Ragnarok (21 page)

“We have to stop them!” Rollins blurted.

“What did you have in mind?” Chakotay asked. “We can’t use the shuttle’s phasers in here….”

“We could go out with hand phasers…” Kim began, then stopped.

Chakotay considered that for a moment, picturing it; the image of the four of them bursting out the shuttle hatch and blasting the P’nir energy projector reminded him of something, but it took a second before he could recover and identify the memory.

A sally, he realized, as in medieval European warfare. Like knights venturing out of a besieged fortress to destroy a catapult or siege tower.

That image exactly paralleled the situation they were in—a besieged castle, with the outnumbered defenders hiding behind their walls while the enemy brought up whatever machinery was necessary to break in.

In such a case, a sally might drive back the attackers, destroy the siege machinery… but it wouldn’t change the inevitable outcome.

Chakotay had studied military history and theory of warfare at the Academy; he knew that the only way defenders ever won a properly conducted siege was if some outside force came to their rescue. The point of the defense was to stay alive until one’s allies could attack the besieging force from the rear. A sally wouldn’t decide anything by itself; it was merely a delaying tactic, a move to delay the inevitable and give one’s allies more time to arrive.

Chakotay realized, however, that his allies were not coming. Oh, he didn’t doubt that Janeway would want to rescue him, but he didn’t believe she could, not while they were trapped deep inside the ongoing battle….

“Mr. Rollins,” he said, “run a scan of the battle. I want to know where we are, and where the Voyager is.”

“Yes, sir.” As Rollins went to work, Chakotay began reviewing his options.

He could surrender, as K’t’rien asked—but she had not actually said that they would be set free again if they did surrender, and even if she had, he had no reason to believe P’nir promises. The Hachai certainly put no faith in them.

The defenders of a besieged castle who surrendered were completely at the mercy of the victors; there were plenty of examples in history of both mercy and ruthless slaughter, and of victorious besiegers breaking their promises.

The four of them could hold out here for as long as possible, in hopes that Janeway and the Voyager would come to their rescue—but it was a thin hope, at best. The P’nir cruiser was a purpose-built warship at least ten times the Voyager’s size, and with a thousand allies close at hand; even if Janeway was foolish enough to try it, her chances of succeeding, despite the slight technological edge, were slim.

They could make the sally that Ensign Kim had suggested, to destroy the energy projector, but that would only prolong the siege, not end it.

There was one other possibility… escape. Many castles were built with secret tunnels that let the defenders escape a siege, and the shuttlecraft’s transporter filled that role nicely.

But if the four of them escaped—five, with K’t’rien—where would they go? What would they do? They had no realistic chance of taking over a ship this size and forcing it to take them safely back to the Voyager, not when the P’nir reaction to a hostage captain was to consider the hostage disgraced and worthless.

They could use the transporter “tunnel” to send their forces behind the enemy lines and wreak havoc—that, too, was a traditional, if risky, maneuver in siege warfare—but Chakotay did not see how that would get them safely off this ship and out of the battle….

“Commander!” Rollins called. “I think you’d better see this.”

Chakotay leaned over the ensign’s shoulder and looked at the displays again.

Rollins had not been looking at the exterior video of the hangar this time; he had been running sensor scans of the battle outside. The details were hazy, since the scanners had to work through the P’nir hull and two sets of shields, but a few facts were clear immediately.

The cruiser on which they were held had moved, had worked its way through the battle zone almost from end to end, and if it didn’t change course soon, they were about to emerge from one end of the cloud of warships, out into open space.

The distraction of the captain’s kidnapping was probably partly responsible for that, Chakotay guessed; this ship would not be in top fighting form while its officers and crew were busy with the invader in their hangar bay and the transition of power to the new captain. The ship was still fighting, but it was being moved into a less-crucial outer position.

While that maneuver lasted the shuttle would have the best chance of escaping into clear space that they could possibly hope for.

It still wouldn’t be an easy ride, by any means, but they’d have a chance, especially if the Voyager was nearby and spotted them in time.

If they could once get the shuttlecraft off the P’nir cruiser…

Another interesting fact to be read from the display was their location relative to the huge spheroid that had attracted Janeway’s attention almost as soon as they saw the battle, the great round object that was plainly neither Hachai nor P’nir, the thing that had emitted strange radiation, including tetryon radiation, that they had hoped might have meant it had some connection with the Caretaker’s lost companion.

They were passing quite near the mysterious object; the battle had shifted so that it was no longer at the center, but instead near one end. And they, aboard the P’nir ship, were between the stranger and the edge of the combat area, about to emerge into empty space.

That meant that the mysterious object would shield them from much of the battle, making this an even better opportunity to escape.

And it meant more than that…

“Give me a close-up on that thing,” Chakotay said.

Rollins tapped the controls, and Chakotay studied the results.

There was no direct visual of the object, but the shuttle computers were able to construct an image from the energy readings—an image of a gigantic, almost spherical construct, its surface divided into cell-like structures.

Some of those cells were missing, and a dozen holes gaped in the thing’s sides, holes big enough to swallow a Galaxy-class starship.

“I’ve seen something like that before,” Chakotay said. His recent mental review of what the Academy had taught him about siege warfare had him in the right frame of mind for recovering half-forgotten old lessons.

“Sir, it’s a derelict…” Rollins said.

“It’s huge,” Kim added.

“History tapes,” Chakotay said. “At the Academy. I remember a ship like that.”

“You’re right, sir,” Kim said. “From… eighty years ago, I think it was.”

“The First Federation,” Chakotay said. “That was what they called themselves. The captain that met their ship sent one of his crew as an ambassador, and then we never heard anything more from them.”

“James Kirk, on the Enterprise,” Kim agreed. “He bluffed them with some nonsense about a super-explosive, and then found out that they’d been bluffing, too. We covered it in Strategy and Tactics, second year.”

“Looks like they ran into the Hachai and the P’nir and found out they weren’t bluffing,” Rollins said.

“Or maybe it was just drifting, already wrecked, and the P’nir and the Hachai found it,” Chakotay said. “It doesn’t really matter how it got here; what matters is that it’s not the Caretaker’s companion, and there’s nothing there that’s going to help us get home.”

“Do we know that, sir?” Kim asked. “If the First Federation contacted our Federation eighty years ago….”

Chakotay shook his head. “Take another look.” He reached down and tapped a control, and the image zoomed in.

“It’s hollow!” Rollins exclaimed.

Kim nodded, remembering. “That’s right,” he said. “That was the bluff—the big ship wasn’t much more than an empty shell. The real ship was incredibly powerful, but it was relatively tiny.”

“And the real ship, as well as anything else worthwhile, is gone,” Chakotay said. He pointed. “Look.”

The others looked, and saw that P’nir ships were maneuvering through the First Federation derelict, dodging in and out of the holes in its side to harass the Hachai, and the Hachai were shooting into the openings after them.

“They wouldn’t be doing that if there was anything of any possible value left in there,” Kim agreed. “The emissions must just be residual—secondary radiation.”

Chakotay nodded. “Or maybe something on there still worked well enough to put out that tetryon beam.” He pointed at a sensor readout.

One cell on the derelict’s hull was producing faint and fading secondary tetryon emissions.

“It’s worthless,” Rollins said bitterly. “This was all for nothing!”

“It was an attempt at peacemaking, Ensign,” Chakotay said.

“That’s always worth trying.”

“Well, it didn’t work,” Rollins said.

“No, it didn’t,” Chakotay agreed. “But it was worth the try.

And now that we know it didn’t work, all we need to do is get out of here!”

“How?” Rollins demanded.

“Well, I could take a few shots at that projector, or whatever it is, with my phaser,” Kim said. “That’ll buy us some time.”

“We need to take out the tractor beam, open the hangar door, and get clear before the P’nir can blow us to dust,” Chakotay said.

“Do we know how to do that?” He turned to look at the Bajoran.

“No,” Bereyt said. “I’ve scanned the ship as best I can, but I couldn’t make much sense of it. Their design isn’t like anything I’m familiar with. I found the bridge, and the storerooms, but beyond that… well, I’m not even sure where Engineering is.”

“But we have someone who could tell us what we need to know,” Chakotay said, jerking his chin at their P’nir captive. “All we have to do is convince her.”

The others looked at him nervously; Bereyt glanced back at the P’nir, then back at him.

She was probably remembering Cardassian methods for “convincing” prisoners to cooperate, Chakotay realized. And she was probably wondering just how many of the stories circulating in Starfleet about ruthless Maquis terrorists were based on truth.

And judging by Rollins’s expression, he had believed those stories about the Maquis all along. Harry Kim was the only one who didn’t seem to expect Chakotay to start breaking open the P’nir’s claws and yanking out the marrow.

“I don’t know how we can do that, sir,” he said. “What can we offer her?”

“We can offer her her position as captain back,” Chakotay replied. He turned to face the P’nir.

“Listen, K’t’rien,” he said, “we can arrange for you to `escape’ once you’ve shown us what we need to shut down to get us out of here safely.”

The P’nir stared at him silently.

“You can defeat us, and we’ll flee,” Chakotay said. “At least, that’s what it’ll look like. We’ll be gone, and you’ll be able to reassert yourself as captain. We all win. But you’ll have to show us how to shut down the tractor beam and open the hangar door, and swear to do what you can to give us a few seconds to get clear before this ship opens fire.”’

“Commander,” Kim whispered urgently, “not to impugn anyone’s honor, but… well, do we really know what the P’nir attitude toward swearing and keeping oaths is? Particularly oaths made to non-P’nir?”

“It’s a calculated risk, Ensign,” Chakotay whispered back. “They taught you about those at the Academy, didn’t they? And we need to act now, before this ship’s crew reorganizes and dives back into the thick of the fray.”

“Yes, sir.” Kim fell silent, and Chakotay turned back to the P’nir.

K’t’rien stared at Chakotay, her red eyes gleaming. She didn’t speak.

“K’t’rien, give me your promise to aid us,” Chakotay said. “When we have your sworn oath, we will release you and we will flee.”

For a long moment the P’nir didn’t reply; then, abruptly, she said, “Tell me what aid you require.”

“We need to know how to disable your ship’s tractor beam—only temporarily—and open the hangar door so that our craft can leave,” Chakotay explained.

“That is all?”

“That is all.”

The P’nir seemed to consider for a moment—though with her featureless face it was hard to be sure what, if anything, she might be thinking.

“Confirm or deny this,” she said at last.

“You propose to listen to my instruction, then hold me here while you carry it out.”

“Well, yes, that’s what we had in mind,” Chakotay said warily.

“I refuse to cooperate with that proposal,” the P’nir immediately replied. “I cannot trust you to do no other damage to the ship that was once mine.”

“Then propose an alternative,” Chakotay said. The P’nir style of speaking without questions was beginning to come naturally for him.

“I will disable the tractor beam and open the door,” K’t’rien replied.

“I will not instruct you, but I will do it myself.”

“You expect us to trust you?” Chakotay asked. “To release you?”

K’t’rien didn’t answer. Chakotay frowned. Of course she didn’t answer, he told himself; he’d asked her a question instead of giving her an order.

“Commander,” Kim said, “What if I went with her? You could keep a transporter fix on us….”

“We can’t risk keeping the shuttle’s shields down that long,” hakotay objected. “We couldn’t maintain a transporter lock.”

“Well, we’ll have combadges,” Kim said, “or at least, I’ll have mine, and I can call for help. It shouldn’t take more than a few seconds to drop the shields, lock on, and retrieve us.”

Chakotay considered that. He didn’t like it—but he didn’t see a better alternative.

“Do it,” he said.

The big projector that the P’nir had assembled in the hangar, whatever it was, did not appear to be ready for use yet, and the guards with their hand weapons had retreated to the corridors, which were now closed off with some sort of shielding. The only P’nir in sight were a handful of workers attending to the final preparations on the projector, and those workers did not appear to be armed.

That being the case, Chakotay judged it safe to drop the shuttlecraft’s shields momentarily, just long enough to use the transporter. At his signal Rollins dropped the shields, and Bereyt energized the transporter.