“Then I will hope for a speedy recovery, Doctor. Keep me advised. Bridge out.”

Donatra rose from her chair, her old wounds aching slightly as she moved toward Centurion T’Relek’s duty station. He was staring intently into a small, console-mounted monitor, and the perplexed expression on his weathered, angular face had drawn her attention.

“What is it, Centurion? Have you found any sign of our fleet? Or of Titan?”

T’Relek turned his dark eyes on her. “The Bloom’s energy emissions are interfering greatly with our sensors, Commander. So the readings we’re getting are inconclusive. Even the subspace bands are jammed.”

“Then we must increase our distance from the Bloom until we’ve cleared the interference it is generating.”

“Yes, Commander. It will be so as soon as the propulsion systems are repaired. But there’s something else.”

She noticed that his look of perplexity had deepened. “What is it?”

“The constellation of Khellian the Hunter has vanished. As have Dhael the Raptor and Ravsam the Sisters.”

Donatra looked over T’Relek’s shoulder so that she, too, could study the starfield that his scans, such as they were, had compiled thus far.

She saw then that it was a completely unfamiliar stellar arrangement, as though the stars had suddenly been re-set, tossed instantly into a new random pattern, like the dice some deity might roll in a cosmic game of Trayatik.

“This has to be a sensor error of some sort, Commander,” T’Relek said.

Donatra felt her throat suddenly go dry. A horrible, plummeting sensation was developing in her belly. She recalled a report filed a decade ago by Commander T’Reth, who had captained the Imperial Warbird Dracowhen a temporary spatial rift had instantly displaced it by over a dozen parsecs. Had something like that just happened to the Valdore?

“Dispatch a full complement of sensor drones,” Donatra ordered. “Use ordinary EM transmissions for telemetry if you cannot overcome the Bloom’s subspace interference. We cannot afford to wait for functional engines to determine what has become of our ships, Titan,and any Klingon vessels that might have quietly followed us to the Bloom.”

And I must know exactly what has happened to the stars.

It had taken several veraku,a goodly portion of a Romulan day in fact, to receive and analyze the data the drones had collected and transmitted to the still-crippled warbird Valdore.During that time, Donatra had kept some of her bridge crew busy scanning the depths of the Bloom to the very limits of the ship’s sensor acuity, despite the energy cloud’s persistent—and uniformly successful—efforts to withhold its secrets.

She had ordered the uninjured members of her science and stellar navigation staff to keep their eyes and instruments turned outward, toward the brilliant scattering of unfamiliar stars that lay far beyond the Great Bloom in every direction.

Now she almost regretted the alacrity with which her people had discovered the answer to her most salient question: Where are we?

“There is no mistake, Commander,” Liravek said with an almost resigned calm. “The Valdoreis no longer located in Romulan space, or anywhere near Romulan space.”

“But how can that be?” Suran said, almost growling as he stabbed a thick finger toward the majestic energy cloud displayed on the main bridge viewer. Then he adjusted the bandage that swathed his thick brow; he was no doubt still in considerable pain from the fall he had taken when the Great Bloom had lashed out at the Valdorethe previous day. “The spatial rift is obviously still there. And we all know that the Great Bloom is positioned well inside Romulan space.”

Donatra glanced toward Dr. Venora, who stood beside an unoccupied diagnostic console, her lined face framed by her shoulder-length, gray-streaked hair as she kept a watchful medical eye trained squarely on Suran. Donatra closed her own eyes briefly, choosing not to respond to Suran’s remark. He had, after all, regained consciousness only a little while ago, immediately after which time he had bullied Dr. Venora into releasing him earlier than was probably wise.

“The Great Bloom apparently has the capacity to displace objects across vast interstellar distances, Commander,” Centurion Liravek said. “Or even inter galacticdistances. The Bloom we see now is merely the other side of a spatial rift that extends all the way out here.”

“And just whereis here?”Suran asked, sounding ever more frustrated.

“Well inside the small satellite galaxy known on our maps as Enhaire.”

Suran shook his head, which made him wince in pain. “That’s impossible, Centurion. No ship has ever traveled so far out of the galaxy.”

“Perhaps not before today,” Donatra said. “It’s possible that we’re the first.” And there’s always a first time for everything.

She wondered then whether the other ships of the fleet were here as well. But if that were so, then where were they?

A sensor alarm suddenly whooped on Decurion Seketh’s console, whose touch-sensitive surfaces were alight with frantic brightness.

TheValdore may be among the first to get out this far,Donatra thought as she strode toward Seketh’s station. But perhaps she isn’t the only one to have made this voyagetoday .

“What have you found, Decurion?” Donatra asked.

Seketh’s eyes grew wide. “At least one large vessel, and what appear to be several small metallic objects.”

“Debris?”

“Negative, Commander. They read as pressurized, and there appear to be intermittently detectable life signs coming from within each of them.”

“Escape pods, then.”

“I believe so, Commander.”

Donatra nodded. “Are there any life signs on the large vessel?”

“Apparently, Commander, though it is difficult to be certain because of the sensor interference created by the Great Bloom.”

“Can the ship and the pods be recovered?” Donatra asked.

“Possibly,” Seketh said. “Though the power cost and the strain on ship’s systems will be excessive. The escape pods and the other ship are drifting in opposite directions, nearly a thousand k’vahrudeeper inside the periphery of the Bloom than our current position. And they all appear to be spiraling dangerously close to the rift’s event horizon. Unless the Bloom’s energy discharges are fooling our sensors.”

“What is the ship’s configuration?” Donatra asked, only now allowing herself to hope that she stood a real chance of conferring with Captain Riker about a mutual problem.

The decurion studied her readings for a moment longer, then looked up again, her eyes widening further. “It’s Klingon!”

“Tactical alert!” shouted Donatra.

Whatever punishment the Valdorehad suffered during its passage through the Great Bloom, the Klingon warship she now approached had clearly experienced far, far worse. It had been in no condition to put up a fight when the Valdoretractored her, along with the nearby quartet of escape pods, away from the immediate vicinity of the Bloom’s hazardous event horizon. The Klingon vessel, which belonged to the large, heavily armed and armored Vor’chaclass, apparently no longer possessed even the capacity to be coaxed into a deliberate, self-immolating warp core breach to prevent her from being captured by Romulan personnel. Because the larger vessel was so much more damaged than any of the escape pods, Donatra made rescue operations on the former a higher priority than of the latter.

Donatra studied the battered, broken Klingon ship, beyond which drifted four tiny, dented and scorched escape pods. She marveled that anyone aboard the Klingon vessel had survived its countless hull breaches, even as a pair of its officers materialized on the warbird’s primary transporter stage before her, Suran, Dr. Venora, and a heavily armed Romulan security team.