This book was utterly unexpected and so, so much fun. I can't even remember how it wound up in my kindle, but thank goodness it did. Wow! I'd been hankering for some good spaceship battles, and this book came out of nowhere to deliver. When the end comes, the old girl gives as good as she gets. That and her crew's creativity help them protect multiple human colonies from certain annihilation. Her multiple redundant systems, her thick armor, and even her antiquated rail guns save her skin time and time again. The Blue Jacket is bruised and battered, but she's game for the contest. The two ships engage in a series of savage engagements across multiple systems. Jumping to the next system they find another devastated system - and this time there is a massive, alien ship in orbit. All two million inhabitants are gone as are the cities and towns. Blue Jacket finds a devastated colony planet. Surprise, surprise! Things do not go according to plan. And there is no room for an Earther as captain in the new navy. There is no need for an old, relic like the Blue Jacket in an era of budget cuts. When they return the ship will be salvaged for scrap. The Admiral also lets Wolfe know that this will be Blue Jacket's last mission. They are to shuttle an arrogant politician's aide to an unspecified location. Wolfe and Blue Jacket are rushed out of dry dock on a seemingly pointless mission. The people who remained behind actually still fought the occasional police action or ground war! They just weren't as bright and enlightened as the off-worlders. It is common knowledge that only the best and the brightest were siphoned off to settle the stars. He's from old Earth rather than the new colonies. Like the Blue Jacket, her commander, Jackson Wolfe, is a misfit in the new navy as well. The point being that Bluejacket despite her age was intended to take a punch. The old girl even carries a battery of rail guns designed for close ship-to-ship combat rather than lobbing missiles across mind-boggling distances. Multiple, redundant systems run through her bones. Massive plating and shields line her hull. Although built after the last war, it was still built with war in mind. The Blue Jacket is an anachronism of that more lethal age. The new, sleek, ultra-modern ships = while powerful - are built more for shuttling civilians about space than for honest-to-goodness in your face combat. With no shooting war in over a hundred years, the interstellar navies of the loosely aligned human states, atrophy. With unlimited resources and unlimited planets to colonize, the wars of the twenty-first and twenty-second centuries are a distant, uncomfortable memory of a darker, more savage past. Faster than Light travel has been a Godsend to humanity.

Joshua dalzelle black fleet series