This story does things differently in its spaceships. They don’t seem to be huge behemoths that fill acres of space because every starship so far has been piloted by the ship’s Captain. Doesn’t seem possible considering all the fire power that’s supposedly contain in one of these fighting starships. Captain Carl Recker has been one of the more capable starship captains for the Human Planetary Alliance (HPA) in their on-going war with the Daklans; almost too good. What he’s accomplished has brought him attention from the High Command and is somewhat pointed out their lack of aggressively pursuing the war. Captain Recker is of the opinion that there are far greater foes out in deep dark space that we are just now encountering which should be the focus of our attention. He things the Daklans are having the same concerns, but don’t know how to stop the war with the humans.
Having recently returned from another successful mission, Captain Recker is busy helping technicians and scientist take apart the Vengeance, a capture Meklon starship. The HPA is taking this huge ship apart in hopes of revers engineering some of the advance technology it contains. When Recker captured the ship, he was able to get into its command software and establish himself as the new Captain at which time he became the only human to which the ship would respond. Now that the techs and scientist have studied the security software, they have been able to override any further lockouts. This basically means Captain Recker is no longer needed to stay with the Vengeance. That’s when he he hears some not so comforting news.
Fleet Admiral Sloan was coming to the Topaz space station to check on repairs to the Maximus and it was said that he wanted a meeting with Captain Recker! Recker figured he’d be the last person the Fleet Admiral wanted to see so he had no clue as to what the meeting was going to be about. It seems that Recker and this Admiral has a history and it wasn’t a pleasant one for either of them. Recker wasn’t sure if he could keep from punching the Admiral in the face as soon as he saw him and was certain that would be the end of his career, war or no war!
The meeting does take place and it’s not as violent as it could have been. Captain Recker was surprised when the Admiral admitted that he might have been a little wrong in his approach to the war with the Daklans. Recker is totally shocked when he finds out the Admiral actually was there to give him a new command and a new mission. Initially, Recker wasn’t going to become one of Admiral Sloan’s “boys” and was going to refuse any orders if he could. He had Admiral Telar backing him, and although that Admiral wasn’t the Fleet Admiral, he pulled a lot of weight. Still, When Admiral Sloan explained this new mission, the new ship he was getting and the fact that his crew would continue with him, Recker decided to go along with the new orders.
The writing is pretty good in that each scene is clearly described. We meet some new characters in this book and even get to meet some Daklans. There’s also a bit of humor thrown in although it comes from a strange and unexpected source. Some of the battles some kind of complicated and with the Captain always calling the shots, it’s hard to understand how he can keep track of everything that is going on. And, it appears that unless a ship is totally destroyed, most of the tech will survive just about anything. That’s hard to believe when even a tiny hole in a space ship can cause all kinds of problems. One way around this is to build extra armor all around the starship, but then you’re adding mass and weight. Weight might not be a problem in space, but they are taking these starships down to the ground which shouldn’t really be possible. But, I guess you can write just about anything you want in a science fiction book and it’s work itself out!
I’ll continue reading this series since this mission isn’t over yet. It has taken a strange twist and it’s going to be interesting to see how Captain Recker keeps his crew safe even from his own HPA forces! That will be explained in book 4, “Fulcrum Gun” now available on Amazon.