STAR TREK - TOS - Final Frontier

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PUBLISHED BY POCKET BOOKS NEW YORK

This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the

author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons,

living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Permission to reprint Ayn Rand quotation on self-defense granted by the Estate of Ayn Rand.

rights reserved. Reprinted by permission from TIME.

Inc., reprinted by permission of Doubleday, a division of Bantam, Doubleday, Dell Publishing Group,

Inc.

AnotherOriginal publication of POCKET BOOKS

POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New

York, N.Y. 10020

For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, N.Y. 10020

This book is published by Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc., under exclusive license

from Paramount Pictures Corporation.

POCKET and colophon are trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

STAR TREK is a Registered Trademark of Paramount Pictures Corporation.

Printed in the U.S.A.

To the spirit of exploration

and the dignity it brings home.

Contents

Foreword.5

Prologue.8

PART I10

Chapter One.11

Chapter Two.16

Chapter Three.22

Chapter Four.29

Chapter Five.34

Chapter Six.39

Chapter Seven.47

PART II50

Chapter Eight51

Chapter Nine.55

Chapter Ten.69

Chapter Eleven.72

Chapter Twelve.77

Chapter Thirteen.84

PART III92

Chapter Fourteen.93

Chapter Fifteen.97

Chapter Sixteen.106

Chapter Seventeen.113

PART IV..121

Chapter Eighteen.122

Chapter Nineteen.126

Chapter Twenty.136

Chapter Twenty-one.142

Chapter Twenty-two.146

Chapter Twenty-three.153

Chapter Twenty-four.162

Chapter Twenty-five.165

Hope and a Common Future.168

Epilogue.169

Author’s Note.171

About the e-Book.172

Foreword

It was a dark and stormy sector. Suddenly, a starship appeared on the horizon. The Vulcan

screamed! ...

Well ... maybe not.

When Diane first suggested that I write the foreword forFinal Frontier, I accepted the task with the

comforting thought that she had 127,000 words to write before I had to make good on this promise.

Surely I could come up with a few paragraphs of insightful prose in the same amount of time.

Surely ...

Now that we are a few days from sending the novel to Pocket Books, I feel much the same as I did in

college on those Sunday nights when I had a term paper due on Monday morning. In those days, my best

bet was to start with a list of possible topics in the hope that one would inspire me.

One topic here could be revenge. I could repay Diane for putting me on the spot like this by describing

what it’s like to be her husband and collaborator. Unfortunately, we’ve all heard so many

eccentric-writer stories at conventions that anything I could say would be redundant. I think I’ll let this

topic slide with merely a sidebar. Psychologists generally agree that a major childhood trauma will often

result in people’s becoming thieves, murderers, drug addicts, prostitutes, or writers. Generally, I’m

pleased that Diane chose the last. However, when the light clicks on at 3:00 A.M. because Captain Kirk

is[viii]whispering something into Diane’s ear, I must admit that those thieves and murderers don’t look so

bad.

Another, always popular possibility would be to take a humorous look at our favorite shared-universe. I

could, for instance, fantasize about being able to remove one scene from the series or the movies and

rewrite it to my specifications. Which scene would it be? No, that might get me into trouble. And while

Star Trek parodies are a lot of fun for true Trek fans, they are often misinterpreted by non-Trek people

(the unclean) as ridicule ofStar Trek.

How about commenting on some of the technical and scientific ... uh ... liberties that were occasionally

taken during the series to move the plot along. No, that would be longer than the book.

Let’s try another tack.

How, it is so often asked, could a twenty-year-old television show develop such a vast and loyal

following? Even the fans can’t reach an agreement on this. Some people feel that theStar Trek

characters, the “Four from theEnterprise” especially, are a classic combination of compassion, humor,

and conflict that the years cannot diminish. Others argue that the series itself always aspired to be “a cut

above,” its episodes not directed, like so much of television, at an audience with the collective IQ of a

swarm of lobotomized houseflies. While I agree with these observations, I think that there is an even

more important aspect ofStar Trek that has made it so enduring—one that is often overlooked.

For several thousand years, philosophical and religious leaders have been preaching that man is basically

evil. WhenStar Trek was conceived in the 1960’s, this fact seemed to be demonstrated by the events all

around us. We were plagued with war, racial unrest, pollution, overpopulation, and the threat of nuclear

annihilation. These combined to support the belief that the human race was going to have a very short and

miserable future on this planet. Those who looked into this future envisioned a massively overpopulated,

polluted world of such poverty and violence that we would all be locked into a daily life-and-death

struggle for our basic needs. A very depressing outlook, to say the least.Star Trek thumbed its nose at

our culture’s Chicken Littles by giving us a much more reassuring look at humanity.

The overall theme ofStar Trek must surely be that we have a grand future. Yes, we will have troubles.

Some of them may seem insurmountable. But mankind is not just an upstart species, an aberration of

nature destined to cause its own inevitable slide back into the muck.[ix]The creatorsof Star Trek wanted

us to know that weare special, weare in charge of our destinies. That destiny can be a fine one as long as

we never allow the problems of today to overwhelm our aspirations for the future. Diane and I consider it

an honor to be part of theStar Trek universe and we will always try to maintain the respect for mankind

that has madeStar Trek an ever-increasing force in the social consciousness of today.

Final Frontieris aStar Trek historical, taking place twenty-five years before James Kirk’s time aboard

theEnterprise (the framework involving James Kirk takes place immediately after the television episode

“The City on the Edge of Forever,” and the reader may wish to refer to it). Diane and I have worked

conscientiously to project backward on both technology and philosophy, to a point where we can see the

emergence of the Trek familiar to us all. This is before everything—before starship technology was

polished, before Federation policy was tested, before captains really knew how to handle what they

encountered. It involves the inevitable conflicts between our philosophies, our aspirations, and the brutal

reality that often exists when intelligence clashes with intelligence. We hope that asStar Trek continues,

more and more people who see life as merely a living and dying process without meaning or direction will

stand with us and demand that “There must be more!”

Gregory Brodeur

Prologue

A TIME BEFOREstardates. And a captain’s privilege to go there.

Even with the unchanged cornfields lying beneath sprawling blue skies and the barn smell all around him,

Jim Kirk discovered he couldn’t quite get away from reality when the communicator in his pocket

suddenly chirped. His hand automatically went for the utility belt that usually held his phaser and

communicator when he wasn’t on board the ship, and only then did he remember he wasn’t wearing a

uniform.

“Mind your own business, Bones,” he muttered as he found the device inside the lightweight indigo fabric

of his sailing jacket. He snapped the grip open with too much ease—not something he ordinarily

perceived in his movements—and spoke firmly into it. “Mind your own business, McCoy. I’m on leave.”

“On leave and suddenly psychic, too, I see,”the familiar voice plunged back.

“Who else has the gall to disobey direct orders?” Kirk shifted the communicator to his left hand and

used his right to wrench open a sliding panel in the barn’s loft wall. Not easy; it hadn’t been open in—no,

he didn’t want to count years right now. The eddies of time weren’t his best friends at the moment. The

backwashes ...

“What do you want?” he asked as he reached into the metal cubbyhole behind the panel of century-old

barnwood. He was quite aware[4]of the guilty hesitation on the other end of the frequency when McCoy

didn’t answer right away.

“I thought you might want company for dinner.”

“That’s the best excuse you’ve got?”

“Well, it’s hard to come up with a shipboard emergency hanging here in spacedock, you know. Dangling

a juicy stuffed Cornish hen dinner in front of you was all I could come up with. I’m a surgeon, not a ...

not a ... damn, I can’t think of anything.”

“Then you have something to keep you busy,” Kirk said sharply. “There are some days when a man

doesn’t want to be cheered up. Kirk out.”

He flipped the grid closed and stuffed the communicator and everything it represented back into his

pocket. In his mind he saw McCoy’s squarish face skewered with helpless empathy and knew he’d been

unfair, but everything was unfair. Where was it written that a starship captain always had to be the

exception? This wasn’t his day to be exceptional. Today he wanted to be what he remembered himself

as—a tough, curly-haired blond kid with big aspirations and a painfully pragmatic edge to his imagination.

He knew that if he looked out the loft door he’d see his mother peeking out the farmhouse window like

she had during his entire boyhood, wondering what her son was thinking and not having the nerve to

come out and ask. Either that or she just had more respect for his privacy than McCoy did.

No surprise. Bacteria had more respect for privacy than McCoy did.

Kirk shook away an urge to glance over his shoulder and reached into the hidden metal box inside the

loft wall. Carefully he pulled out an uneven bundle of letters, ragged and yellowed, a bundle of Starfleet

notepaper preserved only with a child’s obsessive care for something particularly precious. His lips

curled up on one side as he ran his thumb across the discolored ink of a handwritten line.

“Stone knives and bearskins,” he murmured. His throat closed around any further comment. Suddenly

he was glad he was alone. He straightened up—certainly one thing that had been easier twenty-five years

ago—strode through old hay to the loft door, and sat down in a wedge of sunlight with the bundle of

notepaper.

The sunlight on his face, real sunlight, made the natural ruddiness rise in his cheeks again. He could feel

the color seep back into his skin, aware of how pale starship duty sometimes made him in spite of special

whole-spectrum artificial lighting with all its pretense of[5]sunlight. Like pills instead of solid food. The

same, but not. Maybe that was because starship lighting had no warmth.

Starship ... how could a word so beautiful seem so sinister to him now? It hadn’t been the ship’s fault,

this tragedy that crushed him to the Earth’s surface like sudden gravity. It hadn’t been McCoy’s fault,

though McCoy felt otherwise. It hadn’t been Spock’s fault, though Spock hadn’t been able to help no

matter how much he wanted to.So, it must be my own fault. My fault, because I earned command.

And for my reward, I pay.

Squinting in the bright daylight, he divided the pile in two, just for the sake of mystery, then picked up a

letter and started reading.

[6]“No,” Kirk sighed, “it’s not. But I probably wasn’t listening anyway.” He leaned back on the gray

barnwood and crossed his ankles, then indulged in a sip of the coffee he’d brought out here with him.

Doused with honey and milk like his aunt used to make for him when she thought he was too young to

take coffee black, it was more of a liquid candy bar than coffee. The taste of nostalgia.

He tipped the crusty letter away from the sun and spoke to the handwriting.

“Keep talking. I’m listening now.”

PART I

Space ...

Chapter One

THE SECURITY COMMANDERset his pen down and spun the sensor camera roller, then gazed up

at the row of monitors. Each monitor was carefully positioned so that he got a clear view of his own

reflection, and it was a damned annoyance to always have to be looking past that fellow with the rusty

red hair and the stern expression that reminded him of bleached-out dreams. He blinked to clear the

reflection from his mind and looked toward the monitors, each of which showed a different compartment

or lab or lounge on the starbase. At two o’clock in the simulated night, things were quiet. At least

temporarily.

The officer set the computer sentry on automatic survey, picked up his pen, and went back to his writing

while he had the chance.

[8]He stopped writing, dissatisfied with the shielded truth he was sending home. Not even shielded truth.

Shielded lies, really; better servants than a truth that would hurt the tender trust he was writing home to.

At this point, trust meant more to him than truth. And he could never get far enough into space to ease

the ache of his own integrity.

Distraction was welcome when it came—the startling buzz of one of the monitors. He pressed a switch

that stopped the buzz, and leaned forward. Like a lie detector working on physiological cues, the monitor

farthest to the left had focused in on the pool hall, its sensors triggered by the infinitesimal rise in body

heat and other stress factors interpreted as hostile by the computer. Four men were clustered around one

of the pool tables—well, more precisely, three of the men were clustered around the fourth. The biggest

of the three had the prey by the collar and was pressing him against the pool table.

The security chief leaned still closer, his hazel eyes narrowing. He recognized the three as intersystem

traders. “Scratch” Jones and his seamy crew. Local system troublemakers who stayed just close enough

to a loose interpretation of the law that they were still allowed on the starbase to stock up, fuel up, and

hawk their questionable services to anyone who would pay. But the tawny-faced, umber-haired man they

were harassing was no trader. He was starbase personnel, and he had no business being there at this

hour.

“But fellows,” the tawny-faced one said in the accented but perfect[9]English of the West Indies, “twice

you’ve beaten me already. I’m better than you, I’m simply having a terrible day. The terrible-est. If I put

my mind on it, I could smoke you.”

“Sure, Reed,” one of the men responded. “I’ve heard that talk all night and I’m sick of the insults. I’m

still waiting for a real game.”

Scratch Jones tightened his grip on the starbase man’s neck. “Why don’t you put your mind ‘on it’ and

put your month’s pay up against all of ours.”

“I would, but lordy, I’ve got to go. I’m on duty, you see. It means my commission if I’m found here with

you prehistorics.”

“He’s got to go,” muttered the third trader. “What a coincidence.”

“On the rail,” Scratch Jones growled.

With some difficulty, since there was a two-hundred-pound man leaning against him, Drake Reed tugged

his pay voucher from his pocket and placed it on the table’s rail beside him. He’d lost two games

already, and his pay voucher looked like easy pickings to Jones’ crew as they too dumped handfuls of

Federation credit slips and assorted interplanetary tokens, promissory notes, and other tender on top of

the helpless Fleet ticket.

Jones smiled and released Reed. He nodded to the bearded one of his herd. “Rack ’em up, Chainsaw.”

Reed shrugged. “You’re going to need a warp power cue just to keep up with my juju, man.”

“And chickens quack. You break.”

Reed shook his head, catching the cue stick rudely tossed to him by Jones.

In the security office, the chief tightened his weapons harness and kept an eye on the monitor while Reed

flexed his shoulders beneath a standard red Starfleet uniform and leaned over the pool table. “Amateur

night at Starfleet,” the chief muttered just as Reed’s cue made a sudden snap at the cue ball and the

triangle of colored balls exploded across the table.

Scratch Jones and his men dropped their jaws as at least half of the balls toppled neatly into convenient

pockets. They’d seen nothing like that from Reed before this, the chief knew, and that’s where the

trouble lay.

When the balls stopped clacking into the pockets, Chainsaw shook his head and leered at Reed. “You

can open your eyes now,” he mocked.

With his brown eyes gleaming and quite open, Reed offered that[10]innocent shrug again and

responded, “Must have been a sudden gust of gravity ...”

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PUBLISHEDBYPOCKETBOOKSNEWYORK Thisnovelisaworkoffiction.Names,characters,placesandincidentsareeithertheproductoftheauthor’simaginationorareusedfictitiously.Anyresemblancetoactualeventsorlocalesorpersons,livingordead,isentirelycoincidental. PermissiontoreprintAynRandquotationonself-defensegra...

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