Aftermath (Star Trek) (Starfleet Corps of Engineers #29) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1416525769 ISBN 13: 9781416525769

Publisher: Star Trek / Simon Says, 2006

Synopsis

Having recovered from the catastrophic events of Wildfire, the Starfleet Corps of Engineers team on the U.S.S. da Vinci meets its new second officer: Mor glasch Tev, an arrogant Tellarite who's the best there is -- and he knows it.

Even as Captain Gold and Commander Gomez get used to their acerbic new officer, the S.C.E. team faces crises in its own solar system. A strange vessel appears in the middle of San Francisco that the S.C.E. must deal with -- aided by engineers extraordinaire Montgomery Scott and Miles O'Brien. Then they have to help the Venus terraforming team -- a mission that brings Bynar computer expert Soloman to a difficult crossroads.

That's only the beginning of the challenges for the Corps as it faces a Ferengi with a time machine, a prison colony in a black hole -- and a mission from the Dominion War that comes back to haunt the da Vinci crew in more ways than one. . . .

About this title

About the Author:

Keith R.A. DeCandido was born and raised in New York City to a family of librarians. He has written over two dozen novels, as well as short stories, nonfiction, eBooks, and comic books, most of them in various media universes, among them Star Trek, World of Warcraft, Starcraft, Marvel Comics, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Serenity, Resident Evil, Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda, Farscape, Xena, and Doctor Who. His original novel Dragon Precinct was published in 2004, and he's also edited several anthologies, among them the award-nominated Imaginings and two Star Trek anthologies. Keith is also a musician, having played percussion for the bands the Don't Quit Your Day Job Players, the Boogie Knights, and the Randy Bandits, as well as several solo acts. In what he laughingly calls his spare time, Keith follows the New York Yankees and practices kenshikai karate. He still lives in New York City with his girlfriend and two insane cats.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

From Aftermath

by Christopher L. Bennett

Chapter 1

"Danged Breen," Katie Huang complained. "They put a hole in my city."

Sanek, her new assistant, looked up at her as they worked their way down the slope, his bright orange hard hat clashing with his sallow skin. "The Breen put a great many holes in San Francisco. However, most of those holes have been filled."

"Yeah," Katie acceded grudgingly -- or not so grudgingly, she decided as she caught a glimpse of the Golden Gate Bridge, now restored and reopened. She remembered how it had looked a year ago, after the Breen attack on Starfleet Headquarters -- the north tower crumpled, the span missing a huge chunk in the middle. It was a miracle the bridge hadn't collapsed. Some had wanted to leave it as it was as a monument, but it was too valuable a thoroughfare, and too important a symbol of the City by the Bay, not to be restored to its former glory. As proud as Katie was of her fellow civilian builders and maintenance workers, she gave a silent thanks to the Starfleet Corps of Engineers, Earth Division, for their tireless efforts on the city's behalf.

"But that's just it," she went on. "All this time, and there's still this great big ugly scar in the middle of my town."

"That is more the fault of the geology than the Breen."

"They had sensors. They must've known about the underground caverns." The Breen had been indiscriminate in their attack, hitting parts of the city far removed from the military targets and costing many innocent lives. They'd even attacked the Starfleet Museum Center, destabilizing the ground beneath it and opening a sinkhole into which most of the complex had collapsed. The losses to art, culture, and science were incalculable, and Katie felt them keenly; but the massive blemish on the landscape had become her personal symbol for all of it, something that affected her on a visceral level. What had made it worse was that the continued instabilities had hampered efforts to clear and restore the site, so it still remained, even though the rest of San Francisco was as good as new.

"Still," Sanek said, "the ground is now stabilized and most of the wreckage has been cleared away. The new museum can be built soon. Perhaps the construction of a war memorial will be approved. I understand you humans are fond of such emotional representations."

Katie smiled at her new friend's very Vulcan sentiment. "Nothing wrong with a good emotional representation, Sanek. You should try it sometime."

He raised an eyebrow. "That would be illogical, as you well know."

Katie laughed and said, "I know, but you can't blame a human for trying. I'm sure lots of humans think Vulcans would be better off if they let their hair down a bit."

"Just as many Vulcans think humans would be better off if they, to maintain the metaphor, kept their hair tied up."

That prompted another laugh. "Probably, yeah. But that's what keeps the galaxy interesting." They reached the bottom of the sinkhole and activated their sensor units. Not as versatile as Starfleet tricorders, they were still good enough to scan for remaining instabilities, gas pockets, salvageable artifacts from the museum . . . or organic remains. Even now, a few victims were still unaccounted for.

Sanek focused intently on his scanner, barely paying attention to his footing, and Katie smirked. "Don't trip over any android heads."

"I beg your pardon?"

"These tunnels are where they found Data's head a few years back."

"Assuming you are referring to Lieutenant Commander Data of the Starship Enterprise, I was under the impression that his head has remained attached to his person."

"This was his head from the past. He went back in time, it got knocked off, gathered dust here for five hundred years, and got put back on." She frowned. "So his head's twenty times older than the rest of him. I wonder what that does to the warranty."

"According to the records, that was a 'prank' on the part of some cadets from Starfleet Academy -- another of your emotional representations."

Katie grinned. "That's the official story. Of course, time-travel evidence gets classified. Too dangerous, you know. Imagine the havoc someone could cause if they knew how to go back and mess around with the past." She noticed something on her scanner. "Hey, I've got some kind of . . . reading. It's coming and going . . . but yeah, it's there."

"What manner of reading?"

"I think it's some kind of subspace static," she frowned. "Under those rocks."

"Down here?"

"Hell, maybe it's some old communicator from the museum with a bit of power left. Better check it out, though -- might be a priceless antique." Again, she smirked, showing what she thought of the odds. "Help me here." Together they moved the rubble out of the way, exposing the item.

It was a small spherical object, about the size of a golf ball, covered in dust. "It is not registering on my scanner," Sanek said. "Perhaps a Starfleet-issue tricorder would do better."

"No, we don't need to call in the troops every time a problem comes up." She reached toward it.

"I would not advise touching it. We have no way of knowing its function."

"Whatever its function was, if anything, it's been blasted by the Breen's energy dampers, dumped through a sinkhole, and buried under rubble for a year. It probably doesn't do much of anything anymore. Hey, look, it's even got a crack in it. Was that there a moment ago?" She reached a finger forward to indicate the hairline fissure. Her fingernail barely brushed it.

She never heard the blast that followed -- though it rocked the whole city.

It's too quiet, thought David Gold.

He was walking to the bridge with Sonya Gomez, the same morning ritual he and his first officer had enacted every day until the da Vinci had been crippled in the incident at Galvan VI. This was their first morning back since then, and they'd resumed the ritual automatically, a natural beginning to the day when the repaired starship would launch herself out of dry dock once more. Around them the rebuilt corridors sparkled in mint condition; in the background the restored engines thrummed in perfect tune, supplying electroplasma for perfectly calibrated systems. Shipshape and Bristol fashion, Gold thought, remembering the phrase his old friend Jean-Luc liked to use in his antiquarian moments.

But it was too quiet. There was none of the pleasant bustle that had formerly filled the ship's compact corridors -- whether that of engineers pursuing their projects, constantly making adjustments to push the systems just a bit more beyond dry dock specs, or that of crewmates and friends exchanging banter and giving friendly greetings as their commanding officers walked by. All the people they passed were subdued -- the old crew members (agonizingly few) still recovering from the tragedy, the new ones still adjusting to unfamiliar surroundings. It would take time for them to get comfortable with each other, to mesh into a unit that Gold hoped could work as smoothly as the old crew -- though not in quite the same way, to be sure. The da Vinci would never be truly the same again.

Gold wondered if his morning walk with Gomez would ever be the same again either. In the past, it had been an opportunity for small talk, for exchanging shipboard gossip and chatting about family and news and trivia, having more to do with friendship than duty. To Gold, it helped to compensate for being so far from his own family.

In fact, he hadn't been sure that she was going to show up for the walk at all. Among the many fatalities had been Kieran Duffy, the ship's second officer and Gomez's lover. It had seemed from the outside like a simple shipboard romance -- until Duffy had popped the question out of the blue. Gold couldn't blame Gomez for being too farblonzhet to give him an answer. But then Duffy had sacrificed himself to save the ship, never knowing what her answer would've been. By her own admission, Gomez herself didn't know, either. One more loss to add to the list -- the loss of closure. But for a time, Gomez had blamed Gold for Duffy's death, and, though they had settled that, at least, and regained a semblance of their former friendship, Gold knew that Duffy's death would always be a barrier between them.

Gold knew she'd worked through the worst of her grief, and was ready to resume her duties. But there was no telling how long it would be before she could take joy in them again. Which was a shame. She was generally a serious sort, a hardened pro, tough on herself, prone to worry; but underneath it all was a girlish innocence and playfulness, which manifested itself in a radiant smile that filled Gold with fatherly warmth. He missed that smile.

And it was still too quiet.

Naturally, just as he thought that, a jolt went through the ship, knocking him briefly off balance. As he and Gomez ran to the bridge, the captain reflected that he had some choice words for God about His sense of timing.

The bridge was bustling with activity as the crew worked to analyze the disturbance. Yet even here it seemed too quiet, without David McAllan to announce "Captain on the bridge" as he always had. That shtick had annoyed Gold at first, but over time he'd grown accustomed to it, and now he'd give anything to hear it again. Better that than the memory of McAllan sacrificing himself, shoving Gold out from under a falling ceiling support -- of the look on the young man's face in that last moment, meeting his captain's eyes imploringly, seeking assurance that he'd done all right. Until that moment, Gold had never realized the deep respect and devotion that had underlain young David's -- his namesake's -- insistence on announcing his captain's arrival.

Anthony Shabalala, McAllan's replacement at tactical, looked for a moment like he wanted to announce Gold, but couldn't bring himself to. They weren't his words to say.

So Gold announced himself. "What's all the tumult about?"

Lieutenant Commander Mor glasch Tev, the da Vinci's new second officer, rose efficientl...

About this edition

• Publisher: Star Trek / Simon Says
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 1416525769
• ISBN 13: 9781416525769
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 640