Getting back to a great series we find things initially calmed down. The Confederation starship Delta Orionis, a.k.a., Hunter is in orbit over New Copenhagen making some major repairs with the help of the people and industries on New Copenhagen. They had won this last battle but it has cost them in material, but not they seemed to have the time and the ability to recuperate from that ordeal and come back even better.
It also gave Lisa Gane time to adjust to her new life paired with a Tardan named Regex. She, as you should know by now, is a computer hacker while the alien entity she is physically paired with was a computer hardware expert for the Tardans. While she was having some trouble adjusting to having another’s thoughts in her mind, they were slowly learning to accommodate each other and thought that they each could learn something from the other since this paring was probably going to be for life. Additionally, since the Hunter had captured a number of civilian and military Tardans and their computers, Lisa was in demand for communicating with the aliens. Her on-board alien had no problem translating what was said they the captive Tardans and Lisa could therefore almost provide and English translation immediately. They also were working on cracking some Tardan computer security features which should allow them to access whatever information was contained on the Tardan computers. Commodore Jack Romanoff was especially interested in what was on the Tardan military computers.
Meanwhile, everyone knew that the Tardan threat wasn’t over and that the Novarites could pose an even greater threat to the humans of the Confederation. They had received some information from one of the Tardan military computers that indicated their main focus was going to be in the Argent system. So, Commodore Jack Romanoff had his staff begin making battle plans for securing that system now that the Hunter was back up to better than before operations. They were also incorporating some of the alien technology into the Hunter which would give them capabilities they didn’t have before. Still, testing of this alien tech and how it operated with the normal functions of the Hunter was something they tried to go slow on.
Still, the had to jump to Argent and liberate that system from the Tardans and any Novarites that might have caught up with the Tardans. That battle was short and extremely violent, but the Hunter and her crew were battle tested and proved so by eliminating the current threat to Argent. They expected to see wide-spread chaos on the planet with all the orbiting military facilities destroyed and then much of the military and even civilian centers being obliterated. That’s not what they found. Well, the orbiting military facilities, space stations and shipyards had been all destroyed, but one civilian space station seemed to still be in operation.
Upon contacting the planet directly, they were placed in contact with a Rear Admiral Troy Allen. He was the ranking military authority in the Argent system and his position was as Confederation military advisor to the Agent President. But, as Commodore Romanoff was soon to find out, Admiral Allen wanted to put himself in charge of all military assets in the Confederation and that included taking strategic command of the Hunter. So now not only did Jack have to fight off an alien invasion, he was also going to have to fight to keep his command. Legally, the thought he could do so and on further study, the realized that Admiral Allen had no command experience whatsoever and had never even commanded a military vessel in peacetime. He was an administrative officer and nothing much more although he was competent at his duties or he wouldn’t have risen to his present rank.
Then the Hunter’s sensors start reporting more hostile alien ships are inbound to the Argent system. Jack is directly ordered by Admiral Allen to place the Hunter in orbit above Argent and protect it’s civilian population! Jack knows that’s not the way to win this battle so he takes off to go meet this new threat! Now he has defied a direct order and no telling how that will turn out. What’s more important is that the new threat consists of a least two Novarite battleships. These ships are much larger and probably more powerful than the Hunter although they have fired their main weapons since the last time the Hunter met up with one of these, she rammed the Novarite ship before it could get off a shot. They aren’t going to get the chance to do that, besides, that’s a terrible tactic no matter how well it worked last time.
The story moves along at a fast pace and this new situation at Argent is kind of expected, but I think gets resolved in the proper way although it’s not completely settled. There’s still more fighting to do and that will be cover in book 6, “The Grand Conspiracy”. I’m placing it on my reading list right now.