A Look At ST: TNG: Armageddon's Arrow By Dayton Ward - The Point Is That It Is A Good Story!

Star Trek: The Next Generation: Armageddon’s Arrow by Dayton Ward (2015)

Imagine that there is a war that has been raging on for years. You suddenly find yourself with the means to go back in time and stop this war before it starts, and you have one of the most powerful weapons ever invented.  But there is one catch; you have to completely annihilate your enemy to accomplish your mission. What are your going to do?  Would you be willing to commit genocide of another world?

[In the 5th novel of the Star Trek: The Fall series entitled Peaceable Kingdoms, Captain Picard of the USS Enterprise requests and is granted permission to return to the ongoing mission that he and his ship was intended for; exploration.

While investigating the Odyssian Pass, a region of space that is believed to contain a number of inhabited worlds, the crew of the Enterprise finds a giant ship that is apparent adrift.  Further investigation finds that while most of the crew has perished, two crew members of the crew are being held in suspended animation and that she ship the Armageddon’s Arrow has traveled more than 100 years from the future.  In a nearby star system, there are two inhabited planets that have been at war for centuries.  The Arrow itself was launched by a race called the Raqilan, and their descendants have launched the ship to obliterate the race that they are, and have been at war with, the Henlona.

As members of the Enterprise crew are aboard the Arrow to offer aid to the surviving members of the crew, representatives of the Henlona arrive on the scene and claim the Arrow captured and her remaining crew prisoners of war. Picard has no say in the matter because his hands are tied by the non-interference directive, however he does offer his services as mediator to help quell the conflict.

On the surface, all of the involved parties seem to want to conflict to end, but there are some with more sinister ideas.

It is also discovered that the Arrow, which was completed in the future, is actually being constructed in the present, and along with that, it is being built based on a design from the past!

Wow!

One might think that this situation would lead to a very tangled web of time paradoxes involving the past, present, and future, there is no need to worry about that because, as usual, Dayton Ward clearly knows his stuff and there is no confusion as the plot winds and twists around until, as one might suspect, Picard comes up with the more or less perfect solution after pointing out the futility of war, with the help of the two remaining crew of the Arrow.

When I see Dayton’s name on the cover of a Trek novel, I usually expect to read something from The Original Series, but he once again shows that he is quite comfortable in any of the series. That being said, there is however, an element in this story that comes from one of the best episodes (in my humble opinion) of Star Trek: The Original Series.  It seems that the Raquilans have designed their weapon on the second season TOS episode “The Doomsday Machine.”

For those that may not remember, that episode featured a machine that was designed by beings from another galaxy to destroy and consume entire solar systems for fuel. At any rate, leave it to Dayton to call up one of the most destructive weapons from TOS and place in the middle of the 24th Century, and it is brilliantly done.

Anyone who reads Trek novels regularly by now knows that the makeup of the Enterprise crew is very different from the days of Next Generation.  While Picard continues to command, Riker has been promoted to admiral and Worf now serves as the first officer, and it is great to see how Dayton has continued to make the character grow as he has gained experience and wisdom.  The newer members of the crew in this story are also interesting and have many dimensions, and that goes especially for Lieutenant Commander Taurik, who first appeared in the TNG seventh season episode “Lower Decks.”

Armageddon’s Arrow is well paced with nothing rushed or glossed over.  There are many references to events in the Star Trek universe that are relevant to the story.  For me, these are quite fun to find and always give me pause to think about what happened and see how well those events are tied into the story I am currently reading.  Dayton is especially good at this aspect of writing his novels

I heard on a podcast that I listen to regularly that it is the intention of the publishers for Star Trek novels to return to a more exploration stance and less focus on the intrigue and military aspects of Starfleet.  I am very glad that Dayton was tapped to be one of the first to kick off the renewed efforts of Trek to get back to seek out new life and civilizations.

Take a look at Armageddon’s Arrow and enjoy a really good, solid story in the TNG vein.

Well, there it is…

QaplaH!

Androids DO Dream - Book Review: STTNG: Cold Equations: The Persistence of Memory by David Alan Mack

Star Trek: The Next Generation: Cold Equations: The Persistence of Memory by David Alan Mack (2012)

I have read a number of Star Trek novels as you can see by looking through this blog and by the lists on the right side of the page.  Most of them have been very good incorporating characters that I know and introducing new characters, but this one has been a very unique reading experience for me in the main character, or at least what I would think of as the main character was written in the first person.

Persistence of Memory is broken into three parts with the first and third parts taking place a little over four years after the events of Star Trek: Nemesis; while the second part spans seventeen years following events that took place on TNG 3^rd season episode “Brothers.”  The third part of the book brings story lines from the first part of the book together.

Geordi LaForge is contacted and asked to come to the Daystom Annex on Galore IV by Dr. Bruce Maddox to assist with the discovered Soong type android B4 (Nemesis).  One might recall that Maddox appeared in the TNG episode “Measure of a Man” in which he attempted to requisition Data from the Enterprise to be studied so Maddox could try to duplicate Soong’s work.  At any rate, B4 was in danger of a fatal cascade failure of his positronic net which would result in the loss of not only B4, but the memories that Data had uploaded into B4 before his demise in Nemesis.

As the Enterprise arrives at Galore, Maddox’s lab, where B4 and other Soong type androids are being kept for study, is broken into and the androids are taken.  Worf leads an away team to investigate the break in and a mysterious character is chased through the streets and underground passages of Galore, but this person escapes.  Knowing that the androids must still be on Galore, Picard blockades the planet to prevent an escape while the investigation continues.

The outcomes of the investigation are fruitless, so Picard lifts the blockade and soon a mysterious ship leaves Galore and rendezvous with a Breen vessel, and transfers the androids to the Breen.  Picard decides to follow the Breen to see what they are up to and what they plan to do with the androids.  And so ends part one of this tale.

Part two begins with the death of Noonien Soong, as depicted in the TNG Episode Brothers mentioned earlier.  While the episode ended with Soong sending Data back to the ship, we assume from the end of the television episode that after Data departs from Soong, he dies alone in his laboratory.  However this is not the case, as according to the David Mack, Soong drags himself into another lab underneath the dwelling that Soong lives in and promptly transfers his consciousness into an android body with abilities that were extraordinary, even by Soong standards we previously were aware of.

In part two of the novel, we get a narrative of the activities of Soong in his new android body over the next seventeen years.  He spends his time amassing vast wealth and working on a way to win back his one and only love; that being his former wife, Juliana.  Soon manages, with the help of his ship’s artificial intelligent computer, to keep track of any and all news that pertains to Data, Lore, and Juliana.  He learns of how Lore is finally deactivated by Data, how Juliana dies and is brought back to “life” by Emil Vaslovik (who turns out to be Flint from the TOS episode “Requiem for Mathusala), and of the discovery of B4 and the death of Data.

In part three, everything comes together as the Breen are found to be attempting to make thousands of Soong type androids to act as cannon fodder as part of their plan to become the dominant power in the Alpha Quadrant.

Soong makes the ultimate sacrifice at the end of the story as his focus shifts from reuniting with Juliana to saving “his boys.”

I found this story unique among the ones I have read so far because David Mack displays a very detailed knowledge of the Star Trek world and is clever enough to bring elements of many various stories together to make one hell of a good story.  His writing made vivid pictures in my mind as I read the story and I could hear the voices of the characters as I turned the pages.  I gained an appreciation of Noonien Soong as he grew from an old frail man, to a self-serving android, and finally discovering what really mattered to him in the end, and what he was willing to let go of.  The best part for me was how Mack took characters that appeared as guest stars in the series and gave them life, not to mention giving life to new character we hadn’t seen before.

This is a work of genius for fans of Star Trek and I would recommend this story to anyone who enjoys a good read.

Well, there it is

Q’aplaH!