Oderi shook her furry head, blinked her huge loris-like eyes. “Now that no more skymounts can be taken…the others begin to fear that the Pa’haquel will no longer be able to protect them. Their fear makes them angry. And there are many old tensions. The Fethetrit’s boasts are not entirely bluster. They did conquer and enslave dozens of worlds before starbeasts shattered their power, and some were Vomnin worlds. And the Vomnin feel they should be in the lead; they see nomads as rather primitive. But the skymounts have always given the Pa’haquel the edge.”
Deanna nodded. “Alliances based solely on a common enemy are always tenuous. They never resolve the preexisting conflicts, only repress them and let them fester. I—”
A piercing alarm began to sound, interrupting her. Wincing, Troi turned to Oderi, who was back on her feet and consulting the status-display band she wore about her wrist. “What is it? What’s going on.”
“The station is under attack by branchers.”
“Branchers?”
“A very, very deadly form of starbeast. Huge living crystals. They fire beams that disintegrate living matter and absorb its bio-energy. They—”
“Oh, my God. Can you show me an image?”
Oderi nodded and tweaked her status band to project a small hologram of the scene outside the station. Deanna gasped at the sight of the familiar, ramified blue forms closing in on their position. They were the same kind of Crystalline Entity that had destroyed Data’s homeworld decades ago.
And there were three of them.
“Shields up!”
The words came unbidden to Riker’s lips the moment he glimpsed the approaching Crystalline Entities on the viewer. The sight awakened painful memories of Melona IV, a nascent colony destroyed before it had even gotten started, when the Crystalline Entity—or rather, a Crystalline Entity—had swept down upon it shortly after the Enterprise had dropped off the first set of colonists. Most of the colonists, along with Riker’s away team, had survived by retreating into caves lined with protective refractory materials. But two had not. Carmen Davila had not. Riker had grown close to her during the journey to Melona; the charming engineer and he had shared a love of fine cuisine, as well as numerous intimate “desserts.” He had been drawn to her courage and generosity. But those same qualities had led to her death, when she’d gone back to try to help an older man reach the caves. She and the old man had been reduced to ash before Riker’s eyes.
Now he stared at the screen. “Arm phasers and torpedoes.”
“Sir,” said the ensign at security, “we still have people on the station.”
“I’m aware of that!” Riker snapped. Imzadi, he sent, and felt an echo back. Don’t worry about me, came her thoughts. Protect the ship.
Still, Riker turned to Qui’hibra, who had been aboard to consult with him (or dictate to him—opinions still differed) about the relief operations. “Can the station’s shields handle those things?”
“If we do our part defending it,” the elder said. On the screen, several fleets of Pa’haquel skymounts were already moving to engage the Entities, along with the few Fethetrit ships that had deigned to assist with the refugees rather than flying off in search of battle or plunder elsewhere. “Lower your shields, Riker! I must return to my skymount.”
“I’m sorry, Elder, but I will not compromise the safety of my own ship. You’ll just have to monitor from here.”
Qui’hibra didn’t waste time arguing. “Very well. I trust my daughter and Huntsmaster to manage.” He spoke into his communicator for a moment, advising Qui’chiri to proceed without him. Then he turned back to Riker. “I take it you will join the battle?”
The temptation was strong, but he held back. “Not yet. Not unless it becomes necessary to protect the station.”
“Very well. With you on station defense, it frees one more skymount for the battle. You may yet be needed, though. The branchers are a mighty foe, hard indeed to kill. In some ways they are worse than the harvesters; at least those take generations to travel between worlds. The branchers are fast, elusive, cunning. And they are more often the hunters than the hunted.” He said it with a hint of admiration. “But I doubt your phasers would do much good. Break one in two and you only double the number of your enemies. Break it into a hundred and you win the day, but the fragments will grow into a hundred more to menace you in years ahead. The only way to beat them is to pound at them until every last growth node is destroyed. You must practically grind them into powder.”
Onscreen, the skymounts and Fethetrit ships were matching their actions to his words, firing dense barrages at the Entities. The vast crystal life-forms rolled like sapphire tumbleweeds to dodge the attacks, and fired back with their familiar disintegrator beams. “My people have encountered one of these creatures in the past,” Riker said. “I never knew they travelled in groups.”
“Normally they do not, but they are canny beasts, and drawn to the scent of blood. They must have come in response to the Hounding, to feed on the organic matter blown into orbit and on the carrion we left. But first they wish to finish us off, so they may feed freely. They know we are weakened by the Hounding. But my fleet is still fresh and near full strength,” he finished with pride.
The Fethetrit’s shields fluctuated and sparked under the impact of the disintegrator beams, but held for now. When the beams struck skymount armor, they left gouges that looked shallow, but must have been meters deep. The struck ships shimmered, their armor re-forming, but Riker knew they could only do that so many times before running out of biomass.
“Extraordinary,” Jaza said. “Those beams, they somehow convert the chemical energy of carbon bonds into EM form and channel it into the Entities’ bodies. It’s not unlike how the cloud-shimmers feed.”
“They are too fragile to land on planets, so they leech their life-force from the skies,” Qui’hibra growled. “They can strip a whole planet bare in hours.”
“I know,” Riker said, his voice hard. “I’ve seen it happen.”
The elder studied him. “You bear a grudge. Good—if you channel it well. By your survival I take it you have effective weapons against the branchers?”
Riker recalled a vision of the Crystalline Entity shattering like a wineglass, shaken apart by the graviton beam which Data had designed as a means to communicate, but which Dr. Kyla Marr had turned into a weapon to avenge her son. The beam had shattered the creature uniformly, leaving nothing behind that could regenerate. To his Starfleet principles it had been horrific, an act of murder rather than self-defense. But nonetheless he had felt satisfaction at seeing Carmen avenged. And this time it would be self-defense, and defense of his crew, his wife….
No, Imzadi. Her presence, still in his mind, cautioning him, calming him. She was right, of course. He wasn’t about to hand over any more knowledge which could affect the local balance of power—not before he had more information about its consequences. He’d done enough damage already.
“We relied mainly on our shields for defense. And…we made attempts to communicate with it. To make peaceful contact.”
Qui’hibra gave a curt, squawking laugh, the first hint of humor he’d ever evinced in Riker’s knowledge. “Branchers are not interested in discourse with their meals. They are gluttonous beasts, needing much energy to sustain their life processes, to power them into warp. Sources of bio-energy are sparse in the void, so they must take whatever they can find, and there is no talking them out of it. It is instinct, the overriding need to survive and grow. If you survived your encounter with this brancher without killing it, then it must have only recently fed and been sated enough not to press its attack. We will not be so fortunate today.” He gestured to the screen, where two of the Entities were ganging up on a skymount, bombarding it from both sides until its hull ruptured at last. Other ships were systematically blasting away at them, breaking off snowflake chunks and pounding them into fragments, but they were only small pieces of the whole. Once the skymount was inert, the Entities made short wor
k of it, disintegrating it until only a diffuse cloud of dust remained. Qui’hibra’s timeworn crest drooped, but his voice remained level. He had just lost family, Riker realized, but it was a loss he knew from long experience how to bear. “See how they coordinate their efforts. They must have only recently split off from each other, to be so inclined to cooperate rather than vie for advantage. Mitosis depletes their energy, so they will be ravenous. More of my clan will surely die today. But we will make sure the branchers die as well.” He stepped away, issuing more instructions into his communicator.
If anything, Riker thought, it seemed the Fethetrit ships had the edge over the Pa’haquel, since they had shields, and their torpedoes rivalled the skymounts’ plasma stings in power. But the Entities’ blasts wore away at their shields until they started to give way. The viewscreen tracked one ship as its shields gave out entirely and the feeding beam played across it. The ship, being inorganic in construction, did not explode or vaporize, but once the beam had passed, it appeared to coast along on momentum alone. “Zero life signs registering aboard,” Jaza reported. “Even the polymers have been disintegrated.”
“Tactical, assessment of the Fethetrit shields,” Riker ordered.
Kuu’iut was at Tactical, since Tuvok was still confined to quarters. “Inferior to ours, sir,” the Betelgeusian replied. “Perhaps fifty to sixty percent of our shields’ power at maximum, and at least seventy percent less energy-efficient.”
“Fethetrit prize attack over defense,” Qui’hibra said. “Look at them. See how they throw themselves headlong into battle, no caution, no judgment, just berserker fury. See there!” He gestured as a Fethetrit ship accelerated headlong into a feeding beam until its shields flared out, then continued as a ballistic projectile until it slammed into the Entity and exploded, fragmenting it into three large chunks and thousands of shards. “They throw their lives away at every chance, it seems. Yet they seem to like it that way. And better for us, perhaps, that they keep their numbers low. Still, we commend their souls to the Spirit just the same, though Spirit only knows whether It would want them.”
“I take it that the fragments are still a threat?” Riker asked.
“It will only take them a moment to adjust to the separation, and then their hunger will drive them again. But they are smaller now, and weaker. And the more of them there are, the more chance there is of one slipping through our lines. Keep your weapons hot, Riker.”
In quick succession, two more Fethetrit ships were wiped clean of life, and one skymount had a chunk sliced off its edge and quickly digested by the beams. It continued to move under intelligent direction, though; presumably it had a means of sealing off the damaged section. “Have them retreat to station defense,” Qui’hibra ordered his huntsmaster. “Send out mount Ieq’Fha to take their place.”
“Is it wise to send organic ships up against these things?” Riker asked. “It just gives them more sustenance, more energy to fight back with.”
“Only if they catch us. And we are taking more from them than we are giving up.”
Indeed, the two remaining intact Entities were significantly smaller than before, their branches robbed of symmetry as though trimmed by a blind-drunk topiarist. But they continued to fight cannily, and Riker realized one was using its beams to herd the last Fethetrit ship toward the other. “Order them to veer off!” Qui’hibra instructed his people, but apparently the Fethetrit were not inclined to listen. “Rrraa. All their fellows have died and they are jealous. At least tell them to die usefully!” he added into his communicator.
But his huntsmaster apparently had other ideas. Qui’hibra’s own mount—Riker realized he was starting to be able to tell them apart—swooped in and fired a barrage of stings at the Entity’s core, snapping it in two. Coordinating with the Fethetrit, they proceeded to dissect the halves further, rather than chipping away at them from the outside as before. “Let us cut them down to harmless size first,” came the huntsmaster’s voice. “We can then crush the fragments at our leisure.”
But the Fethetrit were not as careful in their aim and were less successful in breaking off fragments. And one that they did break off, given momentum by the Entity half’s rotation, flew right into them, the collision damaging their shields and leaving them vulnerable. They dove almost eagerly into a kamikaze run, but the Entity dodged and took only a glancing blow. The impact was enough to destroy the last of the Fethetrit, however. “Useless fools,” Qui’hibra cursed-but he muttered a prayer for them anyway.
It seemed the Entity half was retreating now, perhaps spooked by the efficiency with which Qui’hibra’s mount was chopping up the rest of its former self. But the remaining Entities—one large, three small—continued to keep the rest of the Pa’haquel fleet at bay. One of the small ones managed to slip through the line and made a dash for the station. “Block it!” Riker ordered Lavena. “Tactical, fire a warning shot, try to scare it off.”
“You cannot think that will work after what you have seen?” Qui’hibra demanded.
“Unlike you, I’m not willing to kill what might be a sentient being without trying the alternatives first. Is there any way to incapacitate it?” he went on, not allowing the elder to argue the point. “Any sensory organs we can blind, weapon emitters we can cripple?”
“No, they are too redundant. Blow away one node and they shunt the beams to the next.”
Riker had a memory from the Farpoint mission. “Jaza, can you calibrate the deflector array to emit the kind of energy it feeds on? Maybe we can satisfy its hunger for now—or at least lure it away from the station.”
“On it, sir.”
“Your sentiment is foolish, Riker,” Qui’hibra said. “Know that even if you drive it away alive, we will hunt it down and pulverize it if we can. More likely it will outrace us and escape, and another planet may die because of your ‘mercy.’ ”
Riker took a moment to absorb that. “That may be,” he said. “But the bottom line is, Titan is a science vessel, not a warship. I’m just playing to our strengths.”
“The deflector is ready, sir,” Jaza announced.
“Activate the beam.”
The viewscreen showed a false-color wash of light illuminating the Entity. It paused, rotating uncertainly in place, and then changed course toward Titan. “Helm, thrusters aft full. Lead it away from the station.”
“Thrusters aft, aye.”
But the Entity’s propulsion system, whatever it was, packed significantly more punch than thrusters. In moments, it was upon them, bumping up against their shields, backing away at the sting of them and then trying again. “The beam isn’t sating it,” Jaza said. “I think we’ve just whetted its appetite.” Now the feeding beam fired, battering against the shields, and the Entity continued to push against them physically, making the ship shudder. “I’d say that’s definite.”
“Shields are holding,” Kuu’iut reported, “but I can’t be sure that will last. The energy beam is taking up a lot of our power.”
Suddenly the ship shook harder and the power fluctuated. “Report!”
“It just figured out where the bio-energy beam was coming from,” Jaza said with some alarm. “It’s fired a feeding beam directly into the deflector array, taking advantage of the same frequency window that lets the beam exit the shields. Sir, it’s sucking energy right out of the ship! The conduits aren’t designed to transfer power at this rate.”
“Shut down the deflector array!”
“I have been trying, sir. It’s not working.”
“Shield energy is falling,” Kuu’iut said. “Down to seventy percent.” Another shudder. “Sixty-four!”
“This is what your kindness brings, Riker,” said Qui’hibra. “Will you die for your Federation ethics?”
Riker glared at him. “If I have to. But not today.” He whirled to Kuu’iut. “Concentrate torpedoes on the stem. Break it in two. Maybe the halves will be too weak to press the attack.”
A row of miniature sunbursts flew out from
the bottom of the screen, striking the Entity at its core and cleaving it like a jeweler’s chisel. “Helm, push between them at full impulse. Knock them apart.”
Titan surged forward, shaking as the halves collided with its shields; but at this close range, the impulse engines had not had time to accelerate the ship very much, so the collision was comparatively gentle on both ends. Still, the tactical display showed that the two Entity pieces were knocked away spinning, like billiard balls on a table. Before long they regained control, but headed off in opposite directions rather than resuming their attack. Riker realized that several of Qui’hibra’s ships were closing in on them, and the remaining Entities had all been broken up or driven away.
“Harry them!” Qui’hibra cried into his communicator. “Do not let them go to warp!”
Riker kept an eye on the pursuit while he gathered damage reports. Titan was in relatively good shape, needing only some replacements and repairs to the deflector array power conduits and a couple of shield capacitors.
But soon Qui’hibra approached him grimly. “Three of the partial branchers escaped into warp. Even so small, they are too fast to overtake. I only pray other hunters find them before they find other peopled worlds or ships.”
Riker spoke tentatively. “I’m sorry. I wish there had been more we could do.”
The elder shook his head. “I do not blame you for this. There were too many; some would have gotten away regardless. You did what you could when it came down to it. And you showed innovation in your tactics; I can respect you for that, if not for your squeamishness. Most importantly, you put yourself at risk to protect the innocents on the station.” Qui’hibra clasped him on the shoulder. “That, in the end, is what the Hunt is all about.”
Riker met Qui’hibra’s gaze, gratified that some degree of trust had been established. Still, he was unable to shake the thought that he had not done all he could. He could have easily destroyed all three of the Crystalline Entities in moments. True, they had some intelligence, and were only wild creatures trying to survive, as they had a right to. But was their right to life worth sacrificing worlds for?
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