In today’s episode, when unknown assailants attacking a Klingon colony literally go scorched-earth, Kirk can barely handle the heat, but agrees to stay in the kitchen. But in order to resolve the situation peacefully, it may come down to a pants-off dance-off. Does Projeff imply the existence of Amateurjeff? When will the other stroke drop? And how do you say “poop head” in Klingon? All this and more in Treaty’s Law, the book that really puts the phrase “hydrate or die-drate” to the test.

Treaty’s Law
Authors: Dean Wesley Smith & Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Pages: 277
Published: October 1997
Timeline: Stardate 3629, putting it not long after “Obsession” (2×13)
Prerequisites: Kor appears in “Errand of Mercy” (1×26).

Four books deep into this miniseries and finally, someone understood the assignment.

After three novels of alleged celebration of the Day of Honor, their inclusion of which runs the gamut from “obligatory perfunctory mention” to “clumsily worked into one small portion of the plot”, Treaty’s Law takes us back to where it all began: Signi Beta, a.k.a. QI’ tu’, a colony world ceded to the Klingons by the Federation after the Klingons won a contest to see who could get more out of the land. The Klingon colonists surprised their Federation counterparts by applying their warrior mentality to agriculture, and won the place fair and square. Now their world is being attacked by unknown assailants, and the Enterprise answers the call, with the Farragut not far behind—neither of them aware of what a brutal, relentless assault they’re walking into.

The attackers are scorching the plant life, but only the Klingon crops, and with surgical precision. Their attacks are frequent, and the beams blisteringly hot, leaving both human and Klingon away teams severely dehydrated and barely able to chug water as fast as it can be beamed down. The foe is inscrutable, but little by little, their clockwork approach leaves small hints that allow Kirk and his old rival Kor to deduce their next moves and form a plan. Eventually, they identify themselves as the Narr, and they claim dibs predating the Klingons’ presence on their world. Of course, knowing the Klingons won’t just give back something they believe to be theirs all nicey-nice-like, Kirk seeks a peaceful solution, even at one point going so far as to hold up his hands in surrender in nothing but his skivvies. But even that desperate gesture may not be enough to keep the Narr from blowing Federation and Klingon alike off the planet and out of the sky.

Treaty’s Law is bookended by framing in which a Klingon farmer named Kerdoch gathers his entire family around to hear the story of how the Day of Honor came to be, and he figures heavily into the story. Right away, you can tell you’re in the hands of authors who get it, thanks to lines like “Feeding the Empire was a never-ending battle” that demonstrate an understanding that being a warrior means a lot more than something so simplistic as shooting first and asking questions never. Just that simple proof of knowing that there can be nuance to the notion of Klingon honor gives Treaty’s Law a considerable leg up on the other Day of Honor books and makes it possible to forgive quite a few less well-stuck landings—which is good, because there are plenty that need forgiving.

Kerdoch receives by far the most character dimensionality out of anyone who isn’t a senior officer. The decades of propaganda slowly melt away as he realizes enemies can also have honor and that it’s possible to care about problems you have no personal stake in. Outside of him, however, the supporting cast is pretty flat. An expert-of-the-week named Vivian Rathbone, a cultural agronomist with a history at the colony, is on hand, though she mostly just alternates between shell shock and grousing about how much she hated the place when she was there. She’s paired with Sulu for most of the book, and he seems better at her job than she is, even though he’s only a hobbyist. She doesn’t really pull much weight until near the end, when it turns out she can shoot a gun real good.

There’s also a lot of sitting and waiting in this story, much of it bound to leave a reader as dried out as the planetside teams. I don’t know whether watching Captain Bogle twiddle his thumbs while the Farragut runs late to the scene (on account of needing repairs) makes worse reading or TV, but I’m glad I only had to do one of them. And even though the scenes on the ground are brutally sere and go pretty hard for TOS, they’re largely short bursts of hectic activity scattered between periods of nothing. I prefer the talkier aspect of TOS myself, but I was glad whenever a space battle came along to shake things up. The book also pops whenever Kirk and Kor have their verbal sparring, which makes it all the more unfortunate that it’s so rare, since the latter is laid up with an injury for most of the proceedings.

All of this appears to add up to the kind of novel I ordinarily wouldn’t care for very much. On top of that, this was an incredibly tough book to want to pick up a lot of the time, which is part of why this review has been so long in coming. Yet every time Kerdoch saw Kirk treat Klingons with respect on their own terms and learned to see things in a new way, I got a warm fuzzy. The book’s job is to show what inspired the incident to become enshrined in Klingon memory. It does that quite well. It checks back in on its core conceit often enough to convince the reader that it’s not simply doing it out of obligation. And so even though I can’t fully recommend it as a read, I think it’s important to recognize it for at least getting the basics down pat, especially when none of the others have so far.

Ten Forward Toast

Each side loses one named crewman in this novel, so we gotta do a double this time out. On the Starfleet side, we lost the awesomely named Ensign Chop, and for the Klingons, the also impressively christened Kahaq. Not sure which one is worse: Chop getting scorched in one of the attacks, or Kahaq dying of dehydration on a long hike through a harsh valley. Whichever you think, one thing we can all agree on is that they’ll both be welcomed heartily into Sto-vo-kor.

MVP & LVP

• My MVP here is Captain Kirk. The dude strips down to his undies and boots and walks out into the middle of the battlefield with his hands up in surrender for barely the smallest chance at getting some dialogue going. He’s committed to the bit! Considering how hot it gets down on Signi Beta, it’s amazing how he keeps his cool. I also always like seeing Kirk around this time when he was still able to get along really well with Klingons and maybe envision a future where they fought side-by-side instead of against each other. Too bad the movies had to go and give him a son he didn’t know he had until that son was an adult and then he suddenly cared a lot about that son when Christopher Lloyd killed that son.
• My LVP goes to Captain Bogle. He doesn’t get much to do while his crew does the heavy-duty stuff all around him, there’s never any real chance for him to shine, and about the most he contributes is getting knocked on the noggin (more on that below).

Stray Bits

• Captain Kelly Bogle and his Farragut crew were last seen in The Rings of Tautee (TOS #78). Their recurrence doesn’t bring any need-to-know info with it, so it’s not that important to know who they are or any of their dynamics (like e.g. the friendly but fierce competition between Scotty and Projeff), but they’re not just names filling in blanks either.
• During one of the space battles, Bogle hits his head and wakes up in sickbay to discover he actually had a mini-stroke during the collision. His CMO repairs the damage, but cautions him that if it happens again, he might not be able to fix him up a second time. I was waiting for this to happen and it never did. It would be amazing if this paid off in another book, but somehow I don’t think that’s going to happen.
• I wish the Narr were a bit less of a cipher, but I also get that you can’t humanize them too much because the humans and Klingons need a common foe to facilitate the lesson of honor.
• “Kor glanced around. The first wave of attack craft [was] already beyond the colony and out of range of the big gun. He cussed at them. If they returned, he would be ready.” The dissonance of the word cussed there made me laugh. Like he was calling them meanie-heads or something. (p. 75)

Final Assessment

On an execution level, Treaty’s Law drops too many balls to clear average, but I’m going to call it good because I think the fact that it gets the overall spirit so right is more important in this case. It has the biggest job of all the Day of Honor books (creating the lore that culminated in the establishment of the holiday), and it nails it by demonstrating an excellent grasp of the many possible manifestations of honor and warrior mentality, and by giving us the best instances of humans and Klingons working side-by-side and developing a strong respect for each other. It is by no means a technical masterpiece, but it’s got heart, and sometimes that matters more.

NEXT TIME: The Day of Honor extends to the YA line with Honor Bound