This is a great beginning to a promising new series. An unseen alien presence creates space portals through which meteors are rained down on the Earth, seeking to completely annihilate it. Aion Scientific, the world’s largest, most powerful corporation, had designed and built the first permanent settlement outside the solar system on the far-distant planet Rasala several generations ago. The colony had flourished and now has a stable ecosystem with a population of about 10,000. To eventually transfer large numbers of humans, Aion planned to build a fleet and had already finished a gigantic spaceship, the Gaea Ark, to hold roughly 3 million people. When the attack started, they quickly finished their loading and took off, leaving the remaining billions to face extinction. The Ark was accompanied by several hundred military ships. They travelled in hypersleep for 20 years at FTL speeds, then woke everyone to convert power to sub-light speed in the Rasala system for about 3 years. The story begins with about a month remaining in their voyage.
Reginald Brown, Aion’s CEO, was dying of cancer, so he appointed his son, Reg Brown, Jr., to replace him for the voyage. The upper, more posh accommodations housed the corporation’s offices and living quarters for their staff. The lower levels of the ship housed the rest of the passengers in dreary, cramped quarters. They had been chosen only by lottery, without regard to needed skills or experience, and were quickly subverted by the organized criminal gang, the Kizoku, turning the area into slums and looking to take over the ship. Their military escort was tired of baby-sitting the Ark, and wanted to run the operation. Reg counted on support from Gideon Patel, his security chief, and Maddox, his ex-Special Forces assistant and hard-nosed bodyguard, to keep the peace, but they were sadly outnumbered by either entity, and were in deep yogurt if the two decided to work together. Then, the fleet was attacked by the “Emergers”, the aliens that wanted to annihilate the humans. The attack was thwarted, but at a great cost to the military ships. It was learned that the aliens had been alerted to human existence by Aion’s time travel tests, and that the attackers may be an advanced species of intelligent robots.
This story starts somewhat slowly, due to the introduction of so many characters and background events, but it quickly got up to speed, pulled me in and kept me reading to finish it in one sitting. It is well-written, with powerful characters and descriptions that made me feel I was right there in the ship with them. I have enjoyed over three dozen books by these great authors, separately and together, and this is another winner! I received an ARC – this review is my honest opinion – I highly recommend it. I bought a copy to support this outstanding team, and am eager to read the rest of this promising series.