I was getting pretty tired of this arrogant, snide, mouthy AI they call “Skippy”, but in this book he becomes somewhat more tolerable! Yeah, that’s kind of hard to believe, but I think I’ve gotten used to what the expected dialogue between Colonel Joe (Bishop) and Skippy. Skippy thinks he’s this super intelligent AI that resents having to work with what he calls monkey-brained humans. Well, I’m surprised the humans work with him at all. But at least Joe Bishop knows what to expect from Skippy and tolerates him better than anyone else.
That’s a good thing because Skippy can tell anyone he wants that Colonel Joe Bishop is the commander/Captain of the alien starship, “Flying Dutchman”. Without Skippy’s involvement, Earth would be endanger of becoming slaves to some alien race. They had already been duped by one race, the Kristang, and now have to deal with the Ruhar on Paradise, the planet Joe found himself and subsequently, Skippy on. For Joe and the *Flying Dutchman*, they are still under the command of the United Nations Expeditionary Force (UNEF), headquartered on Earth. They want the *Flying Dutchman* to go back out to space and make sure the Kristang and Thuranin aren’t prepping to come back to Earth.
So, that’s their mission and Joe Bishop’s mission since Skippy has made it well know that his cooperation is based on Joe being the command/Captain of the ship. Of course the UNEF don’t necessarily trust Skippy nor do they trust Joe a whole lot. See Joe used to be a Sergeant in the Army, but was promoted to Colonel on Paradise by the Kristang and the UNEF went along with the promotion because they had to. All that was covered in the first two books. But, due to their lack of confidence in both Skippy and Joe, the UNEF wants to assign a highly intelligent and somewhat qualified scientist to be the overall Mission Commander. Skippy doesn’t object to this which surprises Joe, but Joe knows that no matter what Mr. Hans Chotek orders, it isn’t going stop Skippy from doing exactly what he wants. Joe will have to clean most of his mission decisions with Mr. Chotek and Skippy will be giving both of them an earful of sarcastic, rude, and down-right insulting commentary all the time.
But, this book isn’t only about the *Flying Dutchman* and its mission. We split our reading time between Earth, the *Flying Dutchman* and Paradise. That’s the planet that military humans were taken by the Kristang as ground troops against the Ruhar. It’s also the planet that Joe and Skippy escaped from although no one really knows that. In fact, the idea that humans are operating a starship in space is very secret and can’t be known by any of these alien species. They would surely send an armada directly to Earth to reduce its population to nothing or close to nothing that humans would cease to exist. So, it’s a very important secret.
Yet, Joe believes it’s in their mission parameters to try and help the humans now trapped on Paradise. They can’t go home since neither the Ruhar nor Kristang are willing to take them back to Earth and right now, the Ruhar control the planet, but they really don’t want it. The Ruhar also consider the humans on their planet to be prisoners of war since they did attack the Ruhar as part of a Kristang invasion force. It doesn’t matter that the humans later found out they were fighting for the wrong side.
The Ruhar are treating the humans as best they can considering they themselves are in bad shape. It seems that the Ruhar central government no longer wants the planet! They’d just as soon give it back to the Kristang. Under Ruhar control, humans have been allowed to farm and raise their own food. The just about have to since there will be no shipments coming from Earth and nothing that natively grows on Paradise can be consumed by humans. So most of the previous soldier and Marines under UNEF Command have now become farmers.
If the Ruhar ever does give Paradise back to the Kristang, it’s going to be very bad for the humans. The Kristang now see the humans as traitors since they are not actively fighting the Ruhar even though the humans have no weapons! So, Joe believes they must do something to help the humans. But what can they do without reveling who they are. That’s what this book is mostly about. Of course Skippy will be involved but he turns out not as bright as some humans.
I enjoyed this book much better than the previous ones because it seemed like the number of insults by Skippy were somewhat reduced and he doesn’t always get away with his foul mouth when speaking to people other than Joe Bishop. Even Mr. Chotek doesn’t escape the rath of Skippy, but he usually ignores the insults much better than I would!
Book 4, “Black Ops”, sounds like a very interesting book that you can obtain from the usual places. I’m adding it to my reading list.
==🔵[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. ]==