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.