Chapter By Chapter> Star Trek: The Vulcan Academy Murders chapter 21

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.

Things were not going well for our heroes in our last chapter. The investigators are down the power is down, the records are down, but at least the fire is down.

We’re not quite at the last third of the book. We still don’t know if the fire was intentional but if so we know our murderer doesn’t care who dies. Or maybe they do. Maybe this is a crazy person demanding death. We have suspects but given how little time has been devoted to the investigation there’s still room for an extra party to be involved, even with the clue I found by accident when going back a few chapters.

How far will the killer go, and why? There’s still so little we don’t know and I suspect the investigation may still not move forward this chapter with everyone needing to recover. The only way to find out is to check the next chapter and see what happens.

There isn’t a lot of movement on the case but we do end with a refocus on it. I’ll explain in a moment. Most of this chapter is aftermath stuff from Kirk’s perspective. He’s awake and set to go under “healing rays”, which is not something I remember from Star Trek but not unlikely. I find the fact that among Kirk’s surviving stuff is a “credit voucher”. It always interests me to see references to currency, physical or digital, in Starfleet and among Earthlings before Roddenberry established that Earth moved beyond the need for money in The Next Generation, something Ira Glass took a shot or two at on Deep Space Nine and questionable when you know some of Gene’s history, like creating lyrics to the original show’s theme he had no intention of using just to get a credit and part of the profits. Or so goes the rumor. We also learn Spock made it through his surgery and both he and his father are in healing trances.

We also have Eleyna making a date with Jim, but the narration notes its after she notices the tricorder, renewing those suspicions. Kirk instead is thinking about a motive against Daniel for his engagement to T’Mir, which he still doesn’t know is not public knowledge except to Daniel and Sorel’s family. Sorel even has T’Mir take Daniel home to take care of him now that the danger is past and the adrenaline supply is about to run out without an emergency to keep his body running. The goal seems to be to get the two of them talking about the misplaced accusation, which I’m betting next chapter will cover. It’s pretty obvious through the discussions, and Soton’s comments, that nobody in the family would be upset and Vulcan has accepted intermarriage with humans. Eleyna confirms that before going for a moment into praising Sarek for breaking that barrier with Amanda, and I have to wonder if she wouldn’t mind being in Amanda’s shoes. As Sarek’s wife, not her current situation.

However, it’s not completely true that there is full acceptance of interplanetary marriage among Vulcans. Spock used to be teased as a kid for being a half-breed by Vulcan children. T’Pau doesn’t seem too happy with humans as far as this story goes, nor any other novel I have where she appears and has time to explore her perspective on those illogical bipeds. I don’t think she’d go this far though, even though we learn the fire was without casualties and could have been a side effect rather than an attempt. Sendet didn’t seem happy with Daniel’s acceptance but that could be less about bigotry and more about his social status. Not sure he even knows about the engagement, but I can imagine he won’t be happy when he finds out.

So unless this story is going to cheat with a curveball this late in the story we have two suspects in my mind when it comes to motive, opportunity, and skill. Sendet wants Corrigan and possibly Sorel and T’Zan out of the way for interfering with his plans to boost his house by wedding T’Mir. I still think Eleyna is very suspicious in recent actions and a possible obsession with Sarek, though Kirk put her on the list for having a secret hate instead of a secret crush. Next time we’ll see where this story goes, but I still think it’s going to be Corrigan and T’Mir’s time.