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Jump Universe #6
Rita Longknife - Enemy in Sight
The victory parades are over and half the fleet is back in mothballs. The Navies better start getting them back in Commission! Rita Longknife, commander of the heavy cruiser Exeter, has proof. Proof that there is something else out there. Proof we are not alone in the galaxy. Aboard her ship is evidence that we have blown up an alien ship, and they have blown up one of ours. So far, contact with the aliens is being made by pirates, the worst scum humanity has. How do the right people take over making contact? Is there already too much bad blood between us? Have we already blown first contact?
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First published August 31, 2017
37 people are currently reading
175 people want to read
About the author
Mike Shepherd
78 books563 followersA pseudonym used by Mike Moscoe.
Mike was born in the Philadelphia Navy Yard Hospital -- and left that town at the age of three days for reasons he does not presently recall. But they had to draft him to get him back there. He missed very little of the rest of the country. Growing up Navy, he lived about everywhere you could park an aircraft carrier.
Mike was one of those college students who didn't have to worry about finding a job after graduation. In 1968, his Uncle Sam made him an offer he couldn't refuse. Two days into boot camp, the Army was wondering if they might not have been a bit hasty. Mike ended the day in the Intensive Care Unit of the local Army hospital. Despite most of Mike’s personal war stories being limited to "How I flunked boot camp," he can still write a rollicking good military SF yarns.
Mike didn’t survive all that long as a cab driver (he got lost) or bartender (he made the drinks too strong) but he figured he could at least work for the Navy Department as a budget analyst. Until he spent the whole day trying to balance the barracks accounts for paint. Finally, about quitting time, a grinning senior analyst took him aside and let him in on the secret. They'd hidden the money for refitting a battleship in that little account. Slowly it dawned on Mike that there were a few things about the Navy that even a kid who grew up in it would never understand.
Over the next twenty years, Mike branched out into other genres, including instruction memos, policies, performance standards and even a few labor contracts. All of those, you may notice, lack a certain something. Dialogue ... those things in quotes. In `87, Mike’s big break came. He landed on a two year special project to build a digital map showing where the trees, rivers, roads, Spotted Owls and other critters were in western Oregon. The list went on and on with no end in sight and two years became ten.
Since there was no writing involved in his new day job, Mike had to do something to get the words out. He signed up for a writing class at Clark Community College and proudly turned in a story ... Star Wars shoots down the second coming of Christ.
Two years later, Analog bought "Summer Hopes, Winter Dreams" for the March, 1991 issue. Four years later he sold his first novel. In the ten years since then, Mike’s turned in twelve novels and is researching the next three.
Mike's love for Science Fiction started when he picked up "Rocket Ship Galileo" in the fifth grade, and then proceeded to read every book in the library with a rocket sticker on its spine.
Mike digs for his stories among people and change. Through his interest in history, he has traces the transformations that make us what we are today. Science launches us forward into an ever changing universe. Once upon a time, the only changes in peoples lives came with the turning of the seasons and the growing wrinkles on their brows. Today, science drives most of the changes in our daily lives. Still, we can't avoid the pressure of our own awakening hormones or hardening arteries. Mike is happiest when his stories are speeding across thin ice, balanced on the edge of two sharp blades, one anciently human, the other as new as tomorrow's research.
Trained in International Relations and history, salary administration and bargaining, theology and counseling, Mike is having a ball writing about Kris Longknife ... coming of age while the world her grand parents built threatens to crash down around her ears. These are books I think you’ll love ... and my granddaughter and grandsons too!
Mike lives in Vancouver, Washington, with his wife Ellen, his mother-in-law and any visiting grandkids. He enjoys reading, writing, watching grand-children for story ideas and upgrading his computer -- all are never ending.
Mike was born in the Philadelphia Navy Yard Hospital -- and left that town at the age of three days for reasons he does not presently recall. But they had to draft him to get him back there. He missed very little of the rest of the country. Growing up Navy, he lived about everywhere you could park an aircraft carrier.
Mike was one of those college students who didn't have to worry about finding a job after graduation. In 1968, his Uncle Sam made him an offer he couldn't refuse. Two days into boot camp, the Army was wondering if they might not have been a bit hasty. Mike ended the day in the Intensive Care Unit of the local Army hospital. Despite most of Mike’s personal war stories being limited to "How I flunked boot camp," he can still write a rollicking good military SF yarns.
Mike didn’t survive all that long as a cab driver (he got lost) or bartender (he made the drinks too strong) but he figured he could at least work for the Navy Department as a budget analyst. Until he spent the whole day trying to balance the barracks accounts for paint. Finally, about quitting time, a grinning senior analyst took him aside and let him in on the secret. They'd hidden the money for refitting a battleship in that little account. Slowly it dawned on Mike that there were a few things about the Navy that even a kid who grew up in it would never understand.
Over the next twenty years, Mike branched out into other genres, including instruction memos, policies, performance standards and even a few labor contracts. All of those, you may notice, lack a certain something. Dialogue ... those things in quotes. In `87, Mike’s big break came. He landed on a two year special project to build a digital map showing where the trees, rivers, roads, Spotted Owls and other critters were in western Oregon. The list went on and on with no end in sight and two years became ten.
Since there was no writing involved in his new day job, Mike had to do something to get the words out. He signed up for a writing class at Clark Community College and proudly turned in a story ... Star Wars shoots down the second coming of Christ.
Two years later, Analog bought "Summer Hopes, Winter Dreams" for the March, 1991 issue. Four years later he sold his first novel. In the ten years since then, Mike’s turned in twelve novels and is researching the next three.
Mike's love for Science Fiction started when he picked up "Rocket Ship Galileo" in the fifth grade, and then proceeded to read every book in the library with a rocket sticker on its spine.
Mike digs for his stories among people and change. Through his interest in history, he has traces the transformations that make us what we are today. Science launches us forward into an ever changing universe. Once upon a time, the only changes in peoples lives came with the turning of the seasons and the growing wrinkles on their brows. Today, science drives most of the changes in our daily lives. Still, we can't avoid the pressure of our own awakening hormones or hardening arteries. Mike is happiest when his stories are speeding across thin ice, balanced on the edge of two sharp blades, one anciently human, the other as new as tomorrow's research.
Trained in International Relations and history, salary administration and bargaining, theology and counseling, Mike is having a ball writing about Kris Longknife ... coming of age while the world her grand parents built threatens to crash down around her ears. These are books I think you’ll love ... and my granddaughter and grandsons too!
Mike lives in Vancouver, Washington, with his wife Ellen, his mother-in-law and any visiting grandkids. He enjoys reading, writing, watching grand-children for story ideas and upgrading his computer -- all are never ending.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
August 15, 2022
The war is over. An age of exploration, using knowledge Ray Longknife gained from a computer on a frontier planet, has begun. It is a wild and wooly time with anyone with a spaceship or any government or corporation that can fund one sending explorers out to try to find a new Earth.
It is also a time when space pirates are out exploring and raiding and pillaging.
Ray Longknife and his wife Rita are both ministers of Wardhaven's Ministry of Exploration. They are doing their best to get mothballed ships space worthy and sending them out to explore. But too many ships are going missing. So now the Ministry is tasked with finding out what happened to them.
When a ship comes racing back shouting about aliens, Ray and Rita need to find out if humans have finally actually made contact with an alien race. The only problem is that the first contact has been made by pirates who are much more interested in the alien's gold planet than doing anything diplomatic.
Needless to say, humans haven't made a great first impression. Can Rita, Ray and their various crews find the aliens and make peaceful contact?
It is also a time when space pirates are out exploring and raiding and pillaging.
Ray Longknife and his wife Rita are both ministers of Wardhaven's Ministry of Exploration. They are doing their best to get mothballed ships space worthy and sending them out to explore. But too many ships are going missing. So now the Ministry is tasked with finding out what happened to them.
When a ship comes racing back shouting about aliens, Ray and Rita need to find out if humans have finally actually made contact with an alien race. The only problem is that the first contact has been made by pirates who are much more interested in the alien's gold planet than doing anything diplomatic.
Needless to say, humans haven't made a great first impression. Can Rita, Ray and their various crews find the aliens and make peaceful contact?
September 18, 2024
Unlike many of Mike Shepherd's fans, the Jump Universe books and the Iteeche War books in particular (Rita Longknife: Enemy Unknown and Rita Longknife: Enemy in Sight) were my first introduction to the Longknife universe... and what a universe it is!
The perils of first contact are well told in Rita Longknife: Enemy in Sight and I could NOT put the book down. The Iteeche alien race and culture are fascinating to me and I would love to read more about the origins between how they and humanity first interacted. Rita has to face some seriously tricky challenges at a time where space has become a 'Wild West' of sorts. On every level - the political, military, and emotional consequences of humanity's exploration into deep space are well told and with a pacing that made me want to read the whole book in a day.
I first got into military science fiction and space opera by way of Jack Campbell's books, but to be honest Mike Shepherd's books to me are just on another level. I look forward to reading more on the Iteeche and to meeting Kris Longknife for the first time in his other books.
The perils of first contact are well told in Rita Longknife: Enemy in Sight and I could NOT put the book down. The Iteeche alien race and culture are fascinating to me and I would love to read more about the origins between how they and humanity first interacted. Rita has to face some seriously tricky challenges at a time where space has become a 'Wild West' of sorts. On every level - the political, military, and emotional consequences of humanity's exploration into deep space are well told and with a pacing that made me want to read the whole book in a day.
I first got into military science fiction and space opera by way of Jack Campbell's books, but to be honest Mike Shepherd's books to me are just on another level. I look forward to reading more on the Iteeche and to meeting Kris Longknife for the first time in his other books.
December 3, 2017
Riveting
Pirates only care about money, self-preservation, and booze and not always in that order. Damn making first contact with a sentient race, just kill and get the money. Rita, Ray, and Trouble, plus a cast of thousands try to keep the lid on. Good story.
Pirates only care about money, self-preservation, and booze and not always in that order. Damn making first contact with a sentient race, just kill and get the money. Rita, Ray, and Trouble, plus a cast of thousands try to keep the lid on. Good story.
September 3, 2017
Love the series. Want twice as much.
January 31, 2018
Now we know how the Iteeche war started. This is a well-paced read.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews