“Harry them!” Qui’hibra cried into his communicator. “Do not let them go to warp!”
Riker kept an eye on the pursuit while he gathered damage reports. Titanwas in relatively good shape, needing only some replacements and repairs to the deflector array power conduits and a couple of shield capacitors.
But soon Qui’hibra approached him grimly. “Three of the partial branchers escaped into warp. Even so small, they are too fast to overtake. I only pray other hunters find them before they find other peopled worlds or ships.”
Riker spoke tentatively. “I’m sorry. I wish there had been more we could do.”
The elder shook his head. “I do not blame you for this. There were too many; some would have gotten away regardless. You did what you could when it came down to it. And you showed innovation in your tactics; I can respect you for that, if not for your squeamishness. Most importantly, you put yourself at risk to protect the innocents on the station.” Qui’hibra clasped him on the shoulder. “That, in the end, is what the Hunt is all about.”
Riker met Qui’hibra’s gaze, gratified that some degree of trust had been established. Still, he was unable to shake the thought that he had not done all he could. He could have easily destroyed all three of the Crystalline Entities in moments. True, they had some intelligence, and were only wild creatures trying to survive, as they had a right to. But was their right to life worth sacrificing worlds for?
Was the Pa’haquel’s side the right one after all?
Chapter Eleven
Dr. Ree had been butting heads with Wangliaph, the female Fethet assigned to the station’s medical-wing security, for hours now. Almost from the moment they had met, they had been exchanging insults and threats, challenging each other’s authority, and coming close to exchanging blows.
It had been the most fun he’d had since last he’d been on the homeworld.
Even back home, Pahkwa-thanh females weren’t often inclined to play this way with him. Though he was seen as massive and physically intimidating by his Titancrewmates, he was not large or strong by his own people’s standards, nowhere near the alpha or even beta-male status that held the interest of females. He had gone into medicine so that he could contribute to society in another way, one to which he had proven well suited; but partly he had hoped that professional and economic success would draw the females he had been unable to attract with physical prowess. Those plans had been somewhat sidetracked two decades ago when the Pahkwa-thanh had joined the Federation and a whole new hunting ground of alien diseases had been opened to him, daring him to chase them down and wrestle them into submission. The intellectual thrill of that particular hunt had diverted him from the hunt for mates ever since, and he was largely satisfied with that. Among the frail humanoids he had found himself closer to an alpha, respected for his strength and skill, his gregarious instincts serving him well once he had found an audience inclined to listen. Many had been slow to warm to him, intimidated by his appearance or eating habits, but in Starfleet, most made the effort to overcome such reactions and accept him as he was. So he had not lacked for social contact either. Still, he did find himself feeling lonely at times, and was grateful for a holodeck where he could distract himself with chasing across the open plains and ripping into moist, pliant throats.
From the way she looked at his Shalra patients, it seemed Wangliaph had similar taste in recreation and little interest in settling for holodecks. “Just look at them,” she had said to him in a rare quiet moment between insults and posturings. “Vast, slow-moving hunks of soft, juicy meat. Don’t you just yearn to snap open those shells and feast? At least bite off some arms or eyes to see if they’ll grow back?”
“Perhaps you need your prey to be so slow and helpless,” Ree had teased, “but I prefer more of a challenge. Besides—it would be rude.”
Before the Fethet could muster a comeback, Captain Riker had come in, with Lieutenant Commander Keru accompanying him. Counselor Troi was already present, helping Ree tend to the patients. Riker had come to brief them on the situation; Ree appreciated that he had come to them rather than requiring them to leave their work with the refugees. He continued to move around the ward, monitoring patients’ vital signs, as Riker related the tale of the battle with the Crystalline Entities, and pondered aloud what it signified. Wangliaph muttered something about the smell of omnivore breath and lumbered away into the next ward.
“This situation just gets less and less clear-cut,” he said. “Not that it ever was to begin with, but now…”
“Now neither side is abstract to you,” Troi said. “You already sympathized with the star-jellies—we all do—but you also have personal grounds for identifying with the victims of the Crystalline Entities.”
“You think seeing another whole planet destroyed before my eyes didn’t affect me personally?”
“Of course it affected you, but it was still remote, abstract. A tragedy on that scale can be too large to process. Will, I’m not criticizing. It’s good that you can identify with both sides now.”
“Is it? It just makes it harder to sort this whole thing out. Obviously what the Pa’haquel are doing serves a valuable purpose—maybe even an essential one. We didn’t know how lucky we had it in the Federation. There are places in the galaxy far more dangerous than we ever knew. Perhaps we even owe the Pa’haquel our thanks for keeping the cosmozoan population from growing out of control, overwhelming known space.
“But I still can’t accept that slaughtering innocent, sentient life forms is the only way to do it. If they were just…very useful animals, it would be one thing. But hunting thinking creatures, surviving at the expense of other sentient beings…there’s a fundamental difference there that any civilized people should recognize.”
Ree looked up in surprise at that, and must have made some sound, because he caught the others’ attention. “You have a thought on that, Doctor?” Riker asked.
“I simply find it an odd sentiment, Captain. And, if I may be so bold, a false distinction.”
“What do you mean?”
“Simply that my people have always regarded our prey as sentient.”
Riker and Keru appeared shocked. Troi was simply inquisitive. Ree went on. “I suppose I understand why peoples like yourselves, from agrarian and industrial backgrounds, would think of animals as mere objects, resources to be harvested. But to a hunting people, you must understand, the prey is a powerful, complex entity with a will of its own. To bring it down, we must respect and understand its behavior—its personality. We must be able to judge its moods, guard against its anger.
“And as often as not, sir, the prey wins. Hunting packs routinely come back empty-handed. Sometimes they come back smaller than they started. So to us, the prey is anything but an inferior. It is a mighty force on whom our very survival depends. How could we not believe it has a mind and a soul?”
“I thought,” the captain said uneasily after a moment, “that Pahkwa-thanh had clear-cut taboos about killing sentient beings.”
“Civilized beings, yes.” At their puzzlement, he explained. “Civilized beings tend to consider themselves in control of nature, exempt from its cycles. They do not think of themselves as prey. So to treat them as such would not be…polite. We Pahkwa-thanh always strive to be polite. Even in our insults, there is a proper social protocol.” He gave a hissing chuckle at the humanoids’ fidgeting. “Rest assured I have never been faulted for my etiquette. As long as you do not consider yourselves fair game, I would never dream of treating you as such—although I’m sure you would all be quite succulent. Particularly you, my dear Counselor.”