Battlestations!

  COLLECT ALL THE STAR TREK FICTION IN 1999!

  JANUARY

  STAR TREK #87 Brother’s Keeper #3: Enterprise—

  Michael Jan Friedman

  STAR TREK. DEEP SPACE NINE #23

  The 34th Rule—Armin Shimerman and David R. George I

  FEBRUARY

  STAR TREK: (hardcover)

  Mission to Horatius—Mack Reynolds

  STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE #24

  Rebels Book 1—Dafydd ab Hugh

  STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE #25

  Rebels Book 2—Dafydd ab Hugh

  MARCH

  STAR TREK

  Day of Honor Omnibus

  STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE

  Rebels Book 3—Dafydd ab Hugh

  STAR TREK: VOYAGER #17

  Death of a Neutron Star—Eric Kotani

  APRIL

  STAR TREK: (hardcover)

  Dark Victory—William Shatner

  STAR TREK

  Spectre—William Shatner

  STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION #50

  Dyson Sphere—Zebrowski/Pellegrino

  MAY

  STAR TREK

  Strange New Worlds II—Dean Wesley Smith, Ed.

  STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION

  Ship of the Line—Diane Carey

  STAR TREK: VOYAGER #18

  Battle Lines—Brodeur/Galanter

  JUNE

  STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE

  Deep Space Nine: Final Episode—Diane Carey

  STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION#51

  Double Helix Book 1: Infection—John Betancourt

  STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION#52

  Double Helix Book 2: Vectors—Smith/Rusch

  A FLICKER OF MOTION

  DREW CHEKOV’S ATTENTION TO

  HIS NAVIGATION CONSOLE.

  The short-range scanner had picked up an object leaving the sunlit face of the planet under heavy acceleration—and heading straight for the Enterprise. The intense brightness of the missile left no doubt as to its identity: someone had launched a photon torpedo.

  Instinct, or academy training, instantly took over. “Incoming!” Chekov shouted, and he jabbed at the switch that activated the defensive shields.

  “Red alert!” Kirk said. “Lock phasers on that tor”

  But there was no time to shoot it down. The ship rocked as the intense matter-antimatter detonation knocked the Enterprise off course …

  Look for STAR TREK Fiction from Pocket Books

  Star Trek: The Original Series

  The Ashes of Eden

  Federation

  Sarek

  Best Destiny

  Shadows on the Sun

  Probe

  Prime Directive

  The Lost Years

  Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

  Star Trek V: The Final Frontier

  Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

  Spock’s World

  Enterprise

  Strangers from the Sky

  Final Frontier

  #1 Star Trek: The Motion Picture

  #2 The Entropy Effect

  #5 The Klingon Gambit

  #4 The Covenant of the Crown

  #5 The Prometheus Design

  #6 The Abode of Life

  #7 Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

  #8 Black Fire

  #9 Triangle

  #10 Web of the Romulans

  #11 Yesterday’s Son

  #12 Mutiny on the Enterprise

  #13 The Wounded Sky

  #14 The Trellisane Confrontation

  #15 Corona

  #16 The Final Reflection

  #17 Star Trek III: The Search for Spock

  #18 My Enemy, My Ally

  #19 The Tears of the Singers

  #20 The Vulcan Academy Murders

  #21 Uhura’s Song

  #22 Shadow Lord

  #23 Ishmael

  #24 Killing Time

  #25 Dwellers in the Crucible

  #26 Pawns and Symbols

  #27 Mindshadow

  #28 Crisis on Centaurus

  #29 Dreadnought!

  #30 Demons

  #31 Battlestations!

  #32 Chain of Attack

  #33 Deep Domain

  #34 Dreams of the Raven

  #35 The Romulan Way

  #36 How Much for Just the Planet?

  #37 Bloodthirst

  #38 The IDIC Epidemic

  #39 Time for Yesterday

  #40 Timetrap

  #41 The Three-Minute Universe

  #42 Memory Prime

  #43 The Final Nexus

  #44 Vulcan’s Glory

  #45 Double, Double

  #46 The Cry of the Onlies

  #47 The Kobayashi Maru

  #48 Rules of Engagement

  #49 The Pandora Principle

  #50 Doctor’s Orders

  #51 Enemy Unseen

  #52 Home Is the Hunter

  #53 Ghost Walker

  #54 A Flag Full of Stars

  #55 Renegade

  #56 Legacy

  #57 The Rift

  #58 Face of Fire

  #59 The Disinherited

  #60 Ice Trap

  #61 Sanctuary

  #62 Death Count

  #63 Shell Game

  #64 The Starship Trap

  #65 Windows on a Lost World

  #66 From the Depths

  #67 The Great Starship Race

  #68 Firestorm

  #69 The Patrian Transgression

  #70 Traitor Winds

  #71 Crossroad

  #72 The Better Man

  #73 Recovery

  #74 The Fearful Summons

  #75 First Frontier

  #76 The Captain’s Daughter

  #77 Twilight’s End

  The Ashes of Eden Federation

  Star Trek: The Next Generation

  Star Trek Generations

  All Good Things

  Q-Squared

  Dark Mirror

  Descent

  The Devil’s Heart

  Imzadi

  Relics

  Reunion

  Unification

  Metamorphosis

  Vendetta

  Encounter at Farpoint

  #1 Ghost Ship

  #2 The Peacekeepers

  #3 The Children of Hamlin

  #4 Survivors

  #5 Strike Zone

  #6 Power Hungry

  #7 Masks

  #8 The Captains’ Honor

  #9 A Call to Darkness

  #10 A Rock and a Hard Place

  #11 Gulliver’s Fugitives

  #12 Doomsday World

  #13 The Eyes of the Beholders

  #14 Exiles

  #15 Fortune’s Light

  #16 Contamination

  #17 Boogeymen

  #18 Q-in-Law

  #19 Perchanee to Dream

  #20 Spartacus

  #21 Chains of Command

  #22 Imbalance

  #23 War Drums

  #24 Nightshade

  #25 Grounded

  #26 The Romulan Prize

  #27 Guises of the Mind

  #28 Here There Be Dragons

  #29 Sins of Commission

  #30 Debtors’ Planet

  #31 Foreign Foes

  #32 Requiem

  #33 Balance of Power

  #34 Blaze of Glory

  #35 Romulan Stratagem

  #36 Into the Nebula

  #37 The Last Stand

  #38 Dragon’s Honor

  Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

  The Way of the Warrior

  Warped

  The Search

  #1 Emissary

  #2 The Siege

  #3 Bloodletter

  #4 The Big Game

/>   #5 Fallen Heroes

  #6 Betrayal

  #7 Warchild

  #8 Antimatter

  #9 Proud Helios

  #10 Valhalla

  #11 Devil in the Sky

  #12 The Laertian Gamble

  #13 Station Rage

  Star Trek: Voyager

  #1 Caretaker

  #2 The Escape

  #3 Ragnarok

  #4 Violations

  #5 Incident at Arbuk

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

  POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster Inc. 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  Copyright © 1986 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: 0-671-03858-3

  ISBN-13: 978-0-6710-3858-8

  eISBN-13: 978-0-7434-1982-6

  First Pocket Books paperback printing November 1986

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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

  Printed in the U.S.A.

  This novel is dedicated to the man and the ship responsible for my sail training—Captain Joseph Maggio and the beautiful, hardworking Bahamian schooner William H. Albury. Their union proved to me that captains really do exist who feel the same intensity toward their ships that James Kirk feels toward the Enterprise.

  Contents

  Author’s Note

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  I must thank my editors for both Trek novels thus far, formerly Karen Haas and now Dave Stern, for their diligent personal attention. As the rest of us can only guess, sifting through piles of Trekkery to find quality worth presenting to the world is neither an easy nor a casual job. Now that Star Trek is in so many hands, the effort to keep it pure becomes more strenuous. So rich a medium as Trek is easily polluted, even by the best of intentions.

  Special thanks to word wizard Mark Okrand for many Klingon minutes via land line. Prime stuff, I must say, in any language.

  Another shout of thanks to Brian “the Scarf” Thomas for designing Piper’s ship with the same flair as he used for the Arco and Tycho fighters. Let’s hear it for guerrilla filmmakers everywhere. And to Gary “éy mate” Jones, here’s to old times, new times, and accurate call numbers on scout ships. Thanks, guys.

  I’d also like to focus briefly on Boris and Doris Vallejo. Boris is responsible for the breathtaking cover paintings and his work continues to dazzle me, especially the care given to my designs and my characters. For all the sheer talent running in the Vallejo household, these are the most gracious, charming, funny, and welcoming people we’ve ever had the pleasure of calling our friends. To both of you, a warm thanks from both of us.

  And, as always—and never enough—credit well deserved to Gregory.

  Fair weather,

  Diane Carey

  “You could feel the wind at your back in those days … the sounds of the sea … even if you take away the wind and the water, it’s still the same. The ship is yours, you can feel her … and the stars are still there, Bones.”

  —The Ultimate Computer

  Chapter One

  THE ENEMY SHIP cut across our port bow, forcing us to heel off to starboard, but our captain gripped the forward rail and refused to give more than a meter.

  “Keep her to,” he said, the quiet of his voice somehow reaching us over the roar of the ship straining.

  “Jim, this is crazy.”

  “Don’t swing off, no matter what your stomach says.”

  Space overhead was bristol blue, the crashing sea even deeper azure and marbled by green swells and white foam. The older officers called it cadet blue.

  “Stand by to come about. Piper, stand by the backstay. Bones, you take the foresheet. And watch your head.”

  “Don’t worry. My head’s not going anywhere.”

  Below and around us white hull and green deck tilted to a sickening forty-five degrees that buried the boom tips in brine and put us straight alongside a swift gust of wind. The bowsprit bobbed in thirteen-foot arches. We crashed against the waves, skating alongside our enemy’s beam for a moment of reasonless risk.

  I freed the backstay on the port side so it wouldn’t be in the way when the big main boom swung about, then slid down the inclined deck to the starboard backstay and got ready to pull it up tight once the sail swung by. There, shivering, I awaited the order to come about. With the ship at this hideous angle, my thigh cut into the rail. I was almost lying on my side. Just over the rail, an arm’s-length away, the tree-trunk boom dug furrows into the seawater with every long dip of the schooner. Arching out and rising away from the water, the mainsail’s bright white canvas tightened with air and became stiff as cast rhodinium. This was drama of the highest order, and my heart thudded testimony to the pure insanity I’d gotten myself into. Of course, I couldn’t exactly decline the honor.

  This old ship had been bending to the winds for something like a century and a quarter on this planet, revived to splendor by the very fading of her own kind. Originally built as a nostalgic replica of a nineteenth-century pilot schooner, she was a working vessel, not a yacht. That “y” word wasn’t allowed on board. And there wasn’t a winch to be found. Every line had to be hand drawn, no matter how heavy the load. The acres of canvas, caught to the masts by big wooden hoops and lashed with rope to the gaffs and booms, made a puzzle of stitched white overlapping rectangles and triangles overhead and together formed a great seagoing pyramid of sailcloth and rigging. Pretty. But sitting here in excitement’s grip, with abused timber groaning under me and the booms biting the tops off eight-footers, it was hard to see the prettiness. Not even in the echo of ourselves as the other ship, a bluff-bowed ancient ketch two meters longer than our schooner, carved away from our starboard stern and came about for another match.

  “Here he bloody well comes again,” uttered Mr. Scott at wheel watch, his Scots rumble getting thicker as tension grew. He was standing at the helm rather than sitting, gripping the spokes of the wooden wheel tightly, and narrowing his gaze forward. His eyes narrowed to dark wedges. His dark hair, matted against his forehead by spray, was laced with the first hints of silver. He wasn’t watching the sails, though. He was watching the captain. And the captain was watching the enemy ship.

  Amidships, Dr. McCoy squinted accusingly at the captain and held on tight to the foresheet. Wind tore at his hair and spray battered his face.

  Our bow lifted high out of the water, coming into the air like some flying fish, until half her keel was clear of the sea. Almost immediately she crashed back into the chop like a descending guillotine, burying the fo’c’sle, burying thirteen feet of bowsprit and the whole bottom of the Genoa jib. I winced and drew my shoulders in.

  Heeled to starboard, the other ship was a mirror image of ours, except that her mast heights were reversed, her fore-tops’l wasn’t flying, and her bow was bluff- instead of clipper-curved. When our captain first started talking about the enemy, I’d thought he was saying “catch”; one of many visits to his aft cabin library had set m
e right. She was the ketch Gavelan. We were out to get her, and she us.

  My hands cramped as I gripped the backstay line.

  Awaiting orders, I looked at the captain and wondered what he was waiting for. Full sail in this kind of chop was crazy enough without waiting until the last second to execute a tack.

  He stood on the forward deck, his eyes hard and pinched at the corners. In a heavy brown sea jacket with the collar up he looked like a holo on a tour spool from some planet-pushing travel agency. His hair, sandy and shimmering on top, darkening at the sides, shone nicely but couldn’t upstage that glare of his. I could see him trying to put his mind into the head of the other captain before making a decision. He wanted more than anything to be inside Gavelan’s hold, secretly listening to what the other skipper was saying—more, though, he wanted to know what the other was feeling, thinking, breathing. He thought he could get there if he stared hard enough.

  “Come about,” the captain said. “Now.”

  Dr. McCoy let go of the foresheet a moment too soon, forcing Mr. Scott to haul hard on the wheel to keep from losing the fores’l into the waves. I held on as long as I could, but the ship wheeled and bucked, reversing herself in the water and cutting a pie wedge in the chop as she tacked. The rigging whistled overhead, the timber groaned, and the hoops grated so loudly I thought they were going to shear right through the mast.

  Bam-the fore boom clunked to port. The sail luffed, then filled and tightened. An instant later—and Mr. Scott ducked just in time to avoid a ringing headache—the main. The schooner twisted back in the water with the grace of a shorebird’s glinting wing.

  “Haul in tight,” the captain called. “I mean you, Piper. Put support on that main, then bring the sheet in close.”

  I shook myself, skidded across the tilted deck and drew in the main until we were so close upon the wind that we threw up a sickle of spray with every dive of our prow. He was watching me. I could feel it. Oh, he was looking at the other ship, but he was watching me.

  “Closer,” he said.

  I drew down harder, sacrificing three more fingernails and one knuckle’s skin.

  Plunging toward each other like two Gloucester packets of a different age, our two schooners glided through walls of spray. The tapered lines of the sails and weaving mastheads conjured images of wave troughs deep enough to hide entire ships. I leaned harder against the teak rail, plain scared. From two sides of an angle, we speared for each other.