The Enterprise has been assigned to escort a convoy of 70 ships and 64 thousand colonists (led by Evan Pardonnet) to Belle Terre. There are an inexplicable number of mishaps along the way, which Kirk and his crew are able to correct before they become too tragic, and talk of turning back becomes rife among the colonists. A group of them, led by one of the privateer captains, Billy Maidenshore (who has a personal grudge against Kirk), does turn back. Maidenshore had made a deal with the Orions, who turn up expecting to be able to easily capture the returning colonists and sell them as slaves, but Kirk had been anticipating something like this and arrives in time to drive off the Orions (who have Maidenshore onboard one of their ships). Meanwhile, two warring groups of aliens, the Blood (led by Shucorion) and the Kauld (led by Vellyngaith), have come to realize that the Federation is on their way towards their area of space, and they make a deal to try to drive the colonists back. The leader of the Blood has seen something in one of the moons of Belle Terre that he realizes will cause the destruction of the planet, and the Kauld want to set up a base for their armed forces on the planet, because they have infected their entire space force through their experiments with an interstellar space drive. Maidenshore meets up with the Blood and gets their assistance in attacking the fleet of colonists, but Kirk organizes the flotilla into a fighting force. They drive off the Kaud/Blood fleet, destroy the two remaining Orion ships, and take Maidenshore into custody. [Timeline: 2272, soon after the encounter with V'Ger]