STAR TREK: Starfleet Academy - TOS #1: Crisis on Vulcan Read online

  “The Enterprise herself could

  blow up within thirty seconds of

  engaging warp drive.”

  “What’s the risk of a core breakdown?” asked Captain April.

  Chief Engineer Powell shook his head. “I’d say roughly seventy percent.”

  “Seventy-one point three eight seven percent,” Spock corrected. “That is a closer approximation.”

  April turned and glared at him. “What’s this civilian doing on my bridge?”

  “I will leave if you wish,” Spock said. “However, I believe I may be of use. I have some experience with computer languages, and I may be able to repair your problem.”

  “Sir,” Pike said, “nine minutes left. Mr. Spock is an extremely gifted young man. It couldn’t hurt to let him have a try.”

  April nodded. “Very well. Take the science officer’s console, Mr. Spock.”

  Published by POCKET BOOKS

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  The sale of this book without its cover is unauthorized. If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that it was reported to the publisher as “unsold and destroyed.” Neither the author nor the publisher has received payment for the sale of this “stripped book.”

  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.

  A MINSTREL PAPERBACK Original

  A Minstrel Book published by POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster Inc. 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  Copyright © 1996 by Paramount Pictures. All Rights Reserved.

  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.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  ISBN: 0-671-00078-0

  First Minstrel Books printing August 1996

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  A MINSTREL BOOK and colophon are registered-trademarks of Simon & Schuster Inc.

  Cover art by Michael Herring

  Printed in the U.S.A.

  To Val and Ron Lindahn,

  Accomplished Artists, Fellow Trekkers,

  and Treasured Friends

  Contents

  STARFLEET TIMELINE

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  About the Authors

  About the Illustrator

  About the e-Book

  Starfleet Timeline

  1969

  Neil Armstrong walks on Earth’s moon.

  2156

  Romulan Wars begin between Earth forces and the Romulan Star Empire.

  2160

  Romulan peace treaty signed, establishing the Neutral Zone.

  2161

  United Federation of Planets formed; Starfleet established with charter “to boldly go where no man has gone before.”

  2218

  First contact with the Klingon Empire.

  2245

  Starship U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701 launched on its first five-year mission under the command of Captain Robert April and First Officer Christopher Pike.

  2249

  Spock enters Starfleet Academy as the first Vulcan student. Leonard McCoy enters Star-fleet Medical School.

  2250

  James T. Kirk enters Starfleet Academy.

  2251

  Christopher Pike assumes command of the Enterprise for its second five-year mission.

  2252

  Spock, still a Starfleet cadet, begins serving under Captain Pike on the Enterprise.

  2253

  Spock graduates from Starfleet Academy. Leonard McCoy graduates from Starfleet Medical School.

  2254

  James T. Kirk graduates from Starfleet Academy. As a lieutenant, Kirk is assigned duty aboard the U.S.S. Farragut.

  2261

  U.S.S. Enterprise, under the command of Captain Christopher Pike, completes its third five-year mission.

  2263

  James T. Kirk is promoted to captain of the Enterprise and meets Christopher Pike, who is promoted to fleet captain.

  2264

  Captain James T. Kirk, in command of the U.S.S. Enterprise, embarks on a historic five-year mission of exploration.

  2266

  Dr. Leonard McCoy replaces Dr. Mark Piper as chief medical officer aboard the Enterprise.

  2269

  Kirk’s original five-year mission ends, and Starship Enterprise returns to spacedock. Kirk is promoted to admiral.

  2271

  U.S.S. Enterprise embarks on Kirk’s second five-year mission (Star Trek: The Motion Picture).

  2277

  James T. Kirk accepts a teaching position at Starfleet Academy; Spock assumes command of the Starship Enterprise.

  2285

  In orbit around the Genesis planet, Kirk orders the destruction of the Starship Enterprise to prevent the ship from falling into Klingon hands (Star Trek III: The Search for Spock).

  2286

  Kirk is demoted to captain and assigned command of the Starship Enterprise NCC-1701-A (Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home).

  2287

  The Enterprise is commandeered by Sybok, Spock’s half-brother, and taken to the center of the galaxy (Star Trek V: The Final Frontier).

  2292

  Alliance between the Klingon Empire and the Romulan Star Empire collapses.

  2293

  The Klingon Empire launches a major peace initiative; the crews of the U.S.S. Enterprise and the U.S.S. Excelsior, captained by Hikaru Sulu, thwart a conspiracy to sabotage the Khitomer Peace Conference. Afterward, the Enterprise-A is decommissioned, and Kirk retires from Starfleet.

  U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-B, under the command of Captain John Harriman, is severely damaged on her maiden voyage. Honored guest Captain James T. Kirk is listed as missing, presumed killed in action.

  2344

  U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-C, under the command of Captain Rachel Garrett, is destroyed while defending the Klingon outpost on Narendra III from Romulan attack.

  2346

  Romulan massacre of Klingon outpost on Khitomer.

  2364

  Captain Jean-Luc Picard assumes command of the U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-D.

  2367

  Borg attack at Wolf 359; U.S.S. Saratoga destroyed; First Officer Lieutenant Commander Benjamin Sisko and his son, Jake, are among the survivors; Enterprise defeats the Borg vessel in orbit around Earth.

  2369

  Commander Benjamin Sisko assumes command of Deep Space Nine in orbit over Bajor.

  2371

  U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-D destroyed on Veridian III.

  Former Enterprise captain James T. Kirk emerges from a temporal nexus, but dies helping Picard save the Veridian system.

  U.S.S. Voyager, under the command of Captain Kathryn Janeway, is accidentally transported to the Delta Quadrant. The crew begins a 70-year journey back to Federation space.

  2372

  The Klingon Empire’s attempted invasion of Cardassia Prime results in the dissolution of the Khitomer pea
ce treaty between the Federation and the Klingon Empire.

  Source: Star Trek® Chronology / Michael Okuda and Denise Okuda

  Chapter 1

  Two suns hung low in a turquoise sky. The higher one was a bloated crimson, a squashed red oval that gave little warmth. The lower sun was merely a brilliant point of blue-white light. Across a vast, nearly flat plain of harshly glittering crystalline rock almost exactly the corroded copper-green color of Spock’s blood, the horizon became jagged. A range of cobalt-blue volcanic cones thrust their sharp peaks upward, and each mountain cast two sharp-edged shadows on the plain, one shadow a deep violet, the other, paler one, gray green.

  Almost directly overhead, an irregular buttery-yellow crescent moon rode waves of crimson, orange, and purple aurora, the shimmering colors as restless as an ocean. Off in the east, a smaller, rounder gray moon had just risen above the roof of the Bel T’aan conference center where fifty diplomats worked to end a war that had gone [2] on for generations. In the darker sky above the sleek building, a few random stars already glittered, their light dimmed in the auroral display. High meteors, their trails brilliant white, scratched across the western sky.

  “It is all very—” began Cha-Tuan Mar Lorval, the Marathan youth who had only a few weeks before set foot on his ancestral planet for the first time in his life. The short, stumpy boy hesitated, searching for the right words. “It is very, very—”

  “Fascinating,” said Spock.

  Cha turned his head, his mane of iridescent hair glimmering in the double light of the setting binary suns. “No. I was trying to say beautiful but in a more intense way. It is more beautiful than anything I have ever seen.” The Marathan boy stole a quick glance back at the Bel T’aan complex, lowered his voice, and murmured, “It is a vision given us by the Ancient Maker.”

  Spock raised an eyebrow. “The Ancient Maker?”

  With an embarrassed shrug, Cha looked away. “I am almost an adult. Such things are forbidden. I cannot speak of them.”

  “Ah. A religious taboo,” Spock said. “I will not question you.”

  Cha relaxed. “Thank you. But surely even one who is without the knowledge of the Ancient Maker can see the glory, the beauty, of all this.”

  Spock tilted his head as he considered. The air of Marath was thin and, at this latitude, bitterly cold in his nostrils. He took a deep breath. “The arrangement of the landscape and the placement of astronomical bodies [3] is aesthetically attractive,” he admitted. “Though of course it is temporary. The most interesting point for me is the double sun. Marath is one of the few inhabited planets that orbits a double star. Most binary-system planets orbit one of the two suns but not both.”

  Cha shook his head. “You Vulcans have no soul,” he complained. “You’re all logic and mathematics and science. You don’t appreciate the—the poetry of such a vision.” He nodded toward the west. “The larger sun, the reddish one, is Hamarka, the Creator, the one my people call the Ancient Maker. The small, brilliant point of blue-white light, the one that dances around Hamarka, is Volash, the Jester.”

  Spock nodded. He noted again that he was cold. Marath was not a particularly cold planet—it was even warmer than Vulcan in the lower latitudes—but Bel T’aan, an ancient religious and cultural center, was close to Marath’s north pole. After eighteen years of learning Vulcan discipline, though, Spock was used to ignoring mere physical discomfort. “It sounds as if the two suns are part of a myth,” he suggested.

  “Yes,” responded Cha. He shifted his feet, making the short columns of frost crunch and crackle. “I can tell you that. I am not yet of age, and the stories are not part of the True Lore. In the beginning, they were alone; then Volash challenged Hamarka to bring forth some new thing in the universe. It was to be a thing to make them both laugh if Hamarka could do that. Then with a thought, Hamarka created Marath, the world, and all the [4] life upon her, just to amuse the two friends. Is that not a pretty story?”

  “It is a standard creation myth,” Spock pointed out. Sensing that his observation might create some unfavorable emotion in the other boy, he added, “Although the story is most unusual in its assumption that the universe was created as a—we have no Vulcan term for the concept, but an Earth word is joke.”

  Cha walked a few meters away, leaving a trail of dark footprints against the frost, and sat on a rounded boulder. He huddled into his heavy jacket, for even to someone whose ancestors came from Marath, the afternoon was growing uncomfortably chilly. Already the distant blue volcanoes had begun to show long jagged streaks of white frost. “It is a bitter joke,” he said softly. “A joke that drove my people away from our home world in the time of my great-grandfather’s father’s great-grandfathers.”

  Marathans had a curious way of measuring historical periods. Spock looked at his friend. They had only met a few weeks ago, but they had learned they could talk easily to one another. Cha’s father, Karos Mar Santor, was a diplomatic assistant in the Shakir mission to the home world. Since Spock’s father, Sarek, was an accomplished diplomat himself, the two young men had much in common. Spock had no doubt that Sarek would succeed in drawing the three factions together, for his father had infinite patience and a gift for directing negotiations in the most logical channels.

  Still, the problem was complex and delicate. Marath, [5] the planet on which Spock and Cha stood, was the second world from the binary star in a seven-planet system. For many centuries, different nations had existed on Marath, almost always at war. The constant warfare had many causes: struggles for territory, struggles for power, even conflicts over points of religion. More than five hundred years earlier, scientists on Marath, working to create new and terrible weapons, had developed space flight. The weapon became a means of escape when a fierce global war broke out. Outcasts from the home world of Marath settled first two moons of Gandar, the third planet in the system. Gandar was a swollen gas giant with eleven major moons, two of them large enough to support life. Another group of refugees sheltered on distant Shakir, the fourth world in the system, a planet almost inhospitably cold, except for its equatorial region. Shakir was Cha’s home.

  And now that scientists on Shakir had developed a primitive form of warp drive, they had encountered hostile Klingons uncomfortably close to them in space. Suddenly all the enemy factions in the system had a new foe to dread. The Marathan system had applied to become part of the United Federation of Planets. The Federation was willing, but only if the Marathans could finally resolve their old hostilities. Sarek had launched the historic peace effort that now, after three years of diplomatic struggle, was finally on the verge of producing a treaty—and, everyone hoped, a lasting peace.

  Cha turned to say something to Spock, blinked, and gestured toward the conference center. “Look!”

  [6] Spock glanced over his left shoulder and noted that all the lights were on—every light inside and outside the building shone with a clear white glare. “They have achieved accord,” he murmured. “The agreement has been reached.”

  Cha came to stand beside Spock. “Yes,” he said, his voice surprisingly tense.

  Raising an eyebrow, Spock studied Cha’s profile. The Marathan teen’s features showed no pleasure. They were set in a scowl of—discontent? Anger? Emotions were so hard to read, thought Spock. Especially the emotions of aliens. “I wish you satisfaction in the agreement,” Spock said.

  Cha did not look at him. “We’d better go in,” he said.

  The warmth of the conference center was welcome after the chilly afternoon. An aide offered both Spock and Cha a tall tubular glass with a few centimeters of tshak, a hot Marathan drink. They accepted and quickly gulped the fiery orange liquid, as was polite. It tasted both sweet and bitter, and the spices in it were surprisingly hot. As the steaming drink warmed him from inside, Spock looked around. Dozens of people stood in the grand hall, clustered in groups of six or seven. At last Spock saw his father, Sarek, at the center of one of these groups.

  The tall, dignified Vu
lcan towered above the stocky Marathans around him. As the two boys maneuvered toward him, Spock noticed that one of the Marathans standing near Sarek was Cha’s father, Karos Mar Santor. Like his son, Karos looked tense and unhappy. His mane [7] of hair, even more impressive than his son’s, had lost some of its luster, and the rainbow colors were muted, but Karos was a healthy, vigorous man. As he spoke to Sarek, he gave the impression of great energy under weak control. Spock wondered what emotion Karos felt. Was the word angry? Or was it a different feeling? Spock could only guess.

  Sarek nodded a greeting as Spock and Cha drew near. “Welcome, my son. Good afternoon, young Mar.”

  Cha murmured some pleasantry and then spoke to his own father: “Well?”

  “The majority have approved a treaty,” Karos said shortly, his voice harsh, rasping. “We will not speak of it now.”

  “But, Father—”

  “We will talk of it later!” snapped Karos.

  The abruptness of Karos’s manner surprised Spock. Like his son, Karos was an easygoing, humorous individual. True, Spock had come to realize that even a being who enjoyed laughter could be very serious indeed when dealing with matters of importance. And it was equally true that the negotiations had lasted for a long time and had been most demanding. And yet ...

  And yet something more was wrong. Spock could sense it in the tension between father and son, in the hopeless but determined glare Cha gave the older Mara-than, in the way they both turned abruptly and walked away.