The Murdered Sun - Christie Golden [43]
"Estimated technological level?" asked Janeway.
"Higher than our own in some areas," replied Kim. "They were an extremely advanced race."
"But... what is their planet doing in Sun-Eater? What happened to them?" Janeway leaned forward, fully aware that the image in front of her eyes was wholly the result of Harry Kim's best guess but caught up in the beauty of it nonetheless.
"The Akerians didn't know. In fact, I was able to make more sense out of the information the Akerians recorded about this civilization than they themselves were. But, Captain, can you imagine what it would be like if we were the ones who stumbled across this when we had just discovered faster-than-light travel?"
Slowly, the captain nodded her auburn head. Kim had been right.
"They would hardly have known what to make of it," she said.
"Like... like a medieval serf finding a starship. The possibilities..."
"Especially to a military organization," interrupted Tuvok. His face was impassive, but Janeway detected just a slight note of excitement in his voice.
"Exactly!" crowed Kim. "The military concentrated all their efforts on learning about this devastated civilization. The concavity became the heart of their empire. I can't go into everything they learned--we'd be here till we got home--but the main information they gleaned by studying this civilization's ruins was a profound understanding of gravity."
"Hence, their preferred choice of weaponry," deduced Tuvok.
"It makes perfect sense," said Janeway. Her own eyes flashed in excited comprehension. "They're operating in a gravity well.
The more they learn how to manipulate it, control it, the more they can learn from the civilization. It's a positive cycle."
"Most of the technology we saw on that Akerian ship was stolen directly from that ruined planet. Look." His fingers flying almost as fast as his sharp brain, Kim called up blueprints of a ship. "This was gathered from the planet. Now, watch." As Janeway sat glued to the screen, Kim superimposed the image of the Akerian vessel over it. It was almost exact.
"The only difference is the position of the weapons array, although the weaponry itself is virtually identical. The Akerians chose to lay it out in this sort of pattern." He pointed to the graviton generators that Janeway had noticed while on the bridge of the Conquest. "While the original inhabitants of the planet laid their weapons out in a semicircle, the Akerians preferred this pattern--four generators arranged at the compass points, like so."
"Fascinating," commented Tuvok.
Kim allowed himself a pleased grin. He didn't often get a chance to so impress his superiors. Janeway smiled her approval and nodded for him to continue.
"Of course, trying to perform excavations in a space that has such intense gravity is slow and dangerous. After they decided to investigate this system, they discovered that Veruna Four had inhabitants--inhabitants that were intelligent, bipedal, as they were, and extremely strong."
He hit another keypad and displayed the corrected image of the planet.
Zooming in, Kim focused on one of the structures he had earlier identified as slave quarters. Janeway could now see Verunans, clad in what was clearly the Akerian version of envirosuits, working slowly and painfully with special equipment.
"The slaves," she said softly. Kim nodded.
"They were perfect." His face hardened, and his voice was angry.
"In one of his personal logs, the captain raves about how long they lasted--a few months to a year, at most. They were utterly and completely expendable."
Janeway sighed. "It would be nice if such attitudes were confined to our species alone. But I'm afraid that it's a more common view than the idealist in me would like to think."
"Now, about three hundred years ago," Kim continued, "something horrible began to happen." The image of the enslaved Verunans disappeared