Diane Carey, one of the finest writers of Star Trek fiction, brings the very good New Earth miniseries to a spectacular conclusion in this excellent novel. The story begins in media res, with the starship Peleliu engaged in a desperate battle with the Kauld during Gamma Night, a period in which sensors do not function due to the presence of a nearby white dwarf star. The Peleliu and her crew are on their way to Belle Terre to relieve Captain Kirk and the Enterprise, taking over as the Starfleet vessel assigned to orbit and lend aid to the Belle Terre colonists. Things do not go as planned however, as Captain Lake of the Peleliu seems to be losing his grip on reality (possibly due to radiation exposure years earlier). When the ship's first officer and much of the rest of the crew are killed during the battle with the Kauld, Lieutenant Commander Nick Keller, the ship's second officer, is forced to violently relieve his captain of command and take charge of the Peleliu.
Nick Keller and some of the crew survive the battle, but the Peleliu does not. Keller enlists the aid of Montgomery Scott in the construction of a new starship, a patchwork ship assembled from pieces of destroyed or dismantled vessels and powered by an alien warp drive. Keller names the new ship Challenger, which is just as well because "Peleliu" would not make nearly as good of a title for this book.
While all of this is going on, Captain Kirk has taken the Enterprise to track a strange robot that has been stealing Olivium (the rare and valuable substance discovered in one of Belle Terre's moons). This adventure leads Kirk to a group of interdimensional aliens who were responsible for giving warp technology to the warring Blood and Kauld races. They are also the ones indirectly responsible for the energy-sucking entity called "the Blackness" in an earlier book in this series, here referred to as "the Cold Factor." Carey brings together many elements introduced earlier in the series for this final adventure, and even brings back characters from the very first New Earth novel, like the reprehensible criminal Billy Maidenshore, who has kidnapped Uhura and McCoy and has his own plans for stealing Olivium.
Clearly, there is a lot going on in this book. The intricately constructed plot is a trademark of Diane Carey's writing, and she handles all of the various plotlines and characters deftly. The ultimate purpose of this novel is to introduce Nick Keller and the crew of the starship Challenger. Keller is a great character, a young man who reluctantly takes command but is clearly an able leader, a true cowboy who even wears cowboy boots while on duty. In addition to a primarily human crew, Keller also enlists Shucorion, one of the Blood aliens, to be his first officer. Zoa, an alien woman who resembles a kind of Egyptian goddess, is also a member of Keller's crew. She had been aboard the Peleliu as an observer. I believe the New Earth series, and this novel in particular, were partly conceived in the hopes of launching an ongoing series about Challenger and her crew, but as far as I know only one further Challenger novel was ever published. That's a shame, because Diane Carey has created a wonderful group of characters here who I would have liked to see a lot more of. As it stands, Challenger is one of the best Trek books I've read recently, a fitting conclusion to a fun and well-executed series.
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