As the title of this book might lead you to beleive that the series is coming to an end, you’re not wrong in your thinking. I do believe this book wraps up a very long and interesting story that started out with Captain Jack Romanoff getting command of a museum ship, the “*Delta Orionis*” a.k.a. the “*Hunter*”. Where he took that ship and its crew is what now will become the history of the Confederation or what the Confederation has now become. Jack Romanoff changed everything.
We know from the last book that Admiral Romanoff was preparing to take the *Hunter* and the *Aries*, a sister battleship commanded by Derek Calvo, to Earth going after the last contingent of Tardans and their automated drones, the Locusts. They haven’t been able to find the command codes for the Locusts. That meant that they were going to have a serious battle ahead of them fighting both the Tardan ships and the Locusts swarms. Romanoff preferred to do that away from Earth, but he wasn’t sure where the Tardans were exactly heading now.
Still, Tina Chen and Professor Alan Prescott, in their stealth spy ship, had discovered that the Tardan fleet was actually heading for Excalibur not realizing that the planet wasn’t the capital of the Confederation. Still, their stop in that system might allow Admiral Romanoff’s small fleet to catch up to them and inflict some damage. So, orders were sent out and the *Hunter* and *Aries* took off to engage in battle. Tina and the Professor sent ahead to tail the Tardans and report their movements back to Romanoff. Jack certainly didn’t want any surprises.
Meanwhile, Lisa Gain and Patrick Tebbe in their stealth spy ship had already departed for the Solar System to check on how things were going. While Admiral Romanoff was attempting to deal with the last of the Tardans and their Locusts, Lisa and Patrick needed to find out the status of the Poseidon Group. They were also something that Admiral Romanoff was going to have to deal with and it seemed that the last of this treasonous group was centered on Earth.
But what Lisa and Patrick found out was that Patrick’s previous efforts to get the Poseidon Group fighting among themselves had worked fantastically. The Poseiden Group on Earth was definitely in disarray with no one really stepping up to claim leadership. It seems when leaders of one faction were identified, the other faction was quick to assassinate the new opposing leader. This was what Patrick had started previously by killing several prominent members while making them look like Poseidon Group members did the killings to each other. The one person Admiral Romanoff, Lisa, and Patrick still wanted to track down was former Vice Admiral Suzanne LaChasse.
So, they headed to battle only to find the Tardans and their Locusts contingent all stuck around a warpgate to Earth. The gate was apparently broken, non-operational and the Tardans had yet to figure out what else to do to get to Earth. This was the opportunity Jack was waiting on. Yet, he knew they would be facing the largest contingent of Tardan ships and Locusts they had face anywhere to date. To fight them now might well mean the destruction of his own two battleships or at least getting both of them seriously degraded. If they could at least destroy the Tardan command vessel that controlled the Locusts, that would prevent the Locusts from having the ability to ever leave this system. Once Jack received more reinforcements, he intended to come back and then destory all the Locusts they had stranded in several systems.
Admiral Romanoff wasn’t sure if he or his battleships could survived this battle. Even if they did, what awaited them in the Solar System. Would the Confederation Navy that had been part of the coup have gathered in force around Earth. He felt the most that had was cruisers, but if they had a large number of them and his battleships were heavily damaged, the didn’t know if he could win that second fight. He also knew that reinforcements from the cluster were still months away.
So, how does it all end? That’s what you’ll find out in this final book of the series. We don’t go as far as to handle the Kingdom of Kastelara yet, so that does leave the author a means to continue this story, but, as you’ll find out, the Confederation no longer exists, yet it just might be the equal to this far distant Kingdom when they arrived. I hope we do read about how the former Confederation and former Admiral Jack Romanoff company eventually attack this problem.