It was an issue Deanna would keep in mind for the future. For now, though, she tried to offer something that could at least begin to help both T’Pel and Tuvok. “What you have to offer, T’Pel, is what he brought you here to share with him: your companionship, your support. Tuvok is no doubt fee—experiencing uncertainty about his worth. It would help him for you to simply show him that he has value to you. That you accept him as he is, even when he’s vulnerable. He can take strength from that knowledge.”
“That is not a very Vulcan sentiment, Counselor.”
“Isn’t it? What about the ship’s own motto? ‘Infinite diversity in infinite combinations.’ Surak himself taught that we’re stronger when we join together with others—that the interaction of different beings, different minds, can produce unexpected and valuable synergies. You and Tuvok may both be Vulcans, but you’re still different people, and that in itself gives you something to offer him. You just have to reach out and share it with him.”
T’Pel raised a brow. “That is an unconventional interpretation of Surak. However, I find it logical. I shall endeavor to follow your advice.”
“Thank you, T’Pel.” At least it’s a start, Deanna thought. But she expected it would take more than that to help Tuvok deal with his guilt. Tuvok, Orilly, Will…self-flagellation is becoming entirely too common a pastime around here.
“Bridge to Captain Riker.”
As a Starfleet officer, Will Riker was trained to wake from a sound sleep at a moment’s notice. Over twenty years of experience had enabled him to hone the skill. Unfortunately, neither training nor experience could make him enjoy it. The late-night call from Hachesa on the bridge meant he’d have to give up having Deanna comfortably spooned within his arms. It meant he’d have to get up and endure some strong replicator coffee to shock himself into a ready state. It meant he’d pay for the sleep deprivation at a later time.
Most of all, it meant there was trouble. “Riker here,” he said reluctantly, feeling Deanna stir against him. “Go ahead.”
“We having intruders on the bridge, sir. Captain Qui’hibra and two others have just beam aboard without warning. He is demand to speak with you at oncely, sir.”
Riker groaned softly, as much at the gamma shift commander’s mangled syntax as his unwelcome news. (“It wouldn’t be so bad,” Deanna had said to him one night, “if only there were some consistent pattern to it.” If Hachesa’s grammatical idiosyncrasies corresponded to any rules of Kobliad syntax, the rest of the crew had yet to figure out what they were.) Sitting up, he put some steel in his tone. This was his ship, and it was time to remind Qui’hibra of that. “Raise the shields. Have security escort our guests to the observation lounge. I’ll meet—”
Qui’hibra’s voice overrode him. “I will not play games, Riker. There is no time. What I have brought you to see is beginning now. I have come to your ship because you claim your long-range sensors are superior to ours. I had hoped to be closer before it began, but if we are doomed only to watch, we must see as clearly as we can. And you will come in haste, Riker, for the onset is mere moments away. Either agree now or my clan will batter down your shields and have you teleported to this bridge. Remember that you are in our territory and still breathe only at my indulgence.”
Riker exchanged a look with Deanna, who was sitting up now too. He’s very serious, Will, she thought to him. Better play along.
Though he was tempted to drag his feet as a show of protest, Riker was eager to get answers, so he dressed and made his way to the bridge as quickly as possible, Deanna right beside him. The rest of the main bridge crew was also in the process of assembling as he arrived, presumably summoned by Hachesa.
“Elder Qui’hibra,” he greeted his intruder curtly, then looked at the others behind him, another male and a crestless female. “And these are?”
“My clan matriarch and daughter, Qui’chiri. And Hunter Se’hraqua, who is here to witness the cost of his negligence. There is no time for pleasantries, Riker—the Great Hounding has begun.”
Qui’hibra gestured at the screen with a small tilt of his head; clearly he was not one for melodrama. Riker stepped down to the center of the bridge for a better view—and his eyes widened.
On the screen, hundreds of Pa’haquel ships were swarming around something…immense. It was cylindrical, rounded, pocked like an asteroid, yet it was under thrust, firing discrete blasts of blue-hot plasma from a sort of rocket nozzle at the far end, and expelling jets from side openings to maneuver. Some of the jets seemed to be aimed at the attackers. Seven enormous spines extended outward from its body, each one the stem for a vast sail; the sails overlapped like flower petals to form a wide, diaphanous skirt around the creature’s body. It was clearly a living thing, and the Pa’haquel were clearly trying to change that, barraging it with heavy fire. No, not just the Pa’haquel—Riker realized that some of the attacking ships were different in design, not armored jellies but more conventional starships. But they were like wasps swarming around an elephant. He winced as a maneuvering jet hit a hunter skymount dead-on. The saucer was blasted away into an uncontrolled spin, leaking fluids into space. This was the Great Hounding? Some kind of mighty hunt to prove themselves? Why drag him all this way to show him this?
But then he noticed the rest of the picture. In the background, behind the raging battle, was a beautiful blue-green planet, clearly M-class. Tactical markers superimposed atop it pointed to ships that were too small to see at this range—ships that seemed to be swarming off the planet in droves. The sight was agonizingly familiar. It struck Riker that the asteroid-size creature seemed to be rotating, its plasma exhaust port slowly moving to point toward the planet. “Mr. Jaza…tell me what we’re looking at.”
“It’s taking place in an F9 star system six light-years ahead, sir. The creature is making course for the planet, using some kind of collimated plasma bursts for decelerational thrust. It reads eighty-three kilometers along the long axis, sir.”
“How much damage are the Pa’haquel doing to it?”
“Not much, sir. Its hide is ablating under the impacts, and the sails are taking substantial damage, but there are some extremely dense crystalline compounds in it. They’ll probably kill it eventually, but not without sustaining heavy losses. And, I think, not in time.”
Riker was beginning to realize what he meant. “Mr. Jaza…how many people are on that planet?”
“I estimate over two hundred million sentient life readings, sir. Maybe a few tens of thousands on the ships.” Only a tenth the population of Oghen…but that didn’t make it any easier.
“The ships belong to allies of ours,” Qui’hibra said. “Rianconi, Vomnin, Shizadam. Still more are on the planet, assisting in the evacuation. The Fethetrit aid us in the attack itself.”
Six light-years…there’s nothing we can do. “There won’t be enough, will there?”
“Not unless the Hounding can stop it in the next few moments.”
Indeed, it looked as if some progress was being made against the leviathan. A concerted attack upon one of the sail-petals, its sail already badly shredded, cracked it near the base of its stem. A whole cluster of Pa’haquel ships extended their tentacles to grasp it and break it fully free, long sheets of torn membraneous material trailing behind it. “Yes,” Qui’hibra muttered. “Now use it as a lance! Get around and drive it into the maw!”
But the leviathan was retaliating against the motes that had wounded it, firing maneuvering jets at them. Some were damaged, others—mostly the Fethetrit starships—destroyed outright. Riker contemplated the sheer amount of power that would be necessary to maneuver such an enormous mass through Newtonian reaction, and understood how those jets could be such devastating weapons. But they were feeble compared to its main plasma thruster. A thruster that was now aimed directly at the planet ahead.
“There’s…a massive energy buildup inside that thing,” Jaza reported in a rough voice. “But it isn’t firing the main jet…it’s letting the pressure
build…oh, Prophets, here it comes….”
“Get the sail-spine into the maw,” Qui’hibra was chanting. “Foul the nozzle, at least knock off its vector!” But the remaining ships were struggling to maneuver the massive spine, barely even retaining their grip.
Then it happened. A flare of blinding blue plasma blasted forth from the leviathan’s maw, shot toward the planet at terrible speed. “It’s…an extremely dense mass of plasma,” Jaza said. “Traveling at…over one point two million kph. Impact in seven minutes.”
Riker turned to Qui’hibra. “Is there any way your people can deflect it? Dissipate it?”
“They will try” was all the elder said. He and the others watched raptly as several fleets broke off their attack on the leviathan to chase down the plasma projectile. But it took them time to catch up, and with each passing moment, the necessary angle of deflection to miss the planet became that much greater, that much harder to achieve. And since it was not solid, deflecting the entire mass would be even more difficult.
Once the ships caught up, they blasted at the plasma mass with their own stings, trying to disperse what they could of it. “The Fethetrit ships are firing tractor beams,” Jaza reported after a moment, “wide-beam, attempting to draw away some of the mass. Transporter activity…they’re beaming parts of it into their buffers…like bailing a lake with a bucket.”
“Everything helps,” Qui’hibra murmured, though he didn’t sound as though he believed it. “We fight the chaos every way we can, until one or the other falls.”
But the plasma mass drew ever closer to the planet. Eventually the skymounts broke off their attack and flew ahead, forming themselves into an array which they positioned in the plasma’s path. “They’re generating an intense magnetic field,” Jaza reported. “The energy readings I’m getting…”
“They are putting everything they have left into it,” Qui’hibra said.
Riker stared at him. “Then if this doesn’t work…”
“Until one or the other falls, Riker.”
As powerful as the magnetic field was, the plasma just had too much kinetic energy. The mass flattened out somewhat as it hit the field, but plowed through with no significant change in direction. The ships it directly engulfed simply ceased to exist; those on the periphery were swept along in the plasma’s magnetic wake, tumbling out of control. Riker had no idea if their inertial damping was strong enough for the crew to survive the acceleration…but they did not appear to be under intelligent guidance anymore.
After that, there was an agonizing wait. No one said a word. Riker barely remembered to breathe.
Then the plasma mass hit the planet.
The flare of light made his eyes water, but he couldn’t look away. What followed happened in agonizing slow motion. A vast cloud of ejecta, larger than nations, spewed into space at an angle; the impact had apparently been on a bias, digging a long gouge into the planetary crust, leaving a yellow-hot skid of molten land, molten homes, molten lives. Outward from the impact streak, a shock wave expanded visibly through the atmosphere, shoving clouds and weather systems aside, leaving dust and ash and fires in its wake. A nearby ocean was swept away, vaporized into steam, leaving bare ocean floor. A fireball roiled, blasting backward out through the swath of vacuum punched in the air by the plasma mass. Dozens of ships in orbit thrust madly to escape it; some failed, their telltales blinking out on the screen.
Perhaps they were the lucky ones. In one moment, this world had ended. The shock wave, Riker knew, would propagate around the planet at supersonic speed, blasting everything in its wake, scalding it with superheated steam. The dust and debris would form a dense cloud around the planet, blotting out its sun. Most of its life would go extinct, with only the meek surviving to inherit: the small animals and insects, the creatures that could survive with little food and could reproduce and evolve fast enough to adapt to the changes.
Then the leviathan fired another blast, and Riker realized that soon, nothing at all would remain alive on this world.
“The harvesters,” Qui’hibra explained in a subdued tone, seeing the crew’s shock, “feed by bombarding planets with enough force to blast their crustal matter and oceans into orbit. Once they have done this to a planet, they take up polar orbit and collect the water, minerals and organic compounds in their feeding sails.” He turned from the screen to face Riker directly. “They always target inhabited planets, for only those contain the concentration of water and organics that they need.”
The female, Qui’chiri, touched his arm. “Elder.”
He turned back to the screen. In the foreground of the image, the Hounding fleet had finally managed to get control of the sail-spine. They had retreated to a considerable distance, and were now charging in at high speed, tilting at this immense windmill with one of its own vanes. They drove the spine into the maw at an angle, and it blew a hole clear through the side and shattered, its tip vaporized to plasma by the force of the impact. The harvester tried a moment later to let off a third burst against the planet, but it was feeble and uneven, with part of it blowing out the hole in the side and pushing the monster off trajectory. The stream would miss the planet and was too diffuse to matter.
But then the second plasma bolt struck, hitting head-on and causing even more devastation than the first. Any beings still alive on that planet, Riker knew, would soon enough be caught between two expanding waves of destruction. The fact that their killer was joining them in death was small consolation.
Two hundred million lives. It was still too much to grasp. Is this the way it’s always going to be? Will this entire mission be marked by death on a planetary scale? Is there no way to escape it?
Qui’chiri gently preened her father’s head feathers with her claws. “We could not have made a difference had we been there, Father. This harvester was too old, too strong. At least it will slaughter no more worlds, bear no more young.”
“Tell that to the Shalra who have seen their world die today.” Again he faced Riker, strode toward him. Qui’hibra was small for his species, the top of his crest barely reaching Riker’s eye level, but he loomed large nonetheless. “Tell it to the thousands of other worlds that will die when there are no more skymount fleets to defend them.
“This is only a sample, Riker. I can show you more. Mr. Jaza. Have your screen display the second set of coordinates I gave you to scan. Use your maximum magnification.”
Jaza looked to Riker, who nodded slowly after a moment. The screen image jumped to another part of the sky, zoomed in on a star surrounded by sheets of expelled hydrogen and eructating vast jets of plasma. “A T Tauri star?” Riker asked.
“No,” Jaza said. “Indicators suggest it’s a G6 main-sequence star—or used to be.”
“This is the handiwork of starpeelers,” Qui’hibra explained. “Photonic beings, made of coherent energy fields sustained in plasma matrices. They travel from star to star, peeling away their atmospheres to give themselves vessels of plasma to travel in.”
Riker frowned. “Are they intelligent?”
“Who can say? If they have minds or purpose, we cannot comprehend either. They seem driven purely by the need to propagate. And they have no concern for the inhabited worlds whose climates are destroyed, whose surfaces are irradiated as a result of their labors. This time we were fortunate; only primitive microbes have paid the price in that system. But as soon as the starpeelers begin to leave the system for others, the Pa’haquel will be there to eradicate them—if there are any skymounts left for us to fight with. Mr. Jaza, the third coordinate set now. Full spectral imaging.”
The image changed again, settled on a distant puff of darkness. The screen cycled through false-color depictions of various spectra, and it became evident to Riker that the dark, ellipsoid cloud engulfed a star and its inner planets. “This is a system we were too late to save, two generations ago. A great civilization walked there, a race of poets and builders. Then the cloud came. It is not a predator, not a hunter; it is a sim
ple phototroph, a mindless thing drawn to light and warmth. But its mass blocked the star’s light from reaching its planets, and its friction stripped away the poets’ atmosphere by degrees. They slowly froze and suffocated…until the captured sunlight heated the cloud and burned whatever remained alive. All their great works, their mighty structures, are melting and eroding away. We only know of them through the radio messages they sent out before the end.
“Many strange and glorious creatures roam the stars, Riker. Most of them are not hunters. But they are vast and powerful, and even the innocuous among them can destroy worlds if they are allowed to. We are insects, crawling underfoot as giants roam the skies. If we wish to survive—either their malice or their neglect—we must battle them. We must hunt them, and hound them from our worlds, and kill them as fast as they breed, or else they would overrun the galaxy in time. They would devour your worlds, as they once did ours.”
Deanna stared at the elder. “Se’hraqua told us that your world…was struck down by divine wrath.”
Qui’hibra threw the younger male an irritated glare. “Se’hraqua has a mystical streak. He was supposed to explain all this to you, but chose to make vague pronouncements instead.”
Se’hraqua bristled. “We do not need to justify the Hunt to these weaklings. It is our holy tradition; that is reason enough to continue it. The rest is incidental.”
Vale gaped at him. “It’s incidental if whole worlds die?”
“They die if we fail in maintaining the divine balance. The balance is the point. And now you have shattered the balance.” He turned to Qui’hibra. “Elder, why do we waste time pandering to these fools? They have seen the magnitude of their crimes, now let them die! The balance demands it!”
“You think snuffing out one tiny ship will restore the balance? Fool! We need solutions. These aliens found a way to help the skymounts fight us and flee us—perhaps they have a way to help us fight back.”
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