Get ready to do some aging! Well, not you personally, but the characters in this book are going to move along pretty rapidly. Not sure if I would like all these life rejuvenations they get to extend their lives for hundreds of years, but that’s the age and technology level that we find aboard the Intrepid.
After having survived the harrowing conditions they found themselves while falling towards the LHS 1565 star, the Intrepid is finally back on mission, although the current mission has slightly changed. Knowing that the Intrepid has to have some major repairs, the command crew decided they would have to stop in Kapteyn’s Star system for, say, oh about 100 years! Yeah, a 100 year delay in their mission is just something all these people readily accept! Except, the majority of them will be in cryostasis and won’t even know the time is passing. Bob, the ships super intelligent AI will run things during the long journey to Kapteyn’s Star and if everything works like it should and there a no more problems, then everyone in stasis should awake ready to get the ship fixed in their new temporary star system.
But, you do remember that Myrrdan wasn’t located during the last book. While he is the known cause of all their current problems, nothing on this vast ship can pin him or her down. So, either Myrrdan is hiding in plane sight as one of the crew or he/she has its own cryopod and is sleeping along with the rest of the crew.That’s what Tanis Richards, now General Richards hopes. She still doesn’t know what Myrrdan is up to but is fully believes that it has something to do with the picotech. The plans for that technology are aboard the Intrepid, but won’t be developed until they reach a system that provides the resources and time needed to fully develop this new technology. Tanis has an uneasy feeling that Myrrdan might show up just as they get settled in Kapteyn’s Star system. She hopes to catch this enemy there and stop all the trouble he/she has caused.
Now, break away from this story line and go to the Sirius binary star system. It’s about 8.6 light years from the Solar System and is fully inhabited. The primary governance in this system is the Sirius Hegemony ran by the Lumins. They are an aristocratic society of the entitled. They have built their superior culture on the backs of the Noctus. The Noctus was the working class and they lived on floating mining platforms mining various minerals for the Lumins while reaping very little benefit. They were in effect slave labor barley manage enough to get buy, but they were used to their situation in life and most just put up with it. Oh, they had tried to rebel a few times in the past with one mining platform going rogue for awhile. But, it always ended the same way. The miners had no way of defending their platforms and not internal military so what uprising they made was quickly squelched by the Lumin military by either capturing the leaders of the uprising or simply destroying the platform.
Then one platform leader, Markus decided he and his people had had enough. They had implemented plans to breakout of the Sirius system while making the Lumins believe they were just upgrading the platforms mining capabilities. When they made their move, the Lumins were caught completely surprised. It took them awhile to setup a significant pursuit, but pursue they did because the President of the Lumin’s daughter just happened to be on the platform, now named the Hyperion, and he wanted her back. Unknown to him, though, his daughter was one of the primary reasons these Noctus were able to make their escape. So, the Hyperion was now headed for, you guessed it, Kapteyn’s Star. It would take them about 40 to 50 years to reach what they hoped would be their new home.
Back aboard the Intrepid, Bob the AI was getting worried that something was going to go wrong on their long voyage to Kapteyn’s Star. So he woke Tanis and ask/told her that he was going to awake her every so often so she could just “check things out” and make sure Bob wasn’t missing something. All the other colonist and ship’s crew would remain in stasis for the voyage. But Tanis knew that she couldn’t be the only awake human on this vast ship for months at a time so she told Bob he was going to have to wake Joe when she was awake. That worked for both of them. They soon fell deeper in love and spent the next 50 or more years enjoying themselves all along on this gigantic colony ship. They didn’t mind.
Then they arrived near Kapteyn’s Star. While they knew it wasn’t inhabited, it had been surveyed. So they mostly knew what was there. it had sufficient resources that the Intrepid could use to fix most all of the ship, but it word require awaking most all of the people including a lot of the colonist.
Then they saw something heading into the Kapteyn’s Star system. Unknown the them, it was the Hyperion, but surprisingly it had something still in pursuit and they didn’t look friendly. So, Tanis was sent out on a scouting mission to find out who these people were and why they were coming to this empty star system in a floating mining station? Once Tanis gets the answers to these questions, a whole new mission grows up and this begins the building of Victoria, a new colony that may or not be the permanent home of two different groups of people.
So, there is a lot going on in this book. We get to meet a lot of new characters and see two different story lines merge together. This doesn’t happen in just a few days. No, as I wrote, Tanis and Joe spend over 50 years just living by themselves in one of the earth-like habitats aboard the Intrepid. That apparently is just a drop in the bucket for their now normal live span. And, as you’ll remember, they expected to have to stay in the Kapteyn’s Star system for at least 100 years. All those on the ship now expect to still be alive and very healthy at the end of that time. Man, what a crazy experience that would be.
Sadly, this appears to be the end of The Intrepid Saga. Still, something happens at the very end of this book and the author follows up with information that more stories are coming involving the crew of the Intrepid. I might look for them, but I’ve got a lot already on my reading list.