“I cannot prevent you from asking them, Commander.”

“You’ve already told us that you’re not an Earth human,” Donatra said. That made sense, considering how very far away Earth was from this extremely remote region of space. “So what exactly areyou, Mr. Frane?”

The creature, this Frane, tilted its head in evident puzzlement.

“What do your people call themselves?” Venora said, by way of clarification.

“We are called Neyel.” Looking at Venora, Frane added, “Where are the others who accompanied me in the evacuation capsule?”

“We found a total of four of your escape pods…evacuation capsules,” Donatra said.

“Four?” Frane appeared surprised, but Donatra couldn’t tell if that was because he had expected more or fewer of the pods to have survived whatever disaster had precipitated their launch.

“Three of the pods contained members of your species, all of whom are apparently uniformed members of your people’s military. You were found in the last one, along with a female…Neyel. And three aliens of species we have never encountered before.”

The creature sat more fully upright, moving quickly enough to provoke the guards, who raised their weapons in a gesture of unambiguous warning.

“Easy,” Venora said, clearly speaking to the guards as much as to Frane.

Frane remained sitting up in the bed, utterly still and rigid as a statue. The only movement Donatra could see in him was contained in the sound of his voice. And in the play of emotions behind his eyes.

“Where are they? Nozomi and g’Ishea and Fasaryl and Lofi. What have you done with—”

Donatra spread her hands and interrupted him. “Those who shared the pod with you are safe. They are elsewhere aboard this vessel.”

Frane met Donatra’s gaze directly. “I wish to see them.”

“You shall. But I need to get a few more answers from you first.”

The Neyel only glared at her in stony silence.

Donatra didn’t need Venora’s training in psychology to see that Frane was becoming oppositional. She knew that if he was to be spared the very real risk of permanent brain damage from truly invasive mind scans, then she had better do more than simply intimidate him. She had to win his confidence.

She reached into a pouch on the lower front of her uniform jacket and withdrew a short loop of fabric, into which countless stones, shells, bones, and gems had been sewn. She held it up so that the Neyel could see it clearly.

“You were wearing this when you were brought aboard. It seemed to be very important to you.” Indeed, he had fought like a wild rainjungle zdonekto keep it.

She handed him the object in silence. It lay in his open palm and he regarded it in what might have been silent reverence.

“Your remote ancestors were obviously Earth humans,” she said, disturbing the deep quiet that had descended upon the infirmary. “How did they get out into this region of space?”

Frane shrugged, still staring at the small loop of fabric in his left hand. “No one knows for certain. Many records were lost during and after the Great Sundering, centuries ago.”

The term “Sundering” took Donatra somewhat aback. Romulans often used this very same term to refer to their own people’s millennia-past separation from their Vulcan ancestors. It made sense. After all, if Vulcans could beget Romulans, then why couldn’t humans have begat the Neyel?

“So how did youget out here?” Frane asked, tilting his head slightly.

“The Great Bloom evidently brought us here,” she said. In response to the blank stare that greeted this revelation, she added, “The large energy cloud from which we retrieved you and your people.”

Frane’s eyes widened slightly, though he maintained his composure well. “The Sleeper brought you here then.”

Donatra sighed; whatever this “sleeper” was, she had no desire to receive a lecture on interstellar mythology. At least not now.

“Why were you and your people in evacuation capsules?” she asked, trying her best to keep the military steel out of her voice. Her fleet, after all, remained missing, its fate unknown.

Frane replied after a lengthy pause. “We were forced to abandon our ship. Surely you were able to divine that for yourselves. Or learn that from one of the ship’s officers.”

Donatra shook her head. “You’re the first Neyel we’ve succeeded in communicating with so far.”

“Ah,” Frane said, a look of understanding crossing his strangely immobile, gray features. “You must have assumed I would be easier to coerce than the military officers would be. My father always underestimated me in much the same way.”

I had better tread very carefully here,Donatra thought, wondering why the Neyel military had been transporting civilians. Were they mission specialists? Or perhaps prisoners?

Aloud, she said, “Civilians often have a…less rigid perspective in situations such as these.”

Frane’s hard lips curved upward ironically. “And they may also be less likely to die from a brainbleed if you were to apply those mental scanners of yours to some purpose other than basic language acquisition.”

He’s no simpleton, this one,Donatra thought. I mustn’t make the mistake of underestimating him.

“I have no desire to test that proposition, Mr. Frane,” she said aloud, smiling as compassionate a smile as she could muster. In truth, she had no wish to inflict harm on this creature, or on the other civilian Neyel—the female—that they had rescued. Indeed, Donatra had decided to make communicating with Frane a priority because the female had seemed far too frail and terrified to withstand interrogation. And the three unknown sentients that had also shared Frane’s escape pod were simply tooalien for even shallow mind-probing to yield any predictable outcome.

Frane slumped back onto the bed in apparent resignation. Donatra wondered if he had decided to cooperate in order to safeguard his female.

“What do you want to know?” he said, sighing.

“Why, exactly, you abandoned your ship, Mr. Frane.”

“We were attacked.”

“By whom?” Donatra asked. Once again, she was growing impatient, though she continued doing her utmost to conceal that fact.

“By other ships that emerged from the Sleeper and have since disappeared into the space of the Neyel Hegemony.”

Donatra’s throat suddenly went dry. “Other ships. What did these other ships look like?”

“They were large warships. Long, tapering vessels that greatly resemble this one, unless I’m very much mistaken. I saw dozens of them. Their attack was brief, but devastating.”

Donatra’s heart thudded in her side, feeling like a singularity drive going rapidly into overload. My fleet. My fleetis here, somewhere in this gods-forsaken corner of space.

But why would her people have used her ships to mount such a senseless attack, and then flee ever deeper into the unknown?

Then, even as Donatra began to frame that question, the infirmary was plunged into stygian darkness.

Chapter Six

The baleful green dullness of the Valdore’s emergency lighting kicked in a moment later. Making her way carefully through the dim illumination, Donatra crossed to the comm panel mounted on the nearest wall.

“Bridge! Report!”

Centurion Liravek’s crisp, businesslike voice replied. “Attempting to take the Klingon vessel in tow has evidently overtaxed our primary power circuits, Commander. Even at the very low-power impulse speeds available to us. We owe it to the effects of the Great Bloom.”