Search Worlds Without End

The U.S.S. Discovery's specialty is using its spore-based hub drive to jump great distances faster than any warp-faring vessel in Starfleet. To do this, Lieutenant Paul Stamets navigates the ship through the recently revealed mycelial network, a subspace domain Discovery can briefly transit but in which it cannot remain. After responding to a startling distress call originating from within the network, the Discovery crew find themselves trapped in an inescapable realm where they will surely perish unless their missing mycelial fuel is found or restored. Is the seemingly human man found alone and alive inside the network the Starfleet officer he claims to be, or an impostor created by alien intruders who hope to extract themselves from the mycelial plane at the expense of all lives aboard Discovery?

Four novellas by the most popular Star Trek authors finds the intrepid Starfleet Corps of Engineers called in to fix urgent crucial situations: a distress call, rampaging monsters, a reactor and a city. The Starfleet Corps of Engineers, the top flight of technical specialists, face four of their most challenging missions yet.

In THE RIDDLED POST the S.C.E. responds to an urgent distress call from an outpost that has been attacked by something that can penetrate shields.

GATEWAYS EPILOGUE finds the S.C.E. facing a horde of rampaging monsters that have been let loose on the planet Maeglin.

In AMBUSH, they must fix a reactor crucial to a mining operation, but the malevolent aliens who damaged it are still around.

And in SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED, the citizens of Keorga are counting on the Corps to save their largest city.

Contents:

• 1 - The Riddled Post - [Star Trek: Starfleet Corps of Engineers - 9] - novella by Aaron Rosenberg
• 77 - Here There Be Monsters - [Star Trek: Starfleet Corps of Engineers - 10] - novella by Keith R. A. DeCandido
• 153 - Ambush - [Star Trek: Starfleet Corps of Engineers - 11] - novella by Dave Galanter and Greg Brodeur
• 221 - Some Assembly Required - [Star Trek: Starfleet Corps of Engineers - 12] - novella by Scott Ciencin and Dan Jolley
• 297 - About the Authors (Some Assembly Required) - essay by uncredited

These are the voyages of the U.S.S. da Vinci. Their mission: to solve the problems of the galaxy, one disaster at a time. Starfleet veteran Captain David Gold, along with his crack Starfleet Corps of Engineers team lead by former Starship Enterprise engineer Commander Sonya Gomez, travel throughout the Federation and beyond to fix the unfixable, repair the irreparable, and solve the unsolvable.

Whether it's an artificial planetary ring that was damaged during the Dominion War, an out-of-control generation ship, a weapons inspection gone horribly wrong, shutting down a crashed probe, solving a centuries-old medical mystery, or clearing a sargasso sea of derelict ships, the S.C.E. is on the case!

But the problems they face aren't just technical; Tev must confront the demons of his past, Lense must confront the demons of her present, Gold faces a crisis of leadership on his own ship, and Gomez must lead an away team into the middle of a brutal ground war. Plus the da Vinci crew must find a way to work with their Klingon counterparts in a deadly rescue mission.

Contents:

• 1 - Ring Around the Sky - [Star Trek: Starfleet Corps of Engineers - 37] - (2004) - novella by Allyn Gibson
• 109 - Orphans - [Star Trek: Starfleet Corps of Engineers - 38] - (2004) - novella by Kevin Killiany
• 245 - Grand Designs - [Star Trek: Starfleet Corps of Engineers - 39] - (2004) - novella by Kevin Dilmore and Dayton Ward
• 337 - Failsafe - [Star Trek: Starfleet Corps of Engineers - 40] - (2004) - novella by David Mack
• 473 - Bitter Medicine - [Star Trek: Starfleet Corps of Engineers - 41] - (2004) - novella by Dave Galanter
• 537 - Sargasso Sector - (2004) - novella by Paul Kupperberg
• 629 - Author Bios (Grand Designs) - essay by uncredited

The Hidran race and the Klingon Empire have been at each other's throats for seventy years, and Captain Jean-Luc Picard has been asked to do the near-impossible: take the "U.S.S. Enterprise to the planet Velex to mediate a treaty that will end the conflict between these two aggressive species.

Things get off to a rocky start -- then turn deadly as the Hidran ambassador mysteriously dies, and kills a Klingon delegate as a last act of vengence. When Lt.Worf is charged with the ambassador's assassinaton, and Commander Riker and Counselor Troi are trapped far below the surface of the planet, Captain Picard must not only act to save the Hidranas and Klingons from each other, but to save his Klingon officer from a hideous death sentence...

Federation space is crumbling into nothingness - and technological societies are plunging into the dark ages!

Seven months ago, Captain Jean-Luc Picard and the USS Enterprise rescued a Federation cargo ship and a Romulan Warbird, both drained of power by an unknown source and mysteriously trapped together in the Neutral Zone.

Five months ago, the captain of the USS Exeter launched a log buoy from her helpless ship, reporting it adrift and without energy for reasons she is unable to explain. Now, a power plant on Mars has gone down, leaving tens of millions in the dark. Reports of remote outposts losing power, ships stranded in space, and unexplained dead zones throughout the United Federation of Planets are beginning to cause a general panic.

But Starfleet sends Picard and the Enterprise to Romulan space with orders to enter as covertly as possible and rendezvous with a high-ranking Romulan named T Sart. An infamous war criminal and a cold-blooded killer, T Sart's expertise runs from biological warfare to high-tech weaponry. Now he claims he is planning to defect - but even though the rendezvous was arranged with Vulcan Ambassador Spock's authentication codes, no contact with the Ambassador himself can be established. Sabotaging the project of his one-time protege, T Sart arranges the destruction of a Romulan warbird - the distraction for his pickup - with disturbing ease. But T Sart insists he is trying to save the universe, not destroy it - and the Federation may have no choice but to take him at his word.

A former Romulan war criminal who is on the brink of madness is the only man who can help Picard halt the decay that threatens to engulf the universe... Starbse 27 has gone dark, functions grinding to a halt as its energy source mysteriously fails. A province on Bajor reverts to pre-cardassian power plants - where it can. Three Vulcan cargo ships are lost with all hands aboard.

The mysterious dead zones continue their expansion, creating havoc throughout civilised space. Communication, transportation, medical facilities, replicators - without this technological infrastructure, the United Federation of Planets will descend into primitive chaos.

On board the Starship Enterprise is the one man who may be able to halt the deadly decay. T Sart, an egomaniacal war criminal whom Picard and his crew suspect of treachery and lunacy, plans to save both the universe and his own career by manoeuvering Picard into a position of weakness even as the two men work together as allies. He leads Picard to a planet on the edge of a black hole from which the decay appears to emanate. There, Picard and the Enterprise must hijack technology beyond their comprehension to save the lives of billions - and prepare themselves to sacrifice millions on the planet below.

The crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise is completing a diplomatic mission with the Maabas, an alien race with whom they'd been sent to sign a treaty. The Maabas are a peaceful people who are not native to the star system they now inhabit, but were refugees from a great war long ago. Several hundred thousand took shelter on their new planet, and have been there for thousands of years. While they have warp capability, they do not travel the stars, but seek to explore within. The Federation's interest is in the Maabas's great intellectual resources. Their science, while behind Federation standards in some areas, excels in others. They are highly intelligent, with unique approaches, and their philosophy is in line with that of the Federation. But just as the pact is signed, the Enterprise is attacked by an unknown ship. They manage to show enough force to keep the alien vessel at bay...but a new danger arises, as their mysterious foes are the Kenisians--a race that used to inhabit this planet thousands of years ago, and now want it back.

While exploring the unmapped frontier, the Starship Enterprise responds to a distress call from an unknown ship. Captain James T. Kirk turns first contact into a threat of interstellar war--by saving the life of a man his own people abandoned. Berlis, colony leader of a telepathic race calling themselves the Isitri, claims not to know why those from his homeworld want him dead. Now Kirk must either find a way to wrench billions from the grip of one man, or be responsible for the destruction of two planets.

While exploring a sector of uncharted space, the U.S.S. Voyager is ambushed -- and forcibly pressed into service as part of the Edesian Fleet in their war against the enemy Gimlon. The Edesian commander claims that the Fleet is fighting only to defend his people against a merciless invader, but Captain Janeway is suspicious. War, she has learned, is seldom so simple or black and white.

With Chakotay and several other crew members held hostage, and the Starship Voyager under the control of the Edesians, Janeway has no choice but to join the campaign against the Gimlon, only to discover that the enemy has developed a new super-weapon capable of destroying entire worlds. Soon the Captain and her crew find themselves fighting a losing battle in a war they never wanted!