With just the three of them, her song was inadequate to carry far. But Alos and Gasa’s fellow apprentices began joining in one by one, some amplifying her own words as Gasa did, others offering translations. To Aili’s ears, it seemed they were not all singing the same thing, but interpreting in more than one way, offering different lines of argument at the same time.

At first, it was simply a matter of getting the squales’ attention. She sang introductory verses to identify herself, to explain how she came to be here. All the world knew of her by now, of course, but they had not heard her side of it. As she sang of her origins in a different, much smaller ocean, Melo joined in, perhaps intrigued enough by the subject matter of the song to want to sing along. Even one or two of the defender squales were singing with her now. After all, Aili realized, one of the things they believed in defending was the right of all individuals to make their voices heard, whether they agreed with what was sung or not.

And that was something she could build on. “Our mission’s to explore,”she sang.

“To seek out strange new worlds, new life,

To go where we have never gone, and meet the people there.

We voyage in the name of peace. We celebrate all life.

Diversity combined: it’s the refrain that guides our quest.

For different voices, even those that frighten us at first

Can join with ours in harmonies we never could have dreamed;

Just as your voices all combine to sing the Song of Life—

A whole that’s greater than the sum, a chord of destiny.”

As she elaborated further on the theme, she heard Alos and the other squale translators begin to improvise upon it, illustrating it by the very act as well as by the words. She reflected that Riker would love the jazzy spirit of it. Together, they developed the theme that all things in the cosmos, even those that are dangerous or painful or discordant, were nonetheless harmonics of the same fundamental tone, the over-arching Song that sang the universe into being. As alien as she and her companions seemed, she told them, they were still part of the same continuum of life and mind.

At this point, Cham began singing too, but not to reinforce her words. His was a counterpoint conceptually as well as musically, reminding the squales of the crisis precipitated by the offworlders. The defender squales not singing her part took his, amplifying it to compete with hers.

Yet it wasn’t truly competition, she realized. Melodically, rhythmically, even thematically, it merged harmoniously with her song rather than clashing. Cham wasn’t trying to drown her out or sabotage her. He was simply adding a voice of caution to the chorus, making sure all sides were heard. In a way, Aili thought, he was even reinforcing her point: even dissenting voices could be part of a single song. An argument didn’t have to be about silencing or sabotaging the opposition; it could be a cooperative act, a way to participate in seeking a resolution to a conflict. Cham wanted the other side to be heard, but only to facilitate a healthy debate.

And maybe, she realized, to give her an opening to address his concerns. “I understand your fear—your dread of losing all you have,” she sang. “That dread is known to us, more so than you could ever dream.”

Aili dug deep down in herself, calling on her memories of the ordeal the Federation had faced at the hands of the Borg. She reached for all the emotions she’d buried away at the time and since: terror for the survival of herself, her ship, her world; grief at the deaths of friends and crewmates; shock, anguish, and sheer incomprehension at the devastation of entire worlds, the elimination of entire civilizations from the cosmos. She knew the squales could not comprehend the events, but she sang to them of the emotions—emotions she’d never let herself face this directly. It was painful, harrowing, and her voice often faltered, but her squale chorus compensated, making her vocal distress a part of the music. When she could not go on, their singing trailed off into a long, sustained chord, a dirge for the dead. It gave her time to gather herself before she went on.

“Like you today, we faced the end of our entire world.

We could have bowed to panic, helped to tear that world apart.

Instead, we let our fear inspire us all to stand as one.

To join in greater chorus, even with our enemies,

And sing a louder, richer song than any could alone—

A harmony that won out over chaos and discord,

Resolved the darkest movement in our cosmic symphony,

And let us start anew, transposed into a brighter key.”

But something was still missing. Aili didn’t feel she’d sold it enough; Cham’s counterpoint was still present, his skeptical melody creating an unresolved chord. The Borg invasion, the loss of worlds—however movingly she sang, it was too abstract for them. As drained as she was, there was one more corner of her soul she had to bare for them.

“Still, there is loss, I know. My grief will be an overtone

In every joyous song to come. For they’ll be incomplete.

They’ll lack a certain voice that I will never hear again.

Miana, sister, lost when I was but a little girl.”

She told them of Miana, of how she had blamed her mother for her death, turning her grief into rage in order to avoid facing it. She faced it now as she never had before. Despite her emotional and vocal exhaustion, she pushed on.