Star Trek: New Frontier #8: Dark Allies

By Peter David

Following directly from The Quiet Place, in a two-book sequence I like to refer to as "The Orange Duology," Dark Allies finds Captain Calhoun reluctantly entering into an alliance with his enemies, the Redeemers.  A strange, seemingly all-powerful entity known as the Black Mass is on course to destroy the homeworld of the Redeemers, and they are holding a planet hostage in order to force Calhoun to help them.  Meanwhile, Chief Engineer Burgoyne 172 continues to court a very pregnant Dr. Selar, Robin Lefler struggles with her feelings for Ambassador Si Cwan, and Calhoun and Shelby finally confront their feelings for one another.  There is also a lot of tension resulting from the appearance of Xyon, revealed to be Calhoun's son at the end of the previous book.  Here, Xyon and Si Cwan's sister, Kalinda, embark on a relationship, much to Si Cwan's chagrin, while Xyon and Calhoun have their own issues to work through.

I absolutely love this book.  Finally, we have all of the crew of the Excalibur together aboard the ship for an exciting and tense adventure.  The soap opera elements, a trademark of the New Frontier series, reach some particular high points in this novel, and the story of the Redeemers and the Black Mass is equally good.  The Black Mass really does seem nearly invincible, and I was uncertain throughout much of the book how the Excalibur was going to defeat it.  While the ultimate solution is actually rather simple, I appreciated the fact that we learned more about what the Black Mass was and how it functioned throughout the course of the story, and it is ultimately defeated using (sort of) real science, something I always enjoy in Star Trek stories and which New Frontier does not always excel at.

There are so many great character moments here, particularly Calhoun's revelation of his feelings for Shelby (a long time coming), and the moving, final scene between Calhoun and Xyon.  Near the end of the book, Calhoun compares himself to the Black Mass in a particularly clever and poignant analogy that I won't spoil here, suffice to say it was a terrific piece of writing.

Dark Allies has the feel of a season finale, as many of the long running subplots come to a head, and a sense of foreboding begins to creep into the book's final pages, suggesting that a major change is coming for all of the characters.  Indeed, the final sentence certainly bears that out.  In the pages of this wonderful novel, a new life is born, a heroic sacrifice is made, and New Frontier firmly establishes itself as one of the finest series of Star Trek books ever published.