Star Trek V: The Final Frontier

“FOR THIS, WE NEED JIM KIRK AND HIS CREW...”

Starfleet had apparently made up its mind; Kirk yielded, but not graciously. “Very well, Admiral. Go ahead.”

“Your orders are to proceed to Nimbus Three, assess the situation, and avoid confrontation if at ail possible. Above all, you’ve got to get those hostages out safely.”

An unpleasant realization struck Jim. “What about the Klingons? Have they reacted?”

“No, but you can bet they will.”

“Klingons don’t negotiate,” Jim said. “They annihilate. They’re liable to blow up the hostages just for the chance to revenge themselves on the kidnappers.”

The admiral’s smile thinned to a grim line. “I know. That’s why you’ve got to get there first, Jim.”

A novel by J.M. Dillard

Based on the screenplay by
David Loughery

Story by William Shatner & Harve Bennett
&
David Loughery

This book 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.

An
Original
Publication of POCKET BOOKS

Copyright © 1989 Paramount Pictures Corporation.
All Rights Reserved

An
Original
Publication of POCKET BOOKS

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

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: 0-7434-5423-5
ISBN-13: 978-0-743-45423-0

First Pocket Books printing June 1989’
POCKET and colophon are trademarks of
Simon & Schuster Inc.

Visit us on the World Wide Web:
http://www.SimonSays.com/st
http://www.startrek.com

For George, Dave Stern, Kathy,
and especially Irwin and Geraldine

Special thanks are due Dr. Carol Williams,
an astronomer at the University of South Florida,
and George at Simply Computers in Tampa

This book 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.

An
Original
Publication of POCKET BOOKS

Copyright © 1989 Paramount Pictures Corporation.
All Rights Reserved

An
Original
Publication of POCKET BOOKS

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

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: 0-7434-5423-5
ISBN-13: 978-0-743-45423-0

First Pocket Books printing June 1989’
POCKET and colophon are trademarks of
Simon & Schuster Inc.

Visit us on the World Wide Web:
http://www.SimonSays.com/st
http://www.startrek.com

THE WATCHER CALLED SOFTLY
at the door of the stone chamber.

T’Rea rose from her bed—nothing more than a double layer of thin handwoven fabric spread across the hard floor. She had lain awake, expecting the summons, for some time now. On the floor beside her slept her young son. He stirred fitfully as T’Rea stood and pulled her neatly folded cloak from a nearby ledge, but he did not wake.

T’Rea slipped on her cloak in the darkness, aided by the bright starlight entering through the open window carved from black rock. She navigated carefully around the shadowy, still figure of her son, then moved with soundless steps to the door. It stood slightly ajar, T’Rea pushed it open farther, and went out into the cavernous hallway.

Lean and dark-haired, the Watcher waited in the flickering torchlight. Beside him stood T’Sai the adept, the woman T’Rea had long suspected would replace her. The hood of T’Sai’s robe had been raised, shadowing her face, but T’Rea recognized her carriage.

T’Rea knew what would come next. She felt an almost physical stab of pain at her betrayal, but her training as a kolinahr adept was consummate; no shadow of emotion crossed her face. She could almost hear the words before the Watcher spoke them, but there was nothing to do now save to listen and endure it.

“The kolinahru have reached a consensus,” the Watcher said. His eyes were opaque, as cold as the night wind on the desert. “A decision has been made.”

Without me,
T’Rea finished silently. The faces of T’Sai and the Watcher, Storel, told her that the decision had gone against her. She was already stripped of her title and power. For that, she felt pain . . . but what gripped her heart was the fear that her child might be taken from her. Remarkably, her expression remained serene.

T’Sai lowered her cowl, revealing a pale, sallow complexion framed by black and silver hair. “I am now High Master of the kolinahru,” T’Sai proclaimed in a voice that was strong and free from any taint of T’Rea’s shame. “You are High Master no more. But we will grant you this: Upon your death, your spirit will be enshrined in the great Hall of Ancient Thought.” Her voice dropped as she switched to the familiar form of address. “It is enough that thou art
dishonored in life; we will not dishonor thee also in death.”

“What more?” T’Rea asked. T’Sai would understand what she meant; there was the question of banishment from the desert mountain retreat of Gol.

The new High Master returned to the more formal pronoun, the one the kolinahru reserved for strangers, outworlders . . . and heretics. “If you wish, you may remain on Gol. But you may not live as one of us; you must remain apart.”

“And my son?” T’Rea struggled to keep the anguish from her voice.

“He may remain with you.”

T’Rea closed her eyes.

“With one provision. The boy is most talented in the mental arts. Such untrained power is. . . dangerous. He must be instructed by the kolinahru in the proper use of his power. . . and in the proper Vulcan philosophy.”

In a way, this was a slap in the face to T’Rea, an intimation that her methods of training the boy were suspect, her philosophy improper. Yet had she been in private, she would have smiled. Let the kolinahru do as they wished to indoctrinate the boy with “proper” philosophy. He was already too much hers. He was barely eleven seasons old—not quite five years old, in Terran terms—yet he had already mastered the elementary mind rules customarily taught to children thrice his age. The child was a prodigy, as intellectually gifted as his father, as telepathically adept as his mother, and T’Rea had taken full advantage of his gifts. She had offered her knowledge to him as freely as she would an adult initiate.

For the boy would be a savior of his people.

He was his mother’s only child, and much beloved. T’Rea had borne him in secret and had kept news of the child’s existence from his father. She named the boy Sybok, an archaic word that conformed to the pattern of male given names but was rarely used; it meant “seer,” “prophet.” In private, she often called him
shiav,
a term from a long-dead religion, which had no counterpart in the modern Vulcan tongue: “messiah.”