Creative Couplings Book 1

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  #5: Interphase Book 2 by Dayton Ward & Kevin Dilmore

  #6: Cold Fusion by Keith R.A. DeCandido

  #7: Invincible Book 1 by David Mack & Keith R.A. DeCandido

  #8: Invincible Book 2 by David Mack & Keith R.A. DeCandido

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  #10: Gateways Epilogue: Here There Be Monsters by Keith R.A. DeCandido

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  #19: Foundations Book 3 by Dayton Ward & Kevin Dilmore

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  #22: War Stories Book 2 by Keith R.A. DeCandido

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  #24: Wildfire Book 2 by David Mack

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  #31: Ishtar Rising Book 2 by Michael A. Martin & Andy Mangels

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  #34: Collective Hindsight Book 2 by Aaron Rosenberg

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  #36: The Demon Book 2 by Loren L. Coleman & Randall N. Bills

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  #42: Sargasso Sector by Paul Kupperberg

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  #44: Where Time Stands Still by Dayton Ward & Kevin Dilmore

  #45: The Art of the Deal by Glenn Greenberg

  #46: Spin by J. Steven York & Christina F. York

  #47: Creative Couplings Book 1 by Glenn Hauman & Aaron Rosenberg

  COMING SOON:

  #48: Creative Couplings Book 2 by Glenn Hauman & Aaron Rosenberg

  #49: Small World by David Mack

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

  An Original Publication of POCKET BOOKS

  POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  Copyright © 2004 by Paramount Pictures. All Rights Reserved.

  STAR TREK is a Registered Trademark of Paramount Pictures.

  This book is published by Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc., under exclusive license from Paramount Pictures.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  ISBN: 0-7434-9688-4

  First Pocket Books Ebooks Edition December 2004

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  Chapter

  1

  U.S.S. Hyperion, main engineering

  “Warning. Warp core failure imminent.”

  The four engineers in the room glanced up from their routine tasks, startled. For an instant, no one moved as they stared at the flashing lights atop each console. Then they leapt into action.

  “Taking the warp core offline,” one of them shouted, fingers dancing across the keyboard.

  “Venting antimatter,” a second announced, activating a manual release lever and tugging it down.

  “Running diagnostics on warp core,” the third called out, not even glancing up from his screen.

  “Pulling the plug,” the fourth declared, tapping in a quick series of commands. When one of the others glanced at him, he grinned. “I mean, switching to backup power.” The lights flickered for an instant, then stabilized. “And killing the alarm.” The sirens and lights suddenly ended, restoring the previous quiet bustle.

  “Not bad,” a fifth voice announced. It seemed to emanate from the warp core itself, as if that item had somehow developed sentience. “Good response time, reasonable reactions, though the diagnostics shouldn’t have been run until after the backup power took over. That way you can make sure a power spike won’t skew your results.”

  “So we passed?” the third engineer asked, looking up at last.

  The disembodied voice chuckled. “Passed? Hey kids, we’re just getting started—consider this a warm-up. Computer, continue program.”

  The voice fell silent, and the four engineers glanced at one another.

  “This could be tough,” one of them said, leaning back in her chair.

  “Sure,” one of her colleagues said, “but isn’t that the point?”

  The others nodded, and they all returned to their work, chatting occasionally without pausing in their tasks.

  “So, what do you think?”

  Fabian Stevens glanced up from his padd, just in time to see one of the four engineers heading right toward him. He flinched involuntarily even as she unconsciously detoured around him. Grimacing at his own foolishness, he looked up at the man standing beside him. He hadn’t met Alex Sparks before yesterday, but the man certainly seemed competent, friendly—and almost as humorless as a Vulcan. He also seemed committed to his students, something Fabian wished his own teachers had felt toward him, all those years ago.

  “Too early to tell much, really,” he replied finally. “The girl, what’s her name?”

  “That’s Tanya, Tanya Sturtze.”

  “Right, Tanya. She was the first to react, and taking the core offline was definitely the right move.”

  “Tanya’s very focused,” Alex agreed.

  “The other three did fine, though,” Fabian went on, continuing to type notes as he spoke. “The Vulcan—?”

  “Santar.”

  “Santar, he saw that the core was already being handled and went for the next item, the antimatter. The other two, the tiny blond girl and the tall young man—”

  “Zoe and Malcolm.”

  “—they took a second longer to react, but they still got the job done. Malcolm’s a little flippant, but as long as he does the work and his superiors don’t mind, it’s no big deal.” Fabian grinned. “I’ve been known to flip ants myself, from time to time.” His companion didn’t even crack a smile. Tough room, Fabian thought. He looked around again, watching the four students as they roamed engineering, or more accurately, the part of the
holosuite that had been set aside as the engine room. They were oblivious to his and Alex’s presence, of course, and would be for the duration of the exam; the holodeck had been told to keep them invisible unless they specifically wanted to appear, and would reroute people and objects around them to maintain that illusion.

  What are the others up to right now? Fabe found himself wondering. He thought about the rest of the crew, Gomez and Pattie and Soloman up on the da Vinci, and envied them a little. This was a lot of fun, but the three of them were just kicking back and relaxing while the ship was in port.

  Then he thought about what the captain was doing, and grinned. Anything was better than dealing with that.

  Chapter

  2

  Captain Gold contemplated the phaser.

  A marvelous invention, the handheld phaser. What sort of engineering wizardry could produce an item that could generate a nonthermal stunner that worked on almost any life-form with no major aftereffects and a thermal beam, useful for heating up rocks or cups of coffee when set on low and hot enough to cut through starship hulls on high and a deathray, leaving an unscorched corpse for relatives to weep over and a no-mess no-fuss hygieno-disintegrator, causing its victims to glow red and simply vanish, leaving behind no searing-hot clouds of remains, organic or otherwise?

  He supposed that it had been created for occurrences just like this, when he had to efficiently deal with multiple annoyances in a variety of ways. His only question was whether he was going to be able to adjust settings fast enough before he was overcome.

  First, there was the Klingon behind the wooden desk that sat at the center of the large room on the top floor of the Klingon embassy on Earth: Ambassador Lantar, charming as a shaved targ, and not all that dissimilar in appearance. He was not so much pushy as most Klingons were, but more oily, more solicitous. For some reason, this got under Gold’s skin more. He was going on about the proper forms of protocol involved for a Klingon wedding, and how it was particularly crucial to follow all the parts of the ceremony, especially with such important people involved.

  Gold was wondering how Lantar came to all his good press as a diplomat. He had come to the conclusion that all of his so-called confidence and firm hand in negotiations was actually pomposity; he simply expected to be heeded without question. How the Klingon Empire chose someone with an ego like a black hole to be ambassador to the Federation was beyond him. Gold desperately wanted to put the phaser on disintegrate for him, but he’d content himself with the scorchless corpse option. There would have to be a state funeral after all.

  Standing to Lantar’s left behind the desk was his son Khor. He was looking even more uncomfortable than usual for someone who was about to be married. He spent at least half of his time looking at his father, hoping to get some form of response out of him. Lantar studiously avoided looking at him, an act wholly in keeping with a diplomat trying to avoid any show of favoritism and completely wrong for a caring father. Gold thought that stunning him would be a mercy, but then he remembered that it was Khor’s suggestion that a military wedding would satisfy the necessary honor involved, and that Captain Gold should perform it. He’d use the heat setting on him, make him suffer a bit.

  Khor was spending much of the rest of his time trying to catch the eye of Esther Silver, his intended and Captain Gold’s granddaughter, seated on the other side of Lantar’s desk on Gold’s right. Esther was having no part of Khor’s ocular pleading. She was being the most argumentative with Lantar, compensating for her small stature with enough volume to be heard from orbit, astroacoustics be damned. She was insisting that she have a nice Jewish wedding. Moreover, that the wedding would be performed by Captain Gold’s wife, Rabbi Rachel Gilman. Stun setting for her.

  And then, seated to Gold’s left, there was Rachel. Love of his life, fire of his loins, meaning of his very existence, quietly and firmly insisting that if she was going to be involved with the ceremony, the canons of Jewish law had to be followed to the letter. Stun setting for her. Maybe. Then he’d have to change settings to fight his way out of the Klingon embassy, and then the court-martial for attacking Federation allies, and then—

  “Captain Gold, are we boring you?”

  The direct address snapped him out of his reverie. “No, Ambassador. I’m sorry—I was thinking on a matter of weaponry that’s been giving me agita for some time, and I suddenly had an inspiration on how to deal with the problem, but it probably won’t work.” Using the heat setting to cut a hole in the floor to escape wasn’t going to work either, if Lantar had already noticed his attention wandering a bit.

  “Captain, I must insist that you take this matter seriously! After all, you are being honored by Khor’s request that you perform this ceremony, but you must perform the appropriate rituals to properly—”

  “Just a moment, Lantar,” Esther said. “I keep telling you that some of the elements of a traditional Klingon wedding conflict with Jewish law—”

  Khor snorted at just the wrong time.

  “And what are you sniffing at, you big lummox?” Esther fixed him with a stare that could shut down a warp core.

  “How dare you speak to my son that way?”

  “Father! I can—”

  “Can what?” Lantar, Rachel, and Esther spoke almost simultaneously, and glared at one another even more viciously.

  Oy, Gold thought. If they knocked heads any harder, the resulting implosion would suck all the air out of the room.

  “The dignity of my House and the honor of the Klingon Empire must be maintained!” Lantar’s skin was beginning to darken.

  “I still don’t see how having ice sculptures at the reception is a violation of your dignity,” Rachel said.

  Lantar glared at Rachel. “If you think such frivolity has a place in a wedding, then clearly you do not understand the Klingon heart.”

  “She understands the Klingon heart, Father. At least, she understands mine.”

  Esther, in turn, glared at her fiancé. “Khor, if you think that trying to sweet-talk me is going to get me to reduce the number of bridesmaids I’m bringing, it’s not going to work.”

  No, I’m just not as fast as I used to be. He’d never be able to switch settings fast enough. He supposed he could try stunning them all, then disintegrate as needed.

  He remembered that one could also set a hand phaser to overload, which would cause it to explode in about ten seconds, killing everybody within a few meters. He was concerned about leaving the da Vinci without a captain, then realized that Starfleet could do far worse than to leave the ship in the hands of Sonya Gomez, and was comforted.

  Chapter

  3

  “Knock knock.”

  Sonya Gomez looked up from her book at the entry-way to the mess hall and laughed. “You don’t have to knock, Pattie. Door’s open.”

  “I know,” her Nasat teammate replied, “but you were lost in your book, and it was either that or throw something at you.”

  “Sorry.” Sonya set the book down. “I’ve been meaning to read it since my mom gave it to me, last time we were back, and just never had the time. Figured I might as well start it now.”

  “Is it any good?”

  “It is, actually. It’s all about this group that meets for lunch once a week, and the silly things that happen to them. It’s fluff but fun—just what I need.”

  “What you need is to get off this ship,” Pattie corrected her, antennae twitching. “Even I’m starting to go a little nuts here, and I’m used to being trapped in a shell.” She tapped her own exoskeleton as proof. “Beam down with me. We’ll get some food, shop a bit, and just enjoy walking on solid ground again.”

  “Thanks for the invite, but I think I’ll just stay here.” Sonya frowned. “To be honest, what with Risa, Vemlar, and the Strata, I’ve been off-ship so much lately I’ve forgotten what the da Vinci looks like. I don’t mind being onboard, especially with everyone else gone—tons of elbow room.” She waved her arms around to demonstrate. “Besides, S
oloman and I are going to take advantage of the downtime. He’s got those new diagnostics he wants to run, and I’ve got a list of repairs the ship needs—from the damage we took at Lokra.”

  Pattie peered at her. “Is that the real reason?”

  Sonya laughed. “Remind me not to play poker with you. Okay, the real reason is—I feel like being lazy, holing up here, and ignoring the outside world for a bit.”

  Pattie’s antennae waved in her equivalent of a laugh. “Now that I can appreciate. Okay, have fun.” She walked back out of the mess hall, leaving Sonya alone with her book.

  Sonya watched her go, feeling a little bad even though she knew Pattie hadn’t taken it personally. That last answer had been the truth, though. She just didn’t feel like going anywhere. She looked around, stretched her arms out, then tilted her chair back and swung her legs up so that both feet rested on the table. Ah, much better. She picked up the book again and flipped it to the page she’d been reading. This is the life.

  Chapter

  4

  “Computer, display response times of students thus far.”

  Alex and Fabian both watched as a square pane materialized in front of them, numbers listed across its translucent surface. Fabian read the numbers, made sure they were copied to his padd, and sighed. These kids were sharp, no question, which meant that he’d have to revise the tests to make them a bit harder. And that meant more work on his part. How did I get myself into this? he wondered. Ah, yes, that’s right—it’s all Kendra’s fault.

  He remembered how, three weeks ago, Gold had announced that they were heading back to Earth.

  “I have a family matter to handle,” the captain had told them, “and I’ve arranged for the da Vinci to dock at Starfleet Headquarters. You’ll all have the week off—I trust you’ll all be sober again by the time we head back out?”

  After the meeting, Fabian had called one of the only people he still knew on Earth, his old friend Kendra Dolby. He and Kendra had gone to the Rigel Polytechnic Institute—“Go, Dominars!”—together, and had stayed in touch ever since. She still looked the same when she answered his call, though her hair was a bit shorter than it had been last time, and was that a silver hair he saw along one temple?