Voyager Takes Fire From the Hachai Fleet
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.
Then Torres spots something useful. The bioneural computer, overheating from the battle outside, started converting waste heat into energy on its own. One button press redirects that power to the shields. Sometimes the fancy new tech actually works.
A crewman mentions that Tuvok compared the fight to Ragnarok. Torres has no idea what that means. When he explains it is the final battle of the Norse gods, she gets angry. She is an engineer, not a soldier, and she does not appreciate being treated like she should know every warrior myth just because she is half-Klingon. She lifts the guy off the floor, then tosses him aside when another barrage hits. The nearby engineers whisper that she was raised on Earth and does not like the Klingon assumptions.
On the bridge, Tuvok lays out the situation in plain terms. The Hachai fight by englobement. They have wrapped Voyager in and cut off retreat. The only way out is to maneuver, look for gaps, and probably punch through several partial traps before reaching open space. Janeway asks about the P’nir. Will they help, ignore Voyager, or join the Hachai in shooting at them?
She tries hailing the P’nir. They refuse to answer.
Then Tuvok delivers the really bad news. The Hachai diverted resources to deal with Voyager. The P’nir noticed and shifted their own strength to the far side of the battle zone. If the Hachai keep focusing on Voyager, the P’nir might actually win the whole war because of it. Janeway came here hoping to make peace. Instead she may have tipped the scales for one side while that side watches her get destroyed.
She tries warning the Hachai commander about the P’nir maneuver. The response is pure paranoia. Of course they see it. It is another P’nir trick. Voyager is the real threat.
Every time Paris aims for open space, another dreadnought appears and cuts them off. Janeway can feel the math closing in. Dodge and run means slow death. Tuvok says returning fire makes the Hachai keep their distance and improves escape odds, but also concentrates heavier fire on Voyager. Fighting does not really change survival odds. It just speeds up whatever happens next.
She is not ready to burn torpedoes yet. Shields are still holding. But the P’nir are maneuvering as if Voyager’s destruction is a given. They plan to exploit the moment of confusion when it happens.
Janeway asks if they can get a closer look at the mysterious globe while they are stuck in here anyway. Paris says he has no choice about routing if he wants to keep them in one piece. Tuvok adds that approaching it would seriously decrease survival odds. Worth asking. Not worth doing.
She also wants someone in Ops since Kim’s station is empty. The bridge is running shorthanded while half the senior staff is on a diplomatic shuttle that went very wrong.
Janeway wipes dust off the console where the Hachai doll had been and makes the call. The Hachai want a war badly enough to fight Voyager on top of their endless war with the P’nir. Fine. Tuvok has a free hand. Fire at will.
It is a grim pivot. She came to broker peace. Now she is choosing which apocalypse Voyager contributes to, and she picks the side that might survive long enough for the quadrant to recover. Someday a P’nir fleet might come out of the Kuriyar Cluster looking for trouble. At least someone would still be alive to do it. Ragnarok indeed.
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