Search Worlds Without End

When an experimental shuttlecraft fails, Captain Christopher Pike suspects a mechanical malfunction--only to discover the very principles on which Starfleet bases its technology have simply stopped functioning. He and his crewmates are forced to abandon ship in a dangerous maneuver that scatters their party across the strangest new world they've ever encountered.

First Officer Una Chin-Riley finds herself fighting to survive an untamed wilderness where dangers lurk at every turn. Young cadet Nyota Uhura struggles in a volcanic wasteland where things are not as they seem. Science Officer Spock is missing altogether. And Pike gets the chance to fulfill a childhood dream: to live the life of a cowboy in a world where the tools of the twenty-third century are of no use.

Yet even in the saddle, Pike is still very much a starship captain, with all the responsibilities that entails. Setting out to find his crewmates, he encounters a surprising face from his past--and discovers that one people's utopia might be someone else's purgatory. He must lead an exodus--or risk a calamity of galactic proportions that even the Starship Enterprise is powerless to stop...

When Una Chin-Riley and Christopher Pike meet at Starfleet Academy after one of his lectures, they immediately become friends. A stellar student, Una is the "poster girl" of her class, and Pike is determined to become a Starfleet captain with his own ship, rhetorically assembling his dream crew. As their friendship evolves, Pike also suspects Una is involved with the Euxhana, a Chionian cultural minority, who are seeking asylum in Federation space, leading to more questions than answers.

Twenty-five years later, Una and Pike are working together on the USS Enterprise to settle a Chionian trade agreement when a pro-Euxhana saboteur launches a terrorist attack. When the suspect is taken into custody for interrogation and is discovered to have a history with Una, her past associations resurface, threatening to expose a secret she's been harboring all these years...

While patrolling the borders of the Klingon Empire, Captain Christopher Pike and the crew of the USS Enterprise record a series of subspace echoes from a planet orbiting a volatile flare star--and when Lieutenant Spock and Commander Una Chin-Riley lead a landing party to learn more, they discover the ruins of a dead civilization and evidence of starship-grade metals... quite possibly a crash site.

As they continue to investigate the strange signals, Spock and Una find shocking signs of dangerous alien life and remnants of what can only be Federation hardware. The trail soon leads Pike and Enterprise's helmswoman Lieutenant Erica Ortegas deep into the mystery of a lost Starfleet vessel, missing in action for over ninety years--and to a terrible dilemma that will challenge the crew to question their past... and their future.