Chapter By Chapter> Star Trek: The Vulcan Academy Murders chapter 14

Chapter By Chapter (usually) features me reading one chapter of the selected book at a time and reviewing it as if I were reviewing an episode of a TV show or an issue of a comic. There will be spoilers if you haven’t read to the point I have, and if you’ve read further I ask that you don’t spoil anything further into the book. Think of it as a read-along book club.

Well, this is interesting. Not just last week’s cliffhanger (I really wish I could find a copy of that dramatic sting to commercial when Star Trek goes to break on a shocker moment) but this chapter is almost double the usual chapter count for this novel. Usually each chapter is about eight to nine pages. We had a pair of chapters next to each other that was half a normal chapter each so I combined them. I will not return the favor and make this a two-part article.

Our crew are finally suspecting there murder going on after another unexplained loss the exact same way as last time, the benefit of those who are a bit more familiar with the concept than the Vulcans being in the right spot. However, the one that just got accused can’t possibly be the guilty party, guilty as he feels for setting up the situation that led to all this, but that’s self-guilt, which isn’t the same thing. Will this ruin a potentially happy couple? Well, let’s keep the homepage padding intro short because this is a bonus sized chapter.

When I refer to “segments” in these chapters I mean that sometimes the chapter will be broken up with an extra space.

Like this. In some cases the book may have a line or a bit of illustration but usually it’s just a space between chapters. This probably could have used one or two to break up moments, particularly when Kirk begins his investigation after the aftermath of what happened last chapter. Sorel attends the injured Daniel, with T’Mir not understanding what she saw in the meld. This is a bit of tension I don’t think we needed. We’re not about to suspect Daniel is actually responsible for the two murders thus far. He is blaming himself because this was a process he co-created and it’s still untested. This is the next stage of human trials after his own treatment. T’Mir is not a healer and probably shouldn’t have tried to meld with him since he was just unconscious. Her accusing Daniel, which Sorel tries to tell her but is trying to help his friend, is just compounding his own misplaced guilt, with Sorel rebuking his daughter for having such a misunderstanding of humans when she wants to marry one.

This is news to Kirk, but not having the full story is what puts Daniel on the list. We’ll go over the full suspect list later, but luckily even he finds it unlikely that Daniel was responsible and assumes as well that T’Mir just doesn’t know what she’s doing. This is when the first segment should have been marked. Kirk gets a Vulcan tablet because he doesn’t have a tricorder happen, and starts his suspect list. He stumbles across Eleyna, who is a suspect and yet Kirk has no problem going over the whole list with her even though she’s on it. She also tells him which button is Vulcan for “save” and which is for “erase”, but apparently he gets that wrong. I’ll come back to that. He ends up getting a proper tricorder, but how do you write anything down on those things? The closest I’ve come to one is an old cassette player styled to resemble a tricorder and an old role play tricorder with no electronics and being rather stubby even for a kid’s accessory, but I’ve never seen anything resembling a keyboard or a screen large enough to write on. They didn’t even have the tablets they have now when the novel was made, so points for predicting something before even netbooks were invented.

This is where the final segment marker should have been, as Kirk approaches one of his first suspects, Sendet, due to his actions at T’Zan’s funeral. He does claim an alibi, but only after he tries to pull the “do you know who I am?” bit even while noting Kirk probably doesn’t. Sendet claims to have been at a temple with no electronics, though does reluctantly admit that he does have the skill to accomplish this. He does, however, have the strongest motive of everyone involved, at least with T’Zan. But let’s go over the whole suspect list Kirk wrote down and either eliminate them or build the case against them.

• Kirk, Spock, and McCoy: Kirk notes to Eleyna that anyone else would have left them up. Spock does have the talent, as Sarek notes with an anecdote of Spock’s childhood pranks, but they have zero motive. McCoy is a doctor, Spock wouldn’t risk his mother, and Kirk owes Remington for saving Kirk’s life, as we learned earlier. They have neither motive nor opportunity. Plus they’re the main characters of the series so of course it won’t be them.
• Sarek: Also quickly eliminated but as we’ll see with some of the other candidates, if you don’t know the people involved you don’t know that Sarek and Amanda have a happy life. There is no way for a Vulcan male to divorce their wife, though the wife can at a particular date decide to annul things. We know, and so does Kirk, that this is also unlikely but you can’t start eliminating suspects until you write them down.
• T’Pau: I have to feel this one was petty and also dropped quickly. She’s a total xenophobe when it comes to humans, and could convince someone else to do the job, but she’s too close to both Sorel and Sarek’s family to truly be a suspect unless Remington or even Amanda were the actual target.
• Sorel: This goes back to that no divorce thing. Kirk doesn’t know what their life was like, and we only get a glimpse through Corrigan’s attempt to hold Sorel’s mind from falling into his pain. Still, this is highly unlikely as a suspect, but he is the first “guest character” we can eliminate.
• Daniel: Kirk only lists him because he has half the story. Could T’Zan have been against the marriage with T’Mir and Daniel decided to push her out of the way? We know that’s the case because this romance only started yesterday. (Quick courtship.) Kirk, on the other hand, doesn’t know that, but thankfully he finds it way too impossible to believe based on Daniel’s guilt and his ties to the family. He’s about as eliminated as you can get without at least some doubt, but I find it being him impossible.
• Sendet: Also doesn’t know about the marriage, which Kirk also doesn’t know but thankfully didn’t bring up in his questioning. He did note Sendet’s urge to be with T’Mir, though we know it’s more about status than love. Getting rid of T’Zan (perhaps even causing the accident in the first place), then ruining the procedure so that it either ruins his other two obstacles or drives a wedge between Sorel and Daniel, leaving T’Mir “open”. He probably has the most to gain by T’Zan’s death…but then why come back for Remington? That’s the event that triggered the murder investigation. If T’Zan is who he wanted gone, he would have done so without suspicion, the loss blamed on the equipment failure. The likeliness of it happening twice is too low for a Vulcan to consider, unless Remington’s stasis field going the same way would further ruin his obstacles’ reputation. They do conclude that it wasn’t the medical equipment that failed but the power, and the way that’s hidden from the alerts is interesting. They might not have found anything if not for the second attack.
• Eleyna: Kirk didn’t pick up on some of this because he’s Kirk and she’s attractive, but she may be the most suspicious. During the discussion, Eleyna almost seems to be flirting with him, suddenly being less “Vulcanlike” than their first encounter, and rather helpful during Kirk’s listing suspects even after she’s put on the list. That is, unless she purposefully told him the wrong buttons. The motivation Kirk gives is killing Sarek through Amanda since Spock wasn’t a factor at the time, and we have seen most of his relatives are so distant that a time-traveling Spock once convinced them he was a visiting cousin in the animated episode “Yesteryear”, one of the few that was considered canon even when the rest of the series wasn’t. With nobody to draw him out like Sorel did with Daniel and his children, Sarek would be doomed.
• However, let me propose another one, and this is where I wonder if I’m actually showing some detective skill, understanding of writing, or just a latent memory of the original reading I did. What if Eleyna is actually attracted to Sarek? We did see earlier that Vulcans mature slower than humans due to the difference in lifespans, so human women attending the Academy are more likely to pursue one of their professors. Eleyna does have access to Sarek’s personal work terminal to help grade his papers and help with lessons. It is a high enough security level that she could get into the system and if she has any 23rd Century hacking skills as far as a 1980s novel would reckon it, she could be responsible. Whether Kirk or I are right about motives, she did act suspicious. Her only shows of emotion prior to flirting with Kirk was when he mentioned the murder, that his crewman was the one who died, and that both Sarek and herself could be suspects, and she only stands up for Daniel, as her physician though she only met him once. She’s also the only other human on our list, and yet to be eliminated from suspicion. Murder is unheard of for a normal thinking Vulcan, but she only acts Vulcan most of the time. Either way, Sendet and Eleyna are MY primary suspects.

And so the murder mystery begins in earnest, and we’re at the halfway point of the novel. The game is afoot in our next chapter. I just had to be more patient.