Book Excerpt: Star Trek Destiny Gods of Night

Next month the big Star Trek crossover book event of the year kicks off with David Mack’s "Star Trek Destiny: Gods of Night." Pocket Books has just released an excerpt from this first book of the upcoming trilogy.
[see below, w/ spoilers]

 

Excerpt from "Star Trek Destiny: Gods of Night"
 

1

Captain Ezri Dax stood on the bow of the Columbia and made a silent wish that returning to the wreck wouldn’t prove to be a mistake, at a time when Starfleet couldn’t afford any.

Engineers and science specialists from her crew swarmed over the derelict Warp 5 vessel. Its husk was half interred by the tireless shifting of the desert, much as she had remembered it from her last visit, as Jadzia Dax, more than seven years earlier. The afternoon suns beat down with an almost palpable force, and shimmering waves of heat distortion rippled above the wreck’s sand-scoured hull, which coruscated with reflected light. Dax’s hands, normally cold like those of other joined Trill, were warm and slick with perspiration.

Lieutenant Gruhn Helkara, Dax’s senior science officer on the Starship Aventine, ascended the ramp through the rent in the hull and approached her with a smile. It was an expression not often seen on the skinny Zakdorn’s droop-ridged face.

"Good news, Captain," he said as soon as he was within polite conversational distance. "The converter’s working. Leishman’s powering up the Columbia‘s computer now. I thought you might want to come down and have a look."

"No thanks, Gruhn," Dax said. "I’d prefer to stay topside."

One of the advantages of being a captain was that Ezri no longer had to explain herself to her shipmates if she didn’t want to. It spared her the potential embarrassment of admitting that her walk-through of the Columbia earlier that day had left her profoundly creeped out. While touring D Deck, she’d been all but certain that she saw the same spectral blue flashes that had lurked along the edges of her vision seven years earlier.

To her silent chagrin, multiple sensor sweeps and tricorder checks had detected nothing out of the ordinary on the Columbia. Maybe it had been just her imagination or a trick of the light, but she’d felt the same galvanic tingle on her skin that Kira had described, and she’d been overcome by a desire to get out of the wreck’s stygian corridors as quickly as possible.

She’d doubled the security detail on the planet but had said nothing about thinking the ship might be haunted. One of the drawbacks of being a captain was the constant need to maintain a semblance of rationality, and seeing ghosts didn’t fit the bill — not one bit.

Helkara squinted at the scorched-white sky and palmed a sheen of sweat from his high forehead, up through his thatch of black hair. "By the gods," he said, breaking their long, awkward silence, "did it actually get hotter out here?"

"Yes," Dax said, "it did." She nodded toward the bulge of the ship’s bridge module. "Walk with me." The duo strolled up the gentle slope of the Columbia‘s hull as she continued. "Where are you with the metallurgical analysis?"

"Almost done, sir. You were — " He caught himself. "Sorry. Jadzia Dax was right. We’ve detected molecular distortion in the spaceframe consistent with intense subspatial stress."

Dax was anxious for details. "What was the cause?"

"Hard to be sure," Helkara said.

She frowned. "In other words, you don’t know."

"Well, I’m not prepared to make that admission yet. I may not have enough data to form a hypothesis, but my tests have ruled out several obvious answers."

"Such as?"

"Extreme warp velocities," Helkara said as they detoured around a large crevasse where two adjacent hull plates had buckled violently inward. "Wormholes. Quantum slipstream vortices. Iconian gateways. Time travel. Oh, and the Q."

She sighed. "Doesn’t leave us much to go on."

"No, it doesn’t," he said. "But I love a challenge."

Dax could tell that he was struggling not to outpace her. His legs were longer than hers, and he tended to walk briskly. She quickened her step. "Keep at it, Gruhn," she said as they reached the top of the saucer. "Something moved this ship clear across the galaxy. I need to know what it was, and I need to know soon."

"Understood, Captain." Helkara continued aft, toward a gaggle of engineers who were assembling a bulky assortment of machinery that would conduct a more thorough analysis of the Columbia‘s bizarrely distressed subatomic structures.

Memories drifted through Ezri’s thoughts like sand devils over the dunes. Jadzia had detailed the profound oddities that the Defiant‘s sensors had found in the Columbia‘s hull, and she had informed Starfleet of her theory that the readings might be a clue to a new kind of subspatial phenomenon. Admiral Howe at Starfleet Research and Development had assured her that her report would be investigated, but when the Dominion War erupted less than two months later, her call for the salvage of the Columbia had been sidelined — relegated to a virtual dustbin of defunct projects at Starfleet Command.

And it stayed there, forgotten for almost eight years, until Ezri Dax gave Starfleet a reason to remember it. The salvage of the Columbia had just become a priority for the same reason that it had been scuttled: there was a war on. Seven years ago the enemy had been the Dominion. This time it was the Borg.

Five weeks earlier the attacks had begun, bypassing all of the Federation’s elaborate perimeter defenses and early warning networks. Without any sign of transwarp activity, wormholes, or gateways, Borg cubes had appeared in the heart of Federation space and launched surprise attacks on several worlds. The Aventine had found itself in its first-ever battle, defending the Acamar system from eradication by the Borg. When the fighting was over, more than a third of the ship’s crew — including its captain and first officer — had perished, leaving second officer Lieutenant Commander Ezri Dax in command.

One week and three Borg attacks later, Starfleet made Ezri captain of the Aventine. By then she’d remembered Jadzia’s hypothesis about the Columbia, and she reminded Starfleet of her seven-year-old report that a Warp 5 ship had, in the roughly ten years after it had disappeared, somehow journeyed more than seventy-five thousand light-years — a distance that it would have taken the Columbia more than three hundred fifty years to traverse under its own power.

Ezri had assured Starfleet Command that solving the mystery of how the Columbia had crossed the galaxy without using any of the known propulsion methods could shed some light on how the Borg had begun doing the same thing. It had been a bit of an exaggeration on her part. She couldn’t promise that her crew would be able to make a conclusive determination of how the Columbia had found its way to this remote, desolate resting place, or that there would be any link whatsoever to the latest series of Borg incursions of Federation space. It had apparently taken the Columbia years to get here, while the Borg seemed to be making nearly instantaneous transits from their home territory in the Delta Quadrant. The connection was tenuous at best.

All Dax had was a hunch, and she was following it. If she was right, it would be a brilliant beginning for her first command. If she was wrong, this would probably be her last command.

Her moment of introspection was broken by a soft vibration and a melodious double tone from her combadge. "Aventine to Captain Dax," said her first officer, Commander Sam Bowers.

"Go ahead, Sam," she said.

He sounded tired. "We just got another priority message from Starfleet Command," he said. "I think you might want to take this one. It’s Admiral Nechayev, and she wants a reply."

And the axe falls, Dax brooded. "All right, Sam, beam me up. I’ll take it in my ready room."

"Aye, sir. Stand by for transport."

Dax turned back to face the bow of the Columbia and suppressed the dread she felt at hearing of Nechayev’s message. It could be anything: a tactical briefing, new information from Starfleet Research and Development about the Columbia, updated specifications for the Aventine’s experimental slipstream drive…but Dax knew better than to expect good news.

As she felt herself enfolded by the transporter beam, she feared that once again she would have to abandon the Columbia before making its secrets her own.

 

Commander Sam Bowers hadn’t been aboard the Aventine long enough to know the names of more than a handful of its more than seven hundred fifty personnel, so he was grateful that Ezri had recruited a number of its senior officers from among her former crewmates on Deep Space 9. He had already accepted Dax’s invitation to serve as her first officer when he’d learned that Dr. Simon Tarses would be coming aboard with him, as the ship’s new chief medical officer, and that Lieutenant Mikaela Leishman would be transferring from Defiant to become the Aventine‘s new chief engineer.

He tried not to dwell on the fact that their predecessors had all recently been killed in fierce battles with the Borg. Better to focus, he decided, on the remarkable opportunity this transfer represented.

The Aventine was one of seven new, experimental Vesta-class starships. It had been designed as a multimission explorer, and its state-of-the-art weaponry made it one of the few ships in the fleet able to mount even a moderate defense against the Borg. Its sister ships were defending the Federation’s core systems — Sol, Vulcan, Andor, and Tellar — while the Aventine made its jaunt through the Bajoran wormhole to this uninhabited world in the Gamma Quadrant, for what Bowers couldn’t help but think of as a desperate long shot of a mission.

He turned a corner, expecting to find a turbolift, only to arrive at a dead end. It’s not just the crew you don’t know, he chided himself as he turned back and continued looking for the nearest turbolift junction. Three weeks aboard and you’re still getting turned around on the lower decks. Snap out of it, man.

The sound of muted conversation led Bowers farther down the corridor. A pair of junior officers, a brown-bearded male Tellarite and an auburn-haired human woman, chatted in somber tones in front of a turbolift portal. The Tellarite glanced at Bowers and stopped talking. His companion peeked past him, saw the reason for his silence, and followed suit. Bowers halted behind the duo, who tried to appear casual and relaxed while also avoiding all eye contact with him.

Bowers didn’t take it personally. He had seen this kind of behavior before, during the Dominion War. These two officers had served on the Aventine during its battle at Acamar five weeks earlier; more than two hundred and fifty of their shipmates had died in that brief engagement. Now, even though Bowers was the new first officer and a seasoned veteran with nearly twenty-five years of experience in Starfleet, in their eyes he was, before all else, merely one of "the replacements."

Respect has to be earned, he reminded himself. Just be patient. He caught a fleeting sidelong glance by the Tellarite. "Good morning," Bowers said, trying not to sound too chipper.

The Tellarite ensign was dour. "It’s afternoon, sir."

Well, it’s a start, Bowers told himself. Then the turbolift door opened, and he followed the two junior officers inside. The woman called for a numbered deck in the engineering section, and then Bowers said simply, "Bridge." He felt a bit of guilt for inconveniencing them; he and the two engineers were headed in essentially opposite directions, but because of his rank, billet, and destination, the turbolift hurtled directly to the bridge, with the two younger officers along for the ride.

He glanced back at the young woman and offered her a sheepish grin. "Sorry," he said.

"It’s okay, sir, it happens," she replied. The same thing had happened to Bowers countless times when he had been a junior officer. It was just one of many petty irritations that everyone had to learn to cope with while living on a starship.

The doors parted with a soft hiss, and Bowers stepped onto the bridge of the Aventine, his demeanor one of pure confidence and authority. The beta-shift bridge officers were at their posts. Soft, semimusical feedback tones from their consoles punctuated the low thrumming of the engines through the deck.

Lieutenant Lonnoc Kedair, the ship’s chief of security, occupied the center seat at the aft quarter of the bridge. The statuesque Takaran woman stood and relinquished the chair as Bowers approached from her left. "Sir."

He nodded. "I’m ready to relieve you, Lieutenant." A more formal approach to bridge protocol had been one of Bowers’s conditions for accepting the job, and Captain Dax had agreed.

"I’m ready to be relieved, sir," Kedair replied, following the old-fashioned protocol for a changing of the watch. She picked up a padd from the arm of the command seat and handed the slim device to Bowers. "Salvage operations for the Columbia are proceeding on schedule," she continued. "No contacts in sensor range and all systems nominal, though there have been some reports from the planet’s surface that I want to check out."

Bowers looked up from the padd. "What kind of reports?"

A pained grin creased her scaly face. "The kind that make me think our teams are more fatigued than they’re letting on."

He grinned and tabbed through a few screens of data on the padd to find the communication logs from the away teams on the planet. "What gives you that impression?"

"A pair of incident reports, filed eleven hours apart, each by a different engineer." She seemed embarrassed to continue. "They claim the wreck of the Columbia is haunted, sir."

"Maybe it is," Bowers said with a straight face. "Lord knows I’ve seen stranger things than that."

Kedair’s face turned a darker shade of green. "I don’t plan to indulge the crew’s belief in the supernatural. I just want to make certain none of our engineers have become delusional."

"Fair enough," Bowers said. He glanced backward over his shoulder. "Is the captain in her ready room?"

"Aye, sir," Kedair said. "She’s been on the comm with Admiral Nechayev for the better part of the last half hour."

That doesn’t bode well, Bowers realized. "Very good," he said to Kedair. "Lieutenant, I relieve you."

"I stand relieved," Kedair said. "Permission to go ashore, sir?"

"Granted. But keep it brief, we might need you back on the watch for gamma shift."

She nodded. "Understood, sir." Then she turned and moved in quick, lanky strides to the turbolift.

No sooner had Bowers settled into the center seat than a double chirrup from the overhead speaker preceded Captain Dax’s voice: "Dax to Commander Bowers. Please report to my ready room." The channel clicked off. Bowers stood and straightened his tunic before he turned to the beta-shift tactical officer, a Deltan woman who had caught his eye every day since he had come aboard. "Lieutenant Kandel," he said in a dry, professional tone, "you have the conn."

"Aye, sir," Kandel replied. She nodded to a junior officer at the auxiliary tactical station. The young man moved to take over Kandel’s post as she crossed the bridge to occupy the center seat. It all transpired with smooth, quiet efficiency.

Like clockwork, Bowers mused with satisfaction.

He walked toward Dax’s ready room. The portal slid open as he neared, and it closed behind him after he’d entered. Captain Dax stood behind her desk and gazed through a panoramic window of transparent aluminum at the dusky sphere of the planet below.

Though he’d known Dax for years, Bowers still marveled at how young she looked. Ezri was more than a dozen years his junior, and he had to remind himself sometimes that the Dax symbiont living inside her — whose consciousness was united with hers — gave her the resources of several lifetimes, the benefit of hundreds of years of experience.

Since they were alone, Bowers dropped the air of formality that he maintained in front of the crew. "What’s goin’ on? Is Starfleet pulling the plug on us?"

"They might as well be," Dax said. She sighed and turned to face him. She sounded annoyed. "We have twenty-four hours to finish our salvage and head back to the wormhole. Admiral Jellico wants us to be part of the fleet defending Trill."

"Why the change of plans?"

Dax entered commands into her desktop’s virtual interface with a few gentle taps. A holographic projection appeared above the desk. According to the identification tags along its bottom, it was a visual sensor log from the Starfleet vessel U.S.S. Amargosa. There wasn’t much to see — just a brief, colorful volley of weapons fire with a Borg cube followed by a flash of light, a flurry of gray static, and then nothing.

"The Amargosa is one of five ships lost in the last sixteen hours," Dax said. "All in the Onias Sector, and all to the Borg. No one knows if the same Borg cube destroyed all five ships."

"If it was the work of one cube, it might be another scout," Bowers said. "Another test of our defenses."

"And if it wasn’t," Ezri said, "then the invasion just started — and we’re out here, playing in the dirt." She shook her head in frustration and sat down at her desk. "Either way, we have to break orbit by tomorrow, so we can forget about raising the Columbia. We need a new mission profile."

Bowers crossed his arms and ruminated aloud, "Our main objective is to figure out how the Columbia got here, and our best chance of doing that is to analyze its computer core. We could beam it up, but then we’d have to re-create its command interfaces here, and that could take days, since it wasn’t what we’d planned on. But if Leishman and Helkara’s adapters work, we can leave it in situ and download its memory banks by morning."

"And then we can parse the data on our way back," Dax said, finishing his thought. "Not my first choice, but it’ll have to do." She looked up at him. "Let’s get on it. Before we leave this planet, I want to know what happened to that ship."

 

In the darkness, there was a hunger.

The need was a silent pain in the blank haze of awareness — a yearning for heat, for life, for solidity.

Mind and presence, the very essence of itself lay trapped in stone, its freedom a dream surrendered and forgotten along with its name and memory.

It was nothing but the unslaked thirst of that moment, unburdened by identity or the obligations of a past. All it knew were paths of least resistance, the push and pull of primal forces, and the icy void at its own core — the all-consuming maw.

For so long there had been nothing but the cold of empty spaces, the weak sustenance of photons. A momentary surge of energy had roused it from a deathly repose and then slipped away, untasted. Now, in a dreamlike blink, it had returned.

At long last it was time.

After aeons of being denied, the hunger would be fed.

 

——————————————

Covers

STAR TREK DESTINY: GODS OF NIGHT (September 2008)


"Star Trek: Destiny: Gods of Night" available for pre-order at Amazon
 

STAR TREK DESTINY: MERE MORTALS (October 2008)


"Star Trek: Destiny: Mere Mortals"available for pre-order at Amazon
 

STAR TREK DESTINY: LOST SOULS (November 2008)


"Star Trek: Destiny: Lost Souls"available for pre-order at Amazon

More Destiny to come
TrekMovie has full coverage for Destiny coming up including an interview with the author, excerpts. Also look for early reviews of each of the three books.

Excerpt from PocketBooks
 

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It all seems too much crossover, but I suppose that’s the fun of this particular line of books. Not my thing, but I hope those who enjoyed the books so far will continue to do so.

In 7 years, Ezri goes from “Ensign” to “Captain”??? When Voyager was on, Harry Kim stayed an Ensign for the entire 7 year trip. It took Tuvok a few decades to go from Lt. to Lt. Cmdr.

Could someone explain to me why the novels insist on referring to ships as the Starship Enterprise or Starship Aventine or Starship Whatever, with the word Starship capitalized and italicized as though it’s part of ship’s name? This is flat out incorrect and it’s bothered me for years. Starship is the type of vessel, not part of its name! We don’t refer to the Aircraft Carrier Nimitz or the Battleship Missouri. This is a silly, silly thing to do in Star Trek novels. At first I thought it was a typo, but it’s been far too consistent to be unintentional. Can’t someone give the editors a copy of Strunk & White? Or maybe some naval addendum thereto?

Will Riker was an ensign at the time of the Pegasus incident in early 2378, and was offered his first command (the Drake) at around the end of 2363, just before he accepted the post as Picard’s first officer. That’s less than six years from ensign to (potentially) captain, and that’s just going through the ranks under normal circumstances. Ezri went from an ensign in early 2375 to a lieutenant commander in early 2381 — one less promotion than Riker got in that same interval, and two less than he was offered — and then got a battlefield promotion to captain under extraordinary circumstances.

3: “Could someone explain to me why the novels insist on referring to ships as the Starship Enterprise or Starship Aventine or Starship Whatever, with the word Starship capitalized and italicized as though it’s part of ship’s name? This is flat out incorrect and it’s bothered me for years.”

It bothers us authors and our editors too, but it’s a trademark or copyright thing, something the studio insists on.

CAPTAIN Ezri Dax?!? I know that there’s a suspension of disbelief involved here, but…well…c’mon! LOL

In that case, let me amend my previous comment to “Can’t someone give the studio’s lawyers at least a college-level education?”

I think the suspension of disbelief has to be justified by the fact that the Federation is at war on the heels of another costly war (against the Dominion). War tends to bring on fast promotion (at least as far as I know from the Napoleonic Wars through World War II) as senior officers were killed in action. Ensign to Captain in seven years is quite fast, but considering Picard’s history (something like Captain by age 28 – that would be Ensign to Captain in seven years), and that not being during a war, it appears that Starfleet is full of examples of rapid promotion.

The stories look like fun, but I have to agree that something just feels out of place for me with Ezri Dax being a captain. Captain Worf, maybe. Captain O’Brien, possibly. Hell, fish Sisko outta whatever etherea he exists in and get him back to work.

Wish I paid more attention to DS9. It is to my chagrin that I did not.

Actually, unless I’m forgetting my history, Ezri made captain the same way Picard did. Wasn’t Picard a lieutenant commander and second officer on the Stargazer when the captain and first officer were killed? And Starfleet gave him a two-step promotion to captain and command of the Stargazer? Of course I could be dead wrong, and Picard may have taken longer to go from ensign to lieutenant commander than Dax did. Personally I have more of an issue with Ezri in command of a ship because of her personality than her Starfleet tenure. She didn’t strike me as strong command material on DS9. Plus she was a counselor – not exactly the normal path to a quick command.

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

Bingo #10. You hit it square on the head. It’s not the quick rise through the ranks that seems off, it’s that she doesn’t seem to be made of the same metal that our favorite fictional captains are. For lack of a better word, she ‘aint “captainy”.

And #11

Wake the hell up. Your rude snoring is interrupting our attempt at civil discourse. Perhaps the thread with the redone poster colors will be more to your liking, all bright and colorful and such.

Hey, at least that’s actual news. If anyone can get excited about a book with Ezri Dax as a Captain, let me know.

Here’s the way that the actual US Navy works. You graduate from the Academy as an ensign. From there on, it takes about 4 years to get to each new rank.

This was Ezri’s Track:

Graduated as an Ensign.
Promoted to Lieutenant because of the Dax symbiont.
Received a promotion to LC
Battle Field Promotion to Captain

All of that can easily happen in 6 years. Sure, it’s not the best way, but it works. Sure she’s not the best command material, but it is still a logical progression. It’ll be interesting to see where this takes us.

I’m hoping that this will bring the TNG Relaunch out the quagmire that Before Dishonor drug it into.

2, Harry Kim stayed an ensign because there wasn’t any room left in the command structure. Every Voyager crewman was given a promotion upon returning home. Hence, Admiral Janeway.

#13 Beam Me Up

The release of a Trek book is news to some of us.

The point was that if it doesn’t interest you, why do you feel the need to comment in a manner that let’s all of us who are talking about a book with Ezri Dax as captain feel beneath you? The act is called “thread p*ssing” and is cosidered not very cool.

However, if you feel that you can add to the conversation or perhaps have a feeling about why you think that character is or isn’t fit to be a captain, or even if you like or dislike the book, please, join the fun.

I too fail to see Ezri as a captain. Granted, she should have the ability, since she has the massive knowledge of the Dax symbiont in her system, but like the others have said, she never seemed like she had it in her. However, I could learn to live with it.

But I’m not very excited about new Trek novels anymore. I’ve read too many bad ones lately. I have been unable to pin down exactly what it is that I dislike so much, but it seems to be a rare book nowadays that can interest me as much as the old novels of the 80s and 90s used to. (Granted, there were stinkers back then too, but you get my point.)

I think, in most cases, it’s the fact that so many novels nowadays are series. Why can’t they just make stand-alone novels anymore? Why does everything have to be a “relaunch” or a “crossover”? What ever happened to just telling a heretofore unknown story, without trying to promote everyone, transfer them to a new post, or uncover some new threat to all the universe?

Another thing that annoys me is when they have a series wherein each novel is written by a different author. Did anyone read the “Wagon Train to the Stars” series? (I think that was the name of it) That’s a perfect example of what I’m talking about. The authors didn’t seem to care about finishing each others’ stories, or keeping characters that others had created, and in some cases, the character seemed to change personalities between novels. I think if you’re going to make a series, have just one author write the whole thing.

Then again, you have series like Peter David’s “New Frontier” that ARE written all by one person that I still dislike, so that’s no guarantee.

In any case, I’m rambling now. My point was, this novel, as is the case with most new Trek novels, fails to excite my interest. I miss the “good ol days” of Trek novels, and I wish they’d come again . . .

Desert planet, Tattooinne? I expected C-3PO and R2-D2 to show up. “Greetings, I am C-3PO and this is my counterpart R2-D2. Are you with the Alliance?”

#16 Vorus

What were some of your favorite novels from the old pulp Trek days? I’ve read so many of them that they start to blend together, plot-wise.

A two book series that I kind of enjoyed that was recent (well, maybe not so much=2000) was Greg Cox’s Eugenics War books about the rise and fall of Khan. He was pretty clever in using actual historic events to explain his fictional Trek goings-on. And there are other neat appearances by some familiar and some just touched upon Trek characters.

Ezri has become a different character in the DS9 relaunch books, Season 7 of DS9 for her is described in the books as her getting used to having these memories that aren’t hers.

She gets stronger all the time in the books and transfers to command in the first story of the relaunch and becomes first officer on the Defiant and 2nd officer on the station.

What’s more interesting to me is why she accepts the promotion to Lt. Commander and leaves the station…

How long do we think it’s going to take the DS9 books to catch up?

#17

I saw on another board (no names) where it was pointed out that Tatooine was the most frequently visited and busiest back-water planet in the entire universe. That was in response to the release of The Clone Wars. Which looks like dung.

Sorry for the derail.

A fan made ST/SW crossover would more fun than some of the Tr’Dreck I’ve witnessed.

@ 18

One of my favorites was “The Final Reflection”. Others were “The Great Starship Race”, “The Romulan Way”, “My Enemy, My Ally”. “Rules of Engagement” and “Prime Directive” are other good TOS novels.

Joe Haldeman’s TOS novels were not nearly as good, nor was John Ford’s second TOS work, “How much for just the planet?”

Among TNG and DS9 novels, there are less that I like. But I did enjoy DS9 “The Seige” (I think that’s the title. A changeling goes on a killing spree.) and a few others whose titles I can’t recall. I also enjoyed most of the early TNG novels. (Although I disliked the very first TNG novel “Ghost Ship”.)

My sister read the Eugenics Wars series and really liked them, but I haven’t read them yet, beyond a brief perusal of book two. (But I did like the little bit that I did read.)

18, 22: Loved all the Rihannsu stuff (re My Enemy, My Ally). Must disagree about “How Much for Just the Planet?”, which I thought was hilarious. A very lighthearded look at Trek to be sure, but who could ever forget that golf game with Scotty and the Klingons, Chekhov as the caddy, on the exploding golf course? Pure genius. And the demented computer that kept spewing milkshakes? Come on!

:)

Borg = I won’t be buying.

Spockanella,

Rihannsu is an AMAZING series! I’m in (and have been for the last 2 years) the process of reading the big white “Bloodwing Chronicles.” I just haven’t had time to read it all in one straight shot. I’ve read about 2 dozen in between, but not the entire thing. My plan is to get it done in the next week.

24, Agreed. The Borg are old. Voyager way overdid it. It’s like every other episode was about the Borg. Then this recent fixation in the books with the Borg has gotten boring. Really, find a new enemy, or something else. The SCE books do just that, you’d think that there would be another concept out there other than the BORG.

Am I the only one who enjoyed the excerpt? I am an avid TOS fan, have never read ST novels other than TOS ones, seen a few TNG, DS9 and VOY episodes, so my knowledge about the characters is a bare minimum. Maybe that is why i enjoyed the excerpt… well written, I’d say!

25: Considering there were only about 12 Borg episodes in all of Voyager, I find that to be an odd comment. Unless you count every episode with 7of9 in it as a ‘Borg’ episode.

@ 22

Prime Directive is probably my favourite Star Trek book of all time. It was an amazing story, and all the characters just felt “right”. They all acted just like they did in Star Trek III, all doing whatever it took (within character of course) to get back to “the scene of the crime” so to speak.

Now that my “Prime Directive is great” rant is out of the way, I will agree with many of the posters that feel some of the new trek novels have not been the best (Before Dishonor), that doesn’t mean that they weren’t entertaining, or that I’m sorry I bought and read them. Just like I’m not sorry I watched “These Are the Voyages”. And I was far more disappointed with the Enterprise finale then with the TNG relaunch books.

I mean, these are not meant to be great works of literature, like say One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, or A Prayer for Owen Meany and the like. Just because something isn’t high art doesn’t mean it can’t be enjoyable.

That said, I don’t want anyone to think that I’m saying “anyone who doesn’t like these books is wrong”, because I’m not. And I’m also not attempting to criticize the authors either (except maybe Dafydd ab Hugh, who’s DS9 book Vengeance was just horrible). I just think we should stop expecting these books to be something they’re not intended to be

I’d also like to add that Chris Bennett’s “Greater Than the Sum” did a very good job at taking yet another Borg story and making it about so much more. It was a rather enjoyable book, and personally look forward to the Destiny trilogy.

I havn’t watched much of DS9.
I want to see all the episodes… just don’t have the $300 to buy all 7 seasons.

Do you think I’ll still be able to follow these books even if I don’t know much about DS9 or the characters?

Maybe it’s because I’m (full disclosure) a DS9 fan (not that I don’t love TOS and TNG as well, because I do – but DS9 is special to me), But I’ve been keeping up on the relaunch series, and I think they’ve mostly done a good job and revitalizing the books based on that series. And given the changes in Ezri Dax (that were really only starting during season 7 of DS9) due to her Joining, that were continued in the relaunch books, I’m not surprised she was a battlefield promotion away from being captain, though I’m not sure (and if you read the excerpt, the character would agree) she was totally ready for it. But not every captain can be the supremely confident Kirk or the very experienced Picard – that would get old – and I have no doubt that even they, at their lowest moment, may have wondered if they were cut out for their jobs.

For the record, I agree that the Borg are overdone, and their mere presence at this point is a bit of a turnoff for me. My hope is that they’re merely used as a convenient (and believable) enemy that would start another war at this point – otherwise they’d have to invent some new race from outside the alpha-beta-gamma area that would have the strength to be a threat to the Federation, and that would take up more focus than the authors (or readers) would want – and that the Borg are more like a background enemy behind the main focus of these stories than a major part of the stories themselves, if you get what I mean.

#30 – No, you don’t need to know much about DS9 to be able to follow the trilogy, though if you were familiar with the books set after the show’s finale, Ezri’s storyline will seem to come less “out of the blue.”

#31 – As Destiny progresses, we’ll see that Ezri does feel a bit overwhelmed by her new billet as the C.O. of a large ship. It’s a role she has to grow into, and, as they say, mistakes will be made….

Thank you, David Mack. I do look forward to reading these books, moreso than Voyager and Enterprise.

“Captain Dax” does have a cool ring to it, but it’s not Canon, so whatever.

I had not heard the word “Aventine” before this.

Looking it up, turns out to be one of the seven hills of Rome. Since there are seven ships in the class, I’d think they’d all have the name of one of the hills, but Vesta is not one of the names (instead the goddess of the hearth apparently).

#19: I’m also waiting for the DS9 series to come out with a new one! Fearful Symmetry took WAY too long to be released after Warpath, and aside from that it would be nice to see the Next Generation and DS9 novel series keep pace with each other for once, rather than one always being way ahead of the other. And I want some backstory on Dax and Bowers transferring off of DS9! WTF!

I’d also like to see some possible involvement with the Borg theme by the Klingon Empire series. I’ve really gotten into the stories about the IKS Gorkon and the other Chancellor-class warships. And besides, ever since the original introduction of the Borg in “Q-Who,” we’ve never really seen the Borg tangle with the Klingons, Romulans, Cardassians, Dominion, or any other galactic superpower other than the Federation.

Looking forward to the Destiny series! One more question: do we have any idea what these new Vesta-class starships look like? Same for the Luna-class deep space explorers. Any sketches anywhere?

#35: Another one of the seven hills of Rome is the Caelian Hill, or Caelius in Latin. Any etymological relation to the Caeliar in the Destiny series? Or is David Mack just putting his knowledge of the classics to good use?

It’s not just Ensign to Captain in six years that’s the only odd thing here. It’s also that, usually, a new Captain is given a “starter ship” first, one of the less smaller, older, less prestigious vessels, Miranda class and so forth.

Apparently, the Aventine is Starfleet’s most advanced, top of the line starship, equipped with a quantum slipstream drive and enough weaponry to hold off a Borg cube.

There are experienced Captains who have proven their worth over decades who could be transferred from smaller, older, less prestigious ship to the Aventine. Some of those, no doubt, have been on a command track for their entire lives, and may also be graduates of Starfleet’s Advanced Tactical Training Command School.

For example, if Captain Jones has commanded a Miranda class for ten years, and then an Ambassador class for the next ten years, it makes more sense to transfer him over to command the Aventine.

It rather stretches credulity that Ezri, who’s training wasn’t Command to begin with, would be given such a prestigious ship over those other officers.

As for Picard’s battlefield commission, it should be noted that the first Constellation class ship was commissioned in 2285. When Picard took command of the Stargazer, it was 2333, by which time that class of ship was a full forty-eight years old. Picard didn’t take command of the brand new, prestigious, Galaxy class until 2364, after a full thirty-one years of command service. That’s the kind of experience that’s required to command a top of the line ship. (And no, Trill’s don’t get a free pass to the top of the list. They have to earn it just like everyone else.)

Then again, the publishers do want to utilize the main characters from the series’, each of which is a recognizable “name brand” to capture a reader’s attention. So Ezri’s command has more to do with that, I suspect, than any sensible logic.

Ezri TinkerTrill as a Captain? No thanks!