“Certainly, Commander.”

The honey-colored therapodian went about his task enthusiastically, clearly fascinated by the star-jellies’ extraordinary anatomy. The “corridors” turned out to be their respiratory channels; as roomy as they seemed, Deanna again had to remind herself that for a kilometer-scale creature they were the equivalent of narrow arteries. Although the jellies lived in a vacuum and fed largely on energy, they were still carbon-based life-forms, requiring air, water, and nutrients, which they periodically hoarded from life-bearing worlds, or converted from the raw matter they found in cometary clouds. A parallel set of circulatory conduits carried their equivalent of blood; Se’hraqua explained how they were flushed and converted as a water storage and delivery system for the “skymount” crews. Control of their bodily functions was attained by tapping their nervous systems. Jaza was more interested in learning about their gravitic, warp-drive, and replication/ transporter abilities, but Se’hraqua either did not know the details of those systems or did not care to go into them for Jaza’s benefit.

“Do you need to take special measures to preserve your kills from decay?” Ree asked.

“A few. Purging the death toxins, halting the metabolic shock from propagating too far—these must be done quickly for a successful reanimation. But they are spacegoing creatures, after all. At times, if low on energy, they may need to drift for centuries in hibernation before finding a star system to replenish them. It is their nature to be durable.”

“But I assume they do not last indefinitely, since you need to replenish them.”

“They serve as they are needed.” Deanna sensed a predator’s reluctance to admit weakness—or simply that of a young, proud male.

Before long, Jaza’s tricorder showed them to be traveling into the creature’s vast brain. Residual electrochemical potentials were still discharging within its mass, occasionally sending uncomfortable empathic spikes through Deanna’s mind, like being brushed by cold, dead fingers. Qui’hibra’s teams were hard at work under her direction; between Se’hraqua’s lecture to Ree and Jaza’s tricorder scan, it became evident that some teams were tapping into various neurological centers while others were performing efficiently brutal lobotomies, or rather lobectomies, cutting out components they didn’t need and having them taken away for later recycling. Deanna stared as fleshy hunks larger than she was were excised and carried away. There went the star-jelly’s memories, its galaxy-spanning experiences, its hopes, its capacity for love and delight—all chopped down into handy cubes of meat for easy disposal. Or perhaps consumption?

Diplomatic officer or not, she felt compelled to ask the question. “Are you sure that the skymounts see your…relationship in the same way you do? Is it possible they have a different view of being preyed upon?”

Se’hraqua fixed her in his aquiline gaze, blinking once. “Of course they flee the Hunt. All beings strive to live. But we must live as well. Such is the balance of creation. If we succeed in the hunt, the skymounts die. If they succeed in escape, we cannot sustain ourselves, and we die.”

“There are other ways of fulfilling your needs,” Jaza pointed out.

“It would not be the same. It would not be from them.”Se’hraqua stroked the wall with reverence.

“But if you cherish the skymounts so much,” Deanna asked, “why must you kill them? Is there no way you could cooperate, achieve a symbiosis?”

“You do not begin to understand. We honor their sacrifice. When we strike them down, we do so with deep gratitude and reverence.”

“I don’t see much reverence around here,” Keru interposed.

“This is a time for haste,” Se’hraqua snapped. “The rites are performed in their proper time.” He returned his gaze to Deanna. “Yes, it would be uplifting if we could share our life-forces, but such is not in the balance. What feeds us drains them. If we occupy them while they live, their immune systems teleport us away.”

“How did your…relationship with them begin?” Jaza asked. “You must have had another means of space travel before you encountered them.”

“Clearly your worlds have not been blessed by the skymounts. They breed on planetary surfaces. Quelha was such a world, once. Their sessile young burrowed their roots deep into our world’s skin, feeding on its warmth. With their gifts, their granting of desires, they drew in animals to live atop their shells, to roam and swim and fly among their tendrils and membranes.” He recited it as though quoting scripture. “When those animals died at the end of rich and happy lives, they gave their flesh unto the skymounts who had sustained them, and thus the mounts grew larger.

“We were savages when we found them, little more than animals with spears, struggling to survive. With their plenty, we were able to build a civilization, to devote ourselves to art and learning. Yet we grew greedy, and demanded too much from them.” He closed his eyes. “Many mounts did not survive. Fewer and fewer came from space to lay their eggs. To sustain ourselves, we had to learn to follow those few that remained when their time came to rise to space. While they lived, it could not be. But we were able to redeem their deaths, to make them live again and let us live as well. We found the balance, and thus the Pa’haquel way was born.”

Deanna granted him a moment of respectful silence before asking, “And what of Quelha? Do others of your kind still live there?”

“Quelha is long dead. Those who stayed were struck down by divine wrath, because they could not find the balance.” Deanna had to wonder: Had the starfaring Pa’haquel taken it upon themselves to be the agents of that wrath?

“Attention!” came a call from Qui’hibra, and Se’hraqua whirled to face his elder. Deanna sensed a twinge of hope that he was about to be assigned a less tiresome duty, but that quickly subsided when it became evident that the elder was addressing the entire crew. “Processing phase complete. All crews, confirm readiness for reanimation!”

One by one, reports came in, confirming their ready status. “Consider yourselves blessed,” Se’hraqua told the away team. “But stay silent and do nothing to interfere. This is a holy moment.”

The final reports came in. “All crews, stand ready,” Qui’hibra said, then spread his arms. “O Spirit of the Hunt, hear me! We pledge this kill to the holy balance. We took its life, not for malice, not for greed, but for the preservation of life, within our clan and among all those whom we protect.” His tone was matter-of-fact, not grandiose or florid; but neither was he merely parroting a script. Deanna felt sincerity in him, if not passion. He had done this many times, but it still meant something real to him.

“O spirit of the kill, accept our thanks for your life, and grant us the boon of your body. Let your death serve life, and thus maintain the balance as the Spirit wills. Let this reanimation show us your forgiveness. Our lives to the Spirit,” he finished, and all the others echoed it. “Now!”

The Pa’haquel workers squeezed the walls and worked the equipment they had attached to exposed brain tissue. After a moment, the chamber began to shudder, and the gravity fluctuated. Jaza set his tricorder to show an exterior view from Titan’s sensors. The star-jelly corpse had moved away from its killer and was accelerating.

Over the next few minutes, the Pa’haquel tested the various systems of their astrocoelenterate zombie, putting it through maneuvers, testing its replication systems, and so forth. They “reeled in” its remaining tentacles, curling them up in a spiral pattern in the ventral recess, and then activated its armored mode. On the tricorder screen, its translucent skin rippled with light and grew slowly opaque, soon achieving the dull metallic hardness of the hunter ships. At Qui’hibra’s next order, pulses of magenta light began to flow through its eight meridional fissures, slowly at first but then accelerating. Then a single, sustained burst of energy shot outward into open space.