The Girl Who Fought Back

Daniel Baker, Sue Glitch, Leon Price, and Vicki Ferdinand are embarking on a new adventure.

They discovered a clue about the location of the missing alien race, the one that predates all of the known species in the Collective, but no trace of them has been seen in 100,000 years.

They need to recruit additional crew members for the mission. The trip will take months just to travel one way. They pick up some skilled mechanics and what they assume will be plenty of spare parts.

Unfortunately, what they discover will require more than they brought with them.

They find a war-ravaged planet, where the survivors are reduced to jungle-dwelling primitives, and the remaining AIs are intent on exterminating all the surviving aliens.

Good sequel to the original story

A little more formulaic than is usually the authors style but told very well. Overall the setting ratchets up the tension by making it non-trivial to call in reinforcements and/or retreat without resolving the situation once discovered without enormous risk. The new characters add depth without being distracting. Especially love that the primary characters take reasonable precautions and think their way our of situations rather than relying on dumb luck and macguffins. Would love to see more of this storyline as the crew pursues other adventures in a similar vein.