If you remember the end of Book One “Starship Eternal”, Captain Mitch Williams was now in control of the Goliath, Earth’s first FTL capable starship which was lost on it’s maiden voyage. Captain Williams or Mitch, as he prefers when not in large company, just destroyed a enemy Tetron ship and numerous Alliance ships under it’s control while in command of the Goliath. He wasn’t alone. The Goliath is inhabited by another Tetron called “Origin” who does not support his species attacks on the humans. He has aligned himself with the humans and will help them defeat the Tetron invasion, if they can. Mich was somewhat depressed that his previous ship, the Schism, Captained by Admiral Millie Narayan, was destroyed during the battle. Now he sees a small vessel approaching the Goliath and finds that it has no comm capability. So, instead of assuming it might be an enemy bomb, he allows it to dock in the landing bays. Happily, it turns out this is the remaining crew of the Schism, including Millie, his current love interest. He also finds another ship that has been drifting after the battle, but this appears to be an Alliance ship and he doesn’t know if they are still under the mind control influence of the alien Tetron. He still brings that ship onboard the Goliath and a larger crew starts to come together.
So, now that Captain or now Colonel Williams has the ship he sought, he has to decide what to do next. His plan is to go back to Liberty and rescue Major Christine Arapo, who isn’t what she appears to be. She seems to be connected to Colonel Williams, but he doesn’t understand how. She also contains some knowledge that is vital to the humans winning this war. How he knows that is because Origin has told him so. There is a complicated back-plot to this story about time incursions by the Tetrons that is the results of them trying to wipeout humanity. Mitch Williams seems to be the key to their success or failure and the only hope for humanities continued existence. He doesn’t know why, nor is this clearly explained. So, has to convince the new crew of the Goliath to go back on a suicide mission, but he’s not telling them it’s only to rescue Major Arapo; instead he’s telling them it’s to liberate Liberty which is now occupied by a gigantic Tetron partially buried deep in the capital city. The Tetron have some capability to control the minds of humans who have cybernetic implants. This means it controls just about any human in it’s vicinity since most all humans have now been implanted with these implants since a very early age. So Liberty is crawling with a zombie-like army of professional military and civilians that can and will be used in any way possible to stop Mitch Williams and his efforts. He also has the problem of finding on single woman on a planet of millions who also doesn’t want to be found since she’s hiding from the Tetron.
The story is well written although some of the scenes are not very realistic. Trying to find a single person on an entire planet is almost impossible especially if you don’t have anyone or anything on the planet to help you. And then, there’s the problem of her specifically trying not to be found. Well, this doesn’t deter Mitch Williams. Once he actually gets on the ground his forces are dwindled down so small that they should have been easily taken care of. I guess this alien Tetron isn’t very bright. He’s got an entire army on the planet yet he never sends it out after Mitch’s group even though he knows where they are and where they are going. You can only be so lucky so long and then you’re dead. Mitch and his small group should have been dead many, many times. Still, it makes for an interesting read even if hard to believe.
I don’t know where this story will go now. They didn’t succeed in rescuing Major Arapo nor did they succeed in freeing Liberty. I don’t even know if they killed this enemy Tetron or not. Still, there seems to be others that have to be found and destroyed. The Goliath might be up to the job, but there doesn’t appear to be any help from any where coming even if the enemy Tetron on Liberty was destroyed. When the Tetron was almost killed, it made the Alliance spaceship around Liberty smash into each other so they couldn’t become free and return to fight for humanity. How convenient. Still the story goes on because I’ve already found out that there’s seven books in the series and they are all already published. Like I said before, I’ve got a lot of reading to do.