Текст книги "Storming Heaven"

Автор книги: David Mack

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“Everybody into the rovers! Now!” As the landing party sprinted back to the ATVs, Terrell closed and secured the partially full container on the back of Ziggy, then he hopped into the driver’s seat and started the engine. Another quake trembled the vehicle and fissured the landscape between the Pit and the Sagittarius. He looked over his shoulder at his staggering landing party, who fought to keep their balance as they crossed the last few meters to the rovers. “Move it, people! Time to go!” Threx and zh’Firro piled into the back of Terrell’s rover as Razka and Theriault clambered aboard Roxy with Ilucci. As the passengers raced to strap themselves in, Terrell stomped on Ziggy’s accelerator. “Punch it, Master Chief!”

The two vehicles were off like shots, swerving and fishtailing through the superfine dust on the statite’s surface as the ground rocked and the stars wheeled precariously overhead.

Over the helmet comms, Threx shouted, “What’s happening?”

He was answered by a distant, eerily silent eruption of broken rock and twisted metal riding a plume of orange fire and blinding light, and then another explosion, and another, each closer than the last. As jets of fire tore up the ground between the rovers and the Sagittarius, Terrell and Ilucci were forced to swerve apart and chart new slalom routes back to the ship.

“Either we tripped a self-destruct switch,” zh’Firro replied while hanging onto Ziggy’s roll cage for dear life, “or someone’s shooting at us.”

Smoldering, glowing debris rained down and littered the path ahead of the rover, and Terrell fought to keep the vehicle from rolling as he swerved madly around one obstacle after another. Huge chunks of superheated rock and metal rolled erratically, cutting deep gouges in the ground that threatened to snare the ATVs unless they were traversed at just the right angle. A steep dip into one smoking trench was followed by the scrape—felt but not heard—of Ziggy’s front bumper striking the far slope and being torn off in the bargain. Two quick jolts shook the ATV as it ran over its own shed parts, leapt clear of the trench, and sped toward home.

The open aft ramp of the Sagittarius was less than fifty meters away, and the two ATVs were closing in fast—but so was a series of explosions that looked like chain reactions, tracing a fiery path across the shadowy surface toward the ship. Boulders trailing smoke slammed down onto the Sagittarius, denting its primary hull and warp nacelles.

Then a massive flare of light burst over the far horizon, and for a moment the terror of being exposed to the pulsar washed away every other thought in Terrell’s mind. Then he saw the expanding debris cloud that followed the flash and realized what he was seeing was the destruction of three of the statite’s solar sails. It took half a second before he asked himself why the Sagittarius was no longer between him and the horizon.

Twisting to his right, he realized that Ziggy, Roxy, and all their occupants had been sent aloft by a sudden interruption of the statite’s artificial gravity. Both rovers were floating away into space, and their strapped-in passengers were along for the ride, wherever it might lead.

Watching the ground and the Sagittarius recede, Terrell hoped Captain Nassir would embrace cold reason, abandon the landing party, and save the ship. But as towers of flame ripped apart the statite around the stationary starship, Terrell feared it might already be too late.

Distant explosions flashed on the Endeavour’s viewscreen. Watching with her fists and jaw clenched in fury, Khatami felt like an overwound spring being twisted tighter by each new bit of bad news her bridge crew reported, torqued one step closer to breaking by every crimson bloom the Tholians’ weapons ignited on the statite. Then, all at once, the Tholians’ massive barrage ceased—but the statite continued to fracture and flare with internal eruptions.

“What am I looking at?” she demanded.

Klisiewicz stared into the blue glow of the sensor display. “The Tholians have deployed six devices onto the underside of the statite. The devices have embedded themselves on the surface at roughly equidistant points from the center, approximately sixty degrees apart.”

She eyed the magnified image on the forward viewscreen. “What are they?”

The science officer straightened and turned toward her. “There’s nothing like these things in the memory banks. They’re generating harmonically reinforcing interphasic distortion fields. In about five minutes those things’ll rip the statite to shreds.”

“Did you say ‘interphasic’ distortion fields?” The word jogged Khatami’s memory of a classified briefing disseminated recently to Starfleet captains throughout the fleet. The Enterprise had encountered an interphasic rift that had proved highly dangerous to navigation. Though a general alert would eventually go out to the public, so far the phenomenon was still classified as top secret while Starfleet investigated all its possible properties and effects. The report filed by the Enterprise’s captain had suggested the interphasic rift might be a natural anomaly, but if the Tholians were wielding such forces as weapons, this was valuable intelligence that needed to be relayed to Starfleet Command immediately. “Estrada, have you raised the Sagittarius yet?”

“Not yet, Captain. Still trying.”

From the forward console, Ensign Sliney declared, “The Tholians are powering up their weapons, Captain!” Seconds later, six of the Tholian ships launched another sextet of the unknown devices into the underside of the statite, targeting them precisely to reduce the spaces between them to thirty degrees. Around them, the statite’s disintegration accelerated, and sensor alarms shrilled from numerous stations on the Endeavour’s bridge.

Returning to her chair, Khatami felt her pulse pounding in her temples. “Estrada! Hail the Tholian commander! Order him to cease fire and deactivate those devices immediately!”

Keying in commands, the communications officer replied, “Transmitting now.” The viewscreen flared momentarily as the Tholian fleet fired another barrage of charged plasma at the statite, which listed even more sharply off its axis. Then Estrada grimaced and swiveled around to face Khatami. “No answer from the Tholians, Captain.”

“Red Alert,” Khatami declared. “All hands to battle stations. Thorsen, raise shields. Sliney, move us into an attack posture.”

Stano interposed herself between Khatami and the view-screen. “Captain, if we fire on the Tholians, we might be starting a war.”

Khatami protested, “They fired first.”

“On an alien construct to which we have no claim. They can claim they didn’t believe the Sagittarius was there. They have diplomatic cover on this. We don’t.”

Precious seconds bled away as Khatami weighed the lives of the Sagittarius’s fourteen crew members, her own ship’s complement of more than four hundred personnel, and the potential casualties—military and civilian alike—that would be on her conscience if she gave the order that started a war. Then she look around Stano at Thorsen. “Target the twelve Tholian devices on the statite and fire phasers. Keep firing till they’re gone.”

“Aye, sir,” Thorsen said, already turning her command into action. The high-pitched whoop of the Endeavour’s phaser banks resounded through the hull as blue beams slashed through the darkness and began vaporizing the interphasic generators.

Firing on the Tholians’ weapons rather than their ships was a legal gray area. Khatami could argue her actions were not aggressive but defensive. If the Tholians chose to interpret this act as hostility and escalate this confrontation, the consequences would be on their collective conscience, not hers—but she was hoping they would take the hint and back off.

Klisiewicz checked the sensors, then aimed a wary glance at his captain and first officer. “The Tholian fleet is coming about and moving into an attack formation.”

So much for hope.

“That didn’t take long,” Stano said.

Khatami forced an empty smile. “Good. Now they have something new to shoot at. Keep them busy as long as you can, and let’s hope the Sagittarius can use this time to escape.”

Stano’s eyes widened as the Tholian fleet loomed large on the main screen. “Great plan, Captain. Now who’s going to rescue us?”

Before Khatami could lighten the moment with a witty retort, the Tholians opened fire, and then all she could hear inside the Endeavour was a roar like thunder.

“On the count of three!” shouted Terrell, watching the rover’s slow roll. “One! Two! Three!”

He and the other members of the landing party in his vehicle huddled together in the middle of the ATV’s passenger area and fired their environmental suits’ maneuvering thrusters straight up, holding open the thrust valves until he ordered, “Stop!”

Looking over the vehicle’s edge, zh’Firro exclaimed, “It worked! We’re moving back toward the ground!”

Terrell exulted but kept his relief to himself. The rover’s descent was fast enough to get them back within less than ten seconds, but slow enough that the impact wouldn’t inflict serious damage on the vehicle or them. “All right, Master Chief,” he said over the open channel, “your turn. Look for a full burn of about six-point-one seconds.”

“Copy that, sir.” To his passengers, Ilucci added, “Look sharp, guys.” Keeping one eye on the ground and the other on Ilucci’s rover, Terrell heard Ilucci start his countdown right on time. “Five. Four.” He was just starting to say three when both rovers went into free fall.

Ziggy slammed to the ground hard, and Terrell, zh’Firro, and Threx held on to their unfastened harness straps as the vehicle tumbled sideways, tossing them like rag dolls in slow motion inside the roll cage before coming to rest upright inside a cloud of fast-settling dust. As the fine gray haze dissipated, Terrell saw Roxy lying on its side a few dozen meters behind them. Half-buried in the regolith were the unmoving forms of its passengers.

“Master Chief! Theriault! Razka! Someone respond!” Terrell tried to start Ziggy’s engine, but the rover’s controls remained dark.

Beside and behind him, Threx and zh’Firro stared mutely toward their fallen comrades. Then the burly Denobulan pointed. “They’re moving!”

Boosting the gain to his suit’s transceiver, Terrell said, “Master Chief? Are you mobile?”

In the distance, the portly chief engineer emerged from behind Roxy’s bent chassis. “I think we are, but Roxy’s toast.”

The statite’s horizon began to shatter and blow away in blinding flashes of light, one roughly every two seconds. Terrell shouted, “Back to the ship! Move!” He bailed out of Ziggy and forced his bruised, aching body to sprint toward the Sagittarius. In moments, zh’Firro had outpaced him, but Threx struggled to keep up; his beefy frame was made for power, not speed.

As they neared the ramp to the ship’s cargo hold, Terrell heard Captain Nassir’s voice crackling over the comm. “. . . to landing party, please respond!”

“We’re here, Captain,” he replied, gasping for breath as he followed zh’Firro up the ramp. “A few more seconds and we’ll all be aboard.”

Nassir, who almost never raised his voice, shouted, “We need to go, Clark!”

Terrell looked back and windmilled his arm, signaling Ilucci, Theriault, and Razka to hurry. The Saurian scout was well ahead of the science officer and chief engineer when the ground between them heaved upward and then erupted in a blast of light, heat, and molten rock. A wall of flames and superheated gas slammed into Razka’s back and launched him toward the Sagittarius. He landed, unconscious inside his smoldering environmental suit, mere meters from the ramp. Terrell ran to the fallen scout, grabbed him beneath his arms, and dragged him backward up the ramp into the ship. Threx and zh’Firro stood at the bottom of the ramp, both looking past Terrell for any sign of Ilucci or Theriault.

Over the comm, Nassir commanded, “Close the aft hatch! We’re taking off!”

“No!” zh’Firro cried. “Theriault and the chief are still out there!”

“Close that hatch! That’s an order!”

Terrell set down Razka and turned to see zh’Firro and Threx staring at him, their gazes feral and desperate, both pleading with their eyes for him to do something. Stealing a look out the open hatchway, he saw Ilucci and Theriault both down and not moving, surrounded by a hellscape of fire and fracturing ground. He made up his mind.

“The hatch won’t close, sir,” he lied. “The controls are jammed.”

Nassir replied, “Get inside, I’ll close it from up here.”

Terrell slapped Threx’s shoulder and pointed at a nearby locker for emergency gear. The senior engineer’s mate nodded, understanding Terrell’s intentions perfectly. Terrell motioned for zh’Firro to follow him, and she did so without hesitation. On his way down the ramp, he said, “Engineer Threx is fixing the ramp now, sir!” As he and zh’Firro hit the ground, Threx wedged a large, heavy tool into a critical segment of the ramp’s hydraulics.

Even through his suit, Terrell could feel the heat and radiation that were tearing the statite to pieces under their feet. Every running stride was a fight to stay upright as the ground buckled and sagged, then expanded and erupted. Walls of fire burst randomly from growing fissures, and Terrell knew that he and zh’Firro wouldn’t be able to count on taking the same route back to the ship, because it likely would no longer be there.

They reached Ilucci and Theriault. The engineer was facedown in the dirt, and the lieutenant was sprawled on her back in an awkward pose. Terrell didn’t bother to check for vital signs. He’d come out here to bring his people home, dead or alive. He kneeled and hefted Ilucci over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. He turned to see zh’Firro had done the same for Theriault. With a nod, he signaled her to lead the way back. The lithe Andorian wasted no time and began the hard run back to the ship.

Dodging the random hazards of the dying statite had been hard enough with his hands free, but struggling under Ilucci’s dead weight, Terrell found the fiery maze insurmountable. Every turn he made led to a dead end, every path zh’Firro blazed turned to slag before he could follow it to safety. Within seconds he was ten meters behind her and turning in panicked circles, frantically searching for a way back to the ship. Steeling his nerve, he hoped the Starfleet environmental suits were as well insulated as their design specs claimed—and he made a straight dash through the flames toward the Sagittarius.

He regretted his choice almost immediately. He felt the sting of searing heat over his entire body, except where he was covered by Ilucci. Painful burning sensations prickled his face and back, jabbed his arms and legs like needles fresh from an acid bath, and filled his suit with the horrid stench of singed body hair. By the time he broke through the far side of the firewall and stumbled the last few meters to the ship, he was sure the bottoms of his feet were covered in broken blisters. He fell to his knees halfway up the ramp, and Threx and zh’Firro leapt forward to grab Ilucci and carry him inside to safety.

Terrell crawled up the ramp into the cargo hold. As he collapsed in exhaustion onto the deck, he felt a rumbling through the ship’s hull and knew it wasn’t another quake. The engines were powering up. He shot a look at Threx, who grabbed the bulky metal rod he’d wedged into the ramp’s hydraulics and pulled on it—only to find it was jammed.

Goddammit, Terrell cursed to himself, this is no time for irony! He forced himself to stand, stumble across the shuddering deck to Threx’s side, and grab the rod. Adding his strength to the Denobulan’s, he gritted his teeth and pulled until he was sure he’d given himself a hernia. Then the rod broke free, and the sudden release sent Terrell crashing back to the deck. Lying beside Ilucci, Razka, and Theriault, he watched the ramp lift and close, and he keyed his suit’s transceiver. “Terrell to bridge. Ramp closed.”

“Clark, get up here, on the double.” The captain sounded pissed off.

“On my way.” He shut off his comm and groaned. No rest for the wicked.

The environmental status light beside the ramp switched from red to green, indicating the cargo hold had been repressurized. As Doctor Babitz and medical technician Tan Bao scrambled down the ladder with medkits in hand, Terrell gratefully emancipated himself from the stifling bulk of the headpiece, then stripped off the rest of his suit and left it on the deck. Dressed only in his regulation gray undergarments, he winced as he climbed the ladder to the main deck.

Seconds later, he stepped onto the bridge. Nassir was in the command chair, and Dastin was at the helm. On the main view-screen, the crumbling disk of the statite was being pulverized by the pulsar’s emissions as it tumbled downward on a collision course with the neutron star. The captain turned slowly to face Terrell and fixed him with a stinkeye glare. “A jammed hatch, Clark? Really? That was the best excuse you could come up with?”

Terrell shrugged. “Time was a factor.”

Nassir reproached him with a look. “Try to come up with something better for the log.”

“Yes, sir.” Terrell felt himself sway, and he blinked to focus his eyes as he fought off an attack of vertigo. “Permission to go to sickbay and collapse?”

“Granted.”

Bad news came to Khatami from every direction. On her right, Klisiewicz tore his eyes from the science console to warn, “Starboard shields buckling!” At the forward stations, Thorsen called out, “Enemy ships too close for torpedo lock!” Shouting over Thorsen, Sliney declared, “The Tholians have split into three groups and are flanking us!” Over the intraship comm, chief engineer Bersh glov Mog bellowed, “Hull breaches on Decks Fourteen, Fifteen, and Sixteen!”

“Thorsen, switch to phasers! Target the group off our port bow!”

Thunderstrokes of enemy fire pummeled the Endeavour’s hull and drowned out the angry screech of its phasers. A split-second of weightlessness was Khatami’s only warning before the deck pitched, courtesy of a momentary overload of the inertial dampers. She clutched the arms of her chair while her bridge crew struggled not to be hurled from their seats. The overhead lights dimmed for several seconds as the bridge consoles stuttered and threatened to go dark, and for a moment the only light was the ruddy glow of the Red Alert panels on the bulkheads.

Systems all over the bridge flickered, then thrummed back into service. Another low shriek of the phasers reassured Khatami that her ship was still combat-worthy. “Helm, hard about! If you have to ram through the enemy formation, do it, but block their shot of the statite!”

Eyes fixed on the main viewer, a despondent Thorsen replied, “Too late, Captain.”

The screen showed the splintered remains of the statite being blasted into dust by the pulsar’s regular bolts of supercharged particles. With a majestic flash, the statite vanished.

Thorsen looked back at Khatami. “The Tholian fleet’s disengaging, Captain. I guess they’re calling this mission accomplished.”

Klisiewicz checked his sensor readings. “The other nodes in the statite cloud are falling into the star, Captain. So much for studying the—” He let the sentence trail off as he worked furiously at his console, adjusting the settings on the sensors.

As impatient as Khatami was to know what had snared the science officer’s attention, it was Stano who prodded, “Talk to me, Klisiewicz. What’ve you got?”

Joy widened his eyes and lifted his voice. “The Sagittarius! She’s clear of the pulsar’s emission axis and breaking orbit of the star at full impulse!”

Immediately quashing the good mood, Thorsen declared, “Tholian fleet coming about on an intercept course for the Sagittarius!”

Khatami seized the moment. “Helm, put us between the Sagittarius and the Tholians. Estrada, let Sagittarius know we’ll guard their aft quarter. Thorsen, route all shield power to the aft emitters, and have all torpedoes transferred to the aft launchers, on the double.” She keyed open an intraship channel. “Bridge to engineering. Stand by for maximum warp.”

“We’ll give you all we’ve got,” Mog answered.

Holding one hand over the Feinberger transceiver in his ear, Estrada reported, “Captain? Sagittarius says, ‘Thanks for the escort, and try to keep up.’”

“Tholian vessels closing fast and charging weapons,” Thorsen interjected.

“Load aft torpedo tubes,” Khatami said, “and stand by to fire a full spread, Pattern Romeo.” With a look she cued Stano to step out of the command well to the upper deck, watch over Klisiewicz’s shoulder, and let her know when the Tholians closed to optimal range.

Sliney locked in a set of coordinates on the helm console. “Sagittarius has set course for Vanguard. They’re powering up their warp nacelles.”

“Stay with them, Mister Sliney.”

“Aye, sir.” On the main screen, the Sagittarius went to warp speed in an iridescent flash, and Sliney jumped the Endeavour into subspace right behind the scout ship.

Thorsen noted with dry efficiency, “The Tholians are matching our course and speed.”

Stano nodded at Khatami, indicating that the Tholian battle group was in range.

“Fire,” Khatami said. “Aft angle on-screen.” The viewscreen switched to show the volley of photon torpedoes that raced away from the Endeavour and detonated in the Tholians’ path. She hoped a show of strength would discourage their pursuit, but when the blinding glare faded, the Tholian vessels were still there and closing with slow, steady menace.

“Their shields are holding,” Thorsen said.

Klisiewicz raised his voice while keeping his eyes on the sensor readout. “Incoming!” Muffled explosions shook the Endeavour and reverberated for several seconds in the hull.

“Aft shields holding,” Thorsen said. “For now.”

Stano stepped back down into the command well and took her place beside Khatami. “It’s a long run back to Vanguard. And it’s gonna seem even longer with them shooting us in the back every step of the way.”

Khatami swiveled left and looked back toward the comm station. “Estrada, let Vanguard know we’re coming in hot and could use a helping hand.”

Sliney cast a nervous look back at the captain and first officer. “How long do you think they’ll keep chasing us?”

There was no point in lying to the anxious helmsman. “Until we turn and fight or run out of fuel,” Khatami said, “whichever comes first.”

14

Once the old melody had been familiar, a bastion of comfort; now all T’Prynn could hear in it were the echoes of old lies.

She masked her frustration behind a placid faзade as her best efforts raised nothing from Manуn’s grand piano but graceless notes that embodied banality. Her only consolation was that the shadowy cabaret was empty except for her and Spock, who sat beside her with his Vulcan lyre perched on his thigh. His expression mirrored hers, fixed somewhere between neutral and dour, while he listened to her uninspired performance of Gene Harris’s arrangement of “Summertime,” a number that once had been her signature piece, and that he had heard her perform years earlier. She hit all the right notes in the right tempo, and yet the song no longer sounded right. Some element she couldn’t define, some ineffable quality that differentiated mere competence from virtuosity, was absent. It left her feeling empty even as she filled the darkened nightclub with sound. She no longer found any meaning in it.

Less than halfway through the piece, she lost patience with it and stopped. The interrupted note decayed for several seconds until she lifted her foot from the sustain pedal, restoring the yawning silence that surrounded her and Spock.

He wore a contemplative look as he stared at the stage, his angular features accentuated by the hard shadows of the spotlight that illuminated them on the piano’s bench. T’Prynn imagined he was choosing his words with care. “You learned to play this instrument on Earth,” he said, posing the question with the flat inflection of a statement.

“Correct.”

Cradling his lyre, he shifted to face her. “And your teacher was a human.”

A minuscule nod. “Yes.”

His upswept brows furrowed slightly. “Did you choose to study this style of music, or was it the only option available to you?”

“I chose it.” She found it difficult not to succumb to defensiveness at his questions. “Why do you consider that relevant?”

He cocked an eyebrow. “The fact that you gravitated to styles as expressive as jazz and blues suggests that those genres resonated with your subconscious. However, they no longer seem suited to you—or, to be more precise, you no longer seem suited to them.”

In no mood for riddles, T’Prynn said, “Speak plainly, Spock.”

“Very well. You’ve told me you feel disconnected from your music. But these are styles and songs you learned and related to when you were, in a very real sense, a different person.” He leaned closer and spoke more gently. “You learned to play this instrument when you were a val’reth, two living katras fused in psychic conflict. Though you denied it, I suspect that, for you, music served as a psychic outlet for emotions you dared not otherwise express.”

She looked down at the keyboard. In the past, her pride would have impelled her to deny his assertion, but now, freed of the combative katra of her dead fiancй, Sten, she saw the logic of Spock’s assumption. “Do you mean to suggest that I no longer need music?”

“That is not for me to say.” He thought for a moment. “However, I think that it will be futile for you to continue trying to play as the person you were. I would suggest you change your approach to this instrument, and to music in general, to reflect the person you have become.”

Trying to imagine how she would put his simple-sounding advice into practice, she felt paralyzed. “How can I put aside more than fifty years’ worth of training and experience?”

“Let go of old patterns,” Spock said. “What was once an emotional purgative can now become an act of meditation and pure creation. Don’t think about what to play; just play.”

“I’m not sure I know how,” T’Prynn confessed.

His voice was deep and soothing. “Close your eyes.” She did as he asked, and then he continued. “Clear your mind of all thought. Let your hands rest on the keys.” She settled her fingers into the middle third of the keyboard. “Breathe, T’Prynn. Relax and listen.”

As she emptied her mind of its chaotic flurry of concerns and anxieties, she heard the first faint notes rise from Spock’s lyre, music floating on the air like a feather aloft on a spring breeze, slow and meandering, seemingly random yet entirely natural in its effect. “What song is that?”

“An improvisation,” Spock said, his voice hushed as he continued to play. “Listen and join me when you feel the music you want to play.”

She tensed with disapproval. “Feel the music? Isn’t that rather human?”

“Logic doesn’t ask us to deny that our emotions exist, but to control and channel them in productive ways. All I ask is that you confront your emotions honestly, T’Prynn.”

Reassured by his interpretation of the Vulcan disciplines whose apparent internal contradictions had long baffled her, T’Prynn drew a deep breath and exhaled slowly, forcing herself to relax and let the sweet sound of the lyre free her mind from its endless tumult. Seconds slipped away and melted into minutes, and then she lost herself in Spock’s carefree melody. It was deceptive in its simplicity, and soon her trained ear discovered subtleties in it, hints of a longing behind its innocent faзade. Then she noted a new richness in the tune and realized it was the piano—with eyes still shut, she had begun to explore the tune with Spock by instinct alone.

At first she merely filled in harmonies or echoed passages that Spock had played. Soon, she settled into key and devised her own melody to complement Spock’s. As her performance became more confident, Spock let the lyre become her accompaniment, and then he let his part fade away altogether as T’Prynn charted her own musical course.

The music emerging from the piano was a mystery to her. The melody was nothing she had ever heard or been taught. It was very different from the human jazz and blues that she had played for decades; this new style was slower, more fluid and yet just as complex as jazz and as rich with feeling as blues. At moments it skirted the edge of dissonance, but each time she felt the way to bring it back into harmony before it went too far. Hidden in its rhythms and chords, she was certain she could hear influences as varied as Terran classical and Vulcan sonatas, Deltan chamber music and Andorian concertos.

All at once she felt the improvisation draw to a close. The melody culminated artfully and found its ending with a quiet grace. The measured, dignified conclusion reverberated softly inside the deserted cabaret, and as the last note decayed into silence, T’Prynn opened her eyes. She understood then what Spock had meant. It had simply felt right.

Neither of them spoke for several seconds. They sat together, reverent in their respect for the silence and each other. Reflecting upon her inner state, T’Prynn discovered a feeling she had not truly known since her childhood: contentment.

Spock’s communicator beeped twice. He tucked his lyre under his left arm, plucked his communicator from his belt, and opened its gold grille with a flick of his wrist. “Spock here.”

A voice that T’Prynn recognized as James Kirk’s responded, “Spock, we need you back on the Enterprise. There’s an emergency, and we’re shipping out in twenty minutes.”

“On my way. Spock out.” He closed the communicator and tucked it back onto his belt as he stood. “You must excuse me.”

As he moved to step away from the piano, T’Prynn reached out and gently grasped his left wrist. He met her gaze as she said in a humble voice, “Thank you, Spock.”

He turned to face her and raised his right hand, fingers spread in the Vulcan salute. “Live long and prosper, T’Prynn.”

She stood and returned the salute. “Peace and long life, Spock.”

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