As the Federation recovers from the devastating events of Star Trek: Destiny, Captain William Riker and the crew of the USS Titanare ordered to resume their deep-space exploration. But even far from home on a mission of hope, they cannot escape the scars of the recent cataclysm.

Painfully trying to rebuild their lives, they encounter a planet made almost entirely of water, which Aili Lavena, Titan's aquatic navigator, sets out to chart. But when their good intentions bring calamity to this new world, Lavena and Captain Riker are cut off from the Titan and feared lost. Deanna Troi is left to face a life-changing event without Riker, while the rest of the crew must brave the crushing pressures of the deep ocean to undo the global chaos they have triggered. Stranded with her injured captain, Lavena must win the trust of the beings who control their fate -- but the price for Riker's survivial may be the loss of everything he holds dear.

Believing that the annihilation of one Borg-controlled ship will wipe out their menace forever, Starfleet Command sends out the Enterpriseto complete the mission -- only to discover how very wrong their calculations have been...

One lone ship, the former science vessel Einstein, has been taken over by the Borg. Cut off as it is from the rest of the Borg Collective, if the ship can be found and destroyed, the Federation can rest easy. The task becomes more urgent still with the discovery of a system-wide slipstream which could enable the Einsteinto reach the Borg Collective; or worse, give the Borg the capacity for instantaneous transportation to other parts of the galaxy. The Enterpriseis dispatched to prevent that threat -- but the Borg have evolved and are more determined than ever to conquer Earth, and with it the Federation.

The Starship Rhea has discovered a cluster of carbon planets that seems to be the source of the quantum energies rippling through a section of space. A landing party finds unusual life-forms inhabiting one of the planets. One officer, Lieutenant T'Ryssa Chen -- a half-Vulcan -- makes a tenuous connection with them. But before any progress can be made, the Rhea comes under attack from the Einstein -- a Starfleet vessel now controlled by the Borg. The landing party can only listen in horror as their comrades are assimilated. The Borg descend to the planet, and just as Chen accepts that she will be assimilated, the lieutenant is whisked two thousand light-years away.

A quantum slipstream -- instantaneous transportation -- is controlled by these beings in the cluster, and in the heart of the cluster there is now a Borg ship. Cut off from the rest of the Borg collective, the Einstein cannot be allowed to rejoin it. For the sake of humanity, the Borg cannot gain access to quantum slipstream technology.

Starfleet Command gives Captain Picard carte blanche: do whatever he must to help the beings in the cluster, and stop the Einstein no matter the cost.

The mysterious "missing years" of Captain Picard's life—before he commanded the Enterprise—are revealed at last in this Star Trek: The Next Generation novel!

Jean-Luc Picard. His name has gone down in legend as the captain of the U.S.S. Stargazer and two starships Enterprise. But the nine years of his life leading up to the inaugural mission of the U.S.S. Enterprise to Farpoint Station have remained a mystery—until now, as Picard's lost era is finally unearthed.

Following the loss of the Stargazer and the brutal court-martial that resulted, Picard no longer sees a future for himself in Starfleet. Turning to his other love, archaeology, he embarks on a quest to rediscover a buried age of ancient galactic history...and awakens a living survivor of that era: a striking, mysterious woman frozen in time since before the rise of Earth's dinosaurs. But this powerful immortal has a secret of cataclysmic proportions, and her plans will take Picard—aided along the way by a brilliant but naive android, an insightful Betazoid, and an enigmatic El-Aurian—to the heights of passion, the depths of betrayal, and the farthest reaches of explored space.

As the U. S. S. Titan ventures beyond the outermost reaches of known space, the telepaths in her crew—including Diplomatic Officer Donna Troi—are overwhelmed by an alien cry of distress, leading the ship to the scene of a shocking act of carnage: a civilazation of insterstellar “whalers” preying upon and exploiting a familiar species of sentient spacebource giants.

Appalled but reluctant to rush to judgement, Captain William Riker and his crew in investigate, discovering a cosmic spawning ground in a region of active star formation—the exosystem for a bewildering array of diverse but similarly vast life-forms. While attempting to negotiate an end to the victimizeation of these creatures, Riker’s crew inadvertently grants them the means to defeat their hunters’ purpose…only to learn that things are not exactly as they seem.