Dozens of P'nir Guns Point at the Shuttle

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.

Small arms keep pinging off the shuttle shields. Rollins says the hangar troops probably figured out hand weapons cannot get through. Kim is not convinced they gave up. The P’nir do not seem like quitters. Chakotay watches armored P’nir line up with those unsettling rifle-octopus guns and wonders if this is one officer’s power play or something deeper in the culture.

Captain K’t’rien wakes on the deck. Red slit eyes brighten. No lids on those eyes. They never truly close. Chakotay has Kim and Bereyt hold her limbs and levels the phaser at her midsection.

“Welcome aboard my ship.”

She demands to know why she still lives. Chakotay says because they want to talk. That is all they ever wanted. Why are the P’nir fighting the Hachai? Can anything stop the war?

He remembers imperatives. “Tell me why you are fighting the Hachai.”

“To destroy them.”

“Tell me why you wish to destroy them.”

She gropes for words. “They are unfit. They are repulsive.”

Bereyt hears Cardassian rhetoric in that. Chakotay nods. Plenty of cultures go through a phase where different means wrong. He asks if peace is possible. She says there is no reason to consider peace.

He points out thousands of P’nir will die if the fighting continues. She does not seem troubled.

“Tell me whether your second-in-command would agree there is no reason for peace.”

“I have no command,” K’t’rien says bitterly.

That stops everyone. Kim insists she must be the captain. She was on the command throne. Tsh’pak announced the captain was gone.

K’t’rien confirms she is K’t’rien, but captain no more. Disgraced. She left the bridge in time of combat.

Chakotay corrects her. She was taken against her will. She says that is worse.

The rules pile up from there. To regain command she must defeat captors unaided and return unaided. Anyone may challenge whether she acted properly. If Chakotay releases her while still resisting, she is marked traitor and destroyed. If they release her and flee, she can claim victory and say she spared the shuttle to recapture them later for study.

Bereyt calls it vicious. Kim says even hard-line Klingons are kinder.

Kidnapping Tsh’pak would disgrace her too. Then F’shrin would be next. Rollins sums it up. They cannot keep beaming officers aboard until the whole crew is in the shuttle.

Releasing K’t’rien might restore her if she can sell the story right. She offers the deal herself, calmer now. Defeat the aliens, escape, claim she spared the shuttle to study how they took her from the bridge. Chakotay stares at her, weighing it.

Bereyt asks what happens if they release her and flee. K’t’rien says she can claim victory that way. What happens if they release her while still fighting? Marked traitor. Destroyed. The cultural trap is thorough.

Rollins says they cannot fire forever. Chakotay replies shields will not hold forever either, and he does not plan to live on this shuttle.

Then Rollins clears his throat. Whatever Chakotay decides, he should decide fast.

On the hangar deck, a dozen P’nir haul machinery together. Components lock. Adjustments are made. Kim spots what looks like an energy projector on one side.

They stopped shooting because hand weapons failed. They did not give up. They are building something that can punch through shuttle shields.

Chakotay turns to K’t’rien. “Tell me what they are doing.”

“No. Surrender to me. Restore me to my place!”

Chakotay turns away in disgust. The clicking in the hangar continues. The projector takes shape. Time is running out fast, and the only captain who might talk to them is disgraced, furious, and trapped in a shuttle built for humans half her height.

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