The grizzled avian commander appeared once more. “I am Qui’hibra, leader of the fleet-clan Qui’Tir’Ieq. We see that you have suffered significant damage. I offer my regret for our part in causing it, but you were warned and chose not to heed. I pray that your misguided actions ended none of your people’s lives.”

Riker was taken by surprise; he’d been expecting something more bellicose. “No, thank you, Captain Qui’hibra. But I appreciate your concern.”

The avian seemed genuinely relieved, in a stern sort of way. “That is providential. The Hunt is risky enough for those who seek it willingly, let alone those whose lack of understanding places them in its path. Others have not been so fortunate in the past. You would be wise to keep that in mind in the future.”

“Captain Qui’hibra—”

“For the present, though, your ship needs repair. We will remain in the area for some time while we process our kills. If needed, we can spare the crew and resources of one skymount to assist in your repairs while we do so. But only one.”

Riker exchanged a look with Deanna, communing wordlessly for a moment. “I…thank you for the offer, Captain. I’ll have my engineering staff coordinate with yours once we determine our needs. In the meantime, I think we should meet and get better acquainted. We’re explorers, new to the region and eager to learn about its inhabitants.”

“And you have much to learn, it is clear. Very well,”Qui’hibra agreed, although he seemed mildly annoyed about it. “You may send a small party to observe our processing operations if you wish. Just so long as you do not interfere. The Hunt calls still, and makes few allowances. Do you require us to teleport you aboard?”

“We have our own transporters, thank you. If you’ll just provide coordinates…”

“Very well. You will stand by. There are rites we must first perform. You will be contacted after, and you will teleport promptly at that time to the coordinates we provide.”Qui’hibra cut the transmission without further ceremony.

“All right, then. We’d best get ready,” Riker said after a nonplussed moment, and took a few steps in the direction of the turbolift.

Only to find Deanna in his path. “May I ask where the captainthinks he’s going? Surely this is a job for the diplomatic officer.”

Of course she was right. For two decades he’d been reminding Robert DeSoto or Jean-Luc Picard that the captain’s place was on the bridge, while his officers went out and took the risks. But those captains had never hesitated to exercise their prerogative to ignore him, and even though he continued to press, he had admired their reluctance to stand by while others stepped into harm’s way. When he’d taken command of Titan,he’d jokingly promised Picard to ignore his officers’ efforts to restrain his wanderlust, and had acted on that promise once already.

But this was Deanna’s job, after all. She was an expert in interspecies psychology and sociology, an experienced diplomat and first-contact specialist, and a trained command officer and combat veteran to boot. Who better to take the lead in contact and negotiation with new civilizations? Riker knew all this perfectly well, and assigning her to the post of diplomatic officer had been as much his idea as hers.

In this case, though, he was more reluctant to send her. These hunters had ruthlessly killed a defenseless sentient being before their eyes—who knew how dangerous they were? And he didn’t relish the thought of sending Deanna inside one of the corpses they used as ships. He remembered the deep emotional connection she’d made with the star-jellies back at Deneb. To be immersed in their remains, to make diplomatic overtures toward their killers—it wasn’t something he wanted her to have to do.

But that was a husband talking, not a captain. They’d both accepted that having Deanna under his command could only work if he kept the two separate. Throwing her a sheepish look, he said, “You’re right, of course. I recommend taking Mr. Keru along, though.”

“I had him in mind. Mr. Jaza, you as well, please.”

“Aye, aye, ma’am.”

“And have Dr. Ree meet us in transporter room one. His perspective could be useful. Both as a life scientist and a predator,” she added as an aside to Riker. He nodded, approving her choices.

And when I get back,he “heard” in his mind as she strode toward the lift, you and I will have a little talk about overprotective husbands.

Chapter Three

The aliens did not seem to be in any hurry to meet with Deanna’s away team. She and the others had a long wait in the transporter room while the hunters went about the grisly business of securing their two kills—an operation which the away team observed on a wall monitor. The ships assigned to salvage the kills rotated to approach them ventral side forward—meaning the side opposite the weapon port, bearing a recessed dome in the center. (She recalled that this had been the “top” of the star-jelly ship that had first approached them at Deneb, but only so that its weapon port would be pointed down at the planet. A spacegoing organism would have no absolute sense of up and down.) Deanna watched in grim fascination as each ship’s ventral surface shimmered and flowed with cloud-like patterns of energy, dissolving away to reveal the familiar eight tentacles, which slowly uncoiled, reaching outward. Yet at the same time the tentacles were unfamiliar, for they lacked the lambent aura which surrounded the live jellies. Instead they were pasty and fishbelly white, and their movements as they reached out to grapple the dead jellies were stiff and mechanical, with none of the feathery grace of the live tendrils. The partial dematerialization of the armor was also unfamiliar; the star-jelly at Deneb had dissolved its armor completely, or transformed it back into its normal translucent carapace, before extending its tentacles. Indeed, given the creatures’ shapechanging abilities, she wasn’t sure whether the tentacles were stored beneath the armor or actually transformed into part of the armor itself.

The hunters were thorough in retrieving their spoils; a third ship even retrieved the two tentacles severed in the attack, and the bridge reported that it also beamed aboard as much as it could of the frozen oxygen and fluids that had spilled from the mortally struck jellies.

After the retrieval operation, nothing visibly happened for a time, and Deanna wondered just how involved their rites would be—as much out of impatience as anthropological curiosity. It was nearly ten minutes before they finally received the beaming coordinates. “Umm, you might want to see this, Commander,” Ensign Radowski said. Deanna looked over his shoulder at the display. The coordinates were for a chamber at the tip of one of the salvaging ship’s tendrils, which had penetrated and sealed the breach in the dead jelly, snaking inward to connect with its internal passageways. Apparently when Qui’hibra had said they could observe the “processing” of their kill, he had meant they would do so in person. She and the others would be beaming inside the body of the magnificent creature whose death she had witnessed—had experienced—mere minutes before.

Deanna steeled herself as best she could, recalling all her training in diplomacy and tolerance, before she gave the order to energize. Still, she felt a palpable weight descend on her when she and the others materialized—a coldness, an emptiness echoing with the absence of life.