The Concord has just captured the leader of the Assembly with three Concord legacy fleet starships. How they got those legacy starships is under investigation now. Captain Thomas Baldwin of the Concord starship, Constantine, along with his crew, were responsible for the capture of the Assembly force including those ships. He has delivered everything back to Nolix, capital of the Concord.
Now he’s told that he and his starship are going back out again to deliver their prisoners to some very remote prisons. They are also going to stop at Earon, there to investigate how the legendary ships had been removed from the archives. To get three of those older, but still powerful ships out of what was essentially the Concord museum, was no easy task. That the Assembly had done so and then was able to somewhat update those ships armament was extremely unexpected. Someone at the museum had to be working for the Assembly.
The prisoner return and the investigation were only minor missions to the real one that the Concord and the Constantine was preparing for. When everything was ready, the Constantine would form up with a small flotilla and head back through a wormhole to find and kill the Statu! They knew there were more captured Bacal’s from the Statu’s most recent excursion into Concord territory. While the Constantine had managed to free a great many, it was thought that more were still in captivity and that the Statu were using these humans to fight for them.
While the prisoner delivery wasn’t all that exciting, one complication did come up. Seda, the wife of the Assembly leader, was also a former crush for Captain Baldwin. While he didn’t have current feeling for her she was an extremely attractive woman who was going to spend the rest of her life on a desolate planet in as secure box; a prison for two, except the other person to be incarcerated with her was a her four-year old daughter, Luci. Tom just couldn’t leave her there to die. So, what’s he going to do with a small child?
They finally get on with their main mission and go through the wormhole. It was thought that the Statu forces were almost gone since they couldn’t fight their own wars. By using mind-wiped humans, the Statu could man a larger number of ships than otherwise, but the humans of the Concord didn’t know how many ships the Statu could field. Upon encountering the Statu over their homeworld, the Concord fleet finds out there are many more combat capable starships than they anticipated. They need reinforcements now!
Good story and seems kind of logical, but I don’t understand why the Concord is always short-handed in every battle. I guess that makes it more interesting, but you’d thing that with a galaxy-wide organization, they would build more ships than anyone else. And, a fighting starship is NOT a “cruise” ship. That is something the author just did wrong. Still, while this book ended well, I think there’s at least one more missions for the Constantine and Captain Thomas Baldwin.