Neustatter's European Security Services encounters a campaign of industrial sabotage, a pastor who attempts to limit their client base, an espionage ring, and the aftermath of the Dreeson assassination. Old nemeses and new allies complicate matters.
Somewhere in Grantville is a missing heiress. There's also a Resistance, and it has cookies. Even repeat business with established clients is complicated, not to mention dangerous. Real life proves more complicated than Neustatter's movies or Astrid's books as NESS looks for common threads. Which incidents are related and which are not?
For Astrid Schäubin, solving cases, directing operations, and even portraying a saint are one thing, but figuring out dating in the midst of everything that's happening is quite another.
Neustatter's European Security Services is open for business, and business is . . . too good?
With the National Guard, private industry, and even a seemingly tranquil farming village caught in an explosive political crossroads all relying on NESS for missions of security, Neustatter and Astrid find themselves pressed to staff, train, and equip the agency while keeping up with their clients' growing requirements in scope and complexity.
A simple railway escort mission involves a secretive manufacturing client from Grantville bearing mysterious cargo and a captured fugitive all destined for Magdeburg during the Baltic War . . . what could possibly go wrong?
The Bible Society hires NESS to guard a flock of Anabaptist, Catholic, and Lutheran high schoolers en route to riot-torn Erfurt and Jena, but will NESS's own pastor tear them apart first?
Already strapped for personnel, the last thing Neustatter needs is for a regiment of dragoon militia to choose their wagon train for . . . 'involuntary provisioning.' Can a handful of badly outnumbered agents protect a village that isn't sure it wants their help?
It's a matter of security.
When the Ring of Fire drags Grantville, West Virginia, back to seventeenth-century Germany, down-time veteran Edgar Neustatter finds himself among the survivors of a unit devastated by the up-time Americans and their Swedish allies. After wintering in Grantville, they return home to find that while they have changed, their village has not. Having glimpsed the promise of a republic ruled by its people rather than lords and tyrants, Neustatter leads his men and their families back to Grantville to establish a new agency: Neustatter's European Security Services. The city from the future counts cowboys and detectives among its heroes-and still needs them.
Join Neustatter, Astrid Schäubin, and NESS as they face desperate refugees, towns on the edge of revolution, and those who want to preserve the old order at all costs, while juggling basic training, modern education, and the day-to-day challenges of living in a boom town. Does NESS have the flexibility, training, and firepower to survive in the new timeline?
