No. Not again.Letting them have free rein would mean the Pa’haquel would suffocate in hard vacuum. It would mean ongoing conflict between the two species, and possibly untold death in generations to come if the cosmozoans were allowed to propagate too far. Tuvok would not accept that. He would not allow anyone else to suffer from his failures of control.
But how could he fight this? His mind was too weak, his shields inadequate.
Don’t fight—yield.Deanna’s mind, not through the link but an echo of memory. Something she had passed along to him in the meld was the concept that resistance was not the only form of strength. Sometimes being strong meant knowing when it was safe to yield, to trust in another’s power and give oneself over to it. That trust could be hard to give if one had been hurt before. But without that trust, that yielding and acceptance, there could be no partnerships, no marriages, no crews, no federations.
But that was the key, wasn’t it? Cooperation. The yielding went both ways. If he fought the jellies, they would fight him, and the struggle would deplete both their energies. But if he yielded to their passion, let it be a part of him, then his reason and judgment could be a part of them as well.
Very well,he thought. We will pursue the hunter fleet. We will save Deanna. But we will do it my way. We will not beam the Pa’haquel into space. Instead we will disable their vessels.
We will not fire on our dead.The jellies were adamant on that.
He shared their revulsion, and did not fight it. It did not matter, because he could still achieve his goal through reasoned strategy. That may not be necessary,he told them.
He spoke the rest aloud for the security team’s benefit. “Mr. Keru, hail Titan.Use the jelly’s console; it will be out of communicator range.”
Keru made the attempt, but only static came back. “I can’t reach them. Too much subspace interference.”
“Very well. We will make do. Here is the plan.”
Chapter Seventeen
Riker was beginning to think Qui’hibra had been right about the Crystalline Entities. There was no mind here, no will to communicate—just pure, ravening hunger.
As Titanhad neared the Entities, he had ordered Jaza to proceed essentially as Data had a dozen years ago aboard the Enterprise-D, generating a series of discrete graviton pulses from the tractor emitters, beginning at ten per second. The results had been the same as last time; the Entities had changed course and come to investigate the signal. Once he had felt they were close enough, he had ordered the pulses ramped up to twenty hertz, and as before, the Entities had come to a stop, seeming to look them over inquisitively. Riker had ordered the next phase, an increase to thirty hertz, at which point the vast crystal creatures had begun to respond with graviton pulses of their own. At this point twelve years ago, Captain Picard had grown hopeful that communication would indeed be possible, but Dr. Marr had sabotaged the effort, switching to the continuous beam that had destroyed the Entity. Afterward, Data had done his best to decrypt the signals they had received before its demise, but the translator had not had a sufficient baseline to work with. Riker had been hoping that this communication would add enough data to allow a viable translation matrix to be constructed.
But to the best of Jaza’s and the computer’s ability to determine, there had been little to the Entities’ gravitic calls beyond a simple sense of acknowledgment and curiosity. After a few moments of hesitation and contemplative twirling in place—which Jaza suggested to be a means of scanning Titanthrough different facets to gain variant spectral readings—the Entities had begun to advance on the ship. “Try modulating the beam again,” Riker had ordered. “Try forty per second.”
The Entities had paused for another moment, then resumed their advance. It was no use—they were too hungry, and had nothing of substance to say to their dinner. Riker had ordered a retreat, and the Entities had pursued. Now he was leading them away from the Proplydian and the star-jellies, wondering what to do next. The fact that they were closing so fixatedly on Titanwhen the Proplydian offered a richer feast for them suggested to Riker that they were not guided by much in the way of intelligence, only instinct and immediate gratification.
He resisted the thought, though. Accepting that they were dumb animals would be too comforting, make it too easy to embrace his desire to lash out and destroy the things. What if he was wrong? What if their pursuit of Titansuggested just the opposite, that they were intelligent enough to be motivated more by curiosity than the prospect of a large meal?
On the way here, Riker had reviewed the research and records on the Crystalline Entities, and found only uncertainty. The first Entity had been brought to Omicron Theta by Lore, Data’s twisted and malevolent prototype, who had then lured it to attack the Enterpriseupon his discovery and reassembly. Lore had given the appearance of conversing with the Entity, but there was no other evidence to suggest that the life form was capable of understanding verbal communication. Only the graviton-pulse method had gotten any response from it at all. In Data’s logs, he had speculated that Lore had actually used some other means to train the Entity to respond to the sound of his voice, in much the way that a dog or horse was trained—although given Lore’s proclivities, Riker doubted his training methods had been particularly humane. Did that mean it lacked intelligence, though, or simply that its intelligence was not a type geared toward verbal communication?
Either way, though, it suggested that there was a way to train these beasts. Maybe it was time for a little negative reinforcement. “Activate the graviton beam again,” he ordered. “Give them a continuous, oscillating pulse for five seconds. The same frequency Dr. Marr used.”
Jaza and Vale looked up at him sharply. “Five seconds, sir?” Jaza asked.
Riker nodded in reassurance. “I just want to swat them across the nose.”
“Swatting, sir.” On the screen, the Entities wavered in their pursuit and came to a dead halt.
“All stop,” Riker ordered. “Let’s see what they do.”
The Entities hovered there for a moment, then resumed their approach. “Jaza, another two seconds.” This time they came promptly to a halt.
“It seems to be working,” Vale said. “Now that we have the stick, should we try the carrot?”
He looked at her. “You mean the energy beam we tried before? I’m not sure I want to risk that yet.”
Before she could answer, a beep came from the tactical console. “Multiple ships approaching,” Kuu’iut reported. “It’s Qui’hibra’s fleet. Arrival in seventy seconds.”
Damn.The subspace interference must have hidden their approach. But what are they doing here?“Hail them. Lavena, move us away from the Entities.”
A moment later, Qui’hibra’s face appeared on the screen. “Elder Qui’hibra,” Riker said. “You were supposed to be meeting Commander Troi at the Proplydian.”
“We saw you taking on the branchers, Riker. It is an unwise thing to do alone.”
“We’re managing just fine, thanks.”
“So it would seem. I am curious to know how you got them to stop. Once we arrive, you can demonstrate your method.”
Riker was reluctant to show them something that could so easily be used to kill the Crystalline—oh, hell, the branchers. “I think it’s more important to resume negotiations with the star-jellies. Commander Troi will be—”