Chapter By Chapter> Star Trek: The Vulcan Academy Murders chapters 17 & 18

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.

I’m combining two chapters again because chapter 18 is so short, only a couple of pages. Last time we got a clue to finding our culprit thanks to remembering past episodes…I mean adventures. Lorrah does seem to know her Star Trek, or at least was really good at research during the pre-internet days. It’s possible her editor caught it and let her know, but she was still smart enough to work it in organically so she wins either way. She may well be a Trekkie, but at least we know she cares about what she’s working on, unlike so many of today’s Hollywood and comic writers, and even a lot of video game companies now.

We have seen her do a good job exploring the characters we know while introducing us to new characters who are important to the mystery. She has shown a strong understanding of them, and anyone coming in new can still follow along as if they were brand new characters on their first adventure as far as the reader knows, even though they may have had adventures in the past. This is how you do an ongoing series. You respect the stories that came before and see them not as an obstacle but a past experience to build upon to show how far the character has gone. Not every series has to be the first year forever.

And so, let’s get back to our investigation as our crew are in the dark–literally, since someone took out the power.

Chapter 17 flashes back a few minutes as Kirk prepares the death notice for Remington’s family, putting the blame on the Klingons rather than the murderer, thinking that it’s a more acceptable death for his family I guess. Kirk does tell himself its their fault for the attack that put Remington in this position. He shouldn’t have the level of hatred that we saw in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. That was born not only from years of past encounters with the Klingons but the still recent murder of his son by Klingons, even though Kruge’s group weren’t exactly acting on orders from High Command in the third movie. I’m kind of neutral on this. I guess having your son die in battle to protect the ship is more glorious than being murdered by someone who wasn’t technically targeting him (in all but a couple of potential motives) but it still isn’t fully accurate, either.

What is a mistake on the writer’s part, and I don’t know how the editor missed it, is that “Starfleet” is written as two words, “Star Fleet”. That was the Japanese marionette show with a giant robot.

Yes, that exists. Look for the full theme song by Brian May. Anyway, the power goes out. This mostly set up WHY the power went out. Our killer may not know what McCoy uncovered but he or she might be aware that something could be left behind. By killing the power before the records of the days events auto-save to the archives that info could be lost. This could just be the killer realizing their act could be tracked or maybe he or she (or it, being aliens, or this could be a group) somehow overheard McCoy was on to them and that’s why they cut the power. The only hope is that the individual console data might have been saved before the power went out. Another motive is brought up, or rather reaffirming some of the motives not personal against any of the three patients, that they’re out to discredit the Academy, or Sorel and Daniel, or just technology in general. It’s clear they don’t care about any of the patients in trouble with the power out. Again, we recently went through something similar with the computers of a set of hospitals here in CT, hackers looking to extort money from the medical group. This is even worse.

Chapter 18 gives us a hint of the fallout. While we don’t hear about patients in surgery, we have people wounded from everything from a stair fall to getting caught in a closing fire door. Joining Daniel and M’Benga, McCoy helps treating patients, then they check to make sure the refrigeration using to the drugs that need to be kept cold is working. Thankfully it is, so this monster either didn’t target it or it’s one of the few things not sharing the system everything else is. There are children among the patients, and that rattles my cage. In the real world case, they were willing to let people die or at least get poor treatment for money. We don’t even know the killer’s motivations but I’m betting it’s just as worthless. To make matters worse, the chapter ends on the fire alarm, and unfortunately the fire suppression system is probably on that down network.

This chapter is about the fallout from the power outage, not only to the investigation but to the patients in the hospital and everyone else in the Academy. Kirk gets brought up to speed and the killer is shown to be even more unhinged and lacking the respect for innocent life. Now I really can’t wait to see this scum get caught. It won’t happen next time, but hopefully our crew find a way to get closer once they get the power up. Kirk, Spock, and Sarek are there to help, and that’s where we’ll join in next time.