She raised her eyebrows at Shastri: Anything? Checking the readings, he shook his head, then twirled his finger in the universal gesture for “Keep going.” Hoping she wasn’t making a cosmic fool of herself, Uhura took a breath and launched into the next verse:

I reach out my hand and draw it back again

Like some cosmic forces pull it away…

“Maintain course, Cadet,” Spock advised T’Lara as he studied the plot on the celestial hemisphere display at the base of the helm/navigation console. The Enterprise and Reliant were maintaining a forced orbit around the flare epicenter, remaining at high velocity to minimize microflare damage while also maintaining proximity to the plasma beings’ signal source. “We must remain in Reliant’s wake.”

“Understood, sir,” the young Vulcan said. “However, the gravimetric distortion is making it difficult.”

“Same here, Captain Spock,” Terrell reported from Reliant. Even with laser transmission, his voice was growing difficult to discern through the rising interference. “This kind of gravitational turbulence with no mass… we might be on the verge of a subspace rift. Whatever your people are doing, they’d better make it fast.”

“They are aware of the urgency, Captain Terrell.”

The ship shook briefly, and the damage control display showed a new microflare breach in the starboard nacelle. Spock reflected that it was fortunate the warp drive was useless under these conditions in any case. However, the turbulence was making it difficult for the two ships to remain in perfect formation—and the microflare impact rate was rising again as the growing subspace instability began to exceed even two verteron fields’ damping ability.

Through the digital flicker and dropouts on the screen, the EV-suited Terrell met Spock’s eyes solemnly. “I trust you also know that if a rift forms while we’re this close, we’ll never get clear in time.”

“That has always been a given, Captain Terrell. You are under no obligation to remain if you wish to save your crew.”

“Are you kidding, Spock? They’d never forgive me if I forced them to miss out on the final play.” He chuckled. “You can rely on us, Captain. It’s right there in the name of the ship.”

U.S.S. Amazon

Earth orbit

Captain Jangura stared at the vast field of flickering light that filled the main viewscreen entirely now. “Time to intercept?”

Chekov answered heavily. “Approximately six minutes, sir.” It was difficult to be more precise. Earth’s own orbital motion hurtled it inexorably closer to the fringe of the field at thirty kilometers per second, but the field continued to expand at an increasing rate, and there was no way to define an exact boundary for it as new microflare clusters erupted on its fringes unpredictably.

“Status of the verteron beams?”