Star Trek: A Time to Be Born by John Vornholt

Wesley Crusher has been studying under the Travellers for years now, and it is finally time for him to become one of them completely, even though he's had a very hard time with their policy of only watching and not intervening in the events of the galaxy. As part of his initiation, he must gaze into the Pool if Visions and find a vision of his own. But when that vision is of the Enterprise and all those aboard being destroyed, Wesley knows he must try and prevent this from happening...

The Rashanar Sector was the site of one of the greatest battles between the Federation and the Dominion. Thousands of ships came to the fight, from many different races, but none of them survived to leave, and the effects of the battle can still be felt today. Full of space debris and broken ships, the Federation is trying to keep the site free of looters and salvagers so that they can recover the bodies of the dead for proper burial.

But this is complicated by the site itself. The loss of so many ships in such a small area of space has caused dangerous gravity anomalies and balls of free-floating antimatter that make the area a dangerous hazard to anyone entering that sector of space. The commander in charge of the Federation force dedicated to retrieving the bodies of the dead asks for an entire task force dedicated to that end, but losses from the war mean that the Federation can assign only one ship: Enterprise.

Captain Picard looks on this as an opportunity to both help and study the anomalies of the battle site, but he doesn't get much of a warm welcome from the woman in Charge, Captain Leedon of the Juno. She is so consumed with retrieving the bodies of the dead that she doesn't really care for much else, and the use of a single Federation ship, even if it is the flagship, the Enterprise, makes her more upset than glad for the help.

Picard soon finds that the Rashanar sector is very bad news for him. His Yacht is stolen by the scavengers that roam the sector looking for ships to sell and weapons and components to make off with. The race helping Captain Leedon and the Federation patrol the area, the Ontailians, seem to be acting suspiciously, with ships constantly coming and going, and sometimes not answering hails or appearing where they shouldn't be. But when Geordie and Data discover a strange ship that can change its appearance at will and causes the ships around it to go dead, a possible scenario for the reason the battle at Rashanar being so furious and going on for so long is revealed.

But when the Changeling ship shifts to looking like the Ontalian Battleship after destroying it and moves towards the Enterprise with the threat of doing the same to it, the Enterprise has no choice but to destroy the Changeling vessel, and in so doing, arouses the wrath of the Ontalians, who destroy the Leedon. The Enterprise retreats, not wanting to kill allies, but the repercussions lead to Picard being Courtmartialed for the crime of killing the Ontalian ship.

But as Wesley-Traveller struggles to keep Picard from being sold down the river, he cannot stop the forces that are conspiring against Picard and using him as an example as to what happens to Captains who cannot prove their cases in court. With Data's word not being accepted because the Changeling ship also shut him down, and Geordie's implants failing in the same attack, the idea of a ship that can change itself to look like Others is an idea too strange to be accepted. Can Picard prove his case, or will his unwillingness to go along and change his story to suit what Starfleet wants cause him the disgrace of being found guilty?

I found this book somewhat depressing, because of the way that the characters always seem to be losing, and their losses overcome the triumphs they manage to achieve during the course of the story. This book is the first part of a series of Nine books. I didn't pick them up when they came out, and now I am not quite sorry for that choice, having read this one. But I will look and see if I can find the others, as I do want to find out what happens... just not enough to actually buy the remaining books!

This series attempts to tell why, at the time of the battle with Shinzon, so many of the crew had abandoned or were about to abandon the Enterprise and go on to new assignments. So, I'll have to read the rest of the series to say whether its fully any good, but this book is good. Just very depressing to read, as you want to read about the successes of the Enterprise's crew, not their rank failures. And in the end, that's really what it ends up being.

So, it's not quite as entertaining as a usual Star Trek story, but there's a possibility for greatness buried within it, which is, of course, the rest of the series. And it does make you want to read more, if only to see where the story as a whole goes. So, interesting, but I have a hard time recommending it without more of the series to read at the same time. Unless like you like feeling depressed and let down.