Star Trek: Pantheon (54 page)

Then he saw a way out.

“We need to do more than slow down,” Gardenhire said. “We need to push ourselves
that
way.” And he pointed to the bulkhead behind Daniels.

“What for?” asked Williamson.

“So we can splash down,” the navigator explained. “Or would you prefer to crack up?”

“Let’s
push,”
said Daniels.

What Gardenhire was asking of them was a lot more complicated than what they had done before. They couldn’t push in two directions at once; they had to find just the right vector.

Somehow, they managed it.

Then the six of them pushed for all they were worth. The mingling of their talents created an unexpected level of force, one that seemed to be more than the sum of their individual abilities.

The navigator moved closer to the window and looked down. He could see land through breaks in the cloud cover. He could make out a large, blue bowl of a bay, embraced by a hilly, green coastline.

It would be a good place for a settlement, he thought, a good place to make a future for themselves. That is, if they survived long enough to think about such things.

Push,
he insisted.

They poured every last ounce of their energy into the effort, nudging the pod away from the land and out to sea. Gardenhire followed their progress on his instruments, cheering inwardly with each minute alteration in their angle of descent.

We’re going to do it,
he told the others.

It encouraged them to keep it up, to shove the pod as far out over the bay as they could. With a couple of kilometers to go, the navigator was certain of it—they had earned a water landing.

Brace yourselves,
he thought.

They looked at each other as they slid into their shock bunks, needing no words—silent or otherwise—to communicate their feelings. Whether they survived or not, whether their temperamental dampers held or failed, they had fought the good fight. They had discovered a strength in themselves that few members of their species ever came to know.

Neither Gardenhire nor any of the others had a single regret.

Then they punched through the surface of the bay. The impact sent rattlings of pain through the navigator’s skeleton, despite the gelatinous padding that lined his bunk. For a moment, he wondered if they might have hit something more than water—some submerged spine of land, perhaps.

Then he craned his neck to look out the observation portal and saw silver bubbles clustering around them like living seacreatures, enveloping them in an intricately woven cocoon of oxygen-rich atmosphere.

Slowly, feeling for injuries all the while, Gardenhire emerged from his bunk. One by one, the others did the same.

“Everyone all right?” asked Williamson, who looked a little dazed.

Santana felt his jaw. “Could have been worse.”

Daniels kneaded his neck muscles. “You can say that again.”

“How far down are we?” asked Coquillette.

The navigator checked his control panel, but his screen was blank. “I wish I could say. We must have lost external sensors when we hit.”

O’Shaugnessy looked out the portal. “Who needs external sensors? I’d say we have five meters of water above us, tops.”

“And we’re rising,” Williamson added, his eyes closed in concentration as he made the judgment.

Gardenhire concentrated as well and came to the same conclusion. Their mantle of bubbles was dissolving, abandoning them, and the waves above were getting closer. Finally, with an effervescent bounce, the pod broke the surface of the bay.

“Look!” said Santana, pointing to the portal.

The navigator looked through the transparent plate, which was dappled with prismatic droplets. In the distance, past a stretch of undulating blue water, he could see the rocky coastline they had managed to avoid. From here, it looked friendly, even inviting.

“I want to get out,” Coquillette said suddenly.

Daniels grinned. “Me too.”

Gardenhire considered it. There might be jagged rocks just under the surface, or a school of carnivorous sea monsters. But he knew how much the others wanted to leave the pod, because he wanted to leave it also.

“Let’s get a little closer to shore first,” he advised, running contrary to the current of enthusiasm.

Despite their urge to leave their artificial womb behind, the others agreed to do as the navigator asked. By then, working in concert had become almost second nature. They got the pod skidding through the waves rather easily and came within twenty meters of shore.

At that point, even Gardenhire couldn’t stop them. They pried open the hatch cover and spilled out into the water—first Coquillette, then Daniels, then Williamson and Santana. Gardenhire was about to come out too when O’Shaugnessy gave him an unexpected shove.

As the navigator was immersed, he found that the water was warmer than it looked—so warm, in fact, that they were all inclined to linger in it. Gardenhire felt like a kid again, splashing and getting splashed, feeling the sun and the waves wash away weeks of tension and fear.

He wished Tarasco had lived to see this. He wished, at the very least, that the captain could have seen the fruits of his sacrifice.

Finally, the navigator and his comrades got too tired to splash anymore. They struck out for shore with long, easy strokes, tugging the pod along in their wake. That is, five of them did.

O’Shaugnessy chose to try to glide above the waves. But then, as Gardenhire had learned from weeks of sharing a pod with the man, O’Shaugnessy could be something of a showoff.

Star Trek: The Next Generation—Reunion
and

Star Trek: The Next Generation—The Valiant

with Michael Jan Friedman

by Kevin Dilmore

Kevin Dilmore:
To put our conversation in perspective,
Reunion
was your fifth
Star Trek
novel, and it was written only a few years after your first.

Michael Jan Friedman:
Yes.
Double, Double (Star Trek
No. 45) came out first, then came
A Call to Darkness (Star Trek: The Next Generation
No. 9). After that was
Doomsday World (ST: TNG
No. 12, written with Peter David, Robert Greenberger, and Carmen Carter), then
Fortune’s Light (ST: TNG
No. 15).

KD:
What started you on the
Star Trek
writing path? I’m assuming you were a fan of the original
Star Trek
series before deciding to write one of these novels.

MJF:
I watched all of the original-series episodes as they came out—not in reruns. I’ve hardly seen any of them in reruns, even up to today. But I never really thought I’d be writing a
Star Trek
novel. The few that I had read, I had enjoyed, including one by Howie Weinstein. I had written a couple of fantasy books for Warner (Books), and my agent at the time said that the people at Pocket (Books) were looking for new writers to write the
Star Trek
books. At the time, they were publishing only original-series books, and it was only six times a year. Dave Stern was the editor, and my agent hooked me up with him. I gave him a proposal, he liked it, and that became
Double, Double.

KD:
How long did it take for you to put that together?

MJF:
Six or seven months, maybe. When I finished the manuscript of
Double, Double,
I said I wanted to write a
Next Generation
novel, because by that time the first season of
Next Generation
was under way on television. Dave Stern agreed, and I gave him a proposal, then started working on
A Call to Darkness.
It was just a quirk in the publishing schedule that they came out very close together.

KD:
With
A Call to Darkness
coming out in the second season of the show, did you know ahead of time about the change in ship’s doctors from Crusher to Pulaski or did you have to rewrite?

MJF:
I think I started at least in the outline stage with Crusher, and then wound up with Pulaski.

KD:
How did the collaborative
Doomsday World
take shape?

MJF:
I forget whose idea it was, probably Bob Greenberger’s. We were at a picnic on Long Island, and there were at least half a dozen
Star Trek
writers at the picnic. It was a great time. We talked about doing a collaborative novel. We weren’t really sure what the structure would be, but we wound up with four commitments. Bob hadn’t written a
Star Trek
novel, but he was involved in the conception of a lot of different
Trek
projects, so he was a valid contributor. The way we ended up doing it was that Bob did a detailed outline and we each wrote a section simultaneously, and when it was all over I polished everything. It was fun, and Bob, Peter, and I went on to do two other collaborations:
Disinherited (ST: TOS
No. 59) and
(Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
No. 20)
Wrath of the Prophets.

KD:
So we come to
Reunion,
which I understand was the first hardcover novel for
The Next Generation
crew. Who began discussion of that story?

MJF:
I had heard or been told that
Next Generation
hardcovers were a possibility. Up to that time, there had only been the giant-sized paperbacks. To make a story worthwhile as a hardcover, it had to cut into a pretty decent-sized chunk of continuity. In
Double, Double
and beyond, I have been fascinated with the possibilities of crews other than the ones we have seen on TV and the movies. So, I thought,
Well, Picard had another crew. Maybe I could make up that crew.
I think there was some initial discussion of making it a
Stargazer
novel, and probably both Paramount and Dave Stern at the time preferred that it be a
Next Generation
book and that we flash back or otherwise discuss the original crew. And I’ve always kind of liked mysteries, so I made it a mystery. That was pretty much the genesis of it.

KD:
Reunion
remains one of the few straight-out “whodunits” in
Star Trek
fiction. I’m assuming that is something that appealed to your readers. Not only do they get some insight as to Picard’s past, but they get a fun story as well.

MJF:
I think so, yeah. At least that was the intent.

KD:
With
Reunion,
you were working under these basic tenets: Jean-Luc Picard was a crew member and later the captain on a twenty-two-year mission to explore space. And that was about all you had with which to work, correct?

MJF:
We knew that Jack Crusher was on the ship, and there was a crewman named Vigo. We knew that in “The Battle,” one of the first-season
(ST:TNG)
episodes, where we first see the
Stargazer
as a hulk, Picard has sort of a flashback and someone is crying out “Vigo!” Later on, there was an episode in maybe the sixth season or so where we see Picard’s supposed son, Jason Vigo (“Bloodlines”). I think that was an attempt to make that connection, but then somewhere along the line they kept the name but changed the character so there could not have been that connection. So I had Vigo to work with. I also knew how the
Stargazer’
s mission ended—in a clash with the Ferengi.

KD:
So that was a pretty blank slate for you to work with, which I’m guessing made it that much more fun.

MJF:
It was fun, but I wouldn’t have minded a few other points to bounce off of. It makes for good ironies and so on. But it was fun in that respect. I was able to come up with a lot of characters I enjoyed.

KD:
Regarding the core seven officers who show up in
Reunion,
you built that crew with Picard as captain, not Picard as a lower-ranks officer as he appears in
The Valiant.

MJF:
Right.

KD:
Let’s start with the first officer, Gilaad Ben Zoma. Where did you go to come up with him?

MJF:
Without thinking about it too much, I went to my childhood. I have vivid memories of my father reciting the Passover service, and one of the rabbis that gets mentioned in that service is named Ben Zoma. There hadn’t been any Jewish characters in
Star Trek
that I could remember, so I figured why not plunk one in there. And the visual I had for him was sort of Dean Martin. Dean Martin is kind of olive-skinned and has a ready sense of humor. And I remembered him fondly from my days of watching his variety shows as a kid. Not that I would build my life on Dean Martin’s.

KD:
And you didn’t fill out the rest of the
Stargazer’
s crew with the Golddiggers.

MJF:
(laughs) There you go. And that might not have been such a bad idea. But those were the things that kind of converged. And I wanted somebody who was different from Riker, but not so different that Picard would not be able to work with him.

KD:
It definitely struck a different tone in relationship. Where Picard and Riker might resemble the teacher and student, Ben Zoma comes across as a contemporary to Picard.

MJF:
Very much so. They work together, they confide in each other, there are no protocols separating them.

KD:
How about a character who took a darker turn by the end of the book, Carter Greyhorse.

MJF:
Yeah, Carter Greyhorse is an interesting character to me, still. In terms of how he looked, I was thinking of the Indian character in the film
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

KD:
Chief.

MJF:
Right. Big guy, kind of taciturn, and different in one regard in that Greyhorse is a little more intellectual than Chief. But I wanted someone unusual and, again, I couldn’t remember any American Indians in
Star Trek,
so I wanted to put one in there.

KD:
And other than in the comics, I don’t know whether there was an approach to that type of character before Chakotay in
Star Trek: Voyager.

MJF:
When I started writing the book, I didn’t…well, yeah, I guess I did know who the bad guy was going to be, Greyhorse. I wanted him to be different from the doctors we had seen at this point. I guess he had a little bit in common with Bashir in terms of his intellectual superiority, but Bashir had not shown up yet.

KD:
The repartee between Greyhorse and Simenon seemed more playful rather than the sometimes antagonistic exchanges between Spock and McCoy. Was that something you were going for?

MJF:
Yeah, exactly. I wanted a pair of guys who could snipe at each other and be in conflict and yet not be doing it in a petty way; it grows out of genuine mutual respect and affection. And that’s how they are related to each other.

KD:
And Simenon is from a reptilian species called the Gnalish? Tell me what you were thinking along those lines, as that was definitely an alien addition to a
Star Trek
crew.

MJF:
The crews that we have seen on the screen, just because of the exigencies of the production process, had to be pretty humanoid. Now, with CGI, you can get away with a wider range of aliens. But at the time, we hadn’t seen anyone like that on the screen. The closest we had come is the Gorn, and that was very stiff and awkward-looking. But I wanted to do something different. The thought of a sarcastic talking lizard kind of appealed to me.

KD:
He is kind of a wise guy.

MJF:
Yeah, but he has a heart of gold, of course, that he zealously conceals.

KD:
The communications officer is an Aussie, which I thought was great.

MJF:
Yeah, you’ll see in all my books that
Star Trek
is very much an international thing. Even though at least some of our major characters are recognizably American, I wanted to provide a range of international flavor. I try to do it all over the place. I’ve even been criticized for using names that fans say are not
Star Trek
names.

KD:
How do you have a name that is not
Star Trek?

MJF:
I don’t know. I used some kind of French name once, and someone said, “Well, that’s not a
Star Trek
name.”

KD:
And Picard is…?

MJF:
(laughs) Yeah, and Picard is okay, so go figure. But the international flavor is fun, and it’s another way of distinguishing characters, especially when you’re introducing a group all at once. But back to (Tricia) Cadwallader. I wanted her to be attractive and perky and an Aussie.

KD:
She was fun in that she reminds me of what could have come of Yeoman Colt from the original
Star Trek
pilot, “The Cage.”

MJF:
And that was one of the things I thought about with her. Really, the only other crew that we really knew about at the time was Pike’s. Shortly after
Reunion,
I did a book,
StarTrek: Legacy,
that had a lot of flashbacks to Pike’s
Enterprise.
So Colt really was one of the influences on Cadwallader. Not the only one, I guess, but certainly the idea of a young, perky officer.

KD:
And she’s definitely one for whom being out in space remains a thrill.

MJF:
Yes.

KD:
Idun Asmund is one of the two
Stargazer
crew members who share space in the original cover artwork with Picard. Obviously, she is meant to be the alluring, exotic Starfleet officer in the bunch.

MJF:
My idea for her started like this: Worf is a Klingon raised by humans. It didn’t make sense for a Klingon to be on this ship, but I like Klingons and I wanted to have some influence from them, considering that is the other big race in terms of possibilities of people being on a starship. It was too early in the continuity for there to be a Klingon on the
Stargazer.
So I thought what if we turned it around and had humans raised by Klingons? At first, I got a little static over that. I showed the execution of the concept and it was okayed. But I wanted to turn Worf’s paradigm around. And the fact that they turned out to be twins, well, it just struck me as being an interesting idea.

KD:
There’s always an idea when you’re creating a crew that there are bridge stations you have got to fill. With Idun, did you create her character to fill the helmsman’s slot, or did you create a great character and then decide later that she would be a good fit at the helm?

MJF:
I probably started with the slot and filled it with her, and I’m not sure at what point I decided to make her twins. I guess I decided that when I realized what the plot of
Reunion
was going to be.

KD:
I wondered whether that also was the case with Pug. To me, if I saw this guy walking down the hall, just from his physical description I’d pick him as a natural for security.

MJF:
Yeah. Pug was named after a friend of mine, Peter Joseph, but they don’t call my friend Pug. He looks nothing like Pug, and he’s not in security. He doesn’t even wear red shirts as far as I know. But I needed a guy, and I had a sense of who he would be and how he would fit in and where he would figure into the plot. I had to consider two things in a macro sense. One was an array of physical and social personalities who looked different and acted different to distinguish one from the other, with the exception of the twins, of course. The other thing was I needed suspects beyond the guy who actually did it.