So the band of Merry Pirates have a new ship named the “Valkyrie”. It’s a put together ship of two Maxohlx battlecruisers that were sliced in half using a very smart idea by none other than Colonel Joe Bishop, now commanding the *Valkyrie*. All that was covered in the previous book so I won’t go into that much here. Just understand that the humans now have two stolen starships (the *Flying Dutchman* is now commanded by Colonel Chang) and are now deciding what to do with them.
They have been watching via relay station intercepts the Maxohlx’s destruction of numerous Bosphuraq science and research stations. Those station were pretty much innocent of the alleged discovery of advanced technology that was supposedly use to destroyed two previous Maxolhx ships destined for Earth. Of course those, ships had been destroyed by the humans aboard the *Valkyrie* and the *Flying Dutchman*. Now Joe Bishop and crew were getting bored and they needed something to do. So they decided to destroy two more Maxolhx starships that were going to enter the Koprahdru system where another isolated Bosphuraq research facility resided.
That attack took place reasonably well. They were using the “Valkyrie” as the main attack vessel while the “Dutchman” stayed at a relatively safe distance ready to provide support if necessary. As long as the *Valkyrie* was attacking Maxolhx starships of lesser size and strength, they had no problems. And these attacks were becoming very, very annoying to the Maxolhx. They couldn’t figure out who was causing this destruction, but they definitely wanted it stopped. So, they started sending out starships in groups and nothing alone if it could be helped.
Of course all this fighting and starship operations were the results of “Skippy” the magnificent AI. He relied on the humans or “monkeys” as he called them, to come up with the ideas and the he would implement them. Most of the weird ideas did come from Joe Bishop who sometimes wanted to act before he thought through all the consequences. One of those consequences in their latest battle had resulted in the death of a number of crew members of the *Dutchman*. Joe felt that he was directly responsible for all those killed and he was having a hard time dealing with it.
Of special concern for Joe was the fact that Gunnery Sergeant Margaret Adams had been critically injured in that action. She was in sickbay under the care of “Doctor” Skippy but her prognosis wasn’t good. She had suffered some unknown brain damage having bee exposed to the vacuum of space for a very very short time. Colonel Bishop had chose between the destruction of the attacking starship and rescuing his people which had caused a lot more deaths and injuries. In hindsight, he had done what the mission required. No alien starship they encountered could go back home with the knowledge that either the *Dutchman* or the *Valkyrie* was being operated by humans. Any of the alien races in the galaxy could wipe out Earth and every human on it with very little effort. So Joe was protecting all the humans on Earth when he made the decision to go after the escaping starship versus stopping and rescuing his injured crewmen and women.
No one blamed Joe for his decision. They all understood why he chose to do what he did. Even Skippy said Joe had done the right thing, the necessary thing if he wanted to save humanity. But Joe was now mad and was willing to go on killing other aliens that threatened Earth. His current target was the Maxolhx whom seemed determined to send a starship, a warship thought the Earth warp gate and would eventually exterminate the humans living on the planet. But, Joe had only the two ships and the Maxolhx had entire fleets. In fact, that had sent a battle fleet towards Earth, but only by some very ingenious actions and ideas of Skippy and Joe did that manage to send that battle fleet far, far away from known space.
Now Skippy was most involved in advising Joe Bishop when he wanted to attack a target starship that was not a good thing to do. Skippy knew that the Maxolhx were not stupid and they and their AI’s, while not as smart as Skippy, would soon figure out a way to set a trap for Joe Bishop and his merry Band of Pirates.
And that’s what they did. Not only does Joe Bishop and the humans aboard the two stolen starships have to survive a very dangerous trap, but they also find themselves needing to rescue a bunch of humans that were going to be use for biological weapons testing. These humans consisted of over one hundred children torn from their parents and treated miserably while in captivity of the Kristang who did not like humans one little bit. Just one of the problems facing Joe Bishop was how to rescue humans from a planet without anyone knowing that humans were doing the rescuing. There wasn’t really any reason for any alien species rescuing humans whom they considered primitive and barely above animals.
This book was very interesting and very, very long. It continues to contain a huge amount of idiotic conversations between Skippy and Joe Bishop. Most of these conversations are at the two-year old level and really add nothing to the book but useless words. I wish the author would cut back on most of these worthless dialogues. It would probably cut the book length in half.
I’ll continue reading the next book, “Critical Mass”, 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. ]==