“Life can coexist with life, as we do with our allies. We and the livemounts established a good rapport,” Qui’hibra said to the Conclave at large. “It was…inspiring. Miraculous. I wish I had the words. It is not something I am sure I wish to abandon completely.”
“But when you took them to the Hunt,” Aq’hareq replied, “it was a disaster.”
“They were untried. I admit I pushed them too hard, too fast. We cannot be certain it will never work.”
“And how long must we wait until they are ready? How long before their nature changes to suit us? And how many worlds die in the meantime?” Cunning, to use Qui’hibra’s own argument against him.
“We cannot afford to wait longer,” Aq’hareq said, raising his voice. “We have talked enough, now we must decide. I call for a vote! The matter: that we give hue and cry upon the vessel Titan, take it intact and forcibly extract the information we need to counteract the skymounts’ new advantages. And once we have that information, we make our kill, so that they can never interfere again.”
“I second!” Se’hraqua called, predictably. A third came swiftly.
The voting went swiftly as well, and decisively. Aq’hareq’s proposal passed with ease. Even many of the subordinates in Qui’hibra’s own fleet voted for it this time. Qui’hibra exchanged a regretful look with his daughter, but he knew he was obliged to accept the will of the Conclave. He would do so with regret for Riker’s people, and with concern for the future of his own. But he would do it nonetheless.
Still, there were other issues to be resolved, issues he wished he had managed to raise before Aq’hareq rammed the vote through. “I have already made arrangements with Titan’s crew and the livemounts. We are to rendezvous at the Proplydian tomorrow. Troi claims she has new ideas to help us work toward hunting together.”
Aq’hareq huddled with his advisors for a moment to discuss it. “Meet with them as planned, Qui’hibra,” he said. “To cancel would make them suspicious. Indeed, this will be advantageous to the hunt. They could detect a force coming to attack them, but since you are invited they will be off their guard. That puts you in a perfect position to attack. And at the Proplydian there will always be other fleets close by as backup. Perhaps you can even capture Troi and their other telepaths, and we can get the information we need from them. At least, it will give us leverage over Riker. A threat to his mate may persuade him to surrender.”
A matriarch raised a criticism. “If the livemounts can read our thoughts, will that not give the plan away?”
Reluctantly, Qui’hibra shook his head. “They cannot take what is not offered or consciously considered. So long as we guard our thoughts and emotions, we can retain stealth.”
“Excellent,” Aq’hareq said. “Then you are ideal for this task indeed, carved from stone as you are.”
A laugh went through the chamber. Qui’hibra could see the ancient elder’s malicious glee at making him the executor of a plan he had opposed. He burned with as much rage and shame as Aq’hareq no doubt wished upon him. But it was the Conclave’s will, and it was a good plan. And for all he knew, it might even work. Maybe there was a way the traditional Hunt could be restored. He just wished that there were another way besides betraying Riker, Troi, and their people, for whom he had developed a grudging respect.
But he was a hunter, and that meant doing anything that was necessary to fend off the chaos for another day. It meant being willing to kill beasts that he admired and loved. It meant taking his wives, sons and daughters into danger and knowing that many of them would not survive. Next to that, betraying Titan’s crew would be a small thing.
Over the past few weeks, Will Riker’s sense of the scale of living things had been broadened numerous times. He had grown somewhat accustomed to the idea of living beings a kilometer across. He felt he had made some progress toward wrapping his mind around the idea of a single organism the size of a small moon, such as the harvester. But nothing had prepared him for the sight of the Proplydian.
Well, not so much the sight itself; on the viewer, it appeared commonplace enough, an A-type giant star surrounded by a dense protoplanetary disk (“proplyd” in astronomer-speak). He had seen numerous such systems in his twenty-plus years in Starfleet.
But none of them had been a single life form.
Truth be told, he still wasn’t fully ready to accept that was the case. After all, it wasn’t a physically contiguous organism. But neither, Jaza had reminded him, were the thousands of chunks of matter that made up a Black Cloud’s “brain.” Though physically discrete, they interacted magnetically as a single collective organism. The Proplydian functioned on similar principles, with most of the planetesimals in its disk coated in bioneural compounds, exchanging stimulus and response through EM transmissions and functioning as a coherent nervous system. Together, they manipulated the systemwide magnetic field in order to turn the star itself into a propulsion system, triggering stellar flares and directing them as rocket thrust, ever-so-gradually altering the course and speed of the star, with the disk itself being pulled along for the ride by the star’s gravity. They also used mutual repulsion to keep the chunks evenly distributed in a disk, rather than accreting into planetary bodies.
Jaza had reminded him that some nebular cosmozoans were larger even than this. But to Riker, it wasn’t the same. A cloud of gas was one thing; this was a whole living star system, an organism with a sun as its heart. Trying to absorb that was making him dizzy.
The Pa’haquel or Vomnin could not quite say how such a life form had evolved, or where precisely it was motivated to go. This was the only such entity they knew of (fortunately for Riker’s mental equilibrium), and its travels were too leisurely to let them say much about its migratory patterns. It didn’t seem drawn to energy sources like most cosmozoans; after all, it had an extremely powerful energy source at its heart, as much radiant energy as it could ever hope for. If anything, it seemed to direct itself through the densest parts of the interstellar medium, and was heading in the general direction of a dustcloud rich in organic compounds; presumably it sought to replenish its supplies somewhat through accretion, although the erosive friction of passage through those clouds would cancel out much of the gain. Perhaps, Jaza had speculated, it had no particular reason to do as it did; perhaps it was simply an evolutionary fluke, the spawn of an accidental convergence of factors. “Or maybe,” the Bajoran had added, “it’s a sign of some deeper meaning in the universe.” Riker was content to leave that speculation to him.
There was always a Pa’haquel presence around the Proplydian, somewhere within a few light-years; they monitored it steadily, which was why Qui’hibra’s fleet-clan and others from the Hounding had wandered this way since then, rather than staying around Udonok. They showed no interest in destroying it, however. “For one thing,” Qui’hibra had explained when he had first told Riker and his crew about the Proplydian, “we do not know how. It is simply too vast. We know of ways we could detonate the star, but a supernova of that size would irradiate too vast a region. At least three inhabited worlds in range would be devastated.”
Besides, the Proplydian showed little interest in coming near other star systems, perhaps wishing to avoid the gravitational disruption of its neural disk. It occasionally shed planetesimals which might have been reproductive spores, or might have simply been ejected by the chaos of gravitational interactions within the disk; the Pa’haquel captured or destroyed those to prevent it from infesting other systems. They kept watch on it for that reason—and because the Proplydian supported a whole secondary ecosystem of cosmozoans, living within it as symbiotes or parasites. Many species were drawn to the nourishing energy and hydrogen of its flare exhaust, to the rich stew of organics that pervaded its disk, and to the heavy elements that remained accessible as planetesimals rather than buried deep inside planets. Starpeelers swam in its wake, stealing hydrogen from its exhaust. Sailseeds attached to its outer cometary ring like barnacles. Spinners used its powerful magnetic
fields to give themselves accelerational boosts. Crystalline Entities and other predators came here to feed on the rest. And star-jellies came to bask in its glow and dance through its disk—and perhaps simply to gape at the sheer wonder of it.
That was the other reason why the Pa’haquel let it be, according to Qui’hibra: It was the one cosmozoan even they didn’t feel they were entitled to kill. It was just too far beyond their scope. “We revere all the beasts we hunt, and feel that we must earn the right to hunt them through our own risk and sacrifice. But how could we ever earn the right to prey on such a great embodiment of the Spirit of Life? Particularly when it may be the only one of its kind. This is a precious and holy place to us.” More practically, because of its lure as a “watering hole,” it was of more use to the hunters intact than destroyed.
On the practical side, though, the Proplydian had its drawbacks. Its intense magnetic field had ionized the dense local medium, creating sensor and comm interference. Plus some of the cosmozoans in the area might be dangerous—and Riker couldn’t be certain whether the Pa’haquel fleets in the vicinity would see Titan as an ally or an enemy. The star-jellies, though, had considered it an excellent place to meet, and to recharge after the ordeal with the spinners three days ago. Meanwhile Jaza and the science staff were going crazy over the system’s wonders. Riker half-suspected that if he gave the order to leave the Proplydian anytime soon, he’d have a mutiny on his hands.
But as amazing as the Proplydian was, Riker had to focus his own attention on other matters: specifically the star-jellies and the Pa’haquel, and what could be done to salvage their relationship—ideally without compromising Federation principles any further than necessary. Deanna had been working on a promising idea. It was not in the star-jellies’ nature to actively seek out and attack prey, but it was in their nature to defend their breeding worlds against cosmozoan attack. Perhaps that behavior could be adapted to the defense of other inhabited worlds as well. It would not be as proactive as the Pa’haquel’s method, but it would meet the goal of protecting intelligent life from the “chaos.” As for the Pa’haquel’s cultural need for the Hunt, that could be met using constructed starships, and the Pa’haquel alliance would still have the star-jellies’ replication abilities at their disposal. Riker knew the Pa’haquel would have many objections, and he was skeptical about aspects of it himself; but at least it was a promising starting point.
“Sir,” Jaza called from his console, interrupting Riker’s train of thought. “We may have a problem.”
“Explain.”
“I’m detecting a group of Crystalline Entities approaching the system at over warp seven. ETA about forty minutes. I would’ve spotted them sooner if not for the interference. There seem to be…yes, there are four of them.”
Riker’s eyes widened. “So much for them not usually travelling in packs. Maybe Qui’hibra doesn’t know them as well as he thinks. Any sign that the nearby Pa’haquel fleets have detected them?”
“No, sir. Both of them are farther away from the Entities, and they still don’t have sensors as good as ours.”
Deanna came up beside him, touched his arm. “Will, Qui’hibra’s fleet is due within that window.”
“We should abort the rendezvous,” Vale advised. “Try again somewhere else.”
Riker thought it over. “Things are tenuous enough as it is—I don’t want to chance upsetting them by breaking the arrangement.”
“I think they’d understand our reasons.”
“But retreating could be taken as a sign of weakness,” Deanna told her. “It could undermine our negotiating position.”
After another moment, Riker spoke. “Deanna, I want you and Tuvok to beam aboard one of the jellies to wait for Qui’hibra. Take Keru and a security team just in case.” With the interference, he wasn’t sure the team could call for help if they needed it. But right now Riker judged the threat from the Entities to outweigh that from Qui’hibra. He felt he knew the elder well enough by now to trust in his integrity. And the jellies would be there to protect Deanna and the rest. “Titan will intercept the Crystalline Entities.”
Deanna studied him. “And do what when you get there?”
“Attempt to communicate,” he said grimly. “Without the Pa’haquel watching, we’ll be free to try Data’s graviton-resonance effect.” He met her eyes. “God knows I’d like nothing better than to use that graviton beam to shatter them all to dust. But I have an obligation to at least try to make peaceful contact.” He widened his gaze to include Vale. “And I’d like to manage to find a constructive solution to at least one thing in this whole mess.”
Deanna smiled. “Good luck, Will.” I love you terribly, you know that?
Actually I think you do it very well.
Throwing him an affectionate glare, Deanna made her way to the turbolift. Just come back in one piece so I can keep in practice.
Qui’hibra’s arrival was right on time—but he came in more force than expected. The star-jellies notified Deanna when they detected his ships’ imminent emergence from warp. Dead ones come—many [alarm/anger]!
Stay calm, Deanna advised as the lights dimmed and the heartbeat pulse grew stronger, indicating that her jelly was beginning to armor up. Look more closely. Is it Qui’hibra?
A pause. Yes. And many more [suspicion/betrayal?].
Please wait before you do anything. You know he was expected. Hail them for me, all right? Aloud, she addressed Tuvok, Keru and his team. “Qui’hibra’s fleet is here.”
A moment later, Qui’hibra’s image appeared on the sensation wall, which the jelly had kept around for her benefit.
“Commander Troi. Where is Titan?”
“Not far. They went to make observations of a group of cosmozoans they detected in deep space not far from here.” She could only hope Qui’hibra would not press the issue or attempt to scan for them. She had asked the jellies to position themselves on the opposite side of the star from the Crystalline Entities’ approach vector; the intervening mass and EM field of the Proplydian would make detection more difficult. And she had emphasized deep space in the hope that the Pa’haquel would assume it was a non-warp-capable species, years away from endangering anyone and worth passing up for now.
Luckily, Qui’hibra seemed more concerned about Titan itself. “And left you undefended?”
She raised her chin. “The star-jellies can defend us and themselves, if necessary. Will it be necessary, Elder Qui’hibra? You seem to have brought your entire fleet. That could easily be taken as a hostile gesture.”
“I appreciate how the livemounts feel about our use of their dead. But as we discussed, they must learn to accept it. We cannot instantly change our whole way of life or abandon our ancestral homes. Even if no new mounts are killed, we will still need the ones we have. They are a valuable resource in the battle against the chaos.”
“Granted,” Deanna said. “But I’m concerned you may be forcing the issue again.”
“I am willing to accommodate the livemounts’ concerns to a point, but accommodation must go both ways. The Hunt is an urgent calling, leaving no room for leisure.”
Deanna gauged the jellies’ reactions. They were unhappy at the presence of so many of their dead, but they were willing to tolerate it for now. It seemed they had begun to build a comfortable rapport with at least some of the Pa’haquel, and genuinely wanted to find a way to coexist. “Very well, Elder. In that spirit, why don’t you beam aboard so we can discuss my proposal?”
Qui’hibra’s expression showed that he got the subtext: while he was aboard one of the jellies, presumably the fleet would not attack. “I will be there promptly.”
The sensation wall went dark. Within moments, Qui’hibra shimmered into being near Deanna and her party. He looked around, not at them, but at the star-jelly around him. “It is an honor to be back here. Although I have my doubts that it can become the norm.” She knew his appreciation was sincere; yet for some reason he was very reserved, his emotions even
more tightly in check than usual. Probably it was unease at the prospect of their emotions overwhelming him again—a sentiment Deanna could sympathize with. Still, his reserve caused her hackles to rise. She knew predators were usually most dangerous when they were most still.
“You’d be amazed,” Deanna said, “how often former enemies learn to work together as friends. Many of the Federation’s founding members were once at each other’s throats. And many of our greatest onetime enemies have become allies, or at least tolerant neighbors.”
“Many of those in our alliance have battled each other at times. Sometimes they still do, when the threat of starbeasts is not so immediate.”
“A common enemy can only do so much to unite people. It’s the willingness to commit to understanding each other, doing the hard work of building and maintaining a relationship, that makes the difference. Not unlike a marriage,” Deanna suggested.
Qui’hibra smirked. “I have had marriages that took endless work. And one that was nearly effortless…or so it felt to me, though probably only because she bore the burdens I placed on her with such grace. Qui’chiri is her issue, and her image.”
What showed through his reserve made Deanna smile. “I can tell how much you love your daughter. If her mother was like her, you must have been very happy indeed.”
“As happy as I think you are with your mate,” he replied. “You work well together. I—” He broke off, and she felt his control clamp down again. “Well. All things are fleeting, and we must be grateful for what happiness we have, while it lasts.”
Some of his pain slipped through despite his control. A sense of guilt too. Qui’chiri’s mother had no doubt died in the Hunt, under his command, and some guilt was inevitable in that circumstance, even among a people as accustomed to death as the Pa’haquel. “I understand what you mean. During the troubles of the past few years, I became very aware of mortality, and of the real possibility of losing Will Riker. It was part of why we finally decided to get married. We’d waited far too long.”
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