I didn’t particularly like this book. The main character is just too dumb or stupid even though he’s a starship Captain! That’s my opinion and I’m sticking to it. Captain Gideon Wallace has dreamed of going into space and exploring new worlds. Well, he gets to live his dream, but due to his stupidity and wonton disregard for his crew and passengers (colonists), he almost gets everyone killed. And to top it off, his has a competent crew that try many, many times to convince him his course of action is extremely dangerous to everyone. Captain Wallace doesn’t listen.
*Trailblazer Eight* is the next colony ship to leave Earth hoping to find a habitable planet for the colonists it will carry to start a new life. As mentioned, the ship is commanded by Captain Gideon Wallace, with Commander Aria Page as his XO and Second-in-Command. The crew also consists of Lieutenants Cyrus Hunt and Venus Vasquez. Hunt is the Chief Engineer and Vasquez is the System Engineer. They have all trained together for some time for this mission and all seem to know their jobs very well. Gideon and Aria are romantically involved. Gideon has asked Aria to marry him right before the mission. Bad timing!
Their mission will take them first to the Proxima Centauri system and specifically to Proxima b where they will either pickup more colonists (Pioneers) or just check-on how things are going with this growing colony. Earth has sent out seven previous colony ships loaded with excited colonist. *Trailblazer One* had previously landed on Proxima b now called *Aurora* twenty years ago so it either had a thriving colony or they needed rescuing. Due to the time difference involved, direct communications couldn’t be made back to Earth, so Trailblazer Eight would contact the colony about half-way through their journey. The journey to *Aurora* will take eighty years even though they will be traveling most of that time in cryo-stasis. The crew will be periodically awaken to check on things aboard the ship and then go back into cryo. The colonist will stay in cryo the entire trip, even the backup crew will remain in cryo unless there is a need to wake them. Cryo-stasis will allow the colonist and crew to age only months compared to the eighty years the trip will actually take.
Included in the colonist are Bailey and Gemma. The former is the daughter of Aria while the latter is the sister of Lieutenant Hunt. Having loved ones as part of the colonist contingent will cause problems down the line, but only one of many problems. Captain Wallace has received a highly classified briefing about the original *Trailblazer One* landing on Aurora. That briefing gave new meaning to this being a dangerous mission. He was not to reveal what was in the briefing to his crew until he felt it necessary. I don’t understand this reluctance to include the entire crew on the situation of TB-1 and Aurora. They needed to know that danger could be awaiting them and not go blindly stumbling into it. But, Wallace still decides not to say anything until it’s almost too late.
*TB-8* blasts off as scheduled. Another member of the crew is an IRIS or Intelligent Robotic Interface System. Yes, IRIS is a robot and a very capable one at that. He will be doing most of the checks on the ship while the crew are asleep. The ship, *TB-1,* is actually taken care of by Cora, the ships Artificial Intelligence. IRIS and Cora will function as a team the entire eighty years of the trip with only occasional interaction with the crew. Well, that’s was the plan anyway.
Captain Gideon Wallace is unexpectedly awoke while only a year and three months from Aurora, but it was a year earlier than planned. IRIS is telling him that they have just received a message from Earth and that the Captain must listen to it now! What he hears changes their entire mission or it should have, but Captain Gideon Wallace is an idiot. Even with a strong warning to not do something, he does it anyway even with his crew telling him not to. He does this a lot and it gets very irritating. Then we find that Aria can’t handle her emotions where her daughter is concerned. She almost becomes non-functional and then gets mad when told to do her job. This is where the story bogs down. Between Gideon making the wrong decisions and Aria going on rants about whatever, I kind of got tired of reading the story.
Still, this is just the beginning of a series titled, “Rebel Galaxy”, but there really are no “rebels” in this story. Just a bunch of people trying to survive after Gideon’s stupid decisions. The next book, “Factions”, is now available on Amazon. I’m not sure I want to read it.