Orion's Hounds (Star Trek: Titan, Book 3) (Mass Market Paperback)

by Christopher L. Bennett (Author) "We swim through space, the void's chill brisk against our flesh..." (more)
Key Phrases: live jellies, graviton beam, feeding beam, Crystalline Entities, Prime Directive, Commander Troi (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
As the U.S.S. Titan ventures beyond the outermost reaches of known space, the telepaths in her crew -- including Diplomatic Officer Deanna Troi -- are overwhelmed by an alien cryof distress, leading the ship to the scene of a shocking act of carnage: a civilization of interstellar "whalers" preying upon and exploiting a familiar species of sentient spaceborne giants.

Appalled but reluctant to rush to judgment, Captain William Riker and his crew investigate, discovering a cosmic spawning ground in a region of active star formation -- the ecosystem for a bewildering array of diverse but similarly vast life-forms. While attempting to negotiate an end to the victimization of these creatures, Riker's crew inadvertently grants them the means to defeat their hunters' purpose...only to learn that things are not exactly as they seem.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

CHAPTER ONE

U.S.S. TITAN, STARDATE 57137.8

"No!!"

Deanna Troi bolted upright in bed. For a moment she felt adrift in the dark, in a void whose emptiness chilled her bare flesh. She wasn't sure where she was, or even who she was. She felt terrible fear, but did not know why.

But then she felt his arms embracing her, bringing her home. Will. Her imzadi. Her husband. Her captain. Her anchor. When he touched her, she was never lost.

She relaxed against him, and they stayed that way for a precious moment. Then he spoke softly. "The nightmare again?"

"I'm not sure," she said. "The same sense of...intrusion...yet different. Not as malevolent." Talking about the recurring nightmare brought unwelcome flashes of memory. It had been over three months since Shinzon of Remus and his viceroy Vkruk had raped her, using Vkruk's telepathy to place themselves in her mind while she made love with Will; yet although the nightmares came less frequently of late, her memory of the event remained as vivid as ever, and she knew it always would. What made it worse was that it had been her second telepathic sexual assault, the first being at the hands of the Ullian historian Jev nearly a dozen years ago. He too had usurped Will Riker's place in her perceptions, forcing her to relive an erotic memory which he twisted into a violation. It was a testament to Deanna's love and faith in Will that she was still able to take joy and comfort from his touch today.

Sometimes it took a little work, though. Reliving those memories intensified the fight-or-flight impulse the dream had triggered, and suddenly she felt a desperate need for personal space. She clambered out of bed and moved to the windows, not stopping to don a gown first. Over the past few months, Will had grown accustomed to her occasional need not to be touched, so he didn't follow. "Not as malevolent?" he asked, his voice gentle. "You seemed pretty scared."

Deanna stared out at the stars, gathering her thoughts. "I don't remember. It was as though...something else's fear was being forced into me."

"Something? Not someone?"

"It felt very alien. Yet...somehow distantly familiar." She shook her head, giving a slight, nervous chuckle. "Never mind. It was just a dream. A bit of undigested chocolate."

"You sure of that, Ebenezer?" She didn't have to turn to see the smirk on his face. "You've been contacted through dreams before. Eyes in the dark," he intoned in a spooky voice that made her laugh.

"Anything's possible, I suppose, but there's too little to go on." She gazed out at the stars. "Something alien, but familiar...probably some symbol my brain pieced together, representing anxiety at the unknown. A natural enough response, considering our mission."

She could feel his excitement at the mission that lay before them, and she shared it even without her empathy. Titan and her crew had been meant for pure exploration, but had been forced to defer that mission when Starfleet had assigned them to head a diplomatic task force to Romulus, assisting with the rebuilding efforts following Shinzon's bloody coup and subsequent self-destruction. Right afterward, Titan's aid in the search for a lost Romulan fleet had led to a fall down an extradimensional rabbit hole into the Small Magellanic Cloud, over 200,000 light-years from home. In theory, that had been an explorer's dream come true, but dealing with the destruction caused by the Red King entity and the rescue of the Neyel from their disintegrating homeworld had left no chance for real exploration. And then it had been back to Starbase 185 for two weeks of repairs and debriefing, and another two weeks and change moving out beyond Federation space, past Beta Stromgren, past Kappa Velorum, and finally, last night, past the farthest benchmark laid by Olympia on its Beta Quadrant survey eight years ago. From this point on, nobody knew what lay ahead.

It was not an unusual experience for an explorer, of course, and it was a welcome one; yet it naturally brought trepidation too, as any new undertaking did. Perhaps that was all there was behind her sense of alien-yet-familiar dread. Maybe it was heightened because from here on, they were completely on their own -- no real-time contact with Starfleet Command, no starbases to offer rest and replenishment, no other starships able to reach them in a hurry. She had gotten a taste of that during their recent sojourn in the galaxy next door. But in an odd way there was something even more daunting about doing it on purpose.

She felt Will's gentle skepticism, reminding her that she sometimes overanalyzed, an occupational hazard. "Probably," he said aloud. "But keep a mental eye out, just in case."

Now she did turn to him. "Aye, aye, Captain," she said with an insouciant salute.

He looked her over, reminding her that she was thoroughly out of uniform. "Must be cold over by the windows. Wanna come back to bed?"

"No, thanks," she replied after a moment. Somehow she didn't feel chilled anymore; it must have been a relic of the dream. "I don't think I could get back to sleep right away. Maybe I'll go for a walk to clear my head."

"All right, then." She sensed the disappointment that he quickly reined in. She knew he regretted that he couldn't always be the one to make her feel better, to take care of her. But she also knew he understood how it was for her. Not long before her ordeal with Shinzon, Will had suffered his own ordeal, held hostage and tortured by the dictator Kinchawn of Tezwa. He still had his own occasional nightmares, and though he'd cherished her comfort and support, still there were times that he needed to deal with them on his own. After all, in the wake of being victimized, degraded and depersonalized, it was healthy to reassert one's independence, to find one's own inner strength.

Deanna went to the closet, slipped on a light blue wrap and a pair of sandals, and headed out the door. She sent a light mental caress Will's way, only to find that he'd already drifted off again. Still, his serenity in slumber was a pleasant sendoff.

Strolling the corridors of Titan felt somewhat like an exploration in itself. It was still a fairly new environment to her -- a new class of ship, a new set of crewmates. More importantly, that crew was the most diverse one in Star-fleet's history, including many species Deanna had never personally met before. The Federation had always striven for diversity in principle, but in practice had tended toward fairly segregated crews. It wasn't a formal policy; people generally just preferred to work among those with similar customs, outlooks, and environmental needs. Even in the absence of outright prejudice, segregation tended to result from simple complacency, the unresisted impulse to seek the familiar. So maintaining true equality took conscious effort, and sometimes the effort fell prey to other priorities, or to simple neglect. There had been occasional attempts to challenge that status quo, most notably Wil-lard Decker's Enterprise experiment of a century before. But reconciling the needs and attitudes of radically different species posed many challenges, and with the loss of Decker on his crew's maiden voyage, some of the impetus for greater diversity had been lost. The technology for balancing so many species' environmental and medical needs had been less advanced then as well. So over the ensuing years, things had settled back into a less challenging status quo. Certainly some progress had been made; during Deanna's tenure on the Enterprise-D and -E, over a dozen species had been represented among the crew. However, it was still fairly unusual for humanoids and nonhumanoids to crew together routinely.

The minds behind Titan's mission had wanted to change that. This new generation of Luna-class explorer ships -- a prototype design mothballed when the Dominion War had forced a shift toward more combat-oriented starships -- had been revived after war's end, promoted as a reassertion of Starfleet's core ideals of peaceful exploration and diplomacy. For years, Starfleet had been forced to focus on mere survival, and many of its ideals had needed to be compromised in pursuit of that goal. Some had been compromised without so great a need -- as Deanna and Will knew better than most, after their experiences on the Ba'ku planet and Tezwa. Many in Starfleet felt it was essential to reaffirm a higher set of values than survival alone, to remind the peoples of the Federation that it was more important to live for something than simply to stay alive. Hence the ambitious new mission of Titan and its eleven sister ships -- emissaries to the unknown, questing out in all directions, hands extended to friends not yet met.

But if these ships were to represent the Federation, it was resolved, then they must represent it in all its diversity. If they stood for peaceful coexistence with future neighbors, then they must stand for peaceful, eager coexistence among the Federation's members. Hence the Great Experiment was spawned, reviving Willard Decker's dream and going it one better -- or twelve better.

Will Riker had been a natural choice to carry forward that dream -- even aside from the striking similarity of their names and aspects of their life histories. For as long as Deanna had known him, William Thomas Riker had been a passionate xenophile, not merely tolerant of others' differences, but positively delighted by them. He took an unabashed, childlike glee in learning about other cultures, sampling their cuisine, their customs, their music, their art -- and in his bachelor days, their sexual customs as well. (Which didn't trouble Deanna in the least; on the contrary, his range of experience in that regard had benefitted her greatly. Though she couldn't always say the same about his experiments with alien music or cuisine.) The chance to captain a crew with so many different species on board, many of which he'd never worked alongside before, had been a dream come true for him.

Will had been a gregarious first officer on the Enterprise, popular with his crewmates, organizing poker games, dinner parties, and other crew a...

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Star Trek (December 27, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 141650950X
• ISBN-13: 978-1416509509
• Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 4.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #82,223 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Titan Three - Counselor Troi proves her mettle, December 28, 2005

By	Judith Sisko (Yukon, OK United States) - See all my reviews

FINALLY! A book where Counselor Troi shows her true value. I always thought she got short changed on the air, and in the books written while the series aired. Up to now, I always considered her part-Betazoid empathic skills to be more of a gimmick than an asset. This book easily dispels that notion.

This was by far my favorite Titan book. (No slight to Misters Mangels and Martin is intended. I thoroughly enjoyed those books also.)

I liked the beginnings of Mr. Bennett's development of the dynamics among Riker-Vale-Troi. They're reminiscent of the Kirk-Spock-McCoy triad, yet totally unique as well. I hope that particular element carries over to the next installment.

I'm glad to see that some of the crew, both those who are already familiar to us and those who have been recently introduced, are getting a little more character development. I'm anxious to see more of the same. Hopefully, Mr. Bennett will be asked to write for this series again. I would certainly purchase it without a moment's hesitation.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Titan Book Three - Back to Exploration, December 28, 2005

By	Star Trek TNG Fan (Dallas, TX USA) - See all my reviews

I agree with the previous reviewer. This book is a 5 star; I don't know why someone would give it a 1 star.

Titan Book Three is a terrific completion to the three part series depicting Captain Riker's first missions. The characters are well thought out and this book further defines all characters. This book is much better than Book Two in that you learn more about the characters. This book is very upbeat and well-worth reading; much more reminiscent of what made Star Trek so great. This book is well worth reading.

I hope that the Star Trek franchise will produce more Titan books and possibly a movie or series with Titan. These books are really terrific and so reminiscent of the plots that made Star Trek so great!

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, February 15, 2006

By	Wannabe (Germany) - See all my reviews

Finally a Titan book that completely convinced me!
In my opinion it has three major points, that are reflecting it's strength:

1) crew diversity

In the first two books it was constantly mentioned, that this ship features the most biodiverse crew in whole Starfleet and the characters became intoduced, but apart from discribing differences in species appearances, the authors did not make clear, what such diversity means for a ship's crew.
This book makes the difference!
The alien key characters are portrayed beyond body characteristics. One really gets the feeling, that they are aliens and not just strangely looking humans from another planet. Even more noticable is, that the author lets these aliens express their cultural and biological distinctivness without succumbing to Federation standards (which are pretty much human standards), like usually shown in ST. From this arises conflict among the crew, but also strength. The characters have to adjust themselves to oneanother and have to overcome prejudice, cliches and fears in order to function as a crew - fascinating!

2) no moral highground for the Federation

The author manages to portray the Titan crew as well as their opponents as complex societies with complex ethics and moral, that are not necessarily superior to one another. Christopher L. Bennett dares to take a second, unbiased look - bravo!

3) a strong Deanna Troi

Finally Deanna experiences a character developement, that logically reflects her past. She is one of, if not THE main character of this book and has the chance to show how fine an officer, how skilled a telepath and how passionate a wife she is. She's written strong without having to take on characteristics, that are traditionally associated with males - refreshing!