Tuvok suggested from behind his console. “I believe we have misjudged what we are seeing; I do not believe it to be a single object at all.”
“Increase magnification. Enhance the image,” Janeway ordered.
The blob expanded to fill the screen, and the bridge crew stared in stunned silence as it became obvious that Tuvok was quite right.
The mass was not a single object at all; it was made up of many, many smaller objects, each of them moving independently, each maneuvering around the others. Energy fields surrounded each object, sometimes colliding with each other, and beams of energy flashed back and forth between them.
The objects were ships—thousands upon thousands of starships.
“They’re gigantic,” Paris said, awed.
“The smallest one I can read is about the size of a Galaxy-class starship,” Chakotay observed, as he stepped forward to read the latest sensor reports. “The big ones—well, I’ve seen moons that were smaller.”
“But what are they doing?” Harry Kim asked, staring at the screen.
“Why are they bunched so close? Why are there so many of them? Why aren’t they going anywhere?”
“I would have thought that was obvious, Ensign,” Janeway said, as she, too, stared at the screen. “They’re fighting. We’ve found the war, and where all the metal in this benighted cluster went.”
Chapter 8
The Voyager hung in space, deep within the cloud of ionized metal dust, virtually motionless and safely out of range of the thousands of weapons being fired a few light-seconds away.
The Voyager waited, and while she waited, her crew watched.
Paris remained at the helm, Kim at Ops, Tuvok at Security; Janeway and Chakotay occupied the two command chairs. Neelix and Kes stood, observing, Neelix now down by Janeway’s left hand and Kes back by the starboard turbolift.
The Hachai doll had fallen to dust when someone had inadvertently bumped against it; all that remained was a smear of greasy dust on the platform beside Janeway’s chair, dark gray on light.
Janeway started to reach for the doll, then remembered that it was gone. She looked down at the smudge, then back up at the viewer.
What she saw there made no immediate, obvious sense. To the unaided human eye the visual display on the bridge’s main viewscreen was a seething, flickering, incomprehensible mass of fire and shadow.
To the ship’s tactical officer, aided by his sensors and computers, it was something else entirely.
“I count approximately two thousand operational warships that I would describe as either dreadnoughts or heavy cruisers, all of them larger than anything in Starfleet,” Tuvok reported, studying his displays.
“There are also several thousand smaller vessels caught up in the conflict, ranging from the size of a Galaxy-class cruiser down to that of a runabout, and I observe large quantities of macroscopic wreckage in the area that would seem to indicate that both fleets were once considerably more numerous.” He turned away from his screens to address Janeway directly across his console.
“I would estimate, Captain,” he said, “that the resources of roughly fifteen hundred M-class planets would be required to build and maintain these fleets—in short, the total industrial output of this entire cluster.”
“Thousands of warships?” Janeway glanced at the screen, then back at the Vulcan. “That’s almost as incredible as one star-sized machine!”
“You said the industrial output of this entire cluster,” Chakotay said.
“Yes, Commander.”
“This cluster hasn’t got any industrial output!” Chakotay exclaimed.
“Unfortunately true,” the Vulcan replied calmly. “However, I worked on the assumption of a level of technology roughly equivalent to our own, reasonably organized and distributed, and working itself to the point of its own destruction to produce these fleets.”
“How could they maintain such fleets, then?” Janeway asked. “If they destroyed their whole industrial
“Increase magnification. Enhance the image,” Janeway ordered.
The blob expanded to fill the screen, and the bridge crew stared in stunned silence as it became obvious that Tuvok was quite right.
The mass was not a single object at all; it was made up of many, many smaller objects, each of them moving independently, each maneuvering around the others. Energy fields surrounded each object, sometimes colliding with each other, and beams of energy flashed back and forth between them.
The objects were ships—thousands upon thousands of starships.
“They’re gigantic,” Paris said, awed.
“The smallest one I can read is about the size of a Galaxy-class starship,” Chakotay observed, as he stepped forward to read the latest sensor reports. “The big ones—well, I’ve seen moons that were smaller.”
“But what are they doing?” Harry Kim asked, staring at the screen.
“Why are they bunched so close? Why are there so many of them? Why aren’t they going anywhere?”
“I would have thought that was obvious, Ensign,” Janeway said, as she, too, stared at the screen. “They’re fighting. We’ve found the war, and where all the metal in this benighted cluster went.”
Chapter 8
The Voyager hung in space, deep within the cloud of ionized metal dust, virtually motionless and safely out of range of the thousands of weapons being fired a few light-seconds away.
The Voyager waited, and while she waited, her crew watched.
Paris remained at the helm, Kim at Ops, Tuvok at Security; Janeway and Chakotay occupied the two command chairs. Neelix and Kes stood, observing, Neelix now down by Janeway’s left hand and Kes back by the starboard turbolift.
The Hachai doll had fallen to dust when someone had inadvertently bumped against it; all that remained was a smear of greasy dust on the platform beside Janeway’s chair, dark gray on light.
Janeway started to reach for the doll, then remembered that it was gone. She looked down at the smudge, then back up at the viewer.
What she saw there made no immediate, obvious sense. To the unaided human eye the visual display on the bridge’s main viewscreen was a seething, flickering, incomprehensible mass of fire and shadow.
To the ship’s tactical officer, aided by his sensors and computers, it was something else entirely.
“I count approximately two thousand operational warships that I would describe as either dreadnoughts or heavy cruisers, all of them larger than anything in Starfleet,” Tuvok reported, studying his displays.
“There are also several thousand smaller vessels caught up in the conflict, ranging from the size of a Galaxy-class cruiser down to that of a runabout, and I observe large quantities of macroscopic wreckage in the area that would seem to indicate that both fleets were once considerably more numerous.” He turned away from his screens to address Janeway directly across his console.
“I would estimate, Captain,” he said, “that the resources of roughly fifteen hundred M-class planets would be required to build and maintain these fleets—in short, the total industrial output of this entire cluster.”
“Thousands of warships?” Janeway glanced at the screen, then back at the Vulcan. “That’s almost as incredible as one star-sized machine!”
“You said the industrial output of this entire cluster,” Chakotay said.
“Yes, Commander.”
“This cluster hasn’t got any industrial output!” Chakotay exclaimed.
“Unfortunately true,” the Vulcan replied calmly. “However, I worked on the assumption of a level of technology roughly equivalent to our own, reasonably organized and distributed, and working itself to the point of its own destruction to produce these fleets.”
“How could they maintain such fleets, then?” Janeway asked. “If they destroyed their whole industrial
Similar Books
