In the late 1970s, I believe it was, R. M. Meluch made a more or less dramatic appearance on the science fiction scene with a series of novels that were conceptually surprising, beautifully written, and often highly poetic. After a ten-year hiatus, she is here again with a new series, Tour of the Merrimack. Wolf Star is the second in that series.
The Merrimack is one of the two most powerful ships in the Earth space forces. It is, in fact, a ship of the U.S. space fleet, deployed against Earth's most problematic enemy, Palatine, a former colony world peopled by Roman Imperialists. The war is a matter of ideology, perceived racial and social superiority, galactic geography and economics. As the novel opens, there are rumors that the Romans are building a counterpart to the U.S. Shotgun, a displacement engine that allows the U.S. to move an entire ship past Roman space in no time flat (literally). The Merrimack, under the command of John Farragut, happens on a Roman convoy that looks likely to be supplying one of the construction sites for this project. What starts as an easy raid turns into a nasty surprise for Farragut and his crew, including the Marines who man the ship's fighters: the Roman have the Merrimack's codes, including IFF, computer overrides, the works. Worse, they have the Mack's resonance harmonics that enable instantaneous communication with other points in space, which means nothing that Farragut can do will throw them off. Being Farragut, he comes up with something, but realizes an unpleasant truth: the Romans have captured the Mack's sister ship, the Monitor. Even worse, he soon discovers that the Romans are fighting a two-front war, the other front being against an alien species they have dubbed the Hive, which detects pulses in the resonance, learns as a group to counter human weapons, and literally eats everything organic in its path. The Hive is headed right at the Roman home world; Earth is on the same route, and not much farther down the line.
This is one of those wonderful series that comes up every once in a while, a classic space opera with vivid characters, most of them larger than life, a plot twist every few pages, and nonstop action. Meluch is an exemplary writer, keeping a strong narrative going throughout, filled with enough detail to let you paint the picture in your mind while you get on with the story.
She also has a twist in this series, but you're not going to realize what it is unless you've read The Myriad, the first volume. Farragut and the Roman patterner Augustus know they have met before, but neither of them remembers the real circumstances of their first meeting: Wolf Star takes place in an alternate universe from The Myriad due to a temporal anomaly created by the ruler of a planet the U.S. ship was trying to rescue from the Hive. There's a time loop involved, a displaced reality, and a couple of other things I haven't figured out how to describe, but the way she's treated it, you won't know it if you don’t read the first volume (which is equally good and equally fast-paced, so go ahead and do that).
This may bother some readers, but for myself, I can hardly wait to see how she's going to resolve it. Sagittarius Command, the third volume, should be out in paperback soon. I can hardly wait.
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