Captain MacKenzie Calhoun is one of Starfleet's finest, a highly-trained Captain in command of the cutting edge ship known as the USS Excalibur. Yet he was not always destined for Starfleet. Things could have been very different...Twenty years before he came to command the Excalibur, he was the victorious teenage figurehead of the revolt that freed his home planet from alien domination. A wild and hardened killer, at nineteen years old he is already a leader of men. But what will he do when his only goal -- his struggle to overthrow the Danteri rule -- is achieved? Discovered by Captain Picard of the USS Stargazer, who detects in him the seeds of possible greatness, he is given a choice which will change his life forever. Under the guidance of Jean-Luc Picard, he abandons the pathway to death and ignominy on his home world, and chooses instead to enrol at Starfleet Academy, a place utterly opposed to the values of independence and rebellion he learned as a youth. The road from raw recruit to Starfleet Officer has never been rougher. And Mackenzie Calhoun's journey is never less than fascinating, told here as only Peter David can tell it.