It seems like every time we come back to this story line, it is in one crisis or another so I don’t know exactly why this book had the title “Crisis”. Still, it is one big, huge crisis. If you recall from the previous three books, we’re on a huge space station called the “Arch”. It sets in the Zan System between two previously warring planets, Zavlot and Zeivlot, and right outside of the Sagittarius gateway or worm hole. The Arch has been maintaining the peace for a while now, but they are also seeing more and more alien civilizations show up at the Arch. This is not necessarily a bad thing since most of these civilizations just want to conduct trade with everyone else.
Colonel Mateo Larra is commanding the Arch and has done so for a while now. He’s getting ready to enjoy the fact that both his Sons are home and with their Mother getting ready to celebrate Christmas. Obviously not all the humans and certainly the aliens do not observe the same holidays, everyone on the station is ready just celebrate a peaceful period of time. It hasn’t alway been so peaceful on the station. The Kin had shown up with obviously hostile intentions and they have had to deal with some strange cultures of other aliens that didn’t fit in with human acceptance. But, most all that is behind, even though they do have patrols out looking for the Kin, but only looking for now.
So all is going well until it does not! The space station suddenly lurches to one side, gravity goes off and everyone else flung all over the place smashing into furniture, consoles and bulkheads in no pleasant manner. When Colonel Larra comes to, he finds himself in total darkness. Even the emergency lights are not working as they should. He manages to get to his feet only to feel that his ribs are trying to stop him from breathing. Others are awakening and starting to stumble about while still others are not moving at all.
Col. Larra asks for his officers to provide a status report but they tell him all their communications have been stopped and they have no contact with anything or anyone outside CIC. It also appears that the emergency bulkhead doors have dropped sealing CIC. Col. Larra is to find out that the entire station is in the say way. Emergency bulkheads have dropped on every deck and every corridor sealing each area off. He at least is thankful that gravity has been restored and they have life support. But he’s blind as to what could have happened. Have they been attacked and if so by whom. What are the attackers doing now and will there be an invasion into his station? He’s also worried about his wife and sons, especially since he can’t contact them with not comms working.
The first thing he and his people in CIC begin doing is providing first aid, as limited as that is going to be, to those that are injured. A lot of cuts and bruises, some lacerations and broken bones that have to be temporarily patched up and set. His XO, LTC Hanif Najm, is down with personnel working on him. They said he had a definite hit to the head and is non-responsive at the moment. The Colonel doesn’t want to just sit in CIC and not know what’s going on in the rest of the station. He can’t imagine a weapon large enough to knock out power all over the station without destroying a great portion of it. He begins sending out groups of two to see if they can find a way around the emergency bulkheads via the stairwells if possible.
This same activity is occurring all over the station. Engineering is also trying to recover. They have wounded also but are trying to patch each other up so they can get back to work and find out what happened to the power. The Chief Engineer, Major Andy Sherman is checking out the anti-matter reactor and sees that it is running as normal but isn’t sending out any power. That he can’t figure out. He starts grabbing those engineering personnel that a capable and beings directing them to run diagnostics with hand-held devices the best they can. He needs to know what shorted out and what trunks need to be replaced. In fact, he knows a lot sensitive electronic equipment has been fried because he can smell the aftermath of it burning. He has to get some power back to the station immediately!
And that’s how this story starts out. Everything going nice and smooth and then total chaos. We’ll spend most all of this book trying to get the space station back in operations while also finding out that we do have Kin aboard doing some seriously dangerous things. And to top everything off, the Arch isn’t just sitting still, no she’s drifting right towards the planet Zeivlot and will impact that planet in about a day and a half.
So, if the space station does survive, then we’ll move on to book 5, “Forward Raid”, which is available on Amazon. I have no idea what that one will be about.
[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. ]