Thin Ice
Riker finds himself on thin ice!

Summary
The  proceeds through space when a distress call from Captain Lyrinda Halk of the USS Marco Polo, attacked by unknown assailants and near destruction. The Enterprise races to the scene, and Will Riker reveals Captain Halk is a childhood friend, with whom he shared an intimate relationship. The Enterprise is briefly waylaid by a super-string phenomenon -- long energetic gravity anomalies  in their path. The crew then finds the Marco Polo adrift, and rescues Captain Halk and a few survivors, before the robot-controlled starships come about and chase the ships apart. The vessels, programmed by the long-dead Darzun civilization, are designed to attack anything within a certain radius from their fleet and home system. Riker, cut off aboard Marco Polo, leads the robot ships into the super-strings, where they are destroyed.

Background information
 An earlier version of the cover was shown in some previews for the comic. Captain Halk was originally depicted with longer hair, the final version has her hairstyle much shorter.
 Several points in Riker's past were illustrated in this story: his childhood, Academy days, and as a junior officer on the . This story had a reference to a variant of a Constellation-class starship (with a Refit Constitution engineering hull attached in place of the lower two nacelles. In the story it was called the Challenger-class. This reference created some confusion with Michael Okuda's writings assigning that name to one of the Battle of Wolf 359 wreckage models. Some fans believed that the Challenger-class model built for that scene might be of the configuration shown in the comic, but later photos of the actual model, of a different configuration, were shown by Mr. Okuda at a convention. Other starships in this issue were designs taken from FASA's role-playing games and one was even derived from the unofficially published Ships of the Star Fleet series.

Creators
 Based on  created by Gene Roddenberry
 Writer: Michael Jan Friedman
 Artists: 
 Matt Haley (pencil art)
 Carlos Garzon (inking)
 Juliana Ferriter (color art)
 Bob Pinaha (letter art)
 Jerome K. Moore (cover art)
 Editor: Robert Greenberger

Characters
 Jean-Luc Picard   captain.
 William T. Riker Enterprise-D exec.
 Data  Enterprise-D operations officer.
 Lyrinda Halk  Marco Polo captain.
 Geordi La Forge  VISOR-sighted Enterprise-D chief engineer.
 Worf  Klingon Enterprise-D security chief.
 Deanna Troi  Half-Betazoid Enterprise-D counselor.
 Miles O'Brien  Enterprise-D transporter chief.
 Ledbetter  Hood captain.
 David Brett Maro Polo ensign.
 Calabria  Enterprise-D crewmember.
 Marco Polo operations commander
 Farmer
Bond  Enterprise-D nurse. Bond appeared in one interior art panel. He had no dialogue in this issue.
Leung
Silas
Pierce
Epstein

References
Alaska
 Beta Marada
 USS Caspian (NCC-5507) The Caspian appeared to match the configuration of a refit-style Larson-class starship, as seen in FASA's Federation Ship Recognition Manual.
 cosmic string
 Darzun
 Far-Pel VII
   Federation starship, an assignment of Lyrinda Halk.
   Federation starship, assignment of Commander William Riker.
 USS Marco Polo (NCC-7219) : Federation starship, identified as "Challenger" class.
   Federation starship, mistaken by Riker to be the duty station of Lyrinda Halk.
 training ship
   Federation starship, first assignment of Ensign Lyrinda Halk.

Timeline
2340s  Lyrinda's father died in a nuclear plant accident when she was 12.
Mid 2350s  Riker and Lyrinda are Starfleet Academy cadets on the Caspian exercise.
Early 2360s  Riker and Lyrinda meet in Alaska, on leave from the Hood and Fearless, respectively.
2367  The Darzun robot ships attack Marco Polo''.

Comics