Star Trek the Next Generation: the Valiant [Audiobook] [Hardcover]

Michael Jan Friedman (Author)

Book Description

Series: Star Trek | Publication Date: July 3, 2000

The USS Stargazer, a long-range exploration ship commanded by Captain Ruhalter, is assigned to pick up descendents of the survivors of the USS Valiant, a ship that was lost at the far edge of the galaxy in the very first Star Trek Original Series episode. The evacuees claim that a deadly invasion force from outside the galaxy is nearing the United Federation of Planets. When they are ambushed by the invaders, Captain Ruhalter is killed, leaving a young Lieutenant, Jean-Luc Picard, in charge of the ship in the midst of a deadly confrontation. Picard must swiftly learn to be an effective Captain; while dealing both with a crew that has not yet come to trust his judgement and with hostile aliens more powerful than anything the Federation has encountered before.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Michael Jan Friedman is the author of more than forty science fiction and fantasy books, among them many Star Trek and Star Trek: Next Generation novels.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

CHAPTER 1

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 limits, a blazing vermillion abyss without beginning or end.

"Amazing," said Gardenhire, his redheaded ops officer.

Tarasco grunted. "You can say that again."

Sommers, the curly-haired brunette who was sitting next to Gardenhire at the helm controls, cast a glance back at the captain. "You still want to go through it, sir?"

"Do we have a choice?" Tarasco asked her.

The helm officer recognized it as a rhetorical question and returned her attention to her monitors. With her slender fingers crawling across her control dials like an exotic variety of insect, she deployed additional power to the propulsion system.

"Ready when you are, sir."

Was he ready? The captain drew a deep breath.

The phenomenon had puzzled him ever since it came up on the viewscreen earlier that day. Their optical scanners registered what looked like the universe's biggest light show, but there was nothing there as far as their other instruments were concerned.

Unfortunately, it wasn't merely a matter of scientific curiosity. Tarasco and his crew of eighty-eight had set out from Earth years earlier, aiming to chart a stretch of space from their home system to the farthest reaches of the Milky Way galaxy -- part of a sector that Terran astronomers had labeled the Alpha Quadrant.

They had almost completed their assignment when they encountered an unexpectedly powerful magnetic storm. At first, it seemed that they might be able to outrun the thing. Then they found out otherwise.

The storm caught them up and flung them light-years off course, well past what Tarasco's cartography team reckoned was the outer edge of the galaxy. If not for the readings their scanners took along the way, they wouldn't even have known which way was home.

But knowing the way was only half the battle. The storm had wrecked both their warp and nuclear impulse engines, forcing them to drift on emergency power until the crew could get them up and running.

Finally, after weeks of languishing under the glare of alien stars, Tarasco and his people got underway again. They knew that their trip back to Earth had been lengthened by nearly eleven months, but no one griped. They were just glad to be heading home.

And all had gone well from that point, the captain reflected. Until now, that is.

He couldn't be sure if the phenomenon had been there when the storm threw them so precipitously in the other direction, or if it had sprung up since that time. Certainly, their computer hadn't made any record of it.

One thing was for sure -- they weren't going to get back to Earth without passing through the thing.

Tarasco glanced at Sommers. "Let's do it."

He could feel a subtle hum in the deck below his feet as the Valiant accelerated to the speed of light. The phenomenon loomed in front of them, a gargantuan, red maw opened wide to swallow them up.

"Still no sign of it on sensors," said Hollandsworth, his tall, dark-skinned science officer.

"Deflectors are registering something," reported Gardenhire. He turned to the captain. "A kind of pressure."

"So we're not just seeing things," Tarasco concluded. "I guess we can take some comfort in that."

"Maintain heading?" asked Sommers.

"Affirmative," said the captain.

The closer they got, the more tumultuous the phenomenon appeared. The ruby light within it began to writhe and shimmer, giving birth to monstrous caverns and towering eruptions.

It was beautiful in the way a stormy, windblown sea was beautiful. And like a stormy sea, it was frightening at the same time.

"All available power to the shields," Tarasco ordered.

"Aye, sir," said Gardenhire.

Suddenly, the ship jerked hard to starboard. Caught by surprise, the captain had to grab hold of his chair back for support. He turned to his operations officer, a question on his face.

"We're all right," Gardenhire reported dutifully. "Shields are holding fine, sir."

Tarasco turned back to the viewscreen. They seemed to be entering a deep, red-veined chasm, pulsating with forces that baffled him as much as they did his scanning devices. Before he knew it, the phenomenon wasn't just in front of them, it was all around.

He felt another jerk, even harder than the first. But a glance at Gardenhire told him that everything was still under control.

Behind the captain, the lift doors whispered open. He looked back and saw that his first officer had joined them. Commander Rashad was a wiry man with a neatly trimmed beard and a sarcastic wit.

"I hope I'm not too late," Rashad said darkly.

"Not at all," Tarasco told him. "The show's just starting."

"Good," said his exec. "I hate to miss anything."

The words had barely left his mouth when the lights on the bridge began to flicker. Everyone looked around, the captain included.

"What's happening?" he asked his ops officer.

"I'm not sure, sir," said Gardenhire, searching his control panel for a clue. "Something's interfering with our electroplasma flow."

Abruptly, the deck lurched beneath them, as if they were riding the crest of a gigantic wave. Hollandsworth's console exploded in a shower of sparks, sending him flying backward out of his seat.

Tarasco began to move to the science officer's side. However, Rashad beat him to it.

"Shields down forty-five percent!" Gardenhire announced.

Another console exploded -- this time, an empty one. It contributed to the miasma of smoke collecting above them. And again, the ship bucked like an angry horse.

"The helm's not responding!" Sommers cried out.

Rashad depressed the comm pad at the corner of Hollandsworth's console. "Sickbay, this is Rashad. We need someone up here on the double. Lieutenant Hollandsworth has been -- "

Before he could finish his sentence, the first officer seemed to light up from within, his body suffused with a smoldering, red glow. Then he fell to his knees beside the unconscious Hollandsworth.

"Amir!" Tarasco bellowed.

For a gut-wrenching moment, he thought Rashad had been seriously hurt. Then the man turned in response to the captain's cry and signaled with his hand that he was all right.

"Shields down eighty-six percent!" Gardenhire hollered. He turned to the captain, his eyes red from the smoke and full of dread. "Sir, we can't take much more of this!"

As if to prove his point, the Valiant staggered sharply to port, throwing Tarasco into the side of his center seat. He glared at the viewscreen, hating the idea that his choices had narrowed to one.

"All right!" he thundered over the din of hissing consoles and shuddering deckplates. "Get us out of here!"

There was only one way the helm officer could accomplish that: retreat. Wrestling the ship hard to starboard, she aimed for a patch of open space.

Under Sommers's expert hand, the Valiant climbed out of the scarlet abyss. At the last moment, the forces inside the phenomenon seemed to add to their momentum, spitting them out like a watermelon seed.

Tarasco had never been so glad to see the stars in his life. Trying not to breathe in the black fumes from Hollandsworth's console, he made his way to the science officer and dropped down beside him.

Hollandsworth's face and hands had been badly burned. He was making sounds of agony deep in his throat.

"Is he going to make it?" asked Rashad, who was sitting back on his haunches. He looked a little pale for his experience.

"I don't know," the captain told him.

Before he could try to help, the lift doors parted and a couple of medics emerged. One was a petite woman named Coquillette, the other a muscular man named Rudolph.

"We'll take it from here, sir," said Coquillette.

Tarasco backed off and let the medical personnel do their jobs. Then he did his. "Damage report!" he demanded of his ops officer.

"Shields down, sir," Gardenhire told him ruefully. "Scanners, communications, lasers...all off-line."

Beside him, Sommers pounded her fist on her console. "The main engines are shot. That last thrust burned out every last circuit."

"Switch life support to emergency backup," said the captain.

Without waiting for a response, he peered over Coquillette's shoulder to see how Hollandsworth was doing. The science officer's eyes were open, but he was trembling with pain.

"Easy now," Coquillette told Hollandsworth, and injected him with an anesthetic through the sleeve of his uniform.

Tarasco heaved a sigh. Then he turned back to Rashad. "Poor guy," he said, referring to the science officer.

But Rashad wasn't looking at the captain any longer. He was stretched out on his back, eyes staring at the ceiling, and Rudolph was trying to breathe air into his lungs.

Rashad wasn't responding. He just lay there, limp, like a machine drained of all its power.

Tarasco shook his head. "No..."

Just moments earlier, his first officer had assured him he was all right. He had even asked the captain about Hollandsworth. How could something have happened to him so quickly?

Then Tarasco remembered the way Rashad had lit up in the grip of the phenomenon, like a wax candle with a fierce, orange flame raging inside it. Clearly, they were dealing with matters beyond their understanding.

Tarasco watched helplessly as Rudolph labored to bring Rashad back to life, blowing into his mouth and pounding Rashad's chest with the heel of his hand. At the same time, Coquillette injected the first officer with a stimulant of some kind.

None of it helped.

"Let's get them to sickbay," a red-faced Rudolph said at last.

Numbly, the captain took hold of Rashad under his arms, though he knew his chief medical officer wouldn't be able to help the man either. On the other hand, Hollandsworth still had a chance to pull through.

He and Coquillette picked up the first officer, while Rudolph and Gardenhire hefted the lanky Hollandsworth. Then they squeezed into the still-open lift compartment and entered sickbay as their destination.

The air ... --This text refers to the Unbound edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster (July 3, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671047868
• ISBN-13: 978-0743409773
• ASIN: 0743409779
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,928,881 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Book, April 1, 2000

By 

J. McCain "Jim McCain" (Shreveport, LA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Valiant (Star Trek The Next Generation/Stargazer) (Hardcover)

The Valiant tells the story of Picard taking command of the Stargazer. The story begins with the crew of the Valiant from the original series Star Trek episode "Where No Man Has Gone Before" and fills in information on what happened to that crew. Jump 300 years ahead to the Trek era just preceeding The Next Generation. Decendants of survivors of the Valiant appear to warn the Federation of a potential enemy on the other side of the galatic barrier. The Stargazer and crew are dispatched to see if the threat is real. The ship is attacked and the captain is killed and first officer incapacitated and Picard has to take over. Picard has to deal with a mutiny, a damaged ship, gain trust of the crew he now commands, deal with a Kelvin, and the new threat to the Federation. If you like space battles and action there is plenty in this book. We see characters that first appeared in Friedmans Star Trek book Reunion and their character development in this book helps explain their actions in the previous book. For fans of Star Trek this book is a must.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book, July 9, 2000

By 

Elim Garak (Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Valiant (Star Trek The Next Generation/Stargazer) (Hardcover)

Good book all round, the story of how Picard took command of the Stargazer when the Captain was killed, and the first officer was incapacitated. This is not the standard TNG book, the only character we know is Picard, everyone else is fiction. The crew of the Stargazer were protrayed well, as were the crew on the Valiant. The plot is good, but, like another reviewer, the enemy troubled me slightly. They were not gone into in any detail, they were simply the Nuyyad, we never even saw a member of the species, only a slight physical description from one of the characters. Another thing is the planet Magnia. It is located outside the Galactic Barrier, I thought that was impossible? Wasn't there a great void between galaxies containing absolutely nothing, how can there be a planet? But, there's very little else to complain about. The story was solid, as were the characters. A good read.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Friedman wasn't even trying (minor spoilers), September 8, 2001

By 

Christopher (Cincinnati, Ohio USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Valiant (Star Trek The Next Generation/Stargazer) (Hardcover)

...

This tale has its moments, and maybe a certain Horatio Hornblower quality of which Roddenberry would approve -- the story of a young officer thrust into a command situation and having to prove his mettle. But the execution is poor. The writing is flat and totally passionless. The scene where Picard's captain and mentor is killed before his eyes contains no trace of emotion.

The story also lacks imagination -- particularly the early part, recounting the Valiant's doomed mission. This ship was supposedly launched just four years after Cochrane's warp prototype. But Friedman depicts it exactly like a 23rd- or 24th-century Starfleet vessel, with a crew of eighty, at least seven decks, lifts, deflectors, ops officers, an electroplasma system, the works. The only concessions to the earlier era are the weapons. There's no way such an early ship could be that big, elaborate and modern. Friedman didn't even try to imagine a credible early-warp expedition or a more primitive level of technology; he just parroted the familiar tropes without considering whether they made sense in this context. As for the plot of this section, it's virtually a beat-by-beat replay of "Where No Man," except less interesting because none of the characters has any emotional connection to the Mitchell stand-in.

The Stargazer portion isn't very creative either. The characters and their interactions are quite crudely drawn. Picard is almost indistinguishable from the TNG-era Picard. In an earlier Stargazer story for DC Comics, Friedman portrayed the young Picard as more brash and daring, somewhere between "Tapestry"'s cadet Picard and the captain we know. But here, Friedman forgets his own past characterization and gives us a routine, uninteresting Picard.

The other characters are mere caricatures, their conflicts as simplistic and exaggerated as any soap opera. The antagonists among the crew are fanatical, incompetent and insubordinate. Friedman has them mutiny at their first disagreement with the new captain, a ludicrously overplayed plot point that makes a mockery of Starfleet training. Anyone with such knee-jerk mutinous tendencies would've washed out of the Academy in the first week. Had this been credibly written at all, these officers would've resisted Picard's authority in subtler ways, respecting their oaths and discipline but still clashing with an unwelcome commander. We've seen such conflicts before, in "Chain of Command," for instance, and they can be quite tense and engaging. But here Friedman takes the most melodramatic and broad approach possible, creating more farce than tension.

Bringing back the Kelvans was a nice idea, but it was handled poorly. No effort was made to develop them, beyond a half-hearted effort to describe their real appearance. The telepath culture wasn't developed either -- just a few random elements that don't fit coherently together. At first they say they value privacy; then, later, they say they all prefer to live close together. Friedman acknowledges the paradox in passing, but never bothers to resolve it. I also agree that the Nuyyad were a total waste, nothing but shooting-gallery targets, another complete creative failure.

More laziness is demonstrated by Friedman's claim that the Andromeda Galaxy is "a hundred thousand light-years away." That's like saying Los Angeles is a hundred-mile drive from Manhattan. It's a minor point, but come on, Mr. Friedman, would it have hurt you to do just a little basic research? Open an encyclopedia? Type "Andromeda Galaxy" into a search engine? Five minutes of your time? (By the way, there's nothing wrong with having planets on the other side of the Barrier. The galaxy has no sharp edge; the stars just get sparser the further out you go. This is just about the only sensible idea in the book.)

The sad thing is, Friedman isn't usually this bad. He's never been brilliant; he has very little SF imagination, and his dialogue tends to be stilted and awkward. But in the past he's turned out a number of engaging character-driven stories, including REUNION, CROSSOVER and MY BROTHER'S KEEPER. THE VALIANT, though, is the worst thing he's ever written. It's evident from start to finish that he just wasn't trying. I can't imagine why Friedman is being given an ongoing Stargazer novel series after such a dissatisfying "pilot."