Verwandte Artikel zu The Face of the Unknown (Star Trek: The Original Series)

The Face of the Unknown (Star Trek: The Original Series) - Softcover

Buch 38 von 44: Star Trek: The Original

Bennett, Christopher L.

 
9781501132421: The Face of the Unknown (Star Trek: The Original Series)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 1501132423 ISBN 13: 9781501132421
Verlag: Pocket Books/Star Trek, 2016

Inhaltsangabe

Continuing the milestone 50th anniversary celebration of Star Trek—a brand-new novel of The Original Series featuring James T. Kirk, Spock, and the crew of the USS Enterprise!

Investigating a series of violent raids by a mysterious predatory species, Captain James T. Kirk discovers that these events share a startling connection with the First Federation, a friendly but secretive civilization contacted early in the USS Enterprise’s five-year mission. Traveling to the First Federation in search of answers, the Enterprise suddenly comes under attack from these strange marauders. Seeking refuge, the starship finds its way to the true home of the First Federation, an astonishing collection of worlds hidden from the galaxy beyond. The inhabitants of this isolated realm are wary of outsiders, and some accuse Kirk and his crew for bringing the wrath of their ancient enemy down upon them. When an attempt to stave off disaster goes tragically wrong, Kirk is held fully accountable, and Commander Spock learns there are even deeper forces that threaten this civilization. If Kirk and Spock cannot convince the First Federation's leaders to overcome their fears, the resulting catastrophe could doom them all!

Die Inhaltsangabe kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Christopher L. Bennett is a lifelong resident of Cincinnati, Ohio, with bachelor’s degrees in physics and history from the University of Cincinnati. He has written such critically acclaimed Star Trek novels as Ex Machina, The Buried Age, the Titan novels Orion’s Hounds and Over a Torrent Sea, the two Department of Temporal Investigations novels Watching the Clock and Forgotten History, and the Enterprise novels Rise of the Federation: A Choice of Futures, Tower of Babel, Uncertain Logic, and Live By the Code, as well as shorter works including stories in the anniversary anthologies Constellations, The Sky’s the Limit, Prophecy and Change, and Distant Shores. Beyond Star Trek, he has penned the novels X-Men: Watchers on the Walls and Spider-Man: Drowned in Thunder. His original work includes the hard science fiction superhero novel Only Superhuman, as well as several novelettes in Analog and other science fiction magazines.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Star Trek: The Original Series: The Face of the Unknown

One

Captain’s Log, Stardate 5361.7.

Two days have now passed since our discovery of the Betelgeusians’ mysterious attackers and their apparent connection to the reclusive civilization calling itself the First Federation. In the interim, we have received reports of similar attacks on a Saurian transport and an Arcturian trading post, both of which were able to repel the assaults—though not without casualties in the latter case. Whoever these beings are, they seem to be targeting races capable of putting up a fight . . . and their own skill seems to be improving. As they draw nearer to Federation space, a confrontation with Starfleet increasingly appears inevitable.

The First Federation clearly has knowledge of these beings, but our attempts to contact Lieutenant David Bailey, our unofficial ambassador to the First Federation, have proven unsuccessful. The Enterprise is proceeding toward the First Federation border in hopes of establishing direct contact with their representatives. In the meantime, the office of the Federation diplomatic commissioner has requested a full briefing on the matter.

The briefing was at 1900 hours, late by the Enterprise’s clocks, but that allowed Kirk to assemble all the senior officers who had been present for the first encounter with Balok: himself, Spock, McCoy, Scott, Uhura, and Sulu. They met in the largest briefing room, the one with a wall screen in addition to the smaller three-sided viewer in the table, so that Commissioner Gopal could see them all at once. Damayanti Gopal was a strong-featured woman in her mid-forties, only recently promoted to diplomatic commissioner after spending two years as assistant commissioner. Kirk had briefly known her predecessor in that post, Nancy Hedford, and had found her to be a rather prickly and un­diplomatic individual, at least on the surface. So far, Gopal did not seem much different, making Kirk wonder what standards the previous commissioner had employed to select his deputies.

“I have, of course, read all the reports on the Enterprise’s initial contact with Commander Balok and the Fesarius,” Gopal said on the viewscreen. “What concerns me is the lack of follow-up. Your Lieutenant Bailey has had three years to learn more about the First Federation, but he hasn’t found the location of their homeworld or even their true name for themselves. We’re forced to call them Fesarians for lack of anything better!”

“You must understand, Commissioner,” Spock replied, “that Commander Balok’s people have good reason to be cautious. They are a neotenous species, retaining the size and appearance of small humanoid children well into adulthood. Many hostile cultures would be quick to take advantage of such physically fragile beings.”

“Their reactions go beyond caution, Commander Spock. They embrace deception and concealment and use highly aggressive measures to defend their territory. The buoy you first encountered provided no warning, merely clung to you and bathed your ship in lethal radiation until you were forced to destroy it.”

“But we were able to destroy it,” Spock pointed out. “With their technology, they could easily have shielded it against our phasers. The buoy was part of a test to assess our—”

“Your peaceful intentions, yes.” Gopal turned to Kirk. “I do wonder, Captain, why you thought the best way to demonstrate those was to push forward into the territory they obviously wished to fence off. You must have known that would provoke a further response.”

“I was counting on it, Commissioner,” the captain ­replied. “We were peaceful, but we didn’t yet know whether they were. Given the level of technology on display, I decided it was imperative that we learn more about what we were facing.” He gave a small smile. “Consider it a chess move. You have to advance your pieces onto the board to get your opponent to reveal their strategy.”

“And yet we still have more questions than answers. With the power of their technology, their effortless ability to shut down a starship’s power and rifle through its memory banks, why do they feel the need for all this protective camouflage? A giant starship with only one person aboard. A threatening face and voice that turn out to be mere ­puppetry. This is a systematic pattern of deceit, and you had no guarantee the tricks would end once Commander Balok allowed you to board his ship and see his true face. And yet you had no problem assigning your most in­experienced bridge officer as the Federation’s ‘ambassador’ to these people.”

“Lieutenant Bailey was an eager volunteer. I felt it would give him valuable seasoning.”

“Mere hours before, you’d ordered him off the bridge when he became insubordinate and suffered a panic attack. Perhaps you were simply eager to foist him off on some other ship’s captain.”

Kirk clung to his patience. “I wanted to give him a chance to make up for that mistake. Something he was strongly motivated to do. I was that young once myself, Commissioner. I was cocky, and I made my share of mistakes.” He tried to ignore Doctor McCoy, whose expression almost audibly countered, Was? “But I learned a great deal from assignments where I spent time living among other cultures, getting to know them. They brought me valuable perspective, showed me there was always another way of looking at any problem—and at myself.” He reflected on the individuals he had befriended on those missions, leaders whose example had helped guide him in becoming a better officer and a better man—Tyree of Neural, Ren’xaan of Arkoni, King Stevvin of Shad. He had sensed a similar wisdom in Balok and had hoped the little trickster could play a similar role for David Bailey.

“But what exactly has Bailey done with that second chance?” Gopal challenged. “Hit wall after wall trying to pierce the First Federation’s veil of secrecy. Been stuck in an unofficial ambassadorial posting because the Fesarians unequivocally refuse to deal with a more qualified representative. Could it be that they prefer dealing with him because his inexperience makes him easy to manipulate and mislead?”

“Excuse me, Commissioner,” McCoy put in. “Maybe I got the wrong memo, but I was under the impression we were here to talk about these aliens that happen to look like Balok’s mechanical scarecrow, not dissect Lieutenant Bailey’s career.”

“That is exactly my concern, Doctor. Balok claimed his ‘scarecrow,’ as you put it, was a mythical construct.” She checked a note on her data slate. “The Hyde to his Jekyll, he called it. I’m not sure whether I’m more troubled by the idea that he could have assimilated the Enterprise’s databanks rapidly enough to be able to make that allusion, or by the implication that his people may have already known more about us than they admitted. In any case, it is now evident that Balok was lying—that these creatures are far from mythical, and that the First Federation’s members are more physically intimidating than we were led to believe. Perhaps Balok is not the mature form of his species after all, or perhaps their federation includes a more aggressive race among its...

„Über diesen Titel“ kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Verlag
Pocket Books/Star Trek
Erscheinungsdatum
2016
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1501132423
ISBN 13 
9781501132421
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
368
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Simon and Schuster Netherlands BV
info@simonandschuster.nl

Herculesplein 96
Utrecht
3584 AA
Niederlande