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“Songbird!”
The cry came from Hoshi as she worked on the lock of the prison cell. Janelle turned from breaking a chair over the head of one of the aliens, looking over the crowd to find her friend.
“Yeah?”
“Get over here! I need you!”
“Coming!”
With a quick leap, Janelle was running along one of the metal tables in the corridor of what they considered a sort of prison; one where all the men of Enterprise had been trapped.
Around her, the women of the ship who’d beamed down to the planet were engaged in hand-to-hand combat with the alien captors, humanoid creatures who resembled nothing so much as ice-cream-coloured women with strange, pinwheeling eyes. They were all females, and it didn’t take much to deduce why they had stolen away the men of Enterprise, keeping them in relative comfort, albeit imprisoned. Even now Janelle could see the men lined up against the clear walls of their holding cells, unable to get out and to the assistance of their crew-mates, but cheering on the women.
Fortunately, a certain Vulcan first officer had not taken kindly to being separated from her bond-mate. She had led the assault by the remaining contingent of the security team, accompanied by the communications officer - herself no slouch in the combat stakes - and several engineering and medical staff. Lieutenant Anna Hess had been left behind to run the ship and monitor their biosigns. The team was now running through the compound, battling the abductors while searching for the transporters that had whisked the men away from their starship.
A purple Coracias suddenly popped up between the two tables, turning to point her weapon at Janelle; the engineer dropped to her knees and slid along the slippery surface, gripping both hands together to provide extra impetus for her elbow coming around in an arc and landing on the alien’s jaw with a satisfying crunch that dropped her lilac form like a stone.
Grabbing the weapon, Janelle hurtled around the last table and came to a halt beside Hoshi, who had moved away from the cell and was now pushing buttons on a pad near the main door, albeit not the one controlling the door.
“I’m here, what’s up?”
“I need you to sing like a bird,” Hoshi said distractedly, eyes shifting between the screen and rapidly-cycling letters on a smaller screen to one side.
“I can do that.”
“Several notes at once. This system uses frequency and harmonics, and the UT or any other device we have isn’t capable of producing what we need without some adjustments.”
“Heads up!” came a cry from Esk, and Janelle turned and blasted a rapidly-approaching lemon-coloured Coracias trying to attack Hoshi. She decided to keep her back toward the wall and fend off any danger to the communications officer, using the weapon she’d grabbed - a sort of phase pistol - as a deterrent before reaching out to yank a longer pipe from a smallish mint-green Coracias to wield as a quarterstaff. She knocked said Coracias on its behind and then took the pipe to its jaw.
“Well done, crewman!” came from Lieutenant Reed, who was standing near the wall where Hoshi was busy, and looking frustrated at not being able to help her or his SIC. Not that Esk was letting anything stop them from laying the smackdown on the abductors.
Janelle sketched off a quick salute to the security officer and a grin at Rostov as he stood beside the smaller man, before turning back to Hoshi.
“Okay, well, I can harmonise for you, but I need to know what to sing.”
“The UT will translate the notes into music you can read.”
“Right. I’ll need a minute to get my head around it, especially if you say I have to maintain frequency and duration.”
“Better start warming your vocal cords then, the UT’s still working out the melody. But it’ll require polyphonic overtones.”
“Then get me those notes and keep these women off my back, I’ll probably only get one chance and I can’t screw it up.”
Hoshi put her forefingers into her mouth and let out a deafening whistle.
“Coming!” rang out from Esk Parker and Liz Cutler, and they converged on the two, weapons in hand and determination in their eyes, while T’Pol approached from the side, grabbing a large Coriacas as it attacked her, and hurling it across the heads of the battling women to crash into the far wall. The Vulcan had clearly decided to discard any pretence at diplomacy.
“I’ve got it figured out, Sub-Commander,” Hoshi told T’Pol. “But I’ll need Crewman Kelly to get it done.”
T’Pol nodded. “Very well, Ensign. Free our crew-mates so we can all return to the ship. We will not leave a single person behind.”
“On it,” Hoshi said, grabbing Janelle and pulling her to one side.
The engineer was already humming in lower tones, prepping her voice so she didn’t end up screeching. The UT beeped and Hoshi handed it to Janelle, who looked over the notes, nodding and humming to herself.
“You wouldn’t happen to have any water or liquid, would you?”
“Not on me, no. Is your throat dry?”
“Not enough to make a difference; it’s just always easier to start when properly hydrated. But I’ll make it work.”
“Okay. You’ll need to sing into the wall panel here, as clearly as possible.”
“The noise from the fighting might make that difficult, but let’s try.”
Hoshi turned her back to the wall, as Janelle had done before, and took the phase pistol from her friend.
“Go.”
Janelle took a breath, fixed her eyes to the notes in front of her, opened her mouth, and sang. There were no words, and no specific structure for the untrained ear to understand. Instead, it sounded as though she was humming in a low register while whistling birdsong at the same time.
As she became used to the notes and her voice strengthened, she increased the volume unconsciously, unheeding of the sounds behind her slowly petering out. She closed her eyes and concentrated on the melody and the resonance, making the notes as clear as she could, until finally an unlocking sound echoed throughout the space.
“I think that did it!” she cried, turning to Hoshi, only to notice that everyone in the hall had stopped and turned toward her corner - most notably, the Coracias women. “What’s going on?”
Hoshi reached for the UT. “I think you surprised them by singing their own language,” she said, her eyes still on the abductors. “Everyone just … move slowly, lower your weapons.” She typed in a few things on the UT, and handed it to Janelle. “Can you sing this?”
Janelle scanned the notes, opened her mouth, and sang. A deep pink Coracias woman glided up to the two; Esk and Liz moved to intercept, but Hoshi stopped them with a word. They allowed the woman to pass, keeping a wary eye on her and those surrounding them.
The Coracias sang at Janelle. Hoshi took the UT and programmed a few words, handing it to Janelle once more. The Songbird repeated the notes on the screen, and the Coriacas’ eyes widened as she looked at the women before her and the men still behind the prison walls. She fluted in what sounded like a panicked state, and Hoshi translated.
“She says they did not realise these were our … our mates. That they seemed very much like the … I think this sound means ‘clones’ … like the clones they received from traders several generations back. I don’t think they understand gender or procreation as such, or at least, not in the way we do.”
“Instruct them to release our crew-mates, Ensign. Whether or not they understand does not give them the right to simply take sentient beings without asking.” T’Pol looked as annoyed as it was possible for a Vulcan to be. Hoshi nodded, and programmed notes for Janelle to sing.
The Coracias flushed a deep crimson and waved a hand at the wall panel and then at the cells, fluting more notes at Hoshi.
“She says Janelle has already unlocked the cells, and as the men move forward, the walls will disappear. They will take us to the transporters immediately and return us to our ship,” the communications officer translated.
T’Pol nodded, her expression still and blank, though those who knew her well after the past almost five years would have picked up the tension in her stance and in the tightening of her eyes.
“Tell them we would have been happy to open formal communications with them if they had only bothered to ask. Abducting anyone, clone or not, without explanation is unlikely to help foster cordial relations,” the Vulcan noted, no inflection in her voice. Still, her hand twitched momentarily as the men began streaming out and the chief engineer approached the small group, his eyes on his bond-mate.
"It's been real fun - not - but can we go home now?" he asked in an aggrieved tone.
“Agreed,” said the captain, walking up to them. “Diplomatic relations are one thing, but I’m not exactly happy to be having them as a prisoner without hope of being understood.”
“Charming as the hospitality here has been," added Lieutenant Reed, his tone as sarcastic as he could make it, "it doesn't hold a candle to Enterprise."
Janelle sang at the group once more, and the Coracias leader flushed again, then gestured for them to follow. Travis and Tanner immediately flanked Liz, while Rostov fell into step beside Janelle, bumping his shoulder gently into hers. She looked up at him and grinned.
“Nice singing,” he praised. “I never knew human throats could make such sounds.”
“You’d be surprised what the human throat can do with enough training and practise, Mike,” Janelle elbowed him lightly. “I’m glad you’re out, though. Engineering’s been too quiet without half the team there.”
“Good thing we have a songbird on board,” interjected Hoshi, winking at a relieved-looking Reed as the security officer joined her. “Now let’s get our guys home and we can figure out diplomatic relations from there.”