The Patterns of Chaos

The Patterns of Chaos is a science-fiction novel by Colin Kapp in which Commander Bron from Terra has been given implants through which a monitoring team can see what he sees, hear what he hears and talk to him. Earth commando place him where they hope he will be able to find out the coordinates of a rival space empire, the Destroyers. A new science, "the patterns of Chaos" allows predictions of events with an accuracy that was not before possible. Bron turn out to be the target of an alien murder campaign that was hatched 700 million years ago. He succeeds in joining together earth and destroyer fleets and beats the aliens. Good writing, interesting thoughts and ideas, but especially later on in the book rather gratuitous shoot-em-up stuff and the book degenerates a bit into space opera at that point.