A floating platform hovered in silence above the dark glass of the Jasnea River. Faint veins of green light traced the edges of the skystage. Flat, layered cliffs climbed upwards along both sides of this part of the river. Natural terraces were formed by their stacked shapes. Red light rolled across the stone in waves as the crowd gathered along the sculpted levels. Many bodies were wrapped in vines and cloth. Others were bare-chested, skin painted in recreations of ancient pigments. The audience had gathered from far and wide for tonight’s show. Some came from dull-painted freighters. Others visited from distant Federation outposts. Crews of the numerous vessels representing Task Force 21 were also well represented. Well over a thousand souls stood in hushed anticipation. The wind had stilled. Even the quiet river seemed to hold its breath.

There was no announcement to start things. A single pulse thumped and reverberated across the naturally-refined acoustics. Low. Coiled. A figure could barely be seen in the distant starlight.

Yelrisa Venn stepped into a spot lit view from behind hazy smoke. The tall Orion woman was barefoot, copper coils glinting in braids wrapped to her shoulders. Her double-scale bass glistened under the flashing stage lights. The instrument was crafted from a Kolarian junglewood body. Its transparent blue finish was worn smooth to the grain pattern where her hand rubbed. She bowed her head, fingers already moving into a thumping pattern.

The first bass notes strummed like a heartbeat waking up after birth.

She struck fast as her left hand raced from the third fret towards the base. She paused to thump notes along the fifth and seventh frets to let the gallop gather momentum. The sound intensified as her hand worked closer to her body, rising in octaves powerfully. Her fingers worked wide and low with long pulls that hummed with a rebellious pace. The bass didn’t walk. Yelrisa led it through a stampeding charge. The sound was composed of relentless triplets. The stage lights flickered green-gold in time with each tap-tap-tap of her stroke. Her fingers were cupped together as they beat the thick bass strings.

Her finger dropped to strings closer to her feet as the sound rose even higher. More playful notes of a humming pitch seemed to beckon the next instrument, repeating a pattern that the crowd started to move to.

From stage right, Urox Bhal emerged like a starship through a nebula’s fog. His guitar was slung low, bare torso scarred and sweaty under his boneplate harness. He stomped once. Tribal instruments rattled from his hip and ankles to add to the building sound.

Urox pressed into the strings with muddy chords. His rhythm looped under Yelrisa’s rhythm. His right hand clawed from the headstock towards the guitar’s body. His picking chopped through the distorted howl with clenched knuckles, while his left hand crawled along the fretboard. His fingers hammered the same frets as the bassist. The guitar’s chords provided a heavy, rich sound that added depth. His eyes were half-lidded as if bound in a trance. Dark pine lips curled upwards in a half-growl.

A flash of ice-blue light announced a flaxen haired guitarst. Nireth Jai appeared mid-platform within the spiral of a laser traced pattern. Her obsidian seven-string glinted like a blade. Her expression remained stoic as her sound clearly cut through the backdrop. She lifted her hand and stretched a high, bending note. Her wrist twitched up and down as the sound wobbled. Her hand moved closer to the headstock with crunchy, dark notes. Her pick slid like a scalpel as her other hand quickly worked towards the base of the guitar. Fingers tapped adeptly as her notes harmonized against the chords and bass. The lead line spiraled into haunting sounds that echoed ancient war cries. Her guitar shouted layered howls. She yanked back on a whammy bar towards the rear of the guitar and stroked it slowly to guide the echoing reverberations.

By tapping the corners of two frets, she formed a layered harmonic that twisted into a heavy metal scream that dug deep beyond the canyon walls.

The crowd roared.

Talrek On ran to his kit next. The lights strobed behind him in crimson pulses. He launched into motion, seated in mid-spin. Both sticks fell down like falling blades.

His drum set exploded to finally bring the song to life.

Quick attacks struck traditional toms, crash cymbals, and snare drums. The kit roared into a rapid and precise beat. Underneath, tribal percussion hummed naturally. He moved in circles as his elbows twisted in tight arcs. Tattoos flared with ultraviolet reflections as he leaned into the snare gallop. Kick drums rolled like cannonfire. Hi-hats chattered like teeth in the cold.

The instruments quickly wrapped into one sound. The bass and drums seemed to urge the others forward with a frenetic pace.

The gallop raced. The beat chased it. The crowd shouted as their bodies writhed and trembled.

The final piece ran into place from within a central structure covered in thorny vines.

Raxur Saan.

His skin glowed like molten jade. A chiseled body peeked out from open, chain-lined robes. Orange eyes scanned the crowd excitedly.

He raised one hand and howled. “Scream for me, Janoor III!”

The gorge shattered with a response. Fists raised. Voices cracked. The bassline dropped into a heavier, snarling tone. Raxur sang like a war-wounded prophet.

“You wrote your rule in polished steel,
But fed it fear, and called it law—
You crowned yourselves with broken tongues—
But we remember what we saw!”

The word ‘steel’ danced on his tongue. The second line was sung with challenging aggression. His tone built during the third line. His voice exploded as he drew out the word ‘saw’.

He stalked the front of the stage, head tilted in ritual defiance. His upper register wailed. A harmonizing voice from a figure in the shadows trailed whispers in old Orion behind his every line.

Raxur’s arms moved like a mix between a preacher’s and a butcher’s.

“You carved your faces on the stars—
But buried hearts in ash and chains—
We dug you up.
We named your crimes.
And now we dance upon your graves.”

There was almost hope in his voice as he mentioned carving faces, holding the note ‘stars’. The sound quickened again on the second line. The third and fourth lines were sung quickly, back in the accusatory tone. There was celebration reflected within the last line, especially as his voice zipped along a sultry set of extra syllables that stretched the last word into an independent performance.

Another guitar double harmonic let a whale-like call of ‘woooo’ along with the singer’s extended vocalization.

The bass surged again into aggressive triplets. Urox slammed down a palm-muted phrase while hammering the fifth fret in tight pulses. Nireth bent strings into a new, faster tune. His solo spiraled up the fretboard’s high notes and dove back down to the low notes closer to the headstock. Fingers danced between the fifth and ninth frets in a blur.

Talrek matched her with blast beats that locked to her every ascent. His right foot double-tapped like gunfire. He bared his teeth and shouted with angst.

The bass and drums formed a thick soup with the rhythm guitar.

Urox and Nireth stepped forward together, dueling with their guitars.

Urox struck deep, meaty chords. His shoulders rolled back and forth with each blow. He mixed chords into a solo that sputtered and lurched like a dying engine. Nireth replied with surgical stabs of melody. Each pick stroke was a rebuttal. The sound blended into a thumping tune. Her hand raced from low fret to high, his followed. The crowd screamed with each clash.

Yelrisa joined with a long, drawn line across her bass. The sound bent downwards as tattoos along her spine flared lime green.

Raxur raised both arms.

“We were born beneath your towers,
But we are not your stone.
We remember every silence—
We remember what you own.”

He inhaled.

“We burned the thrones.
We fed them to the void.
Memory is the hammer.
Memory is the flame.”

The final chorus exploded:

Twelve banners torn,
Twelve bells ring,
The basilica burns—
And the rebels sing.

Let the ashes fall,
Let the tyrants flee—
We are Verdant Thorn,
And we never bend the knee.

The crowd became a raging storm. Waves of energy spread from soul to soul.

Dancers on the lowest level leapt into the river. Younger guests screamed and shouted. Elders raised trembling fists. A Tellarite girl clutched a Nausicaan’s arm and screamed the lines into his chest. A Deltan elder hummed along, eyes closed.

On a massive screen behind the band, a great tree covered in thorns blossomed vibrantly. The colors exploded until the tree was consumed in green flame.

Raxur stood center stage, chest heaving.

He grinned as a roar of applause tore through the canyon

“Scream for me Janoor III!”

His voice warbled as he said the planet’s name. He broke the number three into multiple syllables.

“I said scream for me, Janoor tha-re-ee-eeeeeee.”

The air above the Jasnea River was thick with mist, light, and vibration as the crowd obliged.

Raxur spoke. His normal voice carried natural electricity. “Today we’re here to celebrate a New Day for Janoor III. The local government thanks Task Force 21. Welcome one and all.. To the big show!” His voice rose theatrically on the last sentence, climbing unnecessarily high and jagged.

Sohjeg stood motionless at first, surrounded by the dense and shifting energy of the crowd. His long fingers were tucked into his sleeves. Beside him, Binedra was wrapped up in the sights and sounds of the audience. Her eyes darted between light displays and scent-trails of fried mossroot and charred citrus glazes. T’Naagi stood in front of them, head tilted slightly as if listening to something secret below the noise.

The next bass note finally dropped. The second song began with a more reverent tone.

A soft wail floated over the river. An eerie, ghastly call spiraled upwards into the darkness. Around them, hundreds of others slowly swayed. Even the merchants peddling spice-roasted seeds paused.

The stage above the water shimmered like a mirage. Its lights dimmed to cast green reflections across the slick obsidian surface of the river.

Yelrisa’s bass hummed low. The tap-tap-tap of her line was slow and more deliberate.

The sound moved higher as her hand slowly ran from the headstock toward the base of her instrument. The sound slowly unfolded like something waking in the dark. The notes quivered and droned. A shimmer of lights blinked above the stage like insect eyes. Atmospheric cannons issued faint steam that curled like wisps of breath.

“She’s doing the Sleepwalk intro,” Sohjeg said softly. “It’s the grief trail song.”

Binedra blinked at him, eyes wide. “That’s the one you told us about?”

He nodded. “Listen to that faint backbeat. It’s timed to Orion REM patterns.”

T’Naagi had gone utterly still. The wind pulled strands from her loose copper bun and tossed them into her face. Her hand reached up but stopped midway to tremble slightly. She brushed the hair aside after a moment of contemplation.

Talrek’s drums hit with a sudden snare crack. It landed like a shot.

Tribal drums beat slowly, whispering beneath the main set. The song was beginning to sound like a heartbeat with a limp. It represented a march towards recovery. He struck the toms with feathered brushes. The layered rhythms seemed to clash until they suddenly locked into an eerie waltz.

Urox’s rhythm guitar slid in muted, barely audible at first. His hand pressed close to the frets now, palm muting as he crept from the fifth toward the base, his entire arm twisting like it hurt to move. His movements were tense. Deliberate. The sound was a scratch on stone.

The crowd moved to the somber tune.

The Nausicaan shifted beside a El-Aurian woman with silver chains laced through her hair. A Tellarite teen with an oversized synth-leather jacket began to rock slowly. An Andorian in a laced tunic clutched a Rigelian’s hand and whispered the lyrics.

“I remember ash where the gardens were.
I remember songs that ended in silence.
I remember forgetting you.”

Raxur Saan’s words were low and haunting. He sang the opening lines with his eyes still hidden behind a curtain of smoke and vines. His voice didn’t rise yet. It stayed in that soft range, melodic and slightly broken.

Sohjeg’s arms folded tighter as he nodded.

The lights exploded in cold white as Nireth slashed her way into the song with a lightning-fast section. Her left hand raced from headstock to bridge in a blur. Her right hand strummed the pick against the string rapidly, tremolo picking until her fingers became flashes of verdant light. She leaned hard into the guitar’s neck, knees bent. Luminous hair lit by neon lights snapped forward as she thrashed her head up and down. Every note shrieked like a warning.

T’Naagi flinched as the transition slammed into her chest. Slowly, her arms began to lift, elbows bent as she rocked her hips.

Urox struck a power chord that contrasted powerfully against the sullen sound. Talrek responded with a double-kick beat that punched beneath their feet. The crowd reacted as one, bodies surging inward. A wave of movement ran across the terraces and along those on the river’s banks.

A woman with one mechanical arm lifted a child onto her shoulders. The kid clapped in time with Talrek’s beat. Three young Bolians danced in a close circle, their bodies locked at the shoulder as they spun. An engineering officer from Ohio screamed the next line as the Trill beside him shouted it right back.

“We came here to bury what hurt us.
And we found it still alive.
So we carved a path through memory
And we walked it until it bled.”

Raxur sung, arms bare. Black paint swirled across his shoulders like thorns. His voice climbed and leapt registers. he initial prayer had turned into accusation. He circled Yelrisa as he belted notes.

Binedra had tears in her eyes. She didn’t move, except for her hands. Cobalt blue fingers twisted into fists pressed tight to her chest.

“Ji-hee is missing this,” the doctor whispered.

T’Naagi nodded slowly, a faint smile on her lips. “She would have lost her mind at that solo. She’d be standing on someone’s table already.”

Sohjeg didn’t speak. He watched Raxur instead. His long lips parted as he blinked rapidly.

Yelrisa’s bass dropped to a slower pace. Her hand crawled along the fretboard. She tapped at the high frets now, the bass thumping in whisper tones barely heard above the wind. Nireth hung her head low as the guitar whined softly beneath her slack wrist. Talrek stopped. The drums faded into breath and gentle strings.

Raxur whispered the last stanza like a hushed secret.

“I’ll meet you where the lights bend.
Where the sound folds in on itself.
Where what we lost
Can finally rest.”

There was pain in the crowd’s cheers. Those in their seats stood. Many held each other. A shared feeling of warmth slowly spread.

It wasn’t long until the cold lighting spiraled back into green and gold.

The next riff began with a whisper of distortion. It curled from the jagged row of triangular amplifiers behind the band.

A new rhythm begun the next audible tempest.

Verdant Thorn hadn’t finished. They had only just begun. The Jasnea River crowd enthusiastically awaited each building melody and rhythm.