Right off the bat and this really isn’t a spoiler if you’ve read the previous books, Peacemaker Van Tudor is becoming a Master. With all the problems he’s having protecting Earth, it’s not hard to see this coming. As a Peacemaker, he just didn’t have the authority to get the things done that he wanted. Also without Master Gerhardt backing him up at Anvil Dark, he wouldn’t have quick access to a Master for anything. So, by becoming one himself he solved several problem, one of which Is denying that position to Peacemaker Casaril. That guy was a former protege of disgraced Master Yotov. No one really wanted him to be a Master.
But again, Casaril had connections outside the Guild so Master Tudor now had more potential enemies working against him. Still, he had his hands full trying to protect Earth. Already, several factions were trying to get advanced weapons placed on Earth with people who had no business using them. And with the Special Exclusion Zone expiring, Van needed to do something to ensure the farm in Iowa was protected. He had inquired about setting up diplomatic relations with the USA and Miryam had just called to say he had a call from a State Department Deputy Secretary Loren Freirbach. So could Earth and specifically the USA actually realizing that aliens were coming to Earth on a regular basis? Van hoped so and if they still didn’t, he was going to do his utmost to make them realize that there was a greater galactic universe out there waiting to strip Earth of it’s resources one way or another.
In this book, Master Van Tudor does a lot of work around and on Earth. He and his crew locate a group of mercenaries that appear to have been provided deadly laser weapons not of Earth origin and they had used them on some innocent survey party, killing everyone. Van was going to go after these guys and make an example out of them one way or another. Some even survived the raid on their camp that Van’s crew conducted. He later found out that two aliens had also came to Earth to set up a twist communication station and they had been abandoned by the mercenaries. Van and his crew found them a few days/weeks after they captured the mercenaries and both of these aliens were happy for the rescue. So happy that they readily talked about who had hired them and also identified that another twist comm station was also beings setup some where on Earth.
As usual with these stories, Master Tudor and his crew seem to go off on tangents to other things. Like traveling to Starsmith to see about getting his Moonsword repaired. Here he also got to talk to Matterforge, a star-dwelling being that had some kind of interest in Van Tudor’s activities. From there, the *Fafnir* and crew traveled to Null World to visit with Schegith. That being had a strange request of Van. She had an offspring who was now coming into an age equivalent to a human teenager. He was also showing the same kind of attitude as a human teenager and Schegith, with all her vast intelligence, didn’t know how to deal with it. She had asked Van to talk to the kid which Van agreed, but he didn’t know how him talking to what appeared to be a young slug, Haadrake, could do any good. Yet, they did talk and Van had the idea of taking this young Schegith to Fort Cantullin so he could associate with the ever busy and excited Conoku.
While all of this was going on, Van was learning about the tons of administrative BS that a Master had to deal with. He wasn’t going to establish himself in an office on Anvil Dark as some Masters had done. No, he wanted to be out arresting bad guys and making the universe a safer place for everyone to live. Yet, Perry and others at Anvil Dark had prepared a workstation on the *FaFnir* suitable for a Master. It had the required high-level, secure communication module that the Masters used to transmit their messages. So his in-box grew to an enormous size in just a short time. Van was shocked at the amount of trivia and plane old BS that came across his starship desk.
He was particularly annoyed when Master Marlow’s letter came which accused Van of breaking several Guild rules involving his crew. The letter questioned whether his crew were “authorized” Peacemaker Auxiliaries and specifically challenged the idea that Netty-P, an AI, should be even considered anything more than a tool. Such AIs were supposed to have been procured via a specific contract between the Guild and an AI manufacturer, and Netty-P had not. Van recognized that all this was petty BS and wonder how anyone could get anything done at Anvil Dark if they were allowing this kind of problems to arise. Still, because the letter was from another Master, her accusations would have to be answered at a Masters Review Board.
And so it goes with this book. There is a surprise at the end and that’s going to throw a very large twist to what will happen in future books. There may be a change to Van’s crew that no one anticipated this soon. We’ll have to find out in book 19, “Gone Nova”, now available on Amazon. There’s also a pre-release announcement about a coming book 20, so the story continues.