Out of that necessary and uneasy collaboration came the United Federation of Planets and its combined forces, Starfleet. But the close quarters of a starship among so many races and personalities is discomforting to all the ranks. Control of what could grow to be the greatest power in the galaxy is at stake and no one is taking it lightly. A powerful new class of starship, the Daedalus, the flagship of the new Federation fleet, is up for grabs among the six new Starfleet captains. Admiral Ed Walker is determined to keep this jewel, and all of Starfleet, under military command and away from the scientists. He chooses Captain Aaron Stiles as his protege in the endeavour. Stiles, bent on avenging the death of his brother Jake, faces stiff resistance from Walker's rebellious space jock nephew Dane and scientist Capt. Bryce Shumar. But they face their biggest threat of all in an unknown alien race destroying the bases of the Oreias system. Can brains and brawn combine to win without killing each other in the process.

    But the stakes are higher than anyone imagines, for the pull of destiny tugs at other souls who are swept into the vortex of the Prophets, remote and timeless beings who have set these events in motion. Yet the outcome of this struggle for the fate of one universe will ripple across many others, giving shape to a future that will prove to be greatest trial yet for the heroes of station Deep Space 9.

    What began as a desperate attempt to save lives became a descent into an abyss of deception, moral compromises, and outright criminal acts, as Sisko sacrificed every ideal he held dear in order to preserve the civilization that espoused those selfsame principles.Now the aftermath of that choice is revealed for the first time as Sisko is summoned to Earth to take part in the first Allied talks to come out of the Federation's new partnership with the Romulans. But Sisko's conscience weighs heavily on him, compelling him to seek some kind of penance for what he has done...while elements within Starfleet itself set in motiona scheme to use Elim Garak as a pawn against a human political dissident who may hold the key to the outcome of the war.HOLLOW MENA TALE OF THE DOMINION WAR

    Forced off the Earth, and even beyond Federation territory, danger is never far off, not even a backwater world is safe.

    Kirk, and before Captain Jean-Luc Picard took the helm of the Enterprise, the Federation and the Romulans clashed head on in a confrontation that would change the course of history.

    But while her exploits are legend, little has been revealed about Rachel Garrett, her vessel, or the unusual men and women of her crew. Until now. When the archeological find of the decade hints at an earlier Cardassian civilization, it attracts not merely academics and knowledge-seekers but also those with far less noble interests. Among them is Asfar Qatala, a notorious criminal cartel with a disturbing connection to one of the highest-ranking officers on the Enterprise. Captain Garrett and her crew find themselves swept in to a maelstrom of kidnapping, extortion and murder -- as well as a desperate, secret struggle between the Qatala and its chief rival, the fledgling Orion Syndicate. And beneath the surface of the frozen world on which the proto-Cardassian discovery was made, another drama is playing out that will force Captain Garrett to make the most difficult decision of her career...amid ruins reputed to link the living with the dead.

    Now those days have come back to haunt him. While traveling through an uncharted nebula, Tuvok is besieged by recurring memories of his time with Captain Sulu-- repressed memories that may well kill him unless their source is determined in time.To save her closest friend, Captain Kathryn Janeway follows Tuvok to the century-old bridge of the Excelsior during a desperate battle. There Tuvok, Captain Janeway, Captain Sulu and Commander Janice Rand must face a menace to galactic life unlike anything known before...

    Captain Sisko finds himself in Harlem in the 1950s, where he is Benny Russell, a science fiction writer, who copes with racism by writing of DS-9 and its Black captain.

    Our choices determine which outcome will follow, and therefore all possibilities that could happen do happen across countless alternate realities. In these divergent realms, known history is bent, like white light through a prism -- broken into a boundless spectrum of what-might-have-beens. But in those myriad universes, what might have been...is what actually happened.A LESS PERFECT UNION: More than a hundred yeas after the Terra Prime movement achieved its dream of an isolated Earth, humanity is once again at a fork in the river of history...and the path it follows may ultimately be determined by the voice of a single individual: the sole surviving crewmember of the first Starship Enterprise.PLACES OF EXILE: Midway through Voyager's journey across the galaxy, Captain Kathryn Janeway and Commander Chakotay must choose whether to brave a deadly war zone or abandon their quest for home. But an attack by Species 8472 cripples the ship, and the stranded crew must make new choices that will reshape their destinies...and that of the Delta Quadrant itself.SEEDS OF DISSENT: Khan victorious! Almost four centuries after conquering their world, genetically enhanced humans dominate a ruthless interstellar empire. But the warship Defiance, under its augmented commander, Princeps Julian Bashir, makes a discovery that could shake the pillars of his proud civilization: an ancient sleeper ship from Earth named the Botany Bay.

    Instead, what he finds at his journey's end is totally unexpected...In the climactic closing episode of the final season of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Captain Benjamin Sisko, his destiny inextricably linked to that of the alien entities known as The Prophets, was last seen plunging into the depths of the Bajoran Fire Caves, locked in combat with Gul Dukat. Although he appeared to his new wife Kasady Yates and promised her that he would one day return, his son Jake has not seen him since. In Deep Space Nine: Avatar, a mysterious prophecy sent Jake on an impossible quest to trace his missing father. However, instead of finding his heart's desire, Jake is thrown across the galaxy and saved by the unexpected intervention of a strange ship with an even stranger crew. Sharing their travels and their dangers, he learns important lessons about dealing with his father's loss, and about the truth of the prophecy that sent him here. In the process, he discovers much more than he anticipated; a revelation that will change the world forever for Jake, for Bajor and for Deep Space Nine.

    With wagon trains, ships, satellites and starships, humanity has chosen to seek out the new frontier, to explore new worlds, and to go where no human has gone before-even to the furthest reaches of the Delta Quadrant. There, Captain Janeway and the crew of the "Starship Voyager(TM) " have discovered many strange and wondrous civilizations...but few as alien as the Chiar. An advanced and scienti?c people who have made great strides with nanotechnology, the Chiar expanded internally rather than externally. Every inch of their planet is crawling with the tiniest bits and pieces of arti?cial intelligence imaginable, working in concert as the new lifeblood of this mechanical world. The people themselves are inseparable from their nanites, which layer their skin and provide extra limbs or senses as required.Caught up in a bitter civil con?ict, some Chiar will try to take advantage of their meeting with the crew of "Starship Voyager." They imagine that their homegrown nanites can harness the incredible power of the deadly Borg, and instead set in motion an experiment that goes devastatingly out of control.

    To the Klingons, a matter of honour. But the eighteen-year cold war between these two empires -- euphemistically remembered in later years as the Bretaka Nebula Incident -- creates a vortex of politics, diplomacy and counterintelligence that will define an age, and shape the future. What begins as a discovery that would enable the Klingon Empire to reclaim a lost piece of its past becomes a prolonged struggle with the rapidly expanding Cardassian Union, which has claimed dominion over a region of space that the Klingons hold sacred. Enter the Federation, whose desire to preserve interstellar space leads Ambassador Curzon Dax to broker a controversial and tenuous peace -- one that is not without opponents, amongst them Lieutenant Elias Vaughan of Starfleet special ops. But there are wheels within wheels to the drama unfolding in the Betreka Nebula. Within the shadowy rooms of the Cardassian Obsidian Order, Klingon Imperial Intelligence, and even the Romulan Tal Shiar, secret scales are being balanced -- and for every gain made for the sake of peace, there will come a loss.

    GREED. ENVY. WRATH. LUST. GLUTTONY. SLOTH.The Seven Deadly Sins delineate the path to a person’s downfall, the surest way to achieve eternal damnation. But there is a way out, a way to reclaim salvation: blame it on the demons—taunting you, daring you to embrace these sins—and you shall be free. The painful truth is that these impulses live inside all of us, inside all sentient beings. But alas, one person’s sin may be another being’s virtue.The pride of the Romulan Empire is laid bare in "The First Peer," by Dayton Ward and Kevin Dilmore.A Ferengi is measured by his acquisition of profit. "Reservoir Ferengi," by David A. McIntee, depicts the greed that drives that need.The Cardassians live in a resource-poor system, surrounded by neighbors who have much more. The envy at the heart of Cardassian drive is "The Slow Knife,"by James Swallow.The Klingons have tried since the time of Kahless to harness their wrath with an honor code, but they haven’t done so, as evidenced in "The Unhappy Ones,"by Keith R.A. DeCandido.Humans’ darkest impulses run free in the Mirror Universe. "Freedom Angst," by Britta Burdett Dennison, illustrates the lust that drives many there.The Borg’s desire to add to their perfection is gluttonous and deadly in "Revenant," by Marc D. Giller.To be a Pakled is to live to up to the ideal of sloth in "Work Is Hard," by Greg Cox.

    When sinister forces threaten to tamper with the very nature of reality, Captain Janeway and the crew of the U.S.S. Voyager must risk everything to restore the universal balance....Years ago, near the beginning of its long journey, Voyager made contact with a brilliant Romulan scientist whose present was Voyager 's past. Now Telek R'Mor communicates with Janeway again -- to warn her of a dire plot to capture Voyager and turn its "future" technology against the Federation of yesterday. But more than just the timeline is at stake. Voyager itself may be carrying a menace deadly to all creation!

    Culled from a second nationwide contest/author search, they represent some of the finest Star Trek writing available today.