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.
In case you missed the book reveal, we’re back to the prose novel, back to Star Trek, and back to characters we met during The Vulcan Academy Murders, with the same author. This is essentially a sequel to that book, but rather than a police procedural using the original Enterprise crew and exploring relationships between species in the Star Trek universe we’ve got a medical procedural using the original Enterprise crew and exploring relationships between species in the Star Trek universe.
IDIC: Infinite Diversity In Infinite Combination. As the culture war has kind of messed up what “diversity” means, it’s not a surprise that the guy who said his take on Star Trek wasn’t about making Star Trek but using it to send a message brought on people who doesn’t know what the word means in the Star Trek’s context. In the Star Trek universe the race war was ended when World War III and all the genetically augmented supermen happened. Diversity there was diversity of culture, diversity of thought, diversity of beliefs, all combining to create a shared intergalactic society. There are species who could never understand that, but humanity went through a lot of trouble to learn that, which might be why Earth was the home of the Federation.
This story takes place not on Earth, or Vulcan like Jean Lorrah’s last book, but on a space colony where peace and tolerance for all are the norm, since that’s what they need to survive. Except something is about to challenge that notion, and exploring how that affects everyone will hopefully be good Trek. The Vulcan Academy Murders already showed that she could write good Star Trek and explore cultural differences without hostility towards any one philosophy or group. It’s time to see if she can do it again, which we’ll learn by the end of this book. To get to the end, however, we must start at the beginning. So let’s get started.
The Nisus Science Colony will be the main setting for this story, and we meet two important people, at least at this stage. We’ll later get a bunch of ruling council’s names and we’ll see who matters in the story. I may have to go back and add tags to this article, but all we care about for now is Korsal, the “Thought Master” engineer who serves on the colony as the only remaining Klingon, and Borth, an Orion. This will be the Orions as we used to know them before the Enterprise and later Paramount Plus Trek shows would depict them. Borth has your typical pirate’s mentality, who sees the plague as a potential bioweapon, though as Korsal notes Orions have not shown immunity.
The reveal of the plague, which we already knew about due to the back cover blurb, is slowly done for the readers, getting us up to speed on what’s going on. The plague started non-lethally. You got it, it was a pain–quite literally–and it ran its course. It became more lethal as new strains developed, starting with a little girl and moving on to others. 87% of those infected with the new strain were still recovering…and then it changed again. Symptoms started without warning, and the infected started out more violent, lashing out at others. A mother kills her child, two men kill their wives–two examples added to in the council chambers when one of the councilors also gets hit immediately and starts attacking the others.
This also ruined one of the doctors on the council’s suggestion of exposing people to the weaker strains and letting the antibodies settle in. He used the example of the smallpox plague on Earth before we came up with vaccines. They noticed the weaker cowpox gave them immunity so they went and got infected with smallpox. The infected Lemurian was already a previous victim, meaning no antibodies for this. The plague so far has fought every attempt to come up with a cure or treatment. I don’t know how accurate the science is, but Lorrah is trying to create a scenario to build a story around, not predict our own 2020 plague. It’s not a medical drama, it’s a sci-fi story using the medical procedure formula and familiar characters to explore how people interact with each other during these kinds of situations, which we saw in 2020 and in other plague events like smallpox in the past.
We also learn about the Klingons through Korsal and to a lesser extent Borath. Borath sees this as a potential bioweapon. Thus far Klingons, and Korsal is the only one left besides his kids (and a wife is mentioned), have not been infected. The other Klingons left. This isn’t a Federation colony, but a group of scientist from around the explored Alpha Quadrant who decided to be part of this science colony for whatever reasons they might have. The council is made up of a representative of each homeworld taking part. We already know Earth, the Klingons, Orions, Lemurians, Tellarites, and Vulcans are here due to their introduced council members and the technology they brought along, like dams from Earth and self-adjusting chairs from the Tellarites. Korsal is angered by Borath suggesting the Klingons would want to use this as a weapon. Klingons believe in giving their enemies a fighting chance, and this is cowardice, even if Klingons are immune.
Well, we’re about to find out. Korsal got some hot coffee on his hand in his initial argument with Borath, and the blister broke open during the fight. He’s got some of the Lemurian’s blood on his hand at that spot. That means if Klingons are immune he’ll be fine and if not he has the new strain that could drive him mad. At least they unanimously voted to call in the Federation for help…which would mean Borath is also in favor. That might be interesting.
This chapter does a good job setting up the whole situation and could totally work as an episode’s cold opening, though the only thing close to a complaint, and it really isn’t because this isn’t an episode script, the final paragraph wouldn’t have worked as a proper build-up to the traditional stinger. If she was going for that it would have ended as soon as they saw the open blister with the infected blood on it. She’s not writing an episode, she’s writing a novel and it works fine. Next chapter brings us to the USS Enterprise. Will Doctor McCoy be considered that important or was the ship just the only one nearby again? And will I stop writing “Korath” instead of “Korsal” before this book ends? We’ll find out next time.
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