I’ll tell you right up front that I got very frustrated with this book. As you know by now, Captain Robert Faulkner has been through 20 years in captivity with the Yakutians. Those years were not easy. He was just very recently released and is absolutely terrible physical and some would say, mental health. Yet, the President of the Confederation put him on his old ship and the Naval Admiral in charge sent him on a mission. Faulkner hasn’t had the time to acclimate to his new conditions, he’s twenty years out of date on his technical knowledge, and he’s inherited a ship that was built for a war twenty years ago. It has taken about that long to restore it to some semblance of war-fighting condition, but it’s definitely not a modern fighting ship.
Now after finding out that they have encountered a new enemy with advanced weaponry, Captain Faulkner continues to plow on to Blackthorn Station in hopes of getting his ship repaired. He also thinks it’s his responsibility to protect this station incase of a larger attack by the aliens known as the Da’al. He believes he needs to convince Governor Ardent of two things, 1) the Da’al threat is very real and she needs to get all 50,000 people on the station down to the planet for safety and 2) he needs to new engines to get his ship back to fighting conditions. He’s going to have limited success getting either one of those things done. Blackthorn Station is not a full-fledge Confederation entity. They are a junior member and are so far removed from Earth and the Confederation in general that they aren’t sure if they even want or need to be part of the Confederation.
The Governor has already been advised to shut down all commercial ships leaving the station because they could easily be attacked by the Da’al before reaching the warp gates out of the area. She’s not exactly willing to do this because that would mean some very powerful business leaders would begin to lose money. Additionally, they aren’t exactly convinced that there is an alien threat. While she’s away that two pirate ships were attacked and destroyed recently, she believes that to be pirates attacking pirates and since it was so far from Blackthorn Station, it meant nothing to her. So Faulkner goes to see the Governor. She has temporarily placed a restriction on ships leaving Blackthorn Station until she can talk with Captain Faulkner. Even this action is not setting well with some of the Guilds or union members.
Captain Faulkner does get an agreement for two new engines to be gifted to him. His chief engineer begins attempting to merge them with the *Mantis* and its two other original engines. Meanwhile, things have been turning nasty on the planet which Blackthorn Station is attached. There are signs of riots and definitely efforts for people to leave the planet, get to the station and then depart on any ship they can afford to take them. Just the opposite needs to happen, the civilians on the station need to get down on the planet via the two space elevators that are operational. The Governor asks Captain Faulkner for help in marshaling her people, 5,000 at a time, onto the space elevators and down to the planet. Faulkner sends his XO, Commander Webster, and a platoon of Marines.
Commander Webster hasn’t commanded ground troops in his entire career so he’s kind of at a loss on what to do. But, once he is confronted by Blackthorn Station security, he agrees to have his Marines store their weapons and only be armed with air cannons. These cannons shoot a compress air bubble at people which is effectively knocking them back or down with harming them. So, his Marines are deployed around the entrances to the space elevator that will carry passengers down to the planet, but they soon find out that no one is leaving because they don’t see the need to do so. Others have told them that the Governor is wrong and their is no threat, but if there was, they need to stay close to the docking facilities and the ships that would take them away from Blackthorn Station.
Not long after getting in place, Commander Webster is notified that a group of about 400 arm mercenaries are coming up on the next elevator lift. He still doesn’t act to arm his Marines with their normal combat load. Once these mercenaries arrive, the civilian in charge of securing the doors to the space elevator manages to unlock them before the Marines can react. Soon 400 mercenaries are advancing towards the Marines. The first person taken out of action is Commander Webster. This was probably for the better since the Marine Non-commissioned Office-In-Charge quickly ordered the armory to breakout their normal weapons.
Meanwhile, the aliens have sent two objects through the war-gate headed toward Blackthorn Station. No one knows what these things are but they continue to watch them since they cannot leave the station dock without engines. The Chief Engineer has managed to disconnect all the engines on the premises that he needs those two off in order to get the two new ones operational. Captain Faulkner doesn’t know about any of this because his Chief Engineer doesn’t feel the need to inform his commander of what he’s doing. That’s becoming a huge problem.
Alright, as you can see there are a lot of things going on and quite frankly, Captain Robert Faulkner is really out of his league. He’s not physically capable of putting up with the stress all these actions bring and it’s only due to the fact he has some excellent junior officers that anything gets done. When they tell him what should be done, he doesn’t readily understand because he lacks the technology knowledge that his junior officer have, but to his credit, he allows them to follow through with their plans. It seems that most of the time he is just sitting in his command chair asking questions about what everyone is doing instead of commanding the situation.
This story isn’t over, but it might be the end of the *Mantis*. Captain Faulkner orders the ship to be evacuated, but he and only he remains aboard, but even that doesn’t work. You’ll have to find out what happens in book 3, “Act of War”, now available on Amazon.