Well, you know what happened in book 6, so I won’t dwell on it. Let’s just say, the Starship Satori is now part of the US Air Force and needs a new captain. Dan has gotten the use of his legs back strangely from being tortured by the Naga. One of the devices they used cause incredible pain, but the other one actually heal and repaired his previous spinal injury. They did that only so they could torture him more, but of course he managed to escape. Now he’s back in the Air Force and just recently promoted to Lt. Colonel Dan Wynn and the new commander of the USS Independence. The USS Independence and the USS Constitution were the former Naga battlecruisers that were captured in book 6. Dan had been a major player in capturing the USS Independence so it was fitting that he be her first human commander.
That still left command of the new re-built Starship Satori. This was not the old Satori repaired and ready to go. No, the previous ship was almost totally destroyed saving Earth. Majel had managed to save herself and that precious starship engine which became the nucleus of this new ship. It was bigger, had more firepower and was practically an entirely brand new ship. But, she had no captain. General Hereford even offered to let Majel rename the new ship since it was actually her new body, but she refused so Satori was what it was going to be called.
Then General Hereford shocked everyone when he named Elizabeth Wynn as the new Captain of the Starship Satori! The most shocked person of all was Beth. She had no idea this was going to happen and didn’t have a clue as to why he would do such a thing. The General had stated that the Satori was to be an exploration ship and not a ship of war, therefore, her Captain would be a civilian even thought most of the crew would be Air Force. Beth did immediately demanded an explanation in private from the General. She didn’t know how in heck he considered her qualified to command a starship. But, the General stood firm. He told Beth that she was the only person that had the guts to standup to him when necessary to do the right or better thing and she knew the engineering of the Satori like nobody else. He told her this was her new job and to get on with the mission he had for her and the Satori.
So, even though she couldn’t fathom what it meant to be a Starship Captain, Beth reluctantly took on that role. She immediately found out that ti wasn’t going to be easy since her second in command, Major Ayala, clearly didn’t think she was up to the job and made that clear during their first meeting. He told her that he was commander of the away teams and security detail and that she should remain on the bridge and stay out of his way! That did not set well with Beth.
Their mission was to find out what had happened to the original engineering team that was sent to the old moon base John had built. The Air Force had lost contact with them and the Satori was set to find out why. As you’ll remember, when the Air Force attacked that moon base, they had rampaged through every thing knocking over numerous specimen containers in the labs where Linda was going research on the various alien life-forms that had found. One such life-form was the small infant caterpillar that would grow to a six-foot tall monster if conditions were right.
So, when the Satori docked at the moon base, they found a mess, but not a single human alive or dead. So, Major Aya;a sent out his security teams to secure the place. He did so without Beth’s approval and seemed to be operating as though he was in complete charge of the mission. He then sent out engineering teams to include Charlene when he thought the place was secure. It took Beth looking at a display of his teams positions to notice that one team hadn’t move in quite a while.
When another team was sent to investigate, they found them all dead and they also immediately were being killed. Beth took it upon herself to run to the rescue of this second team since it didn’t appear that Major Ayala was taking the treat seriously. Beth soon found the other team pretty much hacked to bits and she also thought she knew what they were facing. But, back on the Satori bridge, and after several more incidents of clear insubordination, it took a hard slap to the face and a knee to the gut from Beth for Major Ayala to better understand who Captain certainly was and who’s orders he was to follow.
So now the Satori had an infestation problem that had to be handled. General Hereford had his hands full since it appeared a group of surviving Naga had attempted to re-capture the USS Independence and fly it back out into space. He dispatched Lt. Col. Wynn to take charge of the Marine detachment who were attempting to board the vessel and find out just who was flying the thing. So Dan is busy and can’t help Beth and with almost every other space capable ship destroyed in the original battle with the Naga, Beth was on her own.
A good and exciting story. Charlene is here and Andy is mentioned a little. You’ll need to read about what he’s now up to.