Admiral Shelby Proctor is back with the Integrated Defense Force of United Earth. She had been retired but was called back to find out what was going on with the Dolmasi race. It appeared that they were on the warpath again for some unknown reason. Earth and the Dolmasi had a tentative peace agreement after the destruction of the Swarm. That destruction was largely due to the sacrifice of Captain Tim Granger who took his ship and crew threw a blackhole with several anti-matter bombs in an attempt to close the passage that the Swarm had been using. It seemed to have worked because the Swarm hadn’t returned. Of course the Swarm worked through other races by mentally influencing them to do their bidding. The Dolmasi was one of the principle races used by the Swarm in their fight against the humans.
Shelby is now aboard the ISS Independence which is actually Captained by Captain Volz. Why an Admiral is aboard a starship that is not part of a larger fleet is very interesting. You’d think that there would be a least two or more ships around the ISS Independence to make it an actual fleet that an Admiral could command. But, that’s not the case and it even gets worse. Earth’s Admirals are kind of strange.
Admiral Mullins, CENTCOM Bolivar, got himself positioned as the CEO of Shovik-Orion Industries. This is the largest military-industrial business in the entire galaxy. They make most of the hardware for Earth’s military forces. They also supply most all of the technical support for those weapons systems they field. To say the Earth military relies heavily on Shovik-Orion is a vast understatement. Of course, there are so many obvious conflicts of interest for the Admiral to be in this position that it’s unimaginable how he thinks he can continue in that position. So, the Admiral has just decided to ignore that conflict of interest and assumes what he’s doing is in the best interest of Earth and of course, himself.
Then there’s the former President of United Earth. She was a dynamo who was always developing things mostly for her military. One of those things was the anti-matter bomb which Tim Granger took with him aboard the ISS Victory. Now that bomb has fallen into the hands of Admiral Mullins and the current President who intend to use it to stir up the Dolmasi by adding a meta-space shunt to the anti-matter bomb. The current President thinks he’s in charge, but he’s actually oblivious to Admiral Mullins’ empire-building plans. He doesn’t know that Admiral Mullins also plans to release one of his anti-matter bombs with the meta-space shunt over Earth. That will definitely attract the Dolmasi and that could cause the Earth Defense Forces all kinds of trouble.
It’s up to Admiral Shelby Proctor and her new “invisible” ship, the ISS Defiance to stop all this madness and get focused on the return of the Swarm. This is an interesting read, but I’m not so sure why Admiral Proctor is still involved in anything since she’s definitely not commanding anything but a single ship. She’s also a little pre-occupied with thoughts of Tim Granger always hoping that he will someday return. Ain’t going to happen…or is it?