Fleet Academy — Raymond L. Weil

The starship New Horizon is Earth's first attempt at an FTL capable spaceship. But others don't want the mission to succeed. The mission goes suddenly and horribly wrong with the possibility of inadvertently leading the Hocklyns to Earth decades in advance of their estimated arrival time. Can the cadets on the New Horizon stop the deadly plot before it's too late? The Federation survivors on Ceres have built a new warship. It's the most powerful ship they have ever built. Its mission is simple. Return to the old Federation worlds, search for survivors, and find out how far the Hocklyn Slave Empire has spread. The whole key to their mission is secrecy, but the disastrous events on the New Horizon may jeopardize everything.