The Sagittarius Command (Tour of the Merrimack Series #3) Book

Third in the USS Merrimack series. The year is 2445 CE, and Earth and the Palatine Empire (a neo-Roman group that broke away from Earth control a few generations ago) have declared a temporary truce in order to combat the Hive. The Hive cannot be reasoned with, cannot be stopped for long, and they will never, ever stop coming. Because they are hungry. And all life is food.

I read these as really excellent Star Trek:TOS fanfic, with Captain Farragut as a smarter, kinder version of James T Kirk and Augustus as a creepier version of Spock. I have an unfortunately huge crush on Augustus, who is filled to the brim with rage and controlled by an intellect the size of a planet and a loyalty stronger than death. He gets his kicks psychologically torturing his cohorts--Farragut is the only person he has ever met who can deal with his mind games. In fact, Farragut misses Augustus's attempts to rip apart his psyche once he's gone. OTP! I have less interest in the other relationship in the books: between Steele and one of his marines, the sexually free, physically aggressive Kerry Blue. They are both complete numbskulls, and I wish they'd just get together and stop bothering me with Steele's constant "oh how I love her soft femininity" rumblings.

It took me a few chapters to get into this book--Meluch's style sounds like a particularly terse cowboy--but once I got past the sentence fragments and back into the adventure, I was hooked. I read it in a single sitting, unable to put it down to eat.