“Mops” and her ragtag crew of rag carrying galactic janitors are back, and this time they’re going to clean up the mess the Krakau made of Earth once and for all.

In Terminal Alliance, the first book in this series, our favorite cleaning crew wound up the only ones left either alive or not zombified on the EMC Pufferfish, a warship in the midst of an encounter with the Prodryans, a race that believes in “them or us” in a big way. Not only did they survive, but they kicked butt, discovered the truth about the virus that turned all of mankind into ferals (don’t use the z word) and about the philanthropy of the squiddy Krakau, who have been restoring feral humans to rational (if not quite normal) beings. All her post-feral life Marion “Mops” Adamopoulos thought gratitude was the right thing to feel to the Krakau, and the chance to serve in their military as shock troops, janitors, or whatever, was a privilege. But that was before she learned the truth.

Now she’s on a mission of her own to find proof of the Krakau’s role in the apocalypse, a hidden prison planet for the remaining Rokkau, who inadvertently started the whole mess, and just maybe a way for humanity to survive. That mission, along with the covert assistance of a Krakau admiral who isn’t any happier about his race’s role in the near genocide of humanity, takes the crew of the Pufferfish to the last place in the universe they want to go…Earth.

 “My Human name is Advocate of Violence. I’m a certified legal advocate and part-time spy. I’m here to assist you and your crew. In return, you’ll help me end the Krakau Alliance.” — Hines, Jim C.. Terminal Uprising (Janitors of the Post-Apocalypse) (p. 16). DAW. Kindle Edition.

Mops doesn’t remember Earth, except for brief glimpses of her life as a feral human. She was reborn in a lab in Antarctica and shipped out the fleet a dozen years ago and all she knows of her homeworld is that it’s overrun by dangerous degenerated humans and wild beasts. But intelligence provided by the most unlikely of allies, a Prodryan lawyer and spy, shows a video of a clothed human walking on the planet’s surface and has information on a secret lab where experiments are being conducted on the planet. Faced with a chance that humans can survive, or that they can find a way to restore their rationality, Mops and company head for home, even though it means running under the guns of the Krakau occupation forces with their now very beat-up ship.

When they arrive they find that Earth isn’t the hellhole they thought it was, exactly. Sure, packs of ferals, both human and primate, would be happy to tear you limb from limb, but largely because they’re starving, not because they have an insatiable craving for brains. The animal population has come back, and there’s a certain Twelve Monkeys vibe to the crew wandering around the landscape in search of the human in the video, but what they find is not what they expected. Humanity may be down, but it’s not out, and Mops and her crew may be just the ticket for a second chance, assuming the Krakau hunting her down don’t find her first.

From the cover and blurb, you’d think they were playing the janitor thing up for laughs, and there’s enough truth there that you can’t say they’re lying, but in reality, this is a terrific piece of mil/space opera with lighter moments. Put any band of misfits and screwups in a life or death situation and there are bound to be comedic bits aplenty, but there’s something you should know about Mops. She’s not a janitor because that was all she was good for (Disclaimer: I’ve moved bio-hazard waste, pumped radioactive sludge and mopped up a few floods my time too, and I’ve got nothing but respect for maintenance staff). No, she was put there to keep her from realizing her potential and upsetting the aquarium. Not like that worked very well. Not only is Mops humanities best hope, she’s the Krakau ’s worst nightmare.

While Mops remains the main character, the story also focuses on Wolf, the overly eager soldier wanna-be in her crew. Wolf has a hair trigger and longs to be a real soldier, though she got rejected by the EMC twice. Now she’s about to discover the cost of warfare up close and personal, with other lives depending on her, and paying that bill will change her forever.

The first book featured a fair number of space battles, fought on the Pufferfish side with the help of video game expertise and a lot of helpful tutorials featuring an animated pufferfish. This time most of the action takes place planetside, slogging through snow and dodging both the Krakau searching for them and terrestrial dangers, but it’s just as much fun. The crew may have had to pick up guns and learn to fight, but that doesn’t mean they’ve left their cleaning tools behind, which is a good thing because, as the book’s blurb says, the planet hasn’t been cleaned in a long, long time.

Find what looks like a pre-plague human, discover the secret behind the Krakau’s experiments, get proof of the Krakau’s involvement in the feral plague, and deal with any loose ends that come up along the way, all with a bounty on their heads that makes them the most wanted fugitives in the galaxy.

What could go wrong?