Star Trek V: The Final Frontier Read Online Free PDF

one roof.
    But they were scarcely achieving any minor victories for intragalactic peace. The different groups kept to themselves except when involved in arguments orfistfights. She watched amazed as an Andorian—obviously chemically befuddled—leaned over to address a table of surly Klingons. Their response to the Andorian was a fist in the face. He staggered backwards several meters before falling unconscious across a table of disinterested humans, who promptly nudged him off onto the rough sand-covered floor.
    Through it all could be heard a noise that she supposed was music, but it was harsh, strident, offensive to her delicately pointed ears.
    Remember, Caithlin, you volunteered. ..
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    The air inside the bar was filmy. Perhaps it was full of dust, like the air outside. Once she was sure that all hostilities within the bar had temporarily come to a halt, the woman stepped inside. The double doors slid open before her, then snapped shut behind her with a fatalistic click. She drew in a breath through her breathing filter, then grimaced; the smell was pungent, decidedly unpleasant. The air wasn’t full of dust at all, but of some noxious substance, probably smoke from some illegal substance such as tobacco....
    Or perhaps the vapor was generated by the homesteaders themselves.
    Now is not the time for illusions of superiority. You volunteered. . . .
    It took Caithlin a moment to realize that all conversation had stopped the moment she stepped inside. The entire population of the saloon had turned its attention on her; she straightened, drew herself up as tall as possible, and walked with fearless dignity through the very center of the crowd. As she came close to a low platform around which many patrons sat drinking, a barely clad felinoid female, who up tothat point had been entertaining the crowd with a seductive dance, growled low in her throat at the interruption and switched her long striped tail in the air. That growl was the only sound in the bar; no one, Caithlin knew, would dare try to stop her—unless they wished to incur the wrath of her entire government.
    She was Romulan, though her given name was due to the unfortunate fact that her grandfather, Liam James O’Malley, was human. Caithlin had thus far spent her entire life trying to make amends for her ancestry. As soon as she was old enough, she had applied for the diplomatic service, making it immediately clear to the admissions board that she knew herself to be an exceptionally qualified candidate and that if she was turned down, she would not hesitate to take legal action.
    In the end, she was accepted. Regardless of her family background, she was too bright, too skilled, too eager to succeed for them to turn her away. But she had known that, because of her heritage, she was unlikely to receive a good assignment; in fact, she was liable to be given the worst of them. And so she had asked for Nimbus III.
    She knew what she was doing; she knew that Nimbus was considered a lost cause, a boondoggle, a joke, a failed experiment that nothing shy of a miracle would save. Which was precisely why she had applied for the job.
    Caithlin paused momentarily in the dim, hazy bar; she did not see the two men she was searching for. The bartender, a grizzly Tellarite who could barely seeover the top of the bar, took pity on her and jerked an appendage in a specific direction. Deciding to follow his advice, she headed for the far corner of the saloon. In a dark recess, a narrow entryway opened onto an L-shaped foyer, so that Caithlin could not see inside. Even so, she stepped boldly into the foyer without knocking—given her current situation, an air of confidence was imperative—and walked into the room.
    It was a dark, dingy storage area full of extra tables and damaged chairs. On one wall hung a large mirror with a huge diagonal crack. The floor was covered with the omnipresent gritty yellow sand. At one of the tables, in the only two chairs that were whole, the Nimbus