Federation (novel)

Plot summary

The first half of the novel follows three parallel arcs. In one arc, Zefram Cochrane completes the first warp speed voyage, a solo journey to Alpha Centauri and back, becoming the first successful crewed flight beyond the Sol system. His benefactor Micah Brack exploits the warp drive to help humanity expand, foreseeing disaster from the Optimum Movement, perfectionists attempting to perfect Khan Noonien Singh's failed effort to unify and improve humanity.

A second arc covers James Kirk and his crew after the conference admitting Coridan into the Federation; Kirk is confronted by a Starfleet admiral about a subspace message showing the supposedly dead Commissioner Nancy Hedford, and learns Cochrane was kidnapped from his and Nancy's home at Gamma Canaris. A third arc covers Jean-Luc Picard and his crew after dropping off Sarek of Vulcan from the Legaran home world; a Ferengi ship leads them to a Romulan commander who gives Picard what appears to be a section of a Borg ship with a Preserver artifact incorporated. The Cochrane arc jumps ahead 17 years to 2078, just before a devastating war on Earth and after Micah Brack's mysterious disappearance; Cochrane risks visiting Earth and narrowly escapes the Optimum Movement leader Adrik Thorsen, who wants Cochrane's knowledge about warp fields for a bomb.

The arc then jumps to 2111, when Cochrane flees Alpha Centauri and begins a voyage into the future, found by the Companion who takes him to her sanctuary. Kirk and the Enterprise find the hijacked passenger ship with Cochrane aboard and rescue all, but battle Klingon warships commanded by Thorsen's robotic remnants, damaging the Enterprise. Cochrane and the Companion board a shuttlecraft to take shelter inside a black hole's event horizon, with a course calculated to emerge using a short warp burst; a Klingon ship follows, and Kirk takes the Enterprise in, destroying the Klingon ship with one torpedo, but the Enterprise cannot escape and the shuttlecraft is also doomed.

Did You Know?

• In 2015, John Bardinelli of Barnesandnoble.com highlighted this as among the best Star Trek novels.
• Bardinelli praised it for tying together the crews from both the original series and The Next Generation.
• Bardinelli said 'Federation is one of the best-written, most entertaining books in the shared universe.'