Star Trek: Dream's Legacy

Book 1:

Prologue

This is the story of a legacy of a dream. Gene Rodenberry's dream.

But this is a story about a Star Trek very different from any you are used to. It takes place in a unverse more like our own, during a time only a few years in our future. In this universe, Star Trek is just a TV show and a series of movies, created by a version of Gene Rodenberry, like in our own. But in this universe, it spurred on a race to create the first warp drive. This race started in the 1960s and culminated in the big Warp Pattent Controversy in 2014. Seven different companies were fighting over international pattent rights of warp drive technology. It was a difficult legal battle that could not be resolved by normal legal means. In the end, to resolve the conflict, all seven companies agreed to compete in a big warp race and the top four place winners would gain access to the basic internalional pattents and any other companies would have to get rights through these top four companies. In order to compete, each company in the competition would have to build a warp capable vessel with their own style of warp drive, compete agaisnt each other in a series of trials and then final compete in a big interstellar warp race. It is the biggest most ambicsious plan in all of human history. And it is called the Nexus eXtreme Warp Challenge.

Over the months leading up to the start of the competition, over 500 other companies signed up to compete as well, though most had to drop out even before the ship construction phase of the challenge even began. Some companies had gone bankrupt even before they could finish designing their starships and warp drives. That is how big and hard this endeavor had turned out to be. Concerned about how had this challenge was and that it was an international affair, the United Nations got involved and created a special council to administer and run the challenge, rather than letting the original seven companies handle it themselves.

But one of the original seven companies, the Spacenauts Organization (or SNO as it was also known), was proving to be one of the companies to beat and one of the top proponents and contributors of the race. When the UN had been unable to fund or construct the needed lift system and orbital construction yards, the SNO had stepped in, along with the company NEXUS, after which the challenge ended up being named, and built a special electromagnetic lift orbital elevator and the construction yard. And though NEXUS did help, SNO still provided the majority of the funds and work.

Early on, all of the ships were to be built at the main challenge orbital construction yards. But after numerous security and manpower problems at the main construction facilities under UN control, several companies, including the SNO, built their own smaller seperate facilities where they could have their own security forces.

So now it's 2021, the SNO's ship, the SNO-Enterprise has been completed for over 6 months. And while it was not the very first one done, it was still amongst the first few ones. And along with nine other companies, the SNO has been petitioning the UN to start the simpler trials early for the ships already done, while the unfinished ships get finished. That way they don't have to continue waiting and unable to do anything untill all the ships are completed. And the UN is listening.

But continuing to wait or starting the trials early may soon be the least of the SNO (and Earth's) worries...