Kirk better than William Shatner, who portrayed him throughout Star Trek, the Original Series, and seven subsequent Star Trek feature films, making him in the process one of the most iconic and instantly recognizable science fiction characters on the planet. Since then, William Shatner has continued to explore and expand the career of Captain Kirk in no less than nine successful Star Trek novels. Now he turns his attention to the one part of Kirk's backstory that still remains a tantalising mystery, and one that his fans have always wanted to read - his formative years at Starfleet Academy.

    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.

    And, to some extent, that was true. Anakin was dead. From the site of Anakin Skywalker s last stand on the molten surface of the planet Mustafar, where he sought to destroy his friend and former master, Obi-Wan Kenobi a fearsome specter in black has risen. Once the most powerful Knight ever known to the Jedi Order, he is now a disciple of the dark side, a lord of the dreaded Sith, and the avenging right hand of the galaxy s ruthless new Emperor. Seduced, deranged, and destroyed by the machinations of the Dark Lord Sidious, Anakin Skywalker is dead . . . and Darth Vader lives. Word of the events that created him the Jedi Council s failed mutiny against Supreme Chancellor Palpatine, the self-crowned Emperor s retaliatory command to exterminate the Jedi Order, and Anakin s massacre of his comrades and Masters in the Jedi Temple has yet to reach all quarters. On the Outer Rim world of Murkhana, Jedi Masters Roan Shryne and Bol Chatak and Padawan Olee Starstone are leading a charge on a Separatist stronghold, unaware that the tide, red with Jedi blood, has turned suddenly against them. When the three narrowly elude execution and become the desperate prey in a hunt across space it s neither clone soldiers, nor the newly deployed stormtroopers, nor even the wrath of the power-hungry Emperor himself they must fear most. The deadliest threat rests in the hideously swift and lethal crimson lightsaber of Darth Vader behind whose brooding mask lies a shattered heart, a poisoned soul, and a cunning, twisted mind hell-bent on vengeance. For the handful of scattered Jedi, survival is imperative if the light side of the Force is to be protected and the galaxy somehow, someday reclaimed. Yet more important still is the well-being of the twin infants, Leia and Luke Skywalker, the children of Anakin and his doomed bride, Padme Amidala. Separated after Padme s death, they must be made safe at all costs, lest the hope they represent for the future be turned to horror by the new Sith regime and the unspeakable power of the dark side. From the Hardcover edition."