STAR TREK - VOY - 03 - Ragnarok

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Star Trek - Voy - 003 - Ragnarok
By: Nathan Archer
Copyright 1995
Chapter 1
For the moment, all was well aboard the Federation starship Voyager.
While there were repairs being made, and they were, as always, short-handed, there were no
life-threatening emergencies at the moment.
The engines were working well, life support was functioning, the hydroponics plant in the forward cargo
bay was flourishing; they were well clear of any inhabited systems or hostile craft.
This relatively relaxed situation meant that Captain Kathryn Janeway could afford to take the time to
think ahead, to plan out exactly where the ship was headed, and that was just what she was doing as she
and Neelix stood on the central level of the ship's bridge, studying their charts.
Around them, the rest of the Voyager's command crew went about their business, black-shod feet silent
on the soft gray carpeting, hands moving quickly across the gleaming black panels, eyes watching the
illuminated blue and gold displays. The low humming of the ship's engines was a constant, reassuring
background sound, punctuated every so often by the hiss of an automatic door opening. Janeway and
Neelix paid no attention to any of that; they were focused on the navigation screens. Neelix leaned
forward, both hands on the smooth black console, while Janeway stood nearby, holding on to the
chrome rail that ran between the upper and central levels of the bridge. Both of them were considering
what course they should take.
Obviously, their general direction was back toward the Alpha Quadrant and the Federation--she had
promised the crew she would get them home, no matter how long it took, and Captain Janeway intended
to keep that promise.
Still, they couldn't simply head off in a straight line across the galaxy. There would have to be more stops
along the way; they would need to replenish certain supplies, find ways to repair damaged equipment.
The ship's replicators were no longer entirely functional, and were never able to provide everything they
needed, in any case replicator technology had its limits.
Some things couldn't be reliably replicated--including some of the essential elements that powered the
replicators.
So there would be stops for supplies. There would probably have to be stops simply to give the crew a
chance to breathe fresh air and move about unconfined by steel bulkheads, as well--that was essential for
morale. Visits to the holodeck only went so far toward delaying the inevitable cabin fever, one hundred
and forty people who knew they were probably going to be confined to the same ship for years on end
needed chances to get out on a planetary surface, to look at open skies and breathe unfiltered air every
so often.
At least the holodeck's energy systems were incompatible with the rest of the ship, so that there was no
reason to shut it down to conserve their precious resources--the energy it consumed couldn't have been
used elsewhere in any case. Keeping it activated was an emotional necessity. The crew needed
somewhere to unwind.
But it wasn't enough.
Stops would have to be made.
And the question was therefore where these stops should be made.
While Starfleet had, of course, programmed complete star maps of the entire galaxy into the ship's
computers, those were limited, providing little more than the location and spectral type of each star. That
had been enough information to tell them almost instantly where they were when they had been snatched
across the galaxy, but it wasn't much help in planning their route home.
Smaller or less stable and obvious bodies--such as planets, anomalies, dust clouds, or magnetic
storms--were not included in the star maps.
The Voyager carried no charts, no records, no descriptions of any of the worlds or civilizations it might
encounter in this part of the galaxy, nor of any dangerous phenomena, such as plasma storms, ahead.
The ship's computers could provide vast quantities of information about virtually every inhabited body or
energy field in the Alpha Quadrant, as well as a good-sized slice of the Beta Quadrant and even those
relatively tiny areas near the Gamma Quadrant wormhole that had been charted--but the Voyager was in
the Delta Quadrant, yanked across to the far side of the galaxy by an extragalactic alien being known as
the Caretaker, and then left to its own devices.
The Federation knew nothing about the local hazards of the Delta Quadrant. No Federation vessel had
ever come here before the Voyager's unplanned arrival.
So, as explorers of every kind had done before her, Kathryn Janeway had taken on a native guide, a
local inhabitant who claimed to be completely familiar with most of the various planets and their
inhabitants in the vicinity.
He doubled as a cook and handyman, but the Talaxian who called himself Neelix had been taken aboard
the Voyager primarily as a guide.
And today Captain Janeway had summoned that guide to the bridge, where he stood a meter away from
her, bent over a navigation panel.
He didn't have to bend very far, Neelix was shorter than the average human, though he made up for
some of that with an exuberant personality. His clothing was brightly polychrome, garish in comparison
with the subdued grays and blues and silver of the Voyager's interior. Janeway supposed that among his
fellow Talaxians Neelix might well be considered tall and handsome, and his attire the height of fashion,
as he sometimes claimed, but by human standards he was...
well, ugly was too strong a word.
Comical wasn't too strong. Comical fit the bill nicely. She hoped she hadn't let Neelix know that; he had
as much pride and self-respect as the next sentient being, and she doubted he'd appreciate knowing that
his appearance reminded her of a clown's.
She thought he might suspect it, but that wasn't the same as knowing.
Neelix was basically humanoid. His oddly shaped head was adorned with brownish mottling, sparse tufts
of hair, concavities at the temples, pointed and multilayered ears, and a blobby nose that appeared to
have been slit down the middle; when that was combined with his taste in clothing the result was definitely
clownish.
Still, Neelix was no fool. Janeway watched with interest as he frowned at the diagram on the display
screen, one finger tracing along the curving diagram.
"Your star charts are still difficult for me, Captain," he said, "but if I understand this correctly, I think you
really ought to change course."
Rather than crowd her guide, Janeway reached over and tapped a control, transferring the star chart and
its accompanying readouts from the console to the main viewscreen that stretched across the front of the
ship's bridge. She studied it for a moment, then turned to face her alien helper.
"Why?" she asked. "Our sensors don't show anything particularly hazardous on our present course."
"Well, of course," Neelix said with a deferential shrug, "I suppose that would all depend on just what you
consider hazardous."
Janeway smiled. "Magnetic storms, super-novae--I'd say that sort of thing qualifies as hazardous. Is there
anything like that ahead of us?"
"Well, no," the Talaxian said, drawing out the final syllable thoughtfully. "Nothing like that, exactly. But
everyone around here generally considers it a good idea to avoid that star cluster ahead."
He rounded the end of the forward console, took a few steps toward the large screen, then pointed at
the particular group he meant.
"Why?" Janeway demanded again.
"Because of the war, of course...." He saw her expression, and caught himself. "Oh," he said. "Well, I
guess you don't know about that."
"No," Janeway said. "What war? Are the Kazon-Ogla active around here?"
The Voyager's crew had already had one run-in with the local group known as the Kazon-Ogla, and
Janeway had to admit she wasn't eager for another.
Neelix sighed, and pointed again. "No, not the Kazon-Ogla," he said.
"That's the Kuriyar Cluster ahead, where the Hachai and the P'nir live.
Unpleasant people." He shook his head in distaste. "They've been at war with each other for as long as
anyone can remember--centuries, certainly, and probably for millennia. Even in our very oldest legends,
from the first days that Talaxians began to travel in space, the Hachai and P'nir were fighting each other."
"And they're still fighting?" Janeway asked. She stepped away from the rail for a closer look at the
screen.
"So far as I know," Neelix said. "I haven't actually gone into the Kuriyar Cluster and asked lately, you
understand."
"Has anyone else?"
Neelix shook his head. "People around this part of the galaxy have always tried to avoid the Hachai and
the P'nir anyway, and walking into the middle of their war is extremely unpopular.
They're not always very careful about who they shoot at."
"I see," Janeway said noncommittally.
"Perhaps I've misread your proposed course," Neelix said apologetically, "but it appeared to take us
directly through the Kuriyar Cluster."
"It does," Janeway admitted. "You would advise against that?"
"Oh, very much so, Captain." Neelix nodded enthusiastically.
Janeway glanced over toward the turbolift, where Neelix's Ocampa companion Kes was standing and
trying hard to be unobtrusive.
Kes's appearance was much closer to human than Neelix's; except for her ears she could have easily
passed for a native back on Earth. She looked frail and ethereally beautiful--and, Janeway knew, she
was even younger than she appeared, and quite possibly less human than Neelix, despite her outward
form. The average Ocampa life span was only nine standard years; Kes, little more than a year old, was
a mature adult.
She also had hints of some little-understood Ocampa psychic gifts--telepathic projection, and other, less
easily defined abilities.
Kes, seeing Janeway's look, nodded vigorously. "I agree," she said.
Janeway wasn't sure whether this agreement meant that Kes actually knew anything about this war, or
simply that she was supporting her friend, but it didn't really matter. They had taken Neelix aboard the
Voyager to act as their native guide, and there was no point in having a native guide if one didn't take his
advice.
Janeway was turning to face the main viewscreen again, about to give the order to change course, to take
them safely around the star cluster in question, when Harry Kim, the ensign manning the Operations
station, suddenly announced, "Captain, we're being scanned--I think...."
He turned, and shouted, "Captain, it's a tetryon beam, a coherent tetryon beam!"
Janeway whirled. "Red alert!" she shouted, grabbing for the railing.
"Be ready to brace for impact!"
Chapter 2
The lights dimmed instantly at the captain's call for red alert, to permit the bridge crew to focus more
closely on their control panels.
Janeway, gripping the railing, turned to face the Operations station.
That station was a bay set into the port side of the bridge's upper level, a bay where Ensign Harry Kim
stood, almost surrounded by displays and controls.
"Ensign, do you read a displacement wave anywhere?" she demanded.
"Negative, Captain," Kim replied, as he quickly scanned several panels.
"No sign of any other unusual phenomena."
Janeway relaxed slightly, relieved--but also somewhat disappointed.
Once before, the U.S.S. Voyager had been scanned by a coherent tetryon beam--and immediately
afterward the ship had been caught in a magnetic displacement wave that had dragged it halfway across
the galaxy in an instant. The tetryon beam had been used by the Caretaker to see whether anyone aboard
the Voyager might suit its purposes, and when it had discovered that there were possibilities--though they
hadn't worked out in the end--it had sent the displacement wave to fetch the Voyager to its own vicinity.
That journey had been brief and violent, and had left the ship damaged and several of her crew dead or
injured; the vacancies had been made up with the crew of a rebel ship, a Maquis ship, that the Voyager
had been hunting, and that had been similarly abducted.
It had been a rough ride, and furthermore, the abduction had left the Voyager stranded tens of thousands
of light-years from home.
When another tetryon beam was detected, Janeway's first thought had been that they were about to be
hurled back home. When that didn't happen she was relieved to be spared whatever damage the
transition might have inflicted, but disappointed that they were not being sent back to the Alpha Quadrant
and the Federation.
"Lock our own sensors on to the beam..." she began.
"I'm sorry, Captain," Ensign Kim interrupted without turning from the sensor console, "but it's gone.
Duration was less than point four seconds."
"Any sign of a recurrence?" Janeway asked. "A cycle, perhaps?"
"No, Captain," Kim answered. "It seems to have been an isolated event."
Janeway frowned. "Cancel red alert," she said; the bridge's normal lighting returned, banishing shadows
and restoring the usual soothing colors. The captain stared at the viewscreen for a moment, then turned
again to the Ops station.
Harry Kim watched her from behind his controls, ready and eager, anxiously awaiting her orders.
Kim had come aboard the Voyager fresh from Starfleet Academy, thoroughly educated and completely
trained, but still inexperienced, still a bit naive. His rather round Asian face was open and easily read; he
hadn't yet learned to mask anything.
He knew his job, understood his duties, but hadn't yet learned to anticipate his captain's wishes, to do,
without being told, that little bit extra that would make him a really first-rate operations and
communications officer.
It was an amazingly bad bit of luck for him to have had his first mission wind up like this, Janeway
thought; his parents, back on Earth, must still be in shock at the disappearance of their pride and joy.
"Ensign Kim," Janeway said, "I want you to review the ship's sensor records. Find out everything you can
about that beam--its waveforms and energy signature, where it came from, what it did to us, if
anything--whatever the computers can tell us. I want to know just how closely it matches the tetryon
beam that the Caretaker used to scan us."
"Yes, Captain," Kim replied, immediately setting to work at his console.
"You think that that beam was the Caretaker's companion checking us out?" Tom Paris asked from his
place at the forward control panel, a long, curving console that separated the central and lower levels of
the bridge.
The question wasn't one that the officer at the helm should have been asking, really--but then, Tom Paris
wasn't really the officer who should have been at the helm. Lieutenant Stadi, the Voyager's regular
pilot-navigator, had been killed during the abrupt journey from the Alpha Quadrant, and Paris, a onetime
renegade who had been aboard as an observer, had been appointed to fill in.
Paris was an admiral's son, and no one had ever let him forget it--including himself. Janeway was sure
that that desperate need to live up to his family's standards had been what led Paris to falsify
reports--and then, later, to admit that he had done so, an admission that had gotten him kicked out of
Starfleet.
He had probably felt he had nothing left to lose when he joined the Maquis as a mercenary. Janeway
supposed, however, that getting caught and landing in a New Zealand prison might have convinced him
otherwise.
Maybe Tom Paris was the sort who had to hit bottom before he could start back up; if so, Janeway
thought he'd done it, there in that prison camp. It hadn't been a particularly harsh environment in a
physical sense, but for an admiral's son who had always thought himself destined for command, it must
have been hell knowing where he had been sent, and that by his family's standards he deserved to be
there.
But he was on the way back, Janeway was sure. Ever since the Caretaker had grabbed the Voyager,
Paris had done his best for Janeway and for the ship.
Janeway thought his manners still left something to be desired, though.
His question, while reasonable, had the ring of impertinence.
And it was a good question--had that tetryon beam originated with the Caretaker's lost companion?
The being that had snatched Voyager from the far side of the galaxy had been called the Caretaker
because it had dedicated itself to protecting and caring for a race known as the Ocampa--Kes's race. It
had built an immense construction Janeway had, for the lack of a better name, called the Array, and had
used that construction to perform whatever tasks it chose to undertake, such as supplying the Ocampa
civilization with energy--or scanning and then capturing the Voyager.
The Caretaker was dead now, dead and gone, and the Array had been destroyed to keep it out of the
hands of those unpleasant locals called the Kazon-Ogla. That left the Ocampa--and the Voyager--to
their own devices.
Before the Caretaker had died, however, it had told the crew of the Voyager that it had once had a
companion, an extragalactic creature like itself, but that this companion had deserted the Caretaker and
the Ocampa long ago, centuries ago, to wander the stars.
It seemed a safe assumption that this companion would use the same technology that the Caretaker had
used--and Janeway knew of no other source, anywhere in the galaxy, of coherent tetryon beams.
Of course, she didn't know that there weren't other sources, either.
No one in the Alpha Quadrant had ever developed tetryonic technology, but the Voyager was not in the
Alpha Quadrant. They had already encountered some technology in the Delta Quadrant unlike anything
Janeway had ever seen before.
"I think, Mr. Paris, that it might have been the Caretaker's companion," Janeway replied evenly. "I hope
to have some actual evidence one way or the other when Ensign Kim completes his study."
"And in the meantime, Captain," Neelix said anxiously, "if I might point out that we are still heading
directly into a war zone at incredible speed..."
Janeway glanced at the display on the main viewscreen. The Voyager was, indeed, headed directly
toward the Kuriyar Cluster and traveling there at warp six, but even so, they would not reach it for
hours--plenty of time for Harry Kim to review whatever the ship's automatic systems had recorded about
the tetryon scan.
"I'm aware of that," she said. "Thank you, Mr. Neelix." She turned toward the communications station.
"Anything, Ensign?"
"Not much, Captain," Kim reported. He leaned forward, looking over his control panel at the captain. "I
haven't been able to distinguish any identifying characteristics in the beam--there are no resonance
frequencies, no interference patterns, no detectable scatter. It's just pure monoparticulate tetryon
radiation. That's the same thing we found when we analyzed the computer records of the Caretaker's
scanning beam, but it doesn't really tell us much; I'd think that anyone who could project a beam like that
in the first place would be able to keep it this clean."
"Have you located the source?"
Kim shook his head. "I can give you a direction, Captain," he said, "but no range; the beam didn't last
long enough for us to triangulate, and without any scatter or Doppler effects...
well, it could have come from that cluster just ahead of us, or from somewhere back in Alpha Quadrant,
or from anywhere in between, for all we can tell."
"What's the direction, then?"
"I'll put it on the screen."
A moment later Kim's diagram appeared on the main viewer, Janeway took one look and smiled wryly.
"It would seem, Mr. Neelix," she said, "that our mysterious scanner lies in exactly the direction that you'd
advise us to avoid."
Sure enough, if the Voyager were to attempt to backtrack the tetryon beam, it would travel directly
through the exact center of the Kuriyar Cluster--assuming that they didn't come across the beam's source
before they got that far.
Janeway looked around the bridge at her command crew.
Her first officer, Chakotay, was seated in the right-hand chair of the two set below the rail that divided
the upper level of the bridge from the central. He sat there, impassive, calmly awaiting her decision; she
knew that he would not hesitate to argue if he thought she was making a disastrously wrong choice, but
that he trusted her to do the right thing. He had been the commander of the Maquis ship that the
Caretaker had abducted and that the Voyager had been hunting, but he had seen the necessity of joining
forces, and in the end had sacrificed his own ship to make sure the awesome technology of the Array did
not fall into the wrong hands.
Now he served aboard the Voyager, replacing her own dead first officer, and he served very well,
accepting her authority as captain, but never being slavishly obedient. If he had some strong objection to
her plans, he would say so.
Tuvok, the Voyager's Security/Tactical officer, was in his station at the starboard end of the upper level,
a bay that mirrored the Operations bay. He was as calm as Chakotay--but he was a Vulcan; he was
always calm. His serenity was a racial characteristic, where Chakotay's was a sign of his trust in her
competence.
Tuvok had been with her for a long time. He, too, knew when to speak up.
Paris, at the helm, was studying his controls, only glancing quickly at Janeway now and then; she thought
he was trying to hide his eagerness to venture into danger. Janeway knew the threat of alien warships
didn't worry Paris; if anything, he was looking forward to testing his piloting skills--and his
courage--against them. Tom Paris, the admiral's son, clearly still felt he had something to prove--to
himself, if not necessarily to anyone else.
Harry Kim, on the port side in Operations, was visibly nervous, and was trying hard not to be, or at least
not to show it. He wanted to be as fearless as anyone--that was part of his vision of the ideal Starfleet
officer, an ideal he desperately wanted to live up to--but he had enough imagination and common sense
that he couldn't help thinking just how nasty the situation might get if the Voyager ventured into that
cluster.
Neelix, down near the viewscreen, was nervous and clearly didn't care who knew it; Janeway guessed
that he thought venturing into a known war zone was insane, but he'd seen enough of human behavior--of
her behavior, specifically--that he knew she was considering it anyway.
And Kes, up by the gray door of the turbolift, was watching them all, fascinated. She probably hadn't
given the possibility of death and destruction ahead of them any real thought; she was too interested in
observing the people around her to worry about herself.
All but Kes undoubtedly had their own opinions as to whether the Voyager should follow that tetryon
beam into danger, or avoid the Kuriyar Cluster, but none of them were arguing with Janeway about it;
they knew the decision was hers...
"Surely, Captain, you aren't going to risk all our lives, and your lovely ship, just to see where a scanning
beam came from?"
Neelix asked.
"I'm afraid I am," Janeway replied, reaching the decision everyone had known she would reach. "Mr.
Paris, take our heading from Ensign Kim's analysis of the tetryon beam; we will attempt to follow it to its
source."
"Aye-aye, Captain," Paris answered promptly, his tone almost gleeful.
"But Captain...!" Neelix began.
Janeway looked him silently in the eye, and the little alien stammered, then fell silent.
She almost felt sorry for him. It was true that there was no point in taking on a native guide if you ignored
all his advice, but Neelix didn't truly appreciate the situation here. If the Voyager didn't find a shortcut of
some kind, most of her crew--perhaps all of her crew--would be dead of old age before the ship
reached Federation space.
That assumed that they didn't crack under the strain and kill each other first. And that the Voyager could
survive that long without proper maintenance.
It was worth taking a few risks--even a few large ones--to avoid any such fate.
Neelix merely wanted to survive, and to enjoy his life, and he was perfectly content aboard the Voyager,
with a comfortable berth and plentiful food and water and Kes at his side; he wasn't interested in going
anywhere in particular.
Janeway could hardly fault him for that, but for her own part, she wanted more, much more. She wanted
to return home, to see her lover Mark again, to see her crew safely back to their families.
It was worth taking a few risks for all that--but not foolish ones.
She looked to starboard.
"Mr. Tuvok," she said, "I want long-range scanners operating at full military readiness, with shields and
phasers on standby. If we're entering a war zone, I want to be ready for anything. It's not our fight, but
the locals may not realize that."
"Aye-aye, Captain."
"Very good. Mr. Paris, give us warp seven."
The decision made, Janeway sat back in her chair and watched as the image of the Kuriyar Cluster
expanded to fill the screen before her.
Chapter 3
Janeway suppressed an exasperated sigh as her Talaxian guide popped up at her side again the very
instant she set foot back on the bridge.
"Captain, please reconsider!" Neelix said. "The Hachai and the P'nir have been at war with one another
for centuries; they've exhausted entire planets building their war fleets. Their ships could be anywhere."
Janeway, who had listened to Neelix's protests for half an hour before retreating to her ready room for
five minutes for a respite, paused on the steps and turned to face him at that.
"They could be anywhere? Do you mean they have cloaking technology?"
she asked, with interest.
"Have what?" Neelix replied, startled.
"Cloaking technology."
"Ah... I don't know what that is," Neelix said. "Perhaps the translator is malfunctioning; I might know it by
another name."
"I don't think so, Mr. Neelix," Janeway replied, turning her attention back to the main viewer and
proceeding to her chair.
"I think it's unknown around this part of the galaxy. Which is just as well."
"Unknown to me, perhaps," Neelix said, seeing a possible opportunity, "but does that mean it's unknown
to the Hachai? Or the P'nir?"
"Probably," Janeway said dryly.
Neelix, seeing that that particular gambit wasn't going to work, that Janeway was not sufficiently afraid of
"cloaking technology" to turn aside merely because the combatants might have it, returned to his basic
theme. "Even so," he said, "the Hachai and the P'nir both have fearsome weapons, and they have
thousands of warships cruising the cluster, shooting at everything they see."
"Everything?" Janeway asked, as she looked over at Neelix again.
"Yes, Captain, everything!" Neelix said enthusiastically. "You see, throughout the war the P'nir have used
many ruses in their attempts to gain the advantage--they've had warships disguised as neutral trading
vessels, bombs disguised as asteroids or wreckage, and so on. You can imagine the havoc they
produced!"
"Yes," Janeway acknowledged. "I can see that." She studied the viewscreen; they were approaching a
star on the outskirts of the Kuriyar Cluster, a young main-sequence star that could reasonably be
expected to have planets.
If one of those planets was M-class the Voyager might be able to pick up a few supplies, and the crew
might take a brief shore leave.
摘要：

StarTrek-Voy-003-RagnarokBy:NathanArcherCopyright1995Chapter1Forthemoment,allwaswellaboardtheFederationstarshipVoyager.Whiletherewererepairsbeingmade,andtheywere,asalways,short-handed,therewerenolife-threateningemergenciesatthemoment.Theengineswereworkingwell,lifesupportwasfunctioning,thehydroponics...

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