Tom Tinney

It is 560 years into the future, about 300 years after the Intra Stellar Transportation and Exploration Company (ISTEC) discovered the means to build Directional Spherical Mass Multipliers (DSMM) allowing space ships to create Folds to travel light years in short jumps within our galaxy. After setting up a system of unmanned ships called Pigeons to map the galaxy and prevent manned ships from folding into stars or planets and main Drive Modules (IDM) to ferry manned ships within the galaxy for a fee, ITSEC set up operations on their own terra-formed planet to hide their technological secrets and create a wealthy neutral monopoly of interstellar transport within the new MetroStellar colonies and free trade zones. However, when a couple of IDMs and the parasite ships attached to them are seemingly destroyed after coming out of a Fold by an unknown alien attack, the USS Marshal Service, responsible for law enforcement within the MetroStellar zone, sends one of their best to go undercover on a military ship to discover the cause of these attacks. Equipped with hi-tech bio-ware that creates a chameleon identity and seamlessly hacks into nearly any tech system, the agent has an even more secret tool at his command, the ability to communicate with his twin brother back at HQ through a "thread" that connects them throughout the galaxy. When the military ship comes under attack and is destroyed, the agent is able to escape with a suspicious ISTEC character on an escape pod. Meanwhile, another HQ agent has gone rogue, tracking a psychotic serial killer that has high connections and was responsible for killing the agent's twin who was heading the field investigation. As the rogue agent hides from his brethren marshals while doggedly hunting down his mysterious foe, his broken "thread" mysteriously connects with another strange voice demanding that he seek the owner of the voice. Little does either agent or the USS Marshal Service know, but both cases are connected and will lead to unveiling ITSEC's deeply kept secret and putting the entire galaxy in danger. This is an epic book with an excitingly complex adventure to tell, which should please any ardent fan of good science fiction. However, the author unfortunately fills the first third of the book with character back story and future history that is at times too detailed, is provided too early before a character is properly revealed to be in proper context, and in one stretch becomes a political rant that has no bearing on the main story. This will likely turn most readers off who could walk away from the tale before the exciting adventure begins.… (más)