It seems like I have been reading this series forever! Well, we are up to book 17. I think it could have ended a long time ago, but the author keeps coming up with new stories which, thankfully, are pretty good. This one is one of the better ones although it is the start of something kind of new.
General Conner Gates had thought to kind of retire and stay on New Earth while the younger generation did all the exploring. His son, Ethan, is off with the New Earth exploration iniative. Still, Conner wants to stay involved in the community and help further it’s development. So, he’s now at an experimental site helping Noah, the brilliant young scientist, figure out just how his I-Drive invention works.
They are using an old starship, the *Pathfinder,* was currrently in dry-dock at the Whitehall R&D facility on New Earth. That was where it was supposed to be, but something had happen and those on the ship were just recovering from what they though might have been an earth quake in their area of the planet. Yet, a quick discovery showed that the starship and it’s partial crew were now in space. It’s crew as a combination of scientist, some civilian technicians and Gerneral Gates protection detachment.
Once it was recognized that they were no longer on New Earth, they immediately tried to get a count of who was with them and how many people they had on-board. There was limited communications aboard the ship due to everything seemly be down. The power cord had done something that then corrupted the computer core. Most essential services were just now coming back on-line including the artifical gravity. Gradually, people were coming to not necessarily aware of what happened but knew they had to get to the command center and engineering.
Luckily, Noah and another engineer, Naya were already trying to assess systems to find out just what went wrong. Unfortunately for General Gates, there was a Colony inspection team aboard lead by Director Glen Rhodes. Drirector Rhodes was chief of logistics and supplies for the colony and was attempting to do an audit of the R&D operations specifically on the I-Drive project. That project was consuming a lot of rescources and it was felt than such an audit would only provided more efficiencies in resource usage. Conner didn’t mind the idea of an audit as long as they got it done quickly and pretty much stay out of the way of his researchers. He had nothing to hide, but knew there were concerns about this project.
But now everything had changed. They were apparently adrift in space not knowing how they got this way nor how they could return to New Earth. In fact, they didn’t know where they were to even start trying to get home! Noah said that the navigation system had suffered a complete loss of data and the computer wasn’t recogizing any of the stars or systems in close proximity. If they couldn’t figure out where they were, they couldn’t begin to figure out how to get back home.
Still there immediate problem was gathering all the people on the *Pathfinder* into on place so they could get a head-count. Come to find out there were only twelve people showing up in the mess/dining hall with another two in the medbay. One of the two was a senior maintenance tech and he was also the most injured. He was being taken care of by the autodoc but no one knew when his injuries might be fixed so he could be used in fixing the ship.
Noah and Naya had discovered that the power core was down to less than sixty percent of it’s capability which would cause some systems to be permanently shut-down. That also dictated how much power they had for the engines, but they didn’t know if they were all even working. The engines hadn’t been used in quite a while and were supposed to be removed since this ship was so old. The computer core was also degraded, but it was supposed to be getting upgraded for use with the I-Drive if they had gotten that far.
Further, Noah found that the I-Drive had self-initiated for some reason and had caused them to be flung in space. He didn’t think what happened should have ever been able to happen. Lastly, he figured they were some five-thousand light-years from New Earth but he still had no idea of which direction they had been flung. He was just thankful that life support was one of the systems still working.
So, Connor Gates and company have some huge problems to solve. They have a fabricator aboard which can make some of the stuff they require to live and fix parts of the ship. But, that fabricator needs biomass as raw material. They’ll have to find a planet that can provide that raw material some how.
Things are going to happen pretty quick in this story. It also doesn’t end with everyone back on New Earth. To read about what happens next we’re going to have to read book 18, but as of now, it’s not even available on Amazon.