“About half a light-year,” Riker replied.

The counselor shook her head. “We have to move,” she said emphatically, coming down to Riker’s level of the bridge. “The star-jellies are coming to meet us.”

“You made contact.”

“Yes. They’re wary, but they’ve heard of what we did for them at Deneb, so they’re willing to talk.”

Riker raised his brows. “Always nice to have good references.”

“But we can’t rendezvous this close to a Pa’haquel fleet. We need to get out of here, meet them en route.”

The captain nodded, accepting her urgency. “Do you have a course?”

“They’re coming in from the protostar cluster at 54 mark 223. They should be here within half an hour.”

“Helm, you heard. Set an intercept course and engage at warp six.”

“Aye, sir,” Lavena said, and bent to it.

“In the meantime, you can report on what you learned. Senior staff to the observation lounge,” he ordered.

Most of the senior staffers were already on the bridge, save only Keru and Ra-Havreii, so it didn’t take them long to assemble. Vale took a moment to get a cup of coffee before the meeting started, and sipped it absently as Troi began her report. “The gestalt technique was a success, but it shouldn’t be necessary anymore. Now that I’ve gotten their attention, they can read my thoughts and send theirs to me. I should be able to interpret for them.”

“In that case,” Tuvok asked, “I suggest the doctor read-minister his telepathic suppressants, lest we again become overwhelmed by their emotions.”

“It will take a few more hours for the counteragent to clear from your systems,” Ree said.

“Don’t worry, Tuvok,” said Troi. “Their normal emotions are far more…pleasant than what we experienced during the attack.”

“Emotions of any kind are distasteful to me, Counselor—including worry,” he added pointedly.

“Is there any chance of programming the UT to translate their thoughts directly?” Vale asked. “It’s been done before.”

“The Hoodtried that sixteen years ago during their attempt to study the jellies,” Troi told her. “It wasn’t successful. I suspect the problem is that their communication is more emotional than verbal.”

“More like animals?”

Troi mulled it over. “They’re very intelligent. Clear thinkers with long, detailed memories and knowledge spanning half a galaxy. But yes, in some ways they are very animal-like. Intelligent but wild, like dolphins or Betazoid pachyderms. They live for the moment, act on instinct. I suppose that’s why Mr. Chamish is sensitive to them, even though Kazarite telepathy generally only works with animals.

“They’re very open, uncomplicated creatures—childlike, in a way, but with centuries of life experience and a perception that dwarfs ours. They’re very honest and forthright; they share everything telepathically, so they have no secrets in their society—much like Betazoids, only more so. Indeed, they have a strongly communal sense of identity.”

“A group mind?” Vale asked.

Troi shook her head. “No, they are individuals. They just don’t entirely think of themselves that way, and rarely act that way. Their emotional and social bonds with their schoolmates are so strong that they feel an intense sense of identification, a blurring of their definitions of self and other. Not unlike the bonds I’ve often felt between new mothers and their babies. Remember when Noah Powell was a baby?” she asked the captain. “How Alyssa spoke of Noah as ‘we’ all the time, as though they were a single person? And it wasn’t an affectation. She didn’t even realize she was doing it.” Riker grinned. “It’s the same with the jellies, only intensified by their telepathy and empathy.

“They’re so close to each other that they can’t even contemplate harming one another. They can defend themselves against other species—we saw the one at Deneb attack the Bandi who’d imprisoned its schoolmate—but they can’t cause each other pain without sharing in it. The idea of attacking one another is inconceivable to them.

“That’s why the Pa’haquel’s attacks are so horrifying to them, so devastating. As I thought, they don’t know that the ‘zombies’ attacking them are manned by living beings. Apparently their senses can’t penetrate the Pa’haquel’s armor or shielding. They think they’re being attacked by members of their own kind who have somehow risen from the dead and turned destructive. And they can’t bring themselves to attack their own.”

“Even when they’re dead?” Keru asked.

“Perhaps especially then. It would be seen as a desecration. They believe that violating the dead, even in self-defense, would bring down a fate even worse than this. So they’re helpless against the attacks when they come. And they have no warning, since they can’t tell the difference between live and dead jellies until they attack.”

“They’re telepathic, aren’t they?” Vale asked. “Can’t they tell by the lack of thought activity? Or by the fact that they’re armored? Hell, if this has been going on for millennia like the Pa’haquel claim, shouldn’t every jelly in the galaxy know by now to go on the alert whenever they detect a warp emergence?”

“The attacks are comparatively rare on a galactic scale,” Troi explained. “Ninety-nine percent of the time, if they detect jellies coming out of warp, it’ll be a friendly contact. And if they do come out armored, or aren’t broadcasting telepathically, then they could be live jellies who are injured or in danger. The jellies can’t just ignore that possibility, no matter what the risk. It’s simply not in their nature to reject contact with others of their kind—not if there’s the slightest chance that they are live jellies in need.”

“There is a detectable difference in their warp signatures,” Jaza told her. “We just discovered it with our wideband sensors—which were also what allowed us to break through the Pa’haquel’s shielding and read them inside. I guess the jellies don’t have anything equivalent. If we shared the knowledge with them, they could replicate our sensor tech for themselves.”

“That would let them detect the hunters and evade them,” Vale said, “but what would that do to the hunters’ way of life? They need these things to live on.”

“These ‘things’ are living, feeling creatures,” Troi protested, but Riker quieted her with a look.

“She’s right,” he said. “I don’t want to save one species by endangering another.” Troi subsided, her expression conceding the point.

“So you didn’t tell them about the Pa’haquel?” Vale asked, then chose to rephrase it. “They didn’t take the information from your mind?”

Troi faced her. “I wouldn’t have made that decision unilaterally, Christine. And they wouldn’t take anything from my mind that I didn’t share.”

“But if they have no concept of privacy—”

“The link doesn’t work that way. As I said, it’s primarily empathic. For me at least, conveying factual information takes a little more…interpretation.”

“But your reports from Farpoint said they could replicate anything a person thought of, telepath or no. How do we know they can’t just take the knowledge from any of our minds?”

“They only seem able to read from nontelepaths within a very short range.”

Jaza leaned forward. “You say they don’t realize the attackers are piloted as ships. So they have no awareness of having been engineered for that purpose? No memory or history of serving that role?”

“I didn’t explore the question with them in detail. But I get no sense that they’ve ever been anything other than wild creatures. And—”

The comm interrupted. “Bridge to Captain Riker,” came Kuu’iut’s voice.

“Riker here.”

“You should get out here, sir. We’ve picked up the star-jellies on approach…but it looks like the Pa’haquel have too. They’ve broken off from the nebula and are headed after the jellies.”

“Damn. Adjourned,” Riker said, and rushed to the bridge. Vale and the other bridge officers were close behind.