Orion's Hounds

by Christopher L. Bennett

  So after careful thought, and with considerable embarrassment, she’d gone to Jaza and retracted what she’d said to him in bed. She’d asked him to treat it as a one-time thing, with no strings, no hard feelings and no future. He had taken it as well as she could have hoped, expressing regret but telling her he understood, and promising to respect her wishes. It had just made her feel guiltier about reversing course on him like that.

  She shook herself, returning her focus to the matter at hand. Reviewing her memory, she was pretty sure Riker had just asked Jaza, “You think the Pa’haquel made them?” or words to that effect.

  Now Troi was shaking her head. “They insist that the jellies have been the same since the dawn of their history. If someone did engineer them, it must have been some earlier race.”

  “History can be rewritten,” Keru interposed. “People can forget their true past, or have it deliberately hidden.” I guess a Trill would know, Vale thought.

  “True,” Jaza said. “If the Pa’haquel did create the jellies, that makes this an internal matter, and the Prime Directive would apply.”

  “Would it?” Troi challenged. “Whatever their origins, the jellies now live free, and have a life, a society of their own, separate from the Pa’haquel. These jellies don’t even know that their hunters are Pa’haquel. They’re a separate culture.”

  “That’s open to debate.”

  “That’s right, it is,” Riker said. “But that doesn’t change anything.” He paused, his gaze taking in everyone at the table. “We all understand the risks of intervention. That’s what the Prime Directive is for—to make sure we consider those risks, and remember our own limitations. Many of us have seen firsthand what can go wrong when we grow overconfident and meddle too much.” He and Vale exchanged a significant look. They both knew the horrific costs of ex-President Zife’s clandestine interference on Tezwa. “But we’ve also seen whole worlds die because we refused to help them—because we thought that somehow a disruption of their worldview was a worse fate than total annihilation. There was a time when I supported that policy myself. But I’ve seen too much death and devastation in the past decade not to question that. And I think that adhering too slavishly to the letter of the Directive can be an excuse for inaction—for not wanting to deal with the responsibility and the tough decisions that come with trying to help.

  “Now, I still believe in the Prime Directive, and I’m still bound by my oath to defend it at all costs. But I will not see it used as an excuse for taking the easy way out, for letting injustices thrive because we decide they aren’t our problem. Not on my ship. Not in my crew. Because I trust that this crew can handle that responsibility, can make those tough decisions.”

  After a moment, he went on. “Either way, what we need to do now is learn more about the situation. We’ve met with the hunters, now it’s time we met with the prey. Mr. Jaza, your first job is to scan for star-jelly life signs and find us the nearest school. Your second job, once we find them, will be to study their biology and learn what you can about their origins.” He turned to Troi. “Counselor, hopefully you can do the same. Work on making contact with them, getting more from them than just emotions. Maybe they have long memories, and can give us some answers. But your main job is to learn whatever you can from them, work toward establishing a dialogue—one in which we can hopefully include the Pa’haquel. Try to find a way the two species can coexist peacefully.” Troi nodded.

  “Mr. Tuvok,” Riker went on. The tactical officer looked up sharply. “Your job is to work on recalibrating the shields so they can handle the Pa’haquel’s bio-energy bolts more effectively. And work on tactics for defending the jellies from armed attack without resorting to deadly force.”

  “Acknowledged.” Tuvok seemed relieved, Vale thought—probably at not being asked to work with Troi on communicating with the jellies.

  “Dr. Ree,” Riker said, “your job is to administer telepathic blockers to those crewmembers who can’t resist the star-jellies’ emotions on their own. I don’t want any of our people out of commission when we may need them.”

  “There is an herbal medicine from my world which I think would do the trick,” Ree said. “Some of my people are empathic—though not I, obviously—and there were times in our history when the ability was seen as an aberration, which a drug was devised to ‘cure.’ With some refinements, it could be adapted to other species.”

  “Very good. That’s it, people—let’s go to work.”

  Chapter Four

  Tuvok stepped through the doors of stellar cartography to find the Horsehead Nebula blocking his path. “Oh, there you are,” came Commander Jaza’s voice from beyond it. “Never mind that, just step on through.” Tuvok did so, adjusting his gait to the lowered gravity of the catwalk, and reminding himself that this seemingly flamboyant mode of presenting data did have its practical value for visualizing spatial relationships. Still, the crew members who spoke of their experiences with the free-fall environment of the holotank tended to describe it in the terms one would use for a recreational contrivance—a “thrill ride,” he believed his old crewmate Tom Paris would have called it.

  Once he cleared the simulated dust cloud, Tuvok saw Jaza and Lieutenant Pazlar beyond it. Both of them were hovering in freefall, outside the observation platform’s localized gravity field. “Feel free to come up and join us, Commander,” Jaza said, blithely disregarding the inapplicability of the word “up” to his own current frame of reference.

  “No, thank you, Commander. I would prefer to remain here.”

  “Of course,” Pazlar observed. “Vulcans do everything with such gravity.”

  Tuvok ignored the remark, addressing his comments to the commander. “You wished to see me, Mr. Jaza?”

  “Yes, Tuvok, we could use your input,” the Bajoran said. “We’ve been unable to detect any star-jelly schools within sensor range, and we’re having trouble tracking the warp trail of the one we encountered before. Something to do with the organic nature of their drives, I suppose.”

  Tuvok’s gaze sharpened. “If you wish me to attempt to sense them telepathically—”

  Jaza shook his head. “Don’t worry, nothing like that. You see, I realized that the star-jellies can’t exist in…well, I was about to say ‘in a vacuum,’ but that would’ve been a poor choice of words.”

  “You mean,” Tuvok interpreted, “that as living beings they must logically be part of an ecosystem.”

  “Yes. And I realized the same must be true of all spacegoing creatures—cosmozoans, to use the technical term. Starfleet vessels over the past two centuries have observed hundreds of such organisms, but their reports have usually described single individuals or monospecies groups in isolation, rarely interactions between multiple species. That’s understandable, given the vast distances of interstellar space. But there must be a big picture we’re only seeing isolated pieces of.

  “So we’ve been going through all the reported contacts with cosmozoan life-forms, looking for patterns and connections among them. We noticed that Voyager encountered more than its share of such creatures in the Delta Quadrant, so we wanted to consult with you about them. Perhaps learning about the cosmozoans in a different quadrant—essentially a separate ecological region—could help us see some larger patterns.”

  Tuvok frowned. “Could you not simply have consulted Voyager’s logs?”

  “We have, but I like to get a more personal perspective when I can. The evidence always comes first, of course, but it can be informative to compare multiple interpretations of the evidence.”

  Tuvok raised a brow, acknowledging Jaza’s logic. “Very well. I will tell you what I can. Keep in mind, however, that my analyses of the cosmozoans Voyager encountered were shaped more by tactical considerations than scientific curiosity.”

  “That’s a useful perspective as well. If politics can be a science, as my friend Cadet Dakal would have it, then surely tactics can be as well.”

  Lieutenant Pazlar smirked. “I
’ve certainly known enough people who treated scientific debate as a form of combat.” She entered a set of commands into her handheld padd, and the holographic field of view began to move with disorienting speed. She and Jaza moved to hover alongside him, and the three of them ended up facing a projection of the Delta Quadrant, positioned as though they were looking “down” from galactic north. A familiar jagged line appeared, one which Tuvok had seen many times in debriefings, lectures and documentaries about Voyager’s seven-year ordeal: a representation of the starship’s course through the quadrant, beginning at the outer rim of the galactic disk in Kazon territory and progressing through leaps and bounds to the Borg transwarp hub in the Three-Kiloparsec Arm, adjacent to the Central Bulge.

  They proceeded through Voyager’s cosmozoan contacts sequentially, beginning with the nebular life-form encountered on stardate 48546, not long after Voyager’s arrival in the Delta Quadrant. “It was seven AUs across?!” Pazlar asked in amazement when he recounted that fact.

  “That is correct. At first it appeared to be a fairly ordinary nebula aside from the presence of omicron particles and certain organic compounds. Once inside the cloud, we discovered an internal anatomy and biochemistry which indicated it to be a living organism.”

  “No reason a spacegoing organism, particularly a nebular one, couldn’t be that large or larger,” Jaza observed. “It’s been theorized for centuries that the organic molecules inside the right kind of nebula could potentially be triggered by EM radiation or electrical discharges to organize into life; so the size of such a creature would be largely a function of the size of the original nebula. Seven AUs is tiny as nebulae go.”

  Tuvok proceeded to the next account, the discovery of a photonic-matter life-form in a protostar on stardate 48693. “I’d discount your ‘Grendel’ as a cosmozoan,” Jaza said. “That species seemed native to its protostar the way we are to planets. We have no evidence it could exist in interstellar space. Let’s move on.”

  Tuvok spoke with some reluctance. “The next relevant encounter was shortly thereafter on stardate 48734. The Komar, a race of trianic-based energy beings inhabiting a dark-matter nebula.”

  He paused, until Jaza filled in the gap. “According to the reports, one of these beings took you over personally, Commander, and attempted to hijack the ship so its people could feed on your neural energy.”

  “That is correct,” Tuvok admitted. “Fortunately, the Komar inflicted no permanent harm.” Despite my own failure to protect my ship, he thought.

  Pazlar stared. “How could they have a name?”

  “Excuse me?” Tuvok asked.

  “They were energy beings, right? No mouths. Where’d the name ‘Komar’ come from?”

  “I cannot say. I was not privy to the entity’s thought processes. Perhaps some earlier race they contacted gave them the name. Is this relevant, Lieutenant?”

  “No. Just curious.” She turned to Jaza, and gratifyingly returned to the topic. “But they were native to the nebula, right? So shouldn’t we rule them out like the photonic creatures?”

  “I don’t think so,” Jaza said. “The gravity of stars and planets somewhat insulates them from interaction with the interstellar biosphere. The same wouldn’t apply to nebular life. I’d count it.”

  Tuvok recounted what little more he knew about the Komar, and then moved on to the swarm of flagellate organisms encountered on stardate 48921. These creatures, comparable in size to Voyager, had employed a form of magnetic propulsion, with their flagellating motions creating the dynamo effect that drove it. But Jaza was more interested in their behavioral patterns. “These were the only cosmozoans in which Voyager observed complex social behavior,” he explained. “Please tell me all you can remember.” Tuvok complied as best he could, while trying to respect the privacy of his then-protegée Kes, in whom the flagellates’ EM emissions had induced a premature reproductive cycle.

  But Pazlar provided a distraction—fortunately, perhaps, but still annoyingly—by her interest in the creatures’ own reproductive behavior. “The big creature thought Voyager was trying to mate with its partners?” she laughed.

  “Correct. It reacted to us as a reproductive rival. We managed to pacify it by mimicking the submissive behavior of its species.”

  Pazlar laughed harder. “No wonder I never heard that story. Who’d want to admit a Starfleet ship backed down from a fight?”

  Tuvok merely looked at her icily until she subsided. Mercifully, the list was nearing its end. Voyager had not encountered any further cosmozoans until the fifth year of its journey, when on stardate 52542 it had been briefly ingested by a two-thousand-kilometer creature which lured in its prey by telepathic projections of their greatest desires. Then in the seventh year there had been two encounters: a gaseous life-form that Voyager had inadvertently removed from a J-class nebula on stardate 53569, and the dark-matter entities encountered in a cluster of class-T substellar bodies on stardate 53753.

  “That is all I am able to tell you,” Tuvok said when he was done. “I am not sure if it will be helpful in tracking the astrocoelenterates.”

  “It might be,” Pazlar said. “Look.” She manipulated the padd so that markers appeared at the locations of each of the encounters Tuvok had described: three close together at the outer rim, one in the Crux Arm near the Devore Imperium, and two in the Three-Kiloparsec Arm near the quadrant border. “Look at the regions where you encountered all those creatures. See any common pattern?”

  Tuvok studied the display, but was unable to see what she was getting at. “No, I do not, Lieutenant.”

  She worked the padd to generate three insets which magnified the regions under discussion. “There. See it now?”

  He examined the insets, but again had to say no.

  “You’re kidding. Come on, it’s staring you in the face!”

  He glared at her. “Clearly it is doing nothing of the kind, Lieutenant, as I do not see it. I suggest you explain.”

  Shaking her head, she highlighted a cluster of blue stars near Voyager’s starting point. “The star-formation region. See? You spent much of your first year in the DQ passing through a long, narrow OB association. It formed a sort of border between Kazon and Vidiian space. A star-formation region that far out on the rim, away from the arms, it’s surprising to find. I can’t believe you missed it!”

  Tuvok was beginning to find her impatience and condescension tiresome. He strove to remain stoic. “As I remarked, Lieutenant, my training is not in the sciences.”

  “And of course down here in the Three-K Arm, deep in the inner disk—that’s the busiest region of star formation in the galaxy. And out here in Crux, where you found that ‘pitcher-plant’ creature…not only star formation, but subspace ‘sinkholes’ and ‘sandbars,’ chaotic space—that’s got to be the craziest region of space I’ve ever seen.”

  “I see,” Tuvok said. “And we are also currently in a region of active star formation.”

  “Well, near one,” Jaza said. “The Vela OB2 Association isn’t too far away. And this is the common thread of most of the other cosmozoan contacts—they all took place in the approximate vicinity of star-formation regions or other turbulent zones. The star-jellies first encountered by the Enterprise were at Deneb—very far from here, but close to a stellar nursery called the Pelican and North American Nebulae.” He manipulated his own padd, and the field of view moved to highlight it. “It’s actually one nebula with a dark cloud subdividing it as seen from the Federation core worlds. A later survey by the Hood detected a few more jellies near there, though they didn’t seem interested in communicating.

  “Back in the twenty-third century, the Intrepid discovered several cosmozoans in its survey of the Scorpius-Centaurus Association—and was ultimately destroyed by a cosmozoan resembling a giant amoeba, although that’s generally believed to have been extradimensional in origin. Others have been detected near the Orion Association, the Taurus Dark Cloud, you name it.”

  “So what is the na
ture of the connection?”

  “It’s about what life needs to survive, and to come about in the first place. It needs energy, it needs matter. And it needs a certain amount of turbulence—enough to provide the dynamism and change that an ecosystem needs to form, but not enough to destroy its constituents. On a cosmic scale, star-formation zones are the most turbulent regions, full of intense energy and churning interstellar gases.”

  “Are they not generally hazardous to life for that reason?”

  “To tiny, fragile life-forms like us, yes. But to creatures tough enough to live in interstellar space, powerful enough to journey across light-years? A biosphere made of such creatures would need the kind of energy and rare elements that would be most abundant in those zones.”

  “So you believe we can find more of the coelenterates if we proceed toward the Vela Association.”

  “Not just the coelenterates,” Jaza said. “I’m hoping to find a whole ecosystem! Something that will reveal more about the common threads tying the known cosmozoan life forms together, the greater processes underlying their creation.”

  Pazlar appeared skeptical. “But if ecosystems like that exist, why haven’t we seen them in other star-formation regions that have been surveyed?”

  “We haven’t surveyed more than a fraction of the Sco-Cen Cluster, and certainly not its most active region around Rho Ophiuchi.”

  “But the Betelgeusians have surveyed the Orion and Horsehead Nebula region in detail. There have been isolated cosmozoans found there, but no large-scale ecosystem.”

  “True. All the more reason to go to Vela and see what we find.”

  “Keep in mind,” Tuvok told him, “that our mission is to find and contact one specific species, not merely to investigate an abstract scientific riddle. What if we do not find the astrocoelenterates at Vela?”

  Pazlar shrugged. “Then maybe we can stop and ask for directions.”