Ragnarok (17 page)

Lieutenant Carey hurried to the main engine panel without a word.

That silent cooperation made her feel even better, and she wasn’t really frowning anymore as she crossed to a computer access screen and summoned up Tuvok’s analysis of the Hachai shields.

Elegant three-dimensional waveforms danced across the display, and in spite of herself Torres found herself caught up in analyzing them.

Those shields were beautiful work, she thought—absolutely wonderful design. The Hachai clearly included some top-rate engineers if they were able to build things that could put up defensive fields like this.

The energy flow was absolutely smooth, with none of the complex and wasteful heterodyne effects of ordinary shields.

In fact, Torres thought, there was virtually no energy waste at all; the standing fields wouldn’t draw a tenth the power that the Voyager’s shields did, and ordinarily they’d probably be able to absorb a hundred times the punishment.

Of course, that lovely smoothness meant that the fields would all be synchronized, lined up on top of each other, and if you could get a phaser beam’s polarization to match that synchronization it would go right through as if the shield weren’t there.

That realization brought back a memory from her year at Starfleet Academy.

There was a reason that no one back in the Alpha Quadrant built shields like this. It wasn’t that they’d never thought of aligning the fields, Torres remembered. That had been a fairly obvious notion, and had been suggested many times over the past century or so.

The problem with any such setup was that vulnerability to the right polarization—and it was a pretty major problem. After all, every so often you’d get that synchronicity just by chance, in normal use, and you could expect any intelligent enemy to find ways to do it on purpose. Those smooth curves were efficient, but they did have that flaw.

And of course you could find ways to do it on purpose. It ought to be easy.

In fact, thinking about it…

Could it really be that simple?

She frowned, and called, “Torres to Janeway—you said these people aren’t using phasers?”

“No,” the captain replied. “They’re using nonpolarized phased energy.”

“Then they must be using a lot of power behind them, right?”

Torres asked. “These shields Tuvok is showing me would be better than ninety-nine-percent effective against anything like that.”

On the bridge, Janeway turned questioningly to Tuvok.

“That does seem to be the case,” the Vulcan confirmed. “Based on our observations, the effectiveness of P’nir energy weapons against Hachai shields would appear to be less than one-tenth of one percent.”

“And that’s still more than we’re doing,” Janeway said. “Have you got something, B’Elanna?”

“Well, I think so, Captain, but I can’t believe it could be that simple.”

“What?”

“Well, the weapons aren’t polarized, but the shields are,” Torres explained. “That’s what makes them so efficient. So if you were to rotate the polarity of the phasers until it matched the polarity of the shields, they ought to go right through as if the shields weren’t there at all.”

Janeway looked at Tuvok, but he gave no sign of comprehension.

“Yes, that’s all very well in theory,” Janeway said, “but how do we know what the polarity of the shields is, in order to match it? We can’t very well take the time to scan each individual ship’s shields as it moves in to attack, and analyze the polarity, and align our phasers to match.”

“Oh, that’s the easy part, Captain,” Torres replied. “Since shields absorb whatever energy is directed at them, and phasers are all polarized to begin with, if you fire a phaser at the shields the energy flow of the shields will warp into the opposite alignment as it absorbs the phaser energy. All you have to do then is reverse the polarity on the phasers. And since it’ll go right through, the shields won’t be absorbing any of the energy, so they won’t realign—you’ll be able to cut the shielded ship apart as if it were so much cheese.” Janeway and Tuvok exchanged stares.

The ship lurched, and Paris muttered curses to himself as he threw Voyager out of the line of fire.

“You heard her, Mr. Tuvok,” Janeway said. “Pick your target and fire when ready.”

“Yes, Captain,” Tuvok replied.

Janeway watched, tense, as the Vulcan scanned the Voyager’s surroundings.

“Target selected,” he said. “Phasers locked on.”

“Fire!” Janeway barked, as she whirled to look at the viewscreen.

The red line of fire lashed out and spattered against the shields of the immense Hachai vessel. The shields flared greenish-blue…

“Reversing polarity,” Tuvok said calmly.

For an instant, Janeway saw no change; the Voyager’s phaser beam was still vanishing into blue-green radiance against the shields.

And then the phasers punched right through the Hachai ship’s shields and drew a line of fire across the fuselage, slicing the metal of the hull and heating either side of the gash red-hot, and incidentally shearing away an antenna caught in the searing beam.

An instant later the warship’s inner hull gave way under the phaser’s assault, spraying forth a growing cloud of gas and debris. An exhaust port blew out several meters away from the cut as the ship’s internal pressure collapsed, and a gout of dark matter spouted from there, as well.

“Cease fire!” Janeway shouted.

The beam vanished.

The damaged Hachai ship was already wheeling, however, turning aside to escape this unexpectedly deadly attack, breaking formation and sending its own allies into disarray. Wreckage was spilling from the long gouge in its side.

Janeway felt slightly ill. They had come here to make peace, not to destroy. She wondered what sort of casualties the Hachai had sustained just then; few, she hoped.

“Engineering,” Janeway snapped. “B’Elanna, did you see that?”

“Yes, Captain,” Torres replied. “It looks as if it worked.

Those overtuned shields aren’t going to be much use against our phasers anymore.”

Before either woman could say another word, the Voyager shook under a sudden attack; the main viewer blanked out for a moment, overloaded.

“Six Hachai vessels are concentrating fire on us, Captain,” Tuvok reported. “Shields at eighty-eight percent.”

“Return fire, Mr. Tuvok,” Janeway said. “And reverse polarity as necessary.” She hesitated, then added, “Concentrate on drive systems and armament, and avoid life-support; we want them disabled, but we don’t want to kill anyone unnecessarily.”

“Understood, Captain,” Tuvok said. “Firing phasers.”

Janeway leaned forward, a hand on the helm console, for a better look at the screen as the image was restored, filtered down so that it could be seen clearly.

The console was hot beneath her hand; the ship’s systems were straining. She unconsciously absorbed that information and added it to the factors already being weighed as she studied the screen.

Another Hachai ship was being hit; she couldn’t make out the details in the degraded image visible through their own overworked shields, but she could see that once again the phasers were dissipating harmlessly.

“Reversing polarity,” Tuvok said, and an instant later it was obvious that the attack had penetrated. Molten scraps sprayed from the side of the Hachai vessel as the phasers sheared easily through the hull.

Janeway smiled a tight, unhappy little smile.

The Voyager’s weapons could, indeed, pierce the Hachai screens, if they could be held on their targets long enough to use Torres’s polarity-reversing trick. The need for sustained contact meant that they couldn’t just rip the Hachai ships apart at will, though; they would have to settle for inflicting relatively light damage.

Which was all to the good, if it meant they wouldn’t be killing large numbers of the Hachai. And even that was more than Janeway had expected—and more than the Hachai had expected, as well, she was sure.

Neelix had said that the Hachai knew they built the best shields in this sector of the galaxy; they would have been confident of their safety from this strange intruder, and now that confidence would be shaken….

Janeway turned and started to call to Harry Kim to open a channel, and remembered before the first word left her lips that Harry wasn’t there, he was with Chakotay aboard one of the P’nir cruisers. Tuvok was busy with fire control; Paris was trying to guide the ship out of the battle. A man she barely knew, a Maquis named Evans, was now filling in in Ops.

The ship shuddered violently as another Hachai barrage struck.

“Mr. Evans,” Janeway called. “Open a channel to the Hachai.”

“Hailing the Hachai, Captain,” Evans replied.

The Voyager’s phasers flashed out again, and after a second or two of ineffectual sputtering, they abruptly cut into the side of a Hachai destroyer.

“Cease fire, Mr. Tuvok,” Janeway said. “Mr. Evans, do you have a channel?”

“I think so, Captain,” Evans replied. “They’re not answering, but I think they’re listening.”

Janeway nodded. “Good enough.”

She stood facing the main screen and announced, “This is Captain Kathryn Janeway, of the Federation starship Voyager. You have seen that our weapons are effective against you, despite your best defenses.

We wish to leave here in peace, and we will only fire if fired upon.

However, if your attacks continue, any ship that fires upon us will be destroyed.” She waited for a reply.

None came; instead, Evans reported, “They’re not answering us directly, Captain, but I’m picking up intership transmissions among the Hachai, ordering them not to listen to us, to destroy us at any cost.”

She should have known they were too stubborn to give in so easily, Janeway told herself.

“Close the channel, Mr. Evans,” she said. “Mr. Tuvok, fire on any ship that attacks us.”

“I doubt very much that we will be able to carry out your threat, Captain,” Tuvok said.

“I know that,” Janeway replied. “Try to convince the Hachai we meant it, though.”

“Firing phasers.” An instant later, he added, “Reversing polarity.”

“Mr. Paris,” Janeway said, “get us out of here, however you can.”

“I’m trying, Captain,” Paris replied. “Believe me, I’m trying.”

Janeway nodded, and tapped her combadge. “Janeway to Torres,” she said.

“Torres here,” came the reply.

“B’Elanna, if you’ve got anything extra left in those engines, make sure it’s where Tom Paris can use it to get us out of here!”

“But what about Chako—” Torres cut her protest short, biting it off in midname, before Janeway could do it for her.

“Yes, Captain,” she said. “I’ll see what I can do.”

Whatever P’nir ship designers had been responsible for the layout of this particular cruiser were not given to wasting space on unnecessary corridors, Harry Kim decided after he had doubled back for the third or fourth time. Several passages that had looked as if they ought to go through had dead-ended, instead, and his idea of finding an alternate route was beginning to look pretty stupid, in retrospect. He wondered if those P’nir workers, or whoever they were, were still back there in the main passage.

At least, he thought, he hadn’t come across any further signs of life as he made his way through the side passages—there were no tapping feet or clicking claws to be heard anywhere, and he hadn’t seen anything moving. He hadn’t seen much of anything, what with the dim light and black walls—he’d had to go down corridors almost to the end to be sure they were dead ends.

The smell was just about the same here as everywhere else, a nasty oily smell, but he didn’t think that meant anyone had been in the area; he was fairly sure the odor was a part of the atmosphere, and not something that came from the P’nir themselves.

For all he knew, it was their equivalent of air freshener, a little touch of home.

Aside from the silence, the already-dim greenish light seemed even dimmer here in this section, as if it were half-power emergency lighting; he’d gotten pretty confident that he wasn’t going to meet anyone in this area. He wasn’t sure what this part of the ship was really intended for, but it didn’t seem to be in use just now.

He was thinking that when he rounded another corner and abruptly came face-to-… well, face-to-thorax with a P’nir. Kim’s nose was no more than a meter from the hard, darkly gleaming surface of its exoskeleton.

This was his first look at one, and it was a bit startling. He’d guessed from the ship’s architecture that they were tall and thin, but that hadn’t prepared him for the reality. The P’nir was very tall, easily three meters or more—almost twice Kim’s height. That blank face and the four red eyes seemed to be impossibly far above him.

Kim knew what he had to do. As he brought up his phaser and fired, he berated himself for having grown careless after seeing so many empty corridors; he hadn’t been paying attention and had almost walked into this fellow.

The phaser’s beam was intensely, painfully bright in the greenish gloom of what the P’nir apparently considered reasonable illumination.

Fortunately, the P’nir had been just as startled by the encounter as Kim, if not more so; after all, Kim had known there were hundreds of P’nir aboard, while the P’nir had had no idea that there were any humans running around loose. The P’nir didn’t attack, or turn to flee, or do anything else that might have constituted a danger; instead it merely flailed about in a rather vague manner as Kim realized that his first shot had missed any crucial nerve junctions. He had dazed the P’nir, rather than rendering it unconscious. He fired again, aiming directly at its head.

It ignored that, and started reaching for him, now apparently over its initial astonishment. Kim saw that not only did the P’nir have complex and very fierce-looking claws, but the inner surfaces of the P’nir’s upper arms were hard, serrated edges that looked distressingly sharp.

And since it was still conscious, Kim realized that the P’nir apparently didn’t keep their brains in their heads, and he was too close to the P’nir to use a wide beam to hit the whole creature at once. Instead he ducked, to avoid those nasty cutting arms, then held the trigger button down and began waving the phaser back and forth, working his way down the P’nir’s lengthy anatomy.