by David Mack
The rush of air slowed, and Giudice’s head swam. We’re running out of air, he realized. Struggling to concentrate through his pain and hypoxia, he deduced that the Hirogen’s energy dampener was preventing the ship’s force fields from sealing the breach and repressurizing the isolated sections.
Several meters down the passageway, his rescuers had collapsed, robbed of breath. Regnis and Davila were down.
Lying next to Giudice was the dead Alpha-Hirogen. And on his belt was a spherical device like the one that had rolled out of the darkness minutes earlier. With weak, trembling fingers, Giudice detached the sleek, silvery globe from the alpha’s belt. Barely able to see, unable to hear, he crawled forward on his knees toward the rent in the hull. To his relief, he felt the artificial gravity fail beneath him, lightening his burden.
He chucked the globe through the gap, out into the zero-g emptiness. It spun as it vanished into the eternal night.
The corridor lights snapped on, a force field shimmered into place across the rip in the ship’s skin, and a flood of sweet air rushed over Giudice, who collapsed into the restored artificial gravity.
Boots clattered as a security team ran to Giudice and his men. Leading the reinforcement squad was Lieutenant Rennan Konya, the ship’s Betazoid deputy chief of security. “Medics up here, stat!” he shouted back down the corridor.
“Good to see you back on your feet,” Giudice said. From his vantage point lying on the deck, he noted the chrome stripe on the bottom of the ammunition clip in Konya’s rifle: bullets with pointed monofilament tips—the ultimate armor-piercing rounds. “Silver bullets, eh?”
“When only the best will do.” As a team of medics and nurses arrived to tend to Giudice and his wounded men, Konya eyed the damage in the escape-pod bay and tapped his combadge. “Konya to bridge: Hostiles have gone EVA.”
* * *
Sam Bowers dodged through smoke and past a running engineer to join Lonnoc Kedair at the security console. “They’re where?”
“Heading aft on the outside of the dorsal hull,” Kedair replied. Her green, scaled hands moved with speed and grace over her dust-covered controls. “Four Hirogen wearing pressure-support gear. One of them has a pretty serious-looking piece of shoulder-fired artillery.” An alert beeped and lit a pad high on her console. She silenced it with a quick tap. “Power failures are following them every step of the way.”
Lieutenant Gaff chim Nak called across the bridge from the new ops station, “Enterprise also has two EVA hostiles.”
“Our guests must be using magnetic boots,” Captain Dax said, thinking aloud. “Can we electrify the hull? Maybe short out their armor?”
“It’d take about fifteen minutes to set up,” interjected science officer Gruhn Helkara. “And with their energy-dampening field, there’s no guarantee it would even reach them.”
Kedair added, “We can’t use phasers, either. Even if we target them manually, the beam would disperse before contact.”
“What about the runabouts?” Dax asked the security chief.
She shook her head. “Same problem, sir. Phasers won’t hit the targets, and even if their microtorpedoes explode on impact, shooting them at our own unshielded hull is a bad idea.”
The captain heaved a frustrated sigh. “How soon can we send our own people out to engage?”
“Not soon enough,” Bowers said, pointing at the enlarged image on the main viewscreen.
The Hirogen who carried the shoulder-fired weapon raised it, braced it, and aimed it at a central section of the Aventine’s secondary hull. His comrades moved behind him.
Dax tapped her combadge. “Bridge to engineering! Prep for hull breach!”
A fiery streak from the Hirogen’s weapon left a trail of quickly dissipating expended chemical propellant. Then a flash on the main viewer coincided with a deep, angry rumbling in the hull. A port-side engineering status console became a chaotic scramble of symbols and static.
“Breach, Deck Twenty, Section Forty-one,” Nak replied, before he covered his mouth and coughed painfully into his fist.
“They’re heading for main engineering,” Dax said. She snapped orders around the bridge. “Sam, get Leishman and her people out. Gaff, isolate all command systems on the bridge. Gruhn, lock down the engineering computer core. Lonnoc, we can’t let the intruders control our warp core—get your people down there, and dead or alive, get those bastards off my ship!”
As the bridge officers scrambled to their stations to carry out their orders, Bowers saw Kedair summon relief tactical officer Talia Kandel to take over for her at security. Then the security chief walked briskly toward the turbolift.
Bowers intercepted her before she boarded the lift and snapped, “Lieutenant Kedair! Where are you going?”
“Main engineering, sir,” Kedair said.
He folded his arms. “I don’t recall you asking permission to leave your post, Lieutenant.”
She bristled and then snapped to attention.
“Sir. Request permission to lead the counterattack and make our boarders sorry they ever set foot on Captain Dax’s ship.”
“Permission granted,” Bowers said, stepping aside to let her enter the turbolift. “Give ’em hell, Lieutenant.”
The doors hissed shut as Kedair replied with a determined glare, “That’s the plan, sir.”
* * *
Ormoch had earned his place as an Alpha-Hirogen through daring and resilience. Sacrificing his ship in order to breach the defenses of this exotic alien vessel had cost him many fine relics, but he was certain that, once subdued, this ship’s crew would yield many superb trophies.
Kezal, his beta hunter, returned from one of the access corridors that led to the main engine compartment, which the two of them had commandeered without facing any resistance. “Scramblers and countermeasures are in place,” the beta said. The muffled thunder of a distant detonation reverberated through the abandoned corridors.
“That should keep our prey busy until we’ve bypassed their computer lockouts,” Ormoch said. “Then we can use their own antipersonnel systems to neutralize their energy weapons and test their skills in personal combat.”
Something large and dense clanged heavily to the deck beside the matter/antimatter reactor and replied, “Why wait?”
Kezal and Ormoch turned to see a massive, reptilian biped with leathery brown scales, clawed extremities with opposable digits, and a face dominated by an ivory beak. Its round eyes were a solid, glossy black and utterly inscrutable. Fabric in the style of what Ormoch had come to recognize as this ship’s uniform was fitted snugly across the creature’s barrel chest. It hunched and prowled forward with an ornate and fearsome curved-blade axe clutched in one hand.
“This,” Ormoch said to Kezal with a gleam of anticipation, “looks like worthy prey indeed.” The alpha drew his own long blade and squared off against the greenish behemoth. “Stay clear, Kezal. This one is mine.”
The alien shifted his grip on his axe. “Don’t be greedy, friend,” he said. “I’m willing to kill you both at the same time.” He clicked his beak at Kezal. “Bring it on.”
“Mind your place, Kezal,” warned Ormoch.
Ormoch lunged at the alien. It moved quickly despite its bulk. The alpha’s first thrust and slash missed completely, and he barely dodged a scalping blow from his foe’s axe. He ducked under another lateral cut and chopped away a wedge of flesh from above the creature’s knee. Dark blood ran down its leg.
Circling the reptilian, Ormoch studied its movements to see whether it favored its wounded limb or made a greater effort to defend it from further injury. To the alpha’s surprise, it did neither. Either the creature had tremendous self-discipline or its species possessed an unusually high pain threshold.
Best not to linger too long on this one, Ormoch decided. A feint and a lunge slipped him inside the creature’s circle of defense, and a well-placed stroke of his monotanium blade cut a deep wound across the creature’s throat. He thrust his sword up, through
the reptilian’s gut and into its chest. As the creature twitched in its death throes, it tried to bring its axe down on Ormoch’s neck. The alpha reached up and swatted the weapon from his foe’s hand. It clanged and bounced across the deck.
Then the reptilian’s other hand struck Ormoch’s face like a spiked hammer, tearing ragged wounds across his cheek and brow. Blood drizzled over the alpha’s eyes as the creature’s last breath rattled from its throat. Ormoch lowered his blade and let his prey’s corpse slide off, into a heap on the deck.
He wiped his blood from his face, looked at Kezal, and laughed. “Not the best I’ve ever fought, but not bad,” he said. “Look at that beak and those claws. They’ll make fine relics.”
A woman’s voice added, “Don’t forget this.”
Again, Ormoch turned to find an unexpected visitor. She was tall for a humanoid, slim but muscular, and not unattractive, in his opinion. Though her olive-hued hide was scaly, it was much finer in texture than that of the creature he’d just fought. And she twirled the first creature’s weapon with ease and grace.
“You think you know how to handle that axe?” taunted Kezal.
The woman spared him only the briefest glance. “It’s not an axe, it’s a Rigellian voulge.” Her smirk, Ormoch was certain, hid the subtle hint of a sneer. “And I wield it better than most.”
She stalked around Ormoch in a wide circle. Her stride exhibited balance and confidence. Kezal fell into step directly opposite her, circling Ormoch.
“I’m sure you think yourself capable,” Ormoch said to the woman. “But you’re hardly what I’d call worthy prey.”
“Are you sure?” She reached to the rear of her belt, detached two large pieces of metal, and tossed them at Ormoch’s feet. He recognized them as Hirogen breathing masks. “Maybe you should ask Dossok and Saransk.” Feigning forgetfulness, she added, “Oh, right, you can’t. Because I killed them already, up at the engineering computer core—where you sent them, Ormoch.”
She knows our names. The woman’s detailed knowledge of him and his hunters lent credibility to her boasts. “Impressive,” the alpha said. “And now you’ve come to fight me?”
That drew a snide chortle from her. “No.” She pointed behind Ormoch, at Kezal. “I’m here to kill him.”
Ormoch’s temper flared. “I am the alpha!” he shouted, with such fury that it made his entire body tremble. “He is only the beta. Your life is mine to take, not his!”
The green woman stopped moving. “Not anymore. In a few seconds, he’ll be the alpha. Because you’ll be dead.”
Quaking with rage, Ormoch felt like a spring that had been coiled past its breaking point. “You think you can kill me?” He waved his sword erratically. “You’re welcome to try!”
“I don’t have to,” the woman said. “My comrade, Lieutenant Simmerith, killed you ninety seconds ago.” Her smile turned into a glare. “You have a few seconds left, so permit me to educate you. Simmerith was a Rigellian Chelon. In times of stress or combat, their skin secretes a deadly contact poison. And you got a faceful of it.”
Ormoch was about to call her a liar when his knees buckled and dropped him in a quivering mass to the deck. Reduced to a helpless pile of flesh, he filled with shame.
Kezal wasted no time assuming his new status as the alpha. The young Hirogen hunter drew his sword and charged, leaping over Ormoch to attack the woman. The pair danced in and out of Ormoch’s line of sight as he lay all but paralyzed on the deck. The engine compartment rang with the clashing of metal against metal, underscored by deep grunts of exertion.
Then the duelists loomed back into sight almost on top of him, and Ormoch saw the woman overextend herself into a fatal mistake. Kezal, to his credit, exploited it without mercy, driving his sword through the woman’s chest.
Her voulge tumbled from her hands. She gurgled and gasped for air with a horrified expression as Kezal lifted her off the deck and admired his kill. When he raised his blade higher, her body went limp and slid down the blade until it came to a stop against the crossguard.
The new alpha breathed deep of the scent of his prey, committing it to memory. He brought her face level with his own and brushed her black hair from her shoulders, no doubt pondering where to begin her osteotomy for his newest trophy.
Then her eyes snapped open.
She plucked his short blades from the scabbards under his arms and lopped off his head with a scissoring cut.
His decapitated body fell limp at the green woman’s feet. She discarded the two short blades and turned toward the fallen Ormoch, with the blade of Kezal’s longsword still protruding from her back. Unsheathing it from her torso with a slow pull, she walked to Ormoch’s side.
“Last lesson for today,” she whispered in the former alpha’s ear. “My species is called Takaran. We don’t have vital organs, just a distributed physiology.” She pulled open a rip in her uniform jacket and wiped the blood from her stab wound, which was no longer visible. “And, as you may have noticed, we’re really good at healing.”
He forced words past his dry, swollen tongue. “Your kind … are … worthy prey,” he rasped.
The green woman wrapped her arms around Ormoch’s head in an almost tender embrace. “Funny,” she whispered. “That’s how I feel about you.” She torqued his jaw, and the last thing he heard was the crack of his spine snapping in two.
* * *
Worf’s blood burned with anticipation, and he smelled the scents of the two Hirogen hunters who were climbing the port-side auxiliary turbolift shaft toward the bridge of the Enterprise.
“Power failures are moving up the shaft,” Choudhury said, reading her tricorder. “Deck Six just went dark. Deck Five …”
“Here they come,” said Captain Picard.
Kadohata herded the junior officers off the bridge and into the observation lounge. “Weinrib, Elfiki, Chen, let’s go,” she snapped, hustling them out of harm’s way. Then she and tactical officer Šmrhová confronted the captain.
“You too, sir,” Kadohata said.
“I belong here, Commander,” Picard said with pride.
Choudhury called out in a steady voice, “Deck Four’s dark.”
“No time to argue,” Kadohata said. She snapped her fingers at three of the ten security officers who had come to defend the bridge. “Mars, Braddock, Cruzen—front and center.” The three security lieutenants stepped forward. “Give us your rifles, then fall back to the observation lounge and have the armory beam you three more.” They traded confused looks, and Kadohata sharpened her tone. “That’s an order, Lieutenants!”
Mars was the first to comply. The compact, gray-haired man handed his TR-116 and belt of spare clips to Captain Picard. Braddock, a trained sniper, reluctantly surrendered his weapon and rounds to Kadohata, and Cruzen seemed relieved as she passed her rifle and clips to Šmrhová.
“Right,” Kadohata said. “Fall out.” The three unarmed security officers exited the bridge. Kadohata looked at Picard and Šmrhová and nodded toward the mission-operations consoles to starboard. “Take cover there,” she said. “Fire through the gaps in the console stands. Controlled bursts. I’ll be close by.”
Picard checked the settings on his weapon. “Very good,” he said, and then he followed Šmrhová to cover.
Static filled the main viewer, which flickered and switched off, revealing the blank forward bulkhead. Consoles stuttered and went dark. The overhead lights failed, and the bridge’s vast assortment of computers went silent.
Choudhury and Worf flanked the auxiliary turbolift doors. He kept his grip on his bat’leth firm but supple. She kept an equally lithe hold on her twin Gurkha kukri daggers. “Flares,” Worf said to the security personnel who had taken cover around the bridge. Snap-cracks filled the deathly quiet, and then the bridge was aglow with pools of magenta- and lemon-hued light.
Fire and thunder tore through the doors of the auxiliary turbolift. Jagged hunks of the shattered portal caromed off the bulkheads and dormant companel
s, and a few slammed into random security personnel, who cried out in pain.
Amid the patter of falling debris, Worf heard two bright plinks of small metallic disks striking the deck. Searing flashes of light turned the smoky shadows of the bridge as bright as the sun, and for a moment he had to avert his eyes. He tried to stay alert as two Hirogen battle roars echoed on the bridge, but all he could see were purple retinal afterimages.
Tracer rounds filled the darkness, all of them targeted into the turbolift shaft. The strobing light and deafening buzz of gunfire were overwhelming to Worf’s finely attuned senses, especially since he was all but standing atop the target.
His eyes and ears had almost adjusted when the barrage stopped, leaving the bridge steeped in dim shadows, acrid smoke, and tense silence. Nothing stirred in the turbolift shaft.
Then came the first choked-off scream, followed by the sickly gurgle of a humanoid with a slashed throat. Worf couldn’t tell where the sound had come from, but his instincts told him that the Hirogen had slipped past him and Choudhury, probably in the moment of the first blinding flashes.
“Blades!” he shouted to the security team, and he heard the soft scrapes of combat knives being pulled from sheaths.
He stalked away from the blasted-open turbolift portal and hewed close to the aft bulkhead. On the other side of the bridge, Choudhury followed his lead, moving at a quickstep in pursuit of foes who knew how to use the darkness.
Another wet crunch and muffled cry, from the port-side consoles. Choudhury leaped toward it as a yelp of alarm from the starboard side was cut short. Worf sprinted, hurdled over the command chairs, and found Ensign Carr from security with his throat slashed open—and no sign of his attacker.
One soft breath behind his back was Worf’s only warning.
He spun, his bat’leth held vertically, and blocked what had been meant to be a silent killing stroke. Looking down at him was the scaled-and-painted face of a Hirogen.
The hunter snap-kicked Worf in the groin. Worf doubled over, sick with nausea, and the Hirogen kneed him in the jaw, knocking him through the air. The enraged Klingon landed hard and rolled quickly to his feet, ready to hit back.