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“Descent”

Rating:

4 Small Stars
Descent

The Earth’s one and only FTL capable starship, the Leviathan, is still trying to help Avania regain her throne. Why Earth hasn’t yet produced more starships is beyond me. It would seem that would be a priority considering how Earth was introduced to the rest of the Galaxy. Yet, this one ship keeps getting beat up and repaired and then back out again. Not sure that’s all that realistic even for a science fiction book.

Still, the Alliance and the Border Dukes have joined forces. That should greatly help the Alliance and might just be the forces necessary to regain the throne. There are two main missions for this book. One is to attack an Empire space dock in the capital star system. The Alliance knows it can’t actually destroy this massive object, but they can let the royals know they are serious and can put some hurt on them when they want. The second mission involves attacking and capturing the head of the Consul. They believe he is in a secret facility on the far side of the planet where they are growing humans for the essence collecting.

Now, for some reason, Captain Warren is asked to lead the attack on the secret facility while his ship, the Leviathan, is commanded by is First Officer Commander Victoria Serling. She’s very capable and will probably have the next starship if Earth ever gets around to producing one. Captain Warren will be accompanied by Prin Grinta and her crew. He’ll also have his Marines with him and he later finds out that Queen Avaina and Zadok are aboard Prin’s ship and expect to participate in the attack. This is absolutely stupid! A starship Captain has no business on a covert ground operations when they have Prin absolutely the expert in this type of attack. Secondly, Queen Avaina is risking everything for the “thrill” and excitement of an new adventure. She has been offered a marriage proposal which would have kept her completely save until the time for her to take her throne, but no, she has to go in harms way for no good reason.

You’ll have to read the book to find out the outcomes of these two missions. Neither is guaranteed nor is the value in either mission clearly known. They don’t have any intel about the secret base other than it’s big. At over a mile long and with a signal blocking device going on twenty-four hours a day, they can’t even electronically see inside the facility. There could be hundreds of soldiers waiting for them and they don’t even thing about that. Prin, Captain Warren and the rest total to about six people. If there ever was a more stupid raid on an unknown facility, I can’t imagine how it would be done.

Ok, so I was kind of put off with this book. No one knows what the Border Dukes are really up to. They won’t commit their fleet to an all out attack since they are waiting for “the right time”. And none of the Border Duke assets are involved in either of these missions. There’s something going on that’s not quite right.

Back on Earth, UHSF has it’s own problems. While they believe to have some surveillance on a Phoenix Rising staging area, it turns out to be a ruse and now the HQ for UHSF is under attack. Colonel Jacks attempts to get to his operation center in the HQ, but something happens that doesn’t look like he’ll make it.

On to the next book.

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