The Murdered Sun - Christie Golden [8]
"Unusually minimal, considering its size." Tuvok answered the question she had not asked, anticipating her. "We could venture closer without undue risk."
His brow furrowed in concentration. Something about the situation was bothering him, Janeway realized. She waited an instant, but no further information was forthcoming. Tuvok was never one to speak before the facts were in if he could possibly avoid it, and Janeway knew that behind that slightly troubled countenance his brilliant Vulcan brain was busy sorting out information that would enable him to reach a conclusion.
She didn't push him. He'd tell her what he knew when he knew it.
She sat down in her chair and turned her attention back to the screen.
"Then let's move closer, Mr. Paris. Keep to warp two until we've entered the system, then drop to half-impulse. Ensign Kim, keep monitoring the gravitational pull. I don't want to get mired in this thing."
The big ship moved forward, the celestial images on the screen gradually growing larger as a result. There was a soft whisper of a door opening, and Janeway glanced up to see Neelix entering.
He looked slightly better groomed than he had earlier but no happier with the situation. Silently, she nodded toward the chair next to her.
Just as silently, he sat down.
"Recognize any of this space?"
"Nope. Grand spectacle, though, I must say."
Janeway found her attention turning to the little planets, not so little, truth be told; any one of them was the size of Earth if not larger. But against that menacing blackness slowly destroying the red giant, "little" seemed to be an accurate description.
"Any sign of the Akerians around here yet, Mr. Kim?"
"Negative, Captain. Sensors are not picking up any ships in this system at present. We're still seeing a lot of debris, though."
"Scan the planets. Could one of them possibly be the Akerian home world?" She found herself hoping that there would be no developed life-forms on those doomed orbs. Admittedly, though, the Akerians did sound like prime candidates for a comeuppance, and they had the technological capability to move their people to a more hospitable system if this was indeed the home world of the masked, mysterious beings.
Kim glanced at his controls. "Negative, Captain. I'm picking up signs of advanced societies but nothing to indicate development on the level that Neelix attributes to them."
Compassion washed over Janeway. "Damn." She hated scenarios like this one. Even with their technologies and knowledge of the vagaries of the universe, Voyager and every other ship that trolled the stars was completely at the mercy of natural catastrophes on this scale. She grieved for the innocent people whose sun was dying.
A thought cheered her briefly. As such things went, suns took a while before they laid down and died--or, more accurately, went out in a blaze of glory. "Mr. Kim, extrapolate for me. Judging by the present level of technology on this planet, will these civilizations obtain the capability of warp drive before the world becomes uninhabitable?"
Kim's face grew thoughtful. He hit a few controls quickly, lightly, and examined what the computer told him. "Well, the sun won't die for another few million years, but life on the planets will die out long before that. Their technology is somewhat beyond what Earth's was at the end of the twentieth century.
They've already got a complex satellite communication system, which could indicate that they're aware of extraterrestrial life."
He raised his face and met Janeway's questioning glance with an unhappy expression. "If they're sharing information with another society about improving their technology, they might be able to get out of this system before it's too late. On their own...
I'm sorry, Captain, I don't think they'll make it. They've only got about a century or so left."
"Captain," said Tuvok, "I would disagree."
Hope sprang in Janeway's heart. "They've got more than a century?"