Kirk is hauled onto the carpet by a Starfleet admiral demanding that he explain a subspace message showing "dead" Commissioner Nancy Hedford.

The Cochrane arc jumps ahead 17 years, from 2061 to 2078, just before a devastating war on Earth and long after Micah Brack's mysterious disappearance.

The Cochrane arc then jumps further to 2111, when he must flee Alpha Centauri, and begins his voyage into the future when the Companion finds him and takes him to a sanctuary, her home.

Cochrane and the Companion board a shuttlecraft that will take "shelter" inside the event horizon of a black hole, on a course calculated to bring them out again using a short burst of warp drive.

The two Enterprises, once Data's body is shut off, coordinate to take advantage of gravity waves to save both ships and tractor the shuttlecraft out.

In 2015, John Bardinelli of Barnesandnoble.com highlighted this as among of the best Star Trek novels, he praised it for tying together the crews from both the original series and The Next Generation and said "Federation is one of the best-written, most entertaining books in the shared universe.".