Strange New Worlds III
320
Strange New Worlds III
320eBook
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Overview
Each Strange New Worlds competition draws a greater response than the last. The final selections gathered here were chosen from an overwhelming number of entries by virtue of their originality and style. With wit, compassion, and an affection for all things Star Trek, these brand-new authors take us where Star Trek has never gone before.
Their tales rocket across the length and breadth of Federation time and space, from when Captain Kirk explored the galaxy on the first Starship Enterprise™, through Captain Picard's U.S.S. Enterprise™ 1701-D and Captain Sisko's Deep Space Nine™, to Captain Janeway's Starship Voyager™, with many more fascinating stops along the way.
Find out what happens in the Star Trek universe when fans -- like you -- take the helm!
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780743411134 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Pocket Books/Star Trek |
| Publication date: | 02/21/2001 |
| Series: | Star Trek , #3 |
| Sold by: | SIMON & SCHUSTER |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 320 |
| Sales rank: | 850,530 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
About the Author
John J. Ordover previously edited and oversaw the Star Trek franchise licensed novels. He is also the co-creator of many Star Trek spin-off series.
Considered one of the most prolific writers working in modern fiction, USA TODAY bestselling writer, Dean Wesley Smith published far over a hundred novels in forty years, and hundreds of short stories across many genres. He currently produces novels in four major series, including the time travel Thunder Mountain novels set in the old west, the galaxy-spanning Seeders Universe series, the urban fantasy Ghost of a Chance series, and the superhero series staring Poker Boy. During his career he also wrote a couple dozen Star Trek novels, the only two original Men in Black novels, Spider-Man and X-Men novels, plus novels set in gaming and television worlds.
Read an Excerpt
Strange New Worlds III
By Dean Wesley Smith Paula M. Block John J. Ordover
Star Trek
Copyright © 2000 Paramount PicturesAll right reserved.
ISBN: 0-7434-1113-7
Chapter One
[First Prize] If I Lose Thee ...Sarah A. Hoyt and Rebecca Lickiss
A bleak, gray, ancient plain stretched out to the horizon, scattered ruins punctuating the distance. Uhura turned away from the steady dust-laden wind to face the gauntlet of historians and officers leading up to the flickering arch of the Guardian.
"Now, don't forget," one of the historians, a tense man with a thin face, said. "The halfpenny is the silver coin you use to pay for a quart of ale, but a loaf of bread is worth a penny, and a twopenny half-groat will buy you dinner at an inn. Be careful how much you pay. You could change history by making someone rich accidentally." He fixed Uhura with an earnest, pleading gaze.
The coins' names made Uhura dizzy. Half crown, quarter angel, angelet, and the other gold coins, added to a confusion of silver coins. She nodded sagely to the anxious, thin-faced man.
"Have you got all that?"
Quite sure of already having forgotten it, Uhura nodded reassuringly and patted the hidden purse of coins near the top of her dress, where her red bodice squashed her breasts uncomfortably, so that they protruded above, much exposed and unnecessarily enhanced. "Got them right here."
If she didn't find that idiotic boy,William Harrod, and actually had to buy food or, worse, lodging, she would have to find a local and - using age-old techniques of promising without delivering - part him from his money, which he knew how to spend. As for her own money, she'd keep it where it belonged. Hidden.
"Now, remember not to go into a tavern or a public place, unless you find a man to accompany you, or they might think ..." another of the historians said.
Uhura nodded with a confidence she didn't feel and walked by. She hoped they were right about the costume she was wearing. It had no underwear, just a sort of smock beneath the stiff gown, and the skirts were slashed, the puke-green one showing the sickly yellow one showing the bloodred one. She trusted the red hadn't been slashed to show her backside.
"Don't go into a plague house. You can't do anything for the victims without changing history."
She adjusted the red and gold turban on her head, wondering if real Moorish princesses had to tolerate this sort of coaching. If so, she was doubly thankful to be a Federation officer.
"Remember, anything you do could potentially endanger the present. Just find William Harrod and come back, quickly."
Unfortunately no one was yet sure how to come back, but they didn't dwell on that trivial detail. Just as no one was willing to explain precisely how historian William Harrod had accidentally fallen into the Guardian's time portal and become lost, either.
Uhura walked on, trying to escape the thronging mass of anxious, twittering scientists, hampered by the dress's layers of skirts, ridiculously tight waist which prohibited breathing, and flat bodice hardened by several layers of stuffing.
One of the historians kept following her, twitching at the ties that attached her slashed puke-green and sickly yellow sleeves, and rearranging their dangling, ground-dragging tassels. In a pinch she supposed she might be able to use the sleeves to strangle someone. Maybe one of the scientist-historians.
Mr. Spock melted the confusion of scientists around her merely by raising one eyebrow. She smiled at him gratefully.
"If only we could send you with a tricorder, a phaser, something ..." McCoy looked at her sadly.
"A tricorder will do me no good, sir," Uhura said. "And it might cause a temporal disruption." She nodded, and did her best to look competent and calm. "I'll be fine."
"Good luck, lass," Scotty said. "Do you remember what William Harrod looks like?"
"Yes, sir." Uhura nodded. The memory of the image taken from the Guardian was burned into her brain. A blank-faced, blandly blond young man, with a weak chin and watery-blue eyes, wearing a woman's costume similar to this one, holding her hand, preparing to kiss it. The sight of herself in that ancient picture was one she'd never forget. One she feared would come back to haunt her nightmares. She'd also heard enough of William Harrod to suspect he, too, would be a nightmare.
In front of the arch, Captain Kirk waited and looked at Uhura, head to toe, with an amused gaze. "Good job of period dressing, Lieutenant," he said, and smiled. "Very becoming."
"Thank you, sir." Uhura felt her cheeks heat, but kept her expression rigidly professional. She had to admit that, having looked at herself in the mirror before leaving her quarters, this uncomfortable combination of straitjacket and ball gown was very flattering indeed. Which didn't alter her impression that she was sauntering breathless, bare-breasted, and bare-assed into Elizabethan England.
"I still think one of us should go with her," McCoy said, stubbornly holding to his earlier objections.
"The Guardian shows only her and William Harrod." Kirk's frown indicated he agreed with McCoy whatever his words might be. "And the Guardian says only she can enter without changing the shape of time." He glared accusingly at the arch next to him.
"I'll be fine." She would be, too, because she had no intention of dying in Elizabethan England, of all the rat-infested plague-holes in the universe. If she got lucky, she would find that the reason William Harrod hadn't caused any disruption was that he died right after he kissed her hand. Though she feared that strangling him for his stupidity in accidentally falling into the portal would look bad when reported in her log, she must, therefore, rule it out as an option.
Half-smiling at the thought, she saluted her captain and stepped into the portal.
Uhura stood in what she decided must be a back alley. It didn't look at all as she imagined London would. She'd been to London, once, and she'd found it a charming, if boring, place with an atrocious cuisine and very good tea.
But the London in which she found herself looked much like a village. Well, at least, from where she stood she could see three pigs, and four ... no, make that five scrawny chickens, scavenging their way amid piles of refuse. Rotten vegetables, human waste, and things she truly didn't want to identify, mixed in with the mud into which her brand-new ankle boots sank.
All right, the buildings were probably too tall for a village. They towered up three or four stories, and the alley - she hoped it was an alley, she would hate for it to be a main street - that separated them was no wider than her arm span. Which meant that precious little light filtered through.
From somewhere nearby came a deafening roar, like thousands of people speaking, screaming, and screeching at the same time. It sounded like a disturbance of some sort, but this was where William had arrived, and Uhura reasoned that her chances of finding William were better if she went toward the noise.
"Will, Will, Will." The shriek came from above her. Looking up, Uhura saw, in the half-light above, a disheveled female head sticking out of a window.
"Will, Will. Where has that boy got to?"
"Coming, Mum," sounded from the end of the alley farthest away from the noise. From the dim distance, a small boy came running, splashing mud everywhere, and stepping on who knew what without caring. The chickens ran squawking ahead of him, as he plunged past Uhura - barely pausing for a curious look - and into a darkened doorway.
Well ... Maybe a Will, but definitely not William Harrod.
Gingerly, she walked toward the noise, trying not to step on anything that looked too obviously rank. She grabbed her skirts on either side, but, unfortunately, as she reached down to pull them up, the golden tassels at the end of her sleeves dragged in the mud.
The historians and the computer must have gotten the idea for the tassels from some picture of an Elizabethan court lady. Uhura, mincing her way through Elizabethan muck, wished very much that she could grab one of the historians and make him try to keep each portion of this sumptuous wardrobe clean.
The alley turned in a tight, blind curve, and suddenly opened up onto a street at least five times as wide. Wide enough, Uhura judged, for a cart, or maybe for five people to walk side by side. Before she could see much of it, though, a grizzled, scarred face pushed itself in front of her.
"Alms, milady. Alms for poor one-leg Will, a veteran of the Spanish wars, by your kind mercy." The man leered at her, a dubious leer that showed a near-toothless mouth, and breathed a reek of alcohol in her direction. His right leg, below the knee, ended in the proverbial peg-leg.
She turned away from him, not sure what to do. She'd never met a beggar before. She wanted to reach between her breasts and give him the whole leather purse, but in her mind she heard the thin-faced historian telling her that she could change history by giving anyone too much money.
As she turned away, she heard the beggar behind her calling out names that she was sure were obscene - "bawd" and "painted Jezebel" being the only ones she recognized.
Feeling a little better about not helping him, she looked at the other people on the street. There were a lot of them to look at - hundreds in her vicinity, many more than should fit the street. And they weren't, unlike Uhura had first surmised, engaged in anything half so rational as mayhem or disturbance. Instead, all scrambled everywhere, like a disturbed ant hill, each speaking or yelling at the top of his or her voice to other people who were speaking or screaming at someone else.
She dismissed her first fear, that her clothes might be too gaudy. Men and women alike wore clothes so bright as to make the eyes hurt. And they smelled. Not of sweat or unwashed flesh, as she'd expected, not even of the stuff that every one of them must be carrying around on their soles, since this street looked as filthy as the alley. No, they stank of perfume. The odors of all sorts of spices, the smells of most trees, and every flower known to botany, clashed in the air, and each wide-skirted lady, each tight-garbed gentleman who pranced past wafted a different one to add to the mix. Uhura decided that if she escaped going deaf, or blind, or both, she would surely lose all sense of smell before this mission was over.
Holding up her skirts she sauntered into the multitude, accepting inevitable jostling, and elbowing people out of the way when she must. Uhura looked around at the first hint of blond hair, or at the sound of the name "Will." The problem seemed to be that all these men had only three names at their disposal: William, Richard, or Henry. The occasional wild individualist would be named Christopher or Kit. The women, too, all seemed to be either Anne, or Margaret, or Mary. She guessed this must be well before the time of creative naming.
"Ah, well met, Will. You'll have a pint with me," a male voice to her right side.
Uhura looked, but both gentlemen were too portly for either of them to be the boyish William Harrod.
"Dost thou bite thy thumb at me, Will?" a voice screamed from her right, in the tone of fighting words.
"I bite my thumb, Richard. But not at thee."
Neither of these two, both young men and about the right age, had blond hair. They stood facing each other on the street, and people gave them a wide berth, as each of them pulled out long swords. Uhura, with the others, made haste to get away from them, only to be thrown against a throng of people rushing toward the disturbance to gawk.
Quietly but forcefully, she elbowed her way toward the edge of the street. She'd thought there had been law and order under Elizabeth, and that people were arrested for public brawling. She distinctly remembered reading ...
A scream sounded behind her, and Uhura looked over her shoulder to see one of the young men, either William or Richard, run his opponent through with his long sword. The wounded man screamed as he fell onto the street in a gush of blood.
The circle that had gathered to watch the fight moved away, and Uhura found herself shaking. Someone had just been killed, or at least seriously injured. She took a deep breath. Wasn't anyone going to do something? Call the guard? The medics? Shaking, she walked away, not certain that the chill she felt was from the coolness of dusk settling over the city.
A woman ahead of her fell into a man's arms, calling him her sweet Will. Uhura glared at both of them, thinking that William Harrod might have done better to have an original name, if he was planning to get lost in Elizabethan England. Any name would have done - John, or Bob, or Mike. Anything but Will. But no, he had to be William, didn't he? Right at that moment, had she come across Harrod, she would gladly have killed him ... She stopped, remembering the duel and the young man falling into the muck, bleeding. All right, she would gladly have dressed William Harrod down for the capital crime of his unfortunate name.
"Pardon me, Lady," a man said, as he squeezed past her. He smelled heavily of pine, and had warm-brown curls, and caramel colored eyes. And she'd bet his name was Will.
Frustrated, Uhura followed him with her gaze, more to have something to fix on than because she wanted to know where this presumable Will went. Unlike most of his contemporaries, he wore a sensible, if ugly color - a reddish brown. His jacket had much the same tailoring as Uhura's bodice, and his pants stopped just below the knee, where his black stocking showed, molding a straight, muscular leg. He walked with the elastic assurance of a self-confident man on an errand. Uhura envied him heartily.
Suddenly, he broke into a run, and yelled something. Almost without meaning to, she followed, and saw him plunge into a crowd. As Uhura plunged in, after him, she saw him dive into a group of men, and snatch a small boy by his ragged collar. His son?
The man pushed the boy behind him, and turned to the other four men, fists ready. "Varlets, villains, traitors, verminous excrescences, putrid meat. Wouldst thou pick on a child?"
His words showed more spirit than wisdom, unless the boy did happen to be his son, because the men he faced all looked burlier than he, taller and twice as wide, and with fists like hams.
Uhura told herself that she wouldn't intervene. It was none of her business if they fought, fair or not. For all she knew this man was the sort that went around getting into fights with all his neighbors. For all she knew, he got beat up every day. For all she knew ...
She tried to walk away from the scene, in search of the elusive Harrod, but she couldn't, because of the inevitable circle of spectators forming around the beginning brawl.
The presumed Will, defending himself from all the other Wills - or maybe one of them had the originality of being a Richard or a Henry - threw an awkward punch at one of the four giants surrounding him. The giant jeered, and threw a punch in his turn, hitting the smaller man in the face.
The smaller man remained standing. The urchin behind him made a keening noise, and - Uhura's eyes widened - plunged a hand into the pocket of his defender's jacket.
One of the attacking giants saw it, too, and grabbed the child's scrawny wrist, and twisted it, and took something from his hand. This brute, a creature whose features might have been carved with an ax, stepped out of the shadows, away from the fray where his buddies continued punching the smaller guy, who nevertheless remained standing. He held his hand up, grinning at the small glittering metal jewelry in his hand.
Before Uhura could think, she yanked her skirts up higher and, rushing forward, applied a well-placed kick to the man's knee. He screeched and dropped the jewel. She grabbed it midair. Dropping it into the only secure place available - the tight space between her half-bare breasts - she turned to the other savages beating up the man.
A well-placed blow to the back of the head dropped the man nearest her. His companions turned on her. The next one wasn't as easy, but Uhura doubled him over with a kick to his solar plexus. The young man with the dark curls punched the last one.
The man who'd nicked the jewelry had recovered, and tried to wade in. Uhura had time to knock him to the ground, and still see the presumed Will chase off his last assailant. The urchin had disappeared in the confusion, probably with his protector's cash, if he'd carried any.
The man looked at Uhura. As the circle of spectators dissolved around them, Uhura thought she caught references to her, in scattered sentences.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Strange New Worlds III by Dean Wesley Smith Paula M. Block John J. Ordover Copyright © 2000 by Paramount Pictures. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Introduction: The Class of 2000...
Dean Wesley Smith
Star Trek®
If I Lose Thee...(First Prize)
Sarah A. Hoyt and Rebecca Lickiss
The Aliens Are Coming!
Dayton Ward
Family Matters
Susan Ross Moore
Star Trek The Next Generation®
Whatever You Do, Don't Read This Story (Third Prize)
Robert T. Jeschonek
A Private Victory
Tonya D. Price
The Fourth Toast
Kelly Cairo
One of Forty-seven
E. Catherine Tobler
A Q to Swear By
Shane Zeranski
The Change of Seasons
Logan Page
Out of the Box, Thinking
Jerry M. Wolfe
Star Trek Deep Space Nine®
Ninety-three Hours (Second Prize)
Kim Sheard
Dorian's Diary
G. Wood
The Bottom Line
Andrew (Drew) Morby
The Best Defense...
John Takis
An Errant Breeze
Gordon Gross
Star Trek Voyager®
The Ones Left Behind
Mary Wiecek
The Second Star
Diana Kornfeld
The Monster Hunters
Ann Nagy
Gift of the Mourners
Jackee Crowell
If Klingons Wrote Star Trek
jubHa'
Dr. Lawrence Schoen
Hints
Dean Wesley Smith
Contest Rules
About the Contributors