Captain Ryland Maddox embarks on his first year in command of the starship Tempest, one of an elite group of ships charged with carrying out the Interstellar Commonwealth's most challenging, consequential, and unprecedented missions. In his first year, Maddox will have to juggle the competing priorities of exploring the unknown, defending the Commonwealth against hostile aliens, and helping those in need. Along with his mission officers, a ship designer who never expected to find himself on the frontier, an alien doctor running from professional and personal failure, and a former intelligence officer who hasn't made as clean of a break from his old life as he thinks, Maddox has to root out spies and traitors from the Commonwealth's ranks, keep tensions with hostile aliens from erupting into all out war, and confront a new alien threat that may be more dangerous than every other threat to the Commonwealth combined.
Captain Ryland Maddox embarks on his first year in command of the starship Tempest, one of an elite group of ships charged with carrying out the Interstellar Commonwealth's most challenging, consequential, and unprecedented missions. In his first year, Maddox will have to juggle the competing priorities of exploring the unknown, defending the Commonwealth against hostile aliens, and helping those in need. Along with his mission officers, a ship designer who never expected to find himself on the frontier, an alien doctor running from professional and personal failure, and a former intelligence officer who hasn't made as clean of a break from his old life as he thinks, Maddox has to root out spies and traitors from the Commonwealth's ranks, keep tensions with hostile aliens from erupting into all out war, and confront a new alien threat that may be more dangerous than every other threat to the Commonwealth combined.
Captain Ryland Maddox stood at the railing of the Indus Stationâs observation promenade, surveying the line of ships arrayed along the docking ring below him. In this moment, he was in that one held breath of an instant where one phase of your life was ending but the next hadnât yet begun. The dock had been close to capacity the last few days, with every type of ship in the fleet docked somewhere along the ring.Â
Every aspect of the Fleet was represented along the stationâs docking pier. There were the escorts, surveyors, transports and freighters, even a few tenders, and finally his own ship, the Chalice, at the end of the line as the sole representative of the supporter ship type.
My old ship, he had to remind himself. He scanned down the line of ships to the far end of the dock to see the step he was about to take.
The Commonwealth Fleet was more than a military charged with defense against invaders. The Fleetâs Charter organized the service around three core missions (and a fourth support role to cover logistics) and only one of these â Security and Defense â was anything like a âmilitaryâ mission in the classic Earth sense.
The other two â Exploration and Research, and Diplomacy and Assistance â handled the Commonwealthâs scientific and diplomatic missions respectively and each had a type of ship tailored to that mission â âescortsâ for Security and Defense, âsurveyorsâ for Exploration and Research, and âsupportersâ for Diplomacy and Assistance.
And sprinkled in among the escorts and surveyors, transports and freighters, tenders and supporters ships, there wereâŚthe starships.
Where all the other types were designed for specific mission profiles, starships were a different breed. They were the ships that went everywhere and did everything; they handled the most important and challenging missions the Interstellar Commonwealth had; they spent their lives at the very edge of knowledge and experience, and regularly grappled the unknown and sometimes unknowable. In short, they were the ships of the fleet that went where no one else had yet gone.Â
At the far end of the docking ring was Maddoxâs new command, the starship Tempest, its more impressive size over the Chalice still obvious even with the distance between them. In another hour he would step aboard for the first time and this moment of held breath would be over, no longer the captain of a humble little supporter ship, now instead the captain of a starship, the ships that held the Commonwealthâs fate in their hands every day.
âComparing new and old commands?â
Maddox turned to see Admiral Tua striding towards him, the question flowing in English from her translator badge at the same time she was voicing the next sentence in her own language, sounding almost musical before itself being translated into English.
âIf the latter, the vantage point at the far end of the promenade is superior.â
The admiral was short for a fennek but still cleared Maddoxâs own human average by half a meter, even in the half crouch that was the fennek natural stance. And even in that stance, her long legs covered in three steps what Maddoxâs wouldâve covered in ten. And the pair of enormous fox-like ears that had given the species the name humans used for them sat at the top of her elongated head, one focused on him and the other swiveling to survey the surrounding environment.
âSomething like that,â Maddox admitted. âMore likeâŚtrying to appreciate this last moment of calm before the next part of my life begins and the old one is gone forever.â
âAh. The human preoccupation with sentimentality.â
Maddox smiled at the admiralâs interpretation. The fennek werenât emotionless automatons, but they were significantly more stoic than their human counterparts, with a cultural philosophy that emphasized a sort of minimalist practicality.
âOr trying to maintain a dispassionate perspective on the challenges of my new command,â he offered.
Tua slow-blinked her eyelids in the fennek expression of amusement.
âIt is a significant change,â she said. âIt is wise to allow time for your perspective to change. I consider it evidence in support of our decision to promote you into this new role.â
Maddox made the fennek hand gesture of gratitude as he said, âThank you for the vote of confidence.â
Being the captain of a supporter ship had beenâŚeasy was not exactly the right wordâŚbutâŚuncomplicated. The missions were straightforward â rush to someplace-or-other beset by some horrible calamity and save as many lives as possible. Commanders of all the non-starship ships often spent entire careers in missions for which established procedure covered every imaginable eventuality. But starships were different. They routinely plunged beyond the frontier of space and knowledge and grappled with dilemmas and problems that had no clear precedent and yet could decide the fate of billions.
Only once had he faced the kind of unprecedented situation that defied every possible existing procedure. But apparently, he had handled it well enough for the admiralty to notice and trust him with a starship and, undoubtedly, future situations that promised to be just as weirdly consequential.
He had to consider himself lucky to even have the opportunity to be standing here. The admiralty did not put a person in charge of a starship without some kind of evidence they could handle it. Some captains spent their entire careers flying an escort or surveyor back and forth across space without, through no fault of their own, ever being presented with the right opportunity.
And because of the nature of their mission, it was even rarer for support ship captains to stumble into the right circumstances. And yet it felt wrong to think of his own brush with disaster as an opportunity, as some kind of good fortune to appreciate for the career advancement it made possible. They had only survived by the skin of their teeth. Maddox had, in fact, made peace with his impending demise when his medical staff had pulled out a last minute miracle. He was lucky the Chalice was a support ship that happened to have the best neurophysiologist in the fleet onboard. At the time he hadnât felt like some swashbuckling explorer, he just felt luckyâŚand guilty that luck had spared him but not others just as deserving.
âAre you ready to assume your new command?â Tua asked, snapping him back to the conversation.
âYes, letâs do it. It will help pull me out of this preoccupation with sentimentality.â
âA wise consideration,â Tua said, missing Maddoxâs half teasing/half self deprecating tone, undoubtedly lost in translation somewhere between their two translator badges.
Tua started strolling down the length of the promenade and Maddox quickly fell in beside her.
The admiral allowed the silence to sit for a moment. The fennek were stoic and placid compared to humans, but unused to allowing for the delicate dance around difficult topics humans often performed, but the admiral made her best attempt before barreling into the heart of the matter.
âYou are apprehensive about your abilities in the context of your new assignment?â she said.
Maddox flinched a bit and took a breath. She had tried to phrase it as a question, a concession to human custom and not something a fennek would do naturally. The reality was plain, even if unspoken, to both of them, and the fennek custom would be to simply acknowledge facts as facts and reality as reality. Posing it as a question was her attempt at accommodating the human tendency to treat sensitive subjects delicately. And he appreciated it, even if it was a bit clumsily done.
âMaybe a little,â he said, then realized she would take the statement at face value if he didnât clarify otherwise. The concept of lying to protect oneâs ego was wholly alien to the fennek.Â
âYes,â he admitted.
âThis is a reasonable mental state given the circumstances,â she said. âDespite being the ambition of many, fewer than one in one thousand captains command a starship at some point in their careers.â
âAnd half of them donât stay one for more than a year,â he added.
âAlso true. You are concerned you will be among them.âÂ
She had lapsed into usual fennek phrasing but, perhaps counterintuitively, that said she was more interested and less certain in what the follow up would bring.
âDonât get me wrong, I am confident in my abilities, my judgment,â he gestured towards the Tempest as it slowly grew bigger in the window. âI look at that ship and think, âI can do this.â But wouldnât every starship captain have that thought? Surely, somebody must have stood in this spot and thought the same thought with just as much certainty. And they still turned out to be wrong. How can I know Iâm different from them?â
âYou cannot,â the Admiral replied, fennek directness in spades. âBut in my experience, those who leave starship command do so not because are inadequate to the task, but rather because they no longer wish to perform it. Starship command is an order of magnitude more complex and taxing than any other kind. It is not that their judgment or ability is lacking, but rather their stamina for the kind of burden starship captains must endure.â
Maddox didnât exactly find that reassuring, but the admiral hadnât meant it to be. For her, it was simply a statement of the truth.
âThen how do I know I can endure those burdens?â
âYou do not. Except through the attempt. But you should take some reassurance in the procedures that Fleet Command employs to make someone a starship commander. It is not a decision made lightly and we consider it our most important function. If you lack the necessary confidence in your own judgment, you may rely on the confidence of ours.â
The fennek version of, âI believe in you.âÂ
And that was as much of a pep talk as the fennek admiral was able to give.
In a silent agreement, they both walked down the broad boulevard of the promenade, with its massive bay windows overlooking the ships in their berths below.
âThe next few years will be the hinge on which the rest of the century will turn,â Tua said.
Maddox noted the translator AIâs successful translation of a decently poetic metaphor â the linguistic programmers were getting better.Â
Maddox nodded, âThe peace treaty with the goruk expires soon.â
âAnd they are almost completely self sufficient again. We have always hoped that the treaty was the beginning of a greater peace. But we have also feared it was only a temporary respite.â
âDo you think itâs likely theyâll declare war again once they can afford it?â
âThere are some within their empire who wish it, that much we know. But others who do not. Fortunately, even the most pugilistic of them have enough propriety to honor an agreed upon treaty if there is no strong excuse to do otherwise. But whether peace lasts one day beyond it will depend on which faction wins the debate within their government.â
âAnd if violence with the basilar is also inevitable, the Commonwealth will find itself fighting a war on two fronts.â
âAn unenviable prospect. But also very possible. The basilar seem intent on provoking us into armed conflict no matter how hard we work to avoid it. And there are those within the Commonwealth that believe if war is inevitable, it is better to wage it on our terms at a time of our choosing, rather then on theirs.â
âI donât believe that war is ever inevitable.â
âNor do I. But we may well be wrong.â
Maddox took a deep breath and tried to lighten the mood, for his own sake if not the admiralâs.
âOkay, so thatâs two existential threats accounted for. Two downâŚtwo to go?â
âThree,â the admiral answered instantly, missing the tone in his voice that had been a futile effort at levity.
âThe kristad and the sindon are not imminent threats but nonetheless cannot be discounted. And the deah have been quiet for over a decade. They are overdue for some unprovoked aggression.â
Through the translator, Maddox could hear the admiralâs tones shift. He was not nearly practiced enough in the language to follow the specific meaning and syntax, but he could hear the octave change at the mention of the deah, the offshoot branch of the admiralâs own species, which signaled the equivalent of something like ârueing.âÂ
When humans were first quarrying the stones that would become Egyptâs pyramids, the fennek were already ruling an interstellar empire with a sense of manifest destiny that wouldâve shamed the conquistadors. But in an unparalleled cultural shift, they had given it up, returned to their home world, and forbid themselves from returning to space until they had purged their tribal need for domination from their psyches. Some resisted and dug themselves into distant colonies, daring their reformist cousins to bring them home by force. A centuries long interstellar war ensued, one that ended in stalemate and left the fennek a divided society â most on the home world resolved to the new way but with a few thousand left to scratch out a meager survival on a far flung, barely habitable colony.
Even now, thousands of years later, the pain of sundered kinship ran deep among many fennek like Admiral Tua. And Tuaâs ancestors had been the âwinningâ side. Maddox could scarcely imagine the resentment that ran amongst the deah, the human simplification of the fennek word for their ancient cousins.
Maddox ran through the list again in his head: goruk, basilar, deah, kristads, sindonâŚ
The pair reached the gangway that connected the promenade to the Tempest and the ship loomed in the viewport, both menacing and majestic, like some kind of space borne apex predator. Five existential threats to the very existence of the Commonwealth that were now about to become Maddoxâs responsibility to keep at bay. But at least they had managed to cover them all in the walk across the promenade before they reached the Tempest.
âThere is one more item on which I must brief you before we part ways.â
Dammit.
âThere is a research effort classified at the highest levels and managed directly by the Science Council, designated Project Sphex. Only starship captains and above are even made aware of its existence. Its charter is to search for and investigate any evidence that may shed more light on the entity that drove the sigans out of their home region of space. The project has been ongoing for some decades but has only recently achieved any noteworthy progress. There are multiple detachments of survey ships spread throughout known space. If any of them request the Tempestâs support and provide the proper authorization code, you are required to divert from whatever operations you may currently be engaged in and provide them whatever assistance they may ask.â
The tones of her own language shifted a half octave higher, signifying emphasis.
âThis is so even in cases where life may be lost because of the diversion.â
Maddox wrestled with the implications of her statement. Missions of life and death were not uncommon, and often demanded a decision about which of two groups of people could be saved at the cost of the other. As a first officer, he had watched his own captain make that decision and â in Maddoxâs judgment â decide wrongly. As captain of the Chalice, he had made it himself more than once. And as much as he loathed it each time, he lived with his choices well enough to face himself the morning after, not unlike the doctors in the Chalice sickbays who made difficult decisions about which patients would live and die.
But what the admiral was suggesting here felt different in some subtle but important way. These classified orders might demand a similar moment. Except the other side of the equation here wasâŚhelping scientists with a research project in anyway they may demand. Somehow, he wasnât sure he trusted scientists he didnât know to have proper perspective on the importance of their own projects.
Tua could sense â or at least anticipate â his doubts and she gestured in reassurance.
She continued, â62 years ago, the sigans arrived as refugees in the Commonwealth from beyond known space. They claimed their home solar system had been attacked and invaded by another alien species. One which consumed an interplanetary civilization of sixty billion individuals in a matter of days.â
âThatâŚcanât be possible.â
âThey carried little evidence with them and all of it circumstantial. But the magnitude of their claims required follow up. So the Science Council organized Project Sphex to locate more evidence. They have had little success until last year, when they seem to have discovered the first tangible piece of evidence that can be connected to these aliens with some confidence.â
âWhere?â Maddox asked.
âOn an uninhabited planet near the Serpens Rift. The Science Council established a research base to study the artifact and four survey vessels to search the surrounding area. So far they have made no additional significant follow up discoveries. But it seems possible they may at any time,â the admiral said.
âAnd what exactly is so special about these particular aliens that puts them at the same level as the goruk and basilar despite knowing so little about them?â
âThe fact that, if the sigans are correct, they are not a distinct species or society unto themselves, but rather a force whichâŚconsumes other species. Something like a virus or cancer in some unclassified space between biology and technology.â
âSpaceâŚzombies?â
The admiral paused as her translator rattled off a quick primer to her about the Earth concept of âzombieâ in her native language.
âSomething like that,â she said at last. âI regret I cannot provide greater detail, but a brief in your shipâs library computer will decrypt with the necessary information should circumstances demand. Make no mistake, Captain, of all the threats to the Commonwealth that we know of, the sphex may well prove the greatest of them all.â
She offered another gesture of reassurance, followed by a kind of well wishing gesture and then a farewell before turning and walking away.
Maddox looked again at the Tempest now looming directly in front of him, left with the distinct feeling that he was about to climb onto the back of a tiger and try to ride it.
Upfront, this was not really for me - which means two stars, right? So why three? Reviewing is about connecting a book with its audience, not necessarily about pushing your personal (and subjective) taste. This book will, I am sure, have a keen and eager audience.
Based on a podcast with currently 50,000 downloads, which is itself connected to a long-running role-playing game (old school dice and rulebooks) based on Star Trek, the story follows the Starship Tempest, her crew, and Captain Maddox. RPG campaigns - and I've played in, and run a fair number myself since the 1980s - are deeply engaging to be in, but often focus on action and problem-solving. They have a different narrative structure to traditional novels, and that can make the transition to a general audience hard. In addition, the book is structured like a 'season' of an SF series. So what we have is a string of adventures maturing the crew, bonding them as a group, and enhancing their view of the galaxy. Then it's back to base for a refit, and a spot of shore leave before finding out if there's another season being planned.
Starship Tempest is pacy, action-packed, and full of characters you hate to love but can't help it, like Bok-Dan a wily alien with a sense of humour, or characters you love to hate, like Administrator Lee of the Ivex III mining operation. I loved the part with the Ellesmere - a ship in distress and needing assistance but stuck in a 'galactic no-fly zone'. There are some funky alien races and then there are Appendices!
I love world-building and depth - any material exploring background I find compelling. So here we have a walk through the 'Drake Equation' to outline how many habitable planets there are in the setting, notes on psychology, language, biochemistry, as well as naming conventions, just for starters. A section on 'Axion Technology' (based on the manipulation of dark matter) is neatly done, and there are also maps of known space. Usually the province of fantasy novels, in a book like this, a map (perhaps again hinting at Tempest's RPG roots) is a real bonus.
If you are a fan of Star Trek, SF role-playing games, TV SF of the 'galactic space opera' kind (think Babylon 5), and/or the original podcast, you are highly likely to enjoy this - and I'd really recommend you pick this one up. If it ends up on Netflix (and it just might!), I'd grab my biscuits and strap in to watch.