This seems to be a short book. It’s also a straight-forward mission for the Behemoth, Earth’s spectacular solar defense vessel now part of the Alliance. On detached duty to the Alliance High Command, Captain Gray Atwell and his Kielan advisor, Clea An’Tufal, are summons to meet with the Alliance Intelligence Directorate. Obviously, this summons didn’t come direct, but in the form of an appointment at a particular flower shop in the capital city. There they eventually found the deep underground location of the Alliance Intelligence Directorate and were given their next mission. They were to go to a specific planet which had be an ally of the Alliance, but had stopped providing forces due to it’s current civil war. Captain Atwell’s mission is to stop the civil war and get the ally to re-commit to the Alliance so they could have them in the coming fight with the real enemy, the Devarans.
While they were there, they were to try and contact a spy for the Alliance who was trying to infiltrate Orion’s Light, a terrorist group causing all sorts of trouble for the Alliance. It was not know if the spy was even still alive or if he was even on the target planet, but they needed to some how make contact with him or confirm his demise.
So, off the Behemoth goes. One thing about traveling at greater than light speed, it doesn’t take long to get where you’re going. They arrive in the Novalat System only to find the orbital space station under heavy attack as is the planet. He contacts the Novalat Command only to find them heavily engaged and willing to accept any help they can get in space and on the ground. Captain Atwell also comms the rebel starship and asks they to stand-down so they can talk about their grievances. The rebel commander refuses saying their benefactor wouldn’t allow them to do that.
Now things take a turn for the worse. It seems that the rebels have aligned with the Orion’s Light not really know how terrible they really are. The Orion’s Light now shows up and begins landing troops on the planet. Their purpose in space and on the planet are to destroy as much as possible causing chaos and terror in the section of the Alliance. Captain Atwell and the Behemoth must stop them dead.
Good, short story or so it seems. Usually I read a book that has a couple of minor missions and then the major mission comes along and that finishes the book. In this one, there’s really no minor missions. They report, get told what to accomplish and set off to do that. The only ringer in this story is that they do not know the Orion’s Light is involved in the civil war. That slight oversight by the Alliance Intelligence community almost costs the Alliance the destruction of the Behemoth.