This was an interesting, but aggravating book. Captain Scott Moore is the captain of the *U.S.S. Atlanta*. This is the first of its kind faster than light (FTL) starship which is going to a new galaxy and a new planet called Victoria. Earth has worn out its welcome. The planet can no longer grow food for its massive population, so humanity must go somewhere else or go extinct. Captain Moore hopes to find that “somewhere else” on this trip and then come back, maybe. There’s only a couple of things standing in his way.
First, the Aires Drive that will thrust them into FTL flight hasn’t been thoroughly tested! Not sure why, but I believe that it might be a one use only engine but that’s not clearly indicated. Secondly, while he’s a member of US Space Force, he’s been placed in-charge of a mix of military and contract personnel. Equinox Corp. and Melody Systems have pretty large contingents on his ship operating their various components. Fortunately, the Engineering Department is being ran by Chief Engineer Pete Breckinridge also of Space Force, but we really don’t know his rank. Captain Moore calls him “Chief” which could indicate a Chief Master Sergeant but I don’t think an enlisted rank would be given such responsibilities. So we really don’t know the “Chiefs” rank although Captain Moore says he calls him by his rank of “Chief”. So something’s off with this military structure. Additionally, each of the contractor elements have their own CEOs. As you’ll read only one seems subservient to Captain Moore while Ms. Munn of Equinox Corp. thinks she should be running the ship. She becomes a serious thorn in Captain Moore’s side which he tolerates for far, far too long.
I guess because of the urgency to find another planet for humanity, the USS Atlanta starts off from Earth with already know problems. As mentioned the Aries Drive has never been fully tested, so they don’t know if it will actually get them to FTL speeds or if it will simply blow-up! Another thing is while getting ready to go to FTL flight, they notice an anomaly. It seems that there’s a discrepancy between what the Chief can see about the Aries Drive and what Melody, the AI is reporting. Vincent Moore, Captain Moore’s brother, is the genius that built the Melody AI. He swears that there is nothing wrong because Melody says there’s nothing wrong. Still, instead of attempting to fix this anomaly, Captain Moore forges ahead ready to go into FTL even if it blows up the ship! That’s kind of stupid.
Anyway, the ship does successfully go into FTL. While doing so, most of the crew is put into cryogenic sleep since the ship will be mostly ran by Melody. That goes well until the Captain is awaken far ahead of time. His Chief Engineer and Vincent are both revived. The Chief finds that the Aries Drive is dangerously overheating with the cooling system being controlled by Melody. Vincent says that Melody isn’t seeing any kind of overheating so he says the problem doesn’t exist. Then the Chief finds that Melody isn’t taking any data from the Aries Drive. They aren’t “talking” to each other so Melody wouldn’t know of the overheating problem and therefore won’t correct for it. If the drive does overheat sufficiently, it could dump them out of FTL travel with catastrophic consequences, but they don’t know that for sure.
The AI Melody then shuts completely down and isn’t talking to anyone. Even Vincent can’t access her normal routines. The ship does leave FTL travel, but miraculously survives with only some damage. The biggest problem they now have besides the non-working AI, is that they have no idea where they are in relation to Earth or Victoria. Now begins their biggest problems. They can manage most of the ships functions without the AI, but they are limited in what they can do. They don’t have an unlimited supply of edible food on-board nor do they have a large supply of water. Those things were to be supposedly found on Victoria. They manage to get their external sensors running only to find a distant object approaching. Could this be a first contact episode and could such contact help them with their damage ship?
It would have been nice to have made a new friend, but the distant contact turns out to be a very dangerous starship that fires on *Atlanta* without listening or responding to any communication attempts. So now Captain Scott Moore has a whole lot of problems. His ship is damaged and getting more damage by an attacking alien ship. What is he supposed to do now? That’s what you’ll read about in the rest of the book. It’s not clear if or when the crew of the *Atlanta* will ever get back to Earth and certainly not continue their journey to Victoria.
This is a good start to a new series, but there seems to be things that just don’t make sense. His crew is equipped with MAS-5 laser rifles which they will use quite frequently as you’ll read. They are charged with batteries that seem to never, ever run down. Further, when encountering aliens you’d expect a language problem, but in this book, even the non-tech level aliens whip out a translating device as soon as they meet these humans. Later, we’ll find that the Captain obtains the one and only behind the ear translating device continently placed so he finds it. I hope some of these oddities don’t show up in book 2, “Starship Acadia” due on 23 July 2024.