After reading the first two books, I wasn’t expecting too much from this one. Captain Owen Shaw didn’t actually do anything stupid this time. He kind of lead his ships and crews as he should. That’s a vast improvement from the previous two books. Still, he’s got people out looking for the lair of the Phoenix, the pirate that is working with the Pendragon Empire. Things don’t go too well for them and as usual, his scouting crew gets captured.
Meanwhile Capt. Shaw has to get the *Icarus* back to the Obsidian system, but he’s already short on crew. He has to figure out some way to man this new ship since the previous Captain shot all the bridge crew! He does appoint his XO, Commander Adrian Christopher, as Captain of the *Icarus* and they manage to go through the ships crew files and found some people with limited skills in piloting and navigation. Unfortunately, some of those people were former crew members of the *Icarus* that managed to stay out of Captain Grigorev’s way and not get killed. These people were in the brig, but if they were willing to follow orders, then a few were given a chance to redeem themselves. The *Resolute* was going to tow the *Icarus* through a warp gate and that required some careful piloting and navigating by the *Icarus* bridge crew.
Meanwhile, Lt. Octavia Casey, as part of the scout team, had landed on a small planet trying to find any information about the Phoenix and its operations. They knew the pirates were visiting Confederation colonies and capturing civilians for the Pendragon Empire slave market. Yes, the Pendragon Empire, under its new teenaged Emperor, was now back to using slaves for manual labor. Apparently, this pirate band called Phoenix was trying to take over the Obsidian sector and supply all the slaves the Pendragon Empire would take. Of course, these slaves were Confederation citizens and it was up to Capt. Owen Shaw and his crew to stop that business.
Except the Phoenix pirates followed Lt. Casey’s ship down to this small planet and now were attacking her and her crew. Octavia wasn’t actually in-charge of this mission. She was brought along because she spoke the Pendragon language. But, she was also military so she had to do her duty just like all the others in the scout team. There were two special operators and two pilots/navigators also on the team. It didn’t matter much because they couldn’t by themselves put up much of a fight against some heavily armored and armed pirates. So they were captured.
Capt. Shaw and Cmdr. Christopher managed to get their two ships back to the Obsidian sector without much trouble. They had a lot of work to do get both ships back to fighting shape. Capt. Shaw gathered the Captains of the other ships and started planning on what to do next. During this meeting, all the other Captains agreed that Shaw should be leading them and normally the commander of a flotilla was a Commodore. So they convinced him to accept that rank. So now he’s Commodore Shaw as if that makes any difference!
What they are really desperate for is supplies to include more missiles and ammunitions, plus food supplies. They put out the word that if anyone in the crew knew of a supply depot in the Obsidian sector, they needed to come forward. Owen’s tactical officer, Sasha mentioned there was a rumor of a massive resupply depot being built during the previous war some forty years ago, but they didn’t exactly know where it was. It was thought to be in a secret system in the neutral zone. So Shaw ordered his intelligence department to start scouring every database they could find searching for a mention of this supply depot that was never used since the war ended just after it was built. They needed to find that depot even if it ment venturing in to the neutral zone.
Back to Lt. Casey and her crew, they are now taken to an apparent Phoenix secret base and placed with a larger group of civilians taken from Confederation colonies in the Obsidian sector. One of her people is slightly injured and she tries to get medical help but isn’t very successful. She knows there are Pendragon soldiers working with the Phoenix pirates and she has to make sure they don’t recognize her. That didn’t work. They did recognize her and took her to the one person she did not want to see, her ex-husband, Lord Thomas Yatesbury, Pendragon Empire.
So, they have to find a secret supply depot and the away team has to get themselves free of their captures. All in a days work for these people. Fortunately, Commodore Shaw works on the things he can accomplish and doesn’t make any stupid decisions like he has a habit of doing in the past. Nothing gets settled in this book so there’s more to come in book 4, “Operation Eclipse”, now available on Amazon.
[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. ]