by David Mack
“That’s long enough,” Chakotay said. “We have the frequency for twenty-two alpha. Send the T’Kumbra, the Templar, and the Saladin. Make sure they treat it as a combat sortie, not—”
“Captain Chakotay and Commander Paris, please report to the bridge,” Lieutenant Harry Kim interrupted via the comm.
Paris threw a look at Chakotay, and they both moved at a quickstep out of the ready room, onto the bridge of Voyager. Paris centered himself behind the forward duty stations.
“Report,” Chakotay said, dropping into his chair.
“Aperture twenty-six alpha’s opening,” Kim said. “But it’s not us. Something’s coming through.”
Anticipation and dread entwined like snakes inside Chakotay’s gut. “Red Alert,” he said. “Battle stations. Alert the fleet, and get ready to target whatever comes out.”
“Aye, sir,” Kim said, arming weapons and raising shields as the alert klaxon whooped.
Let it be a Borg cube, Chakotay prayed. Hell, let it be five. We’ve got enough firepower to pulverize ten of them.
“Tare,” Paris said to the conn officer, orchestrating the battle preparations, “bring us about, bearing one-three-one mark five. Lasren, tell the warbird Loviatar and the I.K.S. Ya’Vang to come about and guard our flanks.”
Everyone reacted with quiet efficiency. Then all eyes turned toward the main viewer and the expanding circle of light that began to wash away the dreamlike cyan glow of the nebula.
A dark corner appeared in the blinding radiance, followed by another, and Chakotay prepared to sate his appetite for revenge. He was about to give the order to fire when the true scope of what he was seeing began to reveal itself. In that moment all his dreams of retribution left him.
“All ships, open fire!” Paris shouted, but it was too late.
Darkness fell upon Voyager like a hammer, and then all that was left were the flames, the terror, and the screaming.
* * *
Ezri Dax felt every blast that rocked her ship. The ten Hirogen attack craft swarmed the Aventine and the Enterprise and harried the Starfleet vessels with powerful subnucleonic beams.
Over the bedlam of explosions, Dax hollered to her first officer, “Sam! Return fire!”
“Aft torpedoes, full spread!” Bowers shouted through the din. “Helm, roll forty degrees port! Phasers, sweep starboard!”
Every command was carried out with dispatch, and the searing orange glow of phaser beams sliced across the image on the main viewer. Flashes from detonating quantum torpedoes were coupled with violent tremors in the Aventine’s hull.
“One enemy ship destroyed,” Kedair reported from tactical. “Acquiring new targets.”
Bowers replied, “Keep firing, Lieutenant.”
Another fusillade of Hirogen fire raked the Aventine. An auxiliary tactical station on the starboard side of the bridge exploded, hurling Ensign Rhys backward in a jet of sparks and shrapnel. His scorched, bloody body fell in an unnatural pose in the middle of the bridge.
A Vulcan paramedic stationed on the bridge rushed forward, with a tricorder open in her hand, to Rhys’s side. More blasts pounded the ship as she looked up at Dax and shook her head. There was nothing she could do—the man was dead.
Thunderous impacts buffeted Dax’s ship and caused the overhead lights to dim. “Port shields failing,” Kedair called from tactical. “Incoming!”
Bowers shot back, “Roll one-eighty to port! All power to starboard shields!”
It was too late. The Hirogen had spotted the weakness in the Aventine’s defenses and exploited it without hesitation. Dax held on to her chair’s armrests as the bridge pitched sharply, knocking Bowers and the Vulcan medic off their feet. The ops console exploded, engulfing Oliana Mirren in superheated phosphors and shattered isolinear circuitry. When the flash faded, the reed-thin brunette went limp in her chair.
Casting off sentiment, Bowers shouted to the relief ops officer, Lieutenant Nak, “Reset science two for ops!”
“Aye, sir,” replied the shaken young male Tellarite, who scrambled to reconfigure the bridge’s backup science console.
The Aventine’s phasers shrieked as Kedair unleashed three barrages in rapid succession, and the torpedoes-away signal had never before sounded so sweet to Dax’s ears. On the main viewer, another Hirogen ship was vaporized as it blundered into the Aventine’s tandem firing solution with the Enterprise.
“Eight Hirogen ships left,” Kedair announced. “They’re splitting up, four and four, on attack vectors.”
“Tharp,” Bowers said. “Hard about, let Enterprise cover our flank.”
Phaser blasts slashed through two of the Aventine’s Hirogen attackers, but the last pair of enemy ships accelerated on an unswerving intercept course.
Kedair shouted, “Collision alarm!”
The two Hirogen ships made impact. A violent jolt shuddered through the deck and made Dax wince.
“Report,” Bowers said.
From the new ops station, Lieutenant Nak replied, “Hull breach, Decks Seventeen and Eighteen, Sections Five through Nine. Force fields are up, damage-control teams responding.”
“Intruder alert!” Kedair said. “Four Hirogen, moving in pairs on Deck Seventeen.” She looked up at Bowers. “They’re heading for crew quarters.”
“Evacuate that deck,” Bowers said. “And tell your people to shoot to kill. Hirogen don’t take prisoners, so neither do we.”
* * *
The bridge of the Enterprise was heavy with smoke and fumes. Sparks rained down from buckled overhead panels. Pressure-suited damage-control specialists jogged past behind Jean-Luc Picard, on their way to extinguish a fire in his ready room.
In front of him, off to starboard, a Kaferian medic was treating Lieutenant T’Ryssa Chen, whose right arm had been burned black when she’d pushed tactical officer Šmrhová clear of an overloading companel just before it exploded.
At the conn, a surge of electricity had stunned Lieutenant Faur, who had been taken to sickbay. Lieutenant Weinrib had taken over the ship’s flight operations. In a pitched voice he declared, “Two Hirogen ships on ramming trajectories!”
Worf bellowed, “Evasive! Starboard!” He thumbed open the intraship comm. “All decks! Brace for impact!”
Two collisions in quick sequence pummeled the Enterprise. Choudhury held on to her console with one hand and worked its controls with the other. “Hull breach, Deck Ten! Ventral shields are down, and the last two ships are making another attack run.”
Picard gripped his armrests so tightly that his knuckles turned white. “Helm, intercept course. On my mark, make a shallow, full-impulse dive across their path, then pull up.”
“Aye, sir,” Weinrib said.
“Divert phaser power to dorsal shields,” Picard said to Choudhury. “Arm aft torpedoes, dispersal pattern Bravo.”
“Weapons ready,” Choudhury said.
Kadohata looked back from the ops console. “Dorsal shields are as strong as we can make them.”
“Steady,” Picard said, projecting unflinching confidence.
He watched the range and speed data on his chair’s armrest tactical monitor. As he’d suspected, the Hirogen showed no sign of breaking off their attack or changing their course. They weren’t going to surrender or relent.
So be it, Picard decided. “Now, Mister Weinrib.”
The engines throbbed and whined as the Enterprise slipped below the Hirogen’s glide plane at full impulse for just half a second. As the two enemy ships rolled to attack the Enterprise from above, it soared upward, ramming them from underneath. Bone-rattling concussions resounded through the hull as the massive starship slammed aside its smaller attackers. “Hard to port,” Picard commanded over the hue and cry of explosions and damage reports. “Fire aft torpedoes!”
Bright feedback tones from Choudhury’s console confirmed the release of the torpedo volley. Seconds later she reported, “Both Hirogen ships destroyed, Captain.”
He threw a look at Worf. “Dam
age report.”
“Hull breaches on Decks Two through Six, Sections Nineteen through Fifty-one,” Worf replied. “Dorsal shields have failed.”
It was no worse than Picard had expected. “Casualties?”
“Several,” Worf said. “We also have nine crewmen missing from the breached compartments.”
Picard watched the firefighting team shamble out of his smoky ready room. “Begin search-and-rescue operations, Mister Worf.” He asked Choudhury, “What’s the Aventine’s status?”
“They’ve been boarded,” she said. Then her eyes opened wider as a signal shrilled on her console. “And they’re not the only ones—we have four intruders on Deck Ten.”
* * *
Lieutenant Randolph Giudice led his security team into position on Deck 10 of the Enterprise. He ducked into a shallow recess along the corridor, hugged his TR-116 rifle to his chest, and held up a fist to halt the rest of the squad. Across from him, Lieutenant Peter Davila backed into another nook in a bulkhead, his own TR-116 clutched tightly.
A few meters behind them, past a curve in the passageway, four more security officers crouched, awaiting the signal to advance. Lieutenant th’Chun, Lieutenant Harley de Lange, and Ensign Manfred Vogel all were armed with the same kind of rifles as Giudice. In addition, th’Chun and Vogel carried collapsible stun batons for hand-to-hand combat, and de Lange wore a Nausicaan sword in a sheath across his back. The melee weapon was not a standard armament, but the TR-116s and bladed weapons had been issued from the armory on the XO’s orders.
At the rear of the group was Lieutenant Bryan Regnis, the team’s sharpshooter. He carried a specially modified TR-116. At the end of its muzzle was an inertia-neutral microtransporter, which was linked to an exographic targeting sensor that covered his left eye like a translucent crystal patch.
The sensor let him peek through decks and bulkheads, and the microtransporter enabled him to shoot through them as if they weren’t there. His rifle fired ten-millimeter monotanium projectiles at nine hundred twenty meters per second—and materialized them ten centimeters from his target, with their kinetic energy unchanged. In essence, he was able to target his foes from several decks away and inflict damage as if he had shot them at point-blank range.
Giudice looked back at Regnis, made a “V” with his first two fingers, and pointed at his own eyes. Then he made a jabbing forward motion with his whole hand. The lean, boyish-looking sniper nodded, unslung his rifle, and peered through the exo-graphic sensor, seeking out the Hirogen boarding party.
After several seconds of adjustments, Regnis frowned, met Giudice’s questioning stare, and waved his hand up and down in front of his eyes: Something was blocking the exographic sensor.
There’s the dampening field, Giudice figured. So much for doing this the easy way. He waved de Lange and Vogel forward.
The two men stayed low and skulked forward, rifles braced and level. Davila and Giudice kept their own weapons aimed past the duo, ready to lay down covering fire. Regnis and th’Chun hung back, behind cover.
At the far end of the corridor, beyond the next curve, the overhead lights began going out. The leading edge of darkness moved swiftly closer, blacking out companels and even emergency lighting where the bulkheads met the deck.
A dull, heavy thump was followed by the sound of something rolling. Giudice saw a glint of light reflecting off a small, metallic orb the size of a baseball. It ricocheted off the bulkhead several meters away and rolled toward him and his team. A wall of darkness preceded it.
An energy dampener. “Back!” he snapped.
Vogel halted and stared forward into the darkness as it overtook him. A meaty thunk of metal striking bone followed a moment later. Lieutenant de Lange had turned back and was in the midst of his first sprinting stride when he was knocked forward. He fell facedown, revealing a sunburst-shaped throwing blade buried between his neck vertebrae, just beneath his skull.
Giudice and Davila scrambled backward as they opened fire, lighting up the darkened passage with tracer rounds from their TR-116s. Bullets sparked as they were deflected by the two Hirogen hunters’ armor. The height and bulk of the invaders shocked Giudice; he and Davila were big men, broad-shouldered and thickly muscled, but they were dwarfed by the Hirogen.
Stumbling in reverse around the curve in the passage, Giudice almost ran into th’Chun, who was dashing forward. He tried to grab the Andorian. “Neshaal, stop!” He lunged forward to follow th’Chun around the curve, leading with his rifle.
The thaan rolled across the deck and came up shooting in full automatic mode. In a blaze of crimson tracers, he peppered one of the Hirogen with high-explosive rounds, blasting him to a dead stop. A handful of shots struck the hunter in the unarmored areas of his face, and he collapsed.
Then an ovoid hunk of metal arced out of the shadows and bounced across the deck toward th’Chun.
Giudice turned and dived for cover. “Incoming!”
Regnis and Davila retreated ahead of him. Behind him, th’Chun fought to go from a kneeling crouch to a standing run. He didn’t make it. The explosion threw the Andorian forward and slammed him into Giudice and the others. Searing-hot shrapnel pelted them as they rolled in a jumble.
Giudice shook off the worst of the blast and pulled Davila back to his feet. One look at th’Chun confirmed that he was dead. “Redcaps,” Giudice said to Regnis and Davila, using the slang term for high-explosive ammunition. “Suppressing fire. Fall back to Section Nineteen.”
The trio quickstepped backward to an intersection that was still lit. Davila and Regnis switched their weapons’ ammunition clips on the move. They ducked around the corner into Section Nineteen, and Giudice gave the signal to halt. He tapped his combadge. “Giudice to bridge. One hostile down. Need backup.”
Lieutenant Choudhury replied, “Acknowledged. Be advised, we’ve confirmed the Hirogen are using energy dampeners.”
The three men swapped angry, exasperated glares. “Thanks, bridge,” Giudice said. “Noted.” He looked across the passageway to note the bulkhead numbers. “I need force fields at Section Ten-nineteen Echo.”
“Negative,” Choudhury said. “The energy dampeners will just knock them out. Forget containment protocols. Shoot to kill.”
He pulled a clip of redcaps from his belt. “Acknowledged,” he said. In a deft, practiced motion, he ejected his weapon’s emptied magazine to the deck and slapped in the replacement. “Can you tell me if our blind spot’s moving?”
“Affirmative,” said Choudhury. “It’s flanking you. Center of the scrambled zone is Section Ten-twenty-one Delta.”
The corridor to his right grew dark. “Copy that, bridge. Giudice out.” He tapped Regnis’s shoulder and motioned for the sniper to watch the dimming corridor. Then he gave a sideways nod to Davila to follow him to a panel that was marked as a storage space for emergency supplies.
Davila put his back to the wall and shifted his focus every few seconds, wary of an ambush from any direction. Giudice opened the bulkhead panel and retrieved a bundle of chemical emergency flares. He unrolled the bundle between himself and Davila. “Pop ’em, toss ’em, and make it quick,” Giudice said.
The two men cracked the flares to life by the fistful and flung them wildly down the corridors. Even as the corridor’s overhead lights faded to black with the Hirogen’s approach, the pale lime and cyan glows of the chemical flares remained bright and un-dimmed. Lit only by the flares, the passageway took on a surreal cast of harsh shadows and unnatural hues.
Giudice watched the corridor opposite the one guarded by Regnis, and Davila monitored the intersection from which they’d come less than a minute earlier. “Stay frosty,” Giudice whispered. “Check your targets, controlled bursts.”
Waiting in the dark, lying in ambush, Giudice felt as if the seconds were being stretched by the adrenaline coursing through him. His pulse slammed with a steady tempo in his head, and the beating of his heart shook his entire body. Fat beads of sweat rolled from his thinning
hair to his heavy eyebrows.
He thought he heard Regnis start to say something. Over his shoulder, he said in a hushed voice, “Bry? Report.”
No answer came. Giudice looked back and strained to pierce the shadows. Then he saw Regnis dangling several centimeters above the floor, flailing desperately at his blood-drenched throat. The sniper looked as if he was levitating—until Giudice caught a glimmer of light on the monofilament wire that had been lowered through a ventilation duct to garrote his comrade.
“Heads up!” Giudice unleashed a staccato series of short bursts at the overhead panels. The ceiling caved in.
Davila opened fire on the hulking forms of three Hirogen hunters, who let Regnis fall to the deck as they dropped into crouches, scythe-like blades in hand.
One hunter lunged at Davila, thrusting a dagger at the man’s chest. Davila parried the blow with the stock of his rifle, only to get slashed across the chest by a curved blade in the Hirogen’s other hand.
Giudice continued firing until his rifle clicked empty.
A hand locked on his throat, and cold steel bit into his gut and pierced his back. He’d been impaled on the sword of the Hirogen leader, the alpha. The alien, whose face was marked by broad stripes of bright war paint, yanked his blade free and tossed Giudice aside. The brawny security officer struck the bulkhead and fell bleeding to the deck.
A buzz-roar of weapons fire filled the corridor.
In the strobed light of tracer fire, the alpha convulsed as chunks of his armor were blasted from his body in a bloody spray. Giudice winced as he watched the stuttered-motion retreat of the other two Hirogen, one of whom hurled a fist-sized charge through an open escape pod hatch.
They ducked past the portal, and an earsplitting blast vomited fire and debris into the corridor. Then everything was drowned out by a terrifying howl of escaping atmosphere.
Water vapor condensed into white plumes racing toward space, and the sudden plunge in air temperature stung Giudice’s eyes. He forced them open long enough to see the two Hirogen, whose armor suits were equipped with breathing masks and visors for survival in the vacuum of space, clamber out through the ragged new gap in the Enterprise’s hull.