Текст книги "Orion's Hounds "

Автор книги: Christopher Bennett

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“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 and 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 weremastered. 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 noted 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 choseto 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 talkingabout 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 themhow to get along.”

Tylith and the others were lowering their heads abashedly, but that wasn’t enough for Vale. She started moving toward the raucous crowd, gesturing to the others to follow. “I said come on. Let’s not be rude to our guests.” The steel in her voice got them moving.

As they approached the table, Vale registered that the Pa’haquel huntsmaster Chi’tharu was regaling the others with the tale of how his fleet had battled a Hoylean Black Cloud. “How do you kill a nebula?” Kuu’iut was asking.

“Ahh, it is not easy. You must destroy or scatter enough of the planetesimals that comprise its brain so that it cannot continue to function. But getting to them is the hard part. A Cloud contains immense voltages and can send vast lightning discharges against a fleet, as powerful as any technological weapon you have ever encountered. Even the gases that make up its body can hit you with devastating force when accelerated and concentrated by the Cloud’s internal fields. The key is to infect its circulatory streams with radioisotopes. Injected in the right parts of its structure, they can interfere with its neural processes, leave it weakened, confused. But only if you can keep it from isolating the flow. It can cut off a damaged section from its neural network and keep functioning on the rest.

“For us, the slaying of this Cloud was a delicate, lengthy operation. We would dart in to make a strike, to inject isotopes or fire on key neural nodes, to pierce through magnetic barriers and allow cross-contamination. But then we would have to race back out again before it could retaliate. It took us months of harrying the beast, wearing it away by slow attrition. But it wore away at us as well, sometimes getting in a fatal blow with its lightning, and it became a race to see who would run out first. It was a testament to our skill,” he finished proudly, “that we only lost five mounts before the Cloud became too crippled to fight back anymore.”

“Is that really something to celebrate?” Tylith asked in a challenging tone. “All that death and destruction?”

“We celebrate that there was not more,” Chi’tharu explained.

“Still,” Lonam-Arja said in his slow, deep voice, “all those people dying—isn’t it hard to think about?”

The Pa’haquel hunter looked evenly at the Grazerite. “Those people were my siblings, my cousins, my friends. I lost a wife and my firstborn child. Of course their deaths came hard. But how can I honor their lives if I do not think about what they gave them for?”

Lonam-Arja lowered his bovine head. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t you ever wish there was a better way, though?” Vale asked. “A way that didn’t result in so much death?”

“In the long term, the quantity of death is always the same. All that matters is the quality of it, and the purpose.”

“The quality of death,” Tylith echoed. “As though it were a wine to be appraised and enjoyed. Necessary or not, bringing death, to yourselves or to others, is nothing to tell boastful stories about.”

“Oh, really?” Counselor Huilan said with a small, mischievous smile showing around his tusks. “Tell us again, Tylith, about what you did during the Dominion War?”

His request was not hostile; he knew as well as Vale that the Kasheeta had been awarded the Medal of Valor for devising the means to destroy a Jem’Hadar fighter that had left her own vessel defenseless. But Tylith glowered at him anyway. “That was different. I only acted in defense, not aggression. And I take no pride in it.”

“Oh, but it was such a clever solution to the problem! How did it work again…?”

At Huilan’s prompting, Tylith sat down at the table and began to spin her tale of how she had rigged her ship’s tractor emitter to send false information to the enemy fighter’s inertial damper relays, throwing it out of synch and causing it to amplify the fighter’s accelerations rather than cancelling them. The result had been a messy but intact prize for the Starfleet Corps of Engineers to study. Chi’tharu reacted with interest, asking about the Jem’Hadar’s skills as fighters, about which Tylith had little to say. But the Pa’haquel female with him asked some cogent engineering questions, and soon she and Tylith were deep in shop talk, while the others at the table became engrossed in their own tangents to the discussion. After a few more moments, Vale slipped quietly away from the table, smiling. And the lion and the lamb shall lay down together. And no help needed from Deanna.

Soon Titanneared its destination, a star-jelly breeding world on the outskirts of the Vela Association. To repay Will for letting her name the first one Kestra, Deanna had suggested calling this system’s star Kyle, in honor of his recently deceased father. At her recommendation, the ship was now taking up station just outside the system while she and Tuvok prepared to meld and make contact with the jellies. Qui’hibra had wanted to monitor the meld in order to guard against any tricks, but Deanna had insisted on privacy. She had reminded him that if they did engage in any telepathic collusion, he would have no way of detecting it. However, Dr. Ree had insisted just as forcefully that he at least needed to monitor them during the meld. She and Tuvok had both consented to this, and the doctor’s presence had somewhat mollified the other predators.

Deanna found the doctor’s presence somewhat comforting herself. She was unnerved at the prospect of surrendering herself so completely to telepathic influence, with no way to turn it off. But she did her best to manage her unease, for the mission’s sake as well as for Tuvok’s. She believed this meld would help him master his insecurities. She didn’t want to burden him with hers.

Tuvok had spent hours meditating in preparation for the meld. Although he had the ability to meld without prior preparation, as he had done with Melora Pazlar, as a rule he preferred to get into the optimal mindset first. Indeed, given the harm his last meld had caused, reaching the state of equanimity took some doing.

However, she knew from his record that he had a good deal of experience with melding. That experience, combined with the natural psionic receptiveness of her own mind, meant that the meld came easily. At first it was just a level of communication which was second nature to her, a sharing of awareness and thought, but it quickly gave way to something deeper, a blurring of the boundaries between self and other. Part of her recoiled at the intrusion, but at the same time it did not feel like an intrusion, because the new thoughts and memories were hers.

But some of the memories, the perceptions—and yes, the emotions, for no Vulcan could hide them here—were distressing to experience at first hand. The distinctive flavor of a Reman mind, impinging on hers– Vkruk!No, she (Tuvok?) reminded herself– Mekrikuk.The Reman prisoner who had saved Tuvok’s life, befriended him, shared minds with him to aid his recovery and escape. It was a memory of a friend—nothing to fear.

Still, there was agony, rage and violence associated with the memory—the agony of weeks of torture, the rage at his captors, the violence of his escape. And now came another memory of violent anger—Melora Pazlar falling beneath him, her flimsy bones snapping, her grating voice silenced by pain until he bent it to his will. Deanna recoiled at the memory of the terror and helplessness in Pazlar’s eyes, of Tuvok’s satisfaction in it. But then she knew the shame and regret which Tuvok felt at the incident, at giving in to such impulses. The ordeal of the prison must have been horrendous indeed to leave him with such urges, such scars. As much as the ordeals that had shaped Shinzon, she reminded herself, or Vkruk—both of them raised as slaves, brutalized for decades, twisted by hate into monsters. It didn’t excuse what they had done. So how could she forgive Tuvok, whatever the excuse?

Yet how could she not? He was as much a victim as she had been. This was how it was: cruelty was a virus, perpetuating itself, making its victims into carriers. Forgiveness was the only inoculation. The only way to break the cycle was to refuse to react to violence with more violence, hate with more hate. Someone had to let go.

She focused on that thought. That was the goal here: to end a cycle of killing, to make peace between mortal foes. That was their purpose, and they needed to concentrate on that. The thought, she realized, came as much from Tuvok as herself. She felt his rigid sense of discipline and purpose anchoring them. It gave her the courage to let go, to set her own mental discipline loose, let it be drawn in to merge with his. She felt naked, stripped of her psychological armor. But she felt him don it, felt that sense of discipline and purpose intensified by its strength, and that made her feel safe.

We are ready,he thought to her. As the one laid open, it was her place to reach out and make contact, to be the conduit. A renewed thrill of fear went through her, but there he was with her, anchoring her. And somewhere in the background was Will’s presence too, grounding her further. Thus braced, she made the leap. We are here,she sent. We wish to commune with you. There are urgent matters to discuss.

Curiosity poured over her, then recognition, happiness. Too much, too fast, but she could not stop it. Friends! Friends who [helped/rescued/freed] us! Great [joy/gratitude] once again!A torrent of sensation and emotion inundated her as the jellies updated her on recent events. Many dead had been liberated from desecration, and finally returned to their breeding grounds. Many new lives had been conceived with the energies they left behind. They shared every one with her, an orgy of orgies. It was too much, it was unbearable, it was miraculous.

They sensed her distress at her lack of control, her inability to stem the flood of feeling. They pulled back, but it was with puzzlement and regret. To them, this kind of total openness, this absence of boundaries, was natural. This sharing was an act of giving, not domination. The thought of being without it was a desolate one, a thing to be feared, not craved. Deanna seized on that perspective, let it give her reassurance. She could not resist the influx, but she could trust it, embrace it. And she knew they would not harm her. Sensing that assurance, they resumed the sharing of their joy, but more gently, with care for her fragility.

Yes,came Tuvok’s calming voice. Your liberation is gratifying. Yet it comes at a cost. We need your help to remedy it.Curiosity and puzzlement came in response. Tuvok efficiently, methodically spelled out the situation.

Deanna was immersed in anxiety, terror and grief as the jellies witnessed the devastation wrought by the other cosmozoans, and shared their own experience of encounters with such beasts. They offered their commiseration at the loss of life, the grief of the survivors.

Your sympathy is appreciated. But there is more you can offer. You can help us combat the threat.

How [confusion/alarm]? We are not hunters.Fighting, they projected, was something you did when left with no choice; otherwise, you fled.

Tuvok explained the rest of the proposal. It met with alarm, distaste and no small degree of amusement. Join with those who prey on us? Anathema/suicide!

You need not fear. They can no longer hurt you. We gave you that. So it will cost you nothing to meet with them and hear their side. Their survival is at stake too. As is that of many other species.

Sad. But not our [concern/purview/capability] to stop.

Is it not? These creatures endanger your breeding worlds too.

We will defend them [determination/pride]. We always have.