Gauntlet
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Long before he took command of the Starship Enterprise™, Captain Jean-Luc Picard led another proud vessel through the uncharted regions of the galaxy: the U.S.S. Stargazer. Thrust unexpectedly into the center seat, the twenty-eight-year-old Picard must live up to the challenges of starship command—and a crew that hasn't yet learned to trust him The pirate known as the White Wolf has been wreaking havoc across several sectors, and the inexperienced Picard has been given the assignment to stop him. Surprised at getting such a challenge, Picard soon learns that he is expected to fail in his duty and have his captaincy disgraced before it can even begin. Given an untested crew and an impossible mission, Picard must beat the odds and apprehend the White Wolf—but the pirate keeps a shocking secret that leaves Picard to make a deadly decision.
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7 primary books9 released books#1 in Star Trek: Stargazer
Star Trek: Stargazer is a 9-book series with 7 released primary works first released in 1991 with contributions by Michael Jan Friedman and Christopher L. Bennett.
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Prequels are a tricky business. We already know the ultimate fates of the characters featured in them, so a lot of the drama is taken away from them, and instead we have to focus on how the decisions they make ultimately inform the versions of the characters that we already know.
Unfortunately, we don't really get any of that in Gauntlet, the story of Jean-Luc Picard's first starship command. Instead we get a very paint-by-numbers pilot story, where all of the characters are introduced and given equal focus, which means that we don't really get to know any of them in any real detail. The plot fizzles somewhat, as well. Picard and co. have to track down a space pirate who, we learn, really isn't a pirate, and it's made clear that if he doesn't succeed, his career his career is doomed to failure. So he lets the not-really-a-pirate-but-a-heroic-ethnobiologist White Wolf go, which as we can tell from later books and TV series has no real affect on his career.
