Star Trek TNG: Silent Weapons
{4.5/5} “There was still much to be done on Orion, Konar knew. Before it was over, he and Hain would be called upon to accomplish a feat without precedent in local history, one that would send political aftershocks throughout all of known space. And despite the enormity of what they had been asked to do, he knew that if the mission went as intended, their true roles would not be remembered by history. In the annals of the galaxy, the two of them would not merit so much as a footnote. Despite the river of blood they would be compelled to shed, they would die forgotten. But the Breen Confederacy would live on.”
I can’t really talk about this book without spoiling the big surprise in the previous book so…
Spoiler alert
Data, newly resurrected, decided not to rejoin Starfleet but to pursue a more personal mission — he is trying to track down the one person* who can resurrect his daughter, Lal. But he is taken into custody on the Orion homeworld under suspicion of breaking into a bank — and murder. Data sends a signal to La Forge, and Picard and the Enterprise arrive to defend their former colleague. There’s evidence of a Soong-type android from the break-in — the Breen must have been able to activate some of the ones they built.
Silent Weapons by David Mack is the second book in the Star Trek The Next Generation: Cold Equations trilogy, following The Persistence of Memory.
*A human who has somehow lived for thousands of years, he went by the name of Flint when Captain Kirk came across him (“Requiem for Methuselah”).
Some things have changed since the movies. We see Picard and Crusher as parents, and we see Worf as first officer.
Along with the crew of the Enterprise, this book features Captain Bateson and the crew of the Atlas. (Bateson was the captain who had been trapped in a temporal causality loop for 90 years in “Cause and Effect.”) It also features Federation President Bacco, this time secretly negotiating with the Gorn.
In addition to our Federation friends, the book lets us see the Orion and Breen cultures.
It’s not quite as earth shattering as the previous one, but it’s a great book.