Star Trek #1626: Wildfire, Book 1

PUBLICATION: Star Trek: S.C.E. #23, Pocket Books, December 2002

CREATORS: David Mack

STARDATE: Right before the next book which ends on 53781.3

PLOT: The USS da Vinci interrupts its work on a mining platform for a priority mission to a gas giant where the USS Orion was testing a new kind of terraforming device code-named Wildfire that could ignite such planets to serve as secondary stars for remote planets. They must retrieve the device and if they can, the ship now drifting inside the dense atmosphere, lest other powers invoke salvage rights and get their hands on potentially apocalyptic technology. Each attempt by space-suited teams meets with failure - the Orion is filled with liquid hydrogen, all hands lost, and the device has started its countdown. Plus, energy blasts are coming from the planet interior. One puts Corsi in a coma. Another sends the Orion realing towards the da Vinci. It hits and the da Vinci is severely damaged, with many casualties, and is sinking lower into the gas giant. And Sonya Gomez hasn't even given Duffy an answer to his marriage proposal yet!

CONTINUITY: The captain of the USS Orion is Lian T'su, who was at ops on the Enterprise-D during The Arsenal of Freedom (she rose up quickly in the ranks in the 12 intervening years!). The Wildfire device works off protomatter, the laws around which must have changed since Star Trek II (it is also apparently one of Duffy's fields of expertise). David Mack wrote the DS9 episode Starship Down, which is one of the few to feature Fabien Stevens in live action, and he revisits the idea of ships trapped in a gas giant's atmosphere here (Fabien even refers to those events).

DIVERGENCES: None

SCREENSHOT OF THE WEEK - Lian T'su as captain of the USS Orion (RIP)

REVIEW: Let me open by saying that, at this point, the S.C.E. books are often doing two-part stories, and while I understand that the idea behind these ebooks was to put them out on a quick schedule and to be quickly read, why not just go bimonthly and give us the full story all in one go? Book 1 is about 60 pages; Book 2 about 100 (actually long for these things); but even at 160 pages, that's less than a standard novel. That said, what an amazing and harrowing cliffhanger! Because the da Vinci isn't in the series' name, it's not a given that it will survive even if its cast (most of its cast? SOME of its cast?) will. It's hard to imagine how this will all turn out, and that's exciting (and Mack knows how to describe action scenes to make it all work). And it's also setting up a pretty important subplot that could mean big changes in store for Gomez and Duffy, so it doesn't skimp on the character development either. To that point, the doomed ship - and it's quickly but memorable drawn crew - has one character that ties back to the Enterprise-D alumni, making it a little more personal for them. As with all two-parters, Wildfire's success may hinge on how well Mack pulls off Book 2, but as a set-up, it's very well done.