Riker exchanged a look with Deanna, who was sitting up now too. He’s very serious, Will,she thought to him. Better play along.
Though he was tempted to drag his feet as a show of protest, Riker was eager to get answers, so he dressed and made his way to the bridge as quickly as possible, Deanna right beside him. The rest of the main bridge crew was also in the process of assembling as he arrived, presumably summoned by Hachesa.
“Elder Qui’hibra,” he greeted his intruder curtly, then looked at the others behind him, another male and a crestless female. “And these are?”
“My clan matriarch and daughter, Qui’chiri. And Hunter Se’hraqua, who is here to witness the cost of his negligence. There is no time for pleasantries, Riker—the Great Hounding has begun.”
Qui’hibra gestured at the screen with a small tilt of his head; clearly he was not one for melodrama. Riker stepped down to the center of the bridge for a better view—and his eyes widened.
On the screen, hundreds of Pa’haquel ships were swarming around something… immense.It was cylindrical, rounded, pocked like an asteroid, yet it was under thrust, firing discrete blasts of blue-hot plasma from a sort of rocket nozzle at the far end, and expelling jets from side openings to maneuver. Some of the jets seemed to be aimed at the attackers. Seven enormous spines extended outward from its body, each one the stem for a vast sail; the sails overlapped like flower petals to form a wide, diaphanous skirt around the creature’s body. It was clearly a living thing, and the Pa’haquel were clearly trying to change that, barraging it with heavy fire. No, not just the Pa’haquel—Riker realized that some of the attacking ships were different in design, not armored jellies but more conventional starships. But they were like wasps swarming around an elephant. He winced as a maneuvering jet hit a hunter skymount dead-on. The saucer was blasted away into an uncontrolled spin, leaking fluids into space. This was the Great Hounding? Some kind of mighty hunt to prove themselves? Why drag him all this way to show him this?
But then he noticed the rest of the picture. In the background, behind the raging battle, was a beautiful blue-green planet, clearly M-class. Tactical markers superimposed atop it pointed to ships that were too small to see at this range—ships that seemed to be swarming off the planet in droves. The sight was agonizingly familiar. It struck Riker that the asteroid-size creature seemed to be rotating, its plasma exhaust port slowly moving to point toward the planet. “Mr. Jaza…tell me what we’re looking at.”
“It’s taking place in an F9 star system six light-years ahead, sir. The creature is making course for the planet, using some kind of collimated plasma bursts for decelerational thrust. It reads eighty-three kilometers along the long axis, sir.”
“How much damage are the Pa’haquel doing to it?”
“Not much, sir. Its hide is ablating under the impacts, and the sails are taking substantial damage, but there are some extremely dense crystalline compounds in it. They’ll probably kill it eventually, but not without sustaining heavy losses. And, I think, not in time.”
Riker was beginning to realize what he meant. “Mr. Jaza…how many people are on that planet?”
“I estimate over two hundred million sentient life readings, sir. Maybe a few tens of thousands on the ships.” Only a tenth the population of Oghen…but that didn’t make it any easier.
“The ships belong to allies of ours,” Qui’hibra said. “Rianconi, Vomnin, Shizadam. Still more are on the planet, assisting in the evacuation. The Fethetrit aid us in the attack itself.”
Six light-years…there’s nothing we can do.“There won’t be enough, will there?”
“Not unless the Hounding can stop it in the next few moments.”
Indeed, it looked as if some progress was being made against the leviathan. A concerted attack upon one of the sail-petals, its sail already badly shredded, cracked it near the base of its stem. A whole cluster of Pa’haquel ships extended their tentacles to grasp it and break it fully free, long sheets of torn membraneous material trailing behind it. “Yes,” Qui’hibra muttered. “Now use it as a lance! Get around and drive it into the maw!”
But the leviathan was retaliating against the motes that had wounded it, firing maneuvering jets at them. Some were damaged, others—mostly the Fethetrit starships—destroyed outright. Riker contemplated the sheer amount of power that would be necessary to maneuver such an enormous mass through Newtonian reaction, and understood how those jets could be such devastating weapons. But they were feeble compared to its main plasma thruster. A thruster that was now aimed directly at the planet ahead.
“There’s…a massive energy buildup inside that thing,” Jaza reported in a rough voice. “But it isn’t firing the main jet…it’s letting the pressure build…oh, Prophets, here it comes….”
“Get the sail-spine into the maw,” Qui’hibra was chanting. “Foul the nozzle, at least knock off its vector!” But the remaining ships were struggling to maneuver the massive spine, barely even retaining their grip.
Then it happened. A flare of blinding blue plasma blasted forth from the leviathan’s maw, shot toward the planet at terrible speed. “It’s…an extremely dense mass of plasma,” Jaza said. “Traveling at…over one point two million kph. Impact in seven minutes.”
Riker turned to Qui’hibra. “Is there any way your people can deflect it? Dissipate it?”
“They will try” was all the elder said. He and the others watched raptly as several fleets broke off their attack on the leviathan to chase down the plasma projectile. But it took them time to catch up, and with each passing moment, the necessary angle of deflection to miss the planet became that much greater, that much harder to achieve. And since it was not solid, deflecting the entire mass would be even more difficult.
Once the ships caught up, they blasted at the plasma mass with their own stings, trying to disperse what they could of it. “The Fethetrit ships are firing tractor beams,” Jaza reported after a moment, “wide-beam, attempting to draw away some of the mass. Transporter activity…they’re beaming parts of it into their buffers…like bailing a lake with a bucket.”
“Everything helps,” Qui’hibra murmured, though he didn’t sound as though he believed it. “We fight the chaos every way we can, until one or the other falls.”
But the plasma mass drew ever closer to the planet. Eventually the skymounts broke off their attack and flew ahead, forming themselves into an array which they positioned in the plasma’s path. “They’re generating an intense magnetic field,” Jaza reported. “The energy readings I’m getting…”
“They are putting everything they have left into it,” Qui’hibra said.
Riker stared at him. “Then if this doesn’t work…”
“Until one or the other falls, Riker.”
As powerful as the magnetic field was, the plasma just had too much kinetic energy. The mass flattened out somewhat as it hit the field, but plowed through with no significant change in direction. The ships it directly engulfed simply ceased to exist; those on the periphery were swept along in the plasma’s magnetic wake, tumbling out of control. Riker had no idea if their inertial damping was strong enough for the crew to survive the acceleration…but they did not appear to be under intelligent guidance anymore.
After that, there was an agonizing wait. No one said a word. Riker barely remembered to breathe.
Then the plasma mass hit the planet.
The flare of light made his eyes water, but he couldn’t look away. What followed happened in agonizing slow motion. A vast cloud of ejecta, larger than nations, spewed into space at an angle; the impact had apparently been on a bias, digging a long gouge into the planetary crust, leaving a yellow-hot skid of molten land, molten homes, molten lives. Outward from the impact streak, a shock wave expanded visibly through the atmosphere, shoving clouds and weather systems aside, leaving dust and ash and fires in its wake. A nearby ocean was swept away, vaporized into steam, leaving bare ocean floor. A fireball roiled, blasting backward out through the swath of vacuum punched in the air by the plasma mass. Dozens of ships in orbit thrust madly to escape it; some failed, their telltales blinking out on the screen.