The Red King - Michael A. Martin [94]
She made an expansive gesture around them both. “We can’t have one of the heroes of the Neyel miss the rescue of his people now, can we?”
Hero? The word was an explosion in Frane’s mind, one he had never expected to hear in conjunction with himself or his actions.
He shook his head, unsure whether he was agreeing with her or trying to dislodge the very idea from his thoughts.
SHUTTLECRAFT GILLESPIE
Using the bionic hand at the end of his prehensile tail, Cadet Torvig Bu-kar-nguv reached out and tugged on the sleeve of Lieutenant Eviku, trying to capture the Arkenite scientist’s attention quietly.
“Sir, have you noticed how many more Neyel we’re rescuing than any of the other species?” Torvig asked.
Eviku pursed his lips, and looked around the shuttle. The aft section, visible through an open hatchway through which other Starfleet personnel were moving, was crammed full of refugees.
Torvig followed his gaze, mentally counting the many disparate species aboard. This was their fourth trip, and had proved to be the most dangerous one so far. The interspatial energy discharges and related natural disasters occurring on Oghen were making their rescue flights more and more dangerous by the second. It was a good thing that Pazlar’s piloting skills were so strong, otherwise the shuttlecraft Gillespie might have gone down just like that Romulan warbird had.
“I’m not sure I see your point,” Eviku said after a pause. “We seem to have a goodly number of the various local sentient races aboard.”
“There are significantly more Neyel here than any other group,” Torvig noted. “And they are human offshoots.”
Eviku looked at him as if he had just grown a new eye. “What are you implying? That we’re showing favoritism to the Neyel because they’re genetically human?”
“I’m merely making an observation,” Torvig said.
Eviku turned away momentarily, and Torvig’s bionic eyes registered a look of disgust on his austere features when he turned back. The Arkenite opened his mouth as if to speak, then closed it again, apparently pondering the question further.
Finally, he said, “Let’s say for the moment that the Neyel are getting preferential treatment. Could that be because they are more numerous than any of the other species?”
Torvig nodded, ready to concede that obvious fact. “But we could certainly try a little harder to find and rescue more of the indigenous peoples.”
“I don’t think we’re ignoring anyone,” Eviku said. “Have you ignored anyone? Has any member of this crew actively pushed aside an Oghen native in favor of a Neyel?”
Shaking his head, Torvig said, “No. Not that I’ve seen.”
Eviku went quiet for a moment, apparently pondering again. Then, lowering his voice, he said, “I understand your misgivings, Cadet. I know that Titan has been lauded by many for its crew diversity. On the other hand, I also know that nobody can fail to notice that most of the chief decision makers for the ship are either humans or humanoids that I can’t distinguish from humans without a tricorder. And that may indeed influence the way certain decisions aboard Titan get made. But I don’t believe anyone involved in this rescue effort is practicing racial bias. It seems to me we’re all working as hard as we can to save as many of these beings as possible, regardless of where their genes originated.”
Torvig nodded, and surveyed the crowd once more, facing forward again after the hatch had closed the aft section off from the cockpit once again. Upon further dissection of his perceptions, he was forced to agree with Eviku’s conclusion. Still, he felt unsettled.
After all, the Neyel outnumbered the natives because they had enslaved, displaced, and slaughtered them centuries ago. Not because there had been more Neyel originally.
On Oghen and Vanguard, just as aboard Titan, the minority was ruling over the majority.
“You may be right, of course,” he said to Eviku. “I was merely pursuing an interesting avenue of speculation.”
Torvig wondered quietly how those speculations would play out in reality.
U.S.S.