We’re back again with the “special” five Lieutenants, which is something that Mr. Weil seems to create in a lot of his books. These young people are apparently geniuses helping a Professor Wilkens solve whatever problems he assigns them at Complex One, a secure safe haven underground. Now, they are “volunteered” to accompany Captain Dolan and the Fury on a dangerous mission deep into Trellixian space. They are to scout several Trellixian systems to see what they contain and try to determine if the Trellixian’s have any kind of weakness. They will be accompanied by three other Earth ships, but are not to engage the Trellixians if it can be avoided.
Why the “special” five Lieutenants are needed aboard this ship is never clearly explained, although they do come up with a significant new capability that does allow the Fury to accomplish its mission. One of the annoying habits of Mr. Weil’s writing is that he does repeat himself on numerous occasions, especially with this group of Lieutenants. It seems that one is always wishing she was back with Professor Wilkins doing research and we read this lament repeatedly over and over! Additionally, two of the Lieutenants are somewhat romantically involved yet, they supposedly have set aside their feelings for the duration of the mission. That is also mentioned more than once, a lot more! It’s like you’ve read a paragraph on one page and then you’re reading the same paragraph on the next. I guess that fills up space in the book, but it sure gets annoying!
Ok, back to the story. Earth has already been attacked once by the Trellixians and almost destroyed. If it wasn’t for the Fury finding the Voltrex, the Earth would have been occupied and conquered by the Trellixians. But, a Voltrex fleet arrived just in time to save Earth and drive off the Trellixians. Still, most of Earth’s population was driven underground and only with the invention of strong force field shields did any above ground installations survive. Additionally, Earth is just now eradicating the last of the Trellixian ground troops.
Fortunately, back fifty or so years ago, Earth found a crashed Jelnoid spacecraft with one of the alien crew still alive. That, of course, became a national top secret while the American scientist learned everything they could from the Jelnoid and its spacecraft. Most of the stuff they learned was well beyond human capabilities in manufacturing and it wasn’t until just recently that some of the known capabilities could be actually created by humans. The force field shield was one tech as well as some powerful new fusion generators. This Jelnoid technology found its way into military production, which was passed on to the Voltrex so they could build more powerful starships capable of challenging the Trellixians.
The Trellixians have decided that Earth needs to be completely destroyed so as not to become a base of operations for the Voltrex. A humongous Trellixian fleet is assembled and starts off towards Earth. There definitely aren’t enough Earth or Voltrex combat starships to defend Earth, so it doesn’t look good for humanity.
This seems to be the end of this series. I’m not all that sorry to see it goes. While I do believe these books were written for a young adult audience, they were pretty good, but I’ve read better stories without the need for so much repetition. Mr. Weil is an excellent writer and i still look forward to reading more of his books.