Free Ragnarok by Nathan Archer

sides built defenses, and skimped on offensive weapons, and they insisted on staying with that sort of arrangement, despite what some of my… despite the attempts of certain parties to sell the Hachai some very good offensive weaponry at real bargain prices, prices that they were foolish to turn down…”
    “Mr. Neelix,” Janeway said warningly. The Talaxian stopped, startled, and looked at her.
    “I assume these parties who dealt with the Hachai included Talaxians?”
    Janeway asked.
    “Well, they might have,” Neelix admitted.
    “Never mind the comments on Hachai foolishness,” Janeway said.
    “Get on with the story.”
    “Of course, Captain,” Neelix said. He cleared his throat, brushed both hands down the front of his rather gaudy jacket, and continued.
    “As I was saying,” Neelix said, “both sides emphasized defense over offense, and the result was a stalemate. As I heard the story, both sides eventually came up with the same intended solution to the stalemate. Each side built a fleet of immense warships that were meant to sweep through the cluster, destroying anything that opposed them, and exterminating the enemy, planet by planet. These warships were entirely self-contained, with no need to return to base between attacks, so as to avoid any chance of their enemies ambushing supply runs, and so they could take as long as they needed to batter down planetary defenses.”
    Janeway nodded. “Go on,” she said.
    “The thing is,” Neelix continued, “that both sides made the same mistake with the fleets that they’d made all along—they built them to be almost indestructible at the expense of the offensive weaponry. The two fleets destroyed a lot of worlds, you saw some of that, but when they finally met and started shooting at each other, well… nothing much happened, at least at first.”
    Neelix pointed past the forward console at the viewscreen. “When the fleets met, that battle out there started—and it’s still going. Any new ship that either side built was sent to join the battle, because if it weren’t, then the other side might win and their fleet would be free to sweep through the cluster. For centuries, the entire industrial production of the Kuriyar Cluster was devoted to pouring more and more ships into that battle, which pretty thoroughly ruined any trade prospects around here, and…”
    Neelix caught the hardening of Janeway’s expression and decided against explaining how much money this turn of events in the war had cost honest Talaxian arms dealers.
    “Well, as you can see, Captain,” he concluded, “the P’nir and the Hachai have both staked the future of their civilizations on it.
    The loser will doubtlessly be so weakened that the winner—if there ever is one—will be able to wipe the loser out completely.
    You saw that one planet back there, with the half-finished ship—it’s defenseless. They’re probably all like that.”
    “You said, `If there is one’?” Janeway said.
    “Your officer says the two fleets are evenly matched,” Neelix said with a shrug. “Maybe they’ll destroy each other completely.”
    “Their own version of Ragnarok,” Tuvok remarked, stepping out from behind the sleek gray console.
    Neelix blinked, and turned to look at the Vulcan. “Their own version of what?” he said.
    “Ragnarok,” Tuvok repeated, stepping down to the central level.
    “An old Earth myth, from the Norse cultures of the northwestern portion of the Eurasian continent.”
    “I’m not familiar with it,” Neelix said.
    Tuvok explained, “The Norse poets claimed that Odin, king of the group of gods known as the Aesir, had traded one of his eyes for knowledge of the future, and that knowledge included the details of the final battle between the Aesir and their bitter enemies, the Frost Giants. In this battle, which they called Ragnarok, both the gods and the Frost Giants would be utterly destroyed, and the world itself would perish with them. Although after