Imagine the Enterprise finding the most important artifact in the universe. Now imagine it being hunted by fleets of warships from every spacefaring race in the Trek universe. Now imagine that Kirk, Spock and McCoy all sacrificed themselves months ago so that the Enterprise could escape. Now imagine that the crew of the Enterprise is all genetically engineered dolphins and monkeys, along with run of the mill humans, and they're all unable to return home to a blockaded Earth, and are being hounded by fleets of much more advanced and powerful alien ships.
That is what David Brin's novel Startide Rising could be described as, sort of.
It is a fabulous read.
