The Starship Enterprise NX-01 is humanity's flagship – the first starship to begin a systematic exploration of what lies beyond the fringes of known space. Led by Captain Jonathan Archer, eighty of Starfleet's best and brightest set forth to pave humanity's way among the stars. Tempered by a year's worth of exploration, they are a disciplined, cohesive unit. But now one of their number has fallen. Bad enough that Ensign Alana Hart is dead. Worse still that she died while trying to sabotage the Enterprise – and at the hands of Lieutenant Malcolm Reed, the ship's armory officer and her nominal superior. Even as questions swirl around Hart's death, Archer, Reed, and the rest of the Enterprise crew find themselves caught squarely in the middle of another tense situation – a brutal war of terror between two civilizations. But in the Eris Alpha system, nothing – and no one – are what they seem. And before the secret behind Ensign Hart's demise is exposed, Reed will be forced to confront death one more time.