“One Small Step” by Susan Wright
Finished “One Small Step” by Susan Wright.
The story opens toward the end of the episode “That Which Survives”. Kirk, McCoy and Sulu are trapped on the Kalandan station surrounded by the 3 Losira replicants. Spock and a security guard beam down just in time to shoot the Kalandan defense computer and saves them. Kirk hails the ship for beamout, they have a little chat about beauty surviving.
The end.
After the credits, Enterprise tries to beam up the landing party, but the transporter is interrupted by the biofilter detecting the disease that killed off the Kalandans. The entire landing party is infected, and can't leave until they can find a cure. While they're working on a cure, they continue to explore the station, discovering the Kalandan living quarters, one of the control rooms, some other interesting things. They're able to get some computer access, but since the station is in lockdown, all the vital information is controlled by the defense computer, which the security officer, whose name is Reinhart, by the way, left in a smoldering mess.
Kirk reaches out to command, explains what they've found, and is ordered not to allow the station to fall into enemy hands.
The activation of the Kalandan station yeeting Enterprise 900 lightyears away and Losira's repeated usage of the portal generates a massive power spike, which gets the attention of a Klingon ship, as well as a Petraw scout ship. The Petraw are a kindof eusocial humanoid species. Their scout ships are crewed by a half dozen or so individuals, who scour the galaxy to obtain interesting technology, which they then send back to their homeworld. To get their hands on alien technology, they often pursue elaborate con jobs. They gather as much information as they can, tapping into Enterprise's comms with Starfleet Command, and decide to pose as the descendants of the Kalandans to stake claim to the station.
The Klingons arrive first, itching for a fight. Enterprise fights back, but their warp engines are still offline following Losira's sabotage, so they're on the ropes. Then the Petraw claiming to be Kalandans arrive, blow the Klingons to scrap, and introduce themselves. And as icing on the cake, they just happen to have a vaccine treatment that will prevent the sporocite infection from becoming a virus, allowing the away team to safely beam back to the ship.
Kirk is naturally suspicious, but has no proof. So he has no choice but to play along diplomatically until he can gather more information. More Klingons will be on their way, but it will take them a few days to get there. He can't let the station fall into Klingon hands, but he can't be sure the Kalandans are who they say they are, so he's unsure if he can allow them to take it either. He agrees to team up with the Kalandans to explore the station and gather more information. The Petraw commander, Tasm, observed Kirk's attraction to Losira, so she tailored her appearance thinking she could use her feminine wiles to manipulate Kirk. But Kirk finds her advances off-putting.
Their medical officer, Luz, also assumes the form of a beautiful woman, targeting McCoy.
They discover the gateway system that the Losira replicant used to pop in and out of existence. The system that let her instantly appear at any part on the surface of the planet, and even travel to and from Enterprise while it was on its way back from where it was punted. The Petraw want this technology above anything else that might be available on the station. But Kirk recognizes that it can be dangerous in the wrong hands. But anyway, it's locked out by the defense computer, so they've got to get it back into working order before it'll be of any use to anyone.
It's an interesting game of cat and mouse. The reader knows the Petraw aren't really Kalandans. Kirk is suspicious, but not certain. McCoy seems reticent to look a gift horse in the mouth. Especially when one of those gift horses talks the talk of a brilliant medical officer, and is also kinda hot. McCoy more than most of the crew seems to play the mark. Scotty and Spock are seldom in a position to question the Kalandan's authenticity, and the rest of the crew… well…
One thing I've noticed with a few novels lately is the narrative's tendency to forget that the rest of the crew exist unless they're needed. Uhura and Chekov in particular are on the bridge, do their jobs when called on, but the narrative doesn't bring any attention to them unless they're needed to perform some action to move a particular scene forward. And one gets the impression that if Sulu weren't on the planet at the end of the episode, the novel would have forgotten about him too, except for a few instances where he needs to take command. The novel tries to give some of the background characters something to do, M'Benga, Rahda, Reinhart, and even some original characters we've never seen before. But falls into the common habit of forgetting members of the principle cast.
It's by remarkable coincidence that the recently released Strange New Worlds episode “Off-Hour” reintroduced the character of Lt. Rahda just as I'd finished “That Which Survives” and “One Small Step”. I don't think I've seen anyone else mention this, but both episodes make reference to jettisoning a component; “Off-Hour” shows that Pike had to jettison the ion pod before it exploded. In “That Which Survives”, Enterprise is accelerating out of control, and Scotty is in a crawlway trying to access the flow valve to stop it. Spock orders Rahda to arm the jettison system in case something goes wrong. The crawlway isn't the ion pod, but it gets called a pod in dialog. Most commentary I've seen compares the recent episode to “Court Martial”. I'm not aware of any who have drawn the connection to “That Which Survives,” but it's an interesting mirroring of the situation in “Off-Hour”.
That's just an observation. It's got nothing to do with the novel.
The novel ends with Kirk jumping through the portal in pursuit of Tasm and Luz who absconded with the portal control device.
This is sort of the conceit of the Gateways series. Novels 1 through 6 follow each series' crew as they discover the gateway tech, culminating in one of our heroes jumping through the gateway. The last few chapters are hacked off and presented as short stories, collected in book 7. Whichever hero jumped through the portal needs to complete their mission and find their way back. In Kirk's case, the short story “One Giant Leap,” follows him exclusively as he is on the Petraw birth world, some 40000 lightyears from Earth. He needs to track down the portal control device and destroy it before the Petraw can make use of it, and then find his way home. Kirk explores the Petraw homeworld, learning about their culture and their way of life. To imagine a sapient, humanoid species with a eusocial culture is an interesting exercise, and I think it's mostly pulled off well. There might have been a missed opportunity to make the Petraw more insectoid than humanoid to fit with the whole beehive motif, but that's an aesthetic quibble.
There's no mention of the Iconians. The gateway seems at this point to be Kalandan tech. Though it is mentioned that Losira's people were a breakaway group from a more oppressive regime. That might suggest Iconian influence, though the Kalandans were about 12000 years too late for direct contact. The Kalandans may have found and adapted Iconan tech, or developed the gateways independently. I guess I'll find out when I get to the rest of the series.