Go back to academy days with one of Starfleet’s most celebrated officers: Jean-Luc Picard! A new collected series by New York Times best-selling author, Sam Maggs.

Before becoming the Federation’s finest, Jean-Luc was an ordinary student at Starfleet Academy with sights on the stars. His path forward was charted: blow his classmates out of the water on the infamous Evasive Maneuvers exam and graduate early. But there’s a detail Cadet Picard hadn’t factored into his plan: the exam was a group project and he’d need to make friends with, ugh, people if he stood a chance at passing.

Federation starships aren’t run by a party of one, after all. During the training exercise, Picard accidentally puts the lives of himself and two of his classmates—Doq and Marty—in danger!