1073. AmbushPUBLICATION: Starfleet Corps of Engineers #11, Pocket eBooks, December 2001 (collected into print with S.C.E. ebooks #9-12 as Some Assembly Required in April 2003)
CREATORS: Dave Galanter and Greg Brodeur
STARDATE: Unknown (follows the last novel, Bart is still on Maeglin)
PLOT: The da Vinci is on route to a mining colony to drop supplies and pick up an important mineral when both the colony and the ship are attacked by Munqu ships who want to ransom the minerals and equipment back to the Federation. A pair of engineers bravely set out to save the 15 people in their colony even as their reactor fails and goes on overload. Hoping to arrive in time, the crew of the heavily damaged da Vinci find a way of turning the mining equipment they're carrying to fight the Munqu. In the end, they succeed and arrive in time to pick up the miners blown out into space in their EVA suits when their reactor exploded.
CONTINUITY: The da Vinci is picking up a mineral cure to a Horta plague on Janus IV (Devil in the Dark).
DIVERGENCES: None.
CASTING PHOTO OF THE WEEK - The da Vinci's EMH III (Emmett) is getting some "screentime" now, so I guess he has to be cast. The best suggestion I've heard is James Lesure.
REVIEW: The short novel is basically one long ship-to-ship battle, which would make it an unusual episode for the SCE akin to TOS' Balance of Terror or DS9's Starship Down. The twist is that you get to see Starfleet engineers at their most MacGyverish, cannibalizing parts, modifying machines and figuring out how to use technology in new and diverting ways. And you see that process, where in one of the shows, it would mostly or entirely be glossed over with a line over the com. That's interesting, and there's enough of the miners to make you care about them as well. It also makes Ambush the strongest book for the bridge crew (Captain Gold and the non-engineers) yet, though that does make the reader impatient as many of the regular characters are sidelined. I do wish we'd had more of the Munqu as well. As a one-off species (they do reappear in the series later), there's really not a whole lot to them. The ebooks are as short as television episodes, so there isn't the extra development you associate with novels, and here that hurts the story.Next for the SBG Book Club: Trek to Madworld (TOS), A Call to Darkness (TNG), Warped (DS9), Some Assembly Required (SCE).
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