She leaned backward into him, and fairly purred with contentment when he began rubbing her back. “Me, too. Happy New Year, by the way.”

He paused in his ministrations to her back. With all the frantic activity of the past couple of weeks, he had somehow completely lost track not only of Christmas, but had also failed to note the arrival of a new year and a new decade. The year 2380 had sneaked up on him like a shrouded Jem’Hadar.

“My God. It’s already Elvis Presley’s birthday,” he said. “I must be getting old and distracted.”

She turned toward him. “Not old, Will. Seasoned.”

“Ugh. You know I hate that word.”

“I just mean that the gray in your beard suits you. You’ve earned it. As for ‘distracted,’ let mehandle that.” She looked up at him expectantly.

He bent down to kiss her.

Then his combadge abruptly shattered the moment. “Vale to Captain Riker.”

Though two decades of Starfleet service had conditioned him to the inevitability of such interruptions, he was never happy about it. He sighed, then tapped the badge a little harder than was strictly necessary.

“Go ahead, Christine.”

“It’s Commander Donatra. Her ship has decloaked just astern of us, and she wants to talk to you right away.”

He stood and straightened his uniform jacket. “Pipe her down here, Christine.”

“Aye, sir.”

Riker took a seat behind the desk in the small office nook located just outside the bedroom. He touched a control on the interface console located there, and its small viewscreen lit up, displaying the white-on-blue emblem of the United Federation of Planets.

A moment later, this was replaced by the image of Commander Donatra, who looked even more distressed than she had during the battle in the skies over Ki Baratan. The background behind her was a neutral green; she seemed to be transmitting either from her ready room, or perhaps from her personal quarters.

“Commander Donatra,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

“Is this channel secure on your end?”

Deanna approached, making herself visible to Donatra while he entered a few quick manual commands into the desktop terminal.

“It is now, Commander,” Riker said.

“I’m afraid I need your assistance, Captain,”Donatra began without further preamble. “There’s no one else I can turn to.”

He glanced quickly at Deanna, whose dark eyes were wide with alarm. She was confirming what he had already concluded: Something had gone very, very wrong. Perhaps catastrophically wrong.

“I sense your reticence, Commander,” Deanna said. “I am the only one here besides Captain Riker. If my presence makes you uncomfortable, Commander, I would be hap—”

Donatra interrupted her. “No, Commander Troi. There’s no reason for you to leave. My folly will no doubt soon be common knowledge anyway.”She seemed almost on the verge of tears.

“But you obviously have enough confidence in us to come to us first,” Riker said, once again more than a little grateful for the bond that Captain Picard had created with Donatra during the battle against Shinzon.

She paused, looking away toward something that might have been parsecs distant. She seemed to be gathering her thoughts and emotions around her like tattered garments.

“During the confusion that followed the elimination of Praetor Hiren and the Senate,”she began at length, “Suran and I gained access to a large complement of warbirds. These vessels and their armaments were, shall we say, subsequently unaccounted for.

“Obviously, we needed to keep the existence of these vessels a secret, and their location concealed. I convinced Suran that the best place to hide the fleet was within the gravimetric and subspace flux zone surrounding the Great Bloom.”

“Great Bloom?” Riker asked.

“Forgive me. The Great Bloom is our designation for the spatial anomaly located only a handful ofveraku away from Romulus at high warp. You have no doubt observed the phenomenon yourselves, and have given it another name. It’s centered in the very spot where Shinzon’s vessel exploded after our engagement with him.”

“The spatial rift,” Deanna said quietly.

“Why are you sharing this with us, Commander?” he said aloud.

“Because…”Donatra began, her voice faltering momentarily before she found the strength to continue. “Because the entire fleet has vanished. Every ship. Every officer. Every enlisted crew member. All gone, without leaving so much as a body or any identifiable debris. Suran and I have been searching the region for two fulleisae , but to no avail.”

“You think your ships have fallen into the event horizon of the spatial rift,” said Deanna.

“The Great Bloom’s center is the only place we’ve yet to search directly, because our sensors cannot penetrate it. But it is the likeliest place.”

“And you want us to help you find them,” Riker added.

“Yes.”

Riker understood that yet another fairly monumental decision was now expected of him. He was more than passing familiar with the Romulan aphorism “He who rules the military rules the Empire.” And it seemed fairly obvious that helping the Romulan military faction acquire—or reacquire—large quantities of ships and arms could jeopardize the already delicate balance of power that now existed between the mutually opposed Romulan factions and the Klingon-protected Remans.

But leaving those ships lost,he thought , where they might fall into the hands of gods-only-know-who might be an even worse idea.

“I am taking theValdore into the center of the Great Bloom, Captain. With or without your help. I intend to give my crew the order in a moment.”

Riker had seen enough spatial rifts over the course of his career to understand the extreme danger inherent in flying into one. But ever since Commander Donatra had joined forces with the Enterprisecrew against Shinzon, Riker had regarded her almost as a comrade-in-arms. Her cooperation during the recent Reman attack and the subsequent power-sharing summit had only solidified that working relationship. How could he let her face such a terrible risk alone?

He came to a decision. “Titanwill accompany you to the edge of the rift, Commander.”

“But not over its edge. You disappoint me, Captain. I thought you had more courage.”

Riker answered with an involuntary chuckle. Does she really expect to manipulate me by calling me “chicken”?

“There’s courage and then there’s suicide,” he said. “I’ll do my best to help you recover your ships and crews. But I’m not interested in helping you atone for losing them by throwing yourself off a cliff.”

Her eyes narrowed, but it was obvious she had no desire to alienate him by venting her anger on him. “And what will merely standing on the cliff’s edge accomplish?”

“Titanhas sensors that I’ll wager are a good deal more sensitive than anything aboard the Valdore.Perhaps they can tell us just how dangerous that cliff really is.”

She took this in with a curt nod. “Very well, Captain. TheValdore will depart for the Great Bloom in five of your minutes.”And with that her image vanished, to be replaced by the white-on-blue UFP symbol.

“You’re welcome,” Riker said to the screen before tapping his combadge. “Riker to bridge.”

“Vale here, Captain.”

“Change of plans, Commander. We have to make best speed for the spatial anomaly we observed on our way here. I want us under way in five minutes. Please coordinate our departure with Commander Donatra’s staff aboard the Valdore.They’ll be leading the way.”

“May I ask what this is all about?”

He tapped a string of commands into his console. “I’m sending the recording of my conversation with Donatra up to my ready room. Once you review it, you’ll know as much as Commander Troi and I do.”