The Farther Shore - Christie Golden [0]
AT THE CREATURE FOR
A LONG TIME.
Doubtless, had a full-blooded Klingon killed it, he or she would be whooping and dancing in triumph. She felt no sense of giddy pleasure. She actually felt sick to her stomach at what she had just done, even though she had been fighting for her life. Still and harmless in death, the grikshak looked beautiful to her. It was only doing what instinct told it to do—find food and stay alive, just as she was.
Slowly, she walked up to the creature and, on impulse, dropped down beside it and placed a hand on its bloody head.
“I thank the spirit of the grikshak,” she said aloud, feeling that what she was doing was both foolish and appropriate. “I will use its flesh for sustenance, and its hide as protection from the elements.”
She would need a sharp stone to cut it open. ...
Based upon STAR TREK®
created by Gene Roddenberry
and STAR TREK: VOYAGER
created by Rick Berman & Michael Piller
& Teri Taylor
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ISBN: 0-7434-6755-8
First Pocket Books paperback edition July 2003
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This book is humbly dedicated
to the Columbia Seven:
Rick Husband
William McCool
ttan Ramon
David Brown
Laurel Clark
Michael Anderson
Kalpana Chawla
We mourn you and salute you.
May your spirits dance with the stars.
Now the laborer’s day is o’er;
Now the battle day is past;
Now upon the farther shore
Lands the voyager at last.
—“HYMN,” JOHN ELLERTON
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
About the Author
About the e-Book
Prologue
Age Twenty-one
She graduates at the top of her class, and she has learned more from the Academy than anyone could have suspected.
She has learned how to feign, to imitate the behavior of others, to blend in. She has been elected head of her class, and students and teachers alike often express their admiration for her intelligence, her leadership. She has learned when to laugh and when to express sympathy, who to cultivate and who to avoid, and what exactly to do to get ahead with every person who crosses her path. She is a master at finding and exploiting weakness, at uncovering secrets, at telling people what they want to hear and getting them to do what she wants them to do.
Her father is killed a few years later, by a Borg [2]attack at Wolf 359. She and her mother appear stoic at the funeral,