Black Fire

A STAR TREK® NOVEL

SONNI COOPER

POCKET BOOKS
New York London Toronto Sydney

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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Original
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ISBN: 0-7434-1959-6

ISBN: 978-0-7434-1959-8

eISBN: 978-0-7434-1959-8

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Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Look for STAR TREK fiction from Pocket Books

For Theodore Sturgeon,
my mentor and a loving friend

Once upon a time there was a tiny plump Jewish mama who knew how to make kreplach from scratch, and whose chicken soup so terrorized the local disease bacteria that you hardly had to eat it; you just mentioned it.

I knew a lady, the wife of a famous nuclear physicist, who, during a long tenure in New Mexico, turned with compassion and boundless energy to the plight of the Native Americans. It was more than study; she legally adopted a days-old Pueblo child, later became an honorary Blackfoot, and wrote a novel about Indians as they were and are.

There was a writer who decided for the first time in her life to write a novel. She did, and a publisher gave her a handsome advance and a sheaf of requests for editorial changes. Being new to the business, "Oh!," she said, and sat down and wrote
another
novel instead (and did it damned fast, too). A lot of strange things happen in publishing, but this was unprecedented. The only course the publisher could think of was to tell her to keep the money and forget the contract. Indignantly she refused to take money she felt she had not earned, and bashed away at her typewriter, rewriting the first book from beginning to end.

Hollywood has its share of glittering glamor-goddesses and magnetic sexpots; it came to me that none of these would ever be heard of were it not for the support of the dozens and sometimes hundreds of faces-in-the-crowd, spear-carriers, waitresses in the background. I realized this upon meeting an actress who had been in a great many movies in functions such as these. You have, if your eye is quick, seen her often.

We are all familiar with the phenomenon of fandom—baseball and football fans, crewel, dirt-bike, science fiction, Macedonian dirk-hilt fans. Did you know that the word "fan" in this context derives from "fanatic"? Well, there's one species of fan in whose light all others fade to the status of mild interest, and that's the Trekkie. It's the Trekkie who has kept
Star Trek
on the tube all over the world for (at this writing) thirteen years after network cancellation—something achieved by no other show in the history of television. I know a Trekkie so ardent that she has taped all 73
Star Trek
episodes. She is so involved in Trekdom that she can pick up the phone just once and contact I don't know how many meticulously organized
Star Trek
fan clubs. Captain James T. Kirk's personal manager is a Trekkie. (He's otherwise known as William Shatner.)

I have a friend in the Bay area who owns a bathtub. You probably do too, but I doubt it's like this one. It stands on a pedestal like an altar; it's black; it's big enough for four people without crowding. It has two sets of gold faucets (his and hers, one presumes), and on command, water showers down from the living greenery hung overhead.

You must by this time be aware that all these paragraphs concern the same person, the author of this book. This small timid-seeming dynamo with her little-girl voice and her sofa-cushion aspect is in truth an irresistible force. There have been times in her life when she has had nothing to do, and she has gotten sick—very seriously so. The one therapy that works is for her to relax by doing eight or ten people's work and doing it all well.

This book begins with one hell of a bang, literally, and whizzes its way from there on through a surprisingly complex plot, in which it sets up an irresolvable situation and then, equally surprisingly, resolves it. The author treats certain of the laws of the universe cavalierly, but then so does
Star Trek
on the screen and Sonni Cooper in real life. When they're inconvenient she simply nods politely to them (she's not ignorant) and goes on. The really significant thing about the book is that it's real
Star Trek
.

Star Trek has had many imitators, and all have failed to reach the altitude of its original. Clearly there is a secret ingredient that has eluded the followers who are really a knowledgeable lot and know their trade and are especially adept in the techniques of following a trend. Yet none has been able to find that magic something that makes
Star Trek
capture the fans and endure.

The answer is (as somebody once said about Einstein's Theory) not at all difficult to understand; it's just impossible to believe. It is simply that the show comes straight from the basic convictions of its creator, Gene Roddenberry. These convictions are Mom and apple-pie convictions in the equality of the races and of the sexes; of faith in the dream of American democracy; of loyalty, the bondings of friendship and other kinds of love, like loyalty to personal commitment, and especially to duty. Most of the suspense in the episodes derives from the conflict between this last and all the others. And so it is with this story.

One other thing is very much worth mentioning: Sonni Cooper writes with her ears. Unlike so many authors of
Star Trek
novels, Sonni has captured the intonation of each of these familiar voices. Partly this comes out of the skill of an accomplished actress; mostly from the compulsions of the archetypical Trekkie.

So read, and enjoy.

Theodore Sturgeon
San Diego, 1981

1

"Oh, my God," Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott shouted as he was hurled against a bulkhead as the ship lurched, and his eardrums resonated painfully as the sound of a massive explosion echoed throughout. It was the sound of an internal blast, the shock waves pulling the
Enterprise
off her course into a spiral at warp speed. He watched his engineering crew spring into action, as he directed them to compensate for the erratic spin. He then raced to auxiliary control to get the ship back on course. All communications from the bridge were cut off; he was on his own.

Horrified, Scott realized that the bridge was the source of the explosion. The turbolift was useless, and the emergency repair crew was frantically working to clear the debris away from the stairway to the bridge. Scott joined the crew, torch in hand, working along with them—and praying.

He inched his way up the cluttered stairway and, with a strength he did not know he had, pushed against the unyielding hatch. He recruited two burly crewmen, and with their combined strength exerted against the resisting hatch, they managed to open it slowly. Scott raised himself onto the demolished bridge.

"My God," he whispered as he looked around. He observed that the blast had occurred in the center of the bridge. It was a vision of hell; the pattern of destruction radiated from the center of the blast to the outer walls. The inner sheathing of the hull was destroyed by the violence of the blast, and Scott soon detected a weak spot in the outer hull.

"Better get the injured out o' here quickly," he ordered. "That outer sheathin' will go any minute."

He checked the crewman nearest him—dead. Scrambling over the wreckage, he looked for the captain. What was left of the navigation console was scattered toward the darkened view-screen. He found Sulu first. The helmsman, pinned under the wreckage, was clawing at the floor trying to free himself.

Scott found the captain, his tunic covered with blood and as torn as the body within it. The entire area was spattered with blood and strewn with twisted metal. The body of the young navigation trainee was mangled almost beyond recognition. Beside him lay Chekov, whose condition was unknown; he was almost hidden under debris. A group of crewmen grimly started freeing him.

Spatters of green led Scott to the prone figure of Spock, lying face down near the smoking, blackened science console. A jagged piece of metal was protruding from his back. Lt. Uhura lay unconscious; Scott could see she had been slammed into the communications panel, which was now a sputtering, flaming mass of twisted wires.