This story could have got to a 4 or 5 star rating, however it didn't due to George's poor use of detail. He sets this in the wrong order. For example he spends two pages telling us how empty the walls in Commander Vaughn's quarters on board DS9 are, and spends the same number of pages describing First Contact with a brand new species unlike anything in Star Trek History. returnreturnThe story was good, going through Bajor possibly joining the federation again, Quark falling in love with Ro, and possibly being okay that his life is not as profitable as once was. Kassidy adjusting to life on Bajor, for the most part I found the story back in the Alpha Quadrant better than that in the Gamma quadrant, which surprised me about a book titled "Mission Gamma" but I'm okay with that. returnreturnThe book begins with an attack by a species I wasn't familiar with which made me think I had to read the Gateways books first. However that particular part of the story wasn't really relevant to the rest. However, I'm still glad I did break and read Gateways. The character development between Vaughn and Prynn was interesting to say the least and Shar with his "bond mates" returnreturnI hope we get more stories involving the Vahni(first contact species mentioned above) and I hope that Geroge gets less wordy so that I actually want to keep reading for the sake of reading, and not just because I'm out of renewals on my library book.