This story takes place after the remnants of Earth’s civilization have fled the Solar System to get away from the Chian, a monstrous alien that can travel through space and is almost impervious to any known weapon system. The surviving humans flew through the “Passage”, as they called it, to this destination which is an Earth-like planet although I can’t find or remember what they called it! Still, they are just now exploring the planet and finding that it isn’t as peaceful as they had hoped. There are signs that another civilization has occupied the planet and their ancestors might still be here deep underground. Now these are definitely aliens although they do bear some resemblance to humans. These creatures appear to be semi-intelligent, but that are cannibals and have developed some peculiar traits that are definitely not human.
The Daedalus, under the command of Captain David Warwick, has been sent to another part of this new system to explore a strange signal that has been received back at the planetary hub space station. They find the aftermath of a space battle and several derelict starships. Upon careful exploration of one of the larger pieces of a starship, they find live signs and are able to rescue on survivor. They initially can’t speak with him since he’s unconscious when found and the doctor aboard the Daedalus doesn’t recommend reviving him for now. Soon, after this they are attacked without any reason by unknown forces. These new ships are definitely alien in nature, but are somewhat small and not as well crafted as the Daedalus. Still, they fight fiercely and swarm which is causing problems for Captain Warwick and his small fleet. While they are fighting off these attacks, they dispatch a small ship to report back to HQ since direct communications isn’t possible due to some unknown interference.
Captain Warwick later finds out from his recovering alien passenger that these attackers are scavengers who fight anyone without notice to steal anything they can get their hands-on. Their alien passenger also tells him that they will attack his new home planet soon since they now know of the Earth people. His dispatched cruiser gets into mechanical problems on only makes it about half way back home. Fortunately, she does find a lone astroid miner who has some unique comm filtering gear that might be very useful to the entire human fleet; if only they can get back in time.
Meanwhile, on the planet, a exploration team has been sent to look over a hidden building that wasn’t spotted from aerial recons. This building is covered in plant growth, but it clearly appears to have been made with modern tools. This exploration team is commanded by Master Sergeant Aston Brooks. He has a few other soldiers with him, but they are more importantly escorting a group of scientist. These scientist will take samples from the building and other various places in an attempt to find out who built the thing. This should be a fairly easy task, that is until the entrance to the building they used collapses and blocks their way out. Now, if they just don’t run into those cannibalistic aliens in here.
While this all is going on, there’s some political maneuvering going on since one of the Captains doesn’t like that he’s not in-charge! He has plans on how to take over this colonial expedition and lead it in the right direction according to his ideas. He’s not well liked by anyone and most of the other people in the expedition know to be wary around him. Yet, up pops some guy who sells the Captain an idea to make this guy a Army Captain and assign him as a logistics expert. All the while this new “Captain” will be trying to discredit the current Admiral in-charge so the Navy Captain can take over. All this is pretty dumb and not very reasonable. As I said in the first book review, who ever put this colony expedition together certainly didn’t choose the people in the leadership very well. A lot of misfits are around and they are out only for themselves. It won’t be long before these humans are not only fighting aliens, but also themselves! Nothing really new about that!
Book three, “Expansion”, is available on Amazon. I’ll probably continue reading the series even though it has a lot of stuff going on that should never have happened.