Star Trek: The Next Generation: Before Dishonor

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.

For Captain William Riker, that choice has already been made. Haunted by the memories of those he was forced to leave behind, he must jeopardize all that he has left in a desperate bid to save the Federation.

For Captain Ezri Dax, whose impetuous youth is balanced by the wisdom of many lifetimes, the choice is a simple one: there is no going back -- only forward to whatever future awaits them.

But for those who, millennia ago, had no choice...this is the hour of their final, inescapable destiny.

Half a galaxy away, Captain William Riker and the crew of the Starship Titan have made contact with the reclusive Caeliar -- survivors of a stellar cataclysm that, two hundred years ago, drove fissures through the structure of space and time, creating a loop of inevitability and consigning another captain and crew to a purgatory from which they could never escape.

Now the supremely advanced Caeliar will brook no further intrusion upon their isolation, or against the sanctity of their Great Work....For the small, finite lives of mere mortals carry little weight in the calculations of gods.

But even gods may come to understand that they underestimate humans at their peril.

Elsewhere, deep in the Gamma Quadrant, an ancient mystery is solved. One of Earth's first generation of starships, lost for centuries, has been found dead and empty on a desolate planet. But its discovery so far from home has raised disturbing questions, and the answers harken back to a struggle for survival that once tested a captain and her crew to the limits of their humanity.

The Enterprise is just one ship, and Jasminder Choudhury is just one officer, yet her story is being repeated over and over across the galaxy. Hundreds of thousands of displaced persons haunt the space ways, seeking comfort, looking for someplace safe, somewhere, anywhere to find solace. Captain Jean-Luc Picard is ordered to do everything he can to rescue and if need be to recover the lost souls from the Borg invasion.

For the first time in generations, citizens of the Federation know want, uncertainty, and fear. Bloodied yet unbowed, the Federation now stands on the edge of a precipice. The captain of the Enterprise finds himself in the unenviable position of wondering whether it is true that those who can win a war well can rarely make a good peace.

The Starship Voyager leads a fleet into a region of space that has lived in fear of instant annihilation for generations: the Delta quadrant, home of the Borg. Afsarah Eden -- the new captain of Voyager -- is charged with getting answers, to reach out to possible allies and resolve old enmities in the Delta quadrant.

The perfection that was given to the Borg was withheld from Seven of Nine. Left behind, she is living a twilight existence -- neither Borg nor human -- and slowly going mad. The whispers of the Collective, comforting murmurs she has always known, are replaced with a voice deep within her that keeps insisting she is Annika Hansen. Chakotay, the former captain of Voyager, offers to help Seven rendezvous with the ships that Starfleet Command has sent into the Delta quadrant, the probable destination of the mysterious Caeliar.

These are not the friendly stars of the Federation; the unknown and the unexpected are the everyday.

The cataclysmic events of Star Trek: Destiny have devastated known space. Worlds have fallen. Lives have been destroyed. And in the uneasy weeks that follow, the survivors of the holocaust continue to be tested to the limits of their endurance.

But strange and mysterious occurrences are destabilizing the galaxy's battle-weary Allies even further. In the Federation, efforts to replenish diminished resources and give succor to millions of evacuees are thwarted at every turn. On the borders of the battered Klingon Empire, the devious Kinshaya sense weakness -- and opportunity. In Romulan space, the already-fractured empire is dangerously close to civil war.

As events undermining the quadrant's attempts to heal itself become increasingly widespread, one man begins to understand what is truly unfolding. Sonek Pran -- teacher, diplomat, and sometime adviser to the Federation President -- perceives a pattern in the seeming randomness. And as each new piece of evidence falls into place, a disturbing picture encompassing half the galaxy begins to take shape...revealing a challenge to the Federation and its allies utterly unlike anything they have faced before.

On her first mission, the Enterprise was sent to Farpoint Station. A simple, straightforward investigation. Perfect for a crew that had never served together. Then there was Q. An omnipotent lifeform that seemed bent on placing obstacle after obstacle in the ship's -- and in particular in Picard's -- way. And it hadn't ended with that first mission. When he was least expected, Q would appear. Pushing, prodding, testing. At times needling captain and crew with seemingly silly, pointless, and maddening trifles. Then it would turn all too serious, and the survival of Picard's crew was in Q's hands.

Why was it today that Picard was remembering the day he took command of the Enterprise-D? Now he commanded a new ship, the Enterprise-E. His crew was different. There was nothing about Gorsach that in the least resembled Farpoint. But Picard couldn't shake the feeling that something all too familiar was going on. All too awful. All too Q.