Текст книги "Orion's Hounds "

Автор книги: Christopher Bennett

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We’re all right, Will. Save the others.

“Helm, move to intercept the other spinner. Jaza, status on this spinner. Is it alive?”

“Yes, but its sail is pretty torn up and it’s lost a lot of its nodules. It might not be able to recover.”

Will frowned. Even though these weren’t sentient beings, he’d still rather not play a part in killing them if there were an alternative.

The other jelly was now wrapped in considerably more layers of sail, with more being added. It would be hard to free in the same way, especially since it was inactive and doing nothing to attack the sail from within. Brute force might not be a viable option here.

Although that depended on what kind of force, he realized. He studied the way it cocooned its prey—not curling in from the edge like an enchilada, but doubling over in the middle and then rolling to pull the edge inward, something like an Argelian potsticker. And what could be pulled in could be pulled out. “Ensign Lavena,” he said, “put us on a vector tangent to its rotation. Mr. Kuu’iut, as we approach, put a tractor beam on the retracting edge near the trapped jelly. Make it as wide a beam as possible—I want to unfurl that sail, not rip it.” He leaned over Lavena’s shoulder, caught her eye. “Once we have a grip, I want you to put us on a spiral trajectory, tracking the sail as it spins and pulling it straight out. Understand?”

She smiled, nodding. “Aye, sir.

The ship shook as the tractor beams engaged, and the stars on the viewscreen began scrolling upward as Lavena whirled around the spinner. “Lock the viewer on the captive jelly,” Riker ordered. The view changed to an angle across the wide expanse of the spinner’s surface, stars wheeling behind it. The enfolding of the jelly began to slow as the tractor beam pulled it back outward. Before long, the enfolded portion began to unroll.

But it was too slow. The creature resisted, struggled to hold onto its prey. “The sail is being held together magnetically,” Jaza reported.

“Is there a way to demagnetize it?”

“If we heat the material enough, it should reach the Curie point and become demagnetized.”

“Doesn’t it absorb energy, though?”

“Absorbing energy means heating up. It must have limits on how fast it can shunt the heat away, especially with a portion clumped so densely.”

“All right. Phasers to wide beam, thermal effect. Fire on the area around the jelly.” A cone of phaser energy engulfed the clump of sail. Soon, it began to lose its grip and unroll. Before much longer, the star-jelly was released, flying off on a tangent. “Disengage tractor! Intercept that jelly, use the tractor to bring it under control. Then let’s all get the hell away from these things.”

Mercifully, there had been no fatalities in the battle, though Deanna and many of the Pa’haquel had needed Dr. Ree’s ministrations and two of the star-jellies had been seriously wounded. Ree had had no idea how to treat them, but the jellies had taken care of it, using their replication abilities to repair the damage to their schoolmates. It was a time– and energy-consuming process, and they had now towed their mates inward to feed on the star’s light.

Now Deanna stood up from the exam table and stretched, glad to be healed. Looking around sickbay at the Pa’haquel, though, she realized the damage to the alliance would be much harder to heal.

“It was a worthy experiment,” Qui’hibra said to Riker. “And it was a privilege to commune with the skymounts for a time. But it is not in their nature to hunt. Their fear overtakes them in battle, and then it overtakes us, rendering us useless.”

“Doctor,” Riker said, “is there a way to block the effect of the star-jellies’ hormones?”

Ree shock his elongated head, a humanoid gesture he had learned to mimic. “Not without disrupting the Pa’haquel’s own endocrine systems. The two species’ hormone receptors are too isomorphic. Suppressing the effects of the jellies’ hormones would mean suppressing many of the Pa’haquel’s innate emotional responses and behavioral instincts. They would be unable to function without, say, the fight-or-flight response or the desire to mate.”

“Then there is no choice,” Qui’hibra said. “The experiment is over. You will return us to our fleet, Riker.”

“Where you’ll do what?” Deanna countered, striding forward to confront him. “Try to go back to the old ways? Chase after star-jellies that you can no longer catch?”

“That is exactly what we should do,” Se’hraqua interjected from his bed. “We will find new ways to take the prey. The Spirit is challenging us, and we will rise to the challenge and restore the balance.”

“Hunter!” Qui’hibra barked, silencing him. The elder then turned back to Troi and Riker. “We will return to our fleet and regroup. We will assess other options. But this option is a failure. It is out of balance, and without balance there is no survival. We must find some other way. At the very least, we can still hunt other starbeasts with the skymounts we have left. So long as the livemounts agree not to try to liberate their dead.”

“And how long will that last?” she asked. “Another few generations, maybe, but with ever-diminishing numbers. What then?”

“Do you have an alternative suggestion?”

“I’m still not convinced the alliance was a failure. You and the jellies were getting along very well after a few false starts.”

“Only when we were not in combat. They have proven that they cannot handle that.”

“Tell that to the thousands of Pa’haquel they’ve killed.”

“They were in no danger from us—you saw to that. They can defend their own when they must, but when faced with danger they flee. This was an easy hunt, and they could not even rise to it.”

“You pushed them into it before they were ready, Qui’hibra. You tried to fight against their emotions rather than working withthem, accepting those emotions and directing them constructively.” She drove the point in forcefully, aggressively, knowing he would respect that, knowing she had to push it through his tough hide. “Because you were too proud to tolerate being made to feel afraid and weak. You pride yourself so much on this cold, stalwart image. The great hunter, carved from stone, never bending, never losing control. So you tried to force your will on the jellies and you ended up spooking the herd. You fought so hard against a perceived loss of self-control that you lost control of the situation.” He glared at her coldly—but he was listening.

So she went on. “Sometimes, Qui’hibra, yielding is necessary. Part of being strong is knowing when to trust in others’ strength, to place yourself in their hands. It’s part of any healthy relationship. A balancedrelationship.”

The elder remained silent for a moment, then spoke decisively. “We will return to our fleet and regroup. However, you and the skymounts may come with us, and we will explore the possibility of continuing the alliance, along with other options. But if you wish this alliance to resume, you must find a way for the skymounts to prove themselves equal to the Hunt.”

Deanna exchanged an uneasy look with Will. Even if she could help the star-jellies meet Qui’hibra’s requirements…was that really something she could forgive herself for doing to them?

Orilly Malar was so slow to answer her door that Jaza wondered if he would have to pull rank. But eventually the door slid open, and the Irriol looked up at him with her big, sad blue eyes. “Hello, Commander. What can I do for you?”

“May I come in?” Wordlessly, she acquiesced. When the door had shut behind him, he got right to the point. “Cadet, I’ve gotten stalled in my investigation of star-jelly evolution. I could use the help of a good exobiologist. Any idea where I could find one?”

“I am a fairly good exobiologist,” she said matter-offactly. “But I’m not a good security risk. Perhaps you should try someone else.”

“Come on, Malar. You’re not going to be made to attack me or anything. The star-jellies have no incentive to push you into that.”

“No—but what if I learned something that they needed to know? Something that could further disrupt the state of affairs in the Gum Nebula, something the captain would not want the jellies to know?”

“I doubt there’s anything in this line of research that could be harmful. If anything, it could be helpful to our current efforts. I’m trying to learn more, if I can, about how they were genetically modified eight million years ago. About whether it was done by someone else or by themselves. And about who else could’ve done it, and why. I keep thinking: back then, maybe five to ten million years ago, the main wave front of star formation in the Orion Arm would have been passing through what’s now Federation space. Our home region would’ve been much like this region is today. It stands to reason that worlds there would’ve faced the same threat from cosmozoans. And it stands to reason that some forerunner of the Pa’haquel would’ve been waging this battle then. What if the jellies were engineered as part of that effort? What if they were used as ships for battling cosmozoans, and have instincts and abilities that they no longer remember they have? If there were some way of demonstrating that, it could help convince the Pa’haquel to try the alliance again.”

Orilly pondered his words, then spoke uncertainly. “Pardon me for saying so, sir…but it can be unwise to start with a desired conclusion and search for evidence to confirm it.”

“Yes, I know, science should never have an agenda. Personally I’ll be happy either way—I just want to find some answers. I hate not knowing. But I’ve run out of places to look for evidence. I’ve had the computer searching through all our records, looking for scientific findings that might turn out to be connected to the star-jellies. Unexplained remains that could be star-jelly skeletons. Geological formations that were once their breeding pools. Ideally maybe the destroyed remains of a cosmozoan planet-killer with scars bearing the signature of star-jelly stings. But I’ve found nothing definite, nothing more than vaguely suggestive. And even that’s probably just my own agenda making me read things into the data.”

Orilly tilted her head, flexing her fingers thoughtfully. “It’s a big galaxy, sir. And the star-jellies can travel very far. The odds are that they originated somewhere else entirely.”

“I know. It’s just frustrating not to have the answers. The best I can do is send what I’ve learned back to Starfleet, and maybe someday, some ship exploring another part of the galaxy will find more answers. But I might be long gone by then. And it’ll always feel like I missed something…like I failed to know the star-jellies as well as I wished to.”

“Evolutionary history is always fragmentary,” Orilly said after a contemplative moment. “So much of the past is simply not preserved. So much of what we conclude is extrapolation and large-scale patterns, and many of the specific causes and pivotal events will never be filled in.”

“And that doesn’t bother you?”

“No,” she said. “My interest in life-forms…is not about their dead ancestors, but about the living beings in the here and now. I wish to know them, to commune with them, to sense their part in the gestalt of nature, and…and maybe feel a connection with them.” She was quiet for a moment, but he sensed she wasn’t finished. “A connection like I felt with the star-jellies. That was…” She trailed off. “Anyway, that is why I took up exobiology. Why I hoped I could make a career of it. To know life as it is, not as it was.”

Jaza studied her. “In other words,” he suggested, “what matters about a being is not what she did in the past…but what she does in the present, and in the future.”

She stared at him. “That…is not quite what I meant.”

“Maybe it should’ve been.”

“But…what can I do in the present and future to atone for—”

“Ah!” He held up a hand. “As it is, not as it was.”

She acquiesced. “What can I do in the present and future?”

Jaza smiled. “Well, you’ve asked the question. That’s always the best place to start.”

Chapter Sixteen

CLAN AQ’TRI’HHE LEAD SKYMOUNT, STARDATE 57211.9

This time, Qui’hibra had anticipated that the Conclave’s vote would not go his way. Not only had Riker’s plan apparently failed, but the membership of this Conclave was somewhat different from the first; they had moved closer to the heart of the starbirth zone, where there were more fleet-clans in range to join. The newcomers had not been swayed by his or Riker’s arguments at the previous session—and the vote there had been narrow even with that persuasion. Additionally, there was the information Oderi had brought him, courtesy of her fellow Rianconi, who were ubiquitous, often ignored and always listening. “Hunter Se’hraqua has been speaking to many elders and family heads since our return, Elder,” she had told him not long before the Conclave assembled. “Most are those who voted with us the last time. He has been trying to persuade them to approve aggressive action against Titan.”

Qui’hibra was aware of the proposal to take Titan’s sensor information by force. Still, he had said to her, “I know he is discontented, but I question whether he would act against his own elder so overtly. It would undermine what little status he has left.”

“Unless he had the backing of another elder, sir. He has been seen repeatedly with Elder Aq’hareq.” Aq’hareq! A hunter so stubborn, tough and sour that Death itself had taken a taste and spit out the rest more than once. A fierce traditionalist who would never accept any of Riker’s compromises. If he was guiding Se’hraqua, taking the youth’s undeniable passion and eloquence and giving it focus, then there was indeed cause for concern.

So once the Conclave convened, it came as no surprise when Aq’hareq proposed aggressive action and Se’hraqua rose to second it. “We have been told,” the youth said, “that the skymounts’ new knowledge of our existence, their new ability to sweep us from our mounts and leave us to die in space, means that we must abandon the Hunt. That we must turn our backs on millennia of tradition, on the one act that defines who we are as a people. I do not accept this!” Aq’hareq could have been making this case himself, but he was apparently content to use Se’hraqua as his stalking-horse. After all, everyone already knew where he would stand, so for him to say it would be unnecessary. It would carry more weight from a new quarter, especially from one of Qui’hibra’s own juniors, for that would undermine his position.

“These new developments,” Se’hraqua went on, “are simply a new challenge to be overcome. Yes, they increase the danger of the Hunt. But we are Pa’haquel! Do we fear danger? Do we fear death? No! It is the danger that gives the Hunt meaning! It is by risking our own lives that we earn the right to take other lives, by dying that we repay the Spirit for letting us kill. Thus is the holy balance preserved.”

“Do you say we were not in balance before?” Qui’hibra challenged. “We faced risk there as well. Even though the skymounts did not attack us, they could flee, or their armor could prove too strong. And failure in the Hunt could bring death.” Even as he said it, though, it sounded hollow. The truth was, the Pa’haquel had held an unfair advantage over the skymounts. As a pragmatist, he had been satisfied with that; but a part of him had never truly accepted the rationalizations he made now, feeling that their advantage belied their claims of reverence toward the skymounts. On some level he had to wonder if Se’hraqua was right, if facing the mounts in a truly fair battle would do them more honor. He could tell that his voice was not convincing, for he was no politician.

“Certainly that was so once,” Se’hraqua countered, surprising Qui’hibra with his diplomacy. Aq’hareq had coached him well. “But perhaps we have grown too skilled, too experienced. It has become too easy to kill skymounts, and we have grown complacent. That is why the Spirit sent us this challenge.”

“We have no shortage of challenges, as any survivor of the Hounding can tell you.” That, at least, he could say with conviction, and it reminded him of why battling livemounts able to defend themselves was not a practical course. “If we throw away too many lives, lose too many mounts in trying to take new ones, then we will be weakened for the other hunts, less able to keep the chaos at bay.”

“Only if we are as weak and unsuccessful as you assume, Elder. If we rise to this challenge, yes, we will lose hunters and mounts, but the ones that survive will be stronger and fiercer than before. We will be hardened by the fire, and we will not have to suffer losses as severe as we sustained in the recent Hounding and brancher battle.”

It was a good strategy, Qui’hibra realized: to capitalize on the elders’ loss and pain, to promise them that it would not have to come again. But it also opened a weakness which Qui’hibra was quick to exploit. “How dare you say that all those brave hunters were lost due to weakness and complacency? They fell only because the prey was mighty.”

“Or because there were too few of them,” said Aq’hareq. “Where were you for the Hounding, Qui’hibra?”

“I tried to reach it in time!” he shot back, furious. “We had taken too many losses. I was trying to rebuild our forces for the Hounding, but we were impeded.”

“By the interference of Titan!”Se’hraqua cried. “A ship which you could have destroyed easily. Many of us pleaded with you to do so, Elder. Our own beloved matriarch advised you to destroy them! Instead you dallied with them and indulged them, and we were cheated of our chance for glory in the Hounding!”

“Is this true, Matriarch Qui’chiri?” Aq’hareq asked cagily—a question he would not have asked had he not already known the answer.

Qui’chiri had no choice. She could not lie to a venerable elder, and Qui’hibra would not forgive her if she did. “I did advise Titan’s destruction, Elder.” A murmur rippled through the chamber. “But we could not have reached the Hounding in time even without Titan’s involvement, and any claim to the contrary is a lie!” The murmur grew louder, but fortunately Qui’chiri spoke over it rather than letting the Conclave grow distracted by the accusation. “And I now see that destroying Titanwould have been unwise! They did not intend what happened, and they are our best chance to remedy it.”

“Indeed they are,” came Aq’hareq’s smug reply. “And we would not want their ship destroyed now—for only by taking it intact can we retrieve the knowledge we need from its computers, or extract it from its crew.” A cruel laugh ran through the Conclave at the thought of how such extractions might be performed.

“The knowledge we need to do what?” Qui’hibra countered. “To resume hunting skymounts, to put everything back the way it was? That is a naïve hope. I understand the desire to go back to the ways we are used to. I share it. Tradition brings us comfort and certainty, and it is always easier to cling to it than to pursue change. But Riker was right—that which does not adapt does not survive. The balance haschanged, and we cannot restore it by trying to force it backward. We must find a new solution.”

“What solution?” asked Se’hraqua. “To fight alongside live skymounts? That has been tried and failed. As we all knew it would, for it is out of balance. Our life needs and theirs must compete; for one to live, the other must die. That is the way of the Spirit, the way of life.”

“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 Titanas 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.