Ragnarok (16 page)

“Your captain is not P’nir,” the P’nir replied. “Your captain is not a true captain.”

Chakotay frowned—he supposed that the P’nir wouldn’t recognize the expression; after all, the P’nir had no facial expressions themselves, and had not dealt face-to-face with any other intelligent species for centuries.

“Tell me how you know that my captain is not P’nir,” he said.

The P’nir was definitely uncomfortable now; two of its arms were swaying about oddly, as if looking for something for its claws to grab.

Perhaps, Chakotay thought, arm motions served the same purpose among the P’nir that facial expressions served among humanoids.

“Your captain is no true captain,” the P’nir said.

“Tell me how you know that,” Chakotay insisted.

“Your captain acted improperly,” it said. “No P’nir captain would act so improperly.”

“Tell me how my captain acted improperly,” Chakotay said. “I do not see any improper action.”

“Your captain sent you into danger,” the P’nir replied. “Your captain betrayed you. You are here, among us, against your will—a true captain protects her underlings and does not send them to the domains of others without agreement. Obey K’t’rien, the captain of the ship you are on—and obey me, her representative!”

This explanation and demand provided Chakotay with an interesting look at the P’nir culture, but he did not take the time to pursue it; he wanted to maintain whatever conversational advantage he had at the moment.

“No,” he said. “I will not obey you. My captain’s act was not improper.”

“Then your captain is no P’nir!”

Chakotay could not very well argue any further with that, under the circumstances.

“I am no P’nir!” he said.

“Then you are nothing. Tell me how your captain’s ship is armed,” the P’nir demanded.

“No. Take me to your captain,” Chakotay responded.

“No.”

That brought the conversation to a halt.

Stalemate.

Chakotay tried to think of some way to convey to the P’nir that maybe, just maybe, Chakotay would be more cooperative with the captain than with this underling—assuming that this was a mere underling; the green stripe might well mark it as an officer. It could well be the ship’s first officer, his own counterpart.

It wasn’t the captain, though; it had said as much, had said it was merely the captain’s representative.

How could he convince it that he would obey the captain, when he would not obey the captain’s representative?

He could not devise any way to suggest such a thing in a way that the P’nir would accept and yet that wouldn’t be an outright lie.

He could tell a lie, of course—but he had the impression that a people as direct as the P’nir would not take kindly to liars.

Or would they? That was jumping to conclusions. They seemed to be quite adept at lying to the Hachai, to go by the intense Hachai fear of “P’nir trickery.”

But they were at war with the Hachai, which might make anything fair, as far as they were concerned. The Hachai were the enemy.

Perhaps the P’nir saw no point in treating enemies honorably.

He didn’t think the P’nir would appreciate anyone lying to the P’nir, though. They didn’t seem to be very strong on the idea of reciprocity.

At least, he thought, this one didn’t; others might be more reasonable.

He glanced at Bereyt, but she didn’t seem to have any suggestions this time.

Before he could look at Rollins, or turn back to the P’nir, the P’nir turned away, and the forcefield reappeared; apparently it had taken the movement of his head as a sign that the discussion was at an end.

Chakotay glowered after it.

“Damn,” he said. “How am I supposed to negotiate with creatures with an attitude like that?”

“I don’t know, sir,” Bereyt replied. “I thought you did rather well, considering.”

“Not well enough,” Chakotay said.

“It may not be possible to do any better,” Bereyt said. “The Hachai don’t seem to have managed it, in all these hundreds of years.”

“We don’t know if they tried to negotiate,” Chakotay objected.

“Well, you tried, sir,” Rollins suggested. “Maybe Captain Janeway will do better.”

At that moment, aboard the Voyager, Janeway ordered, “No torpedoes. We can’t resupply.”

“I would point out, Captain,” Tuvok said, “that if we die here, conserving our photon torpedoes will have been of no benefit whatsoever.”

“I know that, Tuvok,” Janeway snapped. “We’ll get out of here—and we’ll do it without using up any more photon torpedoes.

Is that clear?”

“Abundantly clear, Captain,” the Vulcan said. “Firing phasers.”

The statement was hardly necessary, the flare of the Voyager’s weapons was obvious, a vivid line of orange-red on the screen.

It struck the shields of the Hachai dreadnought that had been harassing them; the shields fluoresced blue-green, and phaser-energy dissipated in a cloud of superheated interstellar hydrogen and glittering metal dust, the dust of the hundreds of ships that had been destroyed in the centuries the battle had raged.

And that was all that happened. The blast didn’t penetrate the Hachai ship’s shields at all. The dreadnought was still coming after them.

“Evasive action, Mr. Paris,” Janeway called.

“Aye-aye, Captain,” Paris replied, as he threw the Voyager into a sliding movement to one side.

“Continue firing, Mr. Tuvok.”

“Firing phasers.”

Again the fiery red beams lashed out, and again they spattered into useless heat and light against the Hachai dreadnought’s shields.

“It would seem that Mr. Neelix was correct about the efficacy of Hachai shield generators, Captain,” Tuvok said. “Our weapons are having no effect whatsoever.”

“So I see,” Janeway replied. “And if Neelix knew that, I wonder if he knows any way to defeat them?”

“I would not consider it likely, Captain, given his extreme reluctance to encounter the Hachai,” the Vulcan said.

“True,” Janeway said, but even so, she called, “Neelix to the bridge, please.”

“Captain, this is the emergency medical hologram,” came the reply.

“Mr. Neelix is assisting with the wounded; is his presence on the bridge essential?”

Shaken, Janeway looked up. She hadn’t realized there were wounded already, but of course there would be—she’d heard the damage reports, and any time the ride got rough enough to damage equipment, it was rough enough to damage people, as well.

“Doctor, how many wounded are there?”

“We have eight so far, Captain—none of them critical.”

Just then the ship shook as a Hachai assault struck with sufficient force to be felt through the shields.

“Mr. Neelix,” Janeway called, “our weapons aren’t penetrating the Hachai shields. Do you know of any way to change that?”

“I’m afraid not, Captain,” the Talaxian replied. “That’s why the Hachai shield generators were always such a popular trade item.”

“Thank you, Mr. Neelix,” Janeway replied. “Continue to assist in sickbay, please; bridge out.”

Then she turned to the Vulcan. “Tactical analysis, Mr. Tuvok,” she said.

“The only discernable effect of our fire has been to antagonize the Hachai,” Tuvok reported. The ineffectuality of our phasers has been obvious, and the Hachai are therefore not bothering to keep their distance. We are, Captain, in serious peril.”

“Is there anything we can do about it?”

“If we are once clear of the combat zone, we can escape easily,” Tuvok replied. “Sensor analysis indicates that neither the Hachai nor the P’nir vessels are capable of true warp speeds.

However, unless Mr. Paris can extricate us from the combat zone, or we can find a weapon that is effective against Hachai shields and force an opening, I see no way to achieve this escape. We are trapped within the sphere of conflict, and I would estimate that within six hours our power reserves will be exhausted, our shields will fail, and the Voyager will be destroyed.”

Janeway turned to look at the viewscreen; they were passing terrifyingly close to the broadside of a Hachai dreadnought just then, the immense gray surface banded with three orange stripes filling the entire image. Then they were past it, heading toward a trio of dark, jagged P’nir ships—and the bridge trembled as the Hachai dreadnought fired on them.

“Find a weapon that is effective against Hachai shields,” Janeway said, as she leaned on the forward console and stared at the main viewer.

“The Hachai shields are more efficient than our own, you said, Mr. Tuvok—why?”

“Because, Captain,” Tuvok explained, “they are much more finely tuned than ours. The Hachai do not waste energy defending against impossible attacks, or in letting shields on a single ship interfere with each other; each ship uses a single integrated energy field wherein every erg they put into their shields is in the frequency range and resonance patterns of which P’nir weaponry is capable, while our own shields are less discriminating.”

“And the P’nir can’t build weapons in other ranges or patterns?”

“Apparently not. The range of effectiveness of the Hachai shields, while less than our own, is still extremely broad.”

“And the P’nir can’t tune their weapons outside that range,” Janeway said. “But they’re not using phasers. They don’t have Kawamura-Franklin circuitry; their weapons aren’t monopolarically phased.”

“This is true, Captain,” the Vulcan acknowledged. “But I fail to see how it benefits us.”

“I don’t know if it does, Tuvok—but I’m not an engineer.” She straightened up and called, “Janeway to Engineering.”

“Torres here, Captain. If you’re wondering about the engines…”

“Not this time, B’Elanna,” Janeway said. “I trust you to keep the engines going as best you can.”

Torres sighed. “What do you need?” She couldn’t stop herself from adding, “I’m pretty busy down here, Captain, trying to keep up with this battering.”

“B’Elanna, I want you to look at the sensor readouts on the Hachai shields, and see if you can find any way we can get through them,” Janeway explained. “These people don’t have phasers; their weapons aren’t monopolaric. Is there any way we can use that?”

“Captain, I’ve been nursing the engines along down here, and the way Mr. Paris is abusing them, I haven’t been thinking about…”

Just then the entire ship was jarred by a Hachai energy barrage; Janeway lurched as the bridge seemed to tilt beneath her. The viewscreen flickered, and the lights dimmed; for half a second the only illumination was the blue and gold glow of the control panels.

“B’Elanna, if we don’t find a way to get through those shields soon,” Janeway said, “we may not have any engines! Let Carey handle the engines; you get to work on cracking those shields!”

Harry Kim crouched by the bulkhead, wishing he could hold his breath for more than a minute or two at a time, his phaser was ready in his hand, pointed at the distant ceiling, but he really, truly hoped he wouldn’t need it.

The rattlings and thumpings around the curve in the passageway seemed to go on and on interminably, as the P’nir went about their business—whatever it was.

Kim had no idea what was going on; he was just waiting for the sounds to move away.

And they hadn’t moved.

So he was still crouching, still waiting.

He had yet to actually see one of the P’nir, even here; he hadn’t risked looking around the curve at them.

He had been creeping down this passage, and he had heard the sounds and had frozen. Then he had carefully, quietly crept to this dim corner and had waited, hoping that whatever the P’nir were doing would not bring them around the curve where they would see him.

And he was still waiting.

He wished he had some way to cover up his face and the shoulders of his uniform; he thought the rest would blend into the black of the corridor walls.

He wondered how acute the P’nir’s hearing was.

He wondered what they looked like. Judging by what he had seen of the ship, especially the wall-markings and the little control panels in the doorframes, he assumed that the P’nir were considerably taller than human beings. Judging by the sounds he now heard, he also thought that they probably had hard claws, rather than soft fingers.

That really shouldn’t affect his opinion of them as people, he told himself. Starfleet taught its cadets to ignore the mere physical appearance of a sentient being as completely as possible, and to concentrate on the mind and soul within. A gaseous intelligence from inside a star could well be a spiritual brother; Kim knew that.

However, he still didn’t like the sound of all those claws clicking and snapping, just around the curve. Some primitive part of him couldn’t help imagining those claws biting into him, and he found himself quite irrationally disliking the P’nir, sight unseen.

He considered trying to slip away, back to the storeroom where he had arrived, but quickly rejected the idea; by now P’nir security might well have discovered the hole he had cut in the door.

He had passed other corridors; he thought about backtracking and trying one of those. The passage he was in seemed to be headed in the right direction, but perhaps he’d be safer finding a less-direct route.

The more he thought about it, and the longer those nasty clicking noises continued, the better the idea of an alternate route seemed, until at last, moving with all the stealth he could manage, he slipped back down the passage and then into one of the smaller side corridors.

*

“Let Carey handle the engines,” Torres muttered to herself as she prepared to turn the systems over to her fellow engineer.

“Carey couldn’t handle a warp drive properly if you imprinted the instructions directly into his neurons! The man can’t realign a plasma conduit to save his life.” She turned to glare at the shimmering blue glow of the warp core.

“You behave yourself!” she shouted at the machinery. “You just stay aligned, or I’ll take you apart with my bare hands, space the pieces, and build the ship a new warp drive myself!”

That outburst made her feel a little better. She turned and shouted, “Mr. Carey! I need to work on something else—see if you can keep these engines on line!”