The literary, and I would imagine also the commercial, success of David Mack’s Star Trek: Destiny trilogy was such that Pocket Books would have been missing a trick had they not commissioned another crossover miniseries to follow in its wake. This time around though, the multi-series arc would be longer in length; broader in scope; utilise a number of different authors; and showcase a whole host of different sci-fi subgenres instead of just plain ‘epic’. Star Trek: Typhon Pact’s opening novel, Zero Sum Game, may still come from the pen of Destiny’s author, and may still be almost as fast and as furious a read, but it has far more in common with a Bond movie than it does a Borg one - just substitute our man Bashir for 007, the eponymous Typhon Pact for the USSR and the United Federation of Planets for the Western world. And fortunately for Mack, nobody does it better.
But for its “Typhon Pact” subtitle, Zero Sum Game would otherwise have been billed as a Deep Space Nine novel. Not only does its cover bear the images of two of its star-crossed alumni, but its plot and its tone are both firmly rooted in the DS9 house style. After a relatively short reintroduction to the station’s chief medical officer, Dr Julian Bashir - who is now as lonely and as lovelorn as ever he was on television, if not even more so -, Mack turns to the series’ ‘Jack Pack’ of genetically-engineered misfits (from the episodes “Statistical Probabilities” and “Chrysalis”) to brief Bashir on his secret mission for Starfleet Intelligence, and, more importantly, to introduce him to his partner in the field: his fellow superhuman, former patient and long-lost love, Sarina Douglas. Together they must infiltrate a Breen enclave and sabotage the Typhon Pact’s development of a quantum slipstream starship, the specs for which have been stolen from Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards. The only trouble is, Starfleet Intelligence knows little more about the Breen than most Star Trek viewers do - and most of that is conflicting.
Much of this novel’s success is attributable to Mack’s depiction of the Breen culture, which until now has had an alluring question mark hovering above it. On the rare instances that they were seen in Deep Space Nine, usually as part of the Dominion, the Breen looked like less-weathered versions of Return of the Jedi’s Princess Leia in her Boushh disguise, and their unintelligible mechanical shrieks only added to their utterly alien an unerringly uniform mystique. Zero Sum Game lifts the veil on ‘Breen’, but each reveal only begs further questions and deepens the intrigue. Once those porcine masks are lifted, Mack introduces us to complex characters ranging from dissidents living in underground warrens to an overworked slipstream engineer who has to worry as much about politics as he does quantum equations, and whom the reader comes to care for and sympathise with almost as much as Bashir and Sarina. Behind them, he paints in a society predicated on anonymity and fairness, where anti-nepotism and equality are championed above revealing one’s face to a neighbour or colleague. Indeed, what begins the novel as an unequivocally-antagonistic confederacy ends it as a fascinating, layered and above all else grey civilisation; as fate urges the patriotic Bashir to reluctantly exercise his Federation-sanctioned licence to kill against Breen civilians (as well as militia), Mack forces us to look at the good doctor’s “murders” through Breen eyes. In this respect, Zero Sum Game is more than just another chapter in Deep Space 9’s ‘Bashir plays Bond’ storyline – it’s a cold look at cold war, Hippocratic Oaths in tatters and the paving on the road to Hell. It’s a case study of two diametrically-opposed planetary unions – one whose citizens wear metallic masks, one whose citizens wear ethical ones.
Which brings me to Sarina, this novel’s genetically-enhanced Bond girl. The sweet butterfly that Bashir coaxed out of her cocoon on television is now an über-capable femme fatale with a surprising hair trigger, lack of compassion and newfound penchant for promiscuity. Despite Mack’s omniscient prose offering us occasional windows into her thoughts, she remains as inscrutable as the Breen that she’s sent to infiltrate, and I dare say a little colder. Having watched Alexander Siddig take Bashir from the wet-behind-the-ears pompous lieutenant of “Emissary” to the stiff-upper-lipped, lonely old backbone of a space station at war, I would’ve thought that I’d like nothing more than to read about him finally get the girl of his dreams – particularly if he was able to win her heart amidst the perils of undercover intelligence work, which would have really played to his sense of romance. When it happens though, it feels too easy; too flat; too hollow. Lost in the pages, I found myself waiting for a catastrophe to come and crush the Doctor’s fleeting happiness, but it seems that Mack has something altogether more interesting in store for the couple – a long game that is only just beginning in this book.
While for the most part, Mack’s narrative sticks with Bashir and Sarina, it occasionally breaks away to follow Captain Ezri Dax and the crew of the Aventine, who have been charged with extracting the two smitten spies should their mission succeed. However, before they can even formulate a rescue plan, let alone implement one, they need to shake off the cloaked Romulan warbird on their tail and evade a Breen fleet. Reading these parts of the story, I was put in mind of the structure of the Star Trek: The Next Generation two-parter “Unification”, except here little happens involving the Aventine to further the fundamental storyline or even significantly heighten the tension; I found myself constantly willing Mack to cut the padding and return to the two protagonists. This is a pity, really, as I feel that Mack could have done more with Dax than just show what a damned effective captain she’s become – the novel’s cover artwork hinted at an exploration of the failed romantic relationship between Bashir and Dax, which of course becomes even more strained with Sarina’s return, but this is broached only through a quick meal and a row at the novel’s start. I had at least expected a little more insight into Dax’s thoughts as she sought to recover the spy who once loved her.
Taken as a whole though, Zero Sum Game is a real page-turner of a tome; one that took me far less time to tear through than most Star Trek novels, laden as it is with love, lure and good old-fashioned adventure. Mack’s sense of pace is perfect, his action-packed prose is every bit as vivid as a movie screen and his portrait of the Typhon Pact-founding Breen sets the bar so high that I fear for the authors who must follow him as they seek to flesh out the hitherto-uncharted Tzenkethi Coalition, Gorn Hegemony, Tholian Assembly and Holy Order of the Kinshaya in subsequent volumes. With the Borg threat apparently put paid to once and for all, and the United Federation of Planets a mere shadow of its former self, for the first time since the Dominion War, 24th century-Trek feels fresh and exciting. The Typhon Pact might be built around the well-trodden Romulan Star Empire, but its Alpha Quadrant allies are as untapped as the races that Captain Eden’s Voyager fleet is seeking out on the other side of the galaxy. The franchise continues to go boldly where none have gone before; the fact that such places lurk just around the cosmic corner only adds to its appeal, rather than detracts from it.
