Mass driver

Far and away the most terrifying weapon employed by the Zarnac military is the mass driver, a weapon capable of launching a small asteroid at a planet's surface.

Due to the destructive nature of these weapons, they have been banned by treaty between the Zarnac Empire and several of their neighbors. But, as seen during the Battle of Deridous IV, the Zarnac did not scrap all of these weapons (in fact, they may not have scrapped any of them). Starfleet believes that the Zarnac previously used these as a standard front-line weapon, but now use them primarily as terror weapons.

According to information told to Lieutenant Commander Drakt by Sadoloth Athon of the Zarnac Imperial Navy, the mass driver fitted to the IZS Resatalia (a Sustegaria class super battleship - the largest standard warship in service with the Zarnac fleet) is one of the smallest of these devices in use by the Zarnac. It is capable of firing an asteroid up to 15 meters in diameter. The device is a cryogenically cooled gauss gun, using electromagnetic force to propel the asteroid to high relativistic speed, and achieving penetration of the target through sheer kinetic energy. It is believed that it can be used against ships, but due to the time it takes to prepare the weapon for firing (through loading the asteroid "ammo", powering the magnetic coils, and allowing them to cool after firing), it is more useful against stationary targets like planetary installations and space stations.

According to the information gleaned by Lieutenant Commander Drakt, the Zarnac posess a mass driver capable of firing an asteroid large enough to wipe out all life on a Class M planet in a single shot. This information is truly horrific, though given the source Starfleet cannot verify the veracity of the intelligence.

If this information is true, Starfleet believes that such a device could not possibly be mounted on a single ship, and would most likely have to be towed into position by a group of vessels, then draw power from those vessels to operate the launching and cooling systems.