Orion's Hounds

by Christopher L. Bennett

  Sure.

  So she just stood there and kept staring.

  “You don’t have to feel guilty, you know.”

  Jaza didn’t even look up from his console, so it took Vale a second to realize he was addressing her. “What?” she asked, coming close enough that they could talk in private.

  Now he did look up, and smiled. “I told you I understood, and I meant it. I don’t begrudge you going back on an impulsive promise made in the heat of passion. I’m a scientist, remember—which means not only that I place a premium on rational thought, but that I understand the value of admitting one’s mistakes. So it’s not a problem.”

  “Well…good. Of course. Didn’t need to be said.” He smiled and nodded. After a second, she sidled closer. “Not that I think it was a mistake to…do it at all. Just…”

  “Right. To follow up on it.”

  “And it’s not like I don’t want to, you understand. Not that I wouldn’t like to.”

  “I get it.”

  “It just wouldn’t really…”

  “Work, right. And I respect that.”

  “Good.” She cleared her throat. “So…you seemed pretty enthralled by those energy-beings just now.” A short time ago, while Counselor Troi and the others had been starting their seance or whatever it was in stellar cartography, Jaza had detected yet another new cosmozoan species in a small HII region half a light-year away. The bright magenta cloud of excited hydrogen was inhabited by thousands of discrete plasma-energy matrices which demonstrated lifelike behavior. They fed off the hydrogen-band energy emissions in the cloud, competing for the best feeding locations, on the side facing the young A-type giant star whose radiation fuelled the emissions, but not so close to the surface of the cloud as to be disrupted by that radiation. “Are they showing any signs of intelligence?”

  “No, not a trace. But I’ve discovered a secondary feeding behavior. They can disrupt the molecular bonds in carbonaceous asteroids, absorbing the released binding energy.”

  “Oh. That’s…very interesting.”

  Jaza smiled. “I suppose it doesn’t sound that way. It’s just that…well, it’s somewhat unusual in the annals of Starfleet to come across energy beings that can be studied at leisure rather than trying to kill you, take over your body or subject you to testing.”

  They shared a laugh, which was bigger than the comment deserved but then trailed off into an uneasy silence. After a moment, Vale found herself speaking in spite of herself. “So…do you want to? I mean…would you, if it weren’t…”

  He smiled at her, knowing she wasn’t talking about studying incorporeal beings. “Of course I would. But…most of all, I don’t want you to feel we can’t be friends.”

  That made her blush more than the rest of the conversation had. He deserved better than the silent treatment. But just as she opened her mouth to speak, Jaza’s console began beeping. “What is it?”

  He studied the data. “A school of armored star-jellies has just come out of warp next to the HII region.” After another moment, his eyes widened. “They’re firing on the creatures.”

  Vale tapped her combadge. “Captain Riker, to the bridge, please.”

  A moment later, Riker emerged from his ready room. “Report.”

  “A group of armored star-jellies has engaged the energy beings in the nebula, sir.”

  “On screen,” Riker ordered. Jaza hit the transfer controls to uplink his console readouts to the main viewer. The bridge crew watched for a moment as the distant saucers flew into the hydrogen cloud, lighting it up with their plasma stings, whose color almost matched its own. The energy beings, localized shimmers of light within the depths of the cloud, grew more frenetic in their movements. Soon there were brighter discharges of light within the cloud, vast searing arcs that struck the saucers.

  “The energy beings are harnessing the cloud’s electrostatic potential as a defense,” Jaza said. “The potential energy contained in a nebula is immense—it makes for a devastating weapon. The attackers are taking significant damage despite their armor. One of them is spinning away out of control, leaking air and fluids…it’s done for.”

  “Are they Pa’haquel or live jellies?” Riker wanted to know.

  “Hard to get bioreadings at this range,” Jaza said. “But looking at the subspace emission spectra from their warp emergence…yes, there’s a subtle difference in their warp signatures. It wouldn’t be detectable with standard sensors, but yes, these are Pa’haquel ships.”

  Ensign Kuu’iut spoke from tactical, his voder interpreting his chirping speech. “Judging by their number, sizes, and surface details,” the Betelgeusian said, “it’s the same pack that we encountered before. Including their recent kills.”

  “Did they follow us?” Riker asked.

  “Their warp emergence vectors suggest they came from 308 mark 41, sir.”

  “More or less ahead of us,” Vale interpreted.

  Kuu’iut’s hairless blue head nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “More than likely,” Jaza said, “they just thought the same way we did—the closer to Vela, the more cosmozoans they’re likely to find.”

  “But why attack the energy beings?” Vale wondered aloud. “What possible use could they have for them?”

  “Hard to say,” Jaza said. “The beings they kill lose cohesion—their energy dissipates into the cloud. Maybe they intend to use the energy as a fuel source. Live jellies feed on energy, after all. But I see no sign that they’re absorbing the dissipated energy. Maybe that comes later.”

  “Or maybe they just do it for sport,” Riker said coldly.

  “Either way, they’re winning,” said Kuu’iut. His feeding mouth snarled in excitement as he spoke through his beaklike upper mouth. “They’ve disrupted hundreds of the creatures and they aren’t slowing down. I don’t think they intend to leave any of them alive.”

  Riker stared at the screen for a moment. “Could that be why we haven’t found this kind of spacegoing ecosystem in other star-formation zones?” he said heavily. “Because somebody hunted the life there to extinction?”

  Just then the turbolift doors slid open and Counselor Troi emerged, followed by Tuvok and Ree. Vale saw Troi stare at the viewscreen for a moment and then meet Riker’s eyes. It seemed to Vale as though there was more passing between them than a significant look. “How far are they?” Troi asked at last, seeming to confirm that impression. Vale frowned slightly.

  “About half a light-year,” Riker replied.

  The counselor shook her head. “We have to move,” she said emphatically, coming down to Riker’s level of the bridge. “The star-jellies are coming to meet us.”

  “You made contact.”

  “Yes. They’re wary, but they’ve heard of what we did for them at Deneb, so they’re willing to talk.”

  Riker raised his brows. “Always nice to have good references.”

  “But we can’t rendezvous this close to a Pa’haquel fleet. We need to get out of here, meet them en route.”

  The captain nodded, accepting her urgency. “Do you have a course?”

  “They’re coming in from the protostar cluster at 54 mark 223. They should be here within half an hour.”

  “Helm, you heard. Set an intercept course and engage at warp six.”

  “Aye, sir,” Lavena said, and bent to it.

  “In the meantime, you can report on what you learned. Senior staff to the observation lounge,” he ordered.

  Most of the senior staffers were already on the bridge, save only Keru and Ra-Havreii, so it didn’t take them long to assemble. Vale took a moment to get a cup of coffee before the meeting started, and sipped it absently as Troi began her report. “The gestalt technique was a success, but it shouldn’t be necessary anymore. Now that I’ve gotten their attention, they can read my thoughts and send theirs to me. I should be able to interpret for them.”

  “In that case,” Tuvok asked, “I suggest the doctor read-minister his telepathic suppressants, lest we aga
in become overwhelmed by their emotions.”

  “It will take a few more hours for the counteragent to clear from your systems,” Ree said.

  “Don’t worry, Tuvok,” said Troi. “Their normal emotions are far more…pleasant than what we experienced during the attack.”

  “Emotions of any kind are distasteful to me, Counselor—including worry,” he added pointedly.

  “Is there any chance of programming the UT to translate their thoughts directly?” Vale asked. “It’s been done before.”

  “The Hood tried that sixteen years ago during their attempt to study the jellies,” Troi told her. “It wasn’t successful. I suspect the problem is that their communication is more emotional than verbal.”

  “More like animals?”

  Troi mulled it over. “They’re very intelligent. Clear thinkers with long, detailed memories and knowledge spanning half a galaxy. But yes, in some ways they are very animal-like. Intelligent but wild, like dolphins or Betazoid pachyderms. They live for the moment, act on instinct. I suppose that’s why Mr. Chamish is sensitive to them, even though Kazarite telepathy generally only works with animals.

  “They’re very open, uncomplicated creatures—childlike, in a way, but with centuries of life experience and a perception that dwarfs ours. They’re very honest and forthright; they share everything telepathically, so they have no secrets in their society—much like Betazoids, only more so. Indeed, they have a strongly communal sense of identity.”

  “A group mind?” Vale asked.

  Troi shook her head. “No, they are individuals. They just don’t entirely think of themselves that way, and rarely act that way. Their emotional and social bonds with their schoolmates are so strong that they feel an intense sense of identification, a blurring of their definitions of self and other. Not unlike the bonds I’ve often felt between new mothers and their babies. Remember when Noah Powell was a baby?” she asked the captain. “How Alyssa spoke of Noah as ‘we’ all the time, as though they were a single person? And it wasn’t an affectation. She didn’t even realize she was doing it.” Riker grinned. “It’s the same with the jellies, only intensified by their telepathy and empathy.

  “They’re so close to each other that they can’t even contemplate harming one another. They can defend themselves against other species—we saw the one at Deneb attack the Bandi who’d imprisoned its schoolmate—but they can’t cause each other pain without sharing in it. The idea of attacking one another is inconceivable to them.

  “That’s why the Pa’haquel’s attacks are so horrifying to them, so devastating. As I thought, they don’t know that the ‘zombies’ attacking them are manned by living beings. Apparently their senses can’t penetrate the Pa’haquel’s armor or shielding. They think they’re being attacked by members of their own kind who have somehow risen from the dead and turned destructive. And they can’t bring themselves to attack their own.”

  “Even when they’re dead?” Keru asked.

  “Perhaps especially then. It would be seen as a desecration. They believe that violating the dead, even in self-defense, would bring down a fate even worse than this. So they’re helpless against the attacks when they come. And they have no warning, since they can’t tell the difference between live and dead jellies until they attack.”

  “They’re telepathic, aren’t they?” Vale asked. “Can’t they tell by the lack of thought activity? Or by the fact that they’re armored? Hell, if this has been going on for millennia like the Pa’haquel claim, shouldn’t every jelly in the galaxy know by now to go on the alert whenever they detect a warp emergence?”

  “The attacks are comparatively rare on a galactic scale,” Troi explained. “Ninety-nine percent of the time, if they detect jellies coming out of warp, it’ll be a friendly contact. And if they do come out armored, or aren’t broadcasting telepathically, then they could be live jellies who are injured or in danger. The jellies can’t just ignore that possibility, no matter what the risk. It’s simply not in their nature to reject contact with others of their kind—not if there’s the slightest chance that they are live jellies in need.”

  “There is a detectable difference in their warp signatures,” Jaza told her. “We just discovered it with our wideband sensors—which were also what allowed us to break through the Pa’haquel’s shielding and read them inside. I guess the jellies don’t have anything equivalent. If we shared the knowledge with them, they could replicate our sensor tech for themselves.”

  “That would let them detect the hunters and evade them,” Vale said, “but what would that do to the hunters’ way of life? They need these things to live on.”

  “These ‘things’ are living, feeling creatures,” Troi protested, but Riker quieted her with a look.

  “She’s right,” he said. “I don’t want to save one species by endangering another.” Troi subsided, her expression conceding the point.

  “So you didn’t tell them about the Pa’haquel?” Vale asked, then chose to rephrase it. “They didn’t take the information from your mind?”

  Troi faced her. “I wouldn’t have made that decision unilaterally, Christine. And they wouldn’t take anything from my mind that I didn’t share.”

  “But if they have no concept of privacy—”

  “The link doesn’t work that way. As I said, it’s primarily empathic. For me at least, conveying factual information takes a little more…interpretation.”

  “But your reports from Farpoint said they could replicate anything a person thought of, telepath or no. How do we know they can’t just take the knowledge from any of our minds?”

  “They only seem able to read from nontelepaths within a very short range.”

  Jaza leaned forward. “You say they don’t realize the attackers are piloted as ships. So they have no awareness of having been engineered for that purpose? No memory or history of serving that role?”

  “I didn’t explore the question with them in detail. But I get no sense that they’ve ever been anything other than wild creatures. And—”

  The comm interrupted. “Bridge to Captain Riker,” came Kuu’iut’s voice.

  “Riker here.”

  “You should get out here, sir. We’ve picked up the star-jellies on approach…but it looks like the Pa’haquel have too. They’ve broken off from the nebula and are headed after the jellies.”

  “Damn. Adjourned,” Riker said, and rushed to the bridge. Vale and the other bridge officers were close behind.

  “We should warn the jellies, tell them to raise their armor,” Troi said to the captain. He looked to be on the verge of agreeing, so Vale spoke.

  “We shouldn’t. Then they’d want to know how we can tell the attackers aren’t star-jellies. If we’re not prepared to give them that ability, we can’t let them know we have it.”

  Riker grimaced. “You’re right. We’ll just have to protect them ourselves until they can armor up or warp out.”

  “Should we really be getting involved?”

  He glared at Vale fiercely. “They came here to meet us. It’s our fault they’re under attack.” My fault, she saw on his face, and the same was mirrored on Troi’s. “Shields up! Weapons on standby. Put us directly in the hunters’ path.”

  “Tuvok,” Troi said, “I suggest doing what you can to raise your own mental shields. This may get rough.”

  “And Mr. Kuu’iut, take over tactical again,” Riker added. “Tuvok, if you’d prefer to return to quarters, be with your wife—”

  “I would rather stay, sir. I believe I will be better able to handle it this time.”

  Riker stared at him for a second. “All right. Are your countermeasures ready?”

  “The shields have been recalibrated for bio-energy. The warp core is rigged to emit a series of magneton pulses which should somewhat deflect and dissipate their plasma bolts for several kilometers around the ship.”

  “Excellent.”

  Once the hunters dropped out of warp, Lavena began her blocking maneuvers again. O
n the screen, the jellies scattered as the shooting began, and their panic reflected on Troi’s face, though she kept it under control. Vale looked to Tuvok, and saw it there too. On screen, she saw the Pa’haquel’s blasts go astray under the influence of Tuvok’s magneton pulses—meaning that Lavena didn’t have to move quite so fast to block them all.

  Soon a hail came, and Elder Qui’hibra appeared on the screen. “Move aside, Titan. We have lost a skymount today and must take another.”

  “They don’t seem to want to help you, Qui’hibra. I suggest you consider other options.”

  “You have chosen a foolish course, Riker. You fight against the balance, and it must be restored—at your expense, if the Spirit wills.”

  “I don’t see balance in your relationship with these creatures, Qui’hibra. I see parasitism. Maybe once you had a healthy symbiosis, I don’t know, but now you’re exploiting these beings, terrorizing them. I think the Pa’haquel are capable of being better than that. I’m still willing to help you and the ‘skymounts’ negotiate a peace, but I will not—”

  “You would destroy what we are, and far more—more than you begin to understand. If you understood, you would stay out of this. But I have no time to explain it toyou. Your loss.” The screen went dark—only to light up with weapons fire.

  “Aili, block it!”

  “No need,” Lavena said. “It’s aimed at us!”

  Against a dead-on weapon blast, the outward push of the magneton pulses only slowed and weakened the bolt, so most of the hits connected. Tuvok’s shield recalibrations held, but the ride was bumpy. Several Pa’haquel saucers ganged up on Titan, trying to herd it aside so the others could pursue the star-jellies. “Should we return fire?” Kuu’iut asked.

  Vale saw the dilemma play out on Riker’s face. He didn’t want to make an enemy of the Pa’haquel, but he had to protect his ship. Then an idea struck him. “Put ship’s phasers on stun,” he said. “Their ships were life-forms once—maybe we can knock them out temporarily.”