The Red King - Michael A. Martin [36]
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 fleet is 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.”
“Are we clear of it?”
“Negative, Commander. The rift’s random subspace effects will probably stop and reverse our drift sometime over the next several veraku . Even at our current distance from the event horizon, we are still well within the Bloom’s strongest zone of subspace interference.”
So sending a distress signal would be an exercise in futility, Donatra thought glumly. Even if we had a functioning comm system. She had begun hoping that the appearance of her fleet in Neyel space meant that there was at least some chance that Riker and his Starfleet vessel had made it here intact as well. But without a fully operational communications system or sensors, there was no way to tell.
“How soon can we effect repairs and resume a course away from the Bloom and its interference zone?”
Liravek paused briefly before responding, which was unusual for him. “Commander, we’ve vented so much coolant due to the power-circuit failures, that I’m not even certain engine repair is even possible without access to spacedock facilities.”
Donatra looked back toward her Neyel “guest.” Frane hadn’t moved from where he lay on the infirmary bed, apparently in a well-advised effort not to alarm his two armed guards—both of whom had maintained their poise as well as a tight grip on their weapons.
The sight of the still-prone Neyel—whose presence here had resulted entirely from a chance encounter with something that lay beyond the Valdore’s battered hull—suddenly gave Donatra an idea.
Perhaps I should continue looking beyond my vessel for solutions to its problems.
“Thank you, Centurion,” she said aloud. “I’ll be on the bridge shortly to go over our options. Donatra out.” She thumbed the comm circuit closed.
Dr. Venora approached, the diminished lighting accentuating the deep lines and hollows of her wise, patrician face. “Well, Commander. What now?”
Donatra offered a lopsided smile. “I’ll let you know as soon as I’ve