PRESENT
"That kind of psychic control," said Beverly Crusher, "is unprecedented."
Data looked up from the science station in mild surprise.
"Yes, Doctor. I believe I said that."
Beverly tossed her head in exasperation. "What you just said, Data, was that the mental hold these creatures have over us is so tight it affects the way we perceive things even on board ship. Excuse me for needing to add my own layer of medical shock to that." The doctor paced back and forth behind Worf at the security station, with Picard watching her in faint amusement. "The recorders, the ship's logs, everything - nothing we saw and heard was real."
"Define real," murmured Picard, from behind her.
"Oh, don't be pedantic, Jean-Luc. You know perfectly well what I mean, and so does Data." The android sensibly remained as deadpan as ever, only a short blink and frown flitting across his face. "What we're talking about here is a mental force so powerful it outdoes anything we've encountered before, outside of the Q."
Riker gestured at the screen in front of them. "Show me again, Data. I want to try and see it…"
The console sprang to life, displayed the video log of their last visit to Hitchcock as taken by Data. The tricorder panned across the colony, showing grass, trees, buildings, colonists…
Riker shook his head. "I just don't -"
"None of us do." Picard eyed Data shrewdly. "But you saw it, didn't you?"
ONE HOUR EARLIER
"You understand what, Data?"
Sometimes, despite all his best intentions, Will still found Data frustrating. In the early days of their posting together he'd found it hard to understand his android colleague: Data was that little bit too different, a psychological cross between an enthusiastic child and a stone-cold super-genius. Riker had little experience with kids and less with genii. But it was extremely difficult for him to actively dislike Data, who was by almost any standards mild-mannered and open in his dealings with people.
But oh, he could be infuriating -
He gestured to the colonists in front of them and hissed, "What's wrong, what do you see?"
Data, his yellow eyes fixed upon the creatures before him, obediently began to describe what he saw in his usual, dispassionate tones. Riker's feeling of being surrounded by unseen horror escalated, gripped at his gut.
"Before me at a distance of six feet is a group of four creatures, similar or identical to the section of Hitchcock which attacked the captain and myself. The tricorder identifies them as being silicate in structure. They are engaged in apparently consuming or otherwise disassembling sections of a human torso by a slow process of erosion of tissue fragments as a result of continual sweeping motions. The human torso is partially clothed in Starfleet issue -"
"Okay."
Riker's voice came out harsher than he'd intended. He felt sick. Hutchens, that has to be Hutchens. Don't think about his family. "Okay, Data. Enough."
The four colonists he could see in front of him were slicing up a sort of vegetable that looked like potatoes and dropping them into a stew pot. One of them, a little girl, looked up at him and smiled. Riker bared his teeth in a rictus grin in return.
"Let's get the hell out of here," he said, through those teeth.
PRESENT
"Of course, Number One, it was your words that gave me the confirmation I was looking for."
Riker did a brief double-take.
"Me, sir?"
"You, sir!" Picard steepled his fingers before him. "You said to me that if someone wants to harm you, it's often because you either have something they want or you've done something they don't like. And you were of course quite correct, but you left out an important addendum to your first point. When animals kill for food, they are killing you because you have something they want, but it goes beyond that. Deeper. It is instinct, it is evolution. It is nature. Now, it is the same as the psychic influence. It is an evolved weapon, a predator's weapon."
"The explosion of the moon," said Data, responding to a go-ahead nod from his captain, "was not truly an explosion. It was more of - a diaspora. The creatures I have seen on Hitchcock's surface were originally resident on its moon and indeed made up part of its mass. They moved to Hitchcock following occupation by the colonists, and predated there. Their development seems to have been following classic predator-prey expansion lines into an untenable situation, where there are only predators remaining and no prey to feed upon. Such ecological dynamics are only seen in species of predator which do not or cannot co-exist with their prey in the same environment. They must either continually travel to hunt prey -"
" -or lure prey to come to them," Riker completed. He met Picard's approving expression and tried to lighten the sense of growing unease on the bridge by adding: "That's one sucker of a lure."
"It's remarkably sophisticated in some ways and quite primitive in others," offered Troi, leaning with one delicate hand on the bridge rail. Riker exchanged a glance with Worf. The amount of blood we've seen in the transporter room recently, this'll never be anything but primitive to me. "The illusion is complete, but only effective against a single prey in a single ongoing instance. Presented with two instances against the same prey, they could only re-create their original subterfuge."
"He didn't recognise me at all," Riker said. "The creatures don't differentiate between prey animals, only that they are prey animals."
"Correct, sir." Data tilted up to look at the first officer who was leaning on the back of his chair. "The delusion was designed to lure us down for an initial assessment, where we would be shown exactly what we expected to see and be 'lulled into a false sense of security'". He paused a beat, seemingly waiting to be corrected on his use of the idiom, then continued. "The second beam-down would, of course, be of a larger group, more suited to the creatures' needs for food. I would surmise that the original colonists were overwhelmed using similar tactics of confusion. From what I have observed, the creatures are slow-moving except in their strike. They rely upon their mental powers to confuse and disorient their prey, using images designed to frighten when attempting to split up a group or herd in a particular direction -"
Picard was forced through an uncomfortable moment of memory in which M'Reva, her hind paws kicking at the air, was hoisted aloft by Data's implacable arm. "Perhaps the colonists even turned against each other," he said softly. "Killed each other, believing their closest friends to be dangerous murderers."
"Indeed." Data played the console again, bringing up a new set of charts. "Additionally, there has been a significant effect upon Hitchcock's gravitational field and magnetic poles. The creatures appear to have created false magnetic fields around their most heavily colonised sites."
"That sure would explain why your gyros got all out of whack, Data." Geordi folded his arms. "But it shouldn't even be possible. Localised magnetic field generation in a living being?"
"Six impossible things before breakfast," said Riker, thoughtfully, and when Picard gave him a surprised look, added, "but what do we do about them?"