Republic - Michael Jan Friedman

At Starfleet Academy, Gary Mitchell is restless and fun-loving while James Kirk is driven, ambitious, but awkward around other people - especially women! Their friendship begins with a fistfight. Then their routine training mission on the USS Republic is diverted to a planet where centuries of bloody interplanetary conflict are about to end in a ceremony of reconcilation. Assigned to help with security on the planet's surface, Kirk and Gary quickly find themselves in the middle of a life-and-death struggle against terrorists determined to disrupt the ceremony. With the future of two planets at stake, Kirk and Gary must find a way to work together before a mission of life and peace becomes one of death and despair.