We start this issue off on QO’NOS the Klingon homeworld. Several Klingons stand around a table talking to April on a comm device. April tell them he has accepted that Phaedus IV belongs to the Klingon Empire, and in order to secure the safty f the innocent Phaedans he asks to be made the Colonial Governor reporting to the Imperial Command. When the Klingons ask why they would allow that, April says he would give them the Enterprise.

Back on the ship Kirk,Spock and Scotty are gathered in engineering. Scotty tells them that the energy field that hit them when they arrived was gone, but April’s program has them locked out of everything, and April controls it all from the bridge. Kirk suggests they take the bridge and Spock says ‘easier said than done’ in his Vulcan way, but agrees it’s the only way. With the aid of their tricorders Kirk and Spock attempt to get to the bridge by way of the Jefferies tubes.

April opens communication with Kirk to tell him he knows what he is doing and drops a blasting shield between him and Spock. They agree to keep trying to get to the bridge separately. April rambles on about Star Fleet as Kirk kicks his way through some panels to end up in 10 forward. where Uhura, Bones and several other crew members are trapped. Kirk tells everyone they ran into some glitches. Bones asks him if what he’s look at out the window was responsible.

Spock makes his way into a turbolift shaft as Scotty comes up with another solution: shut down the warp core. April begins his negotiations with the Klingon commander Kor when Scotty accomplishes his goal of “shutting off the Enterprise”. Kirk uses his badge comm to ask Scotty what’s going on and after he explains, Kirk tells him about the Klingon ship sitting outside.

Spock makes it to the bridge and hits April with a phaser on the lowest setting. April tells him he is trying to save an entire people and that the Enterprise was just one ship. Kirk gets on the bridge and shoots him again. The lights come back on and Kirk get the shields up and Spock gets them out of the area. Later in the brig Krik asks April what he was thinking, saying he could have started a war.

After talking to April Spock gives the Captain an update on the bridge crew and Mudd. Kirk says he is keeping her ship, as it may come in handy some day. He says he hates that they had to run from the Klingons. Spock says that would have started a war, and though Kirk agrees he thinks April was right. That they left the Phaedans to die and if Star Fleet wasn’t out there to prevent something like that from happening, then what are they out there for?

Spock meets up with Uhura and she asks him to promise her he won’t go running off again and he does.

Kirk radios Pike who informs him everything that happened is now classified information, and once he drops off April to forget about him. He tells him to proceed to the Nibin system per orders. “and Kirk, do your self a favor…remember who your real enemies are.”

The final page is set in London at the Star Fleet Data Archives where access is granted to a John Harrison……

Well that’s it folks, now you are prepared to go see the movie. I’m not sure how any of this is going to fit in because I haven’t seen it yet, but if you have already feel free to leave comments, thoughts, and complaints below, or head over to the Message Board of Doom! Also if you want to read these full comics for yourself click here to find a local comic book shop in your area!

Welcome Back to *TOTALLY SPOILED* with Harvey Locust where we are going to spoil the Ferengi out of the new Star Trek Countdown series. This is the second issue, so if you missed the first one, CLICK HERE to read it first. Now enough with the yappin’ lets get on with the story….

On the surface of Phadaeus IV, at the edge of explored space, is where we find Kirk and Spock confronting Captain April and his rogue army of the indigenous population.  Kirk berates April, calling him a phony but April’s only concern is asking about his ship, which Jim smugly tells him was decommissioned two years prior and that Jim has the new one that he can’t get back to because April shot it down.

April claims that it was an opposing faction that did it but he is interrupted when explosions start going off.  April and his “men” lead Kirk and Spock deep into some caverns in the mountainside as the attackers pursue. Once inside, April takes Kirk’s phaser and seals off the entrance then gives the phaser back to Kirk.

On the ship, Chekov still can’t get through the interference and Uhura wants to go back down to the planet to look for them. Bones tells her they are probably perfectly fine and Kirk needed some shore leave anyway.

Back in the cave, Kirk asks April who attacked them and why does Star Fleet believe him dead.  April says he will tell them once they are safe and then reveals what seems to be a dead end is actually a hologram covering the entrance to his home.  Spock notes that the hologram is more sophisticated than those currently in use at Star Fleet.

Inside, April begins the story of what happened.  How his Enterprise was the first to check out Phadaeus IV.  How everything looked normal for an iron aged society “and then we met The Shadows”.  April tells and shows them a video of a mass genocide taking place on the planet where one race slaughters and enslaves another based on their color.  Children being eaten or used as pets.  He tells them that after seeing that he snuck off the ship with as much technology and phasers as he could carry.  Spock inquires as to why his first officer had not arrested him for breaking the Prime Directive. April said that his first officer, Alex Marcus, was his best friend.  Marcus told him he would tell everyone that April was dead, and the fact that Spock and Kirk believed him to be dead was proof that Marcus proved up to his word. Spock calls April out, saying there is way more weapons and technology on the planet than what April first described. April admits to having outside help.

Back on the ship, Uhura is still debating going after them when the ship is approached by a small  vessel with a Bajoran woman on board claiming to make a delivery to April.  When asked who she is…

On the planet surface, April has Kirk look through some binoculars at a Shadow army sitting off in the distance and tells him Sulu and Hendroff are captured there.  That starts an argument between the two which gives Spock the opportunity to run off and attempt a rescue on his own.

TO BE CONTINUED…

(click here for part 3!)

If you liked this and want to know more about what Kirk and the crew have been up to since the last movie (including adventures that happened in Star Trek The Original Series but with the twist of the new timeline) head on over to the Message Board of Doom where we will be taking a look at the ongoing comic series one issue at a time, and you can tell us about your thoughts, hopes, and half baked ideas on the new timeline and what it means to the Star Trek Universe in general.

Books are great, aren’t they. Total escapism. Some make you laugh, some bring a shiver to your spine while others have the power to make you ponder life and all its bits and pieces. Some even have pictures which you can colour in.

I like those ones best.

And DOOM has the privilege of presenting a sneak-peek of JK’s (writer and illustrator of Sam Legion) first published novel, Six Guns South Part One.

We have it. It’s here. I’m chuffed! So make a warm drink and nestle down. We’d like you to meet Jackson ‘Red’ Horne…

Book synopsis

June 1946. A stolen Chinese freighter sails into the Port of Houston, on board are four soldiers, written off as dead following a covert mission into the forests of Siberia. They quietly accept a hero’s welcome but they never talk about what they’ve seen. They never mention the things they’ve done. The people back home would never believe them. After the fanfare dies down and the ticker tape falls to the ground, they slip back into live less than ordinary- a doctor, a lawyer, a business man, and a cop.

Nearly ten years pass…

Sheriff Benjamin Hoyle is dead, gruesomely murdered on his sister’s front lawn as the day broke on a summer Sunday. A pillar of society and beloved war hero, Hoyle was a man of unimpeachable character- a fair hand in dispensing law, tirelessly committed to keeping the peace and promoting his community.

No one in the sleepy west Texas cow town of Six Guns South could wrap their minds around his death. He had fought his way across Europe and the Pacific without a scratch. To be shot in the head while visiting his widowed sister before church was unimaginable.

But a man’s character is defined by what he does when he thinks no one is looking. And as the investigation digs deeper into the sheriff’s past, more questions are found than answers and the dead bodies begin to stack up like cord wood. What did Ben Hoyle and his men do on that last mission, deep into the Asian continent? Who is hunting down the survivors of that mission and killing them? Why does the military want the investigation stopped, swept away and forgotten?

To Captain Andrew Jackson ‘Red’ Horne, the task should be simple- hunt the killer down and bring him to justice.

But it’s never that easy.

A government agency that does not exist, a man long ago left for dead, and the skeletons in his own closet dog the Ranger’s every step as the murder investigation takes him to the ends of the earth… and beyond.

Six Guns South Book One, Part One: Dead Men Walking is released 2 October.

Excerpt

Thursday August 17, 1955

18:08

The Stylemaster chewed through the farm roads and highways with ease but Red couldn’t help but think he was going to be too late. The sky was turning red and the sun was slipping. He could see lights of the refineries on the edge of southeastern horizon fast becoming visible in the gloaming twilight. With the windows rolled down, he could smell the distinct odor of sulphur on the gulf breeze blowing in across Texas City and Pasadena.

He hated Houston.

The sedan slid to a stop in front of the Gulf Building on the corner of Capitol and Main Street. Red jumped from the car, hurrying inside. The offices had closed at five pm, but as the wheels of industry know no time clock, many people were still coming and going.

The directory in the lobby indicated Brown Coastal and Refining occupied the top four floors- a far cry from the warehouse Lucas Brown was working out of last time Red met the man, some three years ago. A doorman tried to stop him but the Ranger kept on moving into the elevators. He mashed the button for the top and waited for the car to ascend the 37 floors.

Red stepped into the BC&R lobby and immediately went into a crouch. He could see a pair of very fine looking legs laid out on the floor behind the reception desk. He crept to the woman and was relieved to find her only unconscious, a nasty bruise on her temple. Red lightly smacked the woman’s cheek, but the best he could get out her was a slight moan. She had apparently been in the process of leaving when her assailants came in- her purse was on the floor next to her crumpled coat and her keys were clutched loosely in her hand. Red folded the coat around the purse and put the bundle under the woman’s head. It was the best he could do for her at the moment.

He found a set of stairs and sprinted to the top floor. Lucas Brown’s office should be up there, if Red’s intuition was right. He carefully opened the stairwell door an inch or two and listened for a moment. Down the hall, on the west side of the building, he could hear shouts and random gunfire. It sounded like a standoff.

In the back of his mind, he wondered why he couldn’t hear the fighting before exiting the stairs…

Red drew his 1911 from its holster and checked the magazine and the chamber. With the two extra mags in his back pocket, he had twenty two rounds. Should be more than enough, he thought to himself as he stalked towards the firefight.

Lucas Brown’s office occupied the southwest corner of the thirty-seventh floor. There was one door in, one door out. In his personal secretary’s office, three men, Section Eleven goons, were trying to shoot their way in to Brown. They were barricaded behind a heavy mahogany desk, taking pot shots with revolvers. Every time one of them tried to make a move, a shotgun blast would erupt from the office, sending sprays of buckshot and mahogany flying. Two bodies already lie motionless between the upturned desk and the corner office. Red could hear the oilman shouting from the darkened office.

“You bastards seriously think you’re going to take me down? ‘Disappear’ me? I’m Lucas Mother Fucking Brown! I turned down the CMH for killing bastards more worthy of dying than you! You should have brought more than five guys to take me down, you secret squirrel motherfuckers! I’ll kill every Goddamned last one on of you!” Three more rounds of 00-Buck tore through the room punctuating Brown’s last epithet, but in the deafening silence that followed the barrage, everyone could hear the audible click of the twelve gauge dry-firing.

Luke Brown was empty.

As the three surviving attackers jumped up, Red came around the corner, gun raised, ready to put the men down. But then Lucas Brown stepped out of the shadows, carrying a Browning Automatic Rifle. The Ranger dove for cover just as the oilman opened up. The spooks were blown to pieces by a hail of .30-06 slugs. Blood and gore splattered the room, covering everything. Lucas Brown was red from head to toe, smiling like a madman, a fat cigar clamped between his teeth, its aromatic smoke mingling with the stench of gunpowder and death that swirled in the air.

“Anybody else want some?”

Red slowly stepped out from around the corner, both hands raised. Luke’s finger tightened on the trigger, but he relaxed when he recognized the Texas Ranger.

“’Bout goddamn time you got here, Captain Jack. I thought you were coming by on Monday.”

Red put his hands down, hooking his thumbs in his belt, surveying the carnage. “Something came up.”

The oilman slung the BAR over his shoulder and took the cigar out of his mouth. He was about to speak when the lights went out, plunging the interior office into darkness. Red instinctively drew his weapon.

“We need to get out of here. Now.”

“No arguments there, Captain.”

Before the men could move for the stairs, all the windows looking out of Luke Brown’s corner office exploded inward, raining glass across the desk and chairs. Luke spun around, bringing his BAR to bear. Red assumed a fighting stance just outside the room but he couldn’t get a clear line of fire past the oilman into the office- the setting sun was shining right through into the Rangers eyes. All he could make out was a figure in black standing on the giant oak desk in the center of the room.

“You…” Luke whispered to the figure standing as if in judgment, Red could smell the fear rolling off the man- the burly ex-soldier had soiled himself.

The figure in black spread his arms out in front of him, fingers outstretched like the talons of some great bird of prey. Blue flames licked from the man’s fingertips, coalescing in his palms before shooting forth like lightning, exploding all the sprinkler heads in the ceiling. A sheet of water cascaded down over everything in the office.

Luke Brown, soaked in blood and water and his own filth, begin to visibly tremble and shake. The BAR slipped from his hands as his arms pulled in towards his chest, his fists balled so tight, Red swore he saw blood streaming from between the fingers. Incredibly, unbelievably, the man assumed a fetal position, floating in midair, faintly glowing with a purple sheen as the water continued to rain down from the ceiling. Luke Brown made a thin keening through his clenched teeth that crescendoed into a howling wail as the shaking became more violent.

And suddenly, with an audible pop, the man was gone.

Red only waited half a second before his jaw snapped shut and he emptied eight rounds of forty-five auto into the figure standing on the desk. But the man just laughed, leaping backwards out the window as the hot slugs punched through his chest. The Ranger reloaded as he ran through the broken glass, emptying another seven rounds into the man as he fell to street, nearly four hundred feet below.

When he hit the pavement, the man got up, nonchalantly dusting himself off as he walked into the shadows and disappeared from sight- his laughter hanging in the air like the sulphur stink of the refineries to the south.

Red hated coming to Houston.

Six Guns South Book One, Part One: Dead Men Walking

Released 2 October.

Exclusive release on Amazon Kindle (other formats will become available before the end of the year) 99¢ American. Stay tuned for details.

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