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"Dreadnaught"
Sep. 13th, 2011 07:20 amWith last year’s “Victorious”, Jack Campbell (aka John G Hemry) ended the story of the Lost Fleet. Not only had Admiral Jack Geary managed to bring the Alliance Fleet back home after it was ambushed by the Syndic Stars, but he had also found out and repelled the real enemy who had secretly ignited the 100-year-long war between the two human factions.
Does this mean that Geary can now take a long deserved rest? In “Dreadnaught”, not only do the Alliance’s leaders fear he’ll use his military success as an excuse to take over, but there are some in the Fleet who’d be very happy to have him do that. Luckily for them all, Geary has no such ambition, being an honorable man - and literally old-fashioned, having spent the last century in suspended animation. Still his leaders don’t trust him so they decide to send him out on a new mission: go thru Syndic space again even though its own central authority is collapsing, and enter alien space to contact the enemy and resolve their differences. One problem is that the Alliance appears to have set the mission to fail. Another problem is that the aliens are rabidly opposed to any contact, which is why they tried to have humans exterminate each other in the first place. The story ends with a major cliffhanger, with the Fleet stuck in a really bad position after freeing humans who’d been in alien captivity most of their lives.
Does this mean that Geary can now take a long deserved rest? In “Dreadnaught”, not only do the Alliance’s leaders fear he’ll use his military success as an excuse to take over, but there are some in the Fleet who’d be very happy to have him do that. Luckily for them all, Geary has no such ambition, being an honorable man - and literally old-fashioned, having spent the last century in suspended animation. Still his leaders don’t trust him so they decide to send him out on a new mission: go thru Syndic space again even though its own central authority is collapsing, and enter alien space to contact the enemy and resolve their differences. One problem is that the Alliance appears to have set the mission to fail. Another problem is that the aliens are rabidly opposed to any contact, which is why they tried to have humans exterminate each other in the first place. The story ends with a major cliffhanger, with the Fleet stuck in a really bad position after freeing humans who’d been in alien captivity most of their lives.
Geary sighed. "Surely we did the right thing by rescuing them."
"Of course. A cage is a cage is a cage. But freedom will be hard for them to adjust to. What are you going to do with them?" the doctor asked.
"Take them home."
