In the last book, “Fractured Earth”, we actually left with everything looking pretty good. Former Captain Clayton Cross and his wife, Samara (a clone of the original), plus their two daughters, Nova and Doris, were all relatively safe and secure within the compound known as “the Enclave”. There was plenty to eat and drink with comfortable living conditions and life was good, except for one thing.
Doris, their youngest daughter, was stil in isolation in the medical section while her unscrupulous doctors were still trying to use her to find a cure to the original virus and now the new strain left by the Chrona. They are no closer then when the family arrived and Doris wasn’t showing any symptoms nor was she apparently contagious, so her parents, rightly, wanted her released. Still, she did have the ragged bit that, for some reason, wouldn’t heal, but they could keep that covered while she was treated as an out patient, if necessary. The family wanted to be together and couldn’t believe any of the doctors excuses for keeping this little girl locked up and away from them.
So, they went to the leaders of the Enclave and demanded and explanation. Unfortunately, the leadership wasn’t interested in releasing the young girl and if they ever did, she and her family would have to be banished from the Enclave. Both Clayton and Samara understood this and, while it was going to be a very deadly challenge living in the wilds, they were willing to do so if they could have all their family together. After hearing the leaderships definite lack of support and then sometime later finding out that the doctors had no intention of letting Doris leave to the extent they planned to kill her and make it look like she died of the infection, Clayton and his wife, decided to bust Doris out and leave on their own.
Doing so wasn’t going to be easy and it certainly wasn’t. At the same time, the banished enemy named Tyris was plotting to get back into the Enclave and retake what he felt was his compound. Make no mistake about it, this guy or Chimera was a bad guy and if he couldn’t rule in the Enclave, then he was determined to make sure no one lived in comfort. He was breaking into the Enclave at about the same time Clayton and his former Phoenix rebels were trying to breakout.
Tyris’ breakin involved letting in the Dregs! Thousands swarmed the Enclave on the first level setting fire to almost everything. All the crops were burning and everything was getting destroyed. The humans and friendly Chimeras were fleeing to the top-most floors since the Dregs didn’t have a way to climb up and reach them. Clayton manages to rescue his family and the rest of the Phoenix rebels and they flee to their old base.
Now they have to make plans on what to do next. Those plans either involve staying on Earth or possibly fleeing the planet to find one of the other Forerunner colonies. They didn’t have any assurances that there were any other surviving humans in space, but staying on Earth didn’t seem all that safe either. So, what are they going to do?
I will say that this is the end of this series. It has gone on for awhile with several twists and turns. I don’t know if the author had really planned all four books out the way they went, but he did manage to get a good story out of it all. Captain Calyton Cross went from a starship Captain who had just lost his wife, heading to the stars to start a new colony, to driving a garbage truck back on Earth and then surviving in the wild without any kind of modern technology and then back to the stars to a destination he would never had imagined. Very interesting story!