Текст книги "Orion's Hounds "

Автор книги: Christopher Bennett

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Chapter Eight

Elder Qui’hibra studied the sensation feeds with mixed feelings. The displays projected on the control atrium’s wall showed him the telltale signatures of a successful mating. On the one hand, he was glad the mating had gone well; he hoped the embryo would grow into a large, powerful skymount which would serve the Pa’haquel in generations to come. But it was frustrating that the energy fueling the mating had come from a kill that should have been serving his clan in the here and now. Those fools in their little metal toy of a starship had proven more of a nuisance than he’d expected, and would need to be taught the error of their ways soon, one way or another, lest they bring more disruption to the balance.

Next to him, Qui’chiri shivered. Qui’hibra allowed himself a private moment of amusement at his daughter’s melodramatic gesture. He knew that by now her hide had grown as tough as his; she’d inherited that from him, along with her mother’s beauty and genius for fleet management. She was simply offering a critique of his tactic: hiding the fleet in the breeding system’s outer cometary belt, one skymount at each of the most likely departure vectors, their shells camouflaged as ice and with internal heat reduced to minimum. It was not a particularly comfortable tactic, and he had overheard some griping, mainly among the young Pa’haquel males and the Vomnin and Shizadam crew members. (The Rianconi never complained about anything, though Qui’hibra suspected the cold was most troubling to their dainty, half-bare bodies. Conversely, the Fethetrit were prone to complain about everything, but their thick red fur gave them an edge here.) But if Qui’chiri’s only concern were her own comfort, she would not have wasted his time or her own with such weakness.

As he expected, a moment later she followed the gesture with words. “I still question the wisdom of this, Father,” she said. “To attack them so close to a breeding world…”

“So long as we do not make a pattern of it, the risk is manageable,” he replied. “And you know what is at stake, probably better than I. We lost a mighty mount to the cloud-shimmers, and several brave families. Our numbers are even more badly depleted than before. We must replenish them in time for the Great Hounding.”

She bowed her head briefly at the reminder, but then spoke impatiently. “You know that we will never get there in time, no matter how hard you wish it.”

“True.” It was hard for him to admit, but the numbers were undeniable. “But such a massive Hounding will result in many losses among the other fleet-clans. I want us strong enough to fill the void, so the balance may be kept. Not to mention the balance within our own fleet,” he reminded her.

“Yes, yes, we still have too many fertile females and unwed males to pair off, and they need somewhere to go.” She parroted the familiar argument in singsong tones. Neither of them mentioned the unthinkable: lose too many more skymounts and they would have to be absorbed into another fleet, shamed and subordinate. The shame of missing the Great Hounding would make it even worse. “Spirit deliver us from an excess of young males impatient to start their own families. The regular number is bad enough.” Qui’hibra let out a tiny laugh, one that probably only Qui’chiri knew him well enough to recognize as such. That youthful ambition had served him well, had let him win a prime mate and build this proud fleet-clan; but he was glad to have outgrown that contentious phase. He too had needed to wait for his chance to split off from his birth-skymount and start a subclan of his own, and his impatience had made him a major discipline problem for the elder of his small, struggling fleet.

“But at least that is a risk we can cope with,” Qui’chiri went on. “If we were to drive the skymounts from a breeding world this fine, it could cause a major population drop for generations to come.”

“But since it is such a fine world, they would not abandon it easily. And we will not attack too close to the system. When a departing school is spotted, we will trail it for as long as we can.”

“At the risk of losing it.”

“Another manageable risk.”

“Like allowing that Titanship to continue meddling?”

“Others have meddled in the Hunt before. The Hunt continues. The balance is kept.”

“These seem to have a closer rapport with the skymounts than most. They concern me.”

“Their intentions are good, if arrogant and ignorant. I do not wish them harm if I can avoid it.”

“Nice to say in theory. I am a female, I have no time for abstractions. And as you say, we have little margin for error, this close to a Hounding. I say kill them mercifully quick, commend their souls to the Spirit, and move on to the next crisis.” That was Qui’chiri—reliably pragmatic to the end, an ideal female. It was what he cherished about her. When his last wife—a competent matriarch, but nowhere near the level of his first, Qui’chiri’s mother—had died, Qui’chiri, as the most senior surviving female of the Qui’ha line, had been forced into the role of clan matriarch well before her time, but had borne the responsibility magnificently. If only he had the luxury, he would dote over her shamelessly and devote himself to singing her praises. Instead, most of their conversations were about the business of the clan and the hunt. But that was the language they both spoke best, so it was better that way.

“It is an option,” Qui’hibra told her. “But the Hunt is for their good as well, even if they do not accept it.”

“And if they disrupt the balance and the chaos takes hold, they will die just the same, and many others with them. Better they die for the right reasons.”

“Better still if we can make them see wisdom. Then they could prove an ally.”

“All right,” Qui’chiri said. “That is practical, I can support it. But the moment it becomes a choice between killing them and losing another skymount—”

“They die, of course.”

“Of course.” She gave his neck feathers a quick, affectionate preening. “I had no doubt. Good to have it said, though.”

Just then, the Shizadam crew member monitoring communications turned to him. “Elder, we have a hue and cry from Skymount Tir’Shi. A school is nearing the system on a vector within their field.”

“Inbound, you say? Not outbound?” he asked.

“Verified. A school of thirteen members, inbound at sublight.” Qui’hibra was irrationally disappointed. He’d been hoping for a rematch with the school they had fought before. Of course it was natural to expect that school to remain in-system for a time, recharging its energies and ensuring that its offspring settled in well. Still, that school owed him blood, and he wouldn’t feel the balance had been truly restored until he could claim it.

But the fleet needed new mounts now, regardless of their pedigree. “Very well,” he said aloud. “Continue tracking, then follow them at the edge of sensation range. Once a comfortable distance has been gained, the rest of the fleet will warp to meet you and we will attack.”

“So…why do you hate Cadet Torvig?”

Ranul Keru glared at the tall, atypically slim Tellarite across from him. For the umpteenth time, he cautioned himself not to rise to the bait. “I don’t hate him,” he replied in a level tone.

“Liar. How else do you explain these absurdly harsh discipline recommendations you made, hmm? Confinement to quarters? Revoking of security clearances? Possible transfer? What do you think this is, the Spanish Inquisition?” Counselor Pral glasch Haaj didn’t conduct his sessions like any other therapist Keru had ever known. One would think that the argumentative approach favored by Tellarites would serve to put patients on the defensive, making it harder for them to trust their counselor and open up about their problems. But Haaj had a way of making it work—of exposing people’s mind games and preconceptions, deflating their illusions, and maneuvering them into self-contradictions that forced them to question their assumptions. And he did it without the noisy bluster of the stereotypical Tellarite, though with just as much arrogance. Rather than shouting in anger, he delivered his barbs with withering dryness in a smooth, cultured tenor voice.

“What he did was serious,” Keru countered. “And he doesn’t seem to care that it was wrong.”

“Wrong? How? No harm would’ve come of it.”

“That’s not the point. It was incredibly thoughtless of him to attempt to infest people with, with nanoprobeswithout considering their reactions.”

“Oho. Nanoprobes,is it? Naa-no-prrobes,”Haaj said, mocking Keru’s weighty delivery. “Not simply nanites, which everyone knows have been routinely used in medicine and research practically since the Dark Ages. No, these were naa-no-prrobes.I can practically hear the italics. Tell me, Mr. Keru, what exactly was it about these microscopic monstrosities of Mr. Torvig’s that warranted such melodrama?”

Keru glared at him. “You think this is about him being a cyborg? That I’m treating him unfairly because he reminds me of the Borg? Counselor, I’m not a bigot.”

“Well, you’re certainly not a smallot.” Haaj looked over his massive frame. “Good grief, I’m amazed you were never joined. A whole family of symbionts could’ve set up house in there with room for guests. I’m sorry, that was small of me. Well, proportionately. Now where were we?”

“You were calling me a bigot.”

“Excuse me, whocalled you that? I’m sure the word never crossed mylips. But since you bring it up…”

Keru sighed. “All right, I admit, the sight of Torvig makes me uncomfortable. Frankly it makes a lot of people uncomfortable, and he’s well aware of it. Yet he deliberately chose to take an action that would provoke that very unease.”

“Ohh, I see. Well, we can’t have that. Challenging people’s prejudices? That way lies madness, surely. Better to conform, to downplay your uniqueness and just try to fit in. After all, that’s how the Trill did it up until a decade or so ago, right? And we all know how well that worked out for you lot.”

That struck a nerve. For centuries, the joined Trill had kept the existence of their symbionts a secret from the rest of the galaxy, afraid that other humanoids would see them as parasites holding their humanoid hosts in thrall, or as inferior creatures to be exploited or dissected. The truth had come out about a dozen years ago, and had been better accepted than the Trill had feared. But keeping secrets was a longtime habit of the joined Trill leadership, stretching back to an ancient and horrible act of genocide thousands of years in the past, one which the Trill elites had tried to erase entirely from their history out of the shame they felt at the act. More recently, they had concealed the fact that half the humanoid population was fit for joining rather than a tiny fraction, for fear that the many would covet the symbionts of the few, steal and trade them as commodities, and hate and persecute their possessors. Three years ago, the weight of all the secrets had reached the breaking point, culminating in a violent uprising by a radical unjoined faction, the exposure of all those buried secrets, and the murder of the majority of the symbionts. So Keru had to concede that trying to conceal one’s true nature for fear of how others would respond was not a very healthy thing to do.

“Okay,” he said. “That’s not what I meant to say. What I meant was, there are better ways to assert your individuality than deliberately provoking others. Maybe that kind of, I don’t know, activism has its place, but not on a Starfleet vessel. I can’t sanction deliberately disruptive behavior no matter what its motives. And that’s still true regardless of my Borg issues. I admit I don’t exactly have warm and fuzzy feelings about cyborgs, but I’m not letting that affect my work. You should know that. I’ve dealt with those issues.”

“No, you haven’t.”

“Yes, I have.”

Haaj shook his head. “Haven’t.”

“Look, we’ve been talking about it for the past few weeks!”

“Talking about what?”

“About…about Oghen. About T’Lirin.”

“T’Lirin was a Borg? Imagine my surprise.”

“No, no!” He reined in his frustration. “About having to leave her behind. Having to admit that, that sometimes you have to make that choice. Like Worf did with Sean.” For years, Keru had resented the Klingon for what he’d done, for killing Keru’s lifemate rather than trying to save him from Borg assimilation, as Picard had been saved, as Tuvok’s former shipmate Annika Hansen had been. The events during the evacuation of Oghen, in which Keru had been forced to leave Lieutenant T’Lirin to die in order to save the rest of his team and a number of refugees, had forced him to reconsider those beliefs, and to reevaluate his bitterness toward Worf.

At first, he had been reluctant to seek help in this from Titan’s counseling staff. He had chosen instead to talk it out with his best friend, Alyssa Ogawa. But Alyssa was a medic, and had insisted that she wouldn’t serve him as well as another professional, one trained for such services. “If your leg is broken, you don’t go to your friend, you go to a doctor,” she’d told him. “This is no different. The mind needs maintenance and care just like any other part of the body, and if you’re smart, you’ll get it from someone who’s qualified to provide it. The best way I can help you, Ranul, is by sending you to them.” She had convinced him, but he hadn’t been sure which counselor to talk to. Deanna Troi, having been Worf’s former lover, was too close to the issue. And Keru had trouble taking the toylike Huilan seriously. He realized that was a prejudice in itself, a hangup he needed to overcome, but dealing with that could get in the way of his other problem. So he’d chosen Haaj. After the first session, he’d wondered if he’d made a mistake; yet he’d kept coming back regardless. There was something draining yet refreshing about his contentious sessions with Haaj, not unlike sparring in the gym.

“So you’ve dealt with that, have you?” Haaj said now, in his usual skeptical tone.

“Yes, I have.”

“You’re all right with having to leave someone behind to die.”

“If I have to, yes.”

“And when do you have to?”

“When it’s for the greater good. When it has to be done to save more lives.”

“Ahh, I see. So you’ll sacrifice the individual for the good of the whole.”

“If necessary.”

“Oh, so that’swhat you mean by dealing with your Borg issues! You’ve decided that the individual really is irrelevant after all, that only the collective matters. Well done, lad, you’ve convinced me. Where do we sign up to be assimilated?”

Keru gaped at him. “No! God, no! What I’m saying, it’s entirely different! What happened on Oghen—I didn’t just casually throw T’Lirin’s life away like some cog in a machine. I agonizedover that decision.”

“But you made it anyway.”

“Yes,” he said, wincing.

“After swearing to yourself that you’d never, ever contemplate such an act, because that’s the way the Borg do things. Well, that tells us what your word is worth, doesn’t it?”

“I—” Keru realized he had no ready answer. He sat silently for a time under Haaj’s querulous stare, contemplating what had been said. “So…you think I’m taking my own guilt out on Torvig? Treating him like a Borg because I’m afraid I’m turning into one myself?”

“Don’t ask me. We’ve been talking about what you think.”

Again Keru was slow to answer. “Maybe…I don’t know. I guess that’s something I need to think about.”

“Finally. Something penetrates that thick skull. I was starting to wonder if you could hear me from way up there.”

“But it doesn’t change my job. Torvig is a discipline problem. He violated numerous regs, and I offered a recommendation on how to penalize him. But it was just a recommendation. The final decision was up to Riker and Vale, and they went with a lighter discipline. So whatever biases I may have…they’re just my problem, because they don’t determine the kid’s fate.”

“I see. So because you don’t make the decisions, it’s all right for you to project your self-loathing onto him. Well, I’m sure he’ll be glad to hear that.”

“I didn’t say that! I said it isn’t about how I do my job.”

“So? Why should I care how you do your job? Do I look like the first officer? You came here to deal with what’s going on in your mind.”

“But you were the one who brought Torvig up!”

“And you were the one who gave me reason to.”

Keru glared at Haaj, forced to admit that, as usual, he had a point. He had let his state of mind influence his discipline recommendation, and that was what had brought it into Haaj’s purview. “All right. So I have a problem, and I need to deal with it. Where do I start?”

“Well, that’s not my problem. Not till next week, anyway. Your hour’s up. Go on, shoo! I’ve got other patients waiting, and with you in here there’s barely room enough for me.”

Once the door shut behind Keru, he had the realization that it hadn’t been a full hour. And he was fairly sure he was Haaj’s last patient of the day. But after a moment, he realized there was method to Haaj’s meanness. Now that he’d made a discovery about himself, Haaj was giving him time to process it. The wiry Tellarite had taken the action that helped his patient the most, just as he always did.

Keru smirked, realizing how much he liked the guy.

Aili Lavena swam beneath a star-jelly, feeling more alive than she had in months. Kestra II’s hydrothermal lakes were warm and comforting, rich in oxygen, and just alkaline enough to lend an interesting tartness to their water.

And at last Aili was able to do her job without needing that horrid hydration suit. She didn’t have the pleasure of being nude, though; she was on duty, and thus wore a minimal uniform, a halter-style swimsuit held on by shoulder straps so as to leave her dorsal crests free. But it was still a delight, at last being able to join an away mission that made use of her species’ particular gifts.

And the realm in which she swam was amazing, too. This sessile young jelly was less than half-grown, and maybe about a century old. The eight nodes that made up its body at this age formed an island half a kilometer across, atop which had grown a lush ecosystem. The rest of Commander Troi’s away team was surveying it now, with its consent; though still young, the jelly had reached full sentience and learned much of the universe from its starfaring elders. But Aili alone was getting to see its underside. Eviku, who descended from aquatic ancestors, was also doing his part to survey the lake, but he couldn’t dive as deep or last as long without oxygen as she could.

Well, perhaps “underside” was an exaggeration, for the true underside floated only slightly above the lakebed, and the space underneath was choked with thousands of tendrils in addition to the eight immense geothermal taproots that bored deep into the magma flows below. Aili was exploring more off to the side, though still within the bounds of what the creature’s ultimate size would be. Indeed, she could legitimately say she was within the jelly itself. Extending from the island, forming the framework of its ultimate saucer shape, were eight radial vanes of staggering size. The vanes consisted of a dense lattice of tendrils of all sizes, catching matter from the winds as well as providing a framework for vines, small animals and avians to climb on. Between them grew a tangle of fibers and struts, growing out across the water’s surface and down below it, further anchoring the growing creature and extending the reach of its self-sustained ecosystem. Beneath the water, the network of its growing body had become the basis of a complex ecology like that of a coral reef or a deep-sea thermal vent on Pacifica or Earth. Schools of fish darted among its tendrils, and Lavena playfully chased after some of them, leaving her wrist-mounted tricorder to work on its own. They proved elusive, though, and darted through a narrow gap which she couldn’t swerve in time to avoid. Her shoulders wedged into it, and she struggled to break free.

To her surprise, though, after a moment one of the tendrils shimmered with magenta ripples and dematerialized, setting her free. “Thank you,” she said, sobered by the reminder that this was a self-aware ecosystem, conscious of the needs of everything that inhabited it and acting to provide for them. It was how the jellies drew so many species to live among them, an irresistible lure. Nearby, she could see more purplish shimmers, almost looking like reflections of light in the water, as the jelly provided plants for a group of whirling starfish-like creatures to dine on. Such a thing could be the perfect trap, Lavena realized—it could draw in animals with their heart’s desire, then beam their constituent molecules into itself as raw material for its growth. But the jellies grew so slowly, or so Jaza had explained, that they could easily wait for the animals to die and decay naturally.

More than that, though, they seemed to genuinely care about their nests, feeling a responsibility—even in youth—to give back to the ecology that nursed them. Thinking about it left Aili feeling abashed, and she decided to swim to the surface and get her mind off of it.

But when she breached the surface and got her bearings, she found Deanna Troi nearby, sitting on one of the jelly’s tendrils with her boots beside her, dangling her bare feet in the water. “Hello, Aili,” she said. “The water is marvelously warm, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Aili replied. She tried to hide her unease from the commander, but knew it would be futile. “Commander…I need to tell you something. About…what you saw…with Dr. Ra-Havreii…”

Troi studied her. “Ensign, I don’t pry needlessly into the private lives of my crewmates.”

“Of course not,” Aili was quick to say. “But…I just didn’t want you to think that I was…flaunting my sexual activities before you. I have no intention of doing that, of doing anything to make you or…or the captain uneasy with me.”

Deanna smiled. “Aili, I have no reason to be uneasy about it. You and Will had a harmless fling two decades ago. If that sort of thing bothered me, I never would’ve married him.” She lowered herself languidly onto one side, propping up her head with one fist, to bring herself closer to Aili’s eye level. “I think we both know that I’m not the one who’s bothered. I think we both know what Captain Riker doesn’t—about the difference between amphibious and fully aquatic Selkies.”

Aili stared at her, motionless except for her gill-crests, which reflexively undulated to maintain waterflow across them. “Then…you know?”

“I know that in your amphibious phase, you’re supposed to devote yourselves to procreation and parenting. That purely recreational sex is something you’re supposed to save for your aquatic phase, once you’ve discharged those obligations. I also know it doesn’t always work that way in practice.”

“Yes,” Aili said in a small voice. “Especially where offworlders are involved. They find us more alluring in amphibious phase…because they can mate with us more easily in the air, and because our breasts are enlarged then.” She gestured toward her own four small breasts, which no longer needed to produce milk and had thus flattened out to enhance her streamlining. “Often they don’t understand the difference between our phases…and we’re often content not to tell them.”

“Understandable,” Troi said. “To be expected to be so responsible all the time…then to look at your aquatic elders and see them free to romp and play, to be totally free in their sexuality…it’s a natural temptation. Not just the desire to be free from responsibility, but the desire to ‘act grown-up,’as it were.”

“But giving into that temptation is…somewhat scandalous.”

“But does that actually stop anyone from doing it anyway?”

“Rarely,” Aili admitted. “After all, they’re offworlders. They’ll go away and no one will be the wiser. And you never have to see them again.”

“Unless you decide to join Starfleet…and end up on a ship commanded by one of them.”

“Well, there’s that.” Aili looked away. “It’s just that…it was inappropriate. Not for him—I was an adult, fully mature by human standards—but for a Selkie it was improper and irresponsible, to spend my energies on a human lover rather than my children. And if it were known that Will…that the captain had participated in my impropriety, it would reflect badly on him. And I don’t want that, ma’am.”

Troi smiled. “I understand. Will’s former partners tend to remember him very fondly.”

“Well…truth be told, I don’t remember him that clearly at all.”

“Really!” Troi seemed mildly offended on her husband’s behalf, though there was humor in it.

“It’s just…there were so many. I was…very irresponsible back then. More than most. I was a poor mother, a poor caregiver. I wanted to put that behind me, to make up for it. That’s why I joined Starfleet. Even though I knew I might encounter…various old partners again. I’m a different person now, I figured I could handle that. But to have the captain himself be one of my…I’m just concerned how it would reflect on him.”

Deanna reached out and clasped Aili’s shoulder. “Well, your secret is safe with me. No one else needs to know you were intimate with Will, and Will doesn’t need to know about the…inappropriateness of it. After all,” she said with steel in her voice, “it’s not like he’s ever going to try it again.”

Aili would have sighed if she still breathed. “Thank you, Commander. I’m so relieved that you understand.” She smiled. “Would you like to join me for a swim? You were right, the water’s wonderful.”

But Deanna had suddenly grown distracted, looking skyward. A shadow passed across the sun, and Aili looked upward. Above them, a gigantic star-jelly hovered, a vast dark cloud with a halo of refracted light limning its edges. Wispy tendrils extended downward from it like rays of sunlight breaking through clouds. “Oh, no,” the commander breathed. Then she tapped her combadge and scrambled to pull her boots back on. “Troi to Titan.”

“Go ahead.”

“Will, I’ve just been informed—another school of jellies is being attacked.”

Riker had been just about to order the away team beamed aboard when, with a shimmer of purple, they materialized on the bridge. All but one, that is. Deanna’s eyes scanned the others—Jaza, Eviku, Chamish, Rriarr—and she struck her combadge. “Troi to Lavena. Are you aboard?”

“Yes, Commander, in my quarters,”came her response a moment later, her voice oddly modified by the underwater acoustics. “They beamed up my drysuit too.”

“Report to the bridge, Ensign,” Riker said, then turned to Deanna, barely hearing the Selkie’s acknowledgment. She spoke in response to his questioning look.

“The jellies are impatient. They want us out there as quickly as possible.”

“Out where? Coordinates of the attack, Mr. Jaza?”

The Bajoran was already at his console, scanning. “Three-two-one mark 42, point-eight light-years distant. A school of thirteen under attack by…looks like most of Qui’hibra’s fleet. Yes, the rest are on their way to intercept.”

Riker turned to Axel Bolaji at the conn. “Chief, time to intercept, best speed?”

“Fourteen minutes, sir. The brown dwarf’s gravity complicates departure angles at warp.”

“Damn. All we can do is watch.” By now Jaza had a high-magnification image on the screen, courtesy of long-range sensors. “Take us out of orbit anyway, helm, best speed to intercept. Lieutenant Rager, try hailing the Pa’haquel fleet.”

“Hailing…no response, sir.”

On screen, the jellies began withdrawing their tentacles, flipping over and materializing their armor. “Have they decided to fight instead of run?” Riker asked, knowing it was unlikely.

“They still can’t bring themselves to attack,” Deanna told him. “They know now that something else is controlling the corpses—thanks to us.” Thanks to Tuvok,Riker amended, though he knew the Vulcan was not to blame for letting the information slip. “The school comes from outside the system, but the news has been spread telepathically. But they still can’t desecrate them. They have a wounded member who can’t go to warp, and they’re staying to try to protect it.”

Before long, the only way to tell the groups of armored jellies apart visually was by their behavior—whether they fired or not, whether they defended or menaced the injured, unarmored member. “Is their armor protecting them?” Riker asked as he studied the one-sided battle.

“Only some,” Jaza said. “In fact, the armor’s composition seems to be in flux…like they’re improving their defense against the plasma stings as they go.” A pause. “But the Pa’haquel are adjusting the stings to compensate, upping their intensity.” And they clearly knew the most vulnerable points to strike—apparently along the meridional seams in the armor. Riker and the crew watched helplessly as several hunter ships focused their blasts along a single seam in one jelly’s armor until it split, spilling a roseate cloud of plasma.

Deanna and Chamish both gasped at that moment, and Deanna sagged against him. “Dead?” Riker asked with sympathy.

“Yes. I’m…doing my best to block out the pain…but there are hundreds of jellies in the system, and they wantme to share in it. They want us to do something, to tell them what we know so they can see these attacks coming and get away in time. They don’t understand why we won’t help them. They’re begging us, Will.” Her voice was rough despite her best efforts to block out the emotional onslaught.

But Riker realized something, and turned to Chamish. “Lieutenant, you feel it too?”

The Kazarite widened his dark eyes, and spoke in a gentle voice that belied his somewhat feral, simian appearance. “Yes, sir. Perhaps the inhibitor is less effective on my species.”

“Or maybe it just isn’t strong enough.” He turned to Vale. “Commander, contact all the telepaths on board, find out if they’re being affected too.”

“I’ve already gotten calls from Savalek and Orilly, confirming it. Sickbay reports T’Pel is reacting too.”

“How bad is it?” Riker asked Chamish.

“Not severe yet…but they are pressing… aah!”On the viewer, another jelly’s armor shell cracked open. With the defense formation scattered, enough shots got through to finish the defenseless jelly as well. “Please, Captain…they want me to… Iwant to help them…I advise you to relieve me of duty, sir.”