On the hunt for enemy aliens in the long war, Captain Dunmore comes across a human ship drifting after a pirate attack, and goes searching for its crew.

I love coming back to this captain and her crew. The professionalism and the way they plan out their strategy allow them to come out on top, and they are trained so well that surprises don’t throw them for long. The book continues the theme of finding rogue government agents working against the Commonwealth, but here it’s wrapped in the mystery of where the crew of the drifting starship has been taken. Normally when an author presents a plan in advance, it’s because things will go wrong, but here the author uses the plan to allow us to understand what’s going on later when it’s being executed, so he can focus on the action. It’s an interesting way of writing, but takes some of the suspense out of the story. Regardless, the action scenes were action-packed, and the waiting and strategizing were full of interesting dialog, ruminations and playful banter, which all dries up when they are called to battle stations. The usual problems persist, with the long military titles and so many crew members who come and go, but these are minor. I love the ship and its immense firepower. I also love the way Dunmoore takes charge and reminds her enemies of the advantages she has.

It’s nice to return to a book where everyone is professional, and the drama is mostly with the enemy. Dunmoore, as an experienced captain, has full authority over her crew and their actions. As long as the enemy is clearly evil, it’s something they should never have a problem with. That goes for the Shrehari alien aggressors and pirates.

This story opens with a distress call from a young girl who leaves her sanctuary in her family-run ship to find everyone gone. The Iolanthe responds and takes on the mystery. It seems like the Kattegat Maru (Katie for short) was made to look abandoned, its crew and passengers disappeared, and if they had arrived a few hours later, it would have remained an unsolved mystery.

I love how the author pulls on ancient marine history, like calling it a Mary Celeste, as well as how he uses marine terminology, from rank to bells instead of hours, all throughout. The ship is a smooth machine. Even Ezekial Holt, the first officer, offers up caution and counter-arguments as part of his role, not because he’s being combative. Everyone on the Iolanthe knows their place.

When young Carrie Fennon is brought on board, she’s amazed at their efficiency, as well as their banter in off-time and just before a battle. Dunmoore understands and allows the balance between free speech, letting the stress out, and professionalism.

As a pirate arrives to claim the Kattegat Maru, Dunmoore hides all emmissions, and emerges as a privateer, overpowering the smaller ship, and gaining information about Kilia and the main contact there, Tarant. I liked the way Carrie was reluctant to give up the illicit trade stops, but Dunmoore and Emma Cullop convinced her it was the only way to find her mother and the rest of the crew. If anything, I found Carrie to be a little bit too observant for a girl her age, knowing some passengers by face and understanding that one was brought on board without pre-booking. But I guess her position and training to be an officer made her so.

The ship goes to Kilia, where they dress up as privateers and go on to scout the asteroid, paying for docking fees and finders fees, and getting booted off by Tarant when he rightfully thinks they are lying. Their docking fees are returned, but as worthless metals instead of their original precious ones. Not to mention that a tracker was placed on the shuttle.

The Iolanthe is attacked by a Shrehari vessel and two pirates on their way out-system, but that was expected, and Dunmoore easily dispatches them, taking one crew as prisoner. She then returns to Kilia and sends the pirate ship on a collision course, firing nuclear bombs to embed themselves in the asteroid. An angry Tarant has no choice but to give up the coordinates where the Katie’s passengers were taken.

The coordinates are in the middle of space, but Dunmoore reasons a nearby planetary system was the true destination. On Temar, they find a hidden base where political prisoners are being held illegally. It’s not the first time Dunmoore has crossed paths with the secret police. By chance, this time she has an alibi.

The Shrehari have been patrolling this sector of space, because a ghost ship from the Confederation has been picking off their supply ships. Dunmoore defeated Brakal back in No Honor in Death, and he’s shown up sporadically in a couple of other books. Here, he’s taken illegal control of a fleet and is on the hunt. The Shrehari scenes are more interesting for their political setup than anything else. The species is barely concealed Klingon archetypes, under-gunned and under-supported by their government. They, too, complain about their secret police, and Brakal knows that they are losing the war because the government won’t commit to either winning or calling a ceasefire. I think this is setup for Brakal initiating a military coup.

In this story, he investigates the destruction of the Shrehari ship on Kilia, a free port that welcomes both human and alien species. The secret police contacts on Kilia give up the Ionanthe’s coordinates, and they, too, move on to Temar. Dunmoore tracks them, and uses them as a bargaining chip with the commander there, Hersom. She gets a tour, noting the Katie’s crew is not at this prison camp, and that she recognises one of the prisoners from their last adventure in Victory's Bright Dawn.

She then hides at a Lagrangian point, and when Brakal passes nearby, realizing too late her tactics, the opens fire, damaging them and forcing their withdrawl.

There is a short but neat ground assault to rescue the prisoners on Temar, though I’m a little confused as to why this had to be an assault-style effort. Hersom’s people don’t interfere with the raid, which I gather was to make the prisoners think the Navy wasn’t involved, but seemed too much like action for the sake of action. Still, it was fun.

The plot is revealed in that the secret police were after Forenza, the investigator who helped Dunmoore on Tomaso in the last book. He was investigating labor planets where people were shipped off to unclassified worlds because they were inconvenient or surplus in the eyes of their governments. The secret police were certainly involved. It seems likely that the Kattegat Maru’s crew was sold to one of these colonies.

Back to Kilia, where Holt poses as a Navy captain in a fully revealed Iolanthe, using the Kattegat Maru in holographic disguise as well as several shuttles to form a virtual fleet. They force the name of a slaver planet from Tarant, and go to rescue the crew, including Carrie’s mother.

I found this last part of the battle to be less skillfully written than the rest of the book, or the other books, for that matter. Something in the style changed, as the battle was described as from a history book. The army bantered as usual, but the fight itself was stilted, as if it was tacked on later or rushed into production. Add to that how Dunmoore explained exactly how they would perform the mission, and it happened exactly as planned, and the suspense was sucked out of it.

This actually happened a lot in this book, where the author would explain what was going to happen beforehand. Normally when this is done, things are meant to go very wrong. Otherwise just tell us as it happens, because it can get boring with repetition. In this case, I think the author avoided being boring, and while it was less suspenseful that way, it did allow him to tell a different kind of battle sequence, since we didn’t have to worry about the planning stage as it was unfolding.

In the end, Carrie is reunited with her mother and the crew, will probably go under Navy fostering for a year (much to her mother’s chagrin), and Dunmoore is sent to join a task force led by an admiral who hasn’t been in battle for years –all setup to something less comfortable for her than the last couple of books, I’m sure.

While previous books had a large cast of characters who appeared often enough to be recognized, but not often enough to remember who they were, this book focused a lot more on Dunmoore and her tighter circle, including Carrie Fennon. Many others were mentioned, but only Cullop got real page time, as she took over command of the Kattegat Maru –though she was on the sidelines for most of the action. Others came and went, but didn’t feature much in the story. This one was for the Captain.