Another great book in this never-ending series! Well, I guess it will end someday but not with this book. There are still more enemies for Peacemaker Van Tudor and the Fist of Orion members to fight. But first, Perry has brought to Van’s attention that the toilet system on Anvil Dark is in need of a serious overhaul! Yeah, like this is a serious problem for one of the Peacemaker Masters. Well, it is since it’s going to involve a large sum of bonds for the rehab of the reclamation system to take place and that means the Masters have to agree/sign-off on the contracts or expenditure of the bonds. And yes, Van was hoping that Perry could have taken care of all this kind of trivial stuff that passes through his office at the Nexus HQ on Earth. So, if Perry said Van needed to pay attention to the document describing the work and bond expenditures, that’s what he was going to do.
Then he could also start paying attention to the mystery of their non-decaying promethium stash. They were going to use this as a bank against some of the investments needed to keep the Nexus, the *Fafnir*, *Frankie*, and Fort Cantullin Station from operating in the red. It was also going to fund any future endeavors his bunch of highly intelligent crew identified that needed to be done. But now, it couldn’t because it wasn’t acting the way it should.
Promethium, at least the stuff they had, was not decaying the way a radioactive material should. In fact, it wasn’t decaying at all and that wasn’t right. So they had shipped some of it off to Pont Alus Kyr to have some of the big brains study the stuff to find out why it was breaking so many physical and thermodynamic laws. And that wasn’t the only weird stuff going on in the galaxy. There was still the problem of people turning up, usually dead, with no DNA in their bodies. That definitely was impossible if that person was supposed to be alive which all of these people had been at one time. And again, they were still trying to find out how and who managed to get some routine yard bots suddenly exploding while doing seemingly routine work.
This last mystery came home very suddenly when Van received a report that a yard bot had just exploded just outside the upper terminal of the space elevator under construction. What made Van and Torina more interested in this was the fact that their daughter, Kisni, happened to be working inside that very terminal when the yard bot exploded. Fortunately, she nor anyone else was hurt. But, this same type of sudden explosions had happened several times out at Fort Cantullin Station when there should have been no reason for this to happen. They had examined the remains of the yard bots previously and found nothing to indicate who or what had made them explode.
Van was going to eventually have to do something about all these “mysterious” happenings. But right now, he assigned Melly, Alex and Zeke to start studying all these strange happenings and see if they could find some common thread. Meanwhile, Van had to deal with the fact that the GKU was now outwardly supporting a rebellion by a faction of the Six Stars League. The GKU had taken it upon themselves to become a protectorate of a group of planets that wanted to succeed from the Six Stars League even though the League governance considers them terrorist and insurrectionists. With the GKU providing protection, the GKU was now helping to claim a portion of known space for the group called the Common Choice Coalition. This was beyond what the Peacemaker Guild Charter called for as a function of the Guild. The GKU should have been attempting to arbitrate a position between the two entities in order to reach an agreeable arrangement. The GKU wasn’t supposed to take sides and Van Tudor certainly wasn’t going to do that either.
Meanwhile, Van and his crew had to go out to the orbital that they had captured from the Stillness. This huge satellite had housed thousands including many civilians that were not themselves criminals. The orbital had to be searched thoroughly to make sure they had captured all the Stillness criminals living there. While Van was there talking to the lead Peacemaker, reports started coming in that people were being attacked. At first, Van was going to let the Peacemakers doing the searching to take care of the problem, but then his group was attacked with one of the Fafnir’s crew suffering a severe injury!
So Van Tudor and company have their hands full. They have a lot of serious problems that don’t seem to be tied together, but they feel like they are. The various attacks are coming from different directions and even Earth is getting threatened. Then again, Earth is forming support for taking the protection of their planet into their own hands. Van pretty well knows that Earth isn’t capable of doing that right now. But that problem will wait for another time.
We don’t end this book on a good note. One of Van Tudor’s closest friends is going to die. More will come in the the 32nd book, “The Darkest Star”, not available on Amazon.
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[Note 1 (12/23/2025): I’m no longer associated with Amazon and will no longer provide any links to books from that website. You can usually find books that you like at your usual source.]
[Note 2: As of 12/03/2023, this will not be posted on Amazon since I have been banned from posting reviews for some unknown reason. ]