Troi grabbed his shoulder. “The jellies want to flee, not fight.”

He didn’t need her to tell him that; he could feel the panic building inside him. He refused to give into it. “No. Hunters, we must master this fear! Stand and fight! A few more hits will cripple it! Keep firing!”

A few of the mounts, including his own, moved hesitantly toward attack positions, while others hovered uncertainly, torn between fleeing and aiding their schoolmates. The resultant formation was a mess. “Pull it together! We must act as one!”

“The jellies are conflicted,” Troi told him. “They don’t know what to do. They’re starting to panic.”

“Do all you can to keep them calm, Troi.”

“They’re not ready for this, Qui’hibra! Let them run!”

No. He could not do that. It would mean giving in to the cowardice he felt inside him. True, it was hormonally induced, but that was all the more reason why it must be conquered. Unless the Pa’haquel’s courage could overcome the livemounts’ timidity, the Hunt could never endure.

But just then, disaster struck. The livemounts’ erratic courses had brought one too near the spinner’s outer perimeter. A plasma jet shot out from one of its nodules, blindingly bright, the hydrogen heated to fusion temperatures. It sliced across the livemount’s carapace, knocking it into a spin and leaving a glowing, blue-hot welt across its armor.

At that, the panic erupted through him at full force. He struggled to resist it, but to no avail. All he could think of was fleeing. He rushed to the nearest neural membrane wall, pushed at the nodules, not knowing or caring where he was going.

Then the ship shuddered, and a shroud fell across the sensation wall.

Riker watched in dismay as the star-jelly bearing Deanna and Qui’hibra began to be enmeshed. The school’s members were panicking, flying every which way, and that one, in trying to escape the mostly intact spinner that was attacking, had shot off in the direction of the damaged one from which the other star-jelly had been extracted. Apparently, even though much of its sail had been holed and many of its outer nodules destroyed, it still had enough control to have untangled itself. It reached out and snagged the jelly, beginning to engulf it. Its movements were slow and erratic, and the jelly almost broke free, but the spinner managed to hold on and wrap more layers around it, holding it more and more securely. Stings shot out, transporter effect shimmered, but one jelly alone couldn’t do enough, and the others were in panicked flight or crippled. “How soon before we get there?” he asked, striving to keep his voice level.

“Ninety seconds, sir,” Lavena told him.

“Will, look.” Vale gestured at another portion of the screen. The more intact spinner fired another plasma jet at a passing jelly, knocking it out of control, then fired a few other jets in the opposite direction in order to thrust a corner of it forward to snag the wounded beast. Now there would be two to rescue, at least.

On this vast scale, the attack came with stately slowness, so it was only moments later that Lavena reported, “Closing to engage, sir.”

“Drop out of warp.” Weighing the variables, he chose his target. “Target phasers on the damaged spinner. Sever the mesh around Qui’hibra’s jelly.” Deanna’s jelly.Was he playing favorites? Maybe. But this one would be the easier target; it was wounded, slow-moving, its sail already damaged. They could deal with it quickly and have more time to tackle the other. He glanced at Vale; she nodded, supporting his tactical call.

Phaser beams lashed out, sliced through layers of sail. Wisely, Kuu’iut chose to cut where the jelly’s sting had already burnt a hole through, widening the tear. Still, it was slow going; the mesh absorbed much of the phaser energy before it vaporized. “Tractor beams,” Riker ordered. “Pull that slit apart.” Kuu’iut split the beam in two and used it like a surgical spreader to widen the incision, tearing it further, slowly, laboriously. Finally the jelly wriggled out and shot away. Deanna?

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?”