This is almost a short story. In fact, all of the latest books in this series seem to be very short. That’s not a bad thing if you’re wanting a quick read. I’ll know in the future that these books won’t take long to read so I can work one in between other books.
The best reason I can give for these being short works is that this author chooses to focus on one specific mission and nothing else. We don’t have multiple starships sailing around the universe doing various things and being written about while all these separate stories eventually funnel into an ending. No, here it’s about the Behemoth and a familiar Kielan ship, the Crystal Font (don’t ask we what kind of ships name is that!).
The plot to this whole book is that the Crystal Font has gotten itself semi-lost in space. They are near a man-made buoy which is partially working and they send out a message that eventually reaches back to Kielan HQ. The Behemoth has just arrived back at Kielan HQ and is contacted by the Chief of Intelligence. She wants the Behemoth to immediately go back out and find the Crystal Font. That’s not a real problem since going on missions is what the Behemoth is expected to do, only this is a rescue mission with no idea where to start. That message that came from the Crystal Font was partially garbled, leaving the location coordinates unreadable.
So, that’s the Behemoth’s mission and that’s what the book is about. There’s one small little side story about the Kielan deep cover agent, but it really has nothing to do with the main story. So, just read the book and enjoy the good writing knowing that you won’t have to involve you brain very much in figuring out what’s going to happen in the end. Oh, there are surprises, but most of them you’ll figure out well in advance.
It’s a little disconcerting that there’s nothing mentioned at the end of the book about the next book in the series. I guess I’ll just have to keep an eye out for it’s announcement.