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Mutiny, Part 2, by Ron Fortier ............................................................................................ 213
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Star Trek #1 through #3 tell the story of Star Trek – The Motion Picture
Star Trek #4, July 1980
The Haunting of Thallus!, by Mary Wolfman
The Enterprise is tasked with transporting a certified insane prisoner (Raytag M’Gora) and return him to the prison on Thallus that he escaped from, and they are accompanied by Ambassador R’Kgg from Regulus 3 who was supposed to be negotiating Thallus’s entry to the Federation.
When Raytag is beamed aboard, he immediately breaks loose of his restraints, but a bit of trickery orchestrated by Kirk, Scotty, and Spock gets him restrained in the brig. He demands not to be returned to Thallus, claiming to be perfectly sane except for any effects of his imprisonment. The Enterprise receives coordinates to return Raytag to, and, although these turn out to be some way away from Thallus, the ship heads in that direction. Then strange immaterial images of monsters and ghosts are seen at points around the ship, followed by Dracula appearing in physical form on the bridge. Dracula escapes into the ship and seemingly murders R’Kgg but is then not seen again. Arriving at the designated coordinates, they find an ancient Earth-type mansion that is floating in space and set up as a haunted house, and with a breathable atmosphere. Kirk, Spock, and McCoy beam into it, only to be attacked by monsters, but then the monsters are replaced by Klingons who tell Kirk that he’s trapped there. Aboard the Enterprise they see a Klingon warship arriving claiming that the Enterprise has violated Klingon space.
Raytag had been sitting morosely in the brig but suddenly bursts into laughter. [Timeline: Stardate 7416.2]
Star Trek #5, August 1980
The Haunting of the Enterprise!, by Mike W. Barr
The whole thing was a set-up by the Klingons, and the “haunted house” was actually a space station with its outline transformed by advanced holographic technology. The Klingons also had a captured human who could project images of monsters or any of his thoughts, and they had a thought-enhancer that made the monsters physical. They had also installed an implant in Raytag’s brain so that the human’s thoughts get transferred to the Enterprise, resulting in the invasion of monsters. The Klingons wanted to gain the Enterprise for its new warp engines, and they captured Spock (because of his knowledge of the engines) and beamed him back to their ship. Kirk and McCoy get beamed back to the Enterprise, along with a woman who they had found being attacked by a monster. The Klingon commander brags to Spock about what was happening, and also mentions that the human had created a projection of his wife. Spock claims that the human looks ill and is allowed to inspect him. That lets Spock obtain a mindmeld with him and project the message to Kirk and the crew on the Enterprise bridge that the woman must be destroyed (not killed, because she was never actually alive). That ties up with McCoy’s 30
findings, so McCoy fires. That creates extreme distress in the human and causes feedback from him that fuses the implant in Raytag’s brain, killing him. That removes the monsters from the Enterprise and the Klingons end up facing them. Enterprise returns to Starbase 16 before continuing its explorations. [Timeline: Stardate 7417.4]
Star Trek #6, September 1980
The Enterprise Murder Case!, by Mike W. Barr
Kirk had visited Yannid VI while he had been an ensign aboard the Republic. The ship had been assisting the planet’s authorities (who were on the verge of joining the Federation) in fending off Klingon-supplied rebels. But the king had been killed and Prince Arlph (heir apparent) had been kidnapped. In freeing the prince, Kirk inadvertently stuns the prince, resulting in him being in a coma and unable to ascend to the throne and having to change his name to Phral. The new king, Phral’s younger brother, rescinds the membership application to the Federation because of the
“attack” on Phral. That king has now died and his son, Prince Storf, has opened talks for Federation membership again. The Enterprise beams up Ambassador Phral for the negotiations, but the beam-up has problems, and when he arrives on the transporter pad, he collapses dead from a knife in his back. Prince Storf and Princess Minax are definite that Phral (their uncle) was alive at beam-up. An autopsy by McCoy finds that the Ambassador had been killed 10 minutes before beam-up time and, when viewing images from the beam-up and arrival, Spock notices that the Ambassador originally was wearing a ring but was not wearing it on arrival. It is suspected that the problems with beam-up had been caused by the signal being intercepted and the Ambassador being switched for the already dead look-alike. Doctor Loroc, suspected of being associated with the rebels, is checked out but then she is killed by a phaser shot from a corridor. That leads to Kirk, Spock and McCoy being confronted and accused by the prince and princess, and it seems that Federation membership is off again. However, Spock says he has made a telepathic scan of three people confronted in the corridor and determined that one of them was Phral and that Phral had been pilfering the royal treasury and was planning to start a new life with a new identity, while getting revenge on Kirk. Not realizing that Spock was just making calculated guesses, Phral admits it all and a timely syringe with knock-out potion from McCoy prevents his escape. The king apologizes to Kirk, and Yannid VI’s membership is on again. [Timeline: Stardate 7420.1]
Star Trek #7, October 1980
Tomorrow or Yesterday, by Tom Defalco
The Enterprise is sent urgently to the unexplored Andrea Star System because a cloud of Vega radiation is entering it, and that could be deadly to any inhabitants of a planet that gets affected.
A planet with a colony of 200 humanoids is found to have the cloud heading straight for it, and Kirk, Spock, McCoy and two security personnel beam down to get the inhabitants to evacuate, but they find themselves greeted as heroes and see massive 24,000-year-old statues of Kirk, Spock, and McCoy. Unfortunately, excessive solar radiation at the planet causes the transporters 31
to burn out, so they can’t beam anyone up, and the Andreans (as the natives are known) have no intention of leaving anyway. Kirk sends the Enterprise to attempt to disperse the cloud, but that attempt fails, and the Enterprise comes close to being lost. Then, one of the Andreans starts to transform and an opening appears in the plinth of the statues. The Andrean goes into it, followed by the Enterprise trio and, as they go deeper into the planet, they find some massive and complex machinery. Spock mindmelds with the alien and discovers that when the Andreans transform they end up outside of linear time, and they had built this equipment to gather energy from their star for just this moment, and Spock knew that he had to pull a particular lever which released the stored energy and dispersed the cloud. The planet, its inhabitants, and the Enterprise are all saved. [Timeline: Stardate 3708.3]
Star Trek #8, October 1980
The Expansionist Syndrome, by Martin Pasko
The Enterprise gets trapped by two alien craft in some form of energy net that acts as a stasis field, disabling their warp engines and weapons and holding the ship in place. Spock gets beamed off by one of the ships and the other ship tows the Enterprise into orbit of the planet Agena IV. Transporters are working, so a team led by Kirk and McCoy attempt to rescue Spock, but they find themselves under attack by aliens who call themselves Orgs. After subduing them, Kirk learns that the aliens that abducted Spock are called Machs, and the Orgs blame them for the fact that the area that the Orgs live in is overpopulated and can’t produce the food to feed them all. Consequently, they are planning an invasion of the Mach’s city that night. Kirk gets the Org leader to assist them in entering the Mach’s city, which they succeed in doing and rescue Spock. The Orgs were actually descended from humans who left Earth during the Eugenics War, and the Machs had been their robots, but had been discarded. The Machs had become aware of the Org’s plans to invade their territory and wanted to use the Kamahr (an actual native lifeform, something like an armadillo but with telekinesis powers) to hold off the invaders. They wanted to use Spock’s abilities to direct the Kamahr. Instead, Spock mindmelds with one of them and gets them to free the Enterprise by destroying the ship holding it. Then Kirk has Scotty fire a broad stun beam to disable all the combatants. The Enterprise had been taking Prof. Lenore Fowler to Starbase 14 for a heart transplant, but she refused to wait quietly in sickbay. Instead, she beams herself down and organizes a truce in which the Mach’s help the Orgs to make their land livable and sustainable, and the Machs make her an artificial heart that McCoy implants in her.
[Timeline: Stardate 7523.5]
Star Trek #9, November 1980
Experiment in Vengeance!, by Martin Pasko
The Enterprise was on its way to Starbase 8 when they discovered the USS Endeavor that was lost 22 years before. It looked derelict but, as they approach, it becomes active and attacks them, but they disable it. Boarding it, they find the skeletons of the crew and discover that they had gone to Mycena to pick up Janet Hester (the mother of Lt. Karen Hester-Jones, another of Kirk’s 32
old flames and now aboard Enterprise), but then members of the crew had gone mad and started killing the other crew. Then one of the team with Kirk starts firing on other members of the boarding party, but they subdue him and beam back, and then they head for Mycena to see what they can find there. What they discover is that Janet had gone there to continue her work on a new transporter system that the Federation had barred further work on. On Mycena, she had experimented with beaming her assistants but had been unable to retrieve them. However, their consciousnesses had survived and had been plotting revenge on her, but they were now confusing Karen with her mother. The Endeavor had been sent to Mycena to arrest Janet, but when the ship came under attack, she stole a shuttle but had crashed back on Mycena. Kirk had discovered the remains of the shuttle and Janet’s body encased in the ice on Mycena and had uncovered them. When the disembodied assistants, who had joined together as one consciousness and call themselves the Unity, start attacking Karen, Kirk explains their mistake and says he can take them to Janet. When they go to find Janet, Kirk collapses the area around where the shuttle had been moved. He knows that may not trap the Unity but hopes that finding Janet’s remains will satisfy them. [Timeline: Stardate 7641.8]
Star Trek #10, January 1981
Domain of the Dragon God, by Michael Fleisher
The Enterprise had been studying the strangely strong magnetic field of Barak-7 and had got all the data they could from orbit, so an investigation from the planet’s surface was needed. Spock and McCoy take a shuttle down (Kirk was still recovering from flu) but the engine filters get clogged with magnetic dust and the shuttle has a hard landing. The magnetic field prevents communication with the Enterprise. They observe the natives about to carry out a ritual sacrifice of a female (N’Shulu), but she escapes and runs to where Spock and McCoy are, which results in Spock being captured and put to work with the slaves building a monument to the tyrant, Ragnok. N’Shulu takes McCoy to where her brother, K’Barrgh, leads a small band of rebels opposed to Ragnok. McCoy sees there are too few of them to rescue Spock, but then it occurs to him how they could build bows and arrows from the native flora, and he trains them in their use.
That allows K’Barrgh’s rebels to defeat Ragnok and his forces, freeing Spock at the same time.
Sadly, K’Barrgh then becomes as much a tyrant as Ragnok had been, and it looked as though Spock and McCoy might become the next sacrifices. But Kirk had become concerned with the time Spock and McCoy were taking and arrived in a suitably adapted shuttle in time to rescue them. [Timeline: Stardate 7673.6]
Star Trek #11, February 1981
Like a Woman Scorned!, by Martin Pasko
The planet Andronicus is bathed in deadly Berthold radiation and the protective dome of a small colony founded by Carl Wentworth is beginning to leak, so the Enterprise is sent to transport them to safety. Unfortunately, Wentworth is a megalomaniac who plans to use the techniques of the long-lost Andronican civilization to “free” the inhabitants of the Federation and other 33
empires, etc., and bring them under his control. Also, his assistant, Andrea Manning, is an ex-lover of Scotty’s and she hates him for leaving her in favor of his starships. She had been taught by Wentworth the ability to manifest thoughts into physical beings using a form of energy, and that results in Scotty being attacked by monsters from Scottish legends. Wentworth uses his powers to entice the crew to divert the ship from Starbase 28 (where they were heading) to Drexler II (that Wentworth plans to use for his base of operations). Then Manning manifests the Loch Ness Monster as a space creature that attacks and rocks the Enterprise. That causes Kirk to break his eye contact with Wentworth (who had nearly brought Kirk under his control) and Kirk attacks Wentworth, rendering him unconscious. McCoy applies an anesthetic to Manning, and everything starts to settle down on the ship. Wentworth and Manning are placed in custody, sedated, and will be sent to a rehabilitation facility. [Timeline: Stardate 7935.3]
Star Trek #12 March 1981
Eclipse of Reason, by Alan Brennert & Martin Pasao
The starship Icarus is going to cross the galactic barrier to explore intergalactic space, and it will be crewed by Phaetonians and Commander Janice Rand, who is married to the Phaetonian named Kadan. The Phaetonians are incorporeal beings who use pyramid-shaped technology to interact with other beings and starship technology, and Rand fell in love with Kadan because of his mind. The Enterprise is assigned to assist in the preparation of the Icarus, and Kirk has reservations about Rand going, but she is adamant, and the Icarus sets off on its mission.
However, interaction with the barrier drives the Phaetonians mad, makes Rand telepathic, and turns the Icarus back into the Milky Way galaxy. Spock picks up a cry for help from Rand, and Enterprise heads to intercept the Icarus. The Phaetonians develop a desperate longing for their homeworld, Phaeton, and head back towards it but imagine they can land the starship in the middle of their homeworld’s main city, which would cause widespread destruction. Kirk, Spock, and McCoy beam aboard the Icarus to try to stop them, but Scotty comes to the conclusion that the only way to stop the Icarus is to place the Enterprise between them and Phaeton, destroying both ships. Spock mindmelds with Kadan and brings Rand into the link, and they get Kadan sane enough to realize they can’t land the ship on the planet and he pulls the Icarus aside before it impacts with Enterprise. Rand’s telepathy starts to fade but the Phaetonians will need long-term treatment, so Rand plans to seek an annulment and resume her duties as Transporter Chief on the Enterprise. [Timeline: Stardate 8182.3]
Star Trek #13, April 1981
All the Infinite Ways, by Martin Pasko
The Enterprise goes to Hephaestus to negotiate with the intelligent simian race for mining rights, but they find a Klingon ship, the Kluggoth, already there. They later find that McCoy’s daughter Joanna is also there with her husband-to-be, Ambassador Suvak, a Vulcan. The Klingons had discovered that the Hephaestans had had their intelligence enhanced artificially by a manufactured implant called a ‘symbiont’, that had been designed for them by an ancient alien 34
race, and which is now manufactured in a secret facility. The Klingon commander, Kagg, plans to find and destroy the facility and remove the ‘symbionts’ from the Hephaestans, then there will be no sentient indigenous race and they can take over the planet. After finding the facility they plant a bomb there and capture Joanna as a hostage to prevent Federation interference. Suvak had come down with a fatal ailment, choriocytosis, but he recovers sufficiently to sense the danger that Joanna is in, and he frees her. By that time, Kirk’s team had uploaded the manufacturing data for the symbionts and beamed up as many of them as they could before having to beam themselves out before the bomb went off. Suvak dies in the explosion, Kagg had been killed previously, and the other Klingons leave. The Federation helps to rebuild the symbiont manufacturing facility and looks forward to good relations with the Hephaestans. McCoy’s relationship with his daughter had not been good, but he takes time to go and talk with her.
[Timeline: Stardate 8264.5]
Star Trek #14, June 1981
We Are Dying, Egypt, Dying!, by Martin Pasko
A dangerous swarm of metallic meteorites is headed for Zeta Reticuli II, and the Enterprise checks out the planet and finds a desert landscape with pyramids like ancient Egypt. When Kirk leads a team down to investigate, they find no lifesigns but, when investigating a building that McCoy thought might be a burial chamber, they find a tall statue of the god Khnum and a large collection of mummies, and also indications of a strong power-source. Kirk stumbles and grabs the staff of Khnum to steady himself, but then he starts acting like a tyrannical pharaoh, calling himself Menteptah II. He destroys all their communicators except for one that McCoy had taken from the body of a security guard killed by a laser-like beam from Khnum. When Spock (on the Enterprise) gets concerned by lack of contact from Kirk’s team, he gets to speak briefly with McCoy then beams down himself. Spock realizes that there is a computer in Khnum that is controlling Kirk and he destroys it, freeing Kirk. McCoy had found that Kirk had been treating members of the team with a psychoactive drug and he applies an antidote to them. But prior to that, Khnum had fired a beam at the Enterprise causing it (but not those aboard it) to start shrinking. The destruction of Khnum led to the awakening of the mummies and they begin attacking Kirk’s team until Kirk does a reprise of his pharaoh role, ordering them to stand down.
Spock finds another computer system that lets him counteract the shrinking effect on Enterprise.
An ancient alien race had realized that the thinning atmosphere was dooming the native race and had provided technology to preserve and sustain them while they searched for a new home for them. However, they never returned, and the system mistook Kirk as the returning agent. Now the Enterprise destroys the meteoroids and plans to evacuate the survivors while a new home is found. [Timeline: Stardate 8305.3]
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The Quality of Mercy, by Martin Pasko
The Enterprise is sent on a top-secret mission to the execution complex of the prison-planet Miaplacious V of the xenophobic Miaplacidans, in order to recover Tak, the son of Commodore Markessan, who had fled there for reasons unknown. Kirk, McCoy, Spock, and Uhura (all suitably disguised) take the place of four new prison guards on their way to the execution complex. They arrive at a time when a female prisoner had just escaped, and Kirk’s group volunteers to find the escapee, and Wermann (the Supervisor) agrees. But he has suspicions about them, so he has his assistant, Kohll, follow them. Kirk’s group find the escaped woman, but she is dead. They then have to fight off the creature that had apparently killed her, and during that melee they get to meet Tak. His mother is an Antosian, so he had inherited her ability to transform himself and objects that are with him. He explains that he had inadvertently killed the woman he loved by driving into an irrigation canal while intoxicated, and he came to the complex because he deserved punishment. Back at the complex, Wermann is going to have them all executed after they attempt to rescue Tak (who had taken the form of the escapee woman in order to be executed), but Wermann is killed by Kohll. Kohll had been sent to the planet because of his political views and he hated the way the prisoners were treated. Now he says he’ll institute changes, but he still feels that Kirk and the others have to be punished because of the laws against aliens. Happily, Scotty had been instructed to beam them up after five and half hours, no matter what, and that time limit expires just as they are about to be taken into custody, and Tak is included in the beam up. [Timeline: Stardate 8822.5]
Star Trek #16, August 1981
There’s No Space Like Gnomes!, by Martin Pasko
The Enterprise is bringing supplies to a colony on Valerian but cannot find any trace of the colonists except for their abandoned encampment. What they do find is some friendly gnome-like creatures who call themselves the Kuwalden (led by Torval), and some Troll-like creatures (called Mallingen) who seem to live below ground, but who are driven off with the help of the Kuwalden. A humanoid-like creature appears and approaches them but is hit by a beam from somewhere and collapses. McCoy beams up with him to sickbay. There, the injured humanoid appears to start shrinking and turning more Troll-like. When the colonists are not found, the supplies are beamed back to the ship, but two stowaways are inadvertently beamed back with them. Those two appear to be goblins flying on bats and causing havoc with their bolas, including destroying Uhura’s communication console. But when one of the goblins is knocked off his bat and loses his red conical hat, he changes to look like a gnome. Themon was an Andorian crewperson on Kirk’s team, and when she is knocked unconscious and the trolls abscond with her, Kirk’s team go after them, but then a rockfall traps them in the caves with the trolls. When they find Themon being treated well by the trolls, Kirk comes to realize that the gnomes are the real concern, and that they had somehow turned the colonists into the trolls. But when Kirk confronts them, the gnomes make their phasers and communicators disappear and has 36
them captured. But one of the red hats of the Kuwalden on the Enterprise had previously been beamed down to Kirk, and he uses its powers to make the ground rise up around Torval and Hedvig and trap them. Suddenly their phasers and communicators return, and Kirk has Chekov fire and destroy the gnomes’ hats. That causes them to lose their powers, and they explain that the four of them (Torval, Hedvig and the two on the Enterprise) were the last of their kind and they just wanted to be left alone. McCoy had come up with an antidote that restored the colonists to their original state and the Enterprise took them aboard to find a new home for them. The planet Valerian, along with its gnomes, is effectively quarantined. [Timeline: Stardate 8431.5]
Star Trek #17, December 1981
The Long Night’s Dawn!, by Martin Pasko
An automated probe had been monitoring space from the Goran system to look for Klingon incursions into Federation space, but the probe had been struck by a large meteoroid and then burned up in planet Goran IV’s atmosphere. It was feared that chemicals from the probe might poison the atmosphere and prove deadly to the local population that was at a stage of development similar to Europe’s Middle Ages. There was an antidote for the chemical but not knowing the natives’ anatomy, it could be more deadly than the probe’s chemical, so Kirk, Spock and McCoy beam down to investigate. While McCoy goes to find whatever counts as a hospital, Kirk and Spock are investigating a marketplace where Kirk collides with a man scurrying through the crowd with some scrolls. One of the scrolls shows a sketch of the local solar system, and Spock wants to learn more, but the man, Gorman, is considered a heretic by the local religious authorities, and Kirk and Spock are labeled the same when they speak with Gorman, so the two of them get imprisoned in the cathedral, and McCoy ends up there too, after finding an old man suffering from the probe’s gas and testing the antidote on him. The authorities had smashed their communicators and other implements, as they saw them as tools of the devil, so when Gorman, assisted by a young girl who had seen the trio beam down and considered them to be angels, releases Kirk and Spock, they have no way to contact the Enterprise. While Kirk rescues McCoy from execution by drowning, Spock knocks out Gorman with a neck pinch, then uses some of his equipment and wire from the remains of their communicators to build a simple radio capable of sending a message to Uhura to deploy the antidote. People, including Kirk and McCoy, are starting to collapse as the antidote containers explode in the atmosphere. With everyone recovered, and the young girl’s limp is cured by McCoy, they move on to their next adventure. [Timeline: Stardate 8124.5]
Star Trek #18, February 1982
A Thousand Deaths, by J.M. Dematteis
The Enterprise encounters a vessel that is 20.6 times the size of Earth, and it stops right in front of them but doesn’t respond to hails. Then the bridge crew find themselves being probed and Kirk and Spock disappear, reappearing aboard what a giant robot called the Sustainer describes as being the world-ship Solopziz. The Sustainer tell them that it wishes them no harm but says 37
that one of them must die and the other will be returned to the Enterprise, and then Kirk finds himself as captain of an ancient sailing ship being boarded by pirates, and Spock is one of the pirate crew. Instead of the two fighting to the death (as they seem to be supposed to do) they gang up to fight the other sailors and pirates, who turn out to be robots. Then a mast collapses, and Kirk dies while pushing Spock free of it. But the Sustainer restores Kirk to life. Then they go through another adventure where Spock dies saving Kirk, but this time Spock is restored to life.
Then the Sustainer tells them that the Enterprise (which is caught in a tractor beam) will be destroyed, and its outer shell starts heating up to dangerous levels. They are told that the ship can be saved if one of them offers to die in its place. Spock immediately applies a nerve pinch to Kirk and offers himself up, but Kirk desperately fights off the effects and offers himself. Then the Sustainer removes the threats to all of them and explains its actions. The planet Solopziz had been populated by wholly self-centered humanoids, the Lezze-Eesbrk, who had endless fights and wars and finally destroyed their planet. In one collaborative effort they built their world-ship and the Sustainer, and the surviving humanoids were in suspended animation while a new home was found. But the Sustainer knew they’d just destroy themselves again, so he’d been looking for examples of unconditional love and selfless giving to embed in their psyche, and he’d found that in Kirk and Spock. With the examples having been fed to the humanoids, Kirk, Spock and the Enterprise were free to go on their way.
Star Trek Collectors’ Item Issue #1, April 1987
Operation Assimilation, by Paul Jenkins
Moliok, Daughter of the Seat of Tarek, was feeling frustrated with the events that had resulted in her commanding an ancient warbird in a backwater of the Romulan Empire. Then word comes through of a massive alien ship of unknown original attacking a scientific outpost, and she thinks that her chance to prove herself has come. Unfortunately, the vessel and its occupants seem to care less about her threats and actions, and they methodically take over her ship and capture her, then start changing her physically. She uselessly fights the loss of her being as she is merged in with the Collective, and chants along with them “We are Borg”.
Star Trek X Men, 1996
Star TreX, by Scott Lobdell
The Enterprise returns to Delta Vega but finds a psionic rift in space above the planet, and Spock’s sensors tell him it’s alive. A starship starts to emerge from the rift, but then the rift suddenly expands, destroying the craft. However, another starship decloaks nearby, and the image of a giant human, calling himself Gladiator, appears in space declaring that Delta Vega has been claimed for the children of Sharra and K’Ythri in the name of the Majestrix Lilandra Neramani. Meanwhile, the X-Men had teleported themselves off of the ship that got destroyed, expecting to find themselves on the Deathbird’s Star Cruiser (the ship of the Shi’Ar Empire that had decloaked) but instead find that they are on the Enterprise. McCoy discovers three of them in sickbay (which gets confusing when one of the X-Men also turns out to be named Dr. McCoy), 38
and Spock intercepts the others as they are heading for the shuttlebay. An away team led by Kirk joins with the X-Men in beaming down to investigate what is happening on the planet, and they find that Proteus, an adversary of the X-Men, had revived Gary Mitchell who was using the energy from the psionic rift to empower himself. When the X-Men see how Mitchell is only bent on destruction, they agree that Kirk had been right to kill him, and they work with the Enterprise team to restore that situation. With the combined power of the X-Men and the away team’s phasers, plus Spock and Wolverine (aboard the Enterprise) capturing part of the rift and firing its energy back at the rift to disrupt Mitchell’s power, McCoy is able to declare him dead again. The X-Men inform Deathbird that they had been sent by the Shi’Ar Majestrix, so the X-Men take control of the Shi’Ar ship and bid farewell to the Enterprise crew before heading back to their own universe and timeline. [Timeline: Stardate 4740.5]
The Next Generation Special, July 1998
Riker - The Enemy of My Enemy, by Dan Abnett & Ian Edginton
Data is promoted to First Officer after Riker was court martialed for leaking information to the Marquis, but it was really a setup to allow him to infiltrate the Marquis after a meeting with Ro on the planet Perdition. Riker is surprised when they beam up to a Klingon bird-of-prey captained by K’Nera. Ro had made a deal with K’Nera after losing so many people to the Dominion’s Jem’Hadar, and they head to Earth. But Riker was wearing a biomechanical device under false skin on his arm that funneled information to Picard. At Earth, Ro, Riker and two other Marquis beam down and are able to download information from Starfleet Central Archive onto a data chip and beam back. There, Riker finds that the chip holds information about the Genesis device that K’Nera wants to use to restore his house’s honor, and K’Nera kills the other two Marquis but Ro and Riker escape. Riker disables the bird-of-prey’s warp drive and cloaking device, enabling the Enterprise to beam him off before a warp core breach destroys the Klingon vessel. Ro had escaped on a Klingon shuttle and was headed back to the Marquis. On the Enterprise, Riker was wondering where his loyalties were, because he discovers that even the supposed Genesis Device info was faked to lure the Marquis and the rogue Klingon.
The Next Generation #1, 17 November 1990 (UK Edition); #1, Feb 1988 (US)
Where No One Has Gone Before!, by Michael Carlin
The Enterprise approaches the unexplored Tri-Betaline system in order to check out the planet T-B 13. Sensors show it to be class-M and that they have humanoids as the sentient species. They make an audio-only contact with those on Syntagus Thelus (as the planet is known to the natives), who informs them that they welcome visitors and invite them down. However, at almost the same time, the ship comes under fire from the planet, but the Syntagus Theluvians insists that they had nothing to do with it. A diplomatic away-team, consisting of Riker, LaForge, Troi, Yar, and Data, beams down and immediately find themselves under phaser fire. Troi is able to sense the location of their attackers and then LaForge is able to see that they face a large number of natives. [Timeline: Stardate 41187.5]
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The Next Generation #2, 1 December 1990 (UK Edition); part of #1 in US
Where No One Has Gone Before! Part 2, by Michael Carlin
The away team of Riker, Data, LaForge, Troi and Yar split up as they come under attack from a massive tank-like war machine that reminds Data of a Tripolian Hellblazer. Meanwhile, Enterprise is still being told that the away team hasn’t arrived. A scan of the planet fails to locate them because of some form of interference on the surface. LaForge and Data have to surrender to the “tank” and a large humanoid emerges, claiming that he has won the game. Then he gets floored by Yar, who had hidden herself on the outside of the massive vehicle. The odds change again as more large humanoids emerge from the forest, but they are followed by Riker and Troi.
Data gained access to the large tank and disabled the field that was blocking scans, and the Enterprise hears from the planet that the team and their abductors had been located. People on the planet age backwards, and those attacking the away team had been children playing war games, while the actual adults were child-size and friendly and Picard beams down to begin talks.
The Next Generation #3, 15 December 1990 (UK Edition); #2, March 1988 (US)
Spirit in the Sky!, by Michael Carlin
It is a time of parties on the Enterprise with Christmas and a few other festivals from various planets being observed. Riker is left on the bridge as Picard, reluctantly, goes to celebrate with the crew. Then another ship is seen entering the area and some power fluctuations and short outages are noticed, but power settles down. Contact is made with the other ship, which is manned by people calling themselves the Creeg, and Riker invites Captain Bronder and a few others to join the festivities on the Enterprise. The Creeg had actually been chasing an energy creature that they wanted to absorb, and they think it had entered the Enterprise. One of the Creeg thinks he senses the creature and breaks away from the others but comes across Wesley (who had snuck out of the festivities) and thinks it may just be Wesley that he’d sensed. His disappointment tips Wesley off to the fact that the Creeg were up to something. Geordi is able to see the creature with his Visor, and it starts to materialize into something resembling Santa Claus. Then the creature enters Bronder, then leaves him and seems to be heading towards the bridge. When they encounter the creature again it seems to be depleted, but Bronder now stops the other Creeg from going after it, and the concern of Bronder seems to strengthen the creature.
It flies through the Enterprise, then across to and through the Creeg ship before heading off somewhere and leaving everybody filled with the holiday spirit. [Timeline: Stardate 42120.3]
The Next Generation #4, 29 December 1990 (UK Edition); #3, April 1988 (US)
Factor Q, by Michael Carlin
The Enterprise encounters a ship of unknown design that is seemingly abandoned with no lifesigns showing, although Troi senses something over there. An away team of Tasha Yar, 40
Riker, and two security personnel beam over but then something happens to the security guards, as if they had knocked each other out, and then Riker is knocked out by an invisible assailant.
Then the assailant uncloaks himself and Yar is traumatized to find someone from her past. At this point the team gets beamed back to the Enterprise, and Riker and the two guards recover quickly, but Yar is disabled by the memory. Then Q turns up on the bridge, telling Picard to destroy the alien ship and, while Picard argues with him, the alien ship starts attacking. To protect the civilians, Picard has the saucer section separate from the Battle Bridge, and then Picard orders an attack on the alien ship and disables it. At around the same time, Wesley notices something apparently beam aboard the saucer section but not materialize, and navigational control of the saucer is lost. The four human-like crew of the alien ship surrender and make it clear that Q had encouraged them to attack the Enterprise. Q is still demanding that Picard destroy the alien ship, and Picard only stops arguing with him when he is informed that the saucer-section had disappeared. [Timeline: Stardate 42139.7]
Deep Space Nine #1, November 1996
Judgement Day, by Howard Weinstein
The Defiant, with Sisko and Worf, had just finished handling a medical emergency on a Federation observatory when they hear from Kira that DS9 is caught in a battle between three Amaralan ships and two Jem’Hadar ships that had come through the wormhole. The wormhole was also emitting radiation that was pulling the station and one of the Amaralan ships into the wormhole. When the Defiant arrives, they find a disabled Jem’Hadar ship with one occupant and a disabled Amaralan ship with a number of survivors, but the station is missing. The Amaralan are beamed aboard and the Jem’Hadar is beamed directly to the brig, but they all appear to think that DS9 was leading an invasion of the Gamma Quadrant, and the Jem’Hadar seemed to be showing fear about something. Meanwhile, DS9 has emerged from the other end of the wormhole, but seriously damaged. The radiation coming from the wormhole prevents the Defiant from going through to locate the station, and Vedek Twahn on Bajor is preaching that the disappearance of DS9 foretells a time of judgement. [Timeline: Stardate 49236.3]
Deep Space Nine #2, December 1996
Judgement Day: The Conclusion, by Howard Weinstein
Deep Space Nine is being patched up after its unexpected trip through the wormhole. Kira tries to get Commander Torrun (aboard the Amaralan ship) to cooperate in getting the station back to the Alpha Quadrant, but Torrun merely uses that as an opportunity to get Odo aboard her ship to hold him captive, even when it means abandoning Errad on DS9. That action backfires when Krail and Errad’s other supporters mutiny, kill Torrun, and release Odo. Unfortunately, not all the Amaralan think that way, and Domahl fuses the plasma inverters, which will lead to an overload destroying the ship. At the same time, Defiant makes it through the radiation-contaminated wormhole on its second attempt and two Jem’Hadar ships are seen approaching the station. Dax gets Errad to send a distress call from the Amaralan ship to the Jem’Hadar, saying 41
that they have been captured, and she gets a runabout sent to evacuate the ship. With a combination of luck and timing, both Jem’Hadar ships get caught in the blast of the exploding Amaralan ship, and the Defiant helps DS9 back through the wormhole. [Timeline: Stardate 49237.1]
Deep Space Nine #3, January 1997
The Cancer Within: Part 1, by Mariano
Deep Space Nine is still being repaired after the misadventure through the wormhole and back, and then it finds itself being approached by a Starfleet shuttle that had previously been reported missing. Coming from the Badlands, it implied the Marquis. When it docks, it is found that four of the six crew are already dead and the other two are seriously ill from an unknown virus that then starts spreading on the station and Kira is one of those afflicted. Two other Marquis agents aboard the station destroy the shuttle, creating damage that causes major power outages, but O’Brien’s team gets it restored before loss of life occurs, and Worf and Odo apprehend the two agents. Meanwhile, Dr. Pulanski had been called in by her daughter, Jackie, who was working at a Marquis base in the Badlands. Jackie wanted her mother’s help in fighting a virus that was affecting the colony, but without telling her that they had created the virus to infect Cardassians, but it had now mutated to affect humans and Bajorans too. It doesn’t take Pulanski long to work out the true story, and then she finds that her daughter has become infected.
Deep Space Nine #4, February 1997
The Cancer Within: Part II, by Mariano
DS9 is infected by the plague that had been engineered by the Marquis, and Jake and Kira are among those badly infected. Bashir, along with Worf, O’Brien and Jadzia, respond to a message from Dr. Pulaski and meet up with her near the Marquis base in the Badlands. Their welcome by the Marquis is certainly not friendly but the Marquis have been badly weakened by the mutated virus and can’t put up much of a battle. In the underground lab, Pulaski and Bashir find enough information to produce a vaccine, which is tested on some of the seriously ill Marquis, including Pulaski’s daughter, Jackie. Jackie talks the Marquis leader, Kunkel, into stopping their fight at least until the cure is implemented. Sisko had already taken the partially repaired Defiant to the Marquis base and picks up Bashir and the others. The formula for the vaccine is sent to DS9 by subspace, and Jake and Kira are recovering while the Defiant heads back. On Bajor, the Shadow Group are making their plans.
Deep Space Nine #5, March 1997
The Shadow Group, by Mariano
The Defiant is returning from the Badlands and about to dock when a bomb goes off on the Promenade, seriously injuring Ziyal. Doctor Bashir saves her life, but there is another unsuccessful attempt on her life soon after. Communication with a desert region on Bajor was 42
detected around the time of both attacks, and Kira goes to check that out, accompanied by Odo and, at their own special request, Ziyal and Garak. Sisko takes the Defiant to the Badlands because there are indications that the Marquis might be involved, and the Defiant comes across a battle between Cardassian and Marquis ships. They defeat the Marquis ships and beam off the crews before the ships self-destruct, but those rescued turn out to be Cardassians who claim to be members of the Shadow Group. They are handed over to the Cardassian forces, and Defiant heads back to DS9, where Gul Dukat is also headed after learning of his daughter’s injuries. As Defiant nears DS9 they learn that Kira’s group has apparently been taken captive on Bajor. Their captors also claimed to be the Shadow Group and were mostly Cardassians but one of their leaders was Zoal, who had been one of Kira’s fellow resistance fighters during the occupation.
She warns him that the Cardassians will betray his trust, which proves true when one of the Cardassian leaders shoots Zoal in the back, seeing his use to be over now that Ziyal and Garak were captured. But then Dukat’s ship and runabouts from DS9 arrive, Kira shoots the Cardassian leader in the back, but only on a stun setting, and the other Cardassians surrender.
Deep Space Nine #6, April 1997
Risk, by Howard Weinstein
The Defiant is investigating Alpha space beyond Bajor when it encounters a spacial anomaly that is emitting tachyons and disrupting their sensors. Then they realize that their sensors are causing the anomaly to collapse, and they are unable to stop it. Barely escaping, they find that they are surrounded by, and soon held by, tractor beams from three Shirn Alliance ships and accused of the murder of a test pilot (Garra Pol) who was traveling through the anomaly (the main part of the Daralis Project). Sisko takes responsibility for his ship, so he is held for trial, and Dax is his advocate. Dr. Koth is now heading up the Daralis Project, but Dr. Mayev used to be in that position and is now assigned to escort Dax. He lets her know that the project is far from universally supported by the Shirn, but it is the crowning glory of the scientific community.
When Sisko’s judges are all scientists from the project, the verdict becomes a foregone conclusion. O’Brien had been studying their sensor data and comes to the conclusion that the anomaly was not destroyed, just shifted out of phase, and the test pilot is likely still alive. When the evidence is presented to Dr. Koth, he cannot accept that Federation science could demonstrate what their own science couldn’t and demands evidence. So, largely against orders, O’Brien takes a manned probe out to try to locate the test pilot. [Timeline: Stardate 48924.6]
Deep Space Nine #7, May 1997
Risk: The Conclusion, by Howard Weinstein
O’Brien had a rougher ride through the anomaly than he’d planned for, but he makes it back safely having obtained a lot of data about the conduit, even if he didn’t locate the missing test pilot. Koth remains unconvinced that the pilot can be rescued, even when Mayev helps Dax and the others obtain a secret report that Koth had prepared about the dangers of the Daralis project.
He also admits that they don’t have a second vessel capable of traveling through a new conduit 43
and locating the pilot. O’Brien works out how to adjust Defiant’s shields to enable it to travel (hopefully) through safely. Reluctantly, Kira agrees and, assisted by Mayev, they start the trip.
However, Mayev had his own agenda and is prepared to sacrifice the Defiant and all aboard to create a major disaster in the hopes of turning his people away from their concentration on wasteful and dangerous science projects. Dax doesn’t agree and renders him unconscious. With the conduit beginning to destabilize, the test pilot and her ship are located and brought aboard, and they make it back just before the conduit collapses. Sisko is released, and before they leave, he tells Koth that should they meet again he hopes it will be as friends, but they are all thinking that that will only be if the Shirn learn a few lessons. [Timeline: Stardate 49354.9]
Deep Space Nine #8, August 1997
Public Enemies, Private Lives, by Mariano Nicieza
An away team of O’Brien, Keiko, Kira, and Jake Sisko take a runabout from DS9 to the uninhabited jungle planet, Mauer IV, but they stumble across a meeting, supposedly between members of the Marquis (led by Kundel) and a group of human gunrunners who are planning on selling weapons to them. The away team is taken captive, but Kira gets a distress message sent out via their runabout before a Romulan ship, captained by Tomalek, decloaks and destroys the runabout. The Marquis group are actually Romulans in disguise, and their leader (Narak) is actually Tomalek’s son, and Narak is not happy when his father tries to intervene. When Sisko hears the distress call, he heads out with the Defiant, but first heads into the Badlands. There he meets with a Marquis leader, Cal Hudson, who confirms that the group on Mauer IV are not authorized by the Marquis, and Sisko asks him to help spring a trap on them.
Deep Space Nine #9, September 1997
Public Enemies, Private Lives, Conclusion, by Mariano
The Defiant arrives at Maurer IV cloaked, and Hudson’s Marquis ship arrives openly to meet the supposed gunrunners’ ship, but it soon becomes known that there is also a cloaked Romulan ship present. Soon all ships are openly visible, talking, and sometimes firing on one another, but the Romulan ship comes off worse. Tomalek goes down to see what his son, Narak, is up to, and by that time the Federation away team had escaped, but all but Jake were quickly recaptured.
Tomalek sends Narak after Jake, hoping he can learn to do something right, but it is Jake that helps Narak back after rescuing him from a tar pit. Narak learns a lesson about offering help to a worthy opponent. The away team is brought back aboard and the Romulans and the Defiant go their own ways, and while the Romulans had been hoping to drive Starfleet and the Marquis further apart, they ended up getting them to work together. [Timeline: Stardate 50444.1]
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Deep Space Nine #10, October 1997
Lwaxanna Troi and the Wedding of Doom, by Michael Martin & Andy Mangels Lwaxanna arrives at the station with her retinue in tow and tells Odo that she is there for her wedding to the Bolian named Var, just as soon as she can get divorced from Odo (which Odo finds he doesn’t really want). Sisko is not eager to have the wedding on the station, especially when he finds that he is supposed to officiate. Quark is very eager for the event to happen, because he sees a lot of latinum flowing from it, and he pulls Rom away from inspecting some goop on the surface of Var’s ship. But that “goop” escapes into the air ducts and captures (and is assumed to have devoured) a female technician named Trinia and Var’s personal assistant named Ivia. When Rom realizes what is happening, he tries to warn Lieta, but she also gets encased in the growing goop. [Timeline: Stardate 50579.8]
Deep Space Nine #11, November 1997
Rom to the Rescue?! by Andy Mangels & Michael Martin
Lwaxana Troi was on DS9 to marry a Bolian named Var Ulos after arranging to be divorced from Odo, but something had kidnapped three women on the station, including Ivia who was to be a bridesmaid and Rom’s fiancée, Leeta. It appears that the gooey creature had arrived on the outside of the ship’s hull that had brought Lwaxana and Ulos to the station. Rom goes after the creature, assisted by Deputy Etana who also gets captured. There is speculation that whatever the creature is, it must be after female hormones since it has only captured women. Rom finds that a phaser will disrupt the creature enough to free the women, and then they and the creature burst in on the wedding ceremony. Lwaxana reads the creatures mind and finds that it is a female space creature now working on instinct alone after colliding with the ship. Letting it attack her, the creature dies after being overwhelmed by her hormones. Finding Ulos hiding under a table, she uses his cowardly behavior as an excuse to call off the wedding; actually, she had found out that he was after her fortune and that Ulos and Ivia had been using technology to block her telepathy.
Odo admits that he hadn’t got around to filing the divorce papers.
Deep Space Nine #12, December 1997
Telepathy War, Part 2: Command Decision, by Michael Martin & Andy Mangels
{Part 1 of this story is Starfleet Academy #9, Return to the Forbidden Planet on page 67} Deep Space Nine has Cardassian ships approaching from one side and the Dominion’s Jem’Hadar ships preparing to move through the wormhole on the other, so they are very pleased to find that the Enterprise is going to reach the station ahead of the forces allied against them. They are less happy to find that the ship is carrying Admiral Dennis Decker who is still on his vendetta against Omega Squad. The Admiral is right in his assumption that Omega Squad was headed for DS9, but Nog had secretly beamed them aboard the station, via Defiant. When the runabout that Omega Squad had been using is seen drifting near the station and a tractor beam is locked onto it, the runabout explodes and the members of Omega Squad are officially presumed dead, so 45
Admiral Decker rejoins the Enterprise. Kira defies Sisko’s order not to take Defiant out to join General Martok in taking the battle to the Cardassians, and Odo and Garak accompany her, as does Nog inadvertently as he was clearing the transporter logs to hide Omega Squad’s arrival. As the Jem’Hadar ships come through the wormhole, Omega Squad arrive in ops to offer Sisko their assistance in the upcoming battle. [Timeline: Stardate 50796.2]
Deep Space Nine #13, January 1998
Telepathy War, Part 3: Day of Honor, by Michael Martin & Andy Mangels
As about 30 Jem’Hadar ships and Cardassians led by Dukat start attacking the station, Kira beams Worf aboard the Defiant to join her, Garak, Nog, and Odo in facing down the invaders against Sisko’s orders. Aboard the station, Sisko allows Cadet Decker and the others of Omega Squad to join in the defense of the station, and they put up a brave and effective display. The Defiant is outgunned and takes serious damage, but then Martok and his ships decloak and enter the fray. Martok’s ship is hit, but Nog beams Martok aboard the Defiant before Martok’s ship explodes. There, Martok encourages Worf to remember that it is the Day of Honor, which becomes especially important when the Romulans, with Tomalak and Tebok, arrive to help drive off the Jem’Hadar and Cardassians. However, it is felt that this was only some form of test, because a far larger Dominion fleet had gathered at the other end of the wormhole. Sisko has to hand over Omega Squad to Admiral Matt Decker, except for T’Priell who is injured and unconscious in sickbay, and Astrun who is helping her. Sisko lets Kira, Worf, Odo and Garak off the hook for effectively hijacking the Defiant. {Part 4 of this story continues in Star Trek Unlimited #6, Telepathy War Part 4, Heart of Darkness, on page 51}
Deep Space Nine #14, February 1998
Nobody Knows the Tribbles I’ve Seen, by Michael Martin & Andy Mangels
Dax, O’Brien, Odo, Bashir, and Morn are seated at Quark’s, discussing why Klingons hate Tribbles. O’Brien said that Tribbles used to be Klingon pets, and that made the Romulans think they were a soft race open for attack. The resulting war turned the Klingons into ferocious warriors with no time for furry pets and they killed them all. According to Bashir it started when Scotty beamed the Tribbles from the Enterprise onto Koloth’s ship, the I.K.S. Gr’oth, and the close contact with them started to transform the smooth-headed Klingons and give them their ridged foreheads and other distinctive features. Jadzia says the Klingon antagonism started when an earlier Dax host, Enjana Dax, had teamed up with three Klingon thieves to steal the legendary Bat’leth of Molor, entering the building where it was housed in a massive Tribble colony-creature (the tribbles were again seen as Klingon pets). Unfortunately, something about the treasured bat’leth antagonized the tribbles, breaking up the colony into the individual tribbles, but with a taste for Klingon flesh. Worf arrives for what was supposed to be a celebration in his honor, but he dismisses all the stories and then walks out in disgust at the way Quark served up gagh. Odo says that Morn had told the true story, but Morn wasn’t talking. [Timeline: soon after the incidents in the TV episode “Trials and Tribble-ations”]
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Deep Space Nine #15, March 1998
Requiem Obsidian, by Andy Mangels & Michael Martin
Eight years previously, when the station was still called Terok Nor, Garak had killed an Ullian named Yenla Tosh because the Obsidian Order had become suspicious of the Ullian’s telepathic abilities. Now, Garak believes Tosh has been seen aboard DS9 and he tells Bashir about what happened, but then Garak starts behaving erratically, and Bashir discovers that Garak’s neural pathways are deteriorating. Garak is given a neural blocker to allow him to function, and then Garak sees the Ullian again and catches up with her. However, she informs him that she is Yenla’s sister, Keytra Tosh, and as a peaceful Ullian is not out for revenge but wants to cure the offensive memory engram that her sister had injected into him when she was killed. Keytra had waited eight years to do this because the engram had not been working at its usual rapid pace, but now it was. Odo’s deputy, Etana, arrives as Keytra grabs hold of Garak’s head and Garak collapses, followed by Keytra when Etana stuns her. Everyone ends up in sickbay, and Bashir finds that Garak is recovering but Keytra dies. Garak comes close to admitting that he has a conscience when he discovers that another Ullian had died because of him. [Timeline: Stardate 50810.3]
Star Trek Unlimited #1, November 1996
Directives, by Dan Abnett & Ian Edginton
Picard’s Enterprise arrives at the planet Endrella to make first contact with the inhabitants (the Endrel) who are about to become interstellar-capable. However, on arrival they find the planet is undergoing a seismic catastrophe, and it is soon discovered that the seismic activity is being engineered by other aliens. A confrontation with one of these aliens, who was working on one of the installations causing the activity, results in the alien being injured and taken aboard the Enterprise for treatment. Then a large and powerful ship of the Lom arrives, demanding to know why the Enterprise is interfering with their work. The Lom had discovered that the Endrel will develop a deadly genetic flaw a thousand year into the future and the seismic activity and resulting “nuclear winter” would avoid that but kill millions in the process. Picard is left to ponder how he should handle the situation, but then Dr. Crusher discovers that the Lom have a minor congenital blood defect that will eradicate their race within a thousand years, so Picard implements a plan to disable the equipment causing the seismic activity and informs the Lom of the defect they need to deal with, telling them to put their own house in order before interfering with others. The Lom accept that and leave. The Enterprise puts off their first contact mission until the planet has recovered, which it seems is underway despite considerable loss of life.
[Timeline: Stardate 479905.2]
Dying of the Light, by Dan Abnett & Ian Edginton
Kirk’s Enterprise responds to a distress call and discovers a stranded professor, Holm Baynan, who had been collecting samples from ancient structures on the planet. However, it is quickly 47
discovered that the planet was a Gorn funeral planet, and that Baynan was effectively a grave-robber who knew exactly what he was doing, and the distress call was a ploy to get a quick ride home. Discovering that, Baynan is moved from guest quarters to the brig but, before Kirk could return the stolen artifacts to the surface, the Enterprise finds itself surrounded by Gorn warships commanded by S’Alath, who was the Gorn that Kirk had previously fought. S’Alath demands Kirk’s surrender, and Kirk appears to do that, but when they meet up on the planet, Kirk tells the Gorn, and demonstrates, how the Norsemen of Earth sent their honored dead on their way to Valhalla. That gets S’Alath’s interest, and he wants to hear more. Then he allows the Enterprise and her crew to leave the planet known as Lotora III to the Federation, but known as Cenotaph to the Gorn. [Timeline: Stardate 5970.3]
Star Trek Unlimited #2, January 1997
Action of the Tiger, by Dan Abnett & Iain Edginton
The Enterprise gets called to Starbase Six where Captain Kirk is to be among those to be briefed by Admiral Stone on what came out of the Federation’s Klingon Neutral Zone Policy Summit.
Kirk also gets to meet Commander Baines, who heads up Starbase Six, and Captain Ted Horner who had assisted Kirk in defeating the Kobiashi Maru simulation at the Academy. During the presentation, the station is taken over by Klingons, led by Korsa, who demands the return of colonies they claim were stolen from them. Kirk and Horner escape their captivity through extractor ducts and discover that the Klingons are renegades employed by Baines, who was staging a robbery of funds and securities stored on the station because he was tired of being bypassed for starship captain positions. Horner is killed by Korga and Kirk is recaptured.
However, Admiral Stone had also managed to escape and kills Korga while freeing Kirk, but Baines and the other Klingons escape the station aboard the USS Bakker and, having the command codes for all of the ships at the station, succeeds in disabling them all. But Spock had already worked out what was likely to be happening and had called in the Klingons, and Commander Kor is happy to have his ships destroy the Bakker and those on her. [Timeline: Stardate 5973.5]
The Unkindest Cut, by Dan Abnett & Ian Edginton
Most of the crew, including Captain Picard, are taking R&R on Risa while Worf and Data are left onboard to oversee the restocking of the ship. Data suddenly notices an unusual high-frequency signal, followed by a buildup of energy from the crates. Worf immediately orders everyone out of the cargo bay, so nobody is fatally injured when an explosion wrecks the bay. It is also found that the transporter rooms and shuttle bays had been seeded with nano-mines, preventing any more of the crew returning from Risa (Picard had already done so). Analyzing the air usage on the ship, Data establishes that there is someone else aboard, in addition to the skeleton crew, and the person was in Mr. Mot’s barbershop. Unfortunately, he was using a personal cloaking device, but they do succeed in disabling him but not until he had killed another crewman (six had previously died when trying to beam up). It turns out to be a Fenjex huntsman, out to kill Mr. Mot because an ancestor of his had (against his will) been among the crew of a pirate ship that had plundered and destroyed a number of colonies. Worf is forced to kill the 48
assassin when he produces a fragmentation grenade, but not before it is learned that there is another assassin on the planet. No weapons are allowed on Risa, but Barklay rigs a trap that discharges the battery from Geordi’s Visor through some Tholian silk that Deanna had bought, when the second assassin goes to attack Mot. That slows the assassin down enough so that Riker could knock him out. The assassin is later transferred to Starbase Nine to await extradition.
[Timeline: Stardate 48293.5]
Star Trek Unlimited #3, April 1997
Message in a Bottle, by Dan Abnett and Ian Edginton
Enterprise comes across a wormhole-like anomaly that turns out to be the entrance to a pocket universe from which quantum signals are emerging at regular intervals that appear to be attempts at communication. A team, consisting of Kirk, Uhura, Sulu, Nurse Chapel, and Ensign Corman (who proves to be a self-opinionated pain-in-the neck), takes a shuttle through the wormhole to try to make contact with anyone in there. It turns out to be a rough ride and Kirk is rendered unconscious leaving Uhura in charge (to Corman’s chagrin). There are large crystalline structures inside that appear to be the source of the quantum messages, and it seems that the pocket universe itself is a single living creature. When it takes an interest in the shuttle, Sulu advises the use of environmental suits which proves useful when the shuttle is destroyed. With another quantum signal building up, Uhura tries piggybacking a message off of it to the Enterprise giving coordinates for transporting all of them, and seemingly with the help of the pocket universe creature the message gets through, and they are all safely transported back to the Enterprise. With what she learned, Uhura believes that, should the opportunity arise again, she should be able to establish basic communication with the pocket universe. [Timeline: Stardate 5989.6]
Sins of the Fathers, by Ian Edginton & Dan Abnett
The Enterprise is sent to the planet Odena to try to negotiate a peace between the warring Urlan and Dren’Ai tribes. The Dren’Ai are religious zealots and the Urlan are secular industrialists, and neither set of leaders seems particularly interested in achieving peace by any means other than wiping out the other side. The peace mission has a rocky start when an away mission comes under attack. Although the attack is thwarted, one of the Dren’Ai, Deeta, suffers a fractured skull and Crusher has her beamed to sickbay, where she is healed. Deeta tells of the Urlan capturing Dren’Ai girls and sterilizing them to reduce the Dren’Ai population. She also allows Crusher to carry out other tests on her, from which Crusher finds that the Urlan have been stealing the eggs from the Dren’Ai girls in order to birth and raise children as Urlan to compensate for the loss of fertility among Urlan women as a result of fall-out from weapons used earlier in the war. Then a Dren’Ai, Kirella Taure, hijacks a shuttle and uses it in attacking Urlan refugee centers and plans to turn the craft into a sort-of “dirty-nuke” bomb over the Urlan capital. Deeta is allowed to speak to the pilot, and she tells her that the people she will be attacking are largely her own people, her own kin, which is taboo in their religion. Kirella calls off her attack, and when word gets out of what had been happening, a de facto peace emerges and the leaders of both sides 49
(who had kept the truth of what had been happening concealed) come under intense questioning.
[Timeline: Stardate 49293.5]
Star Trek Unlimited #4, May 1997
None But the Brave, by Dan Abnett & Ian Edginton
Scotty is brought in by a Starfleet Intelligence team to help recover the battle bridge section of the new Constellation class ship, Confederate, and the Enterprise moves right up to the border of the Romulan neutral zone to keep the Romulans occupied while the recovery mission is underway. The Confederate had somehow ended up in Romulan space and, while the crew had escaped on the saucer section, the battle bridge had been taken aboard a Romulan space station, Atnox Depot. The Starfleet Intelligence team board the station okay, and only loses one member while boarding the Confederate, but Scotty discovers that the ship had been testing a warp accelerator that he and the original designer had both declared too dangerous to implement.
However, he gets the ship capable of warp 2 and they escape towards Federation space, but the engines fail just on the Romulan side of the neutral zone. The SI commander, Craig, wants to implement the ship’s auto-destruct, but Scotty passes information to the Enterprise on how to protect themselves from the effects of the warp accelerator and gets them to beam everyone off the Confederate. When the warp accelerator is activated, it temporarily disables the surrounding Romulan ships (including one captained by Commander Mirek, the sister of the Romulan commander from whom the cloaking device was stolen), then it creates a spacial distortion which the Confederate disappears into as the Enterprise, complete with Scotty and the SI team, escapes.
Inheritance, by Dan Abnett & Ian Edginton
Leah Brahms had discovered plans for a warp accelerator that her late grandfather, Virgil Brahms, had come up with, and she thinks it has potential. When Geordi LaForge meets up with her at the Theoretical Propulsion Group’s biannual seminar at Starbase 313 and is shown the design, he agrees with her. They decide to do some preliminary testing on a runabout, but the Romulan Major Radek (who had been masquerading as the Vulcan Professor Savel) kidnaps them and takes them to the Romulan Naval Shipyard on Cutuleh Minor. The battle bridge of the U.S.S. Confederate, which had recently dropped out of a spacial distortion, is also there, and the Romulans want them to get the warp accelerator working. LaForge and Brahms both come to realize the dangers of the warp accelerator but, while trying to appear as they are working on it, LaForge gets a signal out with his service number embedded in it, and Data recognizes it. When the Romulans threaten to use a mnemonic probe on LaForge, Brahms says she will get the warp accelerator working, but instead disables the warp core’s magnetic constrictors. That causes the Romulans to evacuate the area rapidly, and before the explosion occurs the Enterprise arrives to beam LaForge and Brahms off. [Timeline: Stardate 482942.7]
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Star Trek Unlimited #5, September 1997
Secret Lives, by Dan Abnett & Ian Edginton
The Enterprise is sent to investigate what had happened to the Horus Deep Space Array near Cardassian space. They find that it had drifted close to a gas giant that was affecting communications and the ability to transport, so Riker, Worf, Troi and Dr. Crusher take a shuttlecraft across. While Riker is trying to contact the Enterprise, he finds that the connection is deteriorating further, and Data suggests that Riker uses the station thrusters to stop the orbital decay. However, they start to find the bodies of the station’s crew who had been violently murdered, and then Lt. Shelby appears as a Borg drone accusing Riker of betraying them to the Borg because he hadn’t killed Locutus when he could. At the same time, Worf comes under attack from two Klingons supposedly hired by Alexander to kill him, Crusher finds the Traveler who shows her the body of Wesley who had been killed by a subspace warp creature who was supposedly still on the station and out to kill them all, and Troi fears that she is suffering the early stages of the deadly Santorini Syndrome because of the way her empathic senses were going acute. When somebody is heard approaching sickbay, Crusher assumes it is the subspace monster and is ready to kill it, but happily Troi stops her because it is Data. Data had come aboard because the orbital decay hadn’t been stopped, but then he identified a virus (possibly a Cardassian bioweapon) that was fueling their worst fears, but once the cause was identified a cure was soon available. [Timeline: Stardate 48303.6]
As Flies to Wanton Boys, by Dan Abnett & Ian Edginton
Kirk takes a landing party down to investigate the planet Vehtora Four and a large mysterious building that had been observed there, but they use a shuttle because an atmospheric disruption blocks transporters. However, the atmospheric disruption becomes an energy field that knocks out all power to the shuttle and renders their communicators and other equipment inoperable.
Trees soften the shuttle’s crash-landing, and although the shuttle is seriously damaged, the crew survives. But when they venture outside, they come under fire from darts fired by the natives, and crewman Jameson is killed, and Sulu is seriously injured. The Enterprise is ordered to go and evacuate the 900 member of the Ana-Barra colony, where radiation from a comet will soon render the planet uninhabitable. But first, Spock determines that the building they had located on the planet was the source of the planetary shield, and he believes that a phaser bombardment of the place might disable it. It does weaken the shielding over the building sufficiently for Spock to beam down inside the building. There, Spock encounters a computer-animated entity calling itself the Monitor, who explains that the original inhabitants of the planet had been the Dhauti, and they had originally created the Xhosa (the inhabitants currently attacking Kirk’s team) to transfer their essences into, but the Xhosa had turned on the Dhauti. Realizing their fate, the Dhauti had created the planetary shield to prevent the Xhosa ever gaining technology and affecting the outside universe. Spock disagrees with limiting any race’s development like that, and he disables the shield just in time to allow Kirk’s party to be beamed up as the Xhosa advanced on them. The Enterprise then headed at maximum warp to the Ana-Barra colony.
[Timeline: Stardate 5993.2]
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Star Trek Unlimited #6, November 1997
Telepathy War Part 4: Heart of Darkness, by Dan Abnett & Ian Edginton
{Part 3 of this story is Deep Space Nine #13, on page 46} A Federation and Klingon task force headed by Admiral Dennis Decker (aboard the Enterprise) goes through the wormhole to take the battle to the Dominion. The Enterprise also has the cadets Matthew Decker and Pava aboard who are assigned by Picard to be orderlies in sickbay. Suddenly Troi starts acting as if the crew, including Riker, are her mortal enemies, and she ends up sedated in sickbay. The task force comes under attack but are able to drive the Dominion forces off, and the task force continues forward. Matthew Decker goes to see his father, to try and reconcile with him, but then finds that he is a changling, but Matthew gets rendered unconscious. As another battle with the Dominion breaks out, Riker is sent to see if Admiral Decker is alright, but comes back saying that the Admiral had been a changling and he’d killed him. But Troi had escaped from sickbay, and she runs to Riker and embraces him joyously, and since Picard knows that the depolarization that the ship is using is reversing Troi’s emotions, he knows that’s not the real Riker. The real one emerges onto the bridge, having shaken off the changling’s attack, and he kills changling-Riker.
Then a Romulan force decloaks and comes to the task force’s rescue by destroying the Dominion forces. Enterprise heads back to DS9. {Part 5 of this story can be found in Star Trek Voyager
#13, Cloud Walkers, on page 61}
Star Trek Unlimited #7, January 1998
An Infinite Jest, by Dan Abnett and Ian Edginton
It is the launch of the Enterprise-E but Captain Kirk, not Captain Picard, walks onto the bridge, which the crew seems to think is normal, but Kirk doesn’t. Meanwhile, Picard finds himself on the bridge of the Enterprise NCC-1701 which is facing down a Klingon ship. All this is a result of a chess game between Q and Trelane, and soon both ships find themselves in completely empty space except for one planet that each ship’s computer identifies as Salvation. Both ships then find themselves being attacked by Klingon ships from the same era as their current captains had come from. Kirk uses a bluff to get the ship attacking Enterprise-E to hold off, and Picard uses his knowledge of the Klingon ship attacking NCC-1701 to disable it. Picard uses a mindmeld with Spock to get the crew to accept that he isn’t their real captain and explains about Q and Trelane’s game, and Kirk utilizes Troi’s empathic abilities to achieve the same goal.
When teams from both ships transport down to Salvation and start cooperating instead of fighting, Q and Trelane put in an appearance, complaining that the game isn’t supposed to work that way. When the two Klingon teams beam down and Kirk and Picard set them on Q and Trelane, the two omnipotent beings have had enough and send all ships and their captains back to their correct eras, and Q and Trelane battle each other directly. [Timeline: Stardate 49827.5, date 30 October 2371]
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Star Trek Unlimited #8, March 1998
The Boy, by Dan Abnett & Ian Edginton
Alexander Rozhenko had thrown a tantrum when a boy, Darryl Futterman, had baited him by showing him up in class, and the principal tells him to go and apologize to the boy. Alexander is on the verge of another tantrum, but he storms out and finds Darryl being beaten up by four bullies. Dismissing the bullies, Alexander stiffly, and obviously coerced, apologizes to the boy.
Darryl, still lying on the ground, can hardly believe his ears. When Alexander asks him why he delights in making him look foolish, Darryl admits to only doing it to make himself look strong, because he’s normally on the receiving end of bullying because he’s overweight and needs to wear glasses. He knew Alexander wouldn’t retaliate because his honor-code wouldn’t allow it.
Instead, Alexander helps Darryl get fit, putting him through some Klingon training. Sometime later, while Darryl is walking through the school yard on his own, the bullies trip him up and attack him, but declaring “Today would be a good day to die”, Darryl is able to get the better of the four. When Alexander and Darryl are brought before the principal to explain what happened, they both just give a Klingon roar.
The Warrior, by Dan Abnett & Ian Edginton
Worf has been left holding the baby, namely the child of Vikoth of the House of Duras. He is also being chased by Keltak of the House of K’Gor, who wants to have the baby in order to take control of the House of Duras. Worf’s shuttle has been shot down and landed without too much damage, but now Keltak and his crew are tracking him and attacking. Worf succeeds in defeating Keltak and his men, and then Vikoth arrives demanding to know where his child by his late mistress B’Etor is. When Worf shows where he had safely placed the child, Vikoth questions why he had protected the baby, Worf explains that he has no argument with the child. Vikoth says he will make sure that the child does not make war with Worf, but Worf says to let the child make up its own mind when it is older.
The Veteran, by Dan Abnett & Ian Edginton
Kang is not happy with his “promotion” to a colonial governorship position, and before he assumes the post, he takes a week off and is left on the planet where Kirk had died after the encounter with Tolian Soran (Star Trek Generations). He had heard rumors that Kirk was still alive, and if so, he wanted one last battle with him. Sulu had also beamed down to search for Kirk, having heard the same rumors, and when Kang sees a Starfleet uniform, he immediately attacks. Once they both had realized who the other was, they team up to see if they can locate Kirk, and then see Kirk standing atop a rocky outcrop. However, that turns out to be a booby-trapped hologram, and the pair of them come under automated weapons’ fire. The Gorn that Kirk had originally fought, S’Alath, had been suffering a form of Gorn dementia, and had been left on the planet to allow him to relive his battle. S’Alath attacks Kang, and Sulu stuns him, but with his aroused state and his wasted condition, S’Alath dies. Kang and Sulu give S’Alath a suitable warrior’s funeral and decide that, better than fighting old battles, they should make sure that their future ones as a captain and as a governor are glorious.
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Star Trek Unlimited #9, May 1998
Trekkers, by Dan Abnett & Ian Edginton
Sulu and Chekov have shoreleave on Starbase 56 where Chekov gets involved in a card game with the Klingon General Krag. Chekov wins all of Krag’s money and his Marker, and when Chekov tries to give back the Marker, Krag becomes very angry and has to be restrained by the other Klingons from attempting to kill him. Sulu hurries Chekov away, and they leave aboard a new shuttlecraft that they are to deliver to the Enterprise, but they come under attack from a Klingon bird of prey captained by Gakk, and then by one captained by Puhg. Sulu and Chekov devise escapes from them initially, but then they are caught up with again, and Sulu finds out that a sensor shadow he had noticed earlier is Krag’s ship. The Marker that Chekov had won was the formal imperial signet of his house, which meant that Chekov was now Krag’s head of house, and Krag was now Chekov’s property. Chekov orders him to do what was necessary to protect him and Sulu, which Krag does before beaming the two of them off the seriously disabled shuttle. Unable to just give the Marker back to Krag, Chekov finds something to trade it for.
Consequently, Chekov and Sulu rendezvous with the Enterprise aboard Krag’s D-7 battlecruiser, while Krag and the Klingon crew make their way back home aboard a small Klingon shuttle.
[Timeline: Stardate 5997.1]
Star Trek Unlimited #10, July 1998
A Piece of ReAction, by Michael A Martin and Andy Mangels
Kirk’s Enterprise visited Sigma Iotia II in 2268, after which a ban on visiting the planet had been imposed. But almost 100 years later, Picard’s Enterprise is heading there after a message is received via subspace from the Iotians requesting Federation membership. The planet is found to be surrounded with a net of satellites that normally block transmission between the surface and space, but Picard receives an invitation from an Admiral Sonny to meet. Beaming down, the team (Picard, Troi, Crusher, and Data) realize that they cannot communicate with the ship, and they find that the 120-year-old Sonny had been the boy that Kirk had jokingly promised a “piece of the action” to. But Sonny had taken the words seriously and wants control of Enterprise as his payment. Picard’s team escape from their cell and Data adapts a transporter to get them back, one-by-one, to the Enterprise, but Picard is stunned before he can beam up. Actually, their
“escape” had been planned by the Iotians who use the adapted transporter to beam people up to take over control of the Enterprise. They demonstrate their resolve in obtaining the command codes by pushing a crewman out of an airlock, but that crewman is Data who gets back in and, on Riker’s instruction, sets the auto-destruct countdown going. Sonny demands that Riker cancel the self-destruct and, in seeming to comply, Riker leads Sonny into a holodeck version of the bridge where “Captain Kirk” also appears. That leads to Riker regaining command of the ship, but Sonny, who was already ailing through age, dies of a heart attack. Doing their best to ensure that no contamination of the planet remains this time, Enterprise leaves. Everyone agrees that the 54
Iotians aren’t ready for Federation membership, but Picard is left wondering if the Federation members are ready either.
Star Trek Untold Voyages #1, March 1998
Renewal, by Glenn Greenberg
After the V’Ger incident, Kirk takes the new Enterprise out for its shakedown cruise, but the ship is spotted by Commander Krell. He was leading a fleet of three Klingon ships (Krell’s own ship, plus Ravager and Deathcry) for a meeting with the Federation about V’Ger, but seeing the refitted Constellation-class ship, he decides that capturing it would be a better use of their time.
The Klingons surround the Enterprise while they are investigating the site where a space station had been lost to V’Ger. Kirk tries to bluff Krell with talk of an “Omegatron” superweapon, but Krell calls his bluff, and the Enterprise gets hammered. Then Kirk recalls the redesigned phasers that Scotty had not had time to change back to their original configuration. Kirk uses them as a demonstration of the Omegatron weapon, cutting through the shields on Krell’s ship and destroying its engines and weapons. It also drains the Enterprise’s warp engines, but the Klingon’s don’t know that and Krell orders the other two ships to lock tractor beams onto his ship and tow them back to Klingon space. Admiral Nogura had intended to have Kirk return as Chief of Starfleet Operations, but after V’Ger and this successful encounter with the Klingon, he decides that Kirk’s place is in command of Enterprise. [Timeline: Stardate 7414.1]
Star Trek Untold Voyages #2, April 1998
Worlds Collide, by Glenn Greenberg
Saavik had been placed with the Vulcan Embassy for training in the ways of Vulcan by T’Pris, but Saavik had been rebelling, so Spock visits with her. After a mindmeld, Spock decides to take her to his home on Vulcan where Sarek and Amanda can raise her. Amanda is delighted.
Meanwhile, Enterprise is visiting a previously unexplored M-class planet about to be hit, in a matter of hours, by a twenty-mile-long asteroid. Beaming down to the planet, they find that the principal lifeform is a massive type of grazing creature that are seen traveling in a herd into a ravine. Encountering them up close, they are found to be friendly, but their sentience is undetermined and Uhura is unable, in the time available, to determine if their sounds constitute speech. Back on the Enterprise, McCoy is telling Kirk that they should deflect the asteroid to protect the creatures, and Kirk finally relents. But before the Enterprise can intervene, the asteroid is seen to veer off course and away from the planet. Scanning the planet, the creatures are seen to be gathered together as if in meditation, and it appears that they diverted the asteroid through telekinesis. The Enterprise heads for Vulcan to pick up Spock. [Timeline: Stardate 7521.4]
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Star Trek Untold Voyages #3, May 1998
Past Imperfect, by Glenn Greenberg
The Enterprise arrives at Starbase 11, where the crew are able to take some shore leave. McCoy was also going to reunite with his daughter, Joanne, and by the time he gets to the bar where they were to meet, Kirk is already chatting her up. But someone else was watching what was going on and saw that Joanne meant something to McCoy and Kirk, so later that night he kidnaps her.
Spock establishes that a Starfleet shuttle that had been based at Miri’s planet (where McCoy had previously cured the Onlies) had made an unorthodox landing and departure, so they head for that planet, arriving before the shuttle. They had rightly guessed that the kidnapping had been carried out by Jahn. The cure that McCoy had found previously had seemingly ended up causing a worse condition, since the Onlies were not fully human after their long-arrested development and poor living conditions. After Miri had died, Jahn had killed the Federation personnel based there and stolen the shuttle. McCoy frees Joanne, then discovers what his earlier mistake was and finds a cure that he is now certain will work. Joanne tells Jahn that she is going to complete her medical training and return to help them. Jahn is surprised that she would help after what he had done, and he says no further Grups will be allowed on the planet, but that she would be welcomed. [Timeline: Stardate 7683.1]
Star Trek Untold Voyages #4, June 1998
Cries in the Dark, by Glenn Greenberg
The Enterprise is on its way to Parides IV for a diplomatic mission, but then gets an urgent message to assist researchers with an unnamed discovery. Because of the importance and sensitivity of the diplomatic mission, Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Ambassador Alec Raymond head to Parides IV, while Sulu is left in charge of the Enterprise as it heads for the Duran system.
There they find that the team, led by Sharolyn Carver, has discovered a mysterious creature living in a sort of crystal cave, and it absorbs communication signals and retransmits them as an almost instantaneous subspace signal. The creature, known as the Crier, is deemed to be non-sentient, so the plan is to move it to Spacelab Draco Three for further study and potential use as a revolutionary communications system. Unfortunately, some Orions had intercepted and decoded one of the messages that the Crier had rebroadcast, and seven Orion pirate ships surround the Enterprise. Although outgunned, the Enterprise destroys four of the ships before being disabled themselves, but three Orion ships head for the planet’s surface. Sulu has Scotty prioritize repairs to the transporters and he leads a team that frees the science team from the Orions, but more of the Orions, led by their commander Raydeen, were already in the crystal cave in order to remove the Crier for their use. But when they try to cut it free from the crystals, it lets out a tremendous cry and turns the Orions into piles of ash. Then it and the crystals convert into a sort of pure energy that transmits itself somewhere by subspace. Sulu is relieved that the creature won’t end up a sort of enslaved tool of either the Federation or the Orions. The Enterprise then heads for Parides IV to collect Kirk’s diplomatic group. [Timeline: Stardate 7795.3]
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Star Trek Untold Voyages #5, June 1998
Odyssey’s End, by Glenn Greenberg
The Enterprise is heading back to Earth at the end of Kirk’s second five-year mission, and Admiral Morrow offers Kirk a position in the Admiralty as a member of his staff, a position that Kirk adamantly refuses. Then Enterprise responds to a distress call from the Yorktown, which had been on a training flight with cadets from the Academy. The ship is discovered badly damaged in orbit of Lycos V with another massive ship that it had apparently fought with. Kirk finds that the original captain and crew of the Yorktown are dead, and the acting captain (cadet Daniel Ehrlich) sees his actions as echoing what Kirk would have done, which means that the cadet is acting recklessly. Then Kirk, Spock and McCoy are abducted aboard the alien vessel and, after a telepathic transfer of information with the alien leader, it is learned that the Abductors (as Spock calls them, but Kirk recognizes them as the Grays that had carried out abductions on Earth) have been trying to undo the work of the Preservers – they see the Preservers’ work as stopping the natural evolution of planets. They have been abducting the transplanted people, holding them in suspended animation and plan to return them to their original planets (that they had never known). They have also now come to the conclusion that the Romulan-Vulcan split was the work of the Preservers and plan to “repatriate” the Romulans, which Kirk sees as a disastrous idea. He gets Sulu to maneuver the Enterprise between the alien vessel and the Romulan Empire and tells the aliens they’ll have to fly through his ship to fulfil their plans. That finally gets the aliens reconsidering their actions, and they decide to return to their own home, dropping off the people they had abducted back at the places they took them from. The Enterprise heads back to Earth with Kirk deciding to take up the role of educating the Academy cadets that the reckless option is one of last resort, not the first. [Timeline: Stardate 7809.8]
Star Trek Voyager #1, November 1996
The Storm, by Laurie S. Sutton
Voyager receives a distress call and finds a Talaxian ship caught in an ion storm in an asteroid belt. Voyager is affected by the ion storm as it goes to rescue the ship and crew, and efforts to get a tractor beam on it, or even to grab the ship with Voyager’s landing struts, prove to be futile.
The Talaxian captain, Acrux, asks that Voyager use their transporters to get them off the ship, but Janeway is reluctant to do so because the charged ions could affect the lock on them. Finally, beaming them off seems to be the only option, but Janeway’s concerns are substantiated as the Talaxian’s signal is lost, and they appear to be lost in a quantum fissure.
Star Trek Voyager #2, December 1996
Under Ion Skies, by Laurie S. Sutton
Voyager had been trying to save the crew of a Talaxian vessel caught in an electrical storm, but when they try beaming the crew off of the crippled ship, the Talaxians get drawn through a 57
quantum fissure. Nelix and Chakotay volunteer to beam through the fissure to the alternate dimension and they find themselves on a planet with large crystals and the whole place crackling with electrical energy. Following the lifesign readings on Chakotay’s tricorder leads them to a crystal city that some energy creatures drive Nelix and Chakotay into. There they find the missing Talaxians, but the building blocks their efforts to have themselves beamed out and the energy creatures won’t let them out of the building. Recognizing the flashes from the creatures as language, Chakotay programs his tricorder to start a dialog with them, resulting in them being allowed out to beam back to Voyager. Captain Janeway had already located a Trabe ship nearby and suspected that the Talaxians were working for them. That is confirmed back on Voyager when the Talaxian mercenaries hold Nelix and Chakotay hostage, in an attempt to hand over Voyager to the Trabe.
Star Trek Voyager #3, January 1997
Repercussions, by Laurie S. Sutton
The Talaxian mercenaries had fought their way to engineering, but on entering they find that Tuvok has a security team waiting to apprehend them and escort them to the brig. Then the Doctor starts behaving oddly, which gets tied to energy spikes and other system failures the ship is experiencing. To add to that, the Trabe ship that the Talaxian mercenaries had been expecting a ride home from, starts attacking Voyager, and Voyager is unable to respond because of the system failures. The Doctor is able to diagnose the source of the problem as being the damage to the bio-neural gel-packs that resulted from interaction with an ion storm, and Torres and Kes work out how to implement the cure. A badly timed shot from the Trabe ship allows the Voyager crew to gain the upper hand over the Talaxians who had escaped from the brig, and some well-timed shots from Voyager drives off the Trabe ship.
Star Trek Voyager #4, February 1997
Homeostasis: Part One, by Howard Weinstein
Voyager is short on supplies and ship’s phasers are effectively non-functional, but the ship is able to drive off an unprovoked attack by a Kazon ship by using photon torpedoes. They head for the planet Praja, where Neelix knows there is the duranium needed for fixing the phasers, and new food supplies will be available from the Cambrog who live there. But on arrival at the planet, they find no sign of the Cambrog, and animal life seems to have been dying off from starvation because there is little plant life left, and what is left is being ravaged by planetwide fires. It is discovered that an alien virus that was delivered by missiles has been killing off the plant life. Areas of the planet appear to have been strip-mined, and Tuvok and Kim discover an automated strip-mining facility at one location and Chakotay and Neelix are investigating a cave system where Neelix thinks the Cambrog might be hiding. Kim accidentally knocks a lever in the control room of the automated facility, alerting the Kazon crew on three large alien vessels, and the Kazon head for Praja. [Timeline: Stardate 49640.1]
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Star Trek Voyager #5, March 1997
Homeostasis: The Conclusion, by Howard Weinstein
Neelix and Chakotay are rescued from an animal pit by Cambrog colonists on the planet Praja, and along with Kim and Kes they visit the caves where the natives are sheltering to avoid the plague that is ravaging their planet. Voyager comes under attack from three alien ships crewed by Kazon and has to withdraw for safety. Janeway realizes that the Kazon are using alien technology to devastate life on planets and then they can raid it for its assets before abandoning it. On the planet, Chakotay discovers a vein of duranium in the caves and they extract sufficient to repair Voyager’s phasers and, to obtain it, Voyager flies erratically past the alien ships, claiming it has lost control and simulates a crash by using a photon torpedo, but actually lands safely. Once phasers are repaired, Voyager is able to drive off the Kazon and destroy their base on the planet. Encouraged by Chakotay, Kes had been studying the planet’s plants to see if any of them were able to fight the virus, and finally finds one. Working with the Doctor, they come up with a cure that they distribute into the planet’s atmosphere from Voyager. [Timeline: Stardate 49641.8]
Star Trek Voyager #6, April 1997
Relic Quest, Part One, by Ben Raab
The crew is getting edgy (Kim and Paris end up in the brig following a fight in the Mess Hall) after not coming across a class-M planet for some time, which would allow shoreleave and restocking the stores. Then Chakotay identifies a suitable planet, but Nelix is dubious about it because it is in the Denarian stellar cluster that used to be ruled by the Order. They had, according to legend, invented something that caused their combined psychic energy to leave the whole region a lifeless decimation. However, it seems like a horticultural paradise until Bona and his jungle cat-like “pet” appear. He says he doesn’t show up as a lifesign because he’s not alive, but he wants Janeway to assist him in locating a powerful device that could return his people to him and maybe return Voyager home. He transports those who were with her (Tuvok, Nelix and Kes) back to Voyager which, by this time, is surrounded by three alien vessels. Bona introduces the other three people who have joined his quest, a Vidiian, a Kazon, and a Trabe, and Janeway decides it would be best if she also join, to make sure none of them get their hands on such a powerful relic. [Timeline: Stardate 5112.9]
Star Trek Voyager #7, May 1997
Relic Quest: Part Two, by Ben Raab
In space, Chakotay is facing down ships of the Kazon, Trabe and Vidiians, who are making verbal moves against each other but mainly jointly targeting Voyager. While Kim is trying to break himself and Paris out of the brig, Chakotay has B’Elanna prepare something called the
“Phantom” and, when it is ready, he orders Voyager to fire on the other ships. On the planet, Janeway and the captains of the other three ships are forced into cooperating to try and recover 59
Bonai’s lost relic, but they find themselves getting lost in the forest, and Janeway ends up facing down a massive gorilla-like creature that has already got the Kazon captain, Kul’Lar, in its grip.
Star Trek Voyager #8, June 1997
Relic Quest, Conclusion, by Ben Raab
Teraz (the Vidiian) wants to help Janeway free Kul’Lar (the Kazon) from the monster (the relic’s guardian), but Durin (the Trabe) would be happy to see any of the others die. Between Janeway and Teraz, they come up with a weapon to use against the monster, but Janeway uses it to injure the monster and drive it off, not to kill it. That leads to the reappearance of Bonai who praises the efforts of them to protect each other and the guardian/monster and reveals the dazzling relic.
Kul’Lar and Durin rush for it, intending to claim it for themselves, but they appear to be vaporized. Actually, Bonai had sent them and their ships back to their own territory, and then inducts Janeway and Teraz into the Order and tells them that “dark skies threaten on the horizon”. Voyager is then able to beam Janeway and Teraz aboard, and Teraz is returned to his own ship before Voyager continues its journey. [Timeline: Stardate 51124.8]
Star Trek Voyager #9, September 1997
Dead Zone, by Terry Pallot
Voyager responds to a distress call that takes them into a binary star system of two red giant stars, and they suddenly find the ship being drained of power. The distress call had been from Prof. K’Them K’Tra from the planet Zerajh, who had been placing warning buoys around the zone of null space, but his ship had got sucked in itself. He is very apologetic about Voyager getting trapped. Then a ship crewed by pirates and using chemical propellants arrives, captures the professor and waits for Voyager to have to drop shields and then they board Voyager. Since they are used to fighting with swords and similar unpowered weapons and Voyager’s crew (except for B’Ellana) aren’t, they start to take over the ship. Tuvok comes up with the idea of exploding a photon torpedo against the pirate’s ship and letting the blast propel them out of the null zone. On the basis that it seems that all the pirates are aboard Voyager, Janeway agrees to the plan. Free of the null zone, phaser powerpacks recharge quickly and the crew retakes control of Voyager. After helping the professor complete his task of deploying the warning buoys, they return him to his home planet before continuing their quest to get back to Earth. [Timeline: Stardate 51128.3]
Star Trek Voyager #10, October 1997
Ghosts, by Laurie S. Sutton
Voyager suddenly detects a chroniton wave cascade and finds itself approaching a rift, ending up in the thick of the Wolf 359 battle, which had occurred six years previous. Then they spot a chain of escape pods and bring them aboard. There are sixteen survivors from the Saratoga including Commander Athena Rand, who is Voyager crewman Josh Rand’s aunt. They are all happy to be 60
free of the rift, but then the Doctor finds that the Saratoga survivors are linked to the Rift. He sets to work on the chroniton radiation effects and B’Ellana starts trying to develop a means of breaking their link to the rift. However, before B’Ellana can complete her work, the Rift catches up with them, and the survivors return to their escape pods and leave to protect Voyager and continue B’Ellana’s idea for breaking the link. Josh then goes after them in a shuttlecraft, taking B’Ellana’s prototype resonance disrupter with him, and Voyager is unable to lock a tractor beam on him before the Rift closes again. Then Voyager finds itself under fire from a massive craft.
Star Trek Voyager #11, November 1997
Leviathan: Part One, by Laurie S. Sutton
After their encounter with the time-displaced survivors of the battle at Wolf 359, Voyager meets up with a ship of the Elessian and joins them in responding to a distress call. That leads them to a giant hodge-podge of a ship, that first ensnares the Elessian ship and then Voyager when they try to rescue the Elessians. The massive ship, that they name Leviathan, starts to cocoon Voyager within itself, but Janeway leads a team to find the control center, from which she hopes to turn off the magneton field that had ensnared them. Along the way, they encounter some Jem’Hadar from before the time they had become addicted to Ketracel-White, and some Vidiians from before they had been afflicted with the Phage. It seems that special habitats had been constructed for the different races, and some small, automated craft inspect Janeway’s team and realize they are in the wrong habitat, so they transport the team into the command center. There, the controlling AI addresses them, informing them that the ship is from another galaxy on a mission to collect different specimens, and says that they are now one of its samples and will remain so.
[Timeline: Stardate 50672.1]
Star Trek Voyager #12, December 1997
Leviathan, Part Two, by Laurie S. Sutton
Janeway is unable to talk the AI in Leviathan’s control center into letting them go, and they get carried by the drones back to Voyager and its habitat. But Janeway had taken recordings while in the control center and as they were carried back, and she has the Doctor work on creating a neural neutralizer that will temporarily disable the AI to allow Voyager and the Elessians to escape, and B’Elanna works on adapting a probe to deliver the neutralizer. Meanwhile, the Voyager crew and the Elessians work at cutting their ships as free as possible from the plant growth tying their ships down. The escape works, but the AI fails to reinitialize, and the other habitats start to fail. B’Elanna and her assistant, Carey, beam back to the control center to restart the AI, then get beamed back to Voyager. When the AI realizes who had done that to it, it heads Leviathan out of the galaxy at a speed that has B’Elanna very envious. The Elessians invite Janeway over to their ship to make her a “Battle Sister”. [Timeline: Stardate 50787.3]
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Star Trek Voyager #13, January 1998
Telepathy War, Part 5: Cloud Walkers, by Laurie S. Sutton
{Part 4 of this story is Star Trek Unlimited #6, Telepathy War Part 4: Heart of Darkness, on page 51.} Finding themselves low on carbondyhydrezine, Voyager heads for the gas giant planet, Thesskira, where an Elessian mining team is operating. The miners allow members of the Voyager team to accompany them, but the stingray-shaped creature that Tom Paris is riding gets spooked by some other creatures. Trying to locate him before his oxygen runs out, Janeway takes Voyager into the gas giant, where they find and rescue Tom from a pirate mining base. They also disable the pirate base’s weapons and tow it back to the Elessian’s mining base so they can take care of the pirates. Aboard Voyager, Kes is collapsing as she feels the onslaught affecting the telepaths in the Alpha Quadrant involving the Borg. [Timeline: Stardate 50796.5] {This series concludes in Star Trek Telepathy War #1, Reality’s End, on page 78}
Star Trek Voyager #14, February 1998
Survival of the Fittest, Part 1, by Laurie S. Sutton & Gwen J. Sutton
Kes has transformed and left Voyager, but Seven of Nine is now onboard. Voyager responds to a distress call from a starship, but while the ship is disabled, the problem doesn’t look serious.
Contacting the vessel, they are greeted by Catira of Orsoria, although when she sees that Voyager’s captain is female, she goes to get her brother, Katirus of Orsoria. The men on Voyager were really taken with Catira, and Janeway is delighted to greet Katirus on Voyager and take him on a tour of the ship. When Seven of Nine is discovered unconscious, Chakotay tries to inform Janeway but finds her effectively insensate in her quarters with Katirus, seemingly knocked out by his pheromones. Chakotay orders him back to his ship, where he nearly stuns B’Elaana (who had been fixing the ship’s problems) with a kiss and gets her beamed back to Voyager. Believing there is a saboteur, Janeway insists on beaming over to the alien ship, but then a strange energy interference blocks sensors from locating her and she doesn’t respond to calls. Tuvok beams over to the ship to find Janeway, but he is knocked out by a kiss from Catira.
[Timeline: Stardate 51019.3]
Star Trek Voyager #15, March 1998
Survival of the Fittest: Part 2, by Laurie S. Sutton & Gwen L. Sutton
Voyager had gone to the assistance of an Osorian ship captained by Catira, but Chakotay quickly comes to realize that it was a trap after B’Elanna and Seven are attacked, Janeway gets abducted by Catira’s brother, Katirus, and then Tuvok goes missing when he seeks the source of radiation that is interfering with their scans trying to locate Janeway. The doctor finds that the effects are being caused by Catira’s pheromones and that Seven had developed antigens against it. Chakotay then sends the Doctor and Seven on a special mission in which they inoculate Tuvok and Janeway against the pheromones. When Catira tries to bring the Doctor under her control, the Doctor inoculates her (she is also the one who appeared as Katirus), and her body contorts and 62
collapses. A large living circular object that Catira had called the Progenitor had appeared and started draining energy from Voyager, but Harry Kim had intercepted Catira’s recognition signal to the Progenitor, and Chakotay has Kim reproduce the signal. That makes to Progenitor stop attacking them and allows Voyager to escape as the Progenitor turns on the smaller Osorian ship and devour it before fading away itself. [Timeline: Stardate 51019.6]
Voyager Splashdown #1, April 1998
Splashdown, Part 1, by Laurie S. Sutton
Voyager is running seriously low on power and searching for somewhere that they can replenish their reserves, but then they come across a ship that has apparently been pounded to destruction by a collection of unmanned orb-shaped drones. Janeway tries contacting the unmanned aggressor craft, and they turn on Voyager, but Janeway resists fighting back until the orb ships have called in reinforcements and systems are starting to fail throughout the ship. She seems to think that heading for the planet that the reinforcements had come from, and presumably what the orb-ships are protecting, will shake them off. Wrong again, but they do lose the attackers as they enter the planet’s atmosphere, which is thick with volcanic dust. The battered ship is then unable to pull out of its dive in time, skips a couple of times across the water before nose-diving in and sinking. As Janeway calls for extra power, B’Elanna and the other engineering crew ignore her as they fight to stay afloat in the rising water levels affecting engineering and large portions of the ship. [Timeline: during their third year trying to get home and not long after their encounter with Catira/Katirus in the Voyager #15 comic]
Voyager Splashdown #2, May 1998
Splashdown, Part 2, by Laurie S. Sutton
Voyager is sinking in the ocean and taking on water, and the crew are desperately trying to reverse its downward journey before the pressure crushes its hull. After implementing increasingly desperate measures, they succeed in doing that. Then the source of what is believed to be the signal that controlled the robotic craft that attacked Voyager is found. A shuttle capable of underwater travel takes a team led by Tuvok to the pyramidal-shaped building, which is found to be uninhabited but with technology visible everywhere and writings in hieroglyphs. They start trying to interpret the hieroglyphs, in the hopes of ascertaining how the robotic craft are controlled, when the technology starts powering up.
Voyager Splashdown #3, June 1998
Splashdown, Part 3, by Laurie S. Sutton
Tuvok’s team are investigating the pyramidal structure, looking for a way to disable the drones that had caused Voyager to crash land into the water world, and then a person who describes himself as a prospector arrives through some form of portal. He had been using the structure as a base for collecting valuable artifacts from the planet, and he had activated the drones against 63
what he considered to be his cheating partner, and Voyager had been accidentally caught in the action. When Kim thinks he has found the control to stop the drones, the prospector loudly warns him against touching it, which causes a diversion allowing him to temporarily escape. When Kim tries the control, all of the team are rendered unconscious. The prospector returns, collects their equipment from them, and puts the team in what he describes as the crypts. Aboard Voyager, they had been fighting the water and a fire in engineering as they headed for the surface.
Successfully escaping the water, they find themselves under attack from a swarm of drones.
Voyager Splashdown #4, July 1998
Splashdown, Part 4, by Laurie S. Sutton
Needing to stop the drones, Chakotay uses the Aerowing’s transporter to beam down to the shuttle, and then to where Tuvok’s team had beamed to. He encounters the prospector, but pays little attention to him, instead destroying a control panel that he believes will stop the drones attacking Voyager. It does, but they dive underwater and start attacking the pyramidal structure.
That encourages Tuvok and his group to escape and join up with Chakotay, and they all (including the prospector) are beamed back to the Aerowing and they rejoin Voyager as the volcano that powered the underwater complex explodes, destroying the gateway that might have got the crew home. The crew are able to relax a bit as repairs are made to Voyager, and Janeway suggests to B’Elana that she utilize the planet’s geothermal power sources to top up Voyager’s power reserves.
Starfleet Academy #1, December 1996
Prime Directives, by Chris Cooper
Matt Decker rescues Yoshi from a Jex smuggling operation and expects to be praised, but instead finds out he’s messed up a Starfleet sting operation. He finds himself assigned to Commander Zund’s Omega Squad along with Kamilah Goldstein, Pava Ek’Noor Aqabaa, T’Priell and Nog.
Matt tells Nog that they’ll never be friends, and Nog’s attitude to females doesn’t exactly endear him to the other team members, but he thinks that a holodeck randomizer from his Uncle Quark will help make him friends. Unfortunately, he has to abandon that idea when he discovers that it isn’t fully compatible with Starfleet holodecks, but it does mess up the holodeck enough that, when they have their first exercise in it, the program goes haywire, and they end up with their lives in danger. Nog realizes that things aren’t random and suggests that the computer has become sentient and sees them as an infection. Using a transponder that Matt has and Nog’s knowledge of Morse code, they make first contact with the computer, which shuts the program down. It exchanges a few words with the cadets before disappearing. Matt acknowledges Nog’s role in saving them from the holodeck but won’t go as far as admit that they are becoming friends.
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Starfleet Academy #2, January 1997
Liberty, by Chris Cooper
The three girls of Omega Squad (Kamilah, Pava and T’Priell) are not totally endeared to each other, but they share their leave at a bar in Sydney, which ends in a barfight with them all fighting alongside each other and cementing a friendship. However, some of the events bring back memories to T’Priell, making her wonder who she really is. Matt Decker had remained at the Academy and had allowed Nog to select any of his books to read, but he gets infuriated when he finds that Nog has broken into the hermetically sealed case in which he had kept his collection of vintage comics. Nog later tries to make amends by offering Matt coownership in a comic he had walked off with after his inadvertent trip back in time to Roswell. Matt is delighted with the quality of the comic. Then Jim Walters approaches Matt about becoming a member of the elite Red Squad.
Starfleet Academy #3, February 1997
Loyalty Test, by Chris Cooper
Matt Decker is inducted into the secretive and elitist Red Squad, which keeps him from his own Omega Squad. That does not endear him to Commander Zund who gives him a bit of a talking to and secretly attaches a tracker to him. After a shapeshifter sets off a bomb at the Federation/Romulan peace talks, Red Squad plans to sabotage Earth’s power grid and blame it on the shapeshifters to allow Starfleet to assume command of Earth. Matt refuses to go along and escapes but makes the mistake of informing Admiral Leyton who had given the order to Red Squad. Matt is placed in a transporter buffer and expected to die when the power goes out, but he’s later rescued by Omega Squad thanks to the tracker that Zund had placed and a battery backup that Olaf (a member of Red Squad) had added to the transporter. Omega Squad succeeds in securing the other members of Red Squad, but Matt (back with Omega Squad) finds himself facing anonymous threats from one or more Red Squad supporters. [Timeline: synonymous with the DS9 episodes “Homefront” and “Paradise Lost”]
Starfleet Academy #4, March 1997
War and Peace, Part 1 of 2, by Chris Cooper
Omega Squadron is given a warp-capable runabout, but then find that Commander Zund will be piloting it on their initial flight to an uninhabited planet that she thinks they can’t do too much damage on. However, just after they enter orbit, a Klingon ship crewed by the just-graduated First Cadre decloaks and attacks them, disabling the runabout and leaving Zund unconscious.
Realizing that the Klingons will board their ship, Omega Squad sets the computer to transport them to the Klingon ship as soon as it drops its shields. So, the Klingons and Omega Squad just catch a glimpse of each other on the runabout’s transporter pad, and then Omega Squad disables the two Klingons left on the Klingon ship. Unfortunately, the Klingon on the bridge destroys the primary control panel before being stunned, so both ships crashland on the planet. Omega Squad 65
takes the one surviving Klingon captive, and Pava Ek’noor tracks down the camp of those who had taken over the runabout. There she meets a Klingon, Kovold, who she had met previously while an exchange student to the Empire. They start out fighting each other but are soon in a passionate embrace.
Starfleet Academy #5, April 1997
Love and Death, by Chris Cooper
Pava’s meeting with Kovold (who had been on watch for the First Cadre) had been part of a successful ploy in which Pava stole Kovold’s disruptor and Nog sneaks into the Klingon camp and steals the other disruptors while the Klingons slept. However, that just riles the Klingon’s leader, Murg, even more, and they attack Omega Squad with their bat’leths. The melee is stopped when Pava declares the Klingon challenge where one person represents each side in a dispute. Murg appoints Kovold to represent First Cadre, and Pava had expected to represent Omega Squad, but Kamilah insists on doing so. Kamilah defeats Kovold but refuses to kill him, instead she tries to convince the Klingons to work with Omega Squad in trying to get a distress signal out and get rescued. However, Murg fires a micro-dagger at Decker, damaging his eye, and Kovold has the opportunity to get up and stab Kamilah, mortally wounding her. Decker takes Kamilah’s dying words to heart and declares that there will be no more fighting today, and they do cooperate enough to get rescued.
Starfleet Academy #6, May 1997
Passages, by Chris Cooper
Omega Squadron is in Jerusalem for the funeral of Kamilah Goldstein (killed by Kovold), which is disrupted by someone who drives a hoverbike crazily into the gathering and ends up falling into the grave. That person is later introduced as their new recruit, Edam Astrun. His whole attitude turns everyone off of him, and it seems he was only brought in because he is Betazoid and can identify shapeshifters by their thoughts. Astrun’s efforts in saving the life of a professor in a lab accident doesn’t endear him to Omega Squad when he puts all their lives in danger. Then Astrun is attacked, and Nog is arrested for his attempted murder. Meanwhile, Admiral Brand takes leave from her position as Academy Superintendent and Admiral Pradesh has taken her place.
Starfleet Academy #7, June 1997
Hide & Seek, by Chris Cooper
Edam Astrun is unconscious in the medical facility and Nog has been arrested for his attempted murder, having confessed to the deed because he has recollections of the attack from some sort of dream. Discussing it with Decker and Zund, they come to the conclusion that the ‘dream’ was most likely Edam sending images of the event to Nog, and the fact that the ‘dream’ showed Nog’s ears changing suggested that the real culprit was a shapeshifter. Nog retracts his 66
confession and Omega Squad is waiting when the shapeshifter tries to make another attempt on Astrun’s life. Astrun recovers enough to help Omega Squad lure the shapeshifter into a holodeck where they are able to confine it in a forcefield bubble. Astrun is able to read the shapeshifter’s mind and learn about the Jem’Hadar and the Founder’s plans, but then the shapeshifter kills itself by pushing out against the forcefield. Matt Decker is appointed as the new leader of Omega Squad by Commander Zund.
Starfleet Academy #8, July 1997
X2, by Chris Cooper
Edam is still affected by his memories of the shapeshifter’s thoughts, but then Omega Squad are sent to assist the Eldorado which had found itself carrying a stowaway. Arriving at the Eldorado, they find the ship badly damaged, the crew missing although the escape pods were still there, and there was one human who introduced himself as Charlie Evans. It is soon apparent that Charlie is no ordinary human and Ensign Li locates his records from the time of Kirk’s Enterprise. Then Omega Squad’s runabout starts to develop a disruption in the containment field, and they suddenly find themselves in a pocket universe that Charlie had created, along with the crew of the Eldorado. Matt Decker’s plan to overpower Charlie involved Edam blocking Charlie’s mind while the rest physically attack, and that weakens Charlie but doesn’t have the desired effect.
However, T'Priell confronts Charlie about him being dual, and Charlie admits that he’d come up with a second version of himself as a friend after the Thasians had left him, and the two had combined but were slightly out of phase. That phase shift was what caused the destruction to the ships. Charlie transports the two crews back to their own universe, placing them on the planet Thasus, but nobody’s sure what the cost was to Charlie. Meanwhile, the Jem’Hadar are preparing to attack Talos IV to further the Founders’ aims.
Starfleet Academy #9, August 1997
Return to the Forbidden Planet, Part 1 of 2, by Chris Cooper
Edam suddenly acts as if he is in a trance and heads for the shuttlebay with the other cadets of Omega Squad following him to see what is happening. He boards a shuttle and Commander Zund (who the others are in contact with) tells the squad to stop him, although he’d need an access code to take the shuttle, but it turns out he has such a code. That code turns out to belong to Captain Pike and had never been rescinded, and then the shuttle is found to be heading for Talos IV. When Edam gains control of himself, he explains that he had received a telepathic message that thousands could die without intervention, but the others need not come and face a death sentence, but they all agree to go. At Talos IV, they meet up with Captain Pike (or mostly his projected image) and find that the planet had been invaded by Jem’Hadar, and although the Talosians had been trying to fight them with their telepathy, it wasn’t working well because of the Jem’Hadar’s violent emotions were blocking a lot of the mental projections. Pike had been hoping for more Starfleet assistance, but with his help and the mental projections of the Talosians, the cadets are able to start fighting back and capture three Jem’Hadar, from whom 67
Edam is able to read that their goal is to kill all telepaths in Federation territory. The message that Edam had intercepted had been meant for Spock. {This story starts the “Telepathy War”
series, continuing through Starfleet Academy #12 and then jumping to other series}
Starfleet Academy #10, September 1997
Return to the Forbidden Planet, Part 2 of 2, by Chris Cooper
Between the cadets (including Nog utilizing the runabout’s weapons), Pike, and the Talosians, they make some advances against the Jem’Hadar, but the odds against them are overwhelming.
Edam reads from the Jem’Hadar’s minds that this is only their first step in eliminating all telepathic races in the Alpha Quadrant, but he also ascertains that they only have one store of Ketracel White, but it’s closely guarded. Pava attacks the store and destroys it, but she is then attacked herself and has her back broken. The cadets are able to recover her, and head for home after finding that Pike had been dead for many years. The Talosian’s had recreated his image from their memories, and from what they found in the cadet’s attitudes and drives. Arriving back at the Academy, they find themselves under arrest and facing a likely death sentence for visiting Talos IV. They also find Spock there, stating that he will be defending them.
Starfleet Academy #11, October 1997
Judgement, by Chris Cooper
The cadets of Omega Squad are up before Vice Admiral Keith, Admiral Whatley and Admiral Pradesh on the capital offence of visiting Talos IV (disobeying General Order 7). They are defended by Spock who mentions his own unauthorized trip to Talos IV and (using information gleaned from the gardener Boothsby) uses an incident involving cadet (now Admiral) Keith, Picard, and Commander Cory Zweller (who appears as a witness) to illustrate how cadets in the past have been allowed leniency when doing something legally forbidden but done for the best of reasons. There is no doubt in the technical guilt of the cadets, but Keith and Whatley are swayed to recommend leniency for them. However, as presiding judge of the tribunal, Pradesh has sole right to declare the penalty. He allows leniency for Nog, since he is Ferengi and would be less knowledgeable of Federation law, but he sentences the others to death.
Starfleet Academy #12, November 1997
Renegades, by Chris Cooper
Omega Squad (with the exception of Nog, who has been sent to Deep Space Nine) are in custody at the Academy and have been sentenced to death by Superintendent Pradesh for their intervention at Talos. The majority of the students and faculty are protesting the sentence, and Yoshi Mishima gets the squad to break out and informs them of Zund’s belief the Pradesh is a shapeshifter. Aboard a purloined runabout, Omega Squad heads for DS9. Admiral Decker contacts the Enterprise, informing them that he is going to be heading up the hunt for Omega 68
Squad and will be using the Enterprise. {This story – Telepathy War - continues in Deep Space Nine #12, Telepathy War, Part 2: Command Decision, on page 45}
Starfleet Academy #13, December 1997
Parents’ Day, by Chris Cooper
Omega Squad are back at the Academy and enjoying being viewed as celebrities, but then they find it is Parents’ Day. Matt’s father tells him that he is going to be transferred to Nebula Squadron. Pava’s mother turns out to be the romance holonovelist Undieela Noor who brings her daughter a gift of a Hybor that was a sort-of furry pet. Pava is visited by Kamilah’s parents who give her a hololocket of Kamilah. Edam’s parents, Florn and Sytalla, suggest he leaves the Academy and joins the University of Betazed, and they project feelings of unease which triggers the Hybor to turn into its aggressive, dangerous form and give birth to more of the same kind, which then run amok at the Academy. The squad works together to trap the Hybors, calm them down and get them to revert to their cuddly form. That leads to Edam confronting his parents, which inspires Matt and Pava to do the same with their parents. The computer says that Matt’s father and Pava’s mother are both in Pava’s room. When Matt and Pava barge in, they find their parents in a compromising situation, which leads to Matt’s father’s demand that he transfers to Nebula Squadron being dropped. A couple of weeks later, T’Priell’s parents contact Superintendent Brand to say they are certain that the person they met at the Academy was not their daughter.
Starfleet Academy #14, January 1998
T’Priell Revealed, Part 1 of 3: Betrayed by One of Their Own, by Chris Cooper The cadets of Omega Squadron (the “Deadmen”), Matthew Decker, T’Priell, Edam Astrun, Pava Ek’Noor Aqabaa, Kyethn Zund, and Yoshi Mishima are involved in a field training exercise.
T’Priell’s parents have realized that the one known as T’Priell is not their daughter, and it is established that Romulan DNA has been added to her. T’Priell has been manning a runabout while others of the team, along with other cadets, are sent aboard the U.S.S. Dunsel on a supposed rescue mission. Using various tricks, T’Priell tricks Astrun, Zund, Decker and Aqabaa into returning to the runabout she is on and disables them. Then she causes a warp core breach, destroying the runabout and supposedly most of the members of Omega Squadron, but they had all been beamed off. T’Priell (or actually Selke, a Romulan agent) introduces them to her Romulan mentor, Subcommander Thokol, before leaving the three cadets in a sealed area where there is a comatose body and, before their light fades, they realize they are also surrounded by raptor rats. Yoshi Mishma contacts Nog, and the two of them do not believe that the Omega Squadron members are dead, and they start working on rescuing them. Also, Aqabaa had sent a message to a member of Nebula Squadron (on the exercise with them) using Morse code over a tricorder.
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Starfleet Academy #15, February 1998
T’Priell Revealed, Part 2 of 3: Origins, by Chris Cooper
T’Priell has discovered that she is really a Romulan agent named Selke, and has met up with her Tal Shiar handler, Thokol. Edam is held by Selke and Terek, and Terek is experimenting on Edam to study his telepathy. The rest of Omega Squad along with Commander Zund are held captive on the same planetoid just inside Romulan space, and they meet a Romulan scientist named N’Vat and Halakith, the last surviving member of the reptilian race that used to call the planetoid home. N’Vat explains that the real T’Priell had joined up with himself, Selke and Terek to research the common origin of Vulcanoid races, but then they had discovered remnants of an old civilization and the last three of the race that had built it. Then Terek revealed himself as being Tal Shiar and wanted to take the superior alien technology for the Tal Shiar. T’Priell was mortally wounded preventing that, and before she died, she passed her katra to her friend Selke who promised to return it to Vulcan. However, Thokol turned Selke into a Tal Shiar agent, altering her to look like T’Priell and suppressing Selke’s personality so she wouldn’t give herself away. Nog and Mishima had been investigating the disappearance of Omega Squad and had followed a subspace distortion trail to the planetoid. They get captured but are able to work with Omega Squad to overcome the Romulans on the planetoid and go to try and locate Edam. One of the Romulans (Sarteth) was part of Spock’s reunification movement and offers help in getting them off the planetoid.
Starfleet Academy #16, March 1998
T’Priell Revealed, Part 3 of 3: The Fall, by Chris Cooper
T’Priell/Selke is desperately conflicted between Thokol and Omega Squad, but Edam Astrun (and later Matt Decker) stand by her. Helped by a diversion when the shuttle that Nog had arrived in explodes and the quick work of Commander Zund in repairing the Signaller, they are able to beam to the Romulan dissidents’ ship, saving T’Priell/Selke as she accidently tumbled into the Firefall of Gal Gath’Thong. They make it across the neutral zone chased by a Romulan warbird, but the U.S.S. Sagan with Captain Sabrina Stuart is waiting on the Federation side of the border and drives the warbird back. T’Priell/Selke is still trying to work out who she is, but she has Astrun to help her.
Starfleet Academy #17, April 1998
Culture Clash, by Chris Cooper
It has come to light that T’Priell of Omega Squad is actually a Romulan agent named Selka with her body altered to look like T’Priell who had died saving others. T’Priell’s katra is imprisoned in Selka’s mind, but now the two minds are separating. T’Priell/Selka is taken to Vulcan to see if T’Latne can help her, but her fellow cadet, the Betazoid named Edam Astrun, is more help.
Nevertheless, the two (Selka and T’Priell) start battling each other in their combined brain-space, but they are so intertwined that an injury inflicted by one on the other hurts the first one too.
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Edam convinces them that they have to learn to live with one another or they will both die, and T’Latne rules that the best place for T’Priell/Selka to work out their differences is at the Academy with her cadet friends. On DS9, the provisional cadet, Halakith, is appalled to find that Yoshi has a romantic association with another male, because her culture had always seen such relationships as abominations. Cadet Decker gets Halakith and Yoshi to a temporary truce, and then Halakith gets accepted into the Academy and is assigned to Nebula Squadron.
Starfleet Academy #18, May 1998
mangHom qaD!, by Chris Cooper
First Cadre isn’t allowed to join in the Klingon’s fight against the Dominion, but then Makree hears that the lost Sword of Kahless is on a Jem’Hadar ship that crashed on the planet Rejak VI.
Kovold was away on another project but B’Essa’al contacts him and tells him to join them at the planet. Arriving there, they find the crashed Dominion vessel and apparently the sword, but it turns out to be a hologram because this was all a setup by the cadets of Omega Squad, seeking revenge for the death of Kamilah Goldstein. To the Klingons’ surprise, Omega Squad takes them on and roundly defeats them, but then there is a rumble as Kovold’s shuttle arrives. When Pava learns who is aboard, she has herself immediately beamed aboard the vessel. [There is also a version of this edition in the original Klingon, and it contains a Klingon glossary.]
Starfleet Academy #19, June 1998
Between Love and Hate, by Chris Cooper
After meeting up again during a salvage mission, Pava and Kovold (who had gone insane) were fighting to the death aboard the Klingon shuttle where a shapeshifting monster was trapped by a forcefield. Omega Squad try to work with the rest of First Cadre to rescue the battling pair, whose shuttle was heading for the Rejak sun, but B’Essa’al gets herself beamed aboard the cloaked warbird she had arrived on. As Pava and Kovold battle, Pava’s locket gets dislodged, projecting an image of Kamilah, whose death at the hands of Kovold had driven Pava to want to kill him, but she also knew that Kamilah would never want anyone to be killed. Pava also accidentally damages the console controlling the forcefield, and the monster escapes and attacks Kovold. Pava kills the monster, but the attack had restored Kovold sanity sufficiently to let him explain that they had discovered an artifact of the Viators which had turned First Cadre’s leader, Murg, into the monster and driven Kovold insane. He also says that he had come back to warn Pava that the Viators were returning, then he drops the shuttle’s shields so that Omega Squad could beam Pava off, but that also lets the star’s radiation destroy the shuttle and him. That misadventure leads to Omega Squad being suspended for months until they are reactivated when the Viator Crisis occurs.
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Star Trek Early Voyages #1, February 1997
Flesh of My Flesh, by Dan Abott & Ian Edginton
Captain Pike’s Enterprise is sent to investigate a region where ships have lost all their crew, but the ships seem to be untouched. As they reach the region, they find a large vessel approaching, except it seems to be one massive creature. Communication with it proves to be futile and then all aboard the Enterprise are knocked out by a brilliant flash from the ship/creature. When the others recover, they find that Pike has been taken and that most systems on the ship, outside of life support, are disabled and they are trapped by tendrils from the creature. Spock finds that a kind of virus is disabling systems by draining energy from them, and Number One assigns Spock, Carlotti, and Dr. Boyce to find a vaccine for the virus while she, Tyler, and Nano board the ‘ship’ to rescue Pike. Pike had awakened to find himself tied up and his mind being searched by the creature, that he comes to know as the Ngultor. He also learns that the creature had arrived in this area by accident, but it had been delighted to find the region so rich in biological life that it likes to absorb into itself. It searches Pike for information about his crew, Starfleet, and Earth, so that it can harvest the region efficiently. Luckily, Number One and the others are able to free Pike, and systems are restored enough to beam them back to the Enterprise before the Ngultor eats them. The Enterprise finds itself towed back to the Ngultor’s mothership, but by then most systems had been restored and the Enterprise is able to break free and destroy the Ngultor and its mothership with photon torpedoes. Pike is unhappy about having to destroy a newly-discovered lifeform, but there was no option that didn’t endanger all other lifeforms around. [Timeline: Stardate 2252.34]
Star Trek Early Voyages #2, March 1997
The Fires of the Pharos, by Ian Edginton
The Enterprise comes to the assistance of Starbase Thirteen (also known as Port Apache). On the adjacent uninhabited planet Pharos, the Federation has built a gigantic tower to provide navigational information through the treacherous region but also for monitoring illegal traffic.
During the construction of the tower’s foundations, it is found that the planet is rich in extremely pure dilithium, which the Federation has kept quiet about, fearing it would become a resource that people would battle over. That concern has proved to be real, as word seems to have got out and Starbase 13 and Pharos have come under attack from Klingons (led by Commander Kaag) and other powers who have joined with them. The Enterprise is badly damaged by the Klingons, but Chief Engineer Grace gets enough power restored to enable Pike to fire the ship’s phasers at the planet, igniting the dilithium which starts to destroy the planet. Kaag is about to vent his anger on the Enterprise when it is discovered that more Federation ships are approaching, so Kaag reluctantly withdraws. [Timeline: Stardate 2372.1)
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Star Trek Early Voyages #3, April 1997
Our Dearest Blood, by Ian Edginton & Dan Abott
Pike, Dr. Boyce, and Yeoman Dermot Cusack are on Rigel for the ceremony to welcome the planet into the Federation. Talza (aide to Minister Etashnan) tells Pike that this is the last time that the Kaylar (Rigel’s specially bred warriors) will be participating in the Festival of Lights that they have been watching, and she offers (almost insists) on showing Pike what had been the main barracks of the Kaylar, the Zemtar Fortress, where the ceremony bringing Rigel into the Federation will be held. Meanwhile, shoreleave for the Enterprise crew begins. Suddenly, all communication between the Enterprise and those on the planet is cut off, Pike comes under attack by a massive Kaylar, and other Kaylar start attacking those on shoreleave. With the help of a communicator that Nano had adapted, Cusack is able to locate the source of the communication block and destroy it, but then he is killed by Talza who was actually part of a traditionist movement on the planet opposing joining the Federation. Security teams are now able to beam down from the Enterprise and restore order, but 3 crewmen are dead (including Cusack) and 7 injured (including Spock). [Timeline: Stardate 2385.7]
Star Trek Early Voyages #4, May 1997
Nor Iron Bars a Cage, by Ian Edginton & Dan Abott
Colt gets assigned to the Enterprise as a replacement for Yeoman Cusack, but she arrives while the losses to the ship’s crew are still being mourned, which leads to a rather frosty reception. A couple of days later she finds herself being held captive by the Talosians along with Pike and Number One. When Pike demonstrates to the Talosians how bad humans are at handling captivity by setting their phasers to overload, the Talosians release them, and Colt has gained Pike’s respect by standing alongside him and Number One. Back on the Enterprise, she is starting to feel more accepted.
Star Trek Early Voyages #5, June 1997
Cloak & Dagger, Part 1 of 2, by Dan Abnett & Ian Edginton
The Enterprise is searching for the survey ship, U.S.S. Cortez, that went missing near Darrien 224. Pike leads an away team (that includes Spock, Dr. Boyce, Colt, and others) to search the planet, but they take a shuttlecraft because interference from the planet largely blocks communications and transporter. Number One is left in charge of Enterprise. Pike’s team locates a crashed shuttle from the Cortez, but apparently any occupants had got out. Then the away team comes under attack but is rescued by other people on the planet. Turns out that there was a Vulcan colony on the planet from before the time of the logic enlightenment, and there now was the basically friendly city dwellers who were interested in making contact with the outside world and a warrior clan who live in the desert and wanted to remain isolated. It is believed that some of these warriors have taken over the Cortez, which is confirmed when the ship appears and 73
starts attacking the Enterprise. The Cortez has also been fitted out with the warriors’ super weapon, Tol Par-Doj, and that is fired at the Enterprise, engulfing it.
Star Trek Early Voyages #6, July 1997
Cloak and Dagger, Part 2 of 2, by Ian Edginton & Dan Abnett
The Enterprise has systems disabled by the blast from the Cortez and then they find themselves being boarded, but the crew fight back and repel the boarders and brings things to a stalemate.
On the planet, Pike and his crew find themselves effectively prisoners of T’Kell, head of the The-Last-of-All-Cities, who wants control of the Enterprise to return to Vulcan and force them back into their pre-logic days. She plans to use an ancient Vulcan weapon, the Vorl-Tak, to destroy the Cortez but Spock warns that it was this weapon and those like it that made Vulcans reign in their emotions and adopt logic, because this weapon could destabilize the planet. When T’Kell ignores the warning, Spock’s words are proved to be true. With the Cortez destroyed and the planet starting to collapse in on itself, Pike (who had returned to the Enterprise by shuttlecraft at T’Kell’s behest) orders the ship into the planet’s atmosphere in order to beam up the rest of the landing party. With that achieved, they move away from the planet and Spock aims to rid himself of human emotions. [Timeline: Stardate 2396.6]
Star Trek Early Voyages #7, August 1997
The Flat, Gold Forever, by Ian Edginton & Dan Abnett
Pike supposedly receives a message that his godfather, Admiral Mahirn, is seriously ill, so he takes a shuttle and heads back to Earth. However, the message had been faked by the Klingon Captain Kaaj who felt he had a blood debt to extract on Pike. Consequently, Pike’s shuttle is shot down and crashes on Pairie, where a non-aligned human colony exists. With their somewhat reluctant help (especially from an ex-Starfleet officer, Clare Thorn) he holds off a Klingon assault team sent by Kaaj, and then the Enterprise arrives after having ascertained that the message about Pike’s godfather was fake. Kaaj’s ship beats a retreat after receiving serious damage to its shields and weapons, and the Enterprise renders assistance to the colonists. The mystery remains as to who sent the anonymous message saying where Pike was. [Timeline: Stardate 258.8]
Star Trek Early Voyages #8, September 1997
Immortal Wounds, by Ian Edginton & Dan Abnett
The Enterprise is at Neyda Prime treating an outbreak of Crain’s disease, but Dr. Boyce gets arrested by the Neydan authorities for murdering a patient, Narten Phayn Drexler. There is surveillance recording of him returning at night and administering an extra-large dose of Metrazene (the medicine used to treat the plague), and Boyce also confesses to it. Pike and the crew cannot believe that Boyce would do such a thing, and the Vulcan ambassador to Neyda Prime, Toluk, agrees to represent him at the trial. The only defense he can think of is insanity, 74
which seems more believable when Colt and nurse Carlotti report some strange behavior including Boyce apparently hearing voices. Then Boyce breaks out of his cell and goes to see Toluk. Toluk learns that many years ago, Boyce had tried to rescue survivors from a shuttle he saw crash, but the three occupants were too badly burned and quickly died. However, they were Jultha Free Men who were telepaths and Boyce agreed to carry their siras (like a Vulcan katras), but their pain had begun to affect them and Boyce. The attack that brought down the shuttle was officially believed to have been caused by Tholians but was actually by Orion pirates who had been led by Drexler. Boyce is held to be not guilty of the offence and is released, Toluk contains the three siras into the living neurocrystals of a Julthan prayer gem and plans to return them to the Julthan Free Worlds. [Timeline: Stardate 360.3]
Star Trek Early Voyages #9, October 1997
One of a Kind, by Ian Edginton & Dan Abnett
Nano gets a call saying there had been an unexpected death on his homeworld, Liria, and, because of that, he was needed to return home to restore the balance of their shared consciousness. The Lirians were a very reclusive, insular race and joining the Federation had been a major step for them. Nano had been specially bred to be their representative among the Federation. Returning home, Nano has a hard time adjusting, but comes to realize there had been more deaths that weren’t being talked about. Seemingly, the Lirians also had a collective unconscious that was being fueled by their fear of the outside universe and created a number of some sort of killer fire creatures. When the leaders were addressing Pike about the crew’s interference, one such fire creature emerges and goes to attack the leaders, but Lt. Mohindas uses a feedback implement to short-circuit it. Nano explains that these attacks will continue occurring until they get over their mistrust of others. To that end, a Federation team will work with the Lirians, and Nano will rejoin the Enterprise but return to Liria at intervals to report on what he has seen and learned. [Timeline: Stardate 361.6]
Star Trek Early Voyages #10, November 1997
The Fallen: Part One, by Ian Edginton & Dan Abnett
The Enterprise gets a message that the Federation colony of Jubal is under attack by the Chakuun (the Tholians’ storm-troopers), which particularly horrifies nurse Gabrielle whose parents were killed by them in a previous attack. Pike’s crew track down the Chakuun ghostships and have to face down one of them and succeed in destroying it but the Enterprise is damaged by the explosion of the other ship. They return to Earth for repairs, which allows the crew time for shore leave, during which Pike meets up with his father again. Then the Enterprise leads a task force back to face the Chakuun and they reach Theta Kalyb colony just after it has also been attacked. [Timeline: Stardate 371.2]
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Star Trek Early Voyages #11, December 1997
The Fallen, Part 2, by Ian Edginton & Dan Abnett
The Enterprise and the rest of Pike’s fleet are trying to assist the colony at Theta Kalyb that is under attack by the Chakuun, the Thollian’s elite shocktroops. The Enterprise and the other ships are fighting a losing battle against the Chakuun’s ghostships, even though they could fight off the smaller fighter craft. The Brazzaville, Achilles and Providence are destroyed, and the Enterprise and the Nelson have suffered serious damage. On the planet, a team is trying to help the colony’s survivors, and Carlotti (who lost most of her family to the Chakuun) goes to investigate a crash site. She finds a wounded Chakuun and is tempted to kill her but can’t bring herself to do so. A shouting match/discussion follows, in which Carlotti learns that the Thollians reassess their territory every ‘eight cycles’ as stars move and see the ‘arrogant child race’ humans as invaders who take over other’s property, and the Chakuun learns that the Federation had never considered property rights changing like that and she learns that humans exhibit compassion. When rescuers come for her, the wounded Chakuun says not to kill Carlotti, and Carlotti learns that the Chakuun is a Cohort General. Almost immediately after the rescue, the ghostships break off their attack and leave, much to Pike’s relief and presumably because of Carlotti’s actions.
Star Trek Early Voyages #12, January 1998
Futures, Part 1, by Ian Edginton & Dan Abnett
The Enterprise and the Nelson are undergoing major repairs at Starbase 45 at Algol II, and Number One is offered the captaincy of the Nelson but turns it down. She does get command of the Enterprise when Pike, Dr. Boyce and Spock are sent on a classified mission of indefinite duration, and Admiral Robert April beams aboard as her ‘tutor’. The crew had been taking shoreleave on Algol and Joe Tyler had discovered a glass Keepsake (like a smallish crystal ball) and thinks he sees something in it. Colt couldn’t see anything in it and Joe jokes that she has no future, but she takes it back to the Enterprise to study it. Her tricorder activates it, and it glows brightly, then Colt vanishes, and the Keepsake falls to the floor. Colt finds herself in a restricted Starfleet zone somewhere and is taken into custody. [Timeline: Stardate 388.4]
Star Trek Early Voyages #13, February 1998
Future Tense, Part Two, by Ian Edginton & Dan Abnett
Colt escapes from the two security officers and finds that she is on the USS Enterprise, NCC-1701, which is now an exhibit in the Smithsonian. In making her escape, she is spotted by Kirk who intercepts her. He finds her story amazing but believes it because he had ended up as Pike’s yeoman when she vanished, but the two had never got along and Kirk had resigned from Starfleet. He was now the captain of the merchantman ship, the Bounty. He offers to try to get her back to her own time, partly because he believes it will affect the timeline and give them all a second chance with their lives. His crew is a bit reluctant to go to Algol, which is now in Klingon territory, but they go along with it. However, their warp engines start to malfunction 76
after they’ve moved into Klingon space, and they come under attack from Chang’s warbird.
Then Pike’s Enterprise, NCC 1701-A arrives to take on Chang.
Star Trek Early Voyages #14, March 1998
Futures, by Ian Edginton & Dan Abnett
Pike’s Enterprise has to go to the rescue of a Federation-registered merchantman that had wandered into Klingon territory, potentially creating a diplomatic incident. Pike was already furious at whoever the merchantman’s captain was, but becomes livid when he finds it is Kirk, who used to be his yeoman before being expelled from Starfleet. Then Spock announces that sensors had identified Mia Colt as being aboard the merchantman. She had disappeared in 2263
after studying an Algol Keepsake yet doesn’t appear to be any older. It is determined that the current timeline is rejecting her, and she can only survive a matter of days, so they decide to carry out what had been Kirk’s plan of returning her to her own timeline. That involves traveling through Klingon space without sanction from Starfleet, and the Enterprise finds itself surrounded and attacked by a number of Klingon warbirds led by Chang. [Timeline: Stardate 8521.8]
Star Trek Early Voyages #15, April 1998
Now and Then, by Ian Edginton & Dan Abnett
Chang looks as though he will defeat the Enterprise, but then Captain Robbins (Pike’s old Number One) and the Excelsior arrive, and Chang opts to withdraw. Robbins had been sent to bring the Enterprise back, but when she learns how the mission involves Colt, she feigns communication problems and lets them go. Arriving at Algol, they find that the planet is now a Klingon military staging post, headed up by Chang, but they locate the Well of Tomorrows (which Colt is expected to use) just outside the Klingon perimeter. Pike allows Kirk and his pirates to beam down with Colt. Colt jumps into the seemingly bottomless well, and Kirk and his pirates battle the Klingon ground forces while the Enterprise finds itself grossly outnumbered in space. But Colt falls down past numerous optional timelines and comes back in her original one in her quarters aboard the Enterprise, and the timeline that evolved from her misadventure melts away. [Timeline: Stardate 8522.0]
Star Trek Early Voyages #16, May 1998
Thanatos, by Ian Edginton & Dan Abnett
Pike and Boyce are part of an undercover team on the Temazi homeworld trying to locate a team of Klingons that are attempting to steal the cache of weapons from an alien civilization that had visited Thanatos in the past. The artifacts that they left behind, including the weapons, are regarded as religious treasures. A Klingon female masquerading as a temple girl sees Pike as being an out-of-town nobleman who has come to be inducted into the mysteries and that might lead them to the weapons cache. But, when she points him out to the other Klingons, Kaaj recognizes him as Pike and attacks him. The fracas in the temple tells the Temazi that there are 77
aliens among them, and weapons are drawn. Meanwhile, Admiral April has brought the Enterprise into orbit of the planet and finds himself facing down a couple of Klingon vessels.
[Timeline: Stardate 380.5]
Star Trek Early Voyages #17, June 1998
Nemesis, by Ian Edginton & Dan Abnett
The Enterprise team on the Temazi homeworld end up fighting side-by-side with the Klingon renegades when the Temazi realize they are all aliens and set the Thanatos weapons on them.
Kaaj sacrifices his life destroying a couple of the Thanatos robotic monsters, allowing Pike’s team to escape the planet with the Klingons aboard the Klingon shuttle. In space, Admiral April has been abusing his authority (with a little help from Mohindas) and nearly started a war with the Klingons, and, when he orders the destruction of the Thanatos weapon chasing the shuttle, he seemingly destroys the shuttle and all aboard and causes substantial damage to the Enterprise.
[That was the final edition of the comic, so you can write your own ending, but we know that Pike, Spock and Boyce survived, and April never regained captaincy of the Enterprise, so don’t lose sleep over it.]
Star Trek Telepathy War #1, November 1997
Reality’s End, by Chris Cooper
{The previous segment of this story is Star Trek Voyager #13, Telepathy War Part 5, on page 61} It has been discovered that the Admiral Decker who had been carrying out the vendetta against Omega Squad was actually a shapeshifter. After the Jem’Hadar attack on DS9, the Enterprise takes the attack to the Dominion, but then it is discovered that the attacks had all been feints, and the real target of the Dominion was the conference of telepaths on Alaya 2. The Enterprise succeeds in reaching the planet by going through the Badlands, along with the real Admiral Decker who had been returned by a renegade Jem’Hadar named Lyb’r. Then the conference and the Enterprise come under attack from the Jem’Hadar. On DS9, Dr. Bashir comes to realize that what is afflicting Troi and T’Priell (and Spock on Romulus) is a meme implanted by the Dominion, with which they have also infected the delegates to the telepath’s conference, aiming to spread it to the telepaths’ homeworlds and disable them. Edam is able to introduce a counteracting meme that frees up the telepaths’ minds, including the Talosians. The Talosians create a vision of a Federation fleet arriving in support of the Enterprise and the telepaths’ conference, and the Jem’Hadar fleet beats a hasty exit. [Timeline: Stardate 50786.5]
Star Trek Mirror Mirror #1, February 1997
Fragile Glass, by Tom DeFalco
In the Mirror universe, Spock has Kirk arrested on his return to the Enterprise and put in the brig, in an adjacent cell to Sulu. Sulu already has a means of contacting his supporters among the crew and organizes a couple of attacks on Spock, but between Spock’s Vulcan strength, Marlena (who 78
has thrown her lot in with Spock) using the Tantalus Field to make Spock’s enemies vanish, and Chekov’s support, Spock consolidates his hold on power. He also gets Scotty to tie the Tantalus Field into the warp power, so that it has the energy to make ships disappear. When the Klingons attack, Spock is able to make all the fleet disappear except for the fleet commander Lord Skarl’s ship, which beats a retreat to warn the Klingon command of the new development. Kirk and Sulu break out of the brig with Uhuru’s help, but they are defeated, and Kirk dies fighting Spock.
Admiral Decker arrives to find that the question of who should command Enterprise has been resolved, and he approves of Spock’s solution with the Halkans that lets the Terran Empire take their dilithium.
Star Trek Operation Assimilation, April 1997
Operation Assimilation, by Paul Jenkins
Commander Moliok is daughter of the seat of Tarek but, due to unfortunate events of politics, she finds herself overseeing a backwater region of the Romulan Empire in a warbird that doesn’t even have a cloaking device. But she is ruthless in carrying out her duties while longing for some excitement. Her wish seems to have been answered when they track an unknown vessel enter Romulan space from uncharted space and apparently attack a scientific outpost. Moliok had been expecting to find a Federation ship, but instead it is a massive cube-shaped vessel that dwarfs them but appears to be very susceptible to her ship’s weapons. She is more surprised and disappointed to find the cube ship repairing itself, and then she finds her ship being boarded.
What disturbs her most is that the attackers don’t seem to be concerned by any of the measures she and her crew bring against them. When she is captured and clamped to a table while they plug tubes into her, she knows her threats against them are pointless, but there’s nothing else she can do. Even more invasive surgery follows, but soon her thoughts become clearer – the Borg will prevail. Soon after that, she becomes the face of the Borg as they attack other Romulan facilities.
DC Comics
Star Trek #1, February 1984
Chapter 1, The Wormhole Connection, by Mike W. Barr
Kirk becomes captain of the new Enterprise and is given the task of finding out what happened to the Gallant, which was apparently attacked by Klingon ships that seemed to appear out of nowhere. Arriving at where the Gallant was destroyed, the Enterprise comes under a similar attack from a Klingon fleet led by Koloth, but Kirk is able to drive them off before the Enterprise gets too seriously damaged. Lt. Saavik, who is Science Officer now that Spock is dead, finds a strange energy signature that Scotty identifies as a wormhole, explaining how the Klingons appeared out of nowhere. Kirk has the Organians notified and has Scotty modify the transporter 79
and a shuttle to enable access to the wormhole, and Saavik is aboard the shuttle while Kirk and Ensign Bryce get beamed in wearing thruster suits. Inside the wormhole, Kirk spots a Klingon space-station with sufficient power to destroy the Enterprise. [Timeline: Stardate 8145.6]
Star Trek #2, March 1984
Chapter 2, The Only Good Klingon, by Mike W. Barr
Saavik takes the shuttle into the wormhole as a diversion to allow Kirk and Bryce to gain access to the station. They have to fight off some Klingons, but then they meet Konom who had tried to warn the Enterprise earlier, and now he helps them locate the wormhole stabilizer where they place an explosive. Saavik had been captured and brought aboard the station, but she escapes and helps beam the team back to the Enterprise. McCoy is able to successfully treat Konom, who had been seriously injured in the escape. The explosion leaves the Klingon space station in normal space, but Koloth has it self-destruct. The Enterprise is about to return to Earth when they hear an announcement from Emperor Kahless IV that the Klingon Empire is declaring war on the Federation because of the treachery of the Enterprise. [Timeline: Stardate 8149.2]
Star Trek #3, April 1984
Chapter 3, Errand of War, by Mike W. Barr
Kirk can hardly believe the Klingon declaration of war. Orders from Admiral Stephen Turner to go to the Romulan border, rather than checking out Organia, seems highly suspicious to him too.
When the Klingons attack and destroy the Benecia Medical Station and the Federation respond by destroying a harmless Klingon research station, Kirk knows something is wrong and immediately heads for Organia. There they find that the planet has disappeared from view, totally hidden behind a field that absorbs all forms of energy. An encounter with two Klingon ships leads to a brief battle in which both Klingon ships are destroyed, but the Enterprise is able to beam survivors off, including the captain, Kor. Kirk attempts to gain Kor’s assistance in investigating what has happened to Organia, but then a large creature appears and warns them off. [Timeline: Stardate 8150.7]
Star Trek #4 May 1984
Chapter 4 - The Final Chapter, Deadly Allies, by Mike W. Barr
In an effort to stop the war with the Klingons, Kirk takes the Enterprise to Organia where he finds and defeats Captain Kor’s ships but finds the planet surrounded by a black field. Then the Excalbians appear and say they had placed the Organians in a form of suspension and had started the war to answer the question again about whether good or evil is more powerful. Kor agrees to work with Kirk because he doesn’t want to be manipulated. Kirk comes up with a dicey plan to create a wormhole through the black field and take a shuttle through, and it surprises Saavik (who is flying the shuttle) that it works. They find the Organians being held by the Excalbians, and Kirk convinces the Excalbians that they would learn the answer better if they were involved 80
in the contest with them representing good and the Organian evil. That causes the Excalbians to release the Organians. The two sets of creatures grow to immense size as Kirk’s team makes a wise exit, and the Excalbians and the Organians both disappear, leaving Kirk relieved that they will now be able to control their own destiny, not overseen by the Organians. [Timeline: Stardate 8151.7]
Star Trek #5, June 1984
Mortal Gods, by Mike W. Barr
With the threat of war seemingly over, the Enterprise is sent to the Beta Epsilon system to discover what had happened to the U.S.S. Valor that had last reported engaging a Klingon vessel.
They find the remains of both vessels and indications that a small vessel had headed for an inhabitable planet. There, the Enterprise away team find themselves greeted as “more gods”, and then find that Captain Philip Hodges of the Valor was their “god”. He had stopped a war between Commander Ballor and General Decton and had provided medical and some technological aid to the natives. He had also married Lylla, daughter of Lorac. Hodges refuses to leave with Kirk, pointing out that the war would resume if he left, and Ballor and Decton are plotting how to resume the fighting. Ballor kidnaps Hodges, but Lt. Bearclaw assists Kirk’s away team in tracking Ballor and Hodges. Kirk is able to free Hodges and thwart Ballor and Decton’s plans, but Lylla gets injured in the disturbance and is beamed aboard the Enterprise for treatment. Kirk arranges to use holodeck and transporter technology to make it look as if the gods are calling Hodges back to be with them, and appoint Lorac as the new leader of the natives. Hodges and Lylla leave aboard the Enterprise. [Timeline: Stardate 8163.5]
Star Trek #6, July 1984
Who is Enigma?, by Mike W. Barr
The peace conference between the Federation and the Klingons on Babel is floundering, so the Enterprise is tasked with transporting Ambassador-at-large Robert Fox there. En route, Fox is attacked by an octopus-like creature that is driven away by Enterprise security, but the creature is soon discovered to be an agent known as Enigma who learned shapeshifting while on Antos IV.
Fox also comes to realize that Enigma is his daughter, Trisha, who had fallen out with him and joined the Orion Victory League. On arrival at Babel, Enigma manages to beam down to the planet, and Commodore Benedict insists that security on the station should be left to his team, and Kirk and his men remain on the Enterprise. But Scotty had been attacked by Enigma previously and was hidden away somewhere on the Enterprise, so Kirk wants to capture Enigma alive to find out where Scotty is before he dies. Fox, who hopes for a reconciliation with his daughter, agrees to a plan by Kirk to set a trap for Enigma at the peace conference. That works, Enigma is drugged so that Trisha can’t shapeshift and will tell the truth. Scotty is saved, Benedict is annoyed with Kirk, but the Klingon ambassador supports Kirk’s actions and Fox has an opportunity for an open conversation with Trisha.
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Saavik’s Story Chapter One: Pon Farr!, by Mike W. Barr
Kirk’s son David joins the Enterprise for its mission. Then Saavik starts to behave un-Vulcan-like, confirming McCoy’s suspicion that she was entering Pon Farr. Kirk then delays the Enterprise’s rendezvous with the Grissom in order to take Saavik to Vulcan, but then Sarek tells them that Xon’s current location was a state secret, but he does give a clue that lets Saavik access the location. Xon was the person she was pledged to as a child. Then she uses Sarek’s authority to get herself beamed to a spaceport and take a one-person ship headed for the galaxy’s edge, and the Enterprise follows her. Arriving at the galaxy’s rim, staying a safe distance from the barrier, the Enterprise finds itself under fire, which is coming from Saavik’s ship because the Pon Farr was causing her to think that they were hiding Xon. [Timeline: Stardate 8180.1]
Star Trek #8, November 1984
Saavik’s Story Chapter Two: Blood Fever, by Mike W. Barr
Kirk has the Enterprise “play dead”, which stops Saavik’s attack on what she assumed was a Romulan ship, and she heads off for the planet housing a Romulan research facility. They are trying to enhance the abilities of a group of Romulans by feeding them energy from the galaxy’s barrier. Xon is working undercover as a Romulan in a prominent position under the Commander and chief researcher Lar. One of the enhanced Romulans senses another ship on the planet and Xon goes to check it out, discovering Saavik. Lar had suspicions about Xon, and he is taken into custody, but the Romulans don’t see Saavik. Calmed by her brief encounter with Xon, Saavik notifies the Enterprise, and they beam her up, attack the Romulan station, destroy the antenna that was pulling energy from the barrier, and beam Xon up. The Enterprise is chased by the Romulans’ ship, but Kirk maneuvers it into the barrier, where it and the results of their research will be lost forever. The Enterprise then continues on its mission, taking David to the rendezvous with the Grissom. [Timeline: Stardate 8185.35]
Star Trek #9, December 1984
New Frontiers Chapter 1: … Promises to Keep, by Mike W. Barr
Spock is recovering on Vulcan after having his katra rejoined with his resurrected body, and Kirk visits Carol Marcus to console her after the death of David. He receives a rather violent reception, but then Carol apologizes to Kirk at the dedication of a memorial to David. In the Mirror Universe, Kirk takes the Enterprise to the space laboratory, Regula I, that Carol Marcus is working on and receives a download of the data from her project, then destroys the station with her on it, because she isn’t needed anymore. Now Kirk has the information he needs to invade the “normal” universe. [Timeline: Stardate 8215.5]
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New Frontiers Chapter 2: Double Image, by Mike W. Barr
The Mirror Universe’s Kirk (M.Kirk) invades the “normal” universe at the same time as Captain Styles aboard the Excelsior is taking Kirk and his crew into custody, along with their Klingon ship, the Bounty. When M.Kirk realizes that a space station, Starbase 13, is nearby, he attacks it.
The badly damaged Courageous gets a distress call sent out, which Captain Styles responds to.
Styles is interested in showing off the size and power of his ship and won’t listen to advice from Kirk, with the result that when they engage M.Kirk’s Enterprise, the Excelsior gets boarded and M.Kirk is delighted when he and his crew reach the Excelsior’s bridge and he comes face-to-face with Kirk again after 15 years.
Star Trek #11, February 1985
New Frontiers Chapter 3: Deadly Reflection!, by Mike W. Barr
Admiral Kirk, Captain Styles, and others are taken to the stasis chamber, but Kirk uses his likeness to the Mirror Universe Kirk (M.Kirk) to create enough confusion for them to beam over to the M.Enterprise. Styles thinks he doesn’t have to take orders from Kirk, so Kirk knocks him out and he is sent on an automated shuttle to Starbase 13 to warn Starfleet of what was happening. Kirk tries to get away from the Excelsior, but the Excelsior catches them up easily and M.Uhura gets a signal through the M.Enterprise’s shields enabling M.Kirk to gain control of the ship’s computer and starts the destruct sequence. M.Spock had found out about the Genesis Planet, and M.Kirk sends him to Vulcan to find out what Spock had to say about it. Spock was having problems integrating his katra with his regenerated body, and M.Spock tries to mindmeld with him to find out what ails him, but Spock lifts his hand and tries mindmelding with M.Spock, and they seem to be locked in a mental battle. [Timeline: Stardate 8217.2]
Star Trek #12, March 1985
New Frontiers Chapter 4: The Tantalus Trap, by Mike W. Barr
On Vulcan, Spock overcomes M.Spock’s efforts. On the M.Enterprise, Kirk discovers that the M.Enterprise’s autodestruct uses the matter/antimatter intermix, so he prepares the saucer section for separation before the countdown ends, then goes after the Excelsior, utilizing the Tantalus Field to disable its power, then he leads a team on a spacewalk to board the Excelsior. M.Kirk’s crew is disabled for a while with an airborne anesthetic, but then M.Kirk and Kirk get into a fistfight, with Kirk coming out the winner. After rescuing the surviving crew of the Courageous, Kirk delivers them and M.Kirk’s crew to Starbase 13, then ignores Grand Admiral Turner’s instructions to hand over the Excelsior to Styles and heads off to make the transition to the Mirror Universe and stop the invasion fleet gathering there. [Timeline: Stardate 8217.8]
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New Frontiers Chapter 5: Masquerade, by Mike W. Barr
Kirk convinces the Empire to allow him and the Excelsior to lead the invasion fleet, intending to turn on them in his own universe. He also meets up with the Resistance group, which turns out to be led by David, the Mirror Universe’s version of Kirk’s late son. Kirk invites him to join the Excelsior crew. Spock had convinced M.Spock to join him, and the two of them, along with M.Sulu and M.Chekov, cross over into the Mirror Universe aboard the Klingon bird-of-prey.
Kirk rescues them as the bird-of-prey’s power is failing. When Kirk had met the Resistance, a spy (Reynolds) for Admiral Turner of the Empire had overheard events and reports back that Kirk is planning to betray the Empire. Turner therefore instructs the invasion fleet to destroy the Excelsior along with Kirk. [Timeline: Stardate 8220.3]
Star Trek #14, May 1985
New Frontiers Chapter 6: Behind Enemy Lines!, by Mike W. Barr
The Excelsior gets damaged enough to prevent it from making the jump back across universes, so Kirk sends the two Spocks and Konom to the Klingon homeworld in the cloaked bird-of-prey, while Excelsior makes a transwarp jump to the prison world, to follow David’s plan of freeing the captured scientists. Kirk and his team make their way into the facility okay, but Lt.
Bearclaw’s actions alert the security forces there, and the away team only just escapes with their lives, but also with Dr. Pederson, who is eager to get his revenge on the Empire. Spock’s team fare little better with Kahless IV on the Klingon homeworld, but Konom submits himself to the mind-sifter to convince the Klingons that the two Spocks are speaking the truth. [Timeline: Stardate 8221.6]
Star Trek #15, June 1985
New Frontiers Chapter 7: The Beginning of the End, by Mike W. Barr
Kirk gets the Klingons and Romulans of the Mirror Universe to ally with them against the Empire, but both of those have their own agendas too. Scotty has come up with a method for nullifying the transtator technology that the Empire uses. Since the Klingons and Romulans use the same technology, Scotty develops an energy field generator device that is fitted in each of their ships to enable them to function normally. Captain Blaine is given the task of leading the fleet against Kirk again, but this time he’s given the Empire’s own version of the Excelsior.
Blaine gives Captain Trask the opportunity of leading the first attack against Kirk, but that leads to most of the fleet being first disabled by the nulling field, then disabled or destroyed by Excelsior, the Klingons, and the Romulans. Then the M.Excelsior comes to attack Kirk’s Excelsior, but they find themselves disabled; the Empire had previously inspected the Excelsior but Scotty had swapped certain components so that the ship could only handle ten percent of its design load, and the Empire followed that pattern. Powering up to attack Kirk’s ship caused systems to blow, disabling the M.Excelsior. Then the Klingons and Romulans attack Kirk’s 84
Excelsior, but Kirk has Spock trigger a remote detonation of all the devices added to their supposed allies’ ships, rendering them powerless in the nulling field. With it looking like David will be leading a reformed Empire, along with M.Spock, Kirk and the Excelsior prepare to make the transition back to their own universe. [Timeline: Stardate 8223.4]
Star Trek #16, July 1985
New Frontiers Chapter 8: Homecoming …, by Mike W. Barr
A fleet of Federation ships, led by the USS Christopher Pike with Captain Styles, had gathered to meet an invasion force from the Mirror Universe, but it is the Excelsior that comes through.
Styles demands that Kirk prove he’s not the Mirror-version, which he does by asking Styles how his jaw is after Kirk had knocked him out earlier. Styles places him and the crew officially under arrest, but Kirk leaks a news story that gets picked up by reporter Lyndra Dean, about how he had defeated the invasion fleet. So, by the time the Excelsior reached Earth, Grand Admiral Steven Turner is not in a position to punish Kirk. Instead, he gives him command of Excelsior with orders to work the bugs out of it so that it can serve as a prototype for the future fleet.
Captain Spock is given command of the research vessel USS Surak, with orders to check if there are any long-range effects from the Genesis Wave.
Star Trek #17, August 1985
The D’artagnan Three, by L.B. Kellogg
Kirk’s Excelsior captures a small pirate vessel (that gets called the D’artagnan) and finds that it is carrying dilithium crystal that was collected from the planet Cetus 5 and is being taken to the space-station Orillius-1, known as a hangout for pirates and smugglers. The station is run by Kabaka Buganda, who used to be a close friend of Uhura, so she, Sulu, and Bearclaw are given the task of checking out the station, using the captured pirate vessel to get them there.
Meanwhile, Excelsior checks out Cetus 5. That had been a water-world, but its star had become a red giant and had evaporated the oceans. Buganda had promised the surviving fish-like natives that he would supply them with water in return for the right to mine the dilithium (using slave labor, naturally). Kirk informs the natives that Buganda had lied to them and gives Saavik the task of finding a suitable new home for them. Uhura’s association with Buganda gets them onto the space-station, but the two sides soon learn the truth about each other. Sulu’s team escapes aboard D’artagnan, followed by a fleet of small vessels and Buganda’s cruiser. Being unable to escape, Sulu turns the D’artagnan towards Buganda’s ship, and they beam aboard it, and free the slaves. So, when they rendezvous with Excelsior, Sulu is in charge of the cruiser, and Buganda and the pirates are in custody. [Timeline: Stardate 8263.5]
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Rest and Recreation!, by Paul Kupperberg
Scotty goes for some R&R at Starbase VII, run by his old friend Commander Joshua Helmes who is still rather bitter about being passed over as a starship captain because of a mistake he made early in his career. Scotty gets talked into addressing a class of cadet. That results in him later talking shop with Cadet Gulder and teaching him some basic techniques of being an engineer, like how to drink strong liquor. Then Scotty takes the cadet to meet another good friend, Bill Nygulla in Supply, but finds that he had been attacked. A robbery had taken place in Supply, and two containers of paper towels apparently taken, but three of the supply crew had been killed and the security video had been deleted. After some checking, Scotty guesses that the containers contained barbit crystals, because they had been delivered from Narktos. Barbit crystals are the base for a highly addictive narcotic, but it has to be processed in an ion flow, like that used in the trash disintegrator. There, Scotty finds that the ion flow had been wrongly adjusted and could cause the barbit to explode, destroying the station but, before he can correct it, he comes under attack from the three thieves, who are Starfleet crew. Scotty sends Gulder to create a diversion but then the three attackers get killed by someone with a phaser. That someone was Helmes, but Scotty comments that it was strange that he just happened to be passing with a phaser set to kill, and Scotty suggests that Helmes was the one who had organized the whole thing. Helmes then goes to kill Scotty but gets jumped from behind by Gulder and, between Gulder and Scotty, they subdue him. [Timeline: Stardate 8293.6]
Star Trek #19, October 1985
Chekov’s Choice, by Walter (Chekov) Koenig
The Enterprise is on its way to the planet Pelham V to discuss with a drone species, the Eebrix, about them becoming crewmen aboard starships. However, they encounter an alien vessel and the aliens plead for help because their ship is locked into a self-destruct sequence. Unfortunately, Enterprise only has time to warp to a safe distance. All involved are affected by having to leave the aliens to die, but Chekov is traumatized by it and is relieved of duty. He meets a sympathetic young crewmember, Yeoman Hamilton, who encourages him in mobilizing a large proportion of the crew in a mutiny, taking control away from the bridge but that leaves the Enterprise headed for an asteroid, although the mutineers couldn’t see it. In the meantime, Spock had gone in a shuttle to try to make contact with a vessel that seemed to be following them but not responding to hails. He finds himself being attacked by Vulcan warships that hadn’t existed for centuries and realizes that they are illusions. Back on the Enterprise, he finally convinces Chekov that the original alien ship, Yeoman Hamilton, and the fact that Chekov cannot see the asteroid are all the result of illusions being created by those on the following ship, and Chekov is able to forestall the collision with the asteroid at the last second. The aliens aboard the following ship were paranoid against contact with others and had only used the power of illusion to protect themselves. They’d been fearful of Eebrix becoming part of the crew on Starfleet ships because they couldn’t be deceived that way with illusions. [Timeline: Stardate 6717]
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Star Trek #20, November 1985
Giri, by Wenonoh Woods
Sulu gets to take leave on Mountaindove, otherwise known as Station L-319. Mountaindove is home to his family’s business, Hatoyama Corporation, and also to that of its chief competitor, Heike Company, both of which make cyber-suits (giant robot-type vehicles that enable a person to work in space building the new transwarp starships). This marriage is between Keiko (who used to be Sulu’s girlfriend before he went off to Starfleet Academy) and Heike Reijiro, uniting the two families and businesses, and ending the feud between the two families. As the family patriarch, Hotoyama Kiyomori, is showing Sulu around, a cyber-suit goes “rouge” and attacks them, and Sulu finds that it had been reprogrammed to attack. At the ceremony after the marriage itself, Sulu is expecting another attempt on Kiyomori’s life and is able to expose Reijiro as trying to kill Kiyomori with poisoned Saki. That ends with Sulu and Reijiro fighting each other in cyber-suits, bursting through the station wall and continuing the fight in space. Sulu ends up defeating Reijiro. Reijiro had been acting out of honor in seeking revenge for his father’s death, which he blamed on Kiyomori. Keiko decides to stand by Reijiro out of honor, and Sulu had attended the wedding in place of his mother out of a sense of honor, and honor is traditionally known as Giri in Japan. [Timeline: Stardate 8293.6]
Star Trek #21, December 1985
Dreamworld, by Bob Rozakis
Captain Spock’s ship, Surak, is sent to investigate a strange planet, Proto, that Brinks reports is habitable according to the sensors. However, with the planet being 450 million miles from its star, Spock declares that that is highly unlikely and suggests that the sensors be recalibrated. He also insists on environmental suits when he, Brinks, and Doctor Chu-Sa (who comes from a flightless avian species) beam down to investigate. On beaming down, Spock finds that the other two are missing but he is involved in some adventure involving an Earth railway station, his mother, and Scotty. The illogic of the situation makes him guess that he is dreaming, and he wakes himself up to find himself in sickbay where the other two are still asleep. After beam-down, the ship had lost contact with the three, and Mr. McCarthy (who had been left in charge) had them located and beamed up, but they had been in a deep sleep, and nothing would awaken them until Spock woke himself up. Spock decides to mindmeld with the other two, starting with Chu-Sa who he finds enjoying the ability to fly. Spock has to chase him and rescue him from a vortex before being able to awaken him. In the case of Brinks, he finds her facing down a monster that then attacks Spock and he has to convince Brinks to phaser it before he can wake her up. Proto is declared a hostile planet, and Spock has a talk with Brinks about why her dream-monster looked remarkably like him. [Timeline: Stardate 8293.6]
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RedJac is Back – Part 1: Wolf on the Prowl, by Tony Isabella
Kirk gets instructed by Admiral Turner to take the Excelsior to the planet Enoch IV where the stone-age natives worship an evil god named RedJac and had built a temple to it with a mural that seems to depict it fighting Kirk. Kirk recognizes RedJac as the being that takes over humans, using them to inflict pain, suffering and death on others, and had been known as Jack the Ripper.
It feeds of the suffering that it inflicts. Three grizzly deaths occur aboard the Excelsior and Konom is seriously injured and left unconscious. An away team beams down to Enoch IV, but the natives have good and bad reversed, and they run from the “good” guys of the away team. On Excelsior, Konom recovers sufficiently to identify Nancy Bryce as the person possessed by RedJac, but she was on the away team and had already started attacking others on the team.
[Timeline: Stardate 8878.1]
Star Trek #23, February 1986
RedJac is Back – Part 2: Wolf at the Door!, by Tony Isabella
Chekov has been nearly mortally wounded by the RedJac-possessed Bryce, but the combined efforts of McCoy and Saavik get Bryce sedated, and RedJac leaves her. However, he inspires the natives to attack Kirk’s team, even after Kirk and his group shelter in the temple structure. Then RedJac and the natives close in on them, but Saavik is able to transmit readings of RedJac to Scotty, who is then able to adapt the transporter to beam the team aboard, just as RedJac is staging his attack. RedJac, in his basic form comes after Excelsior and it looks like he will take it until Kirk gets Scotty, with a little help from Saavik, to create a wormhole which Excelsior dives into. RedJac follows but is cut off from the power he is drawing from the planet’s natives, and then Excelsior exits the wormhole, which closes, trapping RedJac inside. Excelsior returns to offer assistance to the planet’s natives until Starfleet can send more help. Bryce is suffering guilt from the deaths she had been associated with and is planning on resigning her commission, but Kirk talks her out of it. [Timeline: Stardate 8878.4]
Star Trek #24, March 1986
Double Blind, Part 1, by Diane Duane
The Excelsior is cruising through space between the Sagittarius and Orion arms of the galaxy when a large starship appears in front of them, and the lobster-like aliens demand their surrender.
They claim to be from the Ajir Empire, but scans indicate basic phaser-type weapons, no shields, and not a lot of power. But they are insistent on Kirk’s surrender, so he decides to play along.
The Ajir captain tells Kirk that they won’t be killed today because it is the Ajir’s Day of Farf.
The senior officers end up supposedly showing representatives of the Ajir how their departments work, but actually gathering information. The Ajir seemingly know little about space beyond their homeworld or even how their own ship works. They seem to only know which buttons to push to make it go. Kirk is about to turn the tables on the Ajir when another massive ship arrives, 88
again demanding Excelsior’s surrender. These aliens are from the Grond Protectorate, and the Ajir appear to know and be afraid of them.
Star Trek #25, April 1986
Double Blind, Part 2, by Diane Duane
The Ajir go and hide in Rec Room 4 and Kirk, after ascertaining that the Grond ship was no more powerful than the Ajir’s had been (the Grond had destroyed the Ajir ship when they arrived), surrenders to the Grond. The same procedure is gone through, and Saavik ascertains that the Grond Protectorate consists of two impoverished planets and the Grond themselves turn out to be, in looks and abilities, kitty-cats. Kirk takes the Grond captain on a tour of the ship and, when the two alien species encounter each other in Rec Room 4 and act terrified of one another, Kirk confronts the two of them. They had concocted the story of the races being terrifying creatures as a means of protecting themselves from other races, but that had ended up isolating themselves and leaving them poor. Kirk tells them that the Federation needs a base in that area, and they would be willing to establish a presence on planets of the Ajir and Grond. That would attract other traders too, and the Federation would provide protection. The two captains are given documents outlining the proposal to take back to their people, and the Grond offer to drop the Ajir off at their planet since they don’t have a ship anymore. [Timeline: Stardate 8890.1]
Star Trek #26, May 1986
The Trouble with Transporters, by Bob Rozakis
The Surak arrives at Verdee to investigate the planet, and Spock has Commander Brinks beam himself (Spock), Dr. Chu-Sa, Dr. Garace, and Lt. Miller down to the planet, but Miller doesn’t arrive on the planet with the others. An investigation of the transporters shows nothing wrong, but Spock bans their use until whatever went wrong is corrected. Then Spock’s landing party comes under attack from other aliens who had set up a base there since Excelsior had visited.
Starfleet orders Excelsior to go to their assistance. Phasers are beamed down to Spock’s team and (against Spock’s order) Brinks beams herself down, but she doesn’t arrive. Soon afterwards, she is seen floating past in a ghostly form, and she mouths the word ‘Romulans’ to them. Aboard the Surak, it is determined that the transporter problem is caused by a beam from the Romulan base, and Spock orders an unarmed probe to be launched at the base and then to transport the landing party into the base. While the Romulans are concentrating on whatever it was that had been fired on them, Spock’s team is able to surprise them and, after a fight, overpower them.
Miller is recovered from the “ghost” form, then Brinks is also recovered, and Spock speculates on whether to have her decorated for valor or court-martialed for insubordination. Then Spock informs Kirk that his services are not needed. [Timeline: Stardate 8892.3]
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Around the Clock, by Robert Greenberger
The Excelsior is mapping an unexplored region of the galaxy, and people are getting bored. Sulu (when he’s not dating Lt. Maria Morelli) arranges a fencing demonstration and Chekov organizes some security drills. After Kirk tells him to make the drills surprising, he and his team arrange a simulated attack by three hammer & sickle shaped craft that emerge from an ion storm. That drill interrupts Sulu’s fencing demonstration and also gets Chekov a talking-to by Kirk after his tampering with the computer (to cover up the fact that it’s a simulation) leads to the disabling of weapons systems. On the other hand, they did find another of Excelsior’s faults. The antics of Sulu and Chekov add to Saavik’s bafflement about the way humans behave. [Timeline: Stardate 8988.3]
Star Trek #28, July 1986
“The Last Word”, by Diane Duane
Landing parties are selected to investigate an M-type planet of the 12 Lyncis system but, soon after they are deployed, a medical emergency is declared as fatally injured Thometz is beamed back up, along with Nurse Lia Burke and Reynolds. Thometz had been attacked and severely mauled by a creature like a six-legged bear, and Reynolds says that he had managed to kill the creature but not in time to save his friend, Thometz. Then Reynolds collapses and his vital signs begin dropping, although no injury or infection can be found. McCoy feels guilt for having suggested that Thometz and Reynolds be on the same landing party, and he wonders if, after having carried Spock’s katra in his head for a time, he could mindmeld with Reynolds. He succeeds in doing that and convinces Reynolds that Thometz wouldn’t have wanted him to give up on living. After that, Reynolds recovers fairly quickly. [Timeline: Stardate 8899.7]
Star Trek #29, August 1986
The Trouble with Bearclaw, by Tony Isabella
Magnetic storms and other radiation on a previously unexplored planet prevent much in the way of surveys from orbit nor do they allow beaming down, so a landing party with Commander Thimon, Lieutenant Jed, Ensign Bearclaw, Bodine and Konom take a shuttle down while Kirk addresses some long-overdue reports. The mission starts out badly for Bearclaw when he is overheard by Thimon making bigoted comments about Thimon and Jed to Bodine. Then the shuttle has to make a very rough landing, and the team find themselves being attacked by a large group of ape-like creatures whose skin protects them from phaser fire. A cave system proves to be less than satisfactory as a defensible position, and along the way Bearclaw regularly defies orders from Thimon and Jed. It is in defiance of one of those orders that Bearclaw manages to make contact with Excelsior and get help. Before that help arrives, Bearclaw physically attacks and kills one of the ape creatures that was attacking Thimon. That leads to Bearclaw ending up 90
on life-support in sickbay and Jed promising not lay charges against Bearclaw if Thimon won’t recommend him for a commendation. [Timeline: Stardate 8901.1]
Star Trek #30, September 1986
Uhura’s Story, by Paul Kupperberg
The Excelsior is sent to observe the final breakup of the planet Tally, due to its seismic activity, but they find the shuttle Kepler (from Kirk’s original Enterprise) in orbit. Kirk asks Uhura to tell Saavik the story of how it had come to be there. Soon after Uhura had joined the Enterprise and was still trying to prove her worth, the Enterprise visited Tally and found that the Klingons had set up a base there. A landing party led by Kirk beams down, but Uhura notices that the Klingons then erected a disruptor field, preventing the team being beamed back and blocking communication with them. Mitchell, who had been left in charge of the Enterprise, orders the ship into a wider orbit, outside the field, but Uhura (without authorization) takes the shuttlecraft Kepler down on a rescue mission. There, she discovers that the Klingon field also acted as a neural-disruptor, and she finds the landing party incapacitated but she is able to create a counteracting field to protect herself as she locates the Klingon equipment. There, she uses her spectrometer to build up towards a frequency that will shatter metal and is able to escape with the landing party. She tries to call the Enterprise but hears no reply, but the Enterprise beams them all off as the Klingon ship fires on the shuttle. [Timeline: Stardate 9192.50 on Excelsior, 1297.8 on Enterprise.]
Star Trek #31, October 1986
Maggie’s World, by Tony Isabella
Maggie’s World was discovered about 10 years before by Mace Magellan and by the Klingons, and now the Klingons and Federation are trying to show that each can develop the planet better, and the local inhabitants favor the Klingon’s progress, even though their methods are more disruptive to the ecosystem. Then the leader of the Federation team, Alisa Ruthuen, discovers indications of dilithium on the planet. Meanwhile, Excelsior is assigned to take the bombastic Ambassador Averill Stanton to the planet, supposedly to boost the Federation case. Kirk suspects that the Federation assigned him because Maggie’s World appeared to be a lost cause anyway, and therefore Stanton was unlikely to do any real damage. Arriving at the planet, Kirk finds that a Klingon vessel was already there with Captain Koloth. Then a serious explosion occurs at the Federation mining facility. [Timeline: Stardate 8903.6]
Star Trek #32, November 1986
Judgement Day!, by Len Wein
It looks as if war is starting on Maggie’s World and Ambassador Stanton is quick to blame the Klingons, but Kirk wonders why they would do that when it seemed that they had already effectively won the planet. Kirk isn’t the only one to see that things don’t add up, and Magellan 91
(the planet’s Administrator) accuses Ruthuen of causing the explosion. She had actually been working with Stanton, trying to discredit the Klingons and win the planet, and its dilithium, for the Federation. Now she intends to kill Magellan and blame the Klingon miner, Koval. She phasers Magellan as he’s walking through town at night, but it was a set-up. Magellan had been wearing a phaser-proof vest. Ruthuen and the drugged Koval get beamed aboard Excelsior to face Kirk, Stanton, Koloth, and (to Ruthuen’s horror) Magellan. She grabs Koloth’s disruptor and tries to shoot him again, but Stanton intervenes, and it is Stanton who gets accidentally shot and killed. The Klingons do win the planet, but Magellan (who is in a relationship with Ena, the leader of the local inhabitants) stays on as Administrator and gets the Klingons to change from their destructive strip mining to the ecologically friendly methods that the Federation had been using. With that settled, Excelsior heads towards the source of a message that had supposedly been sent from the Enterprise. [Timeline: Stardate 8904.6]
Star Trek #33, December 1986
Vicious Circle!, by Len Wien
Excelsior arrives to find it is the old Enterprise which had overshot it’s return by 20 years after their accidental encounter with Captain Christopher. Both crews are naturally shocked to discover their counterparts, but then they get shaken by chroniton ripples as the universe starts to react to the anomaly of duplicate people from different time zones. Their efforts to work out how to correct the situation are faltering, but then the Surak arrives with Captain Spock. Captain Spock recognizes the chroniton waves as being the same as those around the Guardian’s planet (which the Enterprise’s Spock hadn’t encountered yet). Both ships head there, Captain Spock beams down to find the exact date of the Enterprise’s return, then the Enterprise uses the same cold-start technique that had previously resulted in going back in time, and the ship heads straight at the Guardian’s plant as Excelsior and the Surak hightail it away. The Enterprise returns to its correct timeline with no memory of the detour, and Excelsior is departing Maggie’s World after it’s not-totally-successful mission there. Uhura clears up the message she had intercepted, and it turns out to be the Surak calling for help. [Timeline: Stardate 8906.4]
Star Trek #34, January 1987
The Doomsday Bug!, Chapter One: Death Ship!, by Len Wein
As Excelsior approaches the Surak it picks up a recorded message warning away all ships, and the Surak is seen to be heading directly for a collision with a nearby star. Saavik has to short out the Surak’s shields in order for a team to beam over in bio-suits. They find all the crew dead, except for Spock who is found collapsed in sickbay. Checking the logs, it is learned that the Surak had responded to a distress call from a freighter and found the Tellarite crew dead from no discernable reason, although there was one terrified Andorian who otherwise seems unaffected.
The Andorian was beamed back to the Surak, and soon afterwards the freighter exploded. Then the Surak crew started collapsing and dying, and Spock staggered to sickbay. Kirk and the team beam back to Excelsior with Spock directly into a sterilization bath. Spock is kept in 92