Fortune has smiled on Lieutenant Jasminder Choudhury, chief of security on the USS Enterprise.She has survived. But her homeworld, Deneva, one of the planets targeted in the massive Borg invasion, has not. The entire surface has been wiped clean, killing anyone who was not evacuated in time and rendering the planet uninhabitable. She does not even know whether her family is among the displaced -- or are they gone forever?

All across the galaxy similar stories are being repeated. Hundreds of thousands of refugees haunt the spaceways, seeking comfort, looking for some place safe, somewhere, anywhere to find solace. For the first time in generations, citizens of the Federation know want, uncertainty and fear. Bloodied yet unbowed, the Federation stands on the edge of a precipice. As he battles to rescue the displaced and the desperate, Captain Jean-Luc Picard is forced to wonder whether those who know how to win a war can ever make a good peace.