This Star Trek novella is fourth in a spinoff series
called 'Department of Temporal Investigations'. This of
course refers to time. Who is investigating time travel and
why? I hadn't read the earlier books so I had to hope I
would not find jumping in midstream confusing. TIME LOCK
begins in a storage facility on the dwarf planet Eris,
which is in the Kuiper Belt region and further from Earth
than Pluto, with just a twelfth of Earth's gravity. Some
special artefacts are being held here for safety, but even
here, problems develop.
I've missed a few Star Trek episodes so I do not have a
mental picture of a person who is a Rhaandarite or a
Choblik. Maybe you do. We meet the odd Vulcan, but the
chief instigators of trouble are a group called the Vomnin.
With a name like that you just know they are up to no good.
They have done the equivalent of hacking in to the
depository system using a Trojan horse; only it's more like
the original wooden horse of Troy than a virus. In return,
the desperate scientists staffing the facility employ a
device like a time lock on a bank safe, meaning nothing can
be removed.
Lucsly is the main character we follow, not any of the
familiar TV cast. We also ride along with the raiding
leader Daiyar. While the tale has the feel of a military SF
story, there are hidden gems like the description of a
structure on the lines of a stepwell from Earth's Indian
subcontinent. Deciding what is in the future and what,
subjectively just a few minutes ago, actually happened
weeks ago, can make the adventure a bit of a jerky ride;
but if you will read about time travel you've got to be
prepared for complications and even paradoxes.
Christopher L. Bennett has written previous Star Trek and
X-Men books, and has studied physics in Ohio. The physics
of moving through time get discussed more than once. With
this book there is a brief reference to Data and LaForge in
a previous escapade, but none of the usual suspects make an
appearance so this is strictly an offshoot of the popular
series. TIME LOCK shows that the Department of Temporal
Investigations can be a tricky place to work.
An all new Star Trek e-novella from the world of
Deep Space Nine, featuring the fan-favorite
Federation bureau the Department of Temporal
Investigations!
The dedicated agents of the
Federation Department of Temporal Investigations have their
work cut out for them protecting the course of history from
the dangers of time travel. But the galaxy is littered with
artifacts that, in the wrong hands, could threaten reality.
One of the DTI's most crucial jobs is to track down these
objects and lock them safely away in the Federation’s most
secret and secure facility. As it happens, Agent Gariff
Lucsly and his supervisor, DTI director Laarin Andos, are
charged with handling a mysterious space-time portal device
discovered by Starfleet. But this device turns out to be a
Trojan horse, linking to a pocket dimension and a dangerous
group of raiders determined to steal some of the most
powerful temporal artifacts ever known...