Star Trek: Vanguard: Storming Heaven (18 page)

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.”

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 façade as her best efforts raised nothing from Manón’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 fiancé, 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 façade. 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.