Well, this is a strange series. The guy whom I thought was the main character, Captain Robert Faulkner, commander of the Confederation warship *Mantis* is missing in action and presumed dead. In the last book, the *Mantis* was close to being destroyed so much so that the Captain had ordered all the crew to abondon ship. That crew had gone into escape pods and now have apparently been captured by the Yakutians. Surgeon-Captain Elsbeth Morton awakes from her cryo-pod aboard the Yakutian warship *Serrayu* and finds there are about forty-five of her othere crewmen/women also in cryo-pod. She begins helping those that are awaking to get out of these pods, but she needs to find out what has exactly happened.
We are aware that the Da’al had sent some kind of weapon through the warpgate towards the spacestation known as Blackthorn Station. The second and smaller of the two objects had hit the station even though Captain Faulkner had tried to actually separate the station from the planet by blowing up the space elevator tether. It didn’t get cut so the spacestation was now tilted at an odd angle with emergency efforts underway to evacuate all the inhabitants. The Da’al had also sent three more of their ships into this system apparently heading for a small planet called Tigris. That was also the destination of Captain Meyer’s ship the *USDC Renheim*.
But, there were a lot of escape pods from the *Mantis* still floating in space that needed to be recovered. Commander Webster, XO of the *Mantis* had found himself now aboard the Governor of Blackthorn’s ship the *Dardelion*. It definitely wasn’t a military ship, but it did have the capability to rescue some of the escape pods from the *Mantis*. Except the *Dardelion* didn’t have near enough space to store all these pods. The crewmembers had to stay in the pods until adequate medical facilities to bring them out of the pods and the *Dardelion* didn’t have those kinds of facilities. The *USDC Renheim* did but Captain Claus Meyer was anything but a capable commanding officer. His orders said he was to do something other than rescue *Mantis* exscape pods, so he was going to ignore his obligation to fellow spacers and continue on with his mission. Except, that mission might be very dangerous. And Captain Meyer was very adapt at keeping himself away from and out of danger.
So, Commander Webster proposes to take the *Dardelion* and proceed to Tigris and rescue the scientific mission there. He was also to be accompanied by a Mr. Nash whom he knew nothing about except that he seemed to have a mission of his own. Unknown to most others on the *Dardelion*, the actual reason for going to Tigris was to rescue the Confederation President’s daughter. Mr. Nash, it turns out, also knows that there’s a strange ship seemingly buried near a mountain area on Tigris where the scientist were exploring. He wants that ship and is willing to do what ever to get it back to the Confederation. Of course the Da’al seem to be interested in that particular ship so much so that they manage to destroy the *Dardelion* while most of its crew were on the ground looking for the scientist and the mystery ship.
Now back to Surgeon-Captain Morton. She’s been told to participate in the revival of several crewmen of the *Mantis*. Shockingly she finds that Captain Faulkner is one of these crewmen but he’s in a frozen state and extremely dangerous medical procedures need to be followed to resuscitate him. Unfortunately, Doctor Morton had very little knowledge in how to do this yet the Yakutians seemed to believe she was some kind of expert. Needless to say, the operation to bing back Captain Faulkner wasn’t going to go well.
And while this was all going on Captain Meyer had agreed to begin rescuing the remaining *Mantis* escape pods although he wasn’t in any hurry to do so. He was afraid of wandering into the Da’al spaces or finding the *Serrayu* and having a confrontation with either. To say Captain Meyer was something of a coward was obvious but not said out loud!
So, is this the end of Captain Robert Faulkner? At least forty-five of his crew have become prisoners of the Yakutians who are now at war with the Confederation. And, when will the Da’al decide to do something against the *USDC Renheim* and/or the Y*akutian Serrayu*? With the Dardelion destroyed, how will Commader Webster, his crew and the scientist get off Tigris and back to Confederation space. All good questions that might be answered in book 4, “Day of War”, now available on Amazon.