Kay Hudson

Star Cruise: Outbreak continues Veronica Scott’s Sector Hub series with another tale of disaster on a cruise ship. Dr. Emily Shane, retired military surgeon with PTSD, has certainly never thought of working as a cruise ship doctor; she prefers keeping as busy as possible in the emergency rooms of her home planet, Harilon. But when an old friend of her father’s needs a replacement on short notice, Emily finds herself dragooned. It doesn’t hurt that Jake Dilon, the ship’s head of security who comes to escort her to the Nebula Zephyr, is a sympathetic fellow veteran.

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I’m not giving much away in saying that an unexpected, and unknown, disease strikes the ship, turning Emily’s near-vacation assignment into a struggle for survival. Emily works to solve the medical mystery with help from an assortment of passengers and crew, not the least of which is Maeve, the Ship’s Artificial Intelligence, herself a military veteran.

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I enjoy Scott’s novels because she delivers solid science fiction adventure with romance. Her characters develop their bonds while working together through tough situations. Star Cruise: Outbreak can certainly be read as a stand-alone story, but it also refers to events and characters from The Wreck of the Nebula Dream and Star Cruise: Marooned. (I enjoyed a few little genre references, too, including a chief engineer named Takkei, and Emily’s remark, “I’m a doctor, not a film agent.”)

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Hostage to the Stars can also be read as a stand-alone, as I just did, but it also brings back characters from Scott’s Mission to Mahjundar, which I haven’t read yet (but it’s waiting on my Kindle, along with Escape from Zulaire—can you tell I really enjoy Scott’s Sector Hub stories?). This tale begins on a freighter ship carrying a few passengers, including Sara Bridges, an archivist with little travel experience and no Kidnap & Ransom insurance. When pirates strike the ship, they carry Sara off, along with a high value hostage.

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Johnny Danvers, retired from the Sectors service, joins the rescue mission so that his cousin won’t have to; he has run missions to the pirate planet and expects that the worst he’ll have to deal with is the resentment of the rest of the team. But when the team retrieves the hostage and leaves Sara behind, Johnny stays behind to find her. And that’s only the beginning of their problems.

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I definitely recommended Veronica Scott’s fast-paced Sector Hub novels for anyone who enjoys science fiction romance toward the SF end of the spectrum.