Star Trek Mirror Universe – Rise Like Lions by David Mack (2011, 400 pages) – This story, while exciting and easy to read, is more interesting to me because of the What If factor. What if the Mirror, Mirror alternate universe in classic Star Trek had continued to develop as Next Generation, Deepspace 9, and Voyager did in the normal Star Trek universe? We saw pieces of it in DS9 where Kira visited her evil twin. In that universe, Spock’s unification had weakened the Empire, allowing the Cardassians and the Klingons to destroy Earth and the alternate Federation.
In this tale, an ending of the Excalibur stories and various other Mirror, Mirror pro-novels, we have Picard the archeologist and his assistant, Deanna Troi, convinced by Saavik to head the Terran revolution because General O’Brien, leader of the Terran forces, and Captain Calhoun of Excalibur cannot agree on how best to defeat the Klingons and Cardassians. Without a figurehead, the rebellion is doomed.
Saavik, the Director of Memory Omega, has been trying to carry out Spock’s wishes by inserting spies throughout the different factions. Among her agents are Keiko, O’Brien’s beloved, Duras, the last heir of the Duras family, a Vulcan onboard Excalibur, and many others throughout the area of space we know as the Federation.
But this is mostly O’Brien’s tale. He’s lost Sisko and Bashir and is trying to save Bajor while leading the ragtag Terran Revolution. Keiko, risking it all to tell O’Brien about the secret Memory Omega, has her love for O’Brien severely tested.
Kes is back. She’s decided Neelix is her only reason for living. She wants to convince him to flee with her and let the Alliance of Cardassian and Klingon destroy the Terrans and Vulcans. It’s not their problem. Tuvok saves Neelix when he refuses to leave his friends defenseless.
The Klingons have a new sun destroyer warhead and when the Ferengi support the growing Terran revolution, their sun is destroyed by a power-mad Klingon leader. Memory Omega has some surprises up its sleeves, too, and provide Picard with an Enterprise capable of opening wormholes to travel anywhere in the galaxy. Picard reluctantly agrees to head the new fleet, taking Troi as his security officer, K’ehlyr as Number One, and Reg Barkley as his chief of Engineering.
Worf is in exile, feared by Klingons and humans alike.
It’s great to see so many characters from the shows in positions of power in this alternate universe. Unlike Mirror, Mirror where everyone seemed to be opposites of themselves except for Spock, these characters are the ones we know and love, acting out as heroically as they can. They would fit in very well with Picard and Sisko from the Federation universe.
It’s a very nice read, a veritable who’s who of Star Trek. Aside from the multitudinous endings from everyone’s viewpoint, I really liked it. I had not read the pro-novels about the Mirror universe but I may have to read them now that I’ve seen how it all ends
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