“Yes, it is that. And thanks to the cooperation of our Klingon…friends, our propulsion system and tractor beam are once again operational.”

“Klingon?” Frane asked, as unfamiliar with the word as he had been with the term ‘Romulan’ until very recently.

“Our… otherguests, Mr. Frane. You must have seen their ship from your escape pod. You’ll likely meet them soon enough. By working in tandem with the Klingons we should have both of our ships under way and clear of the disturbances created by the spatial rift.”

“Again, impressive. But why have you brought me up here?”

Donatra smiled, though the expression looked more predatory than amicable on her saturnine features. “You’re very direct, Mr. Frane.”

“There’s little time to waste,” he said, nodding toward the image on the viewer.

Frane noticed that the Romulan woman’s mien had darkened. “Why? Do you know something we don’t about the Great B1—about the phenomenon out there?”

“We call it the Sleeper.”

“Why?”

Frane squeezed the bracelet between his fingers, imagining that he could draw strength from it. “Because its dreams mold reality itself, at least here in Neyel space. And its infrequent awakenings endthose dreams, causing whole worlds to vanish as though they were nothing but errant thoughts to begin with. Or so say the ancient stories of the Indigenous Races.”

“Ah. I see.” She appeared to relax then, obviously having dismissed the wisdom of the ancients as mere myth and folklore.

And perhaps that is all it ever really was.After all, very few modern Neyel—and certainly noNeyel ancestor of which Frane was aware—had ever taken such tales seriously. The Oh-Neyel People whose earliest struggles and conquests had built the Neyel Hegemony had had time for aught but survival.

But the native peoples the Neyel had conquered over the centuries had known the truth, perhaps from the time that intelligent life had first emerged here, billions of Oghenturns before the Neyel or the human species that sired them had come into being. The long-vanished His’lant, among other races, had understood the true nature of the Sleeper, and may even have been tied to it somehow, perhaps more intimately than any species dreamed by it.

If the His’lant legends are merely stories, then why did Newaerth and its entire system vanish when the Sleeper first began to stir?Frane thought. Why did a billion Neyel and their subjects disappear into oblivion like a dream?

“Why do you need me here?” Frane asked.

“It’s quite simple, Mr. Frane. Until we find a way to return home, we’re going to need a knowledgeable guide to help us find our way around in this region of space.”

“Congratulations, Mr. Frane. You’ve just been hired into the service of the Romulan Star Empire.”

Though he was grateful still to be alive—a fact he knew he owed to Commander Donatra—something in her smile made him recall the cold-bloodedness he had often seen in the eyes of his late father. This was all that kept him from questioning her directly about what might have motivated a fleet of warships—craft that so resembled Donatra’s own vessel—to make an unprovoked attack on a Neyel military flotilla.

Clutching again at the beads and stones of the story bracelet in his pocket, Frane suddenly found himself wishing that the Sleeper would come fully awake sooner rather than later.

Chapter Seven

U.S.S. TITAN,STARDATE 57026.2

“You’re frowning at it again.”

Christine Vale shook herself out of her reverie, and turned to see Deanna Troi smiling at her.

Troi gestured at the blank space on the bulkhead next to Titan’s main bridge turbolift. “The missing dedication plaque. We’re going to have to settle on an epigram for it soon, or else I’m going to have to give you and Will a serious talking to.” She grinned mischievously.

Vale smiled back. “I’ve just never been on a ship since its initial launch before, so it’s weird for me. All the other ships I’ve served on—the Den-sxl,the O’Keefe,the Enterprise—had all been up and running for years by the time I came on board. Whenever I was on the bridge of any of them, I always looked to the plaque as a sort of touchstone.”

“I know what you mean,” Troi said. “When the saucer section of the Enterprise-D crashed on Veridian III, one of the first things I made sure we rescued from the wreckage was the plaque. Even though we could have made a new one—it’s not the physical plaque that’s so important, but the message it’s inscribed with—leaving it behind would have felt like abandoning a family member.”

Vale nodded, and turned to look back at the bridge. Riker was studying readings with Jaza Najem at the primary science station, and the other bridge personnel were busy at their various posts. She didn’t even remember how or why she had walked over to stare at the blank spot on the bulkhead; she’d simply done it.

“Will’s told me some of the mottoes you’ve been bandying back and forth,” Troi said. “He’s even half-seriously offered to put up a suggestion box on the bridge for crew input. It’s good that you’ve been tempering some of his wilder ideas.”

Vale snorted. “I’ve told him at least five times now that ‘It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing’is not an acceptable motto, but he keeps coming back to it.”

“You know,” Troi said, “almost all the options I’ve heard from both of you are very Earthcentric. Why aren’t you considering the words of some nonhuman philosophers?”

Vale was about to protest that they hadlooked at nonhuman aphorisms, until she realized that Deanna was mostly correct; the vast majority of their choices had been from ancient Earth writers, artists, and leaders.

“I’m a little embarrassed to admit that you’re right, Deanna,” Vale said, her voice low. “And with the crew on thisship, of all the ships in Starfleet, the motto should be from some non-Terran culture.”

Troi nodded. “If you’d like some suggestions, I’ve found some of Kahless’s proverbs quite eloquent, as well as a few of the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition, the Andorian speeches of Thalisar and the poetry of Shran, not to mention the philosophical writings of a few dozen Vulcans through the last two millennia. I even read a slim tome on Horta mysticism recently.”

Vale’s eyes widened with surprise. “Horta mysticism? What kind of read was that?”

Troi turned to walk away, offering her answer over her shoulder.

“A little rocky in places.”

Vale groaned and shook her head. She’d walked right into that one. Nevertheless, Troi had effectively lightened her mood, which, Vale knew, was precisely the counselor’s intent. This evening’s memorial service aside, the crew was already operating under extremely high stress levels. Repairs on the ship from the Romulan-Reman conflict were still ongoing, as were the attempts to recon-figure many of their systems to keep them operable in such close proximity to the thalaron-generated rift that had whisked Titanall the way to the Small Magellanic Cloud. Or Neyel space, as many members of the crew were calling it now.

She wondered how long it would be before they actually metone of the Neyel, and if the Neyel had continued to evolve past what old Starfleet records had shown them to be eighty years ago.