Star Trek: Discovery‘s first tie-in novel, David Mack’s Desperate Hours, was a big hit with Trek book readers — check out our review here — and now the second chapter in Discovery‘s literary life has been announced for 2018.

We’ve known since the summer that Trek author Dayton Ward would be taking on the next novel in the Discovery, and today Simon and Schuster has announced that Drastic Measures will be the title of the next book in the series.

As many have suspected — given early details about the tale would be set some ten years before the television series — we’re headed to Tarsus IV in the new book, where a young James Kirk barely survived life under the rule of Kodos the Executioner.

Here’s the official synopsis:

It is 2246, ten years prior to the “Battle at the Binary Stars,” and an aggressive contagion is ravaging the food supplies of the remote Federation colony Tarsus IV and the eight thousand people who call it home. Distress signals have been sent, but any meaningful assistance is weeks away. Lieutenant Commander Gabriel Lorca and a small team assigned to a Starfleet monitoring outpost are caught up in the escalating crisis, and bear witness as the colony’s governor, Adrian Kodos, employs an unimaginable solution in order to prevent mass starvation.

While awaiting transfer to her next assignment, Commander Philippa Georgiou is tasked with leading to Tarsus IV a small, hastily assembled group of first responders. It’s hoped this advance party can help stabilize the situation until more aid arrives, but Georgiou and her team discover that they‘re too late—Governor Kodos has already implemented his heinous strategy for extending the colony’s besieged food stores and safeguarding the community’s long-term survival.

In the midst of their rescue mission, Georgiou and Lorca must now hunt for the architect of this horrific tragedy and the man whom history will one day brand “Kodos the Executioner”….

NOVEMBER 17: The official cover is here, thanks to StarTrek.com:

Drastic Measures hits stores February 6, 2018 — and you can preorder here today!

Novel #4: "The Way to the Stars"

Novel #5: "The Enterprise War"

Novel #6: "Dead Endless"