Capitão Kirk deixa o comando da Enterprise com o Dr. McCoy enquanto ele transporta-se ao planeta estranho com o apelido de "Flyspeck", para negociar sua admissão na Federação.
Entretanto, McCoy descobre que o comando é uma faca de dois gumes quando Kirk desaparece sem deixar vestígios. Desesperadamente tentando localizar seu capitão, McCoy sofre pressão da Frota Estelar para resolver a situação imediatamente. As coisas só pioram quando os Klingons chegam e alegam domínio sobre Flyspeck. |...| Doctor's Orders -- When Dr. McCoy grumbles once too often about the way the U.S.S. Enterprise ought to be run, Captain Kirk decides to leave the doctor in command while he oversees a rountine diplomatic mission. Kirk beams down to a strange planet nicknamed "Flyspeck" to negotiate its admission into the Federation, leaving Dr. McCoy to enjoy his new authority.
However, the doctor soon learns that command is a double-edged sword when Kirk disappears without a trace. Desperately trying to locate his catain, McCoy comes under pressure from Starfleet to resolve the situation immediately. Matters go from bad to worsewhen the Klingons arrive and stake their own claim on Flyspeck
Then another, more deadly power threatens them all, and suddenly Dr. McCoy and the Starship Enterprise find themselves pitted against an alien fleet in a battle they have no hope of winning'.' |...| [About the Author] Diane Duane was born in New York City -- a descendant of New York's first mayor -- and worked there as a psychiatric nurse before leaving the profession for the only one she loved better, the business of writing. Since the publication of her first novel in 1981, she's written fifty more, not to mention numerous short stories, comics, computer games and screenplays for TV and film, and has picked up the occasional award here and there. (She has also worked with Star Trek in more media than anyone else alive.)
Right now she's probably best known for her "Young Wizards" series of young adult fantasy novels, featuring the New York-based wizards Kit Rodriguez and Nita Callahan -- in business for twenty-five years now, their most recent adventure being described in the ninth YW novel, "A Wizard of Mars" (just released in paperback).
DD shares a two hundred-year-old cottage in the Wicklow Mountains of Ireland with her husband, the Belfast-born novelist and screenwriter Peter Morwood, a laid-back white cat named Goodman, and various overworked computers... an odd but congenial environment for the staging of epic battles between good and evil and the leisurely pursuit of total galactic domination. (And a lot of ethnic cooking: her own favorite foods come from the cuisines of central Europe and the Mediterranean.) In her spare time she gardens (weeding, mostly), studies German and Italian, listens to shortwave and satellite radio, and dabbles in astronomy, computer graphics, iaido, amateur cartography, and desktop publishing ... while also trying to figure out how to make more spare time.