Excerpt
After his fourth straight night without sleep, Montgomery Scott could hear the music throbbing in his bones and echoing in his ears. It filled his chest with both sorrow and the too-familiar tightness of unrelenting stress. The recorded song, piped into the makeshift operations center Scotty had set up in the Enterprise's cargo bay, rose to a sudden crescendo. He looked up from the mess of sensors, gauges, and readouts in the cargo bay and fervently wished he were somewhere else.

The big engineer touched the wall of transparent aluminum in front of him, the material stretched to the point of breaking. If only the song playing now was the real thing, he thought. If only I could figure out what was making their life signs fade. If only I had some kind of song I could play for them to make their own songs return. But I've got nothing.