Well, this series just goes on and on and on. That’s not a bad thing, but pretty soon I would think the author is going to get these people home and that should be the end. But, it’s not going to happen in the book nor does it look like it’s going to happen in the next book! Captain Cameron Alvarez is now in charge of what was supposed to be an effort to find the homeworld for Lilandreth, a Resscharr alien. They also hoped to find the knowledge of how to get back home to Earth or the Commonwealth from which they came. Unfortunately, their travels lately have only lead to trouble, lots of trouble.
They did find a slightly broken Predecessor ship which Lilandreth can operate, but it has no weapons and some limited functionality. Still, it is made for Resscharr who are considerably taller and larger than humans, so Lilandreth has taken up residence and command of that vessel. They have just escaped what they thought was the homeworld of the Nova, another alien race that looked similar to Earth octopuses. By escape, these Nova weren’t friendly at all and were trying to destroy both the human’s ship, the *Orion*, and the Predecessor ship.
The Orion and the Predecessor ship had just escaped through a warp gate into another galaxy and were hoping the aggressive Novans wouldn’t follow. While going through these warp gates was sometimes physically uncomfortable for Cam Alvarez and the other humans about the *Orion*, they usually quickly recovered and then began searching the new systems for habitable planets. They believed they were on the right path to eventually find the “Northwest Passage” that would lead them back to their own system and the Commonwealth.
Yet, while this new system they had just entered seemed to be promising with a single inhabitable planet, they soon found out differently. The planet had been devastated or rather it seems the inhabitants had all been destroyed while preserving their cities. In fact, this planet had one huge city that seemed to encompass an entire continent. Captain Alvarez took a contingent of Marines down to the surface only to find everything intact, but not a single body in the entire city or at least the portion they could explore. They did find a huge gash through the city and could not fathom what in the world had caused such a large, massive gash in a modern city.
Since there wasn’t much point in staying a this dead world and system they proceeded on through another few warp gates. Again, they found a single habitable planet and just like before, they took a small exploration party down to its surface. Only this time, they found living beings. These were Resscharr like Lilandreth except these had been left behind by the Predecessors without the knowledge of how their city works. Apparently the Predecessors used their cities with mind control, building things just by thinking about them. These Resscharr weren’t capable of doing that so they were reduced to growing their own food and making things out of pieces of the city they could actually use. They weren’t necessarily ignorant, but they had been left alone on their own for a long, long time and several generations had passed since this meeting with Cameron Alvarez and his troops. They were especially shocked by the appearance of Lilandreth. To them she was one of the original Resscharr or a Predecessor and for some reason they feared her terribly.
About this time, a new group of Nova arrive. They appeared to have come through a warp gate still on the path the *Orion* was following. While they didn’t appear to be overly aggressive at first, once they got a look at Lilandreth, their attitude changed for the worse. They immediately attacked Cameron and his Marines with powerful weapons including their landing craft. Of course Cameron’s troops scattered and began fighting back, but during the melee, Lilandreth was captured. She was eventually found in a lab undergoing some kind of treatment. Cameron and his Marines rescued her and began evacuating back to their respective ships, but it appeared that Lilandreth had changed.
So, the rest of the book describes how you fight back against an alien that has God-like powers. Is there any kind of defense against such. Is this going to be the end of the humans struggle to return to their home world. It doesn’t sound too good for them right now. You’ll have to find out where this is all going in the book 15. “Down Range”, now available on Amazon.