"The Lost Fleet: Valiant"

How happy I was when I realized that I wouldn’t have to wait until January 2009 before John Hemry’s The Lost Fleet: Valiant was published. Writing as Jack Campbell, he has delivered another exciting chapter in the saga of Jack Geary, a hero of the early days of the 100-year war between two human groups, the Alliance and the Syndic. Ever since he was found in deep freeze in a space pod, he has had to again and again save the Alliance Fleet trapped within enemy territory, and it worries him that people have such faith in the legend he had become. But he can’t give up, not even when things look dire and Rione, his frequent counsel, suggests that he might have to consider abandoning the fleet and rush back home with his ship’s precious cargo.

Her anger grew. “We can pay any price that is necessary, Captain Geary. For our homes. For our families.”

“I’m supposed to tell their family that? ‘People of the Alliance, I sacrificed your parents, your partners, your children, for you’. How many people would really make that bargain? Would anyone willing to make that bargain deserve to win?”

"We all make it, every day! You know that! Every civilian makes that bargain when they send their military off to war! We know they’re risking their lives for us!”

She was right about that, too. But not entirely. “They trust us not to waste those lives,” Geary stated heavily. "I will not trade the lives of the people of this fleet for a Syndic hypernet key. I will lead them and fight like hell to get that key home to Alliance space, but I will not write off the lives of my people as a necessary price for that. The moment that I decide that any price is justified is the moment I betray my trust and what I see as my duty. We’ll win or we’ll die together, with honor.”

Now I must wait until May 2009 before the penultimate book in the series is published.

Sigh.