Lots of things going on with the Colony on New Earth. We’ve haven’t been back here for a while, but it’s not calmed down much. General Conner Gates is back in charge of the Colony Defense Force (CDF) and he’s just gone through purging some of the political leadership that was really messing up the entire colony. Some didn’t like his heavy-handed actions, but it got the job done and now it’s time to move on. It’s not like they don’t have anything to worry about.
The Krake are still a problem, out there some where! These are interdimensional aliens that are bent on conquering everything, everywhere! They are highly advanced and have been to New Earth before. The planet’s indigent population, the Ovarrow went into suspended cryo-sleep inorder to avoid further capture and enslavement by the Krake. We’ll, it appears that not all the Ovarrow did that only, a select sect that General Conner’s people found and eventually revived. The Ovarrow are a strange people. They don’t trust the humans even though they are the ones that basically brought them back to life. Conner has been trying to win their allegiance with the help of his wife, Lenora, but they are slow to accept the humans.
So, Gen Conner is going to find another group of Ovarrow that might be more acceptable to an alliance. This new group live way out beyond anything previously explored on New Earth except for the one time a scout time venture out that far and find them by accident. It appears this group did not go into cryo-sleep, but just hid from the Krake. Conner wants to find out how they did that and if they’ll join in his fight when the Krake come back to New Earth. His mission out there needs to be successful, but it’s not going to be easy.
Now we go out to another dimension where a New Earth Colonial Task Force (TF) has flown about eight months ago seeking more information about the Krake. They used a gate which runs on coordinates they though they had figured out. Unfortunately, their calculations were off and returning to New Earth’s dimension wasn’t possible for quite some time. While some of the smart people within the Task Force were trying to figure out the correct settings for the gate, others just wanted to go home. When word got out that they had solved the problem, Colonel Sean Quinn, commander of the Task Force, made the decision to continue on with his mission and that was to find out more information about the Krake. He wanted their home planet if at all possible.
Some of the senior officers within the Task Force objected to continuing the mission. They went so far as to mutiny against Col. Quinn’s orders and even started to fire on the loyal ships of the TF. Col. Quinn succeeded in stopping the mutiny and had the officers involved executed. They have now found some Krake who appear to be against the policies of the Krake and don’t want to be fighting other aliens. They tell them where they can find all the information they need about the Krake. Col. Quinn takes his TF to this location and begins attempting to gather the information he needs. His success isn’t guaranteed and he knows what’s going to happen if he and all his fellow humans are captured – slavery! Will Col. Sean Quinn recognize when he has enough information or will he wait too long?
Meanwhile, General Gates needs to do some scouting on his own. They arrive at a planet in another dimension and find Krade there along with Ovarrow. It appears the Krade are forcing the Ovarrow to fight for them. In actuality, the Krade are just watching the Ovarrow to see how they react when confronted with battle and death! They are making the Ovarrow charge a city that is loaded with Krake weapons, but the Ovarrow can reach their freedom if they can get to the gate in the middle of the city. In the process of trying to find out what’s going on, Gen. Gates gets himself captured. Surely he’ll be able to get back to his wife and daughter?
Quite a few things going on and it’s mostly action throughout the book. We do get to see the end of one particular story-line so these books will have to find something else to follow. That’s probably not a problem since the Krake now know about the humans and are very interested in the humans who don’t willingly accept the Krake as their superiors. I’ll look forward to the next book.