I still don’t like the smart aleck tin can AI called “Skippy”. If I were Joe Bishop, I’d have kicked that beer can into deep space a long time ago. Or, at least I would have told Earth leadership that I was in no way interested in working with this rude, egotistic, self-aggrandizing, poor excuse for some kind of intelligence. Yet, Joe Bishop, now Colonel Joe Bishop has been chosen to save the entire world and to his credit, he’s done so twice already.
While they had originally been sent out on this latest mission to find out if the Thuranin were planning on sending another ship to Earth, that was accomplished. The answer was no. Additionally, we know the Kristang can’t send their own ships to Earth so we figured we’d be safe from them. But, when Joe asked Skippy if that meant that Earth was now safe from alien attacks, Skippy said, “No!”. Joe couldn’t believe what he just heard and thought Skippy was just saying that to aggravate him, which Skippy did a lot.
So the reasonable next question was, “Why not?”. That’s when Skippy told him about the impending deal between the Kristang, the Ruhar and the Jeraptha. Here’s what that means. Two Kristang, Fire Dragon clansmen, want to go to Earth and retrieve the White Wind clan leaders. They want to do this in order to solidify the Fire Dragon alliance with the White Clan and make them both stronger. So now the problem for Colonel Joe Bishop and his “Merry Band of Pirates” aboard the *Flying Dutchman*, is they need to find a way for this visit to not happen. And they must do so without any of the effected parties know they were ever involved. This is the same restrictions they have been operating under since they went back into space.
Joe has to come up with a plan to make this happen. And he’s not getting much help from Skippy. He also has to come up with a plan that will satisfy his Mission Commander, Hans Chotek, the UNEF appointed civilian. This civilian is taking up space aboard the starship which is not helping anything. Chotek’s mission directive from UNEF is to make sure no one knows humans are operating a stolen starship and to make sure Colonel Joe Bishop doesn’t do anything stupid! It’s obvious that UNEF doesn’t have a lot of confidence in Joe Bishop even thought he did save Earth twice already.
Joe also knows that if he did decide to do something stupid, his crew would be with him. There’s nothing Chotek could actually do to prevent Joe from doing whatever he wanted, but he also understands what a Mission Commander’s role is and is willing to get his approval on most everything. Of course Skippy wants to do anything he wants and doesn’t need Joe or Chotek’s approval. So Joe finally comes up with an idea that they need to attack the location in space where the Kristang and the Ruhar will be negotiating an agreement to transport the Kristang to Earth. He believes that if they can show the Kristang attacked and destroyed both parties, then the Ruhar would not be willing to provide this transportation ever again.
So, the first part of the plan is to find another Kristang ship to go along with the one they have to use in the attack. They plan on just throwing these to ships at the negotiating ships thereby causing a massive explosion wiping out everyone. Skippy knows where they might be no only one Kristang ship, but three, that had been previously abandoned and could be used for this mission. They head for this location and begin what they hope will be the last time they have to stop some aliens from visiting Earth which has already been done once and didn’t go very well for humanity.
Of course none of the plans Joe Bishop and Skippy come up with survive their execution. There’s always something they can’t account for or didn’t anticipate, but that’s not surprising since we’re talking about conducting clandestine attacks or operations against a ruthless enemy (or enemies), without them ever knowing you where behind the attacks. How do you do that? Even Skippy, in all his magnificents can’t come up with a fool-proof plan and he proves it several times in this book.
The story doesn’t end here although it almost does. Things don’t go quite as planned and even Skippy has his own problems. Skippy mysteriously begins taking a leave of absence in the most inopportune times. And when Skippy leaves, everything almost dies. We’ll find out if this is really the end in book 5, “Zero Hour”, now available on Amazon. Ugh, I just realized there are 18 books in this series. I don’t know if I can take “Skippy” through that many books! It will be rough!
==[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. ]==