Ragnarok by Nathan Archer Read Free Book Online Page A

desolation.
    When they had seen what little there was to see, Janeway ordered, “Take us out.” She slumped in her chair.
    “Aye-aye,” Paris replied, and the image on the screen began to withdraw.
    “When we found that that last system was still inhabited,” Chakotay said quietly, leaning over toward the captain, “I’d hoped that it was a good sign, that we’d find more. Those first two systems, those three destroyed worlds… those saddened me.
    Seeing those ruins ate at my spirit.”
    Janeway glanced at him.
    He met her gaze.
    “Yes, that was why I objected to visiting the third,” he said.
    “I didn’t want to see any more of death, devastation, and destruction.”
    He pointed at the Hachai doll. “That toy you brought back with you brought it home to me—these were people who lived on these worlds, people fighting and dying out here, people who might have worn different shapes than ours, but people with spirits like ours, with families and loved ones. The child who owned that doll had died, probably without ever knowing why, and certainly without deserving such a hideous death. This war of theirs destroyed millions, perhaps billions, of people on both sides—and for what? It’s even more senseless than the Cardassian imperialism—from what Neelix said, no one even knows why these people were fighting!”
    “It happens,” Janeway said. “You’ve seen war before. You’ve fought, yourself.”
    “I know,” Chakotay said. “But to have the entire Hachai and P’nir civilizations destroyed, both their races completely wiped out…”
    “There were still survivors in the third system,” Janeway said.
    “There were people there,” Chakotay said, “but we don’t know for certain they were survivors; we didn’t get a good look at them, to see if they were the same as that doll. They might have been some other species entirely, one that wasn’t involved in the war.” He straightened up.
    “I hope they were survivors,” he said. “Maybe, if they are, they’ve learned something. Maybe they’ll rebuild, someday, and venture off their planet into space, and maybe this time they won’t make the same mistakes.”
    Janeway shook her head. “They don’t have any metals to work with,” she said. “They’ll probably never be able to leave that planet.”
    Chakotay didn’t reply.
    “Even if they never leave, never rebuild their lost technology, it’s a better fate than that,” Janeway said, pointing at the viewer, where the barren surface of the sixth planet gleamed dully in the light of its sun.
    Chakotay nodded. He could hardly argue with that.
    And right now he didn’t feel like arguing with anything—except perhaps whatever gods or spirits ruled this cluster, yet had allowed such a catastrophe.
    As they left the fourth system and its blasted sixth planet behind, Janeway stepped up to the forward console and consulted the Voyager’s star charts; ahead of them lay an empty stretch.
    The four systems they had passed through were in an outlying arm of the Kuriyar Cluster, and ahead lay the cluster’s heart, but for the moment they faced several light-years of empty nothingness.
    Janeway looked at that emptiness and felt suddenly tired.
    At first she thought that the devastation was getting to her, but then she realized that she had been on the bridge almost constantly for the past eleven hours. Some part of her mind was telling her that this was her chance to rest, that her crew could manage without her for a while.
    There were no more star systems to investigate for a dozen light-years.
    “Commander,” she said, “take the bridge; I’m going to get some rest.”
    “Aye-aye, Captain,” Chakotay said.
    As Janeway left the bridge she saw that Chakotay had settled into his chair, his face and body seeming to sag—he was probably tired, as well.
    The last thing she saw of the bridge, as the door of the turbolift closed, was her first officer picking up the fragile, crumbling Hachai