The Red King - Michael A. Martin [122]
Riker noticed that a handful of bright stars had become visible through the expanding, still-attenuating cloud. Dozens of other small, starlike shapes moved quickly in front of those distant suns, as warp-powered vessels towed a single larger one, along with the two dozen or more of their fellows that had crippled themselves in order to pull the rift closed while passing through interspace. The orderly procession moved as one in a graceful arc, like a descending swarm of meteors.
Even as the Red King effect grew ever larger and more transparent, revealing the indifferent stars that lay behind it, a hard realization struck Riker: there was absolutely nothing further that either he or Titan could do to help the convoy escape the Red King’s final agonies.
Vanguard and her escorts would either survive now, or they wouldn’t.
“Mr. Ra-Havreii, Mr. Lavena: Ahead, warp six.”
IMPERIAL WARBIRD VALDORE, STARDATE 57047.6
It had been an extremely rough ride. Donatra thanked every god she could think of that the convoy had emerged from the waves of interspatial turbulence essentially intact.
“The Bloom is…gone, Commander,” Liravek said, though it clearly wasn’t necessary for him to say so aloud. But the centurion’s aquiline features revealed such a study in astonishment that Donatra was inclined to overlook his lapse.
From her command chair, Donatra gazed back at the starfield being displayed across the front of the Valdore’s bridge. Except for a few wispy, vestigial remnants of what had once been the blazing, energetic ferocity of the Great Bloom—the enormous celestial maw that had swallowed the fleet she had once been so foolish as to hide within its fringes—space had resumed its familiar empty aspect. It now appeared black and infinite, intermittently bejeweled with local stars, distant galaxies, and ordinary nebula and dust clouds—just as it had for the billions of years preceding the detonation of Shinzon’s thrice-cursed thalaron weapon.
Also discernible among those ancient stars were several dozen other small, steadily moving lights: her fleet, and the enormous life-bearing rock it continued to tow away from the now-vanished spatial rift.
Still another purposefully moving pinprick of light appeared, heading quickly toward the Valdore. Donatra intuited its identity immediately.
“Titan has just dropped out of warp, Commander,” said Decurion Seketh, who was running the main operations console. “She’s on an intercept course, five-hundred k’vahru distant, decelerating and closing. Captain Riker wishes to speak with you.”
No doubt, Donatra thought as she rose from her chair. Her body felt heavy with fatigue, and her old wounds stung and burned her. “I will take it in my ready room, Decurion.”
Once she was alone inside the small, private office adjacent to the bridge, she glanced down at the carpet. She noticed the tiny greenish-black spots spattered there. Suran’s blood stared up at her in silent accusation.
Crossing to the desk, she activated the computer that sat atop it and dropped into her seat.
Riker’s face appeared immediately. He was clearly furious.
“You blew up Captain Tchev’s ship while the convoy was passing through the rift. Why ?”
“Captain Riker. It’s so good to see you again, too. Is your channel secure?”
“Of course, Commander. Nobody can hear our conversation but the two of us. Now: Why did you destroy the Dugh ?”
Donatra schooled her face carefully until she felt certain it was free of any display of either guilt or innocence, anger or amusement. A Vulcan would be proud, she thought wryly.
“A great deal can happen inside a phenomenon like the Great Bloom, Captain.”
“Are you denying it, Commander? I trust I don’t need to remind you that I have a Betazoid on board.”
She sidestepped his question, and his anger, lest her own be roused. “We have been allies, Captain. But I am a Romulan, loyal to the Star Empire first and foremost. And the