Hallelujah

Though AE 315 will be remembered in Galactic history as the year of the Khowloon Incursion, for Lieutenant Yves Moutine Albolina it began as the year he lost his mother on Bellerophon, and, on his way back from bereavement leave, learned of the death of his great grandfather, Yves Moutine, hero of the May Day Mayday, and planetary President, the man after whom he was named, and under whose shadow young Yves has lived all his life. Instead of being restored to his former post, he is made a Lieutenant Commander by the acting head of Naval Intelligence, tasked with taking charge of the new Terran Naval Research Vessel Eternal Peace, & sent to Khowloon, to investigate the origin of mysterious radio signals from a Survey team lost 180 years before. Then, sent for a final briefing by Zheng He, a spy more famous for a borderline folk singing career, Yves is given an inheritance left him by his great grandfather; a set of mysterious stones originally found by the same lost Survey team, perhaps the only potential evidence yet of other intelligent life in the galaxy. Could things get crazier?For instance, could an Inner Worlds Federation armada be secretly assembling off Khowloon for a strike against the Republic's base on Spiral Center?The Khowloon Incursion must be studied, not just in terms of the strategies and tactics of both sides of the conflict, but in the underpinnings of Federation thinking, those axioms underlying their choices, and to what degree these are on Yves Moutine Albolina's mind when he is forced into action, in split seconds, as it becomes apparent his unarmed research vessel has stumbled into something that others, like ancient interstellar gangster Mei Hsiu Chen, wish kept secret. The majority of Man's troubles, up to this point in history, came from Humanity itself, in the form of pirates, Alphan militarism, or similar follies from the newly rising Clan Elrido of Chimera. Will this be the turning point?