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

“And just where is 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.

The Valdore 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 voyage today .

“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’vahru deeper 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 Valdore had 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 Valdore tractored 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’cha class, 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.

“I am Commander Donatra,” Donatra said, stepping toward her two guests a moment after they had finished materializing. “You are aboard the Imperial Warbird Valdore.”

The taller of the pair of Klingon figures who now stood on the transporter stage was a fierce-looking male whose thick, rough-textured forehead bore an angry wound that oozed a viscous lavender fluid. His heavily mailed though