Star Trek: Voyager: Ragnarok
By Nathan Archer
ISBN: 067152044X
Published 1995
I’m starting a full walkthrough of Ragnarok, the third numbered Voyager novel. Nathan Archer wrote it right after Valhalla for Deep Space Nine, and this one drops the crew into a centuries-old war zone with almost no way out.
Star Trek: Voyager: Ragnarok
By Nathan Archer
ISBN: 067152044X
Chapter 1 opens on a rare quiet moment aboard Voyager. Repairs are ongoing, the crew is short-handed as always, but nobody is dying right now. Engines work. Life support works. The hydroponics bay is doing fine. Janeway is on the bridge with Neelix, studying star charts and thinking about the long trip home.
Star Trek: Voyager: Ragnarok
By Nathan Archer
ISBN: 067152044X
Chapter 2 picks up right after red alert. Lights dim. Janeway grips the railing and asks Kim if he reads a displacement wave anywhere.
Star Trek: Voyager: Ragnarok
By Nathan Archer
ISBN: 067152044X
If you thought Neelix would give up after Janeway set course into the Kuriyar Cluster, Chapter 3 says hello. He is waiting the second she steps back on the bridge. Captain, please reconsider. Hachai and P’nir warships could be anywhere. They have exhausted entire planets building fleets.
Star Trek: Voyager: Ragnarok
By Nathan Archer
ISBN: 067152044X
Chapter 4 might be the hardest chapter in the opening stretch. The last system had boiled planets and stripped metal. This one used to have a habitable world. Now it has an asteroid belt and three gas giants.
Star Trek: Voyager: Ragnarok
By Nathan Archer
ISBN: 067152044X
Chapter 5 slows the pace, literally. Janeway orders impulse as Voyager nears another system. Neelix mutters that if she insists on crossing the cluster, she could at least do it faster. Nothing alive out here except the Hachai and P’nir, and you will not get supplies from them.
Star Trek: Voyager: Ragnarok
By Nathan Archer
ISBN: 067152044X
Chapter 6 is short, but it might be the most emotional chapter so far. No away team. No red alert. Just Voyager passing another dead world and two exhausted officers talking honestly.
Star Trek: Voyager: Ragnarok
By Nathan Archer
ISBN: 067152044X
Okay, the slug says First Federation derelict, but Chapter 7 is really about the moment the book’s title starts making sense. Janeway gets dragged out of a nightmare where Mark and her dog were mummified in a tunnel. Bridge to captain. She checks the clock. They should still be in interstellar void. Why is she needed?
Star Trek: Voyager: Ragnarok
By Nathan Archer
ISBN: 067152044X
Chapter 8 opens with Voyager hanging almost motionless inside a cloud of ionized metal dust, safely out of weapons range while thousands of ships tear into each other a few light-seconds away. The bridge crew watches. That is the whole situation. And it is terrifying.
Star Trek: Voyager: Ragnarok
By Nathan Archer
ISBN: 067152044X
Chapter 9 is basically a history lesson on the bridge, and it is one of the best parts of the book so far. Janeway asks Neelix to explain the Hachai-P’nir war. The whole senior staff turns and stares at him. He clears his throat and starts talking.
Star Trek: Voyager: Ragnarok
By Nathan Archer
ISBN: 067152044X
Chapter 10 is Janeway putting her offer on the table and getting slapped for it. She broadcasts to the whole battlefield. Clear voice. Federation starship Voyager. Neutral party. Ready to help negotiate.
Star Trek: Voyager: Ragnarok
By Nathan Archer
ISBN: 067152044X
Chapter 11 is the bridge argument everyone knew was coming. Neelix asks the question straight out. Are we getting involved in the battle?
Star Trek: Voyager: Ragnarok
By Nathan Archer
ISBN: 067152044X
Chapter 12 opens with one of the weirdest lines in the book. Kes stares at the main viewer and says the battle is beautiful.
Star Trek: Voyager: Ragnarok
By Nathan Archer
ISBN: 067152044X
Chapter 13 stays with the shuttle crew while the peace broadcast drones on loop. Computer voice. Federation shuttlecraft. Neutral party. Ready to negotiate or arbitrate. Please contact us. Then it starts again.
Star Trek: Voyager: Ragnarok
By Nathan Archer
ISBN: 067152044X
Chapter 14 cuts back to Voyager at the worst possible moment. Paris says “Look!” Janeway is already on her feet. A random surge in the battle just swallowed the shuttle.
Star Trek: Voyager: Ragnarok
By Nathan Archer
ISBN: 067152044X
Chapter 15 opens with Rollins asking what everyone is thinking.
“What the hell are you doing, Commander?”
Star Trek: Voyager: Ragnarok
By Nathan Archer
ISBN: 067152044X
Chapter 16 splits between Harry Kim alone in the dark and Chakotay meeting the P’nir face to face. Both halves are tense. One is claustrophobic. The other is deeply weird.
Star Trek: Voyager: Ragnarok
By Nathan Archer
ISBN: 067152044X
The Hachai fleet has Voyager boxed in, and Chapter 17 opens with the ship shuddering hard enough that Janeway has to grab a railing just to stay upright. She shouts down to Engineering for more shield power. Down below, it is chaos. Conduits are buckling. The deck vibrates with every hit. B’Elanna Torres is doing a dozen things at once and tells the captain she has already given her everything she can spare.
Star Trek: Voyager: Ragnarok
By Nathan Archer
ISBN: 067152044X
Harry Kim has been alone in the dark on a P’nir cruiser for a long time. Chapter 18 finally gives him a way forward. He finds the door. He cannot feel a latch anywhere from knee height to the top of his head. So he does what any stranded ensign with a phaser would do. He aims carefully and fires.
Star Trek: Voyager: Ragnarok
By Nathan Archer
ISBN: 067152044X
Chapter 20 splits the action in two. On Voyager, the phasers are useless. In the P’nir ship, Harry Kim is trying not to breathe too loud.
Star Trek: Voyager: Ragnarok
By Nathan Archer
ISBN: 067152044X
B’Elanna Torres hates being pulled off the engines, but Janeway’s order is clear. Study the Hachai shields and find a weakness. Carey gets the warp core. Torres gets Tuvok’s sensor analysis.
Star Trek: Voyager: Ragnarok
By Nathan Archer
ISBN: 067152044X
Chapter 22 is pure adrenaline. Tom Paris is flying Voyager like it is a fighter jet in the middle of a war that has eaten star systems for centuries.
Star Trek: Voyager: Ragnarok
By Nathan Archer
ISBN: 067152044X
Chakotay meant what he said at the end of Chapter 21. If they cannot fly out, they have to talk their way out. Chapter 23 opens with him making that case to the shuttle crew.
Star Trek: Voyager: Ragnarok
By Nathan Archer
ISBN: 067152044X
The standoff from Chapter 23 does not improve. It gets worse in very P’nir-specific ways.
Star Trek: Voyager: Ragnarok
By Nathan Archer
ISBN: 067152044X
Chapter 24 is the exhale after Chapter 22’s sprint. For about two pages, Voyager is actually out.
Star Trek: Voyager: Ragnarok
By Nathan Archer
ISBN: 067152044X
Published 1995
Chapter 25 is where the siege metaphor stops being a metaphor. Chakotay, Kim, Rollins, and Bereyt are trapped in their shuttle inside a P’nir hangar bay, and the enemy has stopped shooting at them. That sounds like good news until you see what they are building instead.
Star Trek: Voyager: Ragnarok
By Nathan Archer
ISBN: 067152044X
Published 1995
Chapter 26 is the chapter where a transporter hop turns into a horror show. The P’nir energy projector in the hangar is not ready yet. Guards have retreated behind shielded corridors. Only a handful of unarmed workers remain near the assembly. Chakotay decides it is safe enough to drop shields for a moment.
Star Trek: Voyager: Ragnarok
By Nathan Archer
ISBN: 067152044X
Published 1995
Chapter 27 splits the action in two. Up on Voyager’s bridge, Janeway is running a dangerous game of cat and mouse through the battle zone. Down in the wreckage, Chakotay’s shuttle is bleeding air and losing Harry Kim by the minute. The chapter ends the moment those two storylines finally touch.
Star Trek: Voyager: Ragnarok
By Nathan Archer
ISBN: 067152044X
Published 1995
Chapter 28 is Janeway at her most Janeway. Locking the tractor beam on the shuttle was the easy part. Getting everyone out alive while a dozen P’nir cruisers converge and the shuttle’s shields are basically decorative? That is the job.
Star Trek: Voyager: Ragnarok
By Nathan Archer
ISBN: 067152044X
Published 1995
Chapter 29 is the escape chapter, and nothing about it is clean. Janeway got her people back. Harry Kim is in sickbay. The shuttle is aboard. Then Paris punches Voyager out of the First Federation derelict and straight into the kind of fight where everyone suddenly has opinions about whose side you are on.
Star Trek: Voyager: Ragnarok
By Nathan Archer
ISBN: 067152044X
Published 1995
Chapter 30 is the last chapter of Ragnarok, and it lands with a twist that is dark even for early Voyager tie-in fiction. Voyager is safe. Repairs are underway. Kim is resting. The battle is far behind them. Janeway gathers her department heads in the ready room for a postmortem on the whole disaster.
Star Trek: Voyager: Ragnarok
By Nathan Archer
ISBN: 067152044X
Published 1995
Thirty chapters later, and Ragnarok ends where it began: a relatively calm moment aboard Voyager, with repairs underway and the crew looking ahead. But the ship and everyone on it are not the same. Here is what stuck with me after the full read.