The Last Stand - Brad Ferguson [66]
“What do you mean?”
“We’re biased by our own environment and experiences, Deanna. We think people have to live on planets. We’ve been seeing the Krann only as wanderers, as rootless transients. We’ve been thinking that Krann society must have been affected in any number of bad ways by their ceaseless traveling. We forgot that the Krann live here. They’re used to being transients—except that they don’t think of themselves as that. The Fleet is their planet, moving through space on a steady course, just as any of our worlds does. The only difference is, they get to pick the course they take.”
“That part may not mean very much,” Troi cautioned. “The Krann usually take generations to get where they’re going; and a journey that lasts for generations is not at all voluntary for the descendants of those who began the trip. It may be that even at the outset of a star trip, the destination is picked by the leadership, and everyone else finds themselves forced to go along.”
“Good point,” Riker allowed. “That makes this mode of living even more planetlike, if you look at it in a certain way.” He thought about it for a moment as they walked on. “This race boasts a population of three billion people,” he finally said. “The Krann live scattered among a hundred and sixty thousand spacecraft of every imaginable configuration. That represents a lot more geographical diversity than you’re likely to find on any given planet.”
“It’s like a Dyson sphere without the sphere,” Troi realized. “Over time, the Krann have created their own vast planet out of this collection of ships. In a way, they’ve terraformed space itself by wrapping metal around it. It’s amazing.” She shook her head in disbelief. “We’ve never met anyone else who lives like this. I’m not sure we’ve ever met anyone else who could. We have a lot to learn from these people.”
“I hope they give us the time,” said Riker. “If we can’t talk the Krann out of attacking the Lethanta, the war could destroy much of the Krann fleet. Maybe all of it. As we used to say in Alaska, the Lethanta are armed for bear, and we don’t know everything we need to know about them, either.”
“There are a great many bears out here, Will—a hundred and sixty thousand ships filled with more than three billion people, bent on murdering a race of two billion that possesses its own unique history and culture. All we have to do is figure out how to stop the Krann from trying to destroy the Lethanta.”
“Yeah,” Riker said, a touch wearily. “That’s all we have to do, and we haven’t done much about finding out how.” He looked around. “Wait a minute. Are you hungry?”
“Now that you mention it, yes. Did you want to return to the ship?”
“No. Don’t have to. How do you feel about crashing a party?”
“A party? Where?”
“Down that way a bit,” he answered, pointing. “See the crowd? It’s spilling out of one of the shops near that intersection. That must be one of the restaurants.”
“It looks like a party, all right,” Troi admitted. “We’ve passed a few today, but this is the biggest we’ve seen so far.”
“That crowd looks big enough to get lost in, and I don’t think anyone is going to ask us for our ID, either. Come on.”
“Do we just walk in?”
“Watch me.” Riker took Troi by the hand and led her into the periphery of the crowd around the restaurant. The facility was a small, brightly lit place that was packed to the rafters with happy people of all ages. They were cooking something inside. It smelled good.
The party inside had spilled out onto the concourse, where it continued unabated. Many of the partygoers seemed to know each other, and the mood was relaxed and convivial. Passersby took a look as they walked by the restaurant, many of them waved, and almost all of them smiled. Some tapped the area over their hearts once-twice-thrice, using the first two fingers of their right hands. It was a private sort of gesture, quickly and almost furtively done. Riker noted it and filed it away for later investigation.
Many of the