Ok, so Cameron Alvarez and his command, which he doesn’t want, have made it through the wormhole jumpgate and have traveled unimaginable distances towards, they hope, the Confederation. Only now they have to stop. Cam is awaken from his stasis pod after five years asleep! He wasn’t sure why he was awaken, only that he was hopeful that their long journey would be over. Unfortunately, that’s not why he was awaken. The Orion had found a system with a civilization. Not one comparable to the Confederation, but they were in space and had colonies on other planetary bodies. The also had a wormhole jumpgate!
They now needed to stop and find out if this jumpgate would lead them closer to the Confederation. They didn’t want to blindly fly through it without knowing where it might lead. So, Cam initiated “First Contact” protocols which in this case involved finding some of the inhabitants that could introduce them to their planet without going into a crazy panic.
They found two unlikely candidates on an isolated mining rig quite aways from their home planet. Of course the humans nor the Resscharr with them could speak this new alien language. But, with some interaction with the two young miners, Dwight managed to construct a translation algorithm that allowed them to speak and hear each other although slightly delayed each way. They found out these two guys were miners and they represented one faction on their planet called Homeworld. They were from the “Fed” faction while the opposing faction on the other side of their planet was the “Grey”. The Fed wasn’t ran anything like the government of the Commonwealth. It was run by influencers who managed the peoples media via which they then voted on important issues. The Grey on the other hand were a dictatorship and everyone was strictly controlled. As far who controlled the jumpgate, both shared responsibility for its use.
So, Cameron used his two humanoid very friendly guys to find out how best to contact someone of importance on the Homeworld planet. These two males, named Joe and Bob, since their aliens names were unpronounceable, said that a Ms. Frost would be the one they needed to talk to. So, that’s what the humans of the Orion set about to do. They find that these people are not that much different than people of the Commonwealth. They aren’t advanced and their military isn’t anywhere capable of defeating the Orion by itself. But Cam certainly didn’t want to fight anyone. He was willing to share some of his technology if they could provide information about the jumpgate and any references in their history about the Predecessors. What he found out was not all that great.
There was another alien race on the other side of the jumpgate and they were hostile to the Homeworlders. They had been allowed to colonize two systems just beyond the jumpgate, but told by the Nova, not to go any further. These Nova could also enforce that edict with almost impunity since they were more advanced than the Homeworlders. So, Cam knew that he needed to talk to these Nova since he knew the trip through these jumpgates had to go way beyond just the next two. So, arranged to go meet them although he had to take a contingent of Feds with him which proved almost fatal.
There’s a lot of interesting things going on in this book and some of it is a little humorous. This story is far from finished and their journey is going to continue, but no one is sure where it will lead. The crew is definitely getting tired of traveling. Hopefully, the next book(14), “Collateral Effects”, will continue as well as this book.