Back in the present, Nida and Carson convince the Coalition to do something about the Vex threat, until Nida feels guilt for trying to destroy them.

This part of the story was about as good as the previous part, Repeat. Already better than the first two installments, that’s not a high bar to cross, and it still doesn’t make the story good. In fact, it was difficult to get through, all the way to the end, but that wasn’t unexpected. Even the end, which had the spark of a reasonable idea, was poorly executed, because the solution comes out of nowhere, and is not earned.

I wasn’t expecting much from this book, and it delivered exactly what I expected. While perhaps a step up from Start and Before, it might be that I reduced my expectations so much that I wasn’t disappointed. The book was poorly written, the dialog was worse, but it had the nugget of a reasonable idea to end the threat. Not allowing the entity to exist in two places at once could have been a highlight of the book, except that it was not earned. The entity also existed in the past, where they spent a book and a half, but nothing untoward happened to it. There was no setup for the eventual solution, nor did Nida have to do anything, or struggle with anything, to achieve it. An unfortunate wasted opportunity to raise the conclusion above the rest of the story.

For what it’s worth, Nida and Carson start the book battling the unimaginatively-named Barbarians as Carson calls for backup from the Coalition. It’s amazing how fast they arrived, given how slow the new ship with better engines was to return them there with the planet-killing weapon.

It’s a given that nobody will believe them, and they spend an inordinate amount of time saying “believe me”, without offering any proof. They left the future so quickly that it would be hard to provide proof, but it would have helped if they mentioned people by name, and the tactics the Vex used, etc… At the very least, Carson should have had them shake up their procedures. I’m still not sure how the Vex got to all of the Coalition planets, destroyed the fleet everywhere, tried to steal human technology, all in the one day that they are in phase with our universe.

Nida has control of the entity all throughout the story, but it takes Carson to convince the fleet admiral to allow her to go free. She’s confined to the hospital again, with a nasty guard, but once she goes free she encounters some old friends from the Academy, one of which tries to get information from her, and others who tease her. She shows a bit of maturity by not responding, but it gives her renewed doubts for no reason, which was annoying. None of them believe she’s now romantically attached to Carson Blake. They seem like a bunch of teenagers, rather than soldiers. It’s no wonder the Coalition lost.

One Admiral believes Carson, because she has artefacts from their planet that seem to come from different technological societies and maybe have vastly different ages. I don’t see how this equates to time travel, but it gets the story moving. While Nida gives an impassioned speech (at least to the committee), Carson recommends destroying the Vex planet so they won’t have a place to phase in to. I’m not sure how that would work, as it hasn’t been established that they need a physical location for phasing to work. Presumably their fleet would be in orbit and ready, so it would have little effect on the battle.

Regardless, this upsets Nida, because she still feels the entity’s guilt, and a part of her is human enough not to want to destroy an entire species. She’s distant and gives Carson the silent treatment, willing her brain to think of a solution to save the Vex and the Coalition. He finally comes to her room and orders her to suck it up, and surprisingly she responds well to the authority of a superior.

When they arrive at the Vex planet, Nida steals a small ship, but Carson figures out her plan and slides into the shuttle before she closes the door and takes off, vowing not to let her do this alone. They get to the surface and as the capital ship is firing its planet-destroying weapon, she opens a time portal, taking them back to the entity’s first contact with the Vex, thousands of years ago.

As Nida still hasn’t figured out how she’s going to reason with the entity of an earlier time, the entity starts to dissolve, as it can’t be in two places at once. She struggles to make sure it’s her entity that survives, but given how weak and trapped it is behind her blocker, I don’t see how she managed to outmatch the entity at its prime.

But they do, and the entity sends them back to the present, and will transport the Vex as they are (in this time) to their present as well. I have no idea what purpose Carson served in all of this. In probably the best twist in the book, the entity brings them back to the moment when Nida first discovered the entity, when she was still considered inept. There’s a power struggle with Sharpe, her commander from that time, but Carson overrules him, and when he sees the planet reverting to its former self, he manages to get everyone offworld in time.

I guess Nida and Carson live happily ever after together, even though nobody can still believe that they are now dating, especially given that they are the only two who experienced the last few months. Nida has gained an aptitude for her TI implant, thanks to the entity.

I don’t usually continue with series that are so poor, but I already owned these ebooks, and each one is relatively short, so I decided to continue. I’m not sure if that was the right decision or not, but I’m done, now, and I don’t plan to continue with any others in this series. I wish the author had taken more time to formulate a good dramatization of the story, as there might have been something interesting underneath it all.