Blood and Fire Read online

  Table of Contents

  Praise

  ALSO BY DAVID GERROLD

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Introduction

  Scenery

  Lambda

  History

  Brik

  Preparation

  Probes

  Approach

  Docking

  Boarding

  Sparkling

  Closure

  Cutting In

  Discovery

  Warning

  Dead

  Plasmacytes

  Orders

  The Orange Box

  LENNIE

  HARLIE

  Hodel

  Decision

  Escape

  Cargo Bay

  Risk Assessment

  Process

  Forward Airlock Reception Bay

  Bedside Manner

  A Tide of Fireflies

  Easton

  Secrets

  Donors

  Blood

  Fire

  Blood and Fire

  The Hull

  Jarell and Blintze

  Intentions

  Med Bay

  Paradigm Engineers

  Breaking Away

  Despair

  Remotely Possible

  Remote

  The Hatch

  The Cure

  Quillas

  Discovery

  Explanation

  Confrontation

  The Vial

  The Bridge

  Confession

  Transformation

  Realization

  The Stars

  The Captain

  Epilogue

  Author’s Afterword

  Copyright Page

  Praise for David Gerrold and the Star Wolf series

  “David Gerrold knows Star Trek better than anyone, and here’s his take at how it really should have been; the Star Wolf series is Star Trek done right—moral conundrums, fascinating characters, and pulse-pounding action. Highly recommended.”

  —ROBERT J. SAWYER, AUTHOR OF HOMINIDS

  “... story moves along at the speed of light.”

  —PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

  “[Gerrold] looks at a real problem: How do you turn a jinx ship into a fighting unit? The answer to that question has often made a great story, and it does this time too. David has studied the master story tellers—Heinlein and Forrester and Conrad, and it shows.”

  —JERRY POURNELLE

  “... the adventure’s there, the action moves along nicely, and the villain is as nasty as anyone could wish.”

  —ANALOG

  “David Gerrold proves that he can do all the things that made us love Heinlein’s storytelling—and often better.”

  —ORSON SCOTT CARD

  “Gerrold elevates his story line above standard battle-driven fare by focusing on the intense war of wits between the Star Wolf’s fully dimensional human crew and its unique alien adversary. He produces intelligent and entertaining hard SF that remains blessedly free of the militaristic stereotypes rampant in other examples of the subgenre.”

  —BOOKLIST

  “Halfway into the story, we’ll already know more about poor Commander Korie, and his whole accursed crew, and every compartment in their jinxed ship, than we ever learned about Kirk and the Enterprise in three seasons and several feature films. Equally important, that ship and those people will go somewhere, and be changed profoundly by what happens to them along the way.”

  —SPIDER ROBINSON

  ALSO BY DAVID GERROLD

  —FICTION—

  The Star Wolf series

  Starhunt

  The Voyage of the Star Wolf

  The Middle of Nowhere

  The War Against the Chtorr series

  The Dingilliad trilogy

  The Man Who Folded Himself

  The Flying Sorcerers (with Larry Niven)

  When HARLIE Was One

  Moonstar Odyssey

  The Martian Child

  —NONFICTION—

  The World of Star Trek

  The Trouble With Tribbles

  Worlds of Wonder

  For Randy, Pam,

  and Captain Anne Jillian Harbaugh,

  with love

  Introduction

  “... To boldly go where no man has gone before.”

  What an exceptional mandate to tell stories—daring stories, stories that broke tradition—especially in science fiction television!

  When that brave opening narration introduced Star Trek in 1966, it expressed itself as episodes that dealt with bigotry and racism, the Vietnam War, the Generation Gap, enslavement of other races, fights for equality and many other issues of the time. Under the entertaining guise of science fiction action adventure, Star Trek told stories that were intelligent, life affirming, entertaining and thoughtful.

  David Gerrold was a part of that groundbreaking series, writing the classic script “The Trouble With Tribbles” in addition to other episodes. It was while I was story editor of the series that I met this young, brash and brilliantly talented writer.

  In the years after Star Trek went off the air, David and I worked together a number of times on various television shows and developed a personal tie of friendship that has never faltered. When he called me in late 1986 and told me Gene Roddenberry was going to produce a new live-action version of Star Trek and he himself was already involved, I was elated. The elation went to the top of the scale when I was called upon to give input into the new show and ultimately to write the two-hour pilot script for Star Trek-The Next Generation.

  Paramount and the new UPN network had guaranteed the show a full first season. Technically, the “pilot” was the premiere movie that would kick off the hour-long series episodes. Therefore, even as “Encounter at Farpoint” was being written and prepared, other scripts were already being put into work.

  Some months before, Gene, David and others from the show had attended a science fiction convention in Boston. A gay fan in the audience pointedly asked if the new show would include gay characters, as Star Trek had been a pioneer in depicting blacks, Asians and Latinos in key roles. Gene agreed that it was time, and he hoped to do it.

  David, who was working as a staff writer, went to Gene and pitched an idea. It would be a story that was a metaphor for the AIDS epidemic, taking place on a biologically infested plague ship with several of the regular characters in jeopardy. An additional point would be blood donorship. The stakes were high; the answers were not easy; the decisions were painful. Gene could sanction a story that tackled a large issue, told through personal, emotional involvement and powerful in its message. It was what Star Trek did best. Gene told David to go write it.

  It was only later, in the development of the script, that David realized it was a perfect place to include gay characters, and he did so in four lines of dialogue so understated that anyone not paying attention could have taken the two men as mere friends.

  David turned in the first draft of “Blood and Fire” just before he was scheduled to fly out of town as a guest on a Star Trek Cruise. A day later, on the ship, David received a telegram from Gene that read: “Everyone loves your script, have a great cruise.”

  Then Gene’s personal lawyer, who had assumed an unofficial position on Star Trek-The Next Generation, read the script. Things changed. Radically.

  The lawyer and several staff members actively campaigned against the script, though some of them earlier had championed AIDS as one of the issues the show should tackle. The complimentary telegram was forgotten. Gene had a new opinion of “Blood and Fire.” It was “aesthetically displeasing” with its slimy bloodworms and plasmacytes as a metaphor for AIDS. That would have to change. As fo
r the gay couple, they would have to be eliminated or become heterosexual. It seemed they, too, were aesthetically displeasing, despite the fact they were drawn as professional and well-regarded members of the Enterprise crew.

  When David arrived home from the weekend cruise, he found a phone message from me warning him about the bear trap he was about to walk into. In a respectful but pointed memo to Gene, David argued for his vision and for the important issues the script addressed. In front of fans and staff, Gene had declared his intention to include gay characters on the new show, even if only in one episode. Where was the courage in presenting a story with ordinary characters facing an ordinary biological threat? David’s final arguments were: “If not now, when? If not here, where?”

  Gene laid down his decree, not to David’s face, but through one of the other producers. The script would either be rewritten as he directed, or it would be shelved. David made changes, taking out one of the gay characters and giving his lines to “Tasha Yar.” It was still “aesthetically displeasing.” David knew he would leave the show soon, as his contract was expiring. He offered to rewrite the script one more time, but Gene told another producer not to let him do so. A staff producer-writer tried to rework the script, calling it “Blood and Ice,” changing the plasmacytes to brain-eating entities that turned infected people into zombies. Didn’t work. The script was shelved, and there were no gay characters depicted on Star Trek-The Next Generation under Gene Roddenberry’s aegis.

  Later, rumors started to spread that David had been fired from the show—not true. Other rumors spread that the “Blood and Fire” script had been so bad it had to be shelved—not true. David began selling copies of it at conventions so people could read it for themselves and decide. He donated the proceeds from those sales to Aids Project Los Angeles.

  With his reputation being trashed at conventions in both the United States and Britain, David responded the only way he knew how—by writing a series of fine novels. Among them were A Rage for Revenge, A Season for Slaughter, Jumping Off the Planet, Voyage of the Star Wolf and esteemed The Martian Child, for which he won the Nebula and the Hugo awards.

  In the nineties, David and I developed four scripts, a full story arc and an immense bible for a potential Star Wolf television series or series of TV movies. The book you hold in your hand is the envisioning of the “Blood and Fire” script in a different universe and with different characters, but with even more power than it would have had as a Star Trek- The Next Generation episode. Read it and see for yourself how compelling and exciting a story it is—and how boldly it goes where no one has gone before.

  D.C. FONTANA

  Scenery

  With each hyperstate jump, the distance between the two ships lessened significantly. Aboard the Star Wolf, the distress signal from the Norway was expected to become not only more distinct, but more detailed. Distress beacons were supposed to use “pyramid” coding, with successive layers of detail encrypted into the signal.

  As a rescue vessel approached the source and the signal became stronger, the additional levels of information would become accessible and the rescuers would have a clearer idea of what kind of emergency to expect. Decoding the Norway’s beacon should have provided additional information about the nature of her emergency.

  Should have.

  Didn’t.

  In this situation, the supplementary channels remained bafflingly blank. And the itch behind Korie’s shoulders became a full-blown rash, so much so that even Captain Parsons had to scratch. She grumbled her annoyance. “They want help, but they won’t give details. You’re right, Commander Korie. This has to be a high-security operation.”

  “Extremely high security,” Korie noted. “Way out here, a month deep into the south end of the rift—this is the other side of nowhere—whatever it is they’re doing, they want it secret.”

  On the forward display, the red star was already visible as a teardrop hung against the darkness. A pinpoint flare of blue-white flamed beyond, but the spiral streamer wasn’t apparent yet, only a soft pink glow surrounding the blue-white dwarf.

  “We have our bearings,” reported Tor. “Ready for the next jump.”

  “Initiate,” said the captain.

  The Star Wolf jumped. And jumped again. And one more time. Soon, the object known only as IKE-34 was a wall of flame that filled half the visible universe. It occupied a volume of space equal to the orbit of Jupiter. Against the darkness, the blue dwarf could now be seen pulling a great streamer of flaming gas out of the tip of the crimson teardrop. The line of fire curled out and around, stretching across the visible sky like a rip; as it reached the disk-shaped well of the bright blue star, it began to spiral inward, around and around, the colors shifting more and more brightly as the crimson flames were gathered into the purpling corona. And yes, the scenery was spectacular. Better than spectacular. Astonishing.

  From this angle, below the red star’s south pole, it wasn’t immediately apparent that the giant was also flattened at both poles; it was impressive nonetheless. Despite the Star Wolf’s distance—several billion kilometers—the massive size of the star created the looming perception that they were close enough to touch it. The perspectives of space create impossible visions, and this was one of the more impossible views. That long-dead poet had been right. Enjoy God’s handiwork in silence. Across the Bridge of the starship the crew worked wordlessly, but again and again their eyes were drawn to the forward display.

  Eventually, the magnitude of the view became so intimidating and oppressive that Captain Parsons ordered the image muted down. “We don’t need the eye of hell looking down on us,” she remarked. “We’ve got work to do. Let’s turn that off.” She stepped down from the Command Deck, only three short steps into the well of the Operations Bay, but a whole other domain of command and control. She took a familiar position next to the astrogation console, just behind Tor’s left shoulder. “How long to close with the Norway?”

  “Fifty-six hours. Coming in across the pole brings us in a lot faster—but the Norway’s in the plane of the ecliptic—a ‘Missionary Orbit.’ Coming up from under, we’ll have to accelerate constantly to catch up, correcting all the way in, and decelerate only in the last few hours. Tricky, not impossible.”

  “And if those folks are in serious trouble ... we still might not be in time,” said Parsons.

  “They never should have parked so close to the star,” Tor replied. “They’ve made the rescue operation damn near impossible.”

  “That may be the point,” said Korie, coming up beside them. “They wanted to make interception difficult. By staying within the gravitational corona they’re beyond the reach of hyperstate—no ship can jump in that close, neither friend nor enemy. The approach has to be made in normal space. The slow way. That gives them time to detect, scan and evade.”

  Parsons nodded. “Tactically, that was the right decision. In practice, it’s going to kill them. This’ll be another one for the textbooks. All right, take us in, Commander Tor.” She turned to Goldberg at the communication station. “Lieutenant? Do you have anything else yet?”

  The stout, red-headed man at the console shook his head. “Sorry, Captain. The signal is still blank.”

  “That’s what I expected.” She turned to Korie. “In a way, they’re doing us a favor. When the inevitable board of inquiry asks why there were no survivors, we’ll be able to point to the deficiencies of their orbit and their distress signal.”

  “Failure to arrive in time,” murmured Korie. “That’s what they’ll say. Of course, we’ll be excused for that—but it’ll still be a black mark on our record.”

  “Don’t sweat it,” said Parsons. “If this ship can carry the burden of blame for Marathon without flinching, it can easily handle a minor embarrassment like this one.” She turned away from Korie’s dour expression. “All right, let’s do the dance. We all know the steps.” She headed back up to the Command Deck, the raised dais at the rear of the Bridge. “Oh, Mr. Korie—o
ne more thing.” She waited until Korie had joined her up behind the railing. In a more conversational tone, she asked, “Have you examined the manifest of the supplies we’re delivering here?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Korie waited for the captain to make her point.

  “Notice anything interesting?”

  “Quite a few things.”

  “Such as?”

  “Well, there’s a more-than-usual complement of biotechnical equipment and supplies, isolation gear, repulsor valves, magnetic bottles and so on.”

  “Your assessment?”

  “It’s a no-brainer, Captain. They’re engaged in Class-X medical research. All that isolation gear says they’re dealing with extreme toxicity.”

  The captain nodded. “That’s my thought too. We’ve got a mean, ugly bear here. Train your mission team carefully.” To his look, “Yes, I’m going to want you to lead it.”

  “Not Brik? This should be his responsibility.”

  “Think about it. If you were captain of a distressed vessel, how would you feel if the first person to your rescue was a Morthan ...? And if your ship was involved in a Class-X operation and security was a major concern—would you believe a Morthan in an Alliance uniform?”

  “Point taken,” said Korie, embarrassed that he hadn’t thought of it himself. But then, he’d been focusing on the more immediate problem—trying to figure out what the Norway was doing out here.

  “I want you to be careful,” the captain added. “Feel free to break out any of the gear in that cargo you need to protect yourselves and the Star Wolf.”

  “Already planning on it.”

  “And don’t listen to Hall’s complaints about the charge-backs.”