Captain Calvin Mercer is called into Admiral Hernadez's office and is asked to take on a secret mission before he finds out what it is. Bored with his ground assignments Mercer accepts. The mission involves taking the refurbished Enterprise to the edge of known space and brokering a treaty with an alien race that has developed a new fuel that promises to revolutionize space travel. What seems like a straight forward mission involving first contact with a strange new world and civilization quickly turns into something much more complicated with sinister overtones and hints of betrayal from within Star Fleet, or...someone else.