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    The Stuff of Dreams
    The Stuff of Dreams
    The Stuff of Dreams
    Ebook120 pages1 hour

    The Stuff of Dreams

    By James Swallow

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    An original e-novel from the Original Series universe!

    The Enterprise-E arrives in unclaimed space for a rendezvous with the Starfleet science vessel Newton. Jean-Luc Picard and his crew have been ordered to assist the Newton with the final phase of its current mission—a mission that brings Picard face to face with something he never thought he would see again: the phenomenon known as the Nexus. Less than twelve years after it left the Alpha Quadrant, the Nexus ribbon has now returned. Tasked to track and study the phenomenon as it re-entered the galaxy, the specialist science team on the Newton discovered that the orbital path of the Nexus has been radically altered by the actions of the rogue El-Aurian Tolian Soren—taking it deep into the territory of The Holy Order of the Kinshaya, one of the key members of the Typhon Pact. Starfleet Command is unwilling to allow the Kinshaya—and by extension, the Typhon Pact—free access to what is essentially a gateway to anywhere and anywhen, as a single operative could use the Nexus to change the course of galactic history….
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPocket Books/Star Trek
    Release dateMar 25, 2013
    ISBN9781451696615
    The Stuff of Dreams
    Author

    James Swallow

    James Swallow is a New York Times and Sunday Times (UK) bestselling author, BAFTA-nominated screenwriter, and the only British writer to have worked on a Star Trek television series. His Star Trek fiction includes The Latter Fire, Sight Unseen, The Poisoned Chalice, Cast No Shadow, Synthesis, Day of the Vipers, The Stuff of Dreams, Infinity’s Prism: Seeds of Dissent, and short stories in Seven Deadly Sins, Shards and Shadows, The Sky’s the Lim­it, and Distant Shores. His other works include the Marc Dane thriller series and tales from the worlds of 24, Doctor Who, Star Wars, Halo, Warhammer 40,000, and more. He lives and works in London.

    Read more from James Swallow

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    Reviews for The Stuff of Dreams

    3.5/5

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    • 4/5
      Book Info: Genre: Science Fiction/TV and Movie Tie-inReading Level: AdultRecommended for: ST:TNG fans, especially those interested in the Nexus.Trigger Warnings: suicide, genocide (historical Borg attacks mentioned), religious zealotsMy Thoughts: This book is definitely for fans of Star Trek: The Next Generation. If you haven't watched the show and/or followed the various books that have been written in the cannon and/or seen the movie Star Trek: Generations you will not have any idea what is going on in this book. Then again, why would someone who is not a fan of ST:TNG even want to read this novella? So, there you go.This was, however, for a fan a neat story. It takes place thirteen years after Star Trek: Generations and involves the Nexus. It also occurs after Star Trek: Nemesis. There are a number of new crewmembers, and Worf is the first officer. There is not a lot of character development as such; this book is mostly action and events, so if you prefer a more character-driven story you probably won't enjoy this much, but I was entertained. Then again, I am a Trekker, so of course I would enjoy it. I didn't find anything to nitpick about; the story flows quickly, and the Nexus, of course, allows a bit of temporal flux to give things a bit of excitement. If you are a fan of ST:TNG, and especially if you were interested in the Nexus, be sure to grab this fun novella. If you aren't, you'll want to find something else.Disclosure: I received an e-galley from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.Synopsis: The Enterprise-E arrives in unclaimed space for a rendezvous with the Starfleet science vessel Newton. Jean-Luc Picard and his crew have been ordered to assist the Newton with the final phase of its current mission—a mission that brings Picard face to face with something he never thought he would see again: the phenomenon known as the Nexus. Less than twelve years after it left the Alpha Quadrant, the Nexus ribbon has now returned. Tasked to track and study the phenomenon as it re-entered the galaxy, the specialist science team on the Newton discovered that the orbital path of the Nexus has been radically altered by the actions of the rogue El-Aurian Tolian Soren—taking it deep into the territory of The Holy Order of the Kinshaya, one of the key members of the Typhon Pact. Starfleet Command is unwilling to allow the Kinshaya—and by extension, the Typhon Pact—free access to what is essentially a gateway to anywhere and anywhen, as a single operative could use the Nexus to change the course of galactic history….

    Book preview

    The Stuff of Dreams - James Swallow

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    TABLE OF CONTENTS

    Historian’s Note

    Chapter One

    Chapter Two

    Chapter Three

    Chapter Four

    Chapter Five

    Acknowledgments

    About the Author

    For Sue, Carole, Darren, and Phil

    HISTORIAN’S NOTE

    This story takes place in the year 2384, some months after the events of the Star Trek: The Next Generation novel Cold Equations #3: The Body Electric.

    1

    ---

    There was a quality to the light unlike anything Jean-Luc Picard had ever seen. The peculiarity of its warm and ethereal glow cast soft waves of color across the bridge of the Enterprise and the upturned faces of his crew. He had forgotten about it, in the pitch and moment of the swift journey here, in the work of being captain and all that entailed.

    But now, as he laid eyes upon the phenomenon for the second time in his life, Picard felt something that stirred a little of the poet in his soul. The motion and pace of the object, the way it writhed through space like a windborne pennant of star-stuff . . . It gave him pause to watch it chart its slow, steady passage, and those thoughts grew heavy when he remembered all the suffering and distress that surrounded it.

    Still, the questions that had come to him in that first moment returned. Where did it come from? What confluence of cosmic events had combined to invest such a thing with existence? Does it live in some sense? Is it intelligent in a way we can never perceive? Or is it a device, a tool of minds infinitely superior to ours, now lost and forgotten?

    Captain? Worf’s voice broke his reverie, and Picard turned to glance over his shoulder to where his first officer was standing. He and the Klingon were the only ones on the bridge who had seen the phenomenon before, and the silence, the held breath in the throats of the rest of the duty officers, made plain their awe at the alien sight. What are your orders? continued the commander. Worf’s stance was stiff and wary; he disliked anything that he couldn’t grasp in a rational manner, and the band of coruscating light was very much that.

    Picard straightened and turned back to the viewscreen. The nexus, he said, and giving the energy ribbon its name seemed to break its spell. Lieutenant Faur, range to object?

    At the flight control by his side, the woman blinked and nodded at the question. Four thousand kilometers to the outer phase nimbus, sir. We’re moving in parallel now.

    Look sharp, he offered. Don’t let it fool you. It’s as dangerous as it is beautiful.

    Aye, sir, said Faur, nodding again.

    Worf glanced at a readout. Commander La Forge reports no adverse field effects from our proximity to the object. Warp core remains stable.

    Picard nodded, accepting the information without comment.

    "Sensors are reading the U.S.S. Newton on the far side of the object, said the Cardassian at ops, the other forward console. They’re holding outside the engagement perimeter, as per standing orders." The young exchange officer seemed slightly out of place on the bridge, the only one of them dressed in a non-Starfleet uniform.

    Picard nodded. Thank you, Glinn Dygan. Maintain course and heading. Lieutenant Chen? The captain signaled to the woman at the aft systems panel with an incline of his head. "Show me the Newton."

    Yes, Captain, offered the Vulcan female. Her hands danced over the panel, and the main screen shifted to show a Starfleet Nebula-class cruiser.

    The other ship was moving in a slow lockstep with the nexus, the thick upper equipment module at its stern angled to present its full dorsal surface toward the eerie light of the phenomenon. Picard saw dense rows of advanced scanner arrays and whiskery antennae lining the Newton’s sensor pod, all of them active, all drinking in gigaquads of new data every second on every aspect of the energy ribbon.

    Whereas Enterprise was a multirole starship, the Newton was a dedicated science vessel, her interiors filled with laboratories and analysis suites of every conceivable kind. She had a larger than normal contingent of civilians on board, scientists engaged in Starfleet’s offworld research programs, and a crew of some of the Federation’s brightest minds. Picard knew the ship’s captain—a curt fellow named Thom Bryant—by reputation only. Bryant had graduated from the Academy the year before Picard, and his record spoke of an exemplary career as an engineering officer before he rose to a command of his own. This would be Bryant’s show, any questions of seniority notwithstanding, and in truth, Picard was willing to let another officer take the lead here. His experiences with the nexus thirteen years ago at Veridian III had left an indelible mark on him, and he was in no rush to revisit it.

    "The readings coming off that . . . thing . . ." said Dygan, his lined face twisting in a grimace. If I didn’t know better, I might think I was looking at the start of a catastrophic sensor malfunction.

    The nexus doesn’t exist in the same sense as we do. At the science station, Lieutenant Dina Elfiki offered an explanation. She made a complex shape in the air with her hands. It’s atemporal, out of phase with our space-time. Transdimensional, even. She shook her head. Quite remarkable. And infuriatingly difficult to understand.

    Picard nodded to himself. The Newton’s presence as the shepherd of the nexus was part of the Federation’s attempt to gather some of that elusive understanding. During the incident with the El-Aurian renegade Tolian Soran, and his ruthless attempts to divert the course of the nexus, Picard had learned of the energy ribbon’s strange qualities through firsthand experience. The nonmatter of the phenomenon was literally psychoactive. It responded to the wants and desires of intelligent minds in direct contact with it. When contained inside it, a living being was insulated from the passage of time, suspended in a bubble of unreality that built itself out of the being’s memories. For those within, the nexus was a kind of Elysium. Like being inside joy, Guinan had said.

    Picard’s old friend had experienced that timeless paradise, just as Soran had, but Guinan had returned to reality, while Soran never truly did. In the years that followed, the El-Aurian constructed a scheme to return to that place of immortality and perfection—a scheme that exacted a heavy cost, to the very death of suns and worlds . . . and one of Starfleet’s greatest heroes.

    He knew why Soran had done those things. Picard’s memories of the nexus, of the moment when he was subsumed into it, had been buried deep. Now they returned, and he quickly smothered an irrational pang of regret, remembering how hard it had been to break away from his own private, perfect world there.

    Picard’s report to Starfleet Command after the fact and his subsequent debriefing by the Department of Temporal Investigations were the reason why Newton was here; for not only did the nexus possess the capacity to construct synthetic realities out of pure thought, but its atemporal nature had the potential to act as a gateway to anywhere or anywhen. Such power could not be allowed to move through the galaxy unchecked.

    And yet for a time, it had. On a steep elliptical orbit that took it up and out of the galactic plane of the ecliptic, the nexus had been free to drift through the empty void of intergalactic space, monitored only by autonomous probes as it completed its 39.1-year cycle. A massed Borg invasion and a handful of other crises took the Federation’s attention, and the nexus became lost in a sea of troubles as Starfleet fought wars and disasters. The nexus should not have returned until the second decade of the twenty-fifth century; but it was becoming clear that the effect wrought upon the energy ribbon by Soran’s influence had changed it in ways that could not have been predicted. The orbital path of the nexus had been radically altered, and the crew of the Newton was still trying to fathom the degree of those changes. Enterprise was here to assist. Those were Picard’s orders, but he couldn’t escape the sense that there was more lurking beneath them. The thought did not sit well with him.

    A chime sounded from the first officer’s panel, and Worf bent to study it. We are being hailed, he announced. "It is Commander

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