Pantheon - Michael Jan Friedman [0]
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Additional text copyright © 2003 by Paramount Pictures. All Rights Reserved.
Reunion copyright © 1991 by Paramount Pictures. All rights reserved.
The Valiant copyright © 2000 by Paramount Pictures. All rights reserved.
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ISBN: 0-7434-9160-2
First Pocket Books trade paperback edition September 2003
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available.
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For Uncle Leslie, never forgotten
Introduction
I distinctly remember two things about the first-season Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “The Battle.” One was that it featured a guy who had been my pal in second grade.
I noticed it the first time his face appeared on the screen. “My God,” I said, “that’s Douglas Warhit.”
“Who?” asked my wife, who was five months pregnant at the time and understandably had other things on her mind.
“Douglas Warhit. We were pals in second grade. I haven’t seen him in maybe twenty-five years.”
My wife knew I never forgot a face (God’s halfhearted way of balancing out my many failings), but this was different. This wasn’t just a guy I had known a quarter of a century earlier. This was a guy I had known a quarter of a century earlier who was playing a Ferengi.
We’re talking major makeup here—the ears, the nose, the forehead, the whole deal. And as far as I could recall, Douglas Warhit’s teeth hadn’t ever come to sharpened points. But I recognized him—in a couple of seconds, tops. It remains one of my most cherished accomplishments.
If I see you at a party, I’ll probably tell you about it. At length.
The other thing I remember about “The Battle” was its revelation that, once upon a time, Picard had commanded another ship. Many years before he had even contemplated setting foot on the Starship Enterprise, he had worked with another crew entirely.
But in “The Battle,” we didn’t learn very much about that crew. They were left huddling in a dank, dark corner of the Star Trek universe, waiting to be discovered. And there’s nothing I like better than shining light into dark corners.
As I write this, Picard’s first crew has appeared not only in Reunion and The Valiant (the books that compose this volume), but also in several other novels, including Requiem, The First Virtue, and the four Stargazer titles published to date: Gauntlet, Progenitor, Three, and Oblivion.
I’m currently in the process of outlining the fifth and sixth books in the series, tentatively entitled Enigma and Maker. And Ben Zoma, the Asmunds, Simenon, Greyhorse, Vigo, and Pug, who started out as characters I thought I would use once and discard, have become like a family to me.
I hope you feel the same way.
And if you’re out there, Douglas, I have to tell you something as a friend…get a dentist, dude. Pointed teeth just gross people out.
Michael Jan Friedman
Somewhere on Long Island
May 2003
Prologue
United Space Probe Agency Starship
S.S. Valiant
2068
One
Carlos Tarasco of the S.S. Valiant stood in front of his captain’s chair and eyed the phenomenon pictured on his viewscreen.
It was immense, he thought. No—it was beyond immense. It stretched across space without boundaries or