Well, Ben finds himself in a pretty difficult situation. He’s been captured by Sedaya, the Duke who wants to take over the Spiral Galaxy. This Duke is not one of the good guys as you’ve found out from the previous two books. He wants something from Ben and he’s ready to torture him in order to get the information as to where the Grimoire is being kept. Of course Ben certainly knows its location aboard the Head Case, but fortunately, Matt and Alta and the Head Case are far away from Sedaya and in a hidden, secret location.
And to make matters worse, in the cell of Sedaya’s dungeon next to Ben is no other than Keep. Yeah, he’s the guy that sold Ben & Matt the starship, took off with their money, leaving them to pay their parking fees and putting them into a whole bunch of dangerous situations since he didn’t tell them what is actually driving the Head Case. It seems there’s some kind of micro-star powering the Head Case and of course, Sedaya wants that too. So, Ben’s talking to Keep and says they are both going here since there doesn’t seem to be a way out and Matt and Alta don’t have the power to rescue them.
But, Keep has something up his sleeve, literally. He shows off some kind of embedded sigil under his skin that can interact with stuff around him so he just puts his hands up and starts bending his bars. Now to Ben, this looks like magic, but it’s not exactly. It’s some very ancient and now banned technology that some how Keep has gotten embedded under his skin. It acts something like the “Force” from Star Wars, but it’s not the same thing. It is technology and using various pieces of it together can make an individual very powerful. That’s why Sedaya wants the Grimoire because it describes how to use all this ancient tech. With it Sedaya could not only take over the Spiral Galaxy, but eventually the Solar System as well. But, Ben and Keep need to escape first.
So, let’s say they accomplish that by stealing a small one seater starfighter and through the use of the sigiltech, Keep gets them zapped all the way to Earth. Both of these guys are smashed together in this single seater starfighter and when it comes out warp above Earth, Ben struggles to keep it from first burning up in the atmosphere and secondly, from crashing. Keep has passed out from using this sigiltech so he’s not much help in landing the Flippy, as the ship is called. It crashes near an unassuming farm some where on Earth. Depending on how badly damaged the Flippy is, will determine if Ben and Keep can get back to the Spiral Galaxy where they need to be. Keep believes they are save enough since he doesn’t think anyone of Sedaya’s thugs can follow him to Earth.
So now it’s just a matter of fixing up the Flippy. With the help of this very friendly farm family, Ben and Keep manage to go back to their respective homes, Ben to his Mom’s apartment and Keep to his own apartment in Modesto, Calf. They also manage to stop at a hardware store and pickup a bunch of tools they’ll need to repair their ship. Ben makes up a story to tell his Mom and Sister about his disappearance, but his appearance does let his Mom know that he’s alive and well, so far. Then Ben and Keep head back to the farm.
Unfortunately, here’s where they find out that Sedaya has a long reach. The farm house is burning down to the ground when they arrive and the barn in which they had kept Flippy is empty. They are also immediately attacked by what appear to Niflin soldiers which they manage to kill. So their problem of getting back to the Spiral Galaxy just got a whole lot tougher. Who are the forces that attacked them and how did they know where they had landed.
It all gets explained in the rest of the book with flows pretty rapidly. They do get some local Earth help, surprisingly, like these kind of people are always around, NOT! But, still, Ben and Keep are still on Earth at the end of this book. That means there’s definitely more to come in book 4, “Candy Bomb”, now available on Amazon.