• The Letheans open negotiations with the Klingons for entry into the Empire, but progress is slow and the Klingons do not consider the negotiations to be a high priority.
2408
• Sela is crowned Empress of the Romulan Star Empire.
• The Klingons and Gorn invade Cestus III. Starfleet sends ships to defend the planet and its population.
• A Starfleet committee concludes a study showing that because of retirements, deaths, and conflicts, Starfleet is facing a severe shortage of captains. It recommends revising rules on away teams to encourage more officers to seek command positions, increasing enrollment at Starfleet Academy and revising the command structure to allow for the best use of experienced personnel.
• Starfleet loses contact with Starbase 236. It dispatches the Enterprise-E to investigate.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author would again like to recognize the contributions of the legions who enriched the contents of these pages: editor Ed Schlesinger (who has a cameo appearance herein in the persona of Jake Sisko’s twenty-fifth-century editor, E’Shles); Marco Palmieri and Margaret Clark, for their steadfast support over the years; Christine Thompson at Cryptic Studios, whose boundless patience, creativity, and enthusiasm helped to keep me on track throughout the evolution of this book’s many picaresque episodes (as well as her “Path to 2409” timeline); the kind and indulgent folks at the New Deal Café (née the Daily Market and Café), where much of this volume was written; Studs Terkel and Max Brooks, whose respective oral histories of two very different previous “Good Wars” inspired this volume’s format; Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman, Mike Johnson, and Tim Jones, whose Star Trek: Countdown comic-book miniseries (IDW Publishing, 2009) set up the story of Data’s return and the ethical conflict that arose from it; John Van Citters at CBS Consumer Products, for allowing me to chronicle the aforementioned event, as well as the rest of the incidents recounted in these pages; David Mack, for his astonishing work on Destiny, a trilogy whose world-shaking events have reverberated far and wide, affecting even Cryptic Studios’ alternative Star Trek continuity; David Mack (again), for creating Tim Pennington (in Vanguard: Harbinger), the namesake of the Pennington School at which Jake Sisko matriculated; David Mack (yet again), whose A Time to Kill and A Time to Heal introduced President Min Zife; Keith R. A. DeCandido for the backstory on Nanietta Bacco and her supporting cast, including Esperanza and Nereida Piñiero (in A Time for War, A Time for Peace, and Articles of the Federation), copious details about the Cestus Baseball League, its players, and its cofounder Kornelius Yates, the invention of Sinnravian drad music (introduced in his Starfleet Corps of Engineers e-book Cold Fusion), and the Meet the Press–style public affairs program, Illuminating the City of Light; S. D. Perry, whose initial post-television-series DS9 novel Avatar Book One established Jake Sisko’s middle name; Christopher L. Bennett, whose U.S.S. Titan novel Orion’s Hounds introduced the term “cosmozoa(n)” to Star Trek literature, and whose story “Places of Exile” in Star Trek: Myriad Universes—Infinity’s Prism established the first alternate name for Species 8472 (the “Groundskeepers”); the entire Star Trek Internet community, those tireless wiki-compilers whose multitudinous and serried ranks defy enumeration here; Geoffrey Mandel, for his Star Trek Star Charts (2002), which kept me from getting lost in the galactic hinterlands many times; Michael and Denise Okuda and Debbie Mirek, whose Star Trek Encyclopedia: A Reference Guide to the Future (1999 edition) remains indispensable even in this modern age of ubiquitous wikis; Shane Johnson’s Star Trek: The Worlds of the Federation, for information about Tau Lacertae IX, the Gorn homeworld; Greg Cox and John Gregory Betancourt, who created the Xoxa colony for their DS9 novel Devil in the Sky; Interplay Games, whose Starfleet Command video game (1999) was the source of my references to the Gorn Egg Bringer S’Yahazah; Peter David (Cold Wars), Kevin Dilmore (“The Road to Edos” from the No Limits anthology), and Michael Jan Friedman (Star Trek: New Worlds, New Civilizations), for their stories featuring Department of Temporal Investigations agents Lucsly and Dulmer; Kevin Dilmore (again), for formulating the distinction between the three-legged Edosians and the three-legged Triexians (“The Road to Edos”); William Leisner for Denevan Federation Council member Lynda Foley, who debuted in his TNG novel Losing the Peace; my own work on two Titan novels (Taking Wing and The Red King, both cowritten with Andy Mangels) for the “continuity glitch” (oops!) that yielded Noah Powell, and John Vornholt’s earlier The Genesis Wave series, which introduced Noah’s alter ego, Suzi Powell; my Marvel Comics Star Trek editor, Tim Tuohy, and my longtime colleague Andy Mangels, for the references to the U.S.S. Thunderchild and members of her crew, as conceived for the abortive Star Trek: Phase III comic-book series we almost got to do at Marvel Comics way back in the late twentieth century; Phantom Productions’ Tape Recorder Online Collection and Museum (http://reel2reeltexas.com/index.html), for information about Vic Fontaine’s 1962-vintage audio equipment; Jonathan Coulton, whose music gave me inspiration, a nifty-sounding place name (Chiron Beta Prime), the name of the Sinnravian drad musician (J’Nat Cton) who sang the UFP anthem at the big game on Cestus III, and some much-needed laughs (“All we want to do is eat your brains!”) when I needed them most; Scott and David Tipton, for attaching a Klingon name (Gralmek) to Arne Darvin/Barry Waddle (“Beneath the Skin,” issue no. 2 of IDW’s comic-book miniseries Klingons: Blood Will Tell); all the show runners who brought Star Trek to screens large and small over the past four-plus decades, with special kudos to J. J. Abrams, Roberto Orci, and Alex Kurtzman, who together crafted the new continuity tangent that spawned the Star Trek Online role-playing game, IDW’s Countdown and Nero comic-book miniseries, and this book; all the actors whose characters participated in this volume’s “interviews,” but especially Cirroc Lofton and Tony Todd, each of whom made indelible imprints on the Jake Sisko character; Gene Roddenberry (1921–1991), for creating the entire universe in which I get to spend so much time playing; and lastly, though never leastly, my wife, Jenny, and our sons, James and William, for long-suffering patience and unending inspiration.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michael A. Martin’s short fiction has appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and he is the author of Star Trek: Enterprise: The Romulan War—Beneath the Raptor’s Wing. He has also coauthored (with Andy Mangels) several Star Trek comics for Marvel and Wildstorm as well as numerous Star Trek novels and e-books, including Star Trek: Excelsior—Forged in Fire; Enterprise: Kobayashi Maru; Enterprise: The Good That Men Do; the USA Today bestseller Titan: Taking Wing; Titan: The Red King; the Sy Fy Genre Award–winning Worlds of Deep Space 9 Volume Two: Trill—Unjoined; Enterprise: Last Full Measure; The Lost Era 2298: The Sundered; Deep Space Nine Mission: Gamma Book Three—Cathedral; The Next Generation: Section 31—Rogue; Starfleet Corps of Engineers nos. 30 and 31 (“Ishtar Rising” Books 1 and 2, reprinted in Aftermath, the eighth volume of the S.C.E. paperback series); stories in the Prophecy and Change, Tales of the Dominion War, and Tales from the Captain’s Table anthologies; and three novels based on the Roswell television series. Other publishers of Martin’s work include Atlas Editions (producers of the Star Trek Universe subscription card series), Gareth Stevens, Inc., Grolier Books, Moonstone Books, The Oregonian, Sharpe Reference, Star Trek Magazine, and Visible Ink Press. He lives with his wife, Jenny, and their sons, James and William, in Portland, Oregon.
* At one point my office looked like a cityscape crafted out of stacks of the old-style Cardassian data rods I’d gotten into the habit of using during my DS9 years.
* This occurred only after much arm twisting on Michael’s part and my receipt of his solemn pledge that my name would appear after the ampersand rather than before it. I insisted on this because so much of the literary heavy lifting—the daunting task of imposing some degree of narrative order upon the chaos of my raw record of the war—had fallen across Michael’s sturdy back, sparing me the vast majority of the truly hard trench work. Michael will probably try
to inflate my contribution to the final version of this work at his own expense, but the reader must bear in mind that he’s a filthy liar.
* December 20, 2396.
* Semper Fidelis was the official Latin motto of the United States Marine Corps, while Semper Invictus was the Latin phrase similarly adopted by its twenty-second-century successor, the MACO (Military Assault Command Organization), which is still extant today.
* April 1, 2389—as if the gathering threat of the Undine wasn’t causing the Federation enough trouble.
* The extradimensional realm that has become widely known as “fluidic space” since its discovery in 2373 by the crew of the Starship Voyager. As the name suggests, matter in this dimensional plane exists in a “fluidic” state, as does space itself.
* For more insights into the Borg collective’s failed attempt to conquer the Undine, I recommend my O. Henry tribute, “The Assimilation of Red Chief,” from my Collected Stories. (J.S.)
* September 17, 2389.
* The Ninth Ferengi Rule of Acquisition is stated in the form of an economic equation: “Opportunity plus instinct equals profit.”
* In order to record my interview with Vic Fontaine, I had to dispense with my usual complement of holographic recording equipment. Because Vic’s 1962 Las Vegas holosuite program is strictly period specific, I had to use an ancient audio recorder that encoded our conversation in the form of magnetic particles embedded into reels of extremely flimsy-looking tape. I would have felt a lot safer using a pencil and paper.
* Mutara Interdimensional Deep space transponder Array System. In 2376 this facility played a pivotal role in opening up long-range subspace communications with the U.S.S. Voyager, still stranded in the Delta Quadrant at the time.
* Admiral Janeway’s choice of the word “disaster” in this context is an entirely appropriate one. The word comes to us, by way of Old Italian and Middle French, from Greek roots that mean, literally, “bad star.”
* Organisms, like those discovered at Deneb IV by the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise-D in 2364, that live in space and feed on the raw EM emissions of stars and other bodies in interstellar space.
* In fact, the Undine did indeed use a spatial rift in the McAllister C-5 Nebula as a point of passage into our universe.
* Starfleet experts have theorized that this Borg technology may have come from the same source as the weaponry that the Romulan Mining Guild representative Nero tried to bring to bear against Vulcan in 2387.
* March 13, 2408.
* A Cardassian deca is roughly equivalent to a kilometer.
* Federation News Service, 2388.
* The Undine, or literally “replacers-of-honor-with-dishonor.”
† Circa 2395.
* Worf and Grilka’s son, K’Dhan, was born in 2388 (stardate 65548.43), more than six standard months after Nero’s 2387 attack on Vulcan.
* The Klingon Defense Force.
* June 4, 2399.
* Also known as Bacco Field (originally Ruth Field), Bacco Stadium was named after Nanietta Bacco, over her own strenuous objections. Bacco served as president of the United Federation of Planets from 2379 until 2389, after serving eleven years as governor of the Federation colony world Cestus III, where she had previously served as representative for Pike City’s Fifth District.
† Full disclosure: Captain Yates is my stepmother, the second woman (after Jennifer Felecia Sisko, my late mother) to exchange vows with my father, Benjamin Lafayette Sisko. (J.S.)
* Kornelius “Junior” Yates is one of the most celebrated baseball players in the history of the Cestus Baseball League, which he helped to establish in 2371. Although Yates was widely considered to be past his prime by 2380, he played shortstop for the Pike City Pioneers for another decade before becoming the team’s manager.
* The Cestus Baseball League of Cestus III was the first professional baseball association to form in Federation history.
† Located deep in Beta Quadrant space, Cestus III has been an object of contention between the Federation and the Gorn Hegemony on several occasions over the past two centuries.
* Hughes Baptiste’s broken bat, splintered when he hit the home run that clinched the Pioneers’ victory in the series against the Port Shangri-La Seagulls, is on display in Pike City’s Pioneer Pub.
* Nancy Addison was one of the Pike City Pioneers’ greatest power hitters during the 2370s and 2380s, despite her diminutive size.
† Meridor is a fermented beverage, usually a deep blue in color, that is brewed on several Beta Quadrant worlds, including the Gorn homeworld. Although the Gorn recipe is a closely guarded secret, Starfleet chemists have theorized that the active ingredient is a digestive enzyme that originates in the lower intestinal tracts of laborer-caste Gorn.
* S’Yahazah is the name of the Great Egg Bringer from Gorn mythology, roughly analogous to the Eve or Earth Goddess figure from many human myths. S’Yahazah’s name has become attached to one of the largest cities on Tau Lacertae IX, the Gorn homeworld.
* This is a remarkable achievement for a single player, considering that from 1880 until the cessation of Major League play on Earth in 2042, only twenty-seven perfect games (defined as nine-inning or longer victories during which no opposing players managed to get on base) were pitched.
† Hickorash (Caryafraxinus cestana) is a species of fast-growing hybrid tree, developed specifically to prosper in the mineralogically unique soils of Cestus III. Developed from hardy strains of ash and hickory, it is famous for yielding exceptionally strong wooden baseball bats. The abundance of hickorash on Cestus III probably played a key role in the emergence of that world as the cradle of the modern baseball renaissance.
* June 6, 2399.
* October 25, 2399.
* So-called neobircher political action groups have popped up throughout Federation history, mainly as a reaction to perceived Federation decadence and indolence. The term “neobircher” is derived from John Birch (1918–1945), a missionary and military intelligence officer who became the namesake of a fringe right-wing twentieth-century political movement on Earth.
* January 2, 2409.
* The Temporal Displacement Division, which functions both as a Federation civilian authority and as a Starfleet administrative office, known alternatively as the Starfleet Department for Temporally Displaced Officers.
* Gralmek, aka Arne Darvin, aka Barry Waddle, was surgically altered to pass as human as part of a failed plot by Klingon Intelligence to sabotage Federation efforts to colonize Sherman’s Planet in 2267.
* Hugh Everett III (1930–1982) was the physicist who pioneered the “many worlds interpretation” of quantum mechanics—the view that all conceivable chance events, even mutually exclusive ones, will occur in other, otherwise identical parallel universes. His views remain controversial today, despite the documented existence of both alternate quantum universes and the time displacement events that might serve to create them.
* Friedman, Michael Jan. New Worlds, New Civilizations. New York: Federation News Service and Simon & Schuster, stardate 52954 (2375).
* This description of the Federation’s chief executive as “the dragon in the Palais” is an unfortunate anti-Saurian ethnic slur that originated during Aennik Okeg’s first successful campaign for the UFP presidency. Unfortunately, the sobriquet is still used by some of President Okeg’s detractors even today.
* September 8, 2406.
* That’s October 6, 2385, 19:05:29 GMT, on the Gregorian calendar.
* Lieutenant Natasha Yar (2337–2364).
* Sir Donald Wolfit (1902–1968).
* June 30, 2408.
* November 22, 2408.
† It must be noted here that neither of this book’s authors nor its editor could verify any aspect of the above story, which was published by a thoroughly disreputable news periodical that is a wholly owned subsidiary of Broht & Forrester, the equally disreputable holopublisher that once made a failed attempt to cheat the U.S.S. Voyager’s Emergency M
edical Hologram out of his right to control the publication of his own original holonovel (an imbroglio that probably accounts for the publisher’s evident antipathy toward holograms). This excerpt is included only to give the reader a small taste of the disinformation that the Undine War inspired. Ardon Broht, the architect of so much malfeasance of this sort, was given a five-year sentence at the New Zealand Penal Colony on Stardate 97267.3 (April 7, 2420), following his conviction on charges of laundering Orion Syndicate money for the Ferengi gangster Nava. What goes around, apparently, really does come around eventually, if one lives long enough and is willing to be patient. (J.S.)
* July 25, 2408.
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