Star Trek: Myriad Universes: #3 Shattered Light: Honor in the Night by Scott Pearson
This final review covers the third story, Honor in the Night, by Scott Pearson.
Nilz Baris's, former Undersecretary of Agriculture, President of the Federation and Ambassador to the Klingon Homeworld, final words were, "Arne Darvin". A reporter investigates why the name of an aide dead for over a century, might have been on the mind of the great former President in his last moments.
Here, the deviation from the known universe is that Darvin wasn't exposed as Klingon on K-7, and the poisoned grain was planted on the colony world of Sherman's Planet - leading to the loss of the colony and thousands of lives, and pitching Baris against the Klingons. It's not the only colony where the conflict gets heated, a couple of years later, earthquakes devastate the cities on Benecia... and instead of revealing Klingon culpability in causing the earthquakes, Baris and Klingon liaison Kamuk strike a deal to cooperate - the first of many which lead to Baris's rise in ranks.
This is an intriguing tale about alternate Klingon and Federation relations. And it's an intriguing tale about what motivates people to cooperate: Baris is driven by contempt, guilt for covering up genocide, but also by wanting to avoid violence - and Darvin... well, he was the one who was ordered to poison the grain, killing countless colonists in a, for Klingons, utterly dishonorable way, just for the sake of expansion despite the Organian treaty. So, for a 100 years he tried to redeem himself (and the Klingon honor in general), and to improve the relationship between Klingons and the Federation, and to show that Klingon expansion can yield benefits for colony worlds. But history is going to be the judge of that - at least, if his actions ever see public light.
And this is perhaps the most interesting facet of this story: How much does the public need to know? Who makes that decision? And when? Interestingly, this issue reminds me a bit of Voyager's excellent "Living Witness". But I have to admit that this story, based on "The Trouble with Tribbles" which never has been one of my favourite TOS-episodes, while well written and reasonably entertaining, didn't engage me on a deeper level, simply because I have never cared about Baris or Darvin.
About Shattered Light in general:
Review of The Embrace of Cold Architects by David R. George III - 3 stars
Review of Tears of Eridanus by Michael Schuster and Steven Mollman - 1.5 stars
Overall, this makes for a 2.5 star average - rather low for the Myriad Universes-series, I'm afraid.
