Ever feel like you're in the end of days? 

It's said that many members of every generation feel as if the end of history is right around the corner.  Fifty years ago, the Nazis were going to destroy the world.  Thirty years ago it was communists.  Ten yeas ago it was acid rain.  Today it's terrorism.

But what if the apocalypse really was just around the corner?

Captain Michael Winters, a former naval infantry soldier and now a career Border Patrol officer, who earlier in life was considered a great prodigy by his training officers, is not concerned about the end of humanity...  In fact, he's not concerned about much at all.  He's a man who looks in the mirror every morning at a stranger who gets more and more distant all the time.  He's fed up with his life, with taking abuse from bureaucratic admirals, with doing a thankless job that gets more and more thankless every day.

And he's decided to retire.

Captain Winters has just been given command of a small patrol cutter called the USS Cardinal, a small, cramped, glitchy, mess of a ship who's begins were very similar to Winters himself.  A lot of promise that never amounted to much at all. 

Cardinal was a grand experiment, a product of the 'Optimistic Times' at the end of the Dominion War.  With the major powers of the galaxy joined together as friends, many members of Starfleet felt that peace would last forever.  Out of the ashes of war came great programs of co-operation, including the thought that if the best technology of all races were combined, fantastic vessels could be built, ones that could explore and safeguard the galaxy.

Then it all came crashing down.

The races of the galaxy were forced together before they were ready to truly be united, and the great hope of the galaxy that eternal peace was in their grasp had slipped through their fingers.  Just as the races fell apart so too did Cardinal, the only ship that made it out of the co-operative fully built.  It was a small escort vessel, designed for week-long bodyguarding missions, and it's various components simply did not get along any better than the races of the galaxy.  The programs were abandon, and Cardinal was dry docked, with the hope that someday something could be made of her parts.

Twenty years after she was first launched, Cardinal was a unique ship - So far ahead of her time when she was built that she was easily the equal of any comparative vessel, but one no Starfleet crew would ever take the time to deal with.  Soon, it was decided it could be re-fitted into a border patrol cutter.  The patrol, desperate for ships of any kind, would have to deal with her problems or scrap her.

And Winters was less than happy about being the one that had to deal with her problems.

Accompanied by his old friend T'Noir, the bonkers helmswoman who's knack for piloting is matched only by her knack for getting Winters in trouble, a brilliant operations chief who's brilliance and awkwardness go hand in hand, and a motley crew of various disappointments like himself, as well as a delegation of Klingon officers from the new cultural exchange program, Winters is commanding a ship subject to brawls, violence and hatred among his own crewmates, and he has made the decision that this will be his last mission.

But rock bottom can be a sobering thing, and sometimes all it takes is a moment of clarity to change your entire life.  If the universe was going to go to hell, then Winters was going to save as much of it as he could.  He and his crew were going to find a way to come together and be a force for good in the galaxy.  He was going to care again, to look in the mirror and like what he saw.  He was going to be the honorable compass of the Federation, the guardian angel...  The Cardinal.