Jay Allan keeps pumping out excellent military science fiction books. By my count, I have reviewed over 30 of his books and they aren’t stopping. He obviously is one of my favorite authors. This book continues an excellent series and clearly indicated there’s more to come!
The CFS Dauntless was destroyed in the last book when it wiped out the Union’s Imperial tech (old tech) pulse weapon. There was nothing left of it to really salvage so it was gone. Yet, there were survivors among the old crew who are now part of a new Dauntless, a brand new, huge warship never before deployed by the Confederation. This new Dauntless was many times more powerful than the old one and it was massive. Still, to Admiral Barron Tyler, now a Fleet Commander, it wasn’t the same. He still longed for his old Dauntless and didn’t believe this huge monstrosity could take it’s place.
But, things change. As Fleet Commander, Admiral Barron finds himself sitting in his huge Admirals chair in the “command center” which used to be called the Bridge on the former Dauntless. This command center is vast with many more workstations and screens than could have ever fit in the previous Dauntless bridge. He was also not the Captain of the new CFS Dauntless. That job now belonged to Captain Atara Travis. He had known that some day he would have to move on and that Captain Travis deserved her own command. So now she sat at his right hand and commanded this vast ship while he now had responsibility for a massive White Fleet.
The White Fleet have been given it’s orders. With the war with the Union over, Admiral Striker decided the Confederation needed fo find all the old tech it could before the Union got busy doing it again. He didn’t want to face another death machine as was the former Union pulse weapon. Without Andi Lafarge’s discover of an old tech stealth generator, the Confederation would have lost this last war. As it was, the Confederation Senate made the stupid mistake of not acting as though the Union was defeated, but only acted to end the fighting. Most in the fleet felt the Senate have given away the victory. They knew another war with the Union was inevitable given the lack of resolve by the Confederation Senate.
So, the White Fleet was to go deep, real deep into the Badlands and find whatever old tech they could. They needed something substantial and figured it did exist out beyond the boundaries of normal Rim prospectors. Admiral Taylor didn’t feel that this mission had much threat, but he was going armed as he should. Know one knew what was out there, but they might have to fight against some old defensive systems that were still working even this long after the cataclysm.
And deep in the Badlands, Captain Jake “Raptor” Stockton came across a functioning com satellite which just about caused his death. This discovery would lead to a much larger find, but again, it could result in the destruction of the entire White Fleet. What had they found? Was this not only a threat to the White Fleet, but also the Confederation? Admiral Barron certainly didn’t like what he had found and he was not about to bring a new enemy back to Confederation space.