And at long last, Mirror Kanril.

This was actually the first chapter I wrote.  I had the idea for “Kanril meets her mirror version” way before I came up with doing a novelization of “The Other Side”, so I ended up making most of this chapter (the meeting with Dal Kanril and Gul Morag in particular) and then finding a plot to put it in.

The trick with this story is, because of the nature of Our Intrepid Heroes™, the usual “same crew as the prime universe but EVIL” storyline for mirror universe stories just plain doesn’t work.  The Mirror Bajorans are part of the Klingon-Cardassian Alliance, so the Terrans wouldn’t have built an ISS Bajor and Mirror Kanril wouldn’t join them (remember, in the mirror universe the power that occupied Bajor for 50 years was the Terran Empire, not the Cardassians).  Meanwhile Prime Kanril’s command crew are mostly species that are Terran-aligned (Andorian, human, and Trill), so there’s no sense in putting everybody on the Alliance side, either.

So instead I went the Deep Space Nine route of changing practically everything.  Mirror Kanril is a career officer instead of a former enlisted crewman, and she’s first officer instead of captain.  I haven’t quite decided yet if any of the mirror versions of Prime Kanril’s crew will appear, though I’m leaning towards yes.

I also enjoyed getting creative with some of the ship classes used by the Terran Empire.  The Harbinger-class is, as stated, the Imperial version of Starfleet’s Emissary-class (the Mirror Assault Cruiser, in other words).  The Sato-class is an equivalent to the Excalibur-class (no playable counterpart), while the Wauja-class is equivalent to the Dakota-class (Mirror Heavy Cruiser).  The name on the latter refers to the Wauja people of Brazilian Amazonia.  Figured a South American indigenous people would be a nice counterpoint to the North American Dakota tribe.

And yes, I just killed off the mirror version of Akira Sulu.  So I guess we finally have an answer to that question.