Ragnarok by Nathan Archer Page B

advanced technology? Do you know? Would either of them be capable of building a weapon that size?”
    She pointed at the displays at the Ops station.
    Neelix immediately saw that she didn’t really want to know everything about the Hachai or the P’nir, his explanations of how to use Hachai funerary customs in salvage-rights negotiations, or the P’nir code of honor as applied to starship repair, would have to wait until some other time. What Captain Janeway really wanted, now that they had come across something other than blasted ruins or harmless primitives, was information about what to expect up ahead.
    Neelix started to reply with a stream of warnings about the incredible power of Hachai and P’nir weaponry, but then he caught himself. He didn’t want to annoy anyone, or amuse anyone, by exaggerating, and besides, these people had already seen those ruined worlds.
    Exaggeration wasn’t needed, and he wanted the captain to listen. He looked at the clouds of dust on the main viewer and weighed his words carefully before he spoke, and then kept himself, as much as he could, to the exact, unadorned truth.
    “Their technologies were always pretty evenly balanced,” he said.
    “After all, how else could their war drag on so long? Even if it’s over now, as you seem to believe, it lasted for centuries.”
    Janeway nodded. “Go on,” she said.
    Neelix thought for a moment, planning out his words, then said, “Well, both sides were said to be masters of defensive technology—before the supply finally ran out outside this cluster, the Hachai shield generators were always in great demand, a very profitable item whenever you could get hold of one.” He smiled in fond recollection. He liked profitable merchandise.
    He was about to say more when Janeway interrupted him. “Were the Hachai shields better than the P’nir shields?” she asked.
    “Not really, but you couldn’t get P’nir shields,” Neelix explained.
    “Not so far back as I’ve ever heard, anyway—certainly not in my lifetime.”
    “Could either of them have built something like that?” Janeway gestured at the displays.
    Neelix hesitated, then admitted, “I don’t know. I’m not sure I understand your readings….”
    “We’re through enough of the dust cloud to be within visual range of the object now, Captain,” Kim reported, interrupting the Talaxian.
    “Onscreen,” Janeway said.
    The viewer lit up with coruscating waves of color, too bright to look at safely. Janeway raised an arm, shielding her eyes.
    “Filter that down,” she snapped.
    The glare vanished, revealing a rounded, irregular mass that seemed to be made up of swirling dots of polychrome light and shadow. It shifted shape constantly, like a gigantic amoeba, and a fine mist of debris seemed to be emanating from it, spreading slowly out in all directions and blending seamlessly into the dust cloud.
    “How big is that?” Janeway asked.
    The screen immediately displayed a scale, indicating that the mass was approximately two hundred and fifty thousand kilometers across—the size of a small star.
    “Mr. Neelix,” Janeway said, without turning to look at him, “to the best of your knowledge, could the P’nir or the Hachai build something the size of a star?”
    “No,” Neelix said, shaking his head sharply. “At least, I don’t think so.” He stared at the screen, trying to make sense of what he saw there. “But then, all that metal must have gone somewhere….”
    “Is that thing just a machine?” Paris asked. “It looks alive!”
    “What’s its mass?” Janeway asked. The computer promptly posted a sensor readout down one side of the main viewscreen; upon seeing the figures, Janeway frowned.
    “It’s not any ordinary machine,” she said. “For an object that size, with that mass, its density would be lower than most gases.”
    “Perhaps it’s hollow?” Paris suggested, glancing back over his shoulder.
    “Perhaps it is not one machine, but many,”