[Note: As of 12/03/2023, this will not be published on Amazon since I have been banned from posting reviews for some unknown reason. Once the ban is lifted, assuming it does get lifted, I’ll go back and post this to Amazon.]==
We’re back with another fight coming up. I thought the “resistance” lead by Charlie Travers had won the war that needed to be won. He and his fellow fighters had tamed the Anguilar by destroying their planet sized fortress. The Anguilar had already seized and occupied the planet Copperell but that’s where the majority of the free Copperell wanted to live. So, Charlie had established a new ruling government initially ran by two Anguilar, Danaan (female) and Von-To (male). His stipulation was that the Anguilar might be in-charge for now, but the Copperell were going to be free citizens with the same rights as the Anguilar on the planet. Because they had used the Copperell as slaves for so long, the Anguilar didn’t have very good skills in doing anything. So now if they wanted something done, they were going to have to hire the Copperell to do the jobs they wanted done, at a fair wage. Even Anguilar females had been treated like second-classed citizens but that was going to change now that Danaan was now Empress or co-Emperor.
Still, not all the Anguilar had easily accepted their defeat at the hands of Charlie and his resistance. One in particular was General Kanan-Raj. He had established his own “kingdom” on a planet out in the middle of nowhere and now was demanding that Danaan allow Anguilar females voluntarily to come to his planet. Danaan wasn’t going to do this. She said there was no need to split the Anguilar civilization and that General Kanan-Raj was just wanting to grow his own empire so he could eventually take over. Without enough females, his population would eventually wane and die out. That’s exactly what Danaan wanted and expected. Still, General Kanan-Raj. had his own military so that was a problem Danaan wanted Charlie to help with.
But, Charlie Travers and just come back from Earth after establishing the United System League, didn’t have time to solve the Anguilar’s problems right now. He was more worried about the invasion by the Zha’-Rath. These were definitely aliens that he had just recently encountered and that encounter had been almost lost. Now he had to find some kind of defense against these mind-control aliens and he had an idea where to find those weapons.
Giblet was a Varnell as we all know. We also know that Varnell’s had a reputation for manipulating people with their smooth talking which bordered on mind-control. While this had caused the Varnell all sorts of problems including them being ostracized from most civilizations, they still found ways to make a living. Giblet had learned to not use his powers of persuasion on anyone in the resistance and had been able to learn how to fight without relying on it too. In Charlies first encounter with the Zha’-Rath, Giblet had been able to break their mental hold on Charlie and his friends. Without Giblet’s support, most humans and other aliens could easily be controlled by the Zha’-Rath. The goal of the Zha’-Rath was to exterminate all living beings that were not them. The did so by having others turn against themselves. Charlie said they needed to begin recruiting lots of Varnell and have them placed strategically among his ships that might encounter the Zha’-Rath.
The only problem with this plan was that there weren’t very many Varnell around. They had been persecuted so much that a lot had died off and others went in to hiding making sure not to use their powers unless absolutely necessary. So Charlie had to find some way to first locate any Varnell he could find and then convince them to come out of hiding and use the powers that got them into trouble in the first place. He realized that his search might wind up leading him to just one or two Varnell at a time and the Zha’-Rath were advancing right now. So that’s what this book is all about. Where and how to find a race of people that don’t want to be found and have been killed for doing the very thing you want them to do.
Even when they do find the Varnell, will they find enough when they have to confront the Zha’-Rath. Right now, Charlie, Laraana, Giblet and Lenny how no idea of how many Zha’-Rath there are including how many starships they might have. There’s also the lingering idea that Lenny, the AI that has been running all the Liberator starships and was the one responsible for kidnapping Charlie from Earth so many years ago, was itself, a Zha’-Rath! Now we can talk about trust issues!
Well, this book ends in a place you wouldn’t have expected or at least I didn’t. The war with the Zha’-Rath certainly isn’t over even if Charlie Travers manages to win a couple of scrimmages. Everything will continue in the next book, “Shadow Dominion”, already on my reading list.