Worlds in Collision Read online

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Introduction, interview, and additional text copyright © 2003 by Paramount Pictures. All Rights Reserved.

  Star Trek® Memory Prime copyright © 1988 by Paramount Pictures. All Rights Reserved.

  Star Trek® Prime Directive copyright © 1991 by Paramount Pictures. All Rights Reserved.

  These titles were previously published individually by Pocket Books.

  STAR TREK is a Registered Trademark of Paramount Pictures.

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

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  ISBN: 0-7434-8814-8

  First Pocket Books trade paperback edition November 2003

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

  Visit us on the World Wide Web:

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  For Robin Kingsburgh,

  who has chosen the final frontier.

  Per ardua ad Edinburgh, ae?

  &

  For Peggy

  For our second home in New York City

  and for being there when inspiration struck.

  L.L. & P.

  Introduction

  If there’s one question people shouldn’t ask anymore, it’s this: Why is Star Trek so popular? We think that’s a bit like asking why some of us like chocolate (JRS), or roller coasters (GRS).

  To us, the answer to all three questions seems simple, obvious, and the same. Chocolate, roller coasters, and Star Trek are popular because all three of them are great: great taste, great fun, and great storytelling.

  Star Trek storytelling is why we turn on the television to watch an episode. It’s why we sit in a theater to see the newest movie. It’s why you opened this book. What has come to be called the Star Trek Universe has a never-ending supply of stories, in all forms and styles.

  If you want humor, there’s McCoy baiting Spock, or Data in Ten-Forward having the human condition explained to him by a Klingon. Not to mention tribbles.

  If you want action, there’s the Enterprise plowing into the Scimitar, or Archer racing across a snowy roof with twin phase pistols blazing. And Khaaaan.

  Romance? Riker and Troi. Hopeless romance? Julian and Jadzia. Nonstop romance? Kirk and just about any female, species not important.

  From the very beginning, Star Trek stories have expanded out to wars among galaxies and focused in on families and friends reaching out to one another. There are stories as vast as the fate of parallel universes, and as personal as the fate of a single constable accused of a crime he did not commit.

  Some of these stories, told for more than three decades on television and in feature films, have become known as “canon”—the core, or “real,” account of our heroes and events as captured on film.

  While film (and coming soon, high-definition video) is a wonderful way to tell a story—showing us things we’ve never seen before, taking us places we’ve never imagined, letting us sense Picard’s mood from the set of his eyes, the steel in his voice—it still has specific limitations of time, depth, and budget.

  A televised episode of Star Trek must begin and end within an hour, or sometimes within two one-hour modules. A Star Trek movie can also stretch to about the same length as a two-part episode. But both the episode and the movie can only tell us stories that can be understood through what we can see and hear for ourselves in a brief window of time. The depth of detail for the story’s events and characters is only what can be developed in that same constricted time.

  And, of course, movie and television budgets are finite.

  That brings us to books, where a story can expand to include all those additional details that make writing Star Trek novels so much fun. Plus, the Star Trek novelist’s budget is infinite.

  And that brings us to two of our Star Trek novels that are presented in this volume: Memory Prime and Prime Directive. They’re both “classic” Star Trek stories; that is, they’re both set during Captain Kirk’s original five-year mission. Best of all, neither one of these stories could have been an episode or a movie, because they deliberately go beyond our visual and aural senses.

  We believe that the heart of Star Trek’s storytelling strength has always been its capacity to take us to strange new worlds. Granted, over more than three decades of Star Trek, all of us have seen many such worlds on film, but in these two books we wanted to explore a different order of strangeness, one which could not be experienced by human senses.

  Hence, the world in Memory Prime that we called Transition. It’s a nonphysical realm, completely subjective, and thus unfilmable. However, the sensation of being in Transition can be described, and so it is in these pages. Then, in Prime Directive, we simply blew the budget. There are more worlds in that one story than any studio could ever afford to depict on film—from a hollowed-out asteroid under construction and the tourist attractions of our own moon’s Tranquillity Base, to a devastated alien planet and its moon, and even something that might resemble a world but…well, you’ll have to visualize it for yourself. Because it, too, we think, is something that you might never see.

  Which brings us back to that 700-plus hours of Star Trek canon and the collision part of this introduction.

  Several key elements in these two books of ours are just plain wrong.

  They weren’t at the time we wrote them. Memory Prime was published just as Star Trek: The Next Generation began its second season. Zefrem Cochrane—of Alpha Centauri, no less—had appeared in one and only one episode of the original Star Trek series. So we felt safe delving deeper into his story, identifying him as a native Centauran, whose Centauran name—Zeyafram Co’akran—had been “humanized.” Oops. Who knew that Star Trek: First Contact waited in the future to establish a different story for Cochrane, as a native of Montana? Same for our complex descriptions of dilithium, warp drive, and Klingon history, inspired in equal parts by the original television series and the 1980 Star Trek reference book, Star Trek Spaceflight Chronology. Fun, yes. But no longer compatible with further Star Trek revelations on film.

  Prime Directive collides with canon, too. We correctly guessed, as it turns out, that Starfleet would have a special department concerned with making first contact with new species based on a species’ reaching a particular technological threshold. Our guess was that that threshold would be subspace radio. Wrong again. As later established in The Next Generation episode “First Contact” and used to full dramatic effect in the movie Star Trek: First Contact, the real threshold is warp drive.

  As someone once said, the devil is in the details (which is a different thing from “The Devil in the Dark”), and that will always be the case for Star Trek fact—stories on film—versus Star Trek fiction, which includes everything else. The very quality that makes Star Trek novels so appealing—that chance to go around corners and reveal what the camera never sees—is the very quality that will lead, sooner or later, to many novels slipping out of established continuity.

  Memory Prime and Prime Directive are both in that category. Like “Yesterday’s Enterprise,” they explore alternate paths through time and space that at the
least show us where the Star Trek universe once was, and at most demonstrate how rich the universe of stories to come still is.

  But rest assured that aside from some side trips into details that no longer fit canon, both novels in this book still have what counts in classic Star Trek storytelling: Kirk and Spock and McCoy and company, the Starship Enterprise, logical Vulcans, scheming Andorians, and a snarling Klingon or two. At heart, they remain Star Trek storytelling.

  For we believe the Star Trek universe is a lot like the real one. It’s so big that given enough time, a few worlds are bound to collide, without really causing damage, only fireworks.

  And when they’re handled with respect, fireworks can be great, too.

  Like chocolate and roller coasters.

  And Star Trek.

  —J&G

  Los Angeles, 2003

  Book One

  Memory Prime

  U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701

  2270

  In the last year of her first five-year mission

  One

  They were all aliens on that planet. From the worlds of the Federation, the empires, and the nonaligned systems, each was a visitor on a planet where indigenous life had vanished in the slow expansion of its sun more than five hundred centuries before.

  The scientists from a dozen races had come and gone since then. Andorians had sifted through the heat-stressed sands in search of clues to understanding and controlling their own prenova sun. Vulcans had beamed down a network of automated planetary sensors and warped out of system in less than one standard day. Terrans had conducted a six-month colony assessment study, with negative results. Even a Klingon heavy-assault scientific survey vessel had passed by, scanned for dilithium, and departed.

  Through all these incursions, the planet spun on, unclaimed, unwanted, littered with the debris of sprawling survey camps and unbridled exploration. In the end, it was not even given a name and became little more than a footnote on navigation charts, identified only as TNC F3459-9-SF-50, its T’Lin’s New Catalog number. It was an abandoned world, a dead world, and for some beings in that part of the galaxy, that meant it was perfect.

  This time, his name would be Starn, and he would wear the blue tunic and burgundy guild cloak of a dealer in kevas and trillium. Legitimate traders were not unknown on TNC 50. The disguise would serve him well.

  As he walked through the narrow streets of Town, Starn cataloged everything he saw, comparing it to the scanmap his ship had produced while in orbit, already planning his escape routes. The slender needles of Andorian prayer towers stretched up past the squat bubbles of Tellarite communal baths, casting dark shadows through billows of fine sand that swirled like vermilion fog. A group of Orion pirates appeared, wearing filters against the sand. There were no authorities on TNC 50 for pirates, or terrorists, or any type of criminal to fear. There was only one law here. Fortunately, Starn knew it.

  The Orions slowed their pace, coolly assessing the resistance that a lone trader such as Starn might provide. Starn pulled on his cloak, stirring it as if the wind had caught it for an instant. The Orions picked up their pace, each touching a green finger to his temple in respect as they passed by. The sudden glimpse of the black-ribbed handle of Starn’s lopene Cutter had shown them that, like most beings on TNC 50, Starn was not what he seemed.

  Starn continued unmolested. Most of the other oxygen breathers he passed also wore filters. A few, like Starn, did not. For those whose lungs had evolved in an atmosphere scorched by the relentless heat of 40 Eridani, this barren world was almost like coming home.

  As Starn approached the center of Town, he felt a tingle and slight resistance as if he had stepped through a wall of unmoving wind. It was the transporter shield, projected and maintained by the merchants of Town. A strong enough transporter beam could force its way through, Starn knew, but the transmission time would be on the order of minutes, long enough to make an easy target of anyone trying a quick escape after an act of vengeance. Everyone who came to TNC 50 had enemies and Town could only continue to exist as long as it offered safe haven.

  As the swollen red primary set, Starn approached his rendezvous site: a tavern pieced together from scavenged survey structures. A sign swung above its entrance, clattering in the rising wind. It told Starn who the proprietors of the tavern were. Other races might secretly whisper the name of the tavern, but only a Klingon would be insulting enough to display it in public.

  The sign carried a two-dimensional image of a monstrously fat Vulcan clutching two Orion slave women to his folds of flesh. The Vulcan’s face was distorted in a terrible grimace. Beneath the image, set in the angular pIqaD of Klinzhai, glowed the tavern’s name: vulqangan Hagh. Starn pulled his cloak around him, an innocuous gesture that served to position the handle of his weapon for instant access, then stepped into the tavern to keep his appointment.

  The central serving area was smoke-filled and dimly lit. For a moment, Starn was surprised to see a fire pit set in a far wall, blazing away. An open fire on a desert planet without plant life could only mean that that part of the tavern had come from either a Terran or a Tellarite structure. Starn studied the fire for a moment and failed to detect an appropriate amount of heat radiating from it. It was a holoprojection.

  Terran, he decided. Tellarites would have shipped in plant material especially for burning. Starn knew the fire was there for a purpose, most probably to hide sensors. His host must already know that Starn had arrived.

  Starn stepped up to an empty space at the serving counter. A multilegged creature made an elaborate show of sniffing the air, then moved several stools away. Starn ignored it.

  The server behind the counter was, as Starn had deduced, a Klingon, and an old one at that. He limped on an improperly matched leg graft and wore a veteran’s ruby honorstone in the empty socket of his left eye. Starn was troubled. A Klingon with an honorstone would be revered on Klinzhai, given line and land. A veteran with such a medal would never submit to being a menial tavern server, which meant the tavern server had stolen the honorstone. The concept of a Klingon without honor was as unsettling as the laughing Vulcan depicted on the tavern’s sign. Starn decided that the stories of Town’s depravity did not do it justice.

  After ignoring him for several trips back and forth, the server finally stopped in front of Starn. “NuqneH, vulqangan?” the Klingon growled.

  Starn considered for a moment that in this setting the standard Klingon greeting actually made sense. “bIQ,” he snarled in reply.

  The Klingon paused as if puzzled by Starn’s perfect accent, then filled the trader’s order for water by spitting on the counter in front of him.

  Other beings nearby, who had listened to the exchange, froze. Had Starn also been Klingon, a glorious blood feud would have started that might have lasted generations. But Starn was not Klingon, though his knowledge of the empire’s customs was comprehensive.

  The server waited tensely for Starn to respond to the insult, his single eye burning with expectation. Starn slowly slid his hand beneath his cloak, and just as slowly withdrew a carefully folded white cloth. Keeping his eyes locked on the Klingon, Starn delicately dabbed the cloth into the spittle on the counter and began to raise the cloth to his forehead.

  The server began to tremble. Starn moved the cloth closer to his forehead. Two Klingon mercenaries standing farther down the counter began to snicker. The cloth was centimeters from Starn’s forehead when the server finally realized that the mad creature was not going to stop.

  “Ghobe!” the server spat, and snatched the cloth from Starn’s fingers. Starn sat motionless as the server used the cloth to wipe up the counter and then stormed away, his rage almost comical in its intensity. The mercenaries broke out in gales of harsh laughter. One of them motioned to a server, who guided an antigrav tray of food and drink through the tables. A few moments later, the server stopped the tray by Starn and passed him a sealed bubble of stasis water.

  “With the compliments of the officers,
trader,” the server said.

  Starn looked down the bar at the Klingon mercenaries. They smiled at him and made clumsy attempts at saluting him with third and fourth fingers splayed. Starn nodded in acknowledgment, to more laughter, then broke the seal on the bubble and waited for its field to collapse. Around him, the business of the tavern returned to normal.

  Whatever else Starn was, he was a connoisseur. From its bouquet, he identified the water as coming from a desert world, high in complex oxides. With his first sip, he ruled out TNC 50 as its origin. The water had once been part of a photosynthesis-based ecosystem and this planet was lifeless. A second sip was all he needed. The water was from Vulcan. The mercenaries had sought to honor him. Starn placed the bubble on the counter and would not touch it again.

  A pale blue hand reached out to the counter beside Starn. The movement was cautious and he turned slowly. An Andorian girl looked at him nervously. She was young, clothed in a tattered and obviously contraband Starfleet jumpsuit that matched her skin color, and she suffered from an atrophied antenna. Even the smallest and poorest of her people’s families would have sacrificed everything to treat that twisted hearing stalk. The girl was something no Andorian should ever have been forced to be: alone.

  Starn greeted her in flawless Federation Standard, again no accent to suggest it was not his first tongue.

  The girl looked nervously from side to side. “Wass it a present brought you here, trader?” she asked in a sibilant whisper.

  Starn nodded yes. He couldn’t detect anyone nearby trying to eavesdrop, but noticed that the girl stood so that as he turned to speak with her, he looked straight across the serving area into the sensors hidden behind the fire. He didn’t try to block them.

  “And where was that present from?” the Andorian asked, shuffling and looking over her shoulder. Her withered antenna twitched and she winced in pain.