A brief recap of the Voyager series? I’ll try, but no promises!

Keep in mind, though, that the books are a lot more interesting than the story may come across here – what’s missing from this the vast amount of character development that has occurred throughout the books so far.

The Spirit Walk duology, written by Christie Golden in 2004, left many of the Voyager characters scattered:

• Admiral Janeway was at Starfleet Headquarters;
• Chakotay, Tom Paris and Harry Kim were on Voyager;
• Seven and the Doctor were working at an Earth-based think tank;
• Tuvok was teaching at Starfleet Academy;
• B’Elanna had gone to Boreth to solve a mystery surrounding her mother’s death – and in the process, discovered that there were Klingons in the Alpha Quadrant who thought her infant daughter Miral was the Kuvah’magh – the Klingon messiah.

Then – outside of the Voyager novels – a number of our characters had significant developments:

• In Michael A. Martin and Andy Mangel’s first Titan novel, Taking Wing, Tuvok left the Academy and accepted an undercover mission with Starfleet Intelligence. He was captured working undercover on Romulus, rescued by the Titan, and joined the crew.
• Admiral Janeway was killed in Peter David’s Before Dishonor, while investigating what was supposed to be a dead Borg cube that turned out to be only mostly dead.
• Voyager was called to the front lines during David Mack’s Destiny trilogy, and was all but destroyed at the Azure Nebula.

When Beyer came on board to take over the Voyager novel series, she had to connect the events of several other series’ stories into the narrative.

Full Circle – my first post-series Voyager novel – begins just after Spirit Walk, and continues for almost three years – taking the crew through and beyond the events of Destiny. Under the command of Captain Chakotay, Voyager is dispatched to the planet Kerovi to interrogate a Changeling they battled in Spirit Walk – and Admiral Janeway joins them.

But before they get underway, they learn that B’Elanna and Miral are missing from Boreth. Seven, the Doctor and Tuvok all lend their expertise as the crew is reunited in a search for Miral that ends on a remote planet where a Klingon cult has kidnapped their savior – Miral – to protect her from others dedicated for centuries to killing the Kuvah’magh.

A new counselor, Lieutenant Hugh Cambridge, joins the crew, and initially, he and Chakotay really don’t get along.

Miral is rescued, but the Warriors of Gre’thor flee, still determined to kill her. Admiral Ken Montgomery, who has been overseeing Project Full Circle – a thorough analysis of the ship’s seven years in the Delta Quadrant – is frustrated by the fact that Chakotay sacrificed his mission to Kerovi to save Miral.

Captain Afsarah Eden and her ex-husband Admiral Willem Batiste are also introduced. Their work on project Full Circle has left Batiste convinced that Starfleet should continue investigating the Delta Quadrant. Eden isn’t so sure until she realizes what a huge potential threat the Borg represents to the Alpha Quadrant.

Admiral Janeway is adamantly opposed to the mission. Tom and B’Elanna concoct a plan to save Miral from the Warriors of Gre’thor by faking their deaths. Admiral Janeway and Chakotay finally give into their mutual affection for one another now that duty no longer makes that relationship impossible. Seven joins the staff at Starfleet Academy where Icheb is one of her students.

The Doctor leaves the think tank and joins his creator, Lewis Zimmerman and Reg Barclay at Jupiter station designing advanced holographic technology. Then – catching up to the story in Before Dishonor and Destiny – the Borg show up in the Alpha Quadrant.

Admiral Janeway is one of the first casualties, but by the end of the assault, the body count numbers sixty-three billion. Chakotay is particularly hard-hit by Janeway’s death. His grief combined with the carnage at the Azure Nebula leaves him devastated. Seven grieves as well, but has a more pressing problem. Ever since the Caeliar transformation of the Borg in the finale of the Destiny trilogy, she has struggled with a voice in her head that tells her she is “Annika.”

In Keith R.A. DeCandido’s A Singular Destiny, B’Elanna and Miral successfully fake their deaths, as Tom lays the groundwork to join them. Admiral Batiste finally convinces Admiral Montgomery that further investigation of the Delta Quadrant is essential, and given what the Borg has just wrought, Starfleet Command agrees. They assemble a fleet of nine ships to return to the DQ – all equipped with slipstream drives – to investigate former Borg space and make sure the Collective and the Caeliar are really gone.

Tom Paris, Harry Kim, and Counselor Cambridge will stay with Voyager, and the Doctor joins the fleet aboard an experimental medical vessel he has helped create – the Galen. Counselor Cambridge is assigned to evaluate Chakotay for his fitness to command Voyager as part of the new Full Circle fleet. Chakotay gains new respect for Cambridge as the counselor helps him deal with his grief.

Chakotay finally regains his equilibrium when he learns that Janeway died trying to prevent Starfleet from sending that fleet out, but it is too late. His command is taken from him and given to Captain Eden. Batiste becomes the Fleet Commander. Determined to help Seven, Chakotay resigns his commission in order to remain with her on Earth.

* * *

Unworthy is the beginning of the story of the fleet’s return to the Delta Quadrant.

When Chakotay and Seven realize that to figure out why the voice is tormenting her, they decide that the need to find the Caeliar – so they come aboard Voyager as observers. Counselor Cambridge and the Doctor begin to help Seven control the voice and search for its source.

B’Elanna and Miral enjoy a brief stay at New Talax with Neelix before reuniting with Tom and Voyager. Harry takes Tom’s betrayal personally, and there is considerable tension between the two former friends.

Voyager discovers a new species, the Indign, who contrary to reason, actually revere the Borg and have developed a cooperative society of six species hoping to prove themselves worthy of assimilation. But a number of inexplicable malfunctions plague Voyager’s efforts to establish meaningful communication with the Indign.

In the interest of self-preservation, the Indign send their most deadly weapon to Voyager, a canister containing the consciousness of one of eight individuals imprisoned thousands of years earlier for horrific crimes against its own people. That consciousness is freed and possesses an incredibly advanced new hologram, Meegan McDonnell, one of the Doctor’s assistants aboard the Galen.

It is revealed that Admiral Batiste only pushed for the Full Circle fleet’s mission to enable him to return to the Delta Quadrant and create a rift to fluidic space. He was a member of Species 8472 sent to spy on the Federation and now just wants to go home. Eden is devastated by Batiste’s betrayal, but Chakotay facilitates Batiste’s return, pleading for his salvation with Valerie Archer. Meegan escapes and her whereabouts remain unknown.

Seven’s work with the Indign allows her to begin to reconcile her human, Borg and Caeliar natures and the voice finally loses its power over her. Finally, Eden, who now commands the entire fleet, tells Chakotay that his resignation was not accepted by Starfleet and he is reinstated as Voyager’s captain.

* * *

Children of the Storm tells the story of what three other fleet vessels were doing while Voyager was busy making a rough first contact with the Indign.

The Children were introduced in the second Destiny book – Mere Mortals – as a strange, intensely xenophobic species. These non-corporeal aliens had somehow managed to clear their territory of the Borg, and Starfleet decides that simply must know how they succeeded (where so many others had failed).

The Quirinal, under command of Captain Regina Farkas, the Planck, led by Hosc T’Mar, and the Demeter, led by Commander Liam O’Donnell, set out to collect intelligence on the Children and within days, the Children attack the fleet vessels, destroying Planck and capturing Demeter. Quirinal barely escapes and crash-lands on a planet twenty thousand light years away.

When the trio of ships does not report in as ordered, Captain Eden plans a rescue mission. Chakotay’s priority is the immediate rescue of Demeter, but Eden is unwilling to pick a fight she does not believe she can win. Meanwhile, Demeter has its own problems. Commander O’Donnell quickly realizes that the ship was captured because of the vast store of living organisms it holds.

Demeter is a special mission ship there to study any new botanical life forms the fleet encounters and to provide fresh food for the fleet as needed. While O’Donnell’s young XO, Commander Atlee Fife, is determined to free their ship by force from the Children, O’Donnell works patiently to understand these aliens and if possible, to help them. Voyager succeeds in locating Quirinal and another special mission ship, the Achilles, is tasked with making her space-worthy again. B’Elanna Torres, who is now the fleet’s chief engineer, leads this effort.

Eden presses her crew to unravel the origins of the Children of the Storm and they succeed, locating the Children’s “mother,” a space-born life form whose thoughts become the Children. Armed with this knowledge they are able to rescue Demeter, and enter into a new and mutually beneficial relationship with them. We learned in Full Circle that Captain Eden doesn’t know much about her past. She was raised by two men she calls her uncles, who she believes found her on a distant planet before sending her to Earth for her formal education.

Several episodes of intuitive insight when viewing relics from the Delta Quadrant, however, have led her to believe that her true home might be somewhere in the Delta Quadrant. By the end of Children of the Storm, Eden has confided this truth to both Counselor Cambridge and Captain Chakotay.

* * *

The Eternal Tide reveals Asfarah Eden’s true origin.

She was created by the ultimate destructive force of the multiverse – the Omega Continuum – to balance an unintentional breach of that continuum that if left untended, will result in the end of the multiverse trillions of years ahead of schedule.

The only individual in the multiverse who has a sense that something is amiss is Q – that’s “Junior“, the son of John de Lancie’s Q, played by Keegan de Lancie in “Q2”. He has suddenly lost the ability to move into the future, and learned at the same time that when Admiral Janeway died aboard that Borg cube back in Before Dishonor, she also dies in every other existing timeline.

He posits that his problems and hers are connected, and believes that this situation only exists because Voyager successfully sealed the Omega Continuum in the original timeline where it took them twenty-three years to get home; the timeline that was erased by the actions of Janeway and her future self in “Endgame”.

Janeway –  who had been rescued (in a disembodied state) by the Q at the moment of her ‘death’ – agrees to return to ‘life’. The nature of the threat is revealed and ultimately, Captain Eden and Q (“Junior”)  must sacrifice themselves to restore the balance necessary to save the multiverse.

Thanks so much to Kirsten Beyer for putting together this Voyager novel primer for us! Don’t go away, because we’ve got an exclusive, in-depth interview with Kirsten covering all of her Voyager books – including a look at what’s on the way in 2014 – coming later this week!

In the meantime, be sure to pre-order your copy of Kirsten’s new Star Trek: Voyager novel Protectors at Amazon now!

Order Star Trek Voyager: Protectors