mara is topside repairing Annie to get off the planet. The turncoat Yeti-man leads the Tetaldians to the Yeti-men/Mara. During the battle, Heath comes back with the jelly brains, gets into the ship, and goes to take off with Mara. While he's occupied fixing the ship, Mara gets killed and dragged away. Seconds later, the ship rockets through time. It gets a little weird here: the future is full of Heath and Mara clones, city sized ships are wiping out spacetime, and Heath gets arrested for the "crime of time travel".
Next we see Heath in jail. We gets a brief flashback to court where Heath is found guilty of changing the past when stopping the Tetaldians, which leads to the wiping out of reality. During this scene, we see that Mara was saved by being removed from time seconds before her death. This group puts Heath in jail while undoing all his changes (ensuring the destruction of Earth). While in his cell, Heath steals some alien's weird green drug. Unexpectedly, Heath is released soon after to get to Earth (stop the Dressites) and is put in Mara and Annie's care (he is dying because his clone body is degenerating from the drugs). We see the Dressites following Heath's ship to Earth.
So we get a brief flashback to Heath and his dad hanging out just before the aliens attack and kill his dad and son. Heath wakes up from this dream, just finished detoxing, and he ends up sleeping with Mara. He gets woken up by this weird vision where Mara is calling for his help. This wakes Mara up, the vision is gone, and they see that the Earth is destroyed. Heath lands on the planet and sets out following a tracking device, leaving Mara and Annie to their faith. We don't know what he's looking for, but Heath fights past a bunch of Dressites and Feeders, eventually finding his wife's (Char's) locket, obviously hoping to find her instead. He decides to die killing as many feeders as he can, but gets rescued by a new group of Fear Agents.
These Fear Agents take Heath, Mara, and Annie to the moon and the only surviving humans. There, Heath finds Char, but she is married to Keith (one of the new Fear Agents). She's pissed that Heath left, Heath's pissed that the Fear Agents didn't stop the destruction, and the survivors have a few options (some look to find a new planet, some want to find a predator on the Feeder's planet). Heath is offered a policeman job. Last page reveal shows that Mara is working with the Dressites, using Heath's ship to sneak past the human's defenses.
Volume Three - The Last Goodbye
This volume is mostly a flashback to the first invasion of Earth, the creation of the Fear Agents, and why Heath has been way for so long. It starts with Heath drinking and crying over a bunch of graves on the moon and Mara asking him about his past.
After the aliens attack Earth and kill Heath's father and son, he and Char make a run for it to town. The get picked up by a guy and his niece, Andi. After fighting lizards through town, they make it to a fallout shelter, where they hang out for about three months. Not being able to take it anymore, Heath leaves the shelter for supplies and to see if there are any survivors. They meet some people and hole up in a warehouse where they find the iconic Fear Agent jumpsuits.
We get another jump in time (seven months) where Heath is leading a pretty decent resistance, we have a geek/genius who is getting alien transmissions, and the introduction of "slug killer" goo that kills Dressites. The resistance also has a Dressite teleportation portal that leads to both their home planet and the moon. On the moon, we discover that the Dressites are building a giant gun pointed at Earth.
The Fear Agents head to the moon to destroy this gun, but fail to stop it before it fires. Turns out that it was an EMP gun that disabled the Tetaldians, but did no other damage. During the battle, Andi shows up on the moon, but her uncle pushes her back through the portal.
There's some Dressite attack back on Earth, so the Fear Agents head back. We learn that the geek/genius has sold out the location of the human base to ensure his survival, but dies shortly after. Heath is looking for Char, but can't find her and assumes that she's dead. In his rage, he takes a tanker of "slug killer" and drives it through the portal to the Dressite homeworld. Just before the tanker explodes, Heath notices that the planet is full of mothers and children and that Andi is stuck there, but he is thrown through the Portal before he could do anything about this.
Back on Earth, he finds Char and tells her what he did. If she wasn't pissed off enough, creatures from the United Systems show up and explain the situation. The Tetaldians are the ones who attacked Earth and the Dressites were supposed to help, but their over enthusiastic military class went a bit rogue and killed humans without provocation. The regular Dressites, the ones Heath has killed, as actually a peace loving pacifist society. Luckily for Heath, the United Systems things that the Tetaldians killed the Dressites, but Char forces him away, eventually to leave Earth forever.
Volume Four - Hatchet Job
With Earth basically destroyed, the humans go out on two missions. Heath, Keith, and the Fear Agents head off to the feeder homeworld to try and find a predator to kill the feeders. Char, Mara, and their crew head off to scout for a planet to relocate the human race to.
Heath and Keith stop on a planet to resupply, but the natives mistake them for a scouting party. To send a message, they force Heath and Keith to fight to the death, where Keith throws himself on Heath's spear, revealing the Heath has a daughter with his dying breath.
On the other ship, we see Mara direct them to a seemingly random planet. We get a flashback where we see Mara and her family are sold as cattle to some lizards in the original Earth invasion. In orbit of this planet they are going to is the pirate that sold out Mara. Mara found this man by selling out Earth to the Dressites. She fires on them, but the pirate ship is too powerful and shoots them down. The planet is dead, but the souls of the dead come back as basically zombies (this involves a black hole), which try to kill Mara, Char, and the rest of the crew. Mara ends up escaping (after sending the message through time that is seen in volume two), Char is rescued at the last second by Heath, and a Russian is stranded on the planet.
Mara escapes to the pirate ship and Heath goes after her. He tries to talk her out of revenge, but it isn't working. When he realizes that he can't, Heath lets the pirate shoot Mara in the back, but is shot out into space for his trouble.
This get a bit crazy here. Heath is rescued by a jelly brain and given a device. When he gets back to Char, things seem to be going well until the creatures from the beginning release footage of the Heath/Keith fight, which looks like Heath killed Keith. Char kicks him out and as Heath is going back to his old life, he picks up an SOS call from the Russian. He rescues the Russian but is sucked into the black hole. Time passes quickly and Heath grows old while the zombies attack before he can activate the jelly brain's device, where everything goes white.
On the edges of this story, we see what happened to Andi. She was found by the Dressites on their decimated homeworld and tortured. She eventually converts to half Dressite and is looking to get revenge on Heath. Part of this revenge is kidnapping Heath's daughter. We also see that the Tetaldians are working with a jelly brain and members of the time travel police to use Heath to spread Tetaldian thinking though the universe since the beginning of time.
Volume Five - I Against I
Heath and the Russian wake up on a strange planet, jump out of the ship to escape the aliens, get injured, and make their way toward a city in the distance. On the way, some bugs jump them, Heath gets poisoned, and the Russian falls. Heath wakes in a bath surrounded by Maras, but a shadowy voice finds that he is a clone and order the Maras to kill Heath.
Heath manages to escape, but is shot in the chest. He is dragged through a desert where some people find and patch him up. He's in a western town and Char is there. She pretends not to know Heath, but eventually admits that it's really her and she's been in this town for two years. Heath and Char start to reconcile, then Heath heads into town for provisions. When in town, he finds wanted posters up around, then rescues a merchant from some thugs. When he gets back home, the house is on fire and Char is missing.
Char has been kidnapped by a different Heath, this one mean and, as evidenced by the tattoo, in an uncloned body. He razes the town and threatens to kill Char until our Heath shows up. We learn the this new one, instead of dying at the hands of the Tetaldians when he traveled back in time, he joined up with them and gives up everything he knows so that the Tetaldians can ensure their victory. In exchange, the Tetaldians gave Heath robotic Maras, a custom built western world, and the promise of Char.
As the Heaths are fighting, the Russian comes and destroys the dark Heath's posse. Andi and the Dressites show up and take the dark Heath away. Months pass as our Heath heals and Char and the Russian rebuild Annie. They take off to the Dressite homeworld to rescue their daughter. There, Andi and the Dressites call a truce to team up with the humans and destroy the Tetaldians. In exchange, they help to kill the feeders on Earth. As humanity is celebrating, all the humans in attendance turn into cyborgs and attack Heath. It's implied that the Tetaldians time travel plans have come to fruition and changed history so that they are already victorious.
Well, that's five down. I'll update this post with the rest as I go through them.
Volume One - Re-Ignition
We start with Heath on a mission to clear out some monkey men, who end up being mind controlled by a "Class A Intellect" jelly brain. It gets blown up by Heath as it tries to escape, but all the destruction causes the monkey men to riot and Heath gets no money.
Heat and Annie (his ship's computer) escape and head to an interstellar truck depot. He's asked to check out why the depot isn't communicating. It seems deserted, but actually filled with Feeders, rapid growing beings that quickly overrun anywhere they set. In escaping, he meets and rescues Mara. In their escape, they notice Dressite's are at the depot (one of the creatures that attacked Earth), herding the Feeders and sending them to Earth for a final attack. Heath decides to race to Earth to warn everyone, but his fuel has been replaced by something extra strong, the final boost warping space and sending him through time, crashing onto a planet, and killing Annie.
This new planet is full of Yeti-men and robots with brains. Here we learn that the robots are Tetaldians, another group (the first) to attack Earth. Since they are in the past, Heath decides to destroy them before they get the capability to leave the planet and, in the future, attack Earth. He gets some new weapon that quickly grows plants, rallies the Yeti-men, and goes for the kill, but he gets double crossed by one of the Yeti's. He faces the leader robo-brain, but the double-crossing-Yeti has warned about the new weapons and robo-brain kills Heath. The End!
Volume Two - My War
Picking up where the first volume left off, Heath's body gets thrown out of a tower and falls into water. Under water live the jelly brains that we saw at the beginning of the first volume. They catch Heath's body, clone it, and stick his brain in. They do this purely to interrogate him to figure out where he comes from. The main jelly brain mind reads Heath and discovers that Heath kills him in the future.
Meanwhile, Mara is topside repairing Annie to get off the planet. The turncoat Yeti-man leads the Tetaldians to the Yeti-men/Mara. During the battle, Heath comes back with the jelly brains, gets into the ship, and goes to take off with Mara. While he's occupied fixing the ship, Mara gets killed and dragged away. Seconds later, the ship rockets through time. It gets a little weird here: the future is full of Heath and Mara clones, city sized ships are wiping out spacetime, and Heath gets arrested for the "crime of time travel".
Next we see Heath in jail. We gets a brief flashback to court where Heath is found guilty of changing the past when stopping the Tetaldians, which leads to the wiping out of reality. During this scene, we see that Mara was saved by being removed from time seconds before her death. This group puts Heath in jail while undoing all his changes (ensuring the destruction of Earth). While in his cell, Heath steals some alien's weird green drug. Unexpectedly, Heath is released soon after to get to Earth (stop the Dressites) and is put in Mara and Annie's care (he is dying because his clone body is degenerating from the drugs). We see the Dressites following Heath's ship to Earth.
So we get a brief flashback to Heath and his dad hanging out just before the aliens attack and kill his dad and son. Heath wakes up from this dream, just finished detoxing, and he ends up sleeping with Mara. He gets woken up by this weird vision where Mara is calling for his help. This wakes Mara up, the vision is gone, and they see that the Earth is destroyed. Heath lands on the planet and sets out following a tracking device, leaving Mara and Annie to their faith. We don't know what he's looking for, but Heath fights past a bunch of Dressites and Feeders, eventually finding his wife's (Char's) locket, obviously hoping to find her instead. He decides to die killing as many feeders as he can, but gets rescued by a new group of Fear Agents.
These Fear Agents take Heath, Mara, and Annie to the moon and the only surviving humans. There, Heath finds Char, but she is married to Keith (one of the new Fear Agents). She's pissed that Heath left, Heath's pissed that the Fear Agents didn't stop the destruction, and the survivors have a few options (some look to find a new planet, some want to find a predator on the Feeder's planet). Heath is offered a policeman job. Last page reveal shows that Mara is working with the Dressites, using Heath's ship to sneak past the human's defenses.
Volume Three - The Last Goodbye
This volume is mostly a flashback to the first invasion of Earth, the creation of the Fear Agents, and why Heath has been way for so long. It starts with Heath drinking and crying over a bunch of graves on the moon and Mara asking him about his past.
After the aliens attack Earth and kill Heath's father and son, he and Char make a run for it to town. The get picked up by a guy and his niece, Andi. After fighting lizards through town, they make it to a fallout shelter, where they hang out for about three months. Not being able to take it anymore, Heath leaves the shelter for supplies and to see if there are any survivors. They meet some people and hole up in a warehouse where they find the iconic Fear Agent jumpsuits.
We get another jump in time (seven months) where Heath is leading a pretty decent resistance, we have a geek/genius who is getting alien transmissions, and the introduction of "slug killer" goo that kills Dressites. The resistance also has a Dressite teleportation portal that leads to both their home planet and the moon. On the moon, we discover that the Dressites are building a giant gun pointed at Earth.
The Fear Agents head to the moon to destroy this gun, but fail to stop it before it fires. Turns out that it was an EMP gun that disabled the Tetaldians, but did no other damage. During the battle, Andi shows up on the moon, but her uncle pushes her back through the portal.
There's some Dressite attack back on Earth, so the Fear Agents head back. We learn that the geek/genius has sold out the location of the human base to ensure his survival, but dies shortly after. Heath is looking for Char, but can't find her and assumes that she's dead. In his rage, he takes a tanker of "slug killer" and drives it through the portal to the Dressite homeworld. Just before the tanker explodes, Heath notices that the planet is full of mothers and children and that Andi is stuck there, but he is thrown through the Portal before he could do anything about this.
Back on Earth, he finds Char and tells her what he did. If she wasn't pissed off enough, creatures from the United Systems show up and explain the situation. The Tetaldians are the ones who attacked Earth and the Dressites were supposed to help, but their over enthusiastic military class went a bit rogue and killed humans without provocation. The regular Dressites, the ones Heath has killed, as actually a peace loving pacifist society. Luckily for Heath, the United Systems things that the Tetaldians killed the Dressites, but Char forces him away, eventually to leave Earth forever.
Volume Four - Hatchet Job
With Earth basically destroyed, the humans go out on two missions. Heath, Keith, and the Fear Agents head off to the feeder homeworld to try and find a predator to kill the feeders. Char, Mara, and their crew head off to scout for a planet to relocate the human race to.
Heath and Keith stop on a planet to resupply, but the natives mistake them for a scouting party. To send a message, they force Heath and Keith to fight to the death, where Keith throws himself on Heath's spear, revealing the Heath has a daughter with his dying breath.
On the other ship, we see Mara direct them to a seemingly random planet. We get a flashback where we see Mara and her family are sold as cattle to some lizards in the original Earth invasion. In orbit of this planet they are going to is the pirate that sold out Mara. Mara found this man by selling out Earth to the Dressites. She fires on them, but the pirate ship is too powerful and shoots them down. The planet is dead, but the souls of the dead come back as basically zombies (this involves a black hole), which try to kill Mara, Char, and the rest of the crew. Mara ends up escaping (after sending the message through time that is seen in volume two), Char is rescued at the last second by Heath, and a Russian is stranded on the planet.
Mara escapes to the pirate ship and Heath goes after her. He tries to talk her out of revenge, but it isn't working. When he realizes that he can't, Heath lets the pirate shoot Mara in the back, but is shot out into space for his trouble.
This get a bit crazy here. Heath is rescued by a jelly brain and given a device. When he gets back to Char, things seem to be going well until the creatures from the beginning release footage of the Heath/Keith fight, which looks like Heath killed Keith. Char kicks him out and as Heath is going back to his old life, he picks up an SOS call from the Russian. He rescues the Russian but is sucked into the black hole. Time passes quickly and Heath grows old while the zombies attack before he can activate the jelly brain's device, where everything goes white.
On the edges of this story, we see what happened to Andi. She was found by the Dressites on their decimated homeworld and tortured. She eventually converts to half Dressite and is looking to get revenge on Heath. Part of this revenge is kidnapping Heath's daughter. We also see that the Tetaldians are working with a jelly brain and members of the time travel police to use Heath to spread Tetaldian thinking though the universe since the beginning of time.
Volume Five - I Against I
Heath and the Russian wake up on a strange planet, jump out of the ship to escape the aliens, get injured, and make their way toward a city in the distance. On the way, some bugs jump them, Heath gets poisoned, and the Russian falls. Heath wakes in a bath surrounded by Maras, but a shadowy voice finds that he is a clone and order the Maras to kill Heath.
Heath manages to escape, but is shot in the chest. He is dragged through a desert where some people find and patch him up. He's in a western town and Char is there. She pretends not to know Heath, but eventually admits that it's really her and she's been in this town for two years. Heath and Char start to reconcile, then Heath heads into town for provisions. When in town, he finds wanted posters up around, then rescues a merchant from some thugs. When he gets back home, the house is on fire and Char is missing.
Char has been kidnapped by a different Heath, this one mean and, as evidenced by the tattoo, in an uncloned body. He razes the town and threatens to kill Char until our Heath shows up. We learn the this new one, instead of dying at the hands of the Tetaldians when he traveled back in time, he joined up with them and gives up everything he knows so that the Tetaldians can ensure their victory. In exchange, the Tetaldians gave Heath robotic Maras, a custom built western world, and the promise of Char.
As the Heaths are fighting, the Russian comes and destroys the dark Heath's posse. Andi and the Dressites show up and take the dark Heath away. Months pass as our Heath heals and Char and the Russian rebuild Annie. They take off to the Dressite homeworld to rescue their daughter. There, Andi and the Dressites call a truce to team up with the humans and destroy the Tetaldians. In exchange, they help to kill the feeders on Earth. As humanity is celebrating, all the humans in attendance turn into cyborgs and attack Heath. It's implied that the Tetaldians time travel plans have come to fruition and changed history so that they are already victorious.
Well, that's five down. I'll update this post with the rest as I go through them.