Incident at Arbuk Ch. 3: Paris, Dvorak, and a Dead Space City

Book: Star Trek: Voyager #5 - Incident at Arbuk
Author: John Gregory Betancourt
ISBN: 9780671520482

Previous: Chapter 2: Neelix Warns About the Sperians | Next: Chapter 4: The Tube Fires Again

Tom can’t focus

Chapter 3 opens with Tom Paris doing something Tom Paris does a lot in early Voyager fiction: noticing a woman on the bridge instead of the crisis ahead.

He’s watching Ensign Marta Dvorak work her station like a machine. Strong jaw, blue eyes, zero warmth when he tries to chat. Tom thinks about holodeck picnics. Then Janeway returns and he snaps back to one hundred and ten percent professionalism.

It’s a small beat, but Janeway clocks the whole bridge dynamic. Tom drifting means Harry drifts too. She files it away. After this rescue, the crew needs real shore leave. Seventy thousand light-years from home will make anyone stir-crazy.

This isn’t a war zone

Long-range view fills the screen. Silver round ships swarm around a metal framework like bees. Janeway realizes they might be dismantling something, not fighting. Tuvok sees no battle damage. It looks like a normal industrial scene.

They drop to warp two, then impulse. Dvorak reports no life signs from the construction crew. Chakotay suggests automation.

Then another structure appears around the white dwarf.

The space city

What comes into view is hard to process.

Half-melted tubes and spheres link together in thousands. Tuvok puts it at 2.64 cubic kilometers. Janeway already knew it was big from the distress call viewport, but seeing the whole thing hits different. This isn’t a station. It’s a space city, bigger than anything in the Federation.

One side is simply gone. The rest looks half-melted or blasted apart. No industrial activity. A few scattered energy readings. Mostly dead.

Harry picks up the distress signal again, now clear. The Sperian looks calmer, almost resigned. The message loops. Still no translation. Tuvok wants yellow alert. Janeway agrees.

Thirteen thousand bodies

Then Dvorak says the line that changes the room.

“Sensors show no life signs. However, there are bodies.”

Nearly thirteen thousand. Janeway keeps her face steady. Confirmed: thirteen thousand and twelve. Primary cause of death: explosive decompression. The whole city lost atmosphere. No working self-sealing bulkheads left.

Janeway says there’s nothing they can do for the city now. Maybe they can help survivors.

The tube

Tuvok reports another construction ahead. Bigger. Different design.

Voyager rounds toward it and the bridge goes quiet.

A metal tube, fifteen kilometers long, more than a kilometer wide, spinning slowly for artificial gravity. The open end glows with pulsing energy. No life signs inside. Massive power flux building.

Janeway and Chakotay both feel a flicker of Academy memory. Tuvok connects the dots for everyone: the Enterprise once met a cone-shaped planet killer in the twenty-third century. Janeway remembers Dr. Englehardt’s lectures on extragalactic civilizations and doomsday machines.

Maybe this is related. Maybe not. Either way, the scale is the same kind of scary.

Harry pinpoints the distress call source: a small ship about thirty-five hundred kilometers beyond the tube.

Then white light floods the bridge.

Seconds from annihilation

Shields up. Red alert. Dvorak starts spectral analysis. A shock wave rocks Voyager.

A kilometer-wide energy beam pours from the tube’s open end. It isn’t aimed at them. It’s hitting the space city behind Voyager. They missed being caught in it by seconds.

On screen the city disintegrates like ice in boiling water. Globes vanish. Framework crumples. Metal vaporizes. Janeway watches, horrified and fascinated, unable to stop it.

The chapter ends there, mid-catastrophe, with the beam still tearing the city apart.

My take

This is the big set piece chapter and it delivers.

Betancourt finally pays off the melted structure from Chapter 1. The numbers are brutal on purpose. Thirteen thousand isn’t abstract when Dvorak says it out loud on the bridge. Janeway’s restraint reads true to character. She doesn’t perform grief for the crew. She keeps working.

The doomsday machine callback is classic Trek fan service, but it works because the characters earn it. Tuvok cites history. Janeway remembers a lecture. Chakotay finishes the thought. It’s not just a name drop.

Tom and Dvorak are the weak spot if I’m honest. The crush subplot feels grafted on. Janeway noticing bridge hormones is fine, but Paris staring at Dvorak while a city dies is a bit much. Still, Dvorak herself is a solid addition. Competent, clipped, Maquis backstory. I want to see where the book takes her.

The tube reveal is the real hook. It’s not a fleet battle. It’s infrastructure turned weapon. Voyager stumbles into the firing lane of something civilization-ending.

That’s a great place to end a chapter.

Previous: Chapter 2: Neelix Warns About the Sperians | Next: Chapter 4: The Tube Fires Again