Rating:

Fractured Horizons

This seemed like a very short book. I think I read it in two nights which is about usual, but the story seemed to really fly. We’re back with Captain Carl Recker and his crew. It seems like all the ships in this book are relatively small. I say that because when Captain Recker takes over a ship, he seems to be the pilot and does all the flying. That sounds kind of strange, but he even does this when he’s commanding the Vengeance, an alien warship he had previously captured.

He’s just returned from his previous mission in book 1 and now his Admiral Telar wants to send him on another mission, but this time he’ll be part of a small fleet. Recker hasn’t been too happy with the Human Planetary Alliance (HPA) command. They seem to be too timid and not taking the war to the Daklans. Of course, he did understand that the Daklans did have advanced technology that was causing the HPA great difficulties. With Captain Recker’s recent discovery of another alien civilization came the knowledge that they might have even more advance technology than the Daklans. His proof was the starship Vengeance, but that ship was locked up with some kind of security that only allowed partial access and only to Recker’s DNA. Recker believed he really needed more time with the Vengence and then he might get it to open up more and allow them to use all of it’s capabilities. But, that wasn’t going to happen right now.

Admiral Telar assigned Captain Recker a new ship called the Expectation. It was to be part of Admiral Fraser’s fleet going to a very distant location where they expected to possibly find more alien technology. This mission turns out about as bad as it could with the HPA losing more ships and not finding much in return. And Admiral Fraser’s version of what happened conflicts greatly with Captain Recker’s even though Captain Recker and another Captain in the fleet went to great pains to rescue Admiral Fraser.

Now back at Adamantine base, Admiral Telar informs Captain Recker that he has another mission and this time it involves the Vengeance. He and his crew are to take the Vengeance and follow a signal that the Vengeance has sent out unexpectedly. Now, flying the Vengeance isn’t easy and it is very dangerous. The crew doesn’t have full control of anything on the ship to include weapons. Still, they must figure out a way to release the security controls on this ship and it’s thought that if it returns to its base of origin, it might reset and allow the crew to fully command the ship. So, that’s their mission. Of course taking a barely flyable starship into potential enemy territory isn’t the best idea, but it’s the only idea that have right now. Captain Recker and his crew are going to find this mission very hard and challenging.

And as if the mission wasn’t difficult enough, the Daklan have found Adamatine base and the planet Lustre. They are in the process of destroying everything on and around the planet. Can Captain Recker and his alien warship do anything to prevent this destruction? If they don’t, it could mean the end of the HPA and humanity.

Pretty good writing if I may say so. Still, it seems as though the starships in these books are awful small with only a flight crew of four or five and the Captain managing to run the entire ship. Additionally, they have a squad of Marine (?) sitting in the back of the ship usually not knowing what’s going on. The squad leader is a Sergeant and they have no officers, but I guess that was planned for since Captain Recker seems to think he’s also qualified to lead ground assaults when they are required. This is another book in which the Captain of a starship leaves his ship for no good reason. Not real practical. His second in command doesn’t get to do much, that’s for sure.

I’ll continue reading the series and the third book, “Galactar” is already available on Amazon. In fact, this series goes out to seven books so we have a whole lot of reading still to do.



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