“Back?”There was Will, his image on the sensation wall.
“Yes! I have to go back, try to talk some sense into Qui’hibra. He doesn’t want to do this, Will. I can reach him.”
The jelly shuddered. “They have opened fire,” Tuvok announced. Qui’hibra’s sting team must have successfully dug in their claws.
“You can talk to him later, Deanna. Right now let’s get out of here.”
“We may not get another chance, Will. He’s wavering now. These tactics rub his feathers the wrong way. But get him caught up in chasing us—in hunting us—and it’ll fire his instincts, harden his resolve. I have got to get back aboard that skymount now.”
“Oh, Prophets.”That was Jaza. “We’ve got a new problem, everyone. The Crystalline Entities are closing in. They’re heading right for the star-jellies!”
Shit!Riker thought. The temptation of so many star-jellies must have overcome the branchers’ fear of the graviton beam. “Hang on, Deanna. We’ll come get you out of there.”
“Sir!” Kuu’iut interrupted. “The hunters’ skymounts are pulling away from the jellies. They’re heading toward us at high speed.”
Riker realized they must have recovered quickly once they broke free of the draining effect. The hunters came up fast, flipping their ventral sides forward to face Titanand cutting loose with plasma stings. The shields shuddered under the impact. Without Deanna as leverage anymore, Qui’hibra must have opted for a direct assault.
Mere moments later, the branchers came within range of the jellies and began firing their feeding beams. The jellies tried to break and run, but the branchers were too fast for them, swooping around them in a tetrahedral englobement, penning them in. A feeding beam swept across one of them, and Will could feel Deanna’s resonant agony through their link.
“Lavena, close on the branchers! Tactical, target—” Another blow shook them, and another. Lavena tried to dodge around the Pa’haquel, but they kept themselves between Titanand the besieged star-jellies. The jellies remained trapped; each time one darted for an opening, a feeding beam struck at it, herding it back into the englobement.
“Riker!”Qui’hibra’s image appeared in an inset on the viewer. “Give me what I need and I will help you rescue your wife and crew. Refuse and I will prevent you from saving them.”Riker had been premature; Qui’hibra still had his leverage after all.
Again the branchers struck, and again Will felt the jellies’ agony hit Deanna. “Kuu’iut, hit the Pa’haquel, hard! Get us past them!”
Phasers and torpedoes lashed out from Titan.Kuu’iut, no slouch as a predator himself, went for the jugular, his beams and salvos targeting the weakest points, the meridional fissures and weapon emitters. But the skymounts moved swiftly and dodged, and continued to pound at Titan.One was struck a crippling blow and drifted off, but the others kept coming. Kuu’iut knocked another out of the fight, but still the stings pounded the shields, eating away at their strength. One particularly direct blow knocked Riker off his feet. Sparks flew from the ops console, and Dakal recoiled from the discharge, shielding his face. No matter how much Starfleet improved the surge protectors, there were still fundamental physical limits on what they could absorb.
Riker climbed to his feet and checked to make sure Dakal was all right. His face and uniform were a bit singed, but he was back at work already, reinitializing the console, his tough Cardassian hide serving him well. So Riker took a moment to judge his own condition. He seemed largely intact, but had sustained numerous scrapes and had a very sore left elbow. Belatedly, he sat down in the command chair and activated its restraint harness, ignoring Vale’s I-told-you-so glare.
And still the branchers’ feeding beams ripped at the jellies’ armor. The trapped jellies had begun returning fire, trying to blast an opening in the englobement. But they only succeeded in splitting two of the branchers into smaller units, which resumed their attack after mere seconds.
Meanwhile, the Pa’haquel’s stings were still eroding Titan’s shields to critically low levels. The ship rocked under a particularly severe impact, and Riker was grateful for the seat restraints. “Starboard phasers are down!” Vale cried. “Starboard impulse reactor in emergency shutdown! Life-support alarms on decks four through six!”
This isn’t working,Riker thought. Titancould stop the branchers with its graviton beam, if only it could reach the jellies. But Qui’hibra wouldn’t let him get near them, and even if he could, there was still the question in the back of his mind of whether he could allow that knowledge to fall into….
Wait.That was it! In a flash of insight, it all came together. The key was putting the knowledge into the righthands. Or rather, tentacles.
“Riker to Tuvok. Respond.”
“Tuvok here, sir.”
“Do you know the specs for the graviton beam we used on the branchers?”
“Aye, sir. I familiarized myself with it as a possible weap—”
“Never mind that! Just think about it. Focus on the specs. Show them to the star-jellies! Show them how to use it to fight the branchers!”
Titanshuddered under more stings. The jellies screamed psychically under more feeding beams. But then: “It is done, sir! The jellies are replicating the components now.”
Moments later, the branchers began to shudder and jerk away. Jaza superimposed a false-color effect on the viewer, making the gravity beams visible. Riker watched as the jellies struck at the branchers, holding the beams on them until they began to tremble. “Deanna, make them stop! That’s enough!” Seconds later, the beams broke off. But the branchers had had enough. One by one, they slinked away.
Riker noted that Qui’hibra’s fleet had stopped its attack. “What just happened, Riker?”the elder asked.
He met the Pa’haquel leader’s eyes. “I’ve just solved your problem, Qui’hibra. I’ve just given you a way you can use the live jellies in the Hunt, and become even more effective hunters than before.”
The raptor eyes narrowed. “Explain.”
“We’ve just given the star-jellies a kind of graviton beam that allows communication with the branchers. As you’ve seen, it can also be used as a weapon against them. If the jellies had sustained their attacks, then the branchers would have been completely destroyed.”
“So you offer us a better way to kill branchers? That is valuable, but it is not enough. There are too many other threats.”
“You’re not getting it, Qui’hibra. Look what happened here. We didn’tkill the branchers—we controlledthem.” He exchanged a look with Vale. “And with that power…they can be herded. Possibly even trained. As you saw before, we also have a way to feed them energy. Reward as well as punishment. And maybe communication as well, up to a point.
“This is what I’m proposing. The Pa’haquel resume their efforts to work with the live jellies. But instead of using them as battleships…you use them as sheepdogs.” Doubting the metaphor would translate, he elaborated. “They now have the means to control the branchers, and once I give them the specs for the energy beam, they’ll have the means to reward them as well. You use those tools to tame the branchers. Herd them away from worlds with intelligent life, and focus their hunger on another rich source of bio-energy: the cosmozoans that you hunt. Make the branchers your hounds. That way the jellies don’t have to go into combat themselves, and you turn one of your most powerful enemies into a powerful new weapon of your own.”