But then the second plasma bolt struck, hitting head-on and causing even more devastation than the first. Any beings still alive on that planet, Riker knew, would soon enough be caught between two expanding waves of destruction. The fact that their killer was joining them in death was small consolation.

Two hundred million lives.It was still too much to grasp. Is this the way it’s always going to be? Will this entire mission be marked by death on a planetary scale? Is there no way to escape it?

Qui’chiri gently preened her father’s head feathers with her claws. “We could not have made a difference had we been there, Father. This harvester was too old, too strong. At least it will slaughter no more worlds, bear no more young.”

“Tell that to the Shalra who have seen their world die today.” Again he faced Riker, strode toward him. Qui’hibra was small for his species, the top of his crest barely reaching Riker’s eye level, but he loomed large nonetheless. “Tell it to the thousands of other worlds that will die when there are no more skymount fleets to defend them.

“This is only a sample, Riker. I can show you more. Mr. Jaza. Have your screen display the second set of coordinates I gave you to scan. Use your maximum magnification.”

Jaza looked to Riker, who nodded slowly after a moment. The screen image jumped to another part of the sky, zoomed in on a star surrounded by sheets of expelled hydrogen and eructating vast jets of plasma. “A T Tauri star?” Riker asked.

“No,” Jaza said. “Indicators suggest it’s a G6 main-sequence star—or used to be.”

“This is the handiwork of starpeelers,” Qui’hibra explained. “Photonic beings, made of coherent energy fields sustained in plasma matrices. They travel from star to star, peeling away their atmospheres to give themselves vessels of plasma to travel in.”

Riker frowned. “Are they intelligent?”

“Who can say? If they have minds or purpose, we cannot comprehend either. They seem driven purely by the need to propagate. And they have no concern for the inhabited worlds whose climates are destroyed, whose surfaces are irradiated as a result of their labors. This time we were fortunate; only primitive microbes have paid the price in that system. But as soon as the starpeelers begin to leave the system for others, the Pa’haquel will be there to eradicate them—if there are any skymounts left for us to fight with. Mr. Jaza, the third coordinate set now. Full spectral imaging.”

The image changed again, settled on a distant puff of darkness. The screen cycled through false-color depictions of various spectra, and it became evident to Riker that the dark, ellipsoid cloud engulfed a star and its inner planets. “This is a system we were too late to save, two generations ago. A great civilization walked there, a race of poets and builders. Then the cloud came. It is not a predator, not a hunter; it is a simple phototroph, a mindless thing drawn to light and warmth. But its mass blocked the star’s light from reaching its planets, and its friction stripped away the poets’ atmosphere by degrees. They slowly froze and suffocated…until the captured sunlight heated the cloud and burned whatever remained alive. All their great works, their mighty structures, are melting and eroding away. We only know of them through the radio messages they sent out before the end.

“Many strange and glorious creatures roam the stars, Riker. Most of them are not hunters. But they are vast and powerful, and even the innocuous among them can destroy worlds if they are allowed to. We are insects, crawling underfoot as giants roam the skies. If we wish to survive—either their malice or their neglect—we must battle them. We must hunt them, and hound them from our worlds, and kill them as fast as they breed, or else they would overrun the galaxy in time. They would devour your worlds, as they once did ours.”

Deanna stared at the elder. “Se’hraqua told us that your world…was struck down by divine wrath.”

Qui’hibra threw the younger male an irritated glare. “Se’hraqua has a mystical streak. He was supposedto explain all this to you, but chose to make vague pronouncements instead.”

Se’hraqua bristled. “We do not need to justify the Hunt to these weaklings. It is our holy tradition; that is reason enough to continue it. The rest is incidental.”

Vale gaped at him. “It’s incidental if whole worlds die?”

“They die if we fail in maintaining the divine balance. The balance is the point. And now you have shattered the balance.” He turned to Qui’hibra. “Elder, why do we waste time pandering to these fools? They have seen the magnitude of their crimes, now let them die! The balance demands it!”

“You think snuffing out one tiny ship will restore the balance? Fool! We need solutions. These aliens found a way to help the skymounts fight us and flee us—perhaps they have a way to help us fight back.”

Riker took a step forward. “Elder Qui’hibra—what you’ve shown us here is…horrific, to be sure. I appreciate what’s at stake here. My people have had to face destruction on this scale before.” Too recently, and too often.“And of course we will do whatever we can, within reason, to help defend inhabited worlds against this kind of menace. But surely you have other options besides hunting star-jellies. Your allies clearly have the technology to build starships and weapons of their own.”

Qui’chiri scoffed. “You will find none as effective as the skymounts,” the matriarch said proudly. “The mounts are faster and stronger than any ship I have ever seen. Their metamorphic and generative abilities make them adaptable and easy to repair. Their organic nature makes superb camouflage. And as living, breeding, self-sustaining creatures, they require no massive infrastructure to support them. You cannot hunt starbeasts while tied down to a planet—especially when planets are often their favorite food. To hunt we must live free, migrate among the stars with the very prey we battle.”

“Our allies contribute much,” Qui’hibra said, “but many of them are worldless too, by tragedy or by choice. They depend on our skymounts to generate replacement parts for their ships, food for their bellies. The mounts do not wage the Hunt alone…but without them, there can be no Hunt, or too feeble a hunt to hold the balance.”

“Even so, the jellies are intelligent beings. I can’t accept that there’s no alternative to murdering them in order to save others.”

Qui’hibra strode closer, coming beak-to-nose with Riker. “And I will not accept seeing more billions die for the sake of hundreds. Yes, we kill skymounts, but their species thrives, because we fight to preserve it along with all the others. All their knowledge is shared, and we never take a whole school, so nothing is lost. If we did not prey on them, others would. If a school of skymounts had flown into the nebula where you saw us battle before, the cloud-shimmers would have fed on them all, dissolving their organic molecules and feeding on the released energy. And they would have spared none, just as they spare no living thing when they swarm over planets or invade starships. At least when we kill them, it serves a higher purpose.”

He thrust his head forward further into Riker’s face, puffing out his feathers. “But if you cannot help us restore the balance, then there will be no purpose to anything anymore and I will kill you simply because you deserve it.”

Chapter Ten

VOMNIN SPACE STATION UDONOK, STARDATE 57188.5