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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 spi
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 Dea
“Ninety seconds, sir,” Lavena told him.
“Will, look.” Vale gestured at another portion of the screen. The more intact spi
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 spi
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. Dea
We’re all right, Will. Save the others.
“Helm, move to intercept the other spi
“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 spi
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 Dea
Now Dea
“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?”