Problem with Serpents Among the Ruins

[marlboro]

It's a good book, but I have one major issue with it.


(Spoilers)

The linchpin of the book is Harriman's plot to frame the Romulans for a major terrorist attack. It's a brilliant scheme...that I think would fall apart within a matter of days.

The plan centers around covering up the real deaths of over 4,000 Starfleet officers over a period of several months, and then tricking everyone into believing that they were all actually killed simultaneously in the Tomed attack.

Sulu figures out the truth when she recognizes the name of an officer who's death she had witnessed a year earlier on the list of Tomed victims. So what's to keep the friends, family, and colleagues of the other4,000+ "victims" from noticing the same thing? I mean somebody had to witness or have knowledge of most of these deaths, right? Doctors would have to be involved fairly often, too, I would think.

Am I wrong here? I hope so, because it ruins an otherwise very good book for me.

 

[DGCatAniSiri]

Depends on what the missions these officers actually does on were - how many of them had witnesses who could place their deaths at not-Tomed? Demora Sulu has just gotten command of the USS Enterprise, a ship involved in the Incident, whose previous captain was a major responsible party of what went down, which put her in a unique position to be able to be able to connect those dots.

 

[marlboro]

Wouldn't pretty much anyone serving with them notice when they didn't come back from an away mission? Wouldn't their commanding officers know?

The dead would have to perish in some way that no one - not their friends, family, crewmates, superior officers and so forth - would ever know about. I'm stumped, really. You would need some mass killings to get to 4,000 people. Multiple Excelsior class ships disappearing?

 

[marlboro]

I've stumped you guys, haven't I?

I was afraid of that. It's really a good book, but this problem kind of ruins it for me.

Maybe the book should have ended with Harriman admitting to Sulu that he actually really did just kill 4,000 people...and Kirk, too.

The kid fell into some bad company in the 80s:

 

[Sci]

It's been like 15 years or more since I read it, but I seem to remember the implication was that the actual deaths had been covered up and the deceased listed as having transferred to the station that was "attacked." Presumably the commanding officers, medical officers, and/or any witnesses to the real deaths would have been ordered not to reveal the truth.

 

[marlboro]

It's been like 15 years or more since I read it, but I seem to remember the implication was that the actual deaths had been covered up and the deceased listed as having transferred to the station that was "attacked." Presumably the commanding officers, medical officers, and/or any witnesses to the real deaths would have been ordered not to reveal the truth.

Your memory is very good. That is what happened. But they are very clear in saying that only a small handful of people know what really happened. Your presumption is the same one I made, but that's the problem - your conspiracy has grown from a handful of people to the commanding officers, doctors, and eyewitnesses of 4,000 people. Not to mention all the people who serve with them who are bound to ask questions about why their friends, crewmates, spouses etc. suddenly, and without warning, disappeared without a trace and haven't been heard from since.

 

[David cgc]

But all the dead people were on classified missions when they were killed. Those are the exact circumstances where you'd expect to see communication delays, vague and potentially inconsistent cover stories, and other cover-up-related things.

 

[JoeZhang]

None of them are actually dead or even real - their family members are also crisis actors - I saw it on a subspace media channel.

 

[Saul]

I really liked this book but it is the cover up that I found not to my personal liking. It's an interesting take but I didn't really buy such an event as a massive cover up.