Well, things have started to go better for the Human Empire lead by Emperor James and Empress Christine Somerville. The return of the Emperor and more importantly his two children, Jonathan and Georgia, to the royal palace was no small event. Of course Christine was there to greet them and her joy was compounded by the knowledge that her daughter, Georgia definitely was alive although injured and recovering. Georgia, as you’ll recall was captured by Admiral Reverus of the Protectorate, but they treated her well and even listened to her countering the terrible lies they had been told about the Human Empire.
This lead directly to a peace accord between the Protectorate and the Human Empire and stopped a potentially terrible war that the Human Empire didn’t need. Both Georgia and Jonathan had done very well in their respective military jobs, but now it was time for them to stay home for awhile so their mother, Empress Christine could dote on them as only a mother can.
Unfortunately, while the war with the Protectorate was over, the instigator was still out there trying to cause trouble. It called itself Rarmanca. It had been seen escaping the destruction it had caused during the peace negotiations with the Human Empire and the Protectorate. This snake-like alien was trying to stir up problems for the Human Empire since it felt that Empire was the greatest threat to her species. It had been thwarted with the peace between the to antagonist so it was off to stir up more trouble elsewhere. That led it to the lair of the Flex-aor and High Queen Ala’ron. The High Queen had been doing those things suggested by Rarmanca only because this alien had enabled her to escape from her former home world where she had been held prisoner. The Flex-aor despised the Human Empire and had been attacking it for quite awhile. Now the High Queen wanted to consolidate her forces and delay further attacks.
That wasn’t in the plans for Rarmanca, but she didn’t have much in the way of forcing the High Queen to go on the offensive so she left to see if she could stir up trouble on Earth itself. She had already co-opted several humans into doing her bidding, some were in very high government positions. I say “she” now because it was using its human prosthetic that appeared to all as a human woman. She arrived on Earth undetected and began laying out her plans.
Meanwhile, back near where the Flex-aor were located, close to the souther borders of the Human Empire, Vice Admiral Emilie Alveraz, was hosting an Ambassador from the Camogodas Democratic Republic. It turns out this civilization was aware of the Flex-aor and had witnessed the Flex-aor attacking and destroying one of its neighboring civilizations. They were looking for allies against the Flex-aor and they had intelligence on where the High Queen and her fleets were located. This was just the information Emilie needed, but she didn’t know if she had enough ships to bring the fight to the Flex-aor. Still, that was a problem she was gladly going to fix if it might mean the end of the Flex-aor.
Jonathan, not wanting to sit at home in the palace and do nothing was sent to report to Admiral Ivanov at Fort Zeta. From there he was assigned the mission of hunting pirate activity in the Wildes, that border space between the Karacknid and Human Empires. Here he would stumble upon a number of significant and dangerous things. He would also have an encounter with the Rillelio, a small civilization that had been ravaged by the Karacknid. The Karacknid destroyed most all of the Rillelio’s space capabilities when they found out it had assisted Emperor Somerville in the last war. The Rillelio had apparently been aided by the snake-like aliens and had built up their space fleets in an astonishing quick fashion. Could they be seeking revenge against the Human Empire for what Emperor James Somerville had done to them?
So, there is a lot going on in this book. The Karacknids are still fighting their civil war but it appears to almost be over. Admiral Somerville knows that the new Karacknid Imperator will make attacking Earth a priority once the civil war is settled. James only hopes they have been building enough ships to defend themselves and that nothing happens until the next Karacknid attack. He doesn’t know that his life is about to take a turn for the worse.
The story continues in book 18, “The Call of Honor”, now available on Amazon.
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[ No more links to Amazon since they have banned my reviews!]