*****
C h r i s t o p h e r   P i k e
by 
Michael Jan Friedman 

          CHRISTOPHER PIKE GREW UP IN THE MOJAVE REGION ON EARTH, A PART OF North America that had been uninhabitable desert only two hundred years earlier. However, by the time of Pike’s birth in the early part of the twenty-third century, the Mojave had been converted into a paradise of glittering cities and wide belts of lush, green parkland. 
          It was here that the young Pike learned to ride horses-particularly his beloved Tango-and to enjoy the wide-open spaces, passions which remained with him throughout his life. It was here as well that Pike first glimpsed the stars in the crisp night sky and knew he wanted to devote his life to their exploration. 
          Even before he took command of the U.S.S. Enterprise, in 2250, Pike was known throughout Starfleet as a bright, dedicated, and compassionate individual-prime command material. Never one to crack a joke, he took his duties and responsibilities as captain quite seriously. 
          According to his critics, he may have taken his responsibilities too seriously on occasion. For instance, when the Enterprise was involved in a violent conflict on Rigel VII and three crew members were killed, Pike blamed the incident on his own carelessness in not anticipating hostilities on the part of the Rigelians-even though his colleagues on the ship assured him there was nothing else he could have done. 
          In 2254, Pike and the Enterprise were en route to the Vega colony when they received a distress call from the S.S. Columbia-a spacegoing vessel that had disappeared near the Talos star group some eighteen years earlier. His investigation led to the discovery of the Columbia’s crash site on planet Talos IV and, subsequently, contact with the planet’s indigenous inhabitants-a race of technically advanced humanoids. 
          The Talosians captured Pike and attempted to detain him with their ability to create realistic illusions. Their aim was to mate him with a human female in their possession in order to breed a line of captive humans. However, Pike managed to outwit the Talosians and win his freedom. His behavior convinced them that humans are unsuitable for captivity. 
          Nonetheless, the human female whom Pike encountered-Vina, the lone survivor of the S.S. Columbia crash-opted to remain with the Talosians. Apparently, she had been badly disfigured in the crash and had come to prefer illusion to reality. 
          Pike left Vina there, though he felt a strong emotional attachment to her. Soon after, Starfleet Command imposed General Order 7 on Talos IV, prohibiting Federation contact with that planet on pain of death. 
          Pike went on to conduct two complete five-year missions of exploration, the second ending in 2261. He relinquished command of the Enterprise to James Kirk in 2263, at which time Pike was promoted to fleet captain. 
          For three years, Pike proved a capable and creative administrator. Then, in 2266, he suffered severe radiation injuries in an attempt to save lives during an accident aboard a class-J training ship. 
          Wheelchair-bound as a result of delta-ray exposure, Pike found life difficult, to say the least. Always a very active individual, his disability drove him to the edge of despondence. 
          Finally, with the help of the Vulcan Spock, who had served on the Enterprise under Pike, the fleet captain managed to return to Talos IV despite General Order 7. Once there, he took the Talosians up on an offer they had made to him twelve years earlier-an offer to use their power of illusion to give him a life unfettered by his physical reality. 
          Though little is known of Pike’s life after that, Starfleet chroniclers have speculated that he lived out his natural life in Vina’s company, as happy and fulfilled as any human could be. 
          Though Pike himself left Starfleet, his accomplishments went on to inspire a great many of the fleet’s finest officers. One of them was the aforementioned Spock of Vulcan, who later served under James Kirk, Pike’s successor as captain of the Enterprise. 
          Pike City, a town on the Federation planet Cestus III, was named for the sometimes grim, always unpretentious, and yet stirringly adventuresome Captain Christopher Pike. 

*****
J a m e s   T.   K i r k
by 
Michael Jan Friedman 

His Early Life
          JAMES TIBERIUS KIRK WAS BORN IN 2233 IN THE REGION CALLED IOWA, ON planet Earth. He and his older brother, George Samuel Kirk, grew up on their father’s farm, where they learned hard work and an appreciation for the facts of life and death. 
          In 2246, at the tender age of thirteen, James Kirk was one of the surviving eyewitnesses to the massacre of some 4,000 colonists on Tarsus IV by Kodos the Executioner. Later on, as a Starfleet captain, Kirk would identify and apprehend Kodos, thereby bringing a sense of closure to the surviving members of the colony. 
          Kirk was admitted to Starfleet Academy in 2250. One of his most influential instructors was a man named John Gill, who would later violate the Federation’s Prime Directive by inadvertently creating a tyrannical regime on the planet Ekos. 
          Early on at the Academy, Kirk was tormented by an upperclassman named Finnegan, who frequently chose Kirk as a target for his practical jokes. Kirk found a measure of satisfaction years later, in 2267, when he had a chance to wallop a replica of Finnegan created on an "amusement park" planet in the Omicron Delta region. 
          One of Kirk’s heroes at the Academy was the legendary Captain Garth of Izar, whose exploits were required reading. Years later, Kirk helped save his hero when Garth became criminally insane and was being treated at the Elba II penal colony. Another of Kirk’s personal heroes was Abraham Lincoln, sixteenth president of the United States of America on Earth. 
          As an exemplary student, Kirk was asked to serve as an instructor at the Academy. One of his students was Gary Mitchell, a fellow human who would become Kirk’s best friend. Years later, on the planet Dimorus, Mitchell would risk his life by taking a poisonous dart meant for his friend Jim. Mitchell also arranged for Kirk to date an unidentified "little blonde lab technician," whom Kirk almost married. 
          Another of Kirk’s friends from his Academy days was Benjamin Finney, who named his daughter, Jamie, after Kirk. A rift developed between Finney and Kirk in 2250 when the two were serving together on the U.S.S. Republic. Kirk recorded a mistake that Finney had made in the duty log, and Finney blamed Kirk for his subsequent failure to earn command of a starship. 
          Shortly thereafter, Kirk and the Republic visited the planet Axanar on a peace mission. The operation was a major achievement for Captain Garth, who spearheaded the mission, while Starfleet awarded Kirk the Palm Leaf of Axanar for his smaller role in the effort. 
          Kirk continued to serve aboard the Republic until his graduation from the Academy in 2254. Before leaving, he distinguished himself as the only cadet ever to have beaten the "no-win" Kobayashi Maru computer-simulation problem. Kirk accomplished this by secretly reprogramming the simulation computer to make it possible for him to win, earning a commendation for original thinking in the process. 
          After graduation, Kirk’s first posting was as a lieutenant on the U.S.S. Farragut, under the command of Captain Garrovick. While serving aboard the Farragut in 2257, Lieutenant Kirk encountered a dikironium cloud creature at planet Tycho IV. The creature ended up killing some 200 members of the Farragut’s crew, including Captain Garrovick. 
          At the time, Kirk felt guilty for the deaths, believing that he could have averted tragedy if he had fired on the creature more quickly. However, he learned years later that nothing could have prevented the deaths of his captain and his comrades. 
          Sometime in his youth, Kirk was exposed to and almost died from Vegan choriomengitis, a rare and deadly disease which remained dormant in his bloodstream. In 2268, the disease was used by the people of the planet Gideon to infect volunteers willing to die to solve their planet’s overpopulation crisis. 
          In 2263, Kirk was promoted to the rank of captain. A year later, he assumed command of the U.S.S. Enterprise, taking over for Captain Pike, and embarked on a five-year mission from 2264 through 2269 that made him a legend in the annals of space exploration. 
          It was during this five-year mission that Kirk’s friendships with Commander Spock and Chief Medical Officer Leonard McCoy developed. These were friendships that would last the three men the rest of their lives. 
*****
The Legendary Five-Year Mission
          In 2265, Kirk and the Enterprise discovered a strange energy barrier. Exposure to the energies in the barrier initiated a transformation in Kirk’s friend and colleague, Lt. Gary Mitchell, changing him into a being with tremendous psychokinetic powers. An attempt to quarantine Mitchell at the Delta Vega mining facility was unsuccessful and Kirk was tragically forced to kill his friend to save the Enterprise. 
          Kirk demonstrated his ability to "tap dance"-in other words, to create innovatative solutions to urgent problems-when he encountered a giant spacecraft which identified itself as the Fesarius. When the commander of the Fesarius threatened to destroy the Enterprise if it didn’t move off, Kirk told his alien counterpart that Starfleet vessels are equipped with a "corbomite" system which would destroy any attacker. The Fesarius refrained from initiating hostilities and Kirk eventually established friendly relations with its lone occupant. 
          Kirk lost his older brother, George Samuel Kirk (whom only James called Sam), and sister-in-law, Aurelan Kirk, on the planet Deneva when it was invaded by neural parasites in 2267. Kirk’s nephew, Peter, survived the invasion. Sam Kirk also had two other sons who were not on Deneva at the time of the tragedy. 
          James Kirk became the first starship captain ever to stand trial when he was accused of causing the death of Benjamin Finney. However, Kirk’s court-martial, held at Starbase 11, exposed a plot by the embittered Finney and proved the captain innocent of any wrongdoing. 
          Early in his five-year mission, Kirk recorded a tape of last orders to be played by officers Spock and McCoy upon his death. Some time later, while trapped in a spatial interphase near Tholian space, Kirk vanished with the U.S.S. Defiant and was declared dead. Spock and McCoy honored their captain’s last wishes by working together against the Tholian threat, despite their differences-at least until they realized he wasn’t dead after all. 
          In 2267, Captain Kirk and a handful of his officers were thrust into a mirror universe after trying to beam down to a planet during an ion storm. They found it to be a savage place, governed by a brutally oppressive regime. In this frame of reference, Starfleet officers climbed the ranks through assassination and mutiny. 
          One of Kirk’s earliest nemeses was Harry F. Mudd, a slippery interplanetary swindler. In the captain’s first meeting with Mudd, the con man was trying to sell off his "cargo" of three women-the beneficiaries of a Venus drug that kept them young and beautiful. 
          In another encounter, Kirk’s ship was taken over and brought to a planet full of androids-among whom Mudd resided. Mudd had made plans to rule the androids as they expanded throughout the galaxy, but the androids-recognizing Mudd as a flawed example of humanity-decided to strand him with the crew of the Enterprise when they left the planet. With Mudd’s help, Kirk took back his ship. But when the Enterprise departed, Mudd was left behind. 
          Of course, not all of Kirk’s adversaries were completely human. In 2266, Kirk took aboard young Charles Evans, the lone survivor of a spaceship on the planet Thasus 14 years earlier. When Charlie demonstrated remarkable telekinetic powers, causing crewmen to disappear and taking over the Enterprise, Kirk was presented with the difficult problem of dealing with this enfant terrible. 
          Shortly thereafter, Kirk’s Enterprise tracked down a Romulan vessel that had attacked Starfleet outposts along the Romulan Neutral Zone. Engaging the ship, Kirk guessed that its actions were a test of Federation resolve. Despite the fact that the Romulans enjoyed a cloaking device and superior weaponry, Kirk outmaneuvered the commander of the Romulan vessel and forced him to self-destruct as an alternative to surrender. 
          On another occasion, Kirk was split into two distinct personalities by a transporter malfunction. With the help of his chief engineer, Montgomery Scott, Kirk arranged for his two halves to be rejoined. 
          In 2267, Kirk found himself at odds with his first officer when Spock hijacked the Enterprise and took it to Talos IV against the express dictates of Starfleet’s General Order 7. It was only when the Enterprise arrived at its destination that Spock’s plan was revealed-the transport of former Enterprise Captain Christopher Pike, crippled in a recent accident, to an environment where he could live out his life in happiness. 
          Kirk encountered Trelane, an illogical but extremely powerful alien, in the middle of the Enterprise’s original five-year mission. Although Trelane appeared to be an adult humanoid fascinated with Earth’s history, Kirk recognized that there was more to the being than met the eye. His suspicions were confirmed when Trelane’s parents intervened-and Trelane himself was exposed as an alien child. 
          On the planet Cestus III, the super-advanced Metrons pitted Kirk against a representative of the merciless, lizardlike species known as the Gorn in a one-on-one competition for survival-in which the loser’s crew would be destroyed. Using his wits against the Gorn’s brawn, the captain defeated his opponent, but refused to kill him. Impressed, the Metrons allowed both crews to live. 
          The captain also encountered a being who called himself Apollo, a member of a band of space travelers who lived on Mount Olympus, on old Earth. Though Apollo declared the Enterprise crew to be his children, Kirk and his officers refused to stay and worship him-and destroyed Apollo’s temple, the source of his amazing powers. 
          Kirk made one of his greatest enemies when the Enterprise discovered a sleeper vessel from the late twentieth century. Its crew turned out to be a group of eugenically created and cryogenically preserved supermen. Their leader, a magnetic but ultimately contemptuous individual named Kahn, tried to take over the ship. However, Kirk defeated Kahn and dropped him off on a virgin world, where he could put his superhuman abilities to the test. 
          Then again, not all of Kirk’s challenges were quite so adversarial. Some of them were a good deal more complex. 
          At one point, the gravitational forces of a black star hurled the Enterprise back in time to the twentieth century, where it was sighted by a pilot named John Christopher. So as to leave the time line intact, Kirk beamed Christopher aboard the Enterprise. However, when Spock pointed out that Christopher’s son would become an important space explorer, Kirk returned the pilot to Earth. 
          In 2267, Kirk came upon two worlds engaged in a war in which randomly selected casualties, who willingly sacrificed their lives in antimatter chambers to prevent the resumption of a real conflict. Kirk destroyed the computers on one of the combatant-worlds, thereby forcing the two worlds to engage in a bloody fight or seek peace. 
          When Spock entered the ponn farr, the Vulcan mating cycle, Kirk was forced to return his first officer to his native planet. However, through a series of machinations, Kirk wound up not as a visitor to a marriage ceremony, but as a participant in a deadly combat-pitted against the inhumanly strong Spock. Only an injection by Dr. McCoy allowed Kirk to escape his dilemma by appearing dead and thereby ending the combat. 
          By 2267, Kirk had earned an impressive list of commendations from Starfleet, including not only the Palm Leaf of Axanar, but the Grankite Order of Tactics (Class of Excellence) and the Preantares Ribbon of Commendation (Classes First and Second). Kirk’s awards for valor included the Medal of Honor, the Silver Palm with Cluster, the Starfleet Citation for Conspicuous Gallantry, and the Kragite Order of Heroism. 
          In 2268, Kirk and two of his officers were abducted by a group of advanced beings called the Providers and forced to fight as gladiators for the Providers’ amusement. To save his people and his ship, Kirk wagered their freedom on his ability to defeat three of the Providers’ best thralls-a feat he then carried off. 
          Soon after, Kirk took the Enterprise into Romulan space and feigned a nervous breakdown due to overwork. Spock denounced his captain and gave the appearance that he had killed Kirk, thereby attaining his way into the trust of a female Romulan commander. 
          However, it was all part of a scheme to gain possession of the Romulans’ cloaking device, the efficacy of which Kirk had experienced firsthand a couple of years earlier. In disguise, the captain beamed aboard the Romulan flagship, stole the device, and escaped. 
          Kirk was known to violate Starfleet directives when he saw no viable alternative. In 2268, for instance, the Klingons armed one component of a planet’s population-the Hill People-with firearms, thereby endangering another component of the population. In violation of the Prime Directive, the captain reluctantly restored the balance of power by arming the endangered tribespeople as well. 
*****
His Romances
          Kirk was notably unsuccessful in maintaining long-term liaisons with the opposite sex. Although he was romantically involved with a great many women during his life, his intense passion for his career always seemed to interfere with his relationships. 
          In 2252, Kirk dated a woman named Ruth. Not much is known about her, though she seemed to occupy Kirk’s thoughts for years afterward. Later on, while still attending the Academy, Kirk spent a year or so with a woman named Janice Lester. Some fifteen years later, Lester would attempt to switch bodies with her old flame in a bizarre attempt to realize her dream of becoming a starship captain. 
          A few years prior to his command of the Enterprise, Kirk became involved with a scientist, Dr. Carol Marcus. The two had a child, David Marcus, but Kirk and Carol did not remain together because their careers took them in different directions. 
          Other significant romances in Kirk’s life included Janet Wallace, an endocrinologist who later saved his life from an aging virus; Areel Shaw, who, ironically, prosecuted Kirk years later in the case of Ben Finney’s apparent death; and Miramanee, a beautiful primitive woman Kirk married in 2268 after he was struck with amnesia on a landing party mission. Miramanee became pregnant with Kirk’s child, but both she and her unborn baby were killed in a local power struggle. 
          Kirk fell in love with a woman named Antonia after his first retirement from Starfleet, and for the rest of his life regretted not having proposed to her. However, Kirk’s most tragic romantic involvement was with American social worker Edith Keeler, whom he met when he traveled into the 1930s through the Guardian of Forever. As it turned out, Keeler’s existence was a focal point in time, and Kirk was forced to watch her die to prevent a terrible change in the established time line. 
          Kirk was not involved with the upbringing of his son, David Marcus, at the request of the boy’s mother, Carol Marcus. In fact, Kirk had no contact with his son until 2285, when Carol and David were both working on Project Genesis and Kirk helped rescue the two from Kahn’s vengeance. Later, Kirk and his son were able to become friends. Tragically, David was murdered shortly thereafter on the Genesis Planet by a Klingon officer named Kruge, who sought to steal the secret of Genesis. 
*****
His Later Career
          Following the return of the Enterprise from its five-year mission in 2269, Kirk accepted a promotion to admiral and became chief of Starfleet operations, while the Enterprise underwent an extensive refit. At the time, Kirk recommended Will Decker to replace him as Enterprise captain. 
          However, when V’ger-a highly destructive mechanical life-form-approached Earth in 2271, Kirk accepted a grade reduction back to captain in order to reassume command of the Enterprise and deal with the threat. In the end, he defused the problem, thanks to the willingness of Decker and a Deltan female named Ilia to merge themselves with the V’ger entity. 
          Kirk’s first retirement from Starfleet took place some time thereafter. Nonetheless, unable to ignore the siren call of duty, he returned to Starfleet in 2284 and became a staff instructor with the rank of admiral at Starfleet Academy. 
          Before long, however, Kirk found himself dissatisfied with ground assignment. He returned to active duty in 2285 when Khan Noonien Singh hijacked the starship Reliant and stole the Genesis Device, a revolutionary terraforming tool. Commander Spock, Kirk’s close friend, was killed in the effort to retrieve the device. 
          Upon learning that Spock’s katra-or personal essence-had survived the incident, Kirk hijacked the Enterprise to the Genesis Planet to recover Spock’s body and take it to Vulcan. There, on the planet of his birth, Spock was brought back to life, his body and katra reunited. 
          In the course of retrieving Spock, Kirk was forced to destroy the Enterprise, to prevent the ship’s capture by Klingons. Later, in 2285, he was charged with nine violations of Starfleet regulations in connection with the hijacking of the Enterprise. 
          All but one charge was dropped. Kirk was found guilty of that one remaining charge-disobeying a superior officer. 
          However, the Federation Council was so grateful that Kirk had saved Earth from the devastating effects of an alien probe, it commuted his sentence and granted him the captaincy of a second starship named Enterprise, known colloquially as the Enterprise-A. 
          Kirk was an intensely motivated individual who loved the outdoors. His greatest accomplishment in that regard was free-climbing the sheer El Capitan mountain face in Yosemite National Park on Earth. 
          The captain was an accomplished equestrian as well. He kept a horse at a mountain cabin that he owned during his first retirement. Another companion at his mountain cabin was Butler, his Great Dane. He sold the cabin some time after his return to Starfleet. 
          Kirk’s bitterness over his son’s murder by Kruge colored his feelings about the Klingons for years after. He therefore opposed the peace initiative of Klingon chancellor Gorkon in 2293. Nonetheless, Starfleet appointed him the Federation’s "olive branch" and assigned him the duty of escorting Gorkon to Earth. 
          During that mission, Kirk-along with his friend and fellow officer, Dr. McCoy-was arrested and wrongfully convicted of the murder of Gorkon. It later turned out that Gorkon had been killed by Federation and Klingon forces conspiring to block his initiatives. Escaping from Rura Penthe, a cold and deadly Klingon prison-planet, Kirk played a pivotal role in saving the historic Khitomer peace conference from further attacks. He retired from Starfleet a second time about three months after the Khitomer conference. 
          Shortly after his second retirement, Kirk was an honored guest at the launch of the Excelsior-class starship Enterprise-B in 2293. When the vessel ran into trouble on its maiden voyage, Kirk was believed dead. 
          However, it was later learned that he had actually disappeared into a unique temporal anomaly called the nexus. Kirk remained in the anomaly until 2371, when he was contacted and roused from his "paradise" by twenty-fourth-century Enterprise-D captain, Jean-Luc Picard. 
          Working alongside Picard, Kirk emerged from the nexus to help save the inhabitants of the Veridian system from the machinations of a deranged El-Aurian scientist, Tolian Soran. However, Kirk’s heroic effort cost him nothing less than his life. Throughout his illustrious career, he had cheated death at every turn, until, at last, he could cheat her no more. 
          James T. Kirk is buried on a mountaintop on the planet called Veridian III. Fueled by a burning curiosity to see "what’s out there" and armed with an unparalleled resourcefulness, Kirk will long be remembered for going boldly where no one had gone before. 

*****
H i k a r u   S u l u
by 
Michael and Denise Okuda 

          SULU BEGAN HIS CAREER IN STARFLEET UNDER THE COMMAND OF CAPTAIN James T. Kirk on the original Starship Enterprise. Sulu, born in San Francisco on Earth was initially assigned as a physicist in 2265 but later transferred to the helm. 
          Sulu assumed command of the Starship Excelsior in 2290, and subsequently conducted a three-year scientific mission of cataloging gaseous planetary anomalies in the Beta Quadrant. Sulu and the Excelsior played a pivotal role in the historic Khitomer peace conference of 2293 by helping to protect the conference against Federation and Klingon forces seeking to disrupt the peace process. 
          Sulu demonstrated his loyalty and courage when he risked his ship and his career by violating Starfleet orders and attempting a rescue of his former shipmates James T. Kirk and Leonard McCoy. During the attempted rescue, Sulu narrowly escaped a Klingon patrol commanded by Captain Kang in the Azure Nebula. Sulu never entered the incident into his official log. 
          Sulu had a wide range of hobbies, including botany and fencing. The latter interest surfaced when Sulu suffered the effects of the Psi 2000 virus in 2266, and Sulu threatened everyone in sight with a foil. Old style handguns were another of his hobbies. 
          Hikaru Sulu had a daughter, Demora Sulu, born in 2271. 
*****
          -Adapted from The Star Trek Encyclopedia 
          by Michael and Denise Okuda 

*****
J e a n-L u c   P i c a r d
by 
Michael Jan Friedman 

His Early Life
          JEAN-LUC PICARD WAS BORN ON EARTH IN 2305 TO MAURICE AND YVETTE Gessard Picard, and raised on a family farm in LaBarre, France, along with his older brother, Robert. Maurice Picard was a tradition-bound French vintner who didn’t approve of advanced technology and encouraged both his sons to follow in his footsteps. 
          However, from a very young age, Jean-Luc had his eyes on the stars. As a boy, he enjoyed building ships in bottles, the pride of his collection being a legendary Promellian battle cruiser-a vessel he would one day discover in his voyages aboard the Enterprise-D. 
          These toy ships served as a springboard for the future captain’s imagination. In his daydreams, he was in command of the vessels after which the toys had been modeled, a true heir to the legendary starship commanders who had gone before him. 
          Against his father’s wishes, Picard applied for entrance into Starfleet Academy in 2322, at the age of seventeen. Unfortunately, he fell short in this effort. Undaunted, the young Frenchman tried again and was admitted to the Academy a year later. 
          As a first-year cadet, in 2323, he ran the grueling Starfleet Academy marathon on Danula II. By passing four upperclassmen on the last hill of the forty-kilometer run, he became the only freshman ever to win the event. Picard won top academic honors at the Academy as well, scoring high enough to be named class valedictorian. 
          Still, his record at the Academy was not flawless. He committed a serious offense that was never made public. Years later, Picard credited Academy groundskeeper Boothby with helping him to rectify his error, thereby making it possible for him to remain a cadet in good standing. 
          Shortly after graduation with the class of 2327, Picard was on leave with several classmates at Starbase Earhart, where he picked a fight with three Nausicaans at the Bonestell Recreation Facility. One of the Nausicaans stabbed Picard through the heart, necessitating a cardiac replacement procedure and leaving Picard with an artificial heart. 
          Years later, as a young lieutenant, Picard met the legendary Sarek of Vulcan at the wedding of the ambassador’s son. Picard was awed by Sarek, whose negotiations had helped to shape the Federation. On another occasion, Picard distinguished himself by leading an away team to Milika III to save an endangered Federation ambassador. 
          In 2333, Picard was a staff officer on the U.S.S. Stargazer when the ship’s captain was killed. The twenty-eight-year-old Picard took charge of the bridge and for his coolheadedness in the emergency was offered command of the Stargazer-thereby becoming one of the youngest Starfleet officers ever to captain a starship. 
          Sometime later, Picard became fast friends with Jack Crusher, one of the officers reporting to him on the Stargazer. In 2344, Crusher introduced Picard to his fiancée, a medical student named Beverly Howard, to whom Picard was strongly attracted. However, as Crusher was a close friend, Picard never mentioned the attraction, either to Crusher or to Beverly. 
          Jack Crusher married Beverly Howard in 2348. The couple had a child, Wesley, a year later. When Jack was killed in the line of duty in 2354, it was Picard’s sad task to inform Beverly Crusher of her husband’s death. Picard still declined to reveal his love for Beverly at the time, because he felt to do so would be to betray his friend. 
          Picard commanded the Stargazer until 2355, when the ship was nearly destroyed by an unprovoked sneak attack near the Maxia Zeta star system. The assailant in the incident was unknown at the time but was later found to be a Ferengi spacecraft. 
          The captain would later recall that an unidentified vessel suddenly appeared and fired twice at point-blank range, disabling the Stargazer’s shields. Picard saved the lives of his crew by employing a tactic to be known as the "Picard maneuver." 
          However, the Stargazer was too badly damaged to repair. Picard abandoned the vessel, albeit reluctantly. The surviving crew, including the captain himself, drifted for several long weeks in lifeboats and shuttlecraft before being rescued. 
          Following the loss of the Stargazer, Picard was court-martialed, as required by standard Starfleet procedure. In the end, he was exonerated. The prosecutor in the case was Phillipa Louvois, with whom Picard had had a love affair. 
          Picard would see the Stargazer again, some years later, in an encounter with a revenge-seeking Ferengi. However, the vessel would be destroyed before the captain could salvage it. 
          While captain of the Stargazer, Picard had also been romantically involved with a woman named Jenice. Although Picard and Jenice were strongly attracted to one another, the captain feared commitment and eventually broke off the relationship. It was a move he would come to regret. 
          Picard and Jenice would be reunited in 2364. At that time, the crew of the Enterprise-D would save the life of Jenice’s husband, Dr. Paul Manheim, following a serious laboratory accident on planet Vandor IX. 
*****
The Enterprise-D
          Picard was appointed captain of the Enterprise-D, the fifth starship to bear the name Enterprise, in 2363, shortly after the vessel was commissioned. It was in this capacity that he carried out his greatest accomplishments and achieved his greatest glory. 
          Still, Picard had served on the Enterprise for less than a year when he was offered a promotion to the admiralty by Admiral Gregory Quinn, who was attempting to consolidate his power base against a supposed alien conspiracy within Starfleet Command. Picard declined the offer, citing his belief that he could better serve the Federation as a starship commander. 
          Later on, however, the captain found that the conspiracy was real. A number of Starfleet officials had been taken over by a species of intelligent parasites, whose presence was marked only by a quill-like protrusion from the host’s neck. With the help of his officers, Picard foiled the parasites’ plans to take control of the fleet. 
          Picard’s most frequent nemesis was the seemingly omnipotent, extradimensional being known as Q. Actually, Q was a single component of an entire continuum that called itself by the same name. Despite his amazing powers and long life, Q displayed a childlike petulance and sense of playfulness. 
          The captain’s first encounter with Q took place during his first mission on the Enterprise-D, in 2364. Q detained the ship and made Picard the defendant in a twenty-first-century courtroom drama, in which Q accused captain and crew of being "grievously savage." 
          On his second visit to the Enterprise-D, Q offered First Officer William Riker a gift of Q-like supernatural powers. On his third visit, Q transported the Enterprise-D some seven thousand light-years beyond Federation space to System J-25, where Picard and his crew first encountered the powerful and dangerous race known as the Borg. 
          In 2367, Q cast Picard and his officers into an elaborate romantic fantasy based on the old Earth legends of Robin Hood. Two years later, Q presented Picard with what he claimed was the afterlife, allowing the captain to see what his life would have been like had he not made some of the rash choices of his youth. However, Picard discovered that it was partly the brashness of his youth that had made him the man he was. 
          In 2370, the Q Continuum decided to test Picard again, devising a paradox whereby he would be responsible for the destruction of mankind by creating an antitime phenomenon. Q himself added the wrinkle of having Picard shift among three time periods, with awareness of what was happening in each. 
          After Picard succeeded in solving the paradox, Q informed him that the experience had been a test. The Q Continuum had wanted to see if Picard could expand his mind and explore the unknown possibilities of existence-abilities he had demonstrated to the Continuum’s satisfaction. 
          One of Picard’s senior officers on the Enterprise-D was Beverly Crusher. As the vessel was designed to accommodate family life, Crusher was accompanied by her young son, Wesley. Another of his officers was Data, an android created by the legendary cyberneticist, Noonien Soong. 
          In 2365, an energy vortex near the Endicor system created a duplicate of Picard that had originated at a point in the time line six hours in the future. Although the "future" Picard was identical to the "present" Picard, the captain had difficulty accepting the existence of his twin-largely because he believed his duplicate might have been responsible for the destruction of his ship. To Picard, this was a deeply repugnant idea. 
          Picard’s artificial heart required routine replacement. This happened most recently in 2365, when complications in the cardiac replacement procedure performed at Starbase 515 necessitated emergency assistance by Dr. Katherine Pulaski. Pulaski had joined the crew of the Enterprise just a few months earlier, temporarily replacing Beverly Crusher. 
          In 2366, in an inadvertent violation of the Prime Directive, Picard was mistaken for a god by the Vulcanoid natives of Mintaka III. While he couldn’t erase their knowledge of him, he was able to convince them to nonetheless follow a "rational" path in their development. 
          The captain met Sarek of Vulcan again in 2366, when the Vulcan ambassador’s final mission was jeopardized by Bendii Syndrome. The disease caused Sarek to lose control of his emotions, a source of great embarrassment to a Vulcan. Picard mind-melded with Sarek to lend the ambassador the emotional stability he needed to conclude a historic treaty with the Legarans. 
          In 2368, Picard visited Sarek’s deathbed to investigate rumors that Sarek’s son, Spock, had defected to the Romulan Empire. Sarek told the captain that Spock perhaps was only attempting to reunite the Vulcan and Romulan peoples. Disguising themselves as Romulans, Picard and Data ventured to Romulus to discover the truth-and aided Spock when he was double-crossed by his Romulan allies. 
          The captain of the Enterprise-D enjoyed a great many friendships. One of his warmest and most unique associations was with a being called Guinan, who came to serve on the Enterprise as the bartender in its Ten-Forward lounge in 2365.
          Guinan was a member of the El-Aurian race, which was nearly wiped out by the Borg in the late twenty-third century. While fleeing from the Borg 2293, she was briefly swept into an alternate reality known as the nexus-along with James T. Kirk and a number of other El-Aurians. 
          Like all her people, Guinan was long-lived. Born sometime in the nineteenth century, she was about five hundred years old when she served aboard the Enterprise-D. Guinan and Q were acquaintances, having met each other in the twenty-second century, but their relationship was a hostile one. 
          Guinan possessed an unusual sense that extended beyond linear space-time. She alone was intuitively aware of the damage to the "normal" flow of time when the Enterprise-C was swept some twenty-two years into its future, creating an alternate time line. Guinan warned Picard that history had been altered, persuading him to return the Enterprise-C to 2344 to repair the time line. 
          Picard also maintained a close rapport with Data. In 2365, the captain served as the android’s attorney when a hearing tested Data’s status as an enfranchised being. With Phillipa Louvois hearing the case, Picard argued successfully that all beings are created but not owned by their creator. Louvois’s decision made it clear that Data was no one’s property. 
          Picard formed a brief friendship with a Tamarian captain named Dathon in 2368. Dathon perished saving Picard’s life, but managed to facilitate peaceful contact between the Tamarians and the Federation in the process. 
          Later that year, Picard accepted Ensign Ro Laren, a Bajoran with a checkered past, as a member of his crew. Two years later, Ro disappointed him by aligning herself with the rebel Maquis and exposing a Starfleet ambush Picard had set for them. Reportedly, her greatest regret was betraying her captain, who had placed so much faith in her. 
          One of Picard’s greatest sorrows as captain of the Enterprise was that he could not save the life of Tasha Yar, his first chief of security on the ship. Yar was destroyed by a creature called Armus in an attempt to rescue Enterprise personnel trapped on Armus’s world. 
          In 2366, on the pleasure planet Risa, Picard met and fell for a beautiful and roguish woman named Vash. A year later, he played Robin Hood to her maid Marian in a fantasy environment created by Q. 
*****
The Borg
          Picard was abducted by the Borg in late 2366 as part of a Borg assault on the Federation. Helpless in the hands of the invaders, Picard was surgically mutilated and transformed into a Borg entity called Locutus. As Locutus, Picard was forced to cooperate in the devastating battle of Wolf 359, in which he helped destroy thirty-nine Federation starships and the majority of their crews. 
          The captain was finally rescued by an Enterprise-D away team, then surgically restored to his human form by Dr. Crusher. However, he carried the emotional scars of his experience for quite some time. 
          Following his return from Borg captivity, Picard spent several weeks recovering from the terrible physical and psychological trauma. While the Enterprise-D was undergoing repairs at Earth Station McKinley in 2367, Picard took the opportunity to visit his hometown of LaBarre for the first time in almost twenty years. 
          In LaBarre, he stayed with his brother, Robert-and met Robert’s wife, Marie, and his son, Rene, for the first time. Fiercely old-fashioned, Picard’s brother had remained on the family vineyard to continue his father’s work after Jean-Luc left to join Starfleet. 
          Robert was resentful of his brother’s stellar achievements, though Robert’s son seemed inclined to follow his uncle Jean-Luc to the stars. Once Robert’s resentment was out in the open, the Picard brothers came somewhat to terms with one another. Jean-Luc even briefly toyed with the idea of leaving Starfleet to accept directorship of the Atlantis Project, but he eventually realized his place was still on the Enterprise-D. 
          In 2368, Picard encountered the Borg again, when the Enterprise recovered a lone Borg survivor of a spaceship crash. Scarred by his experience as Locutus, the captain fought his impulse to allow the Borg to die. 
          Cut off from his race’s collective consciousness, the Borg became an individual referred to as "Hugh," not a threat as Picard had expected. When he was returned to the collective, Hugh’s individualism figured to act as a virus, disabling a portion of the Borg collective as no weapon could have. 
          On two occasions, Picard had to save his ship single-handed. In 2369, he was forced to outwit a pack of thieves who had snuck aboard while the Enterprise-D was shut down for maintenance work. In 2370, when a bizarre virus transformed the crew into their various evolutionary forebears, the captain had to work his way through the ship to stun a devolved Worf and facilitate a cure devised by Commander Data. 
          Picard also had to fight the Enterprise-D itself when it developed a network of nodes reminiscent of a neural web and began acting of its own volition. Eventually, the captain realized that the ship was indeed fostering its own embryonic intelligence. When that intelligence departed in the form of a fully mature entity, the Enterprise-D returned to normal. 
          Picard assumed an unprecedented role in Klingon politics when he served as Arbiter of Succession following the death of Klingon leader K’mpec in 2367. K’mpec took the highly unusual step of appointing an outsider as arbiter so as to ensure that the choice of K’mpec’s successor would not plunge the Empire into civil war. Under Picard’s arbitration, council member Gowron emerged as the sole challenger for leadership of the High Council. 
*****
A Man of Parts
          The captain of the Enterprise-D was known as something of a Renaissance man, whose areas of interest ranged from drama to astrophysics. In particular, he was an accomplished fencer and wine connoisseur. His favorite beverage was "tea . . . Earl Grey . . . hot." 
          Picard was also an avid amateur archaeologist who was intrigued by the legendary ancient Iconians while still at Starfleet Academy. He occasionally published scientific papers on archaeology, and even addressed the Federation Archaeology Council in 2367. 
          Early in his career, at the urging of his teacher, noted archaeologist Richard Galen, Picard had seriously considered pursuing archaeology on a professional level. Picard’s path later crossed Galen’s again just before Galen’s death in 2369, when Picard helped complete Galen’s greatest discovery-the reconstruction of an ancient message from a humanoid species that had lived some four billion years earlier. 
          The captain actually had the opportunity to visit the mythical planet Iconia in 2365. However, an Iconian computer virus endangered the Enterprise and prevented him from exploring the place. 
          In 2370, Picard’s expertise as an archaeologist stood him in good stead. Captured by pirates bent on finding a psionic superweapon developed by the ancient Vulcans, the captain was able to survive by posing as a renegade archaeologist. 
          Picard was also an accomplished equestrian. One of his favorite holodeck programs was a woodland setting in which he enjoyed riding a computer-simulated Arabian mare. 
          The captain played the piano when he was young, at the urging of his mother, but his deep love of music may have stemmed from an incident in 2268 when his mind received a lifetime of memories from the now-dead planet Kataan. At that time, he experienced the life of a man named Kamin, who had died a thousand years earlier. Kamin had played a Ressikan flute; Picard treasured the instrument because he shared Kamin’s memories. 
          Picard’s affinity for music led him to become romantically involved with Neela Daren, an Enterprise-D crew member, in 2369. When Daren was nearly killed on an away assignment, she and Picard realized they couldn’t remain lovers while working as commander and subordinate, and she requested a transfer off the ship. 
          In 2369, Picard-like several members of his crew-was turned into a twelve-year-old child after passing through an energy field. With the help of Dr. Crusher and Enterprise-D engineer Miles O’Brien, they were restored to their original ages. 
          Picard suffered profound emotional abuse that same year when he was captured by Gul Madred, a high-ranking Cardassian officer. Madred tortured Picard for Starfleet tactical information. Picard resisted, but later confessed that the experience so brutalized him that he would have told Madred anything had he not been rescued. 
          The same occasion marked the only time a non–crew member was ever in command of the Enterprise-D during Picard’s stint as captain. That individual was Edward Jellico, who took the captain’s seat while Picard was in the custody of the Cardassians. 
          In 2354, Picard had been romantically involved with a woman named Miranda Vigo during shore leave on Earth. Although Picard and Vigo attempted to keep in touch, he never saw her again. 
          In 2370, a Ferengi named Bok found Jason Vigo, the son of Miranda Vigo, and resequenced the boy’s DNA to make it seem as if he were Picard’s son. Bok, who had plotted against Picard before, planned to kill Jason in retaliation for the captain’s supposed murder of Bok’s son in 2355. Fortunately, the plot was exposed and Jason Vigo’s life was preserved. 
          Beverly Crusher finally learned of Picard’s feelings for her in 2370, when she and the captain were implanted with psi-wave devices so she could read his thoughts. To his surprise, Picard learned that his feelings were reciprocated, though the two opted not to act on those feelings for a while. 
          Picard enjoyed taking part in a series of hard-boiled holonovels featuring fictional twentieth-century detective Dixon Hill. On one occasion, a computer malfunction disabled the fail-safe mechanism that protects holodeck users, allowing a crew member to perish in the holonovel environment. 
          On another occasion, in 2365, a Sherlock Holmes holonovel gave rise to Moriarty, a villainous holoconstruct who tried to take over the ship. It took all Picard’s powers of persuasion to convince the Moriarty construct to release his hold on the Enterprise. 
          The Moriarty construct appeared again in 2369. This time, Picard and Commander Data created a separate holoreality and outwitted the resourceful Moriarty into inhabiting it, forever unaware that he had not escaped the holodeck after all. 
*****
Tragedy and Triumph
          Jean-Luc Picard was proud of his illustrious family history. One of his ancestors fought at the battle of Trafalgar, another won a Nobel prize for chemistry, and a handful of Picards were among those who settled the first Martian Colonies. 
          On the other hand, Picard felt guilt over the role of another ancestor, Javier Maribona-Picard, who helped crush the Pueblo Indian Revolt on Earth in 1692. This became evident in the captain’s dealings with a colony of Native Americans on Dorvan V. 
          For a long time, Picard wasn’t confortable with children around him. In fact, almost from the moment he took command of the Enterprise-D, he foisted his child-related duties as captain onto his first officer, Commander William Riker. However, after being trapped in a turbolift with three young winners of a shipboard science contest, Picard came to appreciate children for their courage and optimism. 
          Still, he had no urge to start a family of his own. That is, until the tragic death in a fire of his brother, Robert, and his nephew, Rene-his only blood relatives, in 2371. At that point, the captain realized that he was "the last Picard," and regretted his earlier decision not to have children. 
          Picard’s command of the Enterprise-D came to a premature end in 2371, when the ship was destroyed at Veridian III in an attempt to prevent Dr. Tolian Soran from destroying the Veridian system. Picard’s partner in his effort to thwart Soran was James T. Kirk, captain of the original Enterprise. Kirk, who had been missing for some seventy-eight years following the launch of the Enterprise-B, was killed in the battle against Soran. 
          As captain of the Enterprise-E, Picard uncovered a Borg plot to go back in time and prevent Earth’s initial contact with the Vulcans, thereby nullifying the formation of the Federation-and making the Borg’s conquest of the sector in the twenty-fourth century a much easier task. 
          Picard took his vessel back in time as well and thwarted the Borg Enterprise, Jeancoming to grips with the fear and anger that still plagued him as a result of his assimilation into the Borg collective. 
          As the captain of the fifth and sixth starships called Enterprise, Jean-Luc Picard will always be known as one of the great space explorers, scientists, and interstellar diplomats of the twenty-fourth century, a man whose considerable accomplishments were forged in the fires of wisdom, compassion, and conscience. 

*****
B e n j a m i n   S i s k o
by 
Michael Jan Friedman 

His Early Life and Career
          BENJAMIN SISKO WAS A DEVOTED FAMILY MAN WHO GREW UP IN NEW Orleans on Earth. His father, Joseph Sisko, was a gourmet chef of Creole descent who ran a small bistro in New Orleans. 
          The elder Sisko insisted the family dine together, so that his "taste testers"-his wife and two children-could sample his new recipes. This love of cooking, particularly with regard to his native Creole dishes, manifested itself in young Ben as well, allowing him to become an accomplished chef in his own right later in life. 
          While Sisko’s sister moved to Portland, Oregon, the future captain himself attended Starfleet Academy in San Francisco. He distinguished himself there as a promising command officer. 
          Sisko met Jennifer, his future wife, at Gilgo Beach on Earth in 2353, just after Sisko’s graduation from the Academy. After a short courtship, during which Jennifer expressed reservations about marrying a Starfleet cadet, she and Sisko married. The couple had a son, Jake, in 2355. 
          Early in his Starfleet career, Ensign Sisko was mentored by Curzon Dax, a Trill whom he met at Palios Station. The two later served on board the U.S.S. Livingston together and remained friends for nearly two decades. Curzon Dax was in the habit of assigning Sisko the duty of escorting VIP guests so the Trill wouldn’t have to deal with them. 
          Sisko also was friends with Calvin Hudson, a fellow Starfleet officer with whom he had attended the Academy. Sisko was sorely disappointed when Hudson later turned out to be a member of the infamous Maquis rebellion. 
          One of Sisko’s earliest Starfleet experiences was a stint in the war between the Federation and the Tzenkethi. He served aboard the U.S.S. Saratoga as executive officer with the rank of lieutenant commander until early 2367, when the ship was destroyed by the Borg in the battle of Wolf 359. 
          Though Commander Sisko and his son survived the destruction of the Saratoga, his wife, Jennifer, tragically did not. Sisko was devastated by the loss, which caused him to withdraw into himself for a time and shun the idea of serving again on a starship. 
          Out of respect for his personal tragedy, he was assigned to the Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards on Mars, where he spent three years overseeing starship construction. One of Sisko’s projects at Utopia Planitia included design work on the experimental warship Defiant, which he would later command. 
          However, Starfleet had no intention of letting such a valuable officer languish for long at Utopia Planitia. Sisko was eventually promoted to full commander and assigned to station Deep Space Nine-a former Cardassian facility near the planet Bajor, which had been occupied and exploited by the Cardassians for several decades. 
*****
On Deep Space Nine
          Commander Sisko was not at all pleased with his posting to Deep Space Nine, as it didn’t seem like the ideal place to raise a young boy. In fact, he was seriously considering civilian life as an alternative. 
          He also was not pleased with the officer who turned over the "keys" to the place-Captain Jean-Luc Picard, of the Enterprise. After all, the last time Sisko had seen the man was at Wolf 359-where Picard, as the Borg named Locutus, coordinated the Borg attack that resulted in the death of Jennifer Sisko. 
          However, after the Bajoran wormhole was discovered, the commander came to understand the strategic importance of Deep Space Nine and the challenge of bringing Bajor into the Federation-and rose to the challenge. He even overcame his negative feelings toward Picard in order to continue his role as Starfleet’s presence on the station. 
          Among Sisko’s staff at Deep Space Nine was science officer Jadzia Dax, a Trill who carried the memories and experiences of Curzon Dax. Sisko initially found it difficult to relate to his old friend in the body of a beautiful young woman, but the two eventually came to renew their friendship. 
          Shortly after his posting to Deep Space Nine, Sisko made contact with beings existed in the Celestial Temple-also known as the Bajoran wormbeings existed in the Celestial Temple-also known as the Bajoran wormhole-which was located in the Denorios Belt. Their nonlinear perspective on existence helped Sisko come to grips with the loss of his wife. 
          As a result of his contact with the Prophets, Bajoran religious leader Kai Opaka indicated that Sisko was the Emissary described in ancient prophecies as the one who would save the Bajoran people. Sisko was uncomfortable with his role as Emissary for some time, but felt obligated to respect Bajoran religious beliefs. 
          From the time of his wife’s death, Sisko was reluctant to form another romantic relationship. It wasn’t until 2370 that he took an interest in a mysterious woman called Fenna, who bore a strange resemblance to the wife of a scientist visiting Deep Space Nine. Much to Sisko’s dismay and disappointment, Fenna turned out to be a mere psychoprojection created by the scientist’s wife under stressful circumstances. 
          Sisko’s next relationship had its share of rough spots as well. In 2371, he began dating an attractive freighter captain named Kasidy Yates, who shared his love of baseball. Their relationship blossomed rapidly into a serious love affair. 
          Thus, Sisko felt betrayed when Yates was exposed as a Maquis sympathizer, who was helping to smuggle supplies into the Badlands. He confronted Yates with his knowledge of her activities, after which she gave herself up and served time in a Federation penal colony. As he had promised, Sisko was there for Yates when her sentence was over. 
          It was also in 2371-specifically, stardate 48959.1-that Sisko was promoted to the rank of captain, in recognition of his accomplishments on Deep Space Nine. Though rank had never been particularly important to Sisko, his subordinates thought the promotion was long overdue. 
          Commanding Deep Space Nine brought Sisko his share of difficult decisions. In 2370, for instance, a proto-universe threatened the safety of his station, but he refused to arbitrarily destroy the proto-universe. He felt that to do so would have been to act with the same indifference to life that the Borg had shown to the Federation. 
          In 2371, Sisko was abducted by a man who appeared to be Miles O’Brien, Deep Space Nine’s chief of operations. This man turned out to be the Miles O’Brien of the mirror universe originally discovered by Captain Kirk. The mirror O’Brien wanted Sisko to help a Terran rebellion, to fight an interplanetary group of oppressors known as the Alliance. 
          Sisko was disconcerted to learn that the counterpart of his late wife, Jennifer, was still alive in the mirror universe. It was Sisko’s difficult job to convince the mirror Jennifer to abandon her work for the Alliance, and to persuade her to instead join the Terran rebellion. Fortunately for the rebellion, he succeeded. 
          The captain entered the mirror universe again a year later, following his son after Jake was lured there by the living counterpart of his late mother. By then, the Terran rebellion had built its own Starship Defiant, but was having trouble making the warship operational-and needed Sisko’s help to fend off an oncoming Alliance fleet. 
          Helping to get the Defiant shipshape, Sisko subsequently volunteered to lead its rebel crew into battle. His leadership enabled the rebels to emerge victorious-but not before the mirror Jennifer was killed, leaving Sisko and his son to deal with Jennifer’s loss a second time. 
          In 2371, an automated Cardassian self-destruct program was accidentally activated on Deep Space Nine. Sisko, trapped in an ore-processing bay with his son and Miles O’Brien, risked his life to reach a control junction and successfully redirect the destructive force into space. 
*****
The Dominion and Other Foes
          Sisko’s greatest challenge as commander of Deep Space Nine was the threat posed by the Dominion, a powerful and hostile alliance of planetary groups in the Gamma Quadrant. The Dominion had been established by the mysterious and reclusive Founders, who were almost never seen, though a species of brutal soldier called the Jem’Hadar savagely ensured compliance with the Founders’ rule. 
          Sisko first encountered the Dominion during a father-son bonding trip to the Gamma Quadrant, during which he ran into a group of Jem’Hadar. Some time later, hoping to avert a Dominion invasion by demonstrating the Federation’s peaceful intent, Sisko took the newly commissioned Defiant and his officers into the Gamma Quadrant to find the Founders. 
          It turned out the Founders were shapeshifters, like Sisko’s Deep Space Nine security chief, Odo-and that they were unlikely to accept the idea of a peaceful coexistence with the Federation. Sisko and his people returned to the Alpha Quadrant, sobered by the knowledge that war with the Dominion might be inevitable. 
          A year later, evidence that the Founders were targeting Earth for invasion sent Sisko back to his home planet, where he and Odo had to prevent-or prepare for-war with the Dominion. However, the more immediate threat was a Starfleet plot to wrest control of the Federation to better defend it against the Dominion. Sisko exposed the conspiracy and restored order on Earth, refusing to let fear conquer his homeworld for the Dominion. 
          In 2373, Sisko, Odo, and O’Brien disguised themselves as Klingons and joined Commander Worf, formerly of the Enterprise-D, on a suicide mission into Klingon territory. Their purpose was to expose Gowron, the Klingon leader, whom they suspected of being a changeling. However, it was General Martok, Gowron’s right-hand man, who turned out to be the changeling in question. 
          Later on, Sisko and some of his officers came across a crashed Jem’Hadar warship while exploring a world in the Gamma Quadrant. When another Jem’Hadar ship showed up, Sisko and his enemies contended for the vessel-but neither side got what it wanted from it. 
          After learning that Cardassia had joined the Dominion, Sisko was forced to deal with what appeared to be a devastating assault force made up of cloaked Jem’Hadar and Cardassian warships. However, the attack turned out to be a ruse to conceal a more insidious plot-to transform Bajor’s sun into a supernova, destroying Bajor and Deep Space Nine in the process. 
          Sisko was sometimes forced to join forces with his enemies. In 2372, he succeeded in stopping a group of Jem’Hadar renegades from gaining immense power by working alongside a sanctioned group of Jem’Hadar. Though the captain saved the life of the Jem’Hadar leader with whom he was aligned, the Jem’Hadar threatened to kill Sisko next time they met. 
          The captain also found it necessary to ally himself with the Cardassians on occasion. In one such instance, Thomas Riker-a duplicate of the Enterprise-D’s Will Riker-stole the Defiant on behalf of the Maquis. Concerned that the Cardassians would believe the Federation had made an alliance with the Maquis, Sisko was forced to help his Cardassian nemesis, Gul Dukat, find and destroy the Defiant. In the end, Sisko was able to negotiate a deal to retrieve his ship and preserve Thomas Riker’s life. 
          On another occasion, when the Klingons invaded Cardassia, Sisko deemed it necessary to warn the Cardassians and even do battle with the Klingons. Eventually, the captain was able to convince Gowron, the leader of the Klingon High Council, that a split among the Federation, the Klingons, and the Cardassians was just what the Dominion wanted to see. 
*****
Officer and Emissary
          Though skeptical of his role as the Bajoran Emissary, the captain gradually came to embrace it, seeing the potential for doing good it brought him. A key point in this process was an incident in 2371, in which Sisko ignored an ancient Bajoran prophecy of doom to undertake a joint scientific venture with the Cardassians. When the prophecy came true, albeit in a symbolic way, Sisko developed a new respect for Bajoran mysticism-and for his own prophesied part in Bajor’s fate. 
          A year later, Akorem Laan, a legendary Bajoran poet who had vanished into the wormhole two hundred years earlier, claimed that he was the Emissary. Sisko stepped aside without argument to let Akorem assume the position-until he saw the misery caused by Akorem’s reverence for Bajor’s ancient caste system. In the end, the wormhole aliens known as the Prophets confirmed that Sisko was the true Emissary. 
          In 2373, Sisko was plagued by life-threatening visions that enabled him to find B’hala, Bajor’s legendary lost city, which seemed to hold the key to Bajor’s future. When his life was saved by the station’s physician, Dr. Julian Bashir, the visions went away-and the captain felt the loss deeply. 
          That same year, Sisko and some of his officers traveled back in time to a pivotal moment in the history of the original Starship Enterprise. Arne Darvin, a surgically altered Klingon, had used a Bajoran orb to send the Defiant back into the past, aiming to kill Captain James Kirk and alter history in his favor. Rubbing elbows with Kirk and his legendary crew, Sisko and his people managed to foil Darvin’s plot and preserve the time line. 
          One of Sisko’s favorite recreational activities was a holosuite program of the pastime known as "baseball," in which he was able to pit his skills against the sport’s greatest players-including Buck Bokai, Tris Speaker, and Ted Williams. Using this program, Sisko was able to teach his son, Jake, how to play the game. The program also allowed him to cheer his hero, Buck Bokai, in the sparsely attended 2042 World Series that heralded the end of professional baseball. 
          Sisko was an aficionado of other aspects of twenty-first-century Earth history as well. This interest stood him in good stead when he and Dr. Bashir were transported to the San Francisco of 2024-the time and place of the infamous Bell riots. 
          The captain enjoyed collecting ancient African artifacts. In fact, he tried to bring one back with him every time he visited Earth. 
          One of Sisko’s most remarkable recreational activities was his construction of a Bajoran solar-sail vessel of ancient design, which he completed in 2371. Along with his son, Jake, Sisko piloted the vessel to Cardassia, dramatically demonstrating how ancient Bajorans might have accomplished the same feat some eight centuries earlier. 
          Sisko had a "problem" with losing, as evidenced by his preoccupation with the Maquis leader Michael Eddington. Eddington had served aboard Deep Space Nine for eighteen months as Starfleet security officer before showing his true colors as a rebel. Taking the deception personally, Sisko finally apprehended Eddington by casting himself as the villain of the piece and appealing to the rebel’s penchant for self-sacrifice. 
          Despite his soft-spoken and often charming demeanor, no Starfleet officer has ever been as strong-willed, as tough, or as downright courageous as the estimable Benjamin Sisko. 

*****
K a t h r y n   J a n e w a y
by 
Michael Jan Friedman 

Her Early Life and Career
          KATHRYN JANEWAY WAS RAISED IN A TWENTY-FOURTH-CENTURY AGRICULtural park in the region known as Indiana, on Earth. Her father, Edward Janeway, was a career Starfleet officer who rose to the rank of vice-admiral before his untimely death. 
          During the latter stages of Kathryn’s childhood, the elder Janeway spent increasing amounts of time away from home, dealing with the burgeoning Cardassian threat to the Federation-a threat that would ultimately erupt into armed conflict. Young Kathryn responded to these absences by trying to excel at the activities her father had laid out for her, becoming an outstanding mathematician, scientist, tennis player, and ballet artist in an attempt to impress and please him. 
          Once, after losing a tennis match, Kathryn Janeway set out to trek twenty miles through rainy woods rather than take a ride back to her home. It would not be until later in life that she learned to deal well with failure, though she remained driven to succeed in every aspect of her life. 
          Janeway accompanied her father to Mars at the tender age of nine and developed an affinity for the terraformed world that would bring her back on several other occasions. As a young woman, after completing her senior honors thesis on vertebrate anatomy, Janeway discovered what appeared to be a chordate skeleton while cave-diving on Mars-suggesting that there had been vertebrate life on Mars at one time. The discovery brought her a certain amount of fame in scientific circles at an early age. 
          Originally, Janeway aspired to become the science officer on a deep-space exploration expedition, and even completed a doctoral degree in quantum cosmology toward that end. However, the young woman changed her mind about her career direction while serving as an ensign under Admiral Owen Paris on the starship Icarus. 
          Janeway’s assignment to the Icarus was her first in space. In the course of it, both she and Admiral Paris were briefly taken prisoner by the Cardassians, whose actions the Icarus was investigating. After Janeway aided in the admiral’s escape, he suggested that Starfleet would better benefit from her services as a command officer. 
          Janeway went on to serve under Paris as science officer on the AlBataani, but later took his advice and switched to the command track. It was at about the same time that Janeway’s father and fiancé were killed in the crash of a shuttlecraft on Tau Ceti Prime. 
          Janeway, who had been piloting the vessel, was only injured in the crash. Still, she carried its emotional scars for some time afterward, even sinking into a clinical depression. 
          Her mother, Gretchen, and her younger sister, Phoebe, are credited with having brought Janeway out of that depression. Janeway also benefited from the company of Petunia, a dog she rescued from a snowstorm near her family home, and the support of Mark Johnson, a childhood friend and a member of Earth’s Questor philosophical symposium. 
          Janeway went on to become romantically involved with Johnson, though she had never before seen him in a romantic light. Nonetheless, their relationship didn’t keep Janeway from pursuing her aspirations to explore deep space as a Starfleet officer. 
          Her first mission as captain was a six-month venture into the Beta Quadrant. Afterward, a Vulcan ensign named Tuvok was asked to assess her efforts as the commanding officer of a starship. He found her lacking in respect for military exercises. Though Janeway was nonetheless commended for her tour of duty, Tuvok was assigned to accompany her on her next command-to make sure she conducted the necessary tactical drills. 
          Janeway and Tuvok went on to become fast friends and staunch comrades. The captain came to rely on the Vulcan’s clear, logical vision and technical expertise. When she was placed in command of the cutting-edge starship U.S.S. Voyager, Janeway named Tuvok her tactical officer. 
*****
The Voyager Adventures
          Starfleet Command "borrowed" Tuvok from Janeway and had him infiltrate the revolutionary group known as the Maquis. However, in 2371, the Maquis ship to which the Vulcan was assigned fell victim to an anomaly in the region of space known as the Badlands. 
          Janeway took Voyager into the Badlands in an attempt to locate Tuvok, but fell victim to the same anomaly. Both she and her ship were swept into the distant Delta Quadrant of the galaxy, some 70,000 light-years from the nearest Federation border. 
          After the destruction of the Maquis vessel, which had also been drawn into the Delta Quadrant, Janeway recovered Tuvok and accepted the Maquis crew aboard her ship. Furthermore, she invited its commander, Chakotay, to become her first officer on Voyager. 
          Janeway’s courage and leadership were instrumental in the survival of her ship and its occupants as they made a long and difficult journey back to the Alpha Quadrant. One of her earliest challenges in this area was to meld the Starfleet and Maquis components of her crew. 
          To accelerate the process, Janeway named other Maquis besides Chakotay to staff officer positions. Prominent among these appointments was that of B’Elanna Torres, a half-Klingon, half-human female who was placed in charge of the engineering section. 
          Tom Paris, the son of Admiral Owen Paris, served as helmsman on Voyager during those difficult days. Though the younger Paris had been discredited for lying and ousted from Starfleet, Janeway valued his skills as a pilot and had him removed from a penal colony to take her into the Badlands. Though he couldn’t keep Voyager and her crew from being thrown into the Delta Quadrant, Paris proved his mettle as a pilot and an officer, and justified Janeway’s faith in him on numerous other occasions. 
          Captain Janeway encountered a number of intriguing and dangerous species in her journey across the Delta Quadrant. Prominent among them was the Kazon, a savage and acquisitive people divided into individual sects, each one hostile to Janeway and her crew. At one point, the captain tried unsuccessfully to forge a defensive alliance with a number of Kazon sects. 
          The captain also encountered the Vidiians, a species ravaged by a virus called the Phage, which gradually destroyed the organs of their bodies. To fill their increasing need for new organs, the Vidiians captured individuals of other species and used them as involuntary donors. 
          In 2371, Janeway and Tom Paris were investigating a world laid waste by a polaric energy explosion, when they were thrown back in time through a subspace fracture. Arriving at a point just prior to the explosion, they managed to prevent it-and thereby save an entire planetary population from extinction. 
          That same year, Janeway sought Chakotay’s help in experiencing a vision quest in search of her personal animal spirit guide. Her quest indeed yielded her a guide-a lizard. 
          Soon after, Janeway got the opportunity to meet one of her heroes-the twentieth-century female pilot Amelia Earhart. Apparently, Earhart had been abducted from Earth in 1937 by an alien species and brought to the Delta Quadrant, where she was preserved in suspended animation. 
          The captain’s feelings for her father were reawakened when she allied herself with a local eccentric on an alien planet, in an attempt to recover Tuvok and B’Elanna Torres from a prison cell. When the man took a fatal wound helping her, Janeway recognized his courage by going along with his illusion that she was his long lost daughter. 
          In 2372, Janeway ran into the entity known as Q for the first time, when she encountered another Q with a death wish. A year later, Q returned to Voyager to ask the captain to have his baby, over the objections of a jealous female Q. 
          On another occasion, Janeway took Voyager through a void in space and discovered an identical ship and crew existing in a parallel universe. With the help of her counterpart, the captain saved Voyager and her crew-though, in the process, her own Ensign Harry Kim was replaced with the Kim of the other universe. 
          Janeway was extremely protective of her subordinates. At one point, she found it necessary to enter a computer program and pit herself against the embodiment of a race’s fear. Some time later, the captain risked her life to save Kes, a member of her crew, from a coma-the result of Kes’s encounter with the Nechani homeworld’s "spirit" realm. 
          Late in 2372, Janeway and her crew were boarded by the Kazon and beamed off Voyager onto the surface of a savage planet. Using their most basic skills, the captain and her people survived the rigors of that world and went on to recover their vessel. 
          In 2373, Janeway had to fight for her life and that of her crew once again. This time, she was pitted against a spreading macrovirus threatening to take over Voyager. 
          Also in 2373, Janeway and her crew got their wish and were transported back to Earth-but in the wrong century. In returning to their own time, they also were forced to return to the Delta Quadrant. 
          Janeway experienced her first brush with the Borg when Voyager encountered a disabled Borg ship in the Delta Quadrant-as well as the ship’s besieged planetbound survivors. Fortunately, the survivors turned out to be friendly to Janeway and her people. They created a Borg-like neural network and destroyed the cubeshaped vessel before it could come back to life. 
          A lifelong dog lover, Janeway grew up with a wire-haired mutt named Bramble. At the time of Voyager’s disappearance, Janeway’s Irish setter, Molly, was about to give birth under Mark Johnson’s watchful eye. 
          During her off-duty hours on Voyager, Janeway enjoyed participating in a Gothic romance holonovel set in old England on Earth. In the program, which was referred to as Janeway Lambda-1, Janeway played the governess of two children whose mother had died. 
          Janeway was also an accomplished pool player. She got a chance to demonstrate this in another holo-setting, a recreation of a French pool hall called Chez Sandrine, favored by Tom Paris during his Academy days. 
          Janeway considered coffee to be her only vice. Even though replicator privileges on Voyager were strictly rationed, she always had at least two cups of coffee a day. 
          Kathryn Janeway will be remembered as an individual who always rose to a challenge, inspired others with her unflagging optimism and ability, and never took no for an answer. 

*****
M a c k e n z i e   C a l h o u n
by 
David Mack 

          CAPTAIN MACKENZIE CALHOUN WAS WELL KNOWN AS THE LEADER OF THE planetary revolution that freed the planet Xenex from Danteri control before he entered Starfleet Academy. 
          During Calhoun’s tenure in the Academy, he earned a reputation for being high-energy and quick with his fists, and for never backing down from any confrontation. 
          Calhoun is never afraid to say precisely what’s on his mind; nor does he suffer fools gladly. Although he understands and appreciates the chain of command, respect and loyalty are not commodities he gives to superior officers simply because they are of higher rank. He feels those privileges must be earned. 
          Captain Calhoun’s given name on his homeworld of Xenex was M’k’n’zy. When he joined Starfleet he changed it to Mackenzie, the closest Terran equivalent, and adopted the name of his home city, Calhoun, as his surname. 
          Calhoun has an older brother, D’ndai, who conspired with Thallonian Chancellor Yoz to overthrow the Thallonian royal family. 
          -from the Star Trek: New Frontier Minipedia