Orion's Hounds

by Christopher L. Bennett

  “I assure you,” she said calmly, “Mr. Tuvok deeply regrets what he was compelled to do under the star-jellies’ influence, and wants nothing more than to make amends for it. We do have means to guard against it happening again.”

  “And we should trust the word of another telepath on this?” snapped Chi’tharu, a wiry veteran who had been chosen as huntsmaster for the expedition. “How do we know they are not influencing you now? It is sung in the ancient songs, it is known to all that the Spirit does not abide telepaths in the Hunt, for they compromise the stealth on which victory depends.”

  “With all respect, Huntsmaster Chi’tharu, this is not a hunt. We—”

  “All life is a Hunt.”

  She went on. “We are trying to create a new kind of balance, one based on communication. Telepathic intermediaries are the only way to communicate with the skymounts.”

  “But him?”

  Deanna explained her reasoning in choosing Tuvok, someone whom the jellies trusted and who could be valuable in advising them tactically. But Chi’tharu was unconvinced. “What do you know of tactics? You are an empath—a weakling, bled by others’ wounds.”

  “She is not weak,” Qui’hibra said, silencing the other with his quiet, simple sternness. “She worked tirelessly with the refugees. And she saved Oderi and others from the rampaging Fethet, striking a cunning blow against him and taking no pause for her safety.” A look passed between him and Oderi, and she sensed something else between them too—nothing sexual, but a sense of trust and reliance. Oderi had his ear, had told him what Deanna had done, and was now gratified that her words had done their job. Her loyalty could be a two-way street, it seemed; she wished to do the best for everyone.

  Or maybe to take care of everyone? Did the Rianconi see themselves more as servants, or as parents?

  “Because of that,” Qui’hibra continued, “I am willing to give you a chance to make this work. But understand that I do not indulge those who fail me. So you had best be very sure of this Tuvok—and of yourself.”

  “Let’s be clear here,” she countered, coming on strong in response to the implied threat. “Are you speaking of failure, or of betrayal? I am sure that neither Tuvok nor I, nor any other telepathic member of this crew, will act in violation of their duties.” Regrettably, in some cases that would be because they would not be given the chance. She had sadly recommended that Orilly Malar remain confined to quarters for now, since she simply could not rely on the gestalt-starved Irriol’s ability to resist acting under the influence of other minds—not when it was so much in her evolutionary nature to do so. As for the other psi-sensitives, they would all be on duty (where applicable) but under guard, and kept from high-security areas on Titan, though they might be assigned to work aboard the star-jellies on a case-by-case basis if and when that stage was reached.

  “But I cannot promise you that this effort will be successful. We’re trying something new here, and there are no guarantees. Threats and intimidation cannot change that. We will do our best. And if this plan does not work, then we will try something else. We will do so because we choose to and believe it is right—not because you growled at us or gave us an ultimatum.”

  Chi’tharu and Tir’hruthi grew angrier at her haughty tone, but Qui’hibra softened fractionally, and she even sensed amusement in him. “Well said, Commander Troi. We cannot shout the balance into shifting in our favor. We go to the Hunt with no guarantee that we will triumph—only that if we fail, it will not be for want of effort or commitment. That is what I require of you and your crew. And I hope that you will not fail me. I hope you will not fail the galaxy.”

  So do I, Troi thought devoutly. So do I.

  “This plan is doomed to fail.”

  Jaza Najem had not met enough Vomnin to know whether repeating oneself was a common practice in their culture. Indeed, given how widespread their worlds were throughout the Gum Nebula, Jaza was certain they had no single culture. But at least it seemed to be a personal habit of Podni Fasden, the Vomnin scientist accompanying this mission. She was a member of Udonok Station’s complement, sent as an observer on behalf of the Consortium which encompassed a plurality of the Vomnin-settled worlds. Her report would be reviewed by the Consortium’s government as they deliberated whether to lend their resources in support of building a partnership between the Pa’haquel and the star-jellies. Given that, Jaza was actually glad of her skepticism; a report of success would carry more weight from someone who had not expected success. Of course, that would require the effort actually succeeding, and Jaza could not be sure that would happen.

  Still, he tried to stay optimistic. “But if you’re right, the jellies were engineered to serve as ships sometime in the past,” he reminded Fasden. “And they must have accepted it, or been designed to accept it. Given their form of reproduction, their conscious error-checking of their genome, they wouldn’t have kept those traits if they didn’t want them.”

  “Their reasons for wanting them may not have been the same as those of their masters,” Fasden responded, crouching on her haunches while her long arms reached up to tap at a console. Vomnin posture kept them a bit lower to the ground than most humanoids, and on their station the controls had often been at or near floor level. Fasden seemed to have no trouble adjusting to the equipment here in the science lab, though. “Warp drive, replication, more potent weaponry—these are clearly pro-survival traits for most any species. The artificial gravity, as you surmised, is beneficial to their metabolism. So they would have had no reason to eliminate these or other traits when they eliminated their masters.”

  Jaza wasn’t quite convinced that the jellies’ added traits had been given them by some other race. True, the Vomnin had been studying the question far longer than he had, and their genetic records—based on the accumulation rate of certain trivial mutations uncorrected by the jellies’ error-checking—showed that these traits and their associated behaviors had been added or enhanced some eight million years ago, later than most of their other attributes. (Their sapience, telepathy, and more limited telekinesis had evidently been innate properties.) The Vomnin assumed the enhancement had been done to turn the jellies into ships for some ancient race, but Jaza did not feel the evidence ruled out Eviku’s hypothesis that the jellies had independently chosen to adopt technologies they had observed. As Fasden said, they were beneficial survival traits.

  But the question might never be answered. Despite the jellies’ shared memories, Counselor Troi had reported that their recall grew hazier the further one went back in time. Even telepathically transmitted memory was a subjective thing, susceptible to alteration and forgetfulness, and with each duplication it blurred further. Past a certain point, it was no more reliable than oral history and legend.

  For now, though, Jaza admitted that Fasden’s theory was the more probable one, so he didn’t argue the point. At least, not that part of it. “You’re only assuming they turned on these hypothetical masters.”

  “What else do you suppose could have become of them?” She shook her wide-featured bronze head. “In our researches we have found the remains of more than one civilization which attempted to master cosmozoans and was destroyed by the effort. They are simply too powerful to control. One world attempted to harness a variant of the sailseeds to extract the vital elements from its system’s asteroids and comets. They engineered away their migratory behavior. As a result, their whole system was overrun and its planets slowly disassembled.

  “One great empire at war took a species of predatory cloud creature with metadimensional abilities, engineered it with warp capability and a hunger for humanoid blood, and turned it loose on its enemy. The creatures ended up nearly destroying both sides before they were stopped. And a few escaped to plague the rest of the galaxy, their fate still unknown.”

  “I think I’m aware of encounters with two of them,” Jaza said, realizing that Fasden’s tale could explain some of the anomalies about the “vampire clouds” encountered by James Kirk an
d the Klingons. “Both creatures were ultimately destroyed.”

  “That is good. But it does not mean I want to see a new scourge unleashed on the galaxy.”

  Jaza could understand her fatalism. The Vomnin’s original technology had been left by a race which had colonized their world while they were still scavenger-gatherers, but which had died out in some ancient cataclysm. Upon learning of the region’s hazards from the settlers’ records, the Vomnin had mastered the remnant technology and used it to found many colonies of their own, most of them far from the Vela Association, to ensure that their species would survive any catastrophe. Along the way they had acquired more technology and knowledge left by other ancients, some destroyed, some regressed to primitivism, others apparently ascended to higher planes. Given the hazards of this region, it was even more littered with such ancient ruins (at least ones younger than several million years, and thus more likely to contain viable technology) than Federation space. The Vomnin had made a career out of harvesting such ruins, building their science and culture on the whispers of the dead. So a certain preoccupation with failure and destruction was understandable.

  Another consequence of this history was that the Vomnin had little in the way of religious belief. The ancient settlers had appeared as gods to the primitive Vomnin, but discovering the truth—of their instrumentality and their mortality—had disillusioned them. On their travels they had come across relics of other religions based on beings they knew to be merely advanced civilizations. As a result they were skeptics and secularists, more concerned with making the best of this life than with anything after it. They indulged their Pa’haquel allies’faith in the Spirit of the Hunt, but Fasden had made it clear in private that she saw it as mere superstition.

  But maybe that was the key, Jaza realized. “You keep talking about cosmozoans turning on their ‘masters.’ If that’s true, maybe the problem is that they were mastered. Treated as servants instead of equals. Take it from a Bajoran—that kind of treatment has a way of provoking rebellion.

  “And maybe that’s why this can work. The Pa’haquel already feel great reverence for the star-jellies. They cherish them as a divine source of life. If we can redirect that reverence toward partnership with the jellies rather than predation upon them, it could help to ensure that they’re treated well.”

  “How do you redirect an article of faith? Their divinity is a hunting deity, not one of peace and amity.”

  “They allied with you, didn’t they?” Jaza reminded her. “There are as many aspects of the divine as there are believers to behold them. So faith can adapt to suit anyone’s needs. If it couldn’t—if it only applied to a finite number of people—it wouldn’t be divine, would it?”

  Fasden looked at him oddly. “I would not have expected such talk from a scientist.”

  Jaza smiled. “I think that’s exactly my point.”

  “Well? Have you extracted the data?”

  Fasden shook her fat-faced head. “No, Hunter Se’hraqua. Their computer security ciphers are extremely sophisticated and rely heavily on biometric identification. A consequence of their recent war, I suppose.”

  Se’hraqua hissed in frustration. “I do not care why, Vomnin. I only care about results. We must get that information!”

  “There is only so much I can do without attracting suspicion. The information on your skymounts’ sensor signatures has been encrypted, no doubt to guard against precisely what we are trying to do.”

  “Yes, yes, I do not need one of your lectures.” Had the smug intellectual not been an ally, and would it not have drawn the attention of Titan’s security, Se’hraqua would have been sorely tempted to give her a head start, hunt her down, and rip her throat out. It would be a satisfying release for this frustration, this inability to achieve the holy task Aq’hareq had assigned him. The Starfleeters were being unreasonable, determined to keep the Pa’haquel from the sensor information they had given the skymounts—thus giving the lie to their claims of nonpartisanship. All they had to do was share the knowledge, and the Hunt could be resumed, the balance restored. All would be as it was—except Se’hraqua’s status would be considerably higher. If he brought home a prize of this magnitude clenched in his jaws, Aq’hareq would surely reward him with a mount to command and a bride from a high family, perhaps Aq’ha itself. Indeed, since he had a whole line to repopulate, Aq’hareq might even reward him with multiple brides. Fathering so many directly would bring him to high status swiftly, especially with so many noble females to crew his mount and make it strong and swift in the Hunt.

  But such triumph was contingent on his retrieval of useful information, and he had run out of ideas on how to retrieve it. His Rianconi servant, Ujisu, had been unsuccessful at seducing the ship’s first officer, science officer and all the others he had propositioned. Perhaps he was not as persuasive as Qui’hibra’s slut Oderi, or maybe the Starfleeters were more protective of this information, seeking to keep the skymounts from the honor of being righteously hunted. And now Fasden, as skeptical of Riker’s plan as he and thus a potential ally, had failed as well. He wanted to command her to dig deeper, but he knew that was unwise. Her inquisitiveness to a point could be interpreted as the Vomnin’s natural desire to scavenge others’ technology, but if she dug too deeply or were caught trying to compromise their computer security, it could expose them to the Starfleeters.

  So for now, Se’hraqua’s only option was to watch and wait. As a hunter he knew the value of this, but at least in the Hunt he knew the waiting would culminate in a strike, and possibly the glory of a kill. In this kind of hunt, the hunt for hidden information, he was out of his element. He could see no way to make the strike, to claim the prize. No way to escape the disgraced state Qui’hibra had trapped him in and gain his rightful place as an elder. It made him want to rip something’s throat out. Somebody’s.

  “Go. You are dismissed,” he said to Fasden, before he gave into the impulse and did something…indiscreet. Once the soundproofed door had closed behind her, he let out a scream, though it did little to sate his rage. Maybe he should try that holodeck hunting program that the doctor had recommended, though hunting unreal prey would not serve the Spirit and could not ease his soul. Perhaps later he would take out some of his frustrations on Ujisu’s body. Rianconi were always so obliging, and bore a suitable resemblance to the humans, Vulcans and others upon whom he would like to unleash his rage. He could only inflict such punishment up to a point, of course—even Rianconi drew the line at permanent damage—but it should be satisfying.

  And perhaps someday, if the Spirit willed, he would be free to do the same to Riker and Troi and not need to hold himself back.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Christine Vale sat in a corner of the mess hall, nursing an orange-banana smoothie and monitoring the mood of the room. Jaza had been forced to postpone their just-friends lunch date—something she realized she was more disappointed about than she would’ve expected—but she’d chosen to remain in the mess hall anyway and keep an eye on things. It didn’t quite feel right to be essentially spying on her own crewmates, but her peace officer’s instincts died hard. Tensions were high in here right now. Several of the Pa’haquel visitors had gotten together with a number of Titan’s carnivorous crew members, including Ree, Huilan, and Kuu’iut, and were sharing a pair of tables, telling hunting stories in loud voices and laughing raucously. Many of the other crew members in the mess hall, particularly the herbivores, were acting disturbed and uncomfortable. A few minutes ago, Tylith, a Kasheetan engineer, had requested that they lower their voices, but as was usual in such cases, their compliance had lasted only a few minutes. Now Tylith was at a table on the far side of the cavernous room, trying to carry on a conversation but periodically glaring over at the carnivores. Vale expected that her silence wouldn’t last; Kasheeta might be herbivores but they were not known for meekness.

  Indeed, after another few moments Tylith and her tablemates rose and came over toward Vale herself. Vale no
ted that those with her were also herbivores: Lonam-Arja, the Grazerite sensor tech, and Chamish, the Kazarite ecologist. “Commander,” Tylith said, “we’d like a word with you.” Her wide-set yellow eyes stared out from under high bony crests, and the lips of her protruding red-brown snout were curled, giving her a haughty and irritated look. To some extent all Kasheeta looked like that by default, but in this case Vale could tell the illusion was accurate.

  “Yes, Lieutenant?”

  “I thought the carnivores had agreed to limit their mess hall activities to late night. They’re not abiding by that agreement.”

  “They chose to do that as a courtesy to their crewmates,” Vale told her. “It’s not a formal policy. They have as much right to be here as you do. Besides, they’re not eating.”

  “No, but they’re talking about eating, and killing, and torturing helpless animals. It’s put me quite off my appetite.”

  “And it’s not just about eating,” Chamish said. “Should we really be encouraging those Pa’haquel like this? Indulging their tales of brutality to nature’s creations, laughing in celebration of their triumphs? I don’t think the predators are serving Starfleet’s ideals very well by doing that.”

  Vale stared at him. “Serving Starfleet’s ideals? Listen to yourself, Ensign. ‘The predators’? Is that any way to talk about your own crewmates?” She stood. “This is ridiculous. I’m not going to watch this crew get divided on some sort of carnivore-versus-herbivore lines. I mean, look at them,” she said, gesturing at the Rianconi aides who sat near the Pa’haquel, listening politely to the stories. “Those herbivores don’t have any problem coexisting with predators. So why are you standing here complaining about sharing the mess hall with your own crewmates? Come on, people. We’re Starfleet. We should be the ones showing them how to get along.”