Well, you knew the war with the Hegemony was going to have to end sooner or later, right? Well, it looks like it might end pretty quickly now. The Hegemony have just deployed a secret project named “Zed” and something else called “Red Storm”. Initially, no one on the Confederation side knows anything about either of these secret Hegemony projects. But, it doesn’t take long for them to find out exactly what Project Zed actually was.
Project Zed cruised into Confederation space. It was a colossal starship from the days of the Imperium. The Hegemony had found it and had spent the last 20 years getting it ready for battle. Still, the size of the thing was far larger than the resources even the Hegemony had to bring it to its full warfighting potential to use. Over sixty kilometers long, it massed over five hundred times the size of the Hegemony’s largest starship. There was no doubt that this single ship could destroy the entire Confederation fleet in a single battle and end the war that had been going on for over six years.
Admiral Tyler Barron saw the first saw the Colossus as his fleet entered to do battle with the Hegemony. Even without the Colossus in the Hegemony line, it was dobutful that the Confederation had enough firepower to succeed in this battle. If the Confederation lost here, then the Confederation was certainly doomed to fall under the reign of the Hegemony. And now, with this humungous starship facing them, Admiral Barron couldn’t see how his forces could win. Should he just surrender now, asking for some kind of agreeable terms or should he finish off this war while killing himself and all those with him and not worry about what comes after?
In desperation, Admiral Jake Stockton was sent on a final mission with his entire flying command outfitted as bombers. They were going straight for the Colossus and drop as much ordnance on it as they could carry. In fact, his bombers were overloaded with bombs and all of his ships were configured as bombers, some five thousand. It was hoped that they could at least put a dent in this mighty ship. Truth be told, everyone doubted that they could destroy the Colossus even with this huge bombing run. Then Project Red Storm was released and that more than anything doomed Jake Stockton’s mission and his flyers.
A very well written book as are all of Jay Allen’s books. He’s one of my favorite authors if I haven’t said that before. This story is kind of interesting in that there’s not a mention of the Grand Alliance allies that are still fighting in this war and only a very small chapter was written about any Union activities. No, this focused strictly on Admiral Barron and how he was reacting to so many years of warfare and so many deaths, and now this new threat.
Fortunately, this story isn’t over. Book 13, “The Others” will be out soon and i can’t wait to get my hands on it.