Reseña del libro "Gratiam: Gargantua: A new Outreach Novel (en Inglés)"
(AE 138/200) Two generations of spies collaborate, 60 years apart, on the case of a missing Survey Ship, and its Navy support vessel.Zheng He finds himself, fresh out of ReJuve, sent by Naval Intelligence to sing on Gargantua, in high profile concerts, as cover for an offbeat mission to recruit his old friend Yves Moutine, hero of the May Day Mayday on Bellerophon. Yves is now an adult, and Zheng’s boss, Admiral Potemkin, like certain Galactic Catholic Church officials, wants the man to run for planetary President of that colony.While still en route to Gargantua, Zheng He meets the aging hero of the early New Outreach, Joachim Bolstrom, who tasks him with yet another mission. That rich industrialist and former spy has found out that on his trip to Alpha he sired Duchess Dora of Caernarvon, and wants Zheng to tell her the truth of her ancestry.Bolstrom, to repay him, provides Zheng with old secret files, finally telling the folk singer the long-withheld story of his mother, Zhi Ruo, and that of Pierre Moutine, the father of Yves, as well.In these files, including holos from Zhi Ruo’s career, and that of her trainee Pierre Moutine, Zheng sees the parents sent to Gargantua, his own current destination, in an attempt to find a lone survivor of the lost NONSS Indestructible, Petty Officer FC Willard Tompkins. Unbeknownst to their boss, the younger Captain Potemkin, that mystery man is carrying an artifact which might have been produced by another intelligent life form, the first such race, outside of Man, to be discovered in our galaxy.Picking up this old trail, Zheng He learns about this last mission of the parents, which ended in disaster, and his interest is piqued.After an attempt is made on Zheng’s life at his first big concert, the folk singing spy recruits Yves into joining him to find an artifact his mother had left behind during her last mission, the action which brought grief to Yves’ father Pierre Moutine. This item, though never mentioned in the official report, is a black box showing the last location of the Indestructible, left on Martel's Anvil, nearly lost in their parents’ last battle there.Does Potemkin want it retrieved? If Zheng He does this, what will this hidden knowledge of another intelligent species do to the Galactic New Outreach?And who else is involved, trying to stop their investigations?
