Galactic Convoy: this second novel in Bill Baldwin’s Helmsman Saga is a Military-Science-Fiction novel about intra-galactic competition and conflict. First published in 1987, it chronicles the adventures of StarSailor and extraordinary Helmsman Wilf Brim during an epoch of discord and outright war among various star-nations—within a galaxy that could be a far-future version of the one in which we live.

This special, “Director’s Cut” Edition is heavily re-written, a la George Lucas’ rewrite of the Star Wars Trilogy, to bring it more in line with later novels in the series, as well as existing “Director’s Cut” Editions of The Helmsman, The Trophy; the five other “Director’s Cut” editions to come—as well as the continuation novel now in the works: The Turning Tide.

Galactic Convoy opens as Brim—now a Lieutenant in the Imperial Fleet—is assigned to the military team monitoring the construction and outfitting of I.F.S. Defiant, first starship in a whole new class of light cruisers. Many of the characters from Brim’s first ship, I.F.S. Truculent, carry over into the new adventure.

Defiant experiences serious growing pains before her commissioning, but eventually sets off for duty at the sprawling Fleet base in the exotic city of Atalanta on the watery planet Haelic, orbiting the great star Hador (Hador-Haelic). Here, as his relationship with Princess Margot Effer’wyck runs into problems, he meets Claudia Valemont and begins a new romance—as well as survives a number of dangerous missions.

The novel ends with Brim and I.F.S. Defiant engaged in an interstellar battle between the Imperial forces and the League of Dark Stars that is so all-encompassing, it changes the whole course of history—and turns on a single element of technology so ancient that no one can recall its exact origins.