This book struck me as short. It’s not really at 402 pages, but I read on my Kindle and I don’t know that converts. Still, it seemed short, or maybe it just went fast because of the action. I don’t know. Something puzzles me about this book.
Any way, we’ve got this disgruntled former Commonwealth (CW) spaceship Captain Carson Mach who finds himself recalled to active duty, but only on his terms. Seems like the one and only CW Admiral was a friend (former) of Captain Mach and he needs help.
Admiral Morgan is supposed to in charge of protecting the Salus Sphere. He has a large array of Orbital Forts stationed between the outer edge of the Salus Sphere and No-Mans-Space, which is the buffer between the CW and it’s enemies. That buffer and those forts were established and built some twenty years ago. There has been peace for all those twenty years, but now it looks like that’s all about to change.
A ship has come through a self-generated wormhole and destroyed Orbital Forty. Now, there’s a hole in the defense screen. More worry-some is the fact that the ship that destroyed the fort, isn’t supposed to exist. It’s been identified as the “Atlantis Ship” which is larger than anything currently in any know military fleet. The ship has the most powerful ion cannons and shielding that are far superior to anything currently known to exist. And this ship has been sighted for centuries. It is very old but still keeps coming back to attack different places for unknown reasons. Admiral Morgan must capture this ship and use the technology for the CW or at least disable it from destroying more CW defense installations. He calls on Carson Mach.
Of course, Mach isn’t just giving up his freelance days and happily going back into the CW Fleet. No, he wasn’t a fat some of money, a CW ship, and freedom to choose his own crew. Then he’ll go after the Atlantis Ship as long as it doesn’t try to kill him!
So, there you have the gist of the story. Captain Mach goes about finding a bunch of old “friends” who he wants to join his crew. It doesn’t matter that one potential crew member is trying to fulfill a contract on him. That contract wants Carson dead. Another potential crew member is a CW fleet officer who accidentally opened an alien artifact which let loose a virus that killed several thousand of his fellow humans. He was, unfortunately, told specifically not to mess with the artifact, but his curiosity got the better of him. The rest of Captain Mach’s crew are just a interesting.
You need to read the book to find out if Captain Mach and crew can actually find the Atlantis Ship. If they do that, how do they get close enough to do anything to it? Also, what happens to Mach’s mission when Admiral Morgan suddenly decides to turn traitor!
The book was easy to read and pretty exciting. I think I’ll follow Carson Mach on some of his future stories, provided he survives this one.