Ragnarok Read Online Free PDF Page A

Captain,” he said, “the Hachai and the P’nir have been fighting for a long time. They’ve stripped whole planets to build their fleets.”
    “And that orbiting debris?” Chakotay asked, stepping up to join the pair at the forward console.
    “The remains of their defenses, I suppose,” Neelix said. “I think this would have been a P’nir system; the P’nir are said to be fond of orbital fortresses.”
    “Those defenses don’t seem to have worked,” the First Officer remarked.
    “Of course not,” Neelix agreed. “No defense can hold out forever against a really determined attack. And the Hachai are pretty determined people.”
    “Of course not,” Janeway said, appalled.
    “Now, Captain,” Neelix asked, his tone wheedling, “do you think we might change course, so as to not run into the Hachai fleet that did this?”
    Janeway turned and looked across the bridge to Ensign Kim, behind his console in Ops. “When were these worlds destroyed?” she demanded.
    “Just a minute, Captain,” Kim said, as he studied the readings.
    Then he looked up. “Judging by the vacuum evaporation of the surface molecules from objects among the orbital debris,” he said, “I’d estimate that the objects I picked as samples have been drifting untouched here for roughly two hundred standard years.”
    Janeway stared at Kim for a moment, then straightened and nodded.
    “I hardly think, Mr. Neelix,” she said, “that any war fleet would still be in the area, looking for stragglers, after two centuries.”
    She took another look at the viewscreen, at the image of the blackened ruins that had once been inhabited worlds, then stepped back and settled into her seat.
    “I don’t think anyone here was producing any tetryon beams, either.”
    “They’d be too busy fighting,” Neelix replied. “Anyone anywhere in the Kuriyar Cluster would be. There’s nothing here that’s going to help.”
    “You don’t know that,” Janeway replied.
    “But I knew that there was a war here, didn’t I?” Neelix protested.
    “Yes, you did,” Janeway agreed, “but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing but a war. And in fact,” she added, “I would guess that your war here is long since over. A conflict at that level of ferocity could not possibly have been sustained for so long.”
    Neelix looked at the screen.
    “I hope you’re right, Captain,” he said. “I’d like to think so.
    But the war was still going on the last I heard.”

Chapter 4
    The next star system that the Voyager approached might have had a habitable planet orbiting it at one time; what it had now was an asteroid belt and three gas giants.
    They weren’t going to find any supplies here, either; that was obvious.
    And this time no one made any jokes about coffee plantations.
    A quick analysis indicated that the asteroid field was not part of the system’s original structure; a small planet had been destroyed to create it. By tracking orbital patterns, Harry Kim estimated that the destruction had taken place some three centuries before.
    Whether the shattering of the planet had been natural or whether a world had been deliberately smashed could not be determined.
    There was no sign of any inherent instability in the remaining fragments, but that didn’t rule out a natural impact, or some sort of collapse.
    An analysis of the core might have told them more, but the planet’s metallic core was gone; the asteroids were all rock, presumably from the mantle or crust, and all without any trace of useful metals. A few chunks appeared to have once been part of a planetary surface; Janeway thought that she saw certain markings here and there that might even have been the remains of canals or highways.
    “Take us in closer,” she ordered, rising and stepping forward for a better view.
    Paris obeyed; with shields raised to fend off any stray chunks of rock, the Voyager made its way cautiously into the asteroid belt.
    “Was there anything in particular that you