General Connor Gates of the Colonial Defense Force has his hands full. He’s got a rogue group of former CDF personnel and other colonist that believe the pending alliance with the Ovarrow (formerly called the NEIIS) is not something that the colony should pursue. They have gone into hiding and are led by Lars Mallory, a former protege of General Gates and the son of one of the leading colonial members. The Ovarrow have just been awaken from their self-imposed deep sleep chambers, but are not all that cooperative with the Colony. Now that the Krake were known to exist in a different universe, but still capable of coming to this universe, the colonist needed to know everything about them, but the Ovarrow weren’t talking freely.
While the human colony had done everything to make the awakening of the Ovarrow as painless as possible, these Ovarrow were aliens and not understood by the colonist. They have given the Ovarrow access to one of their ancient cities and the Ovarrow were rebuilding it for habitation. It was a large city and some progress was being made in its restoration, but the work was slow because the Ovarrow refused to let the colony help.
There were numerous efforts to try and get the Ovarrow to loosen up a bit. The newest effort was a group of colonist, scientist and other specialist, who wanted to met with the leader of the Ovarrow. Included in this group was Dr. Lenora Gates, archeologist and wife of General Gates. While she was the foremost expert on ancient Ovarrow cities and artifacts, she had never been to a living Ovarrow city, seen or talked to a live Ovarrow.
Her visit was going well until one of the Ovarrow military faction leaders stepped in and accused Lenora as being a thief who stole their property when she excavated the Ovarrow ancient ruins. Since this was one of the stronger military factions in the Ovarrow city, it was felt that the humans should leave immediately. They were guide out of the city following a different route than they did coming in which took them over a foot bridge. With no warning, the footbridge and the one above it collapsed trapping Lenora and several of her human party as well as numerous Ovarrow escorts.
General Gates finally got word of the accident and he immediately wanted to go there and help rescue Lenora. Then he found out the military faction in the Ovarrow city was no longer allowing any humans access to the city. They wanted no human help in recovering the missing and injured even though they didn’t have the necessary tools to do the extensive search and rescue. And, it appeared the Ovarrow military was going to enforce this position with force if necessary.
That’s when General Gates called for the CDF to rendezvous just outside the Ovarrow city. One way or another, he was going to go in and rescue Lenora!
Meanwhile, Colonel Sean Quinn and his Task Force are still attempting to find out more information about the Krake. They entered a new universe where they believed the Krake were operating, but found nothing except trouble. While they escaped that universe, it did destroy one of their ships and severly damage most of the others. Repairs were now being done while they had some time and were not under attack. Strangely, they had received a message from a Krake ship telling them to meet up at a specific set of coordinates in 24 hours. Colonel Quinn fully expected to follow-up on that message, but it appears some of his ships and crews are not happy with the way the mission is going. They believe they need to head home and get some much needed repairs and resupply. Is Sean’s determination to finish this mission the why he intends or will something happen that is unexpected?
Another good book in this series and it’s not over yet. Something must be done about the Ovarrow. Either the colony needs to leave them to their own or possibly put them back into stasis or something. The Ovarrow are causing the colony a lot of trouble, using resources and not giving anything back in return. Sean Quinn’s command is being questioned and it’s surprising how he reacts. In my opinion, Sean isn’t listening to his people.