Earthforce Mars - Kirov Series, #71

ABOUT EARTHFORCE MARS  Linked directly to Volume #70, Earth has completed a 100 ship navy in space and chosen Vladimir Karpov as its CIC. Now Karpov leads a Task Force from the new Earthforce battle fleet to Mars to seek out and eliminate any alien presence there, but he and Fedorov find much more than they were expecting.   The year is 2130, and learning that the Kroth, or the Skeletal Ice Men, will arrive with a new invasion fleet in just five years, Karpov intends to use that time to scour the Solar system and eliminate any Krothi outposts, bases, or ships that remain.
He will also establish a military footprint on Mars to hold that planet as Earth's forward base.    Leading a twelve ship squadron, Karpov soon finds Mars is already under attack by raiding Krothi forces. So the war begins early, on Mars, in the Inner Asteroid Belt, at the Moons of Jupiter and Saturn and even farther, to the outer limits of the Solar system near the Kuiper Belt.      In the deep Marineris Valley, Earthforce enters a system of caves in the canyon wall to root out a suspected Krothi base.
There, Troyak, Karpov, and Fedorov make a startling discovery about Mars that will change everything then known about the rise of Humanity on Earth.