Chapter Text
An undulating tendril from the morphing Changeling slammed into Lar'ragos as he advanced and catapulted him into the wall. Only the kinetic absorption matrix in his armor saved him from a severe concussion and spinal injuries.
Haftan was not as fortunate. The Founder snaked out a tentacle that engulfed the security man's head. It yanked him off his feet, snapped back sharply and decapitated the Tiburonian in a lightning-quick flash of savagery.
Lar'ragos struggled to clear his head. He realized dimly that his phaser blasts should have killed the creature. He spared a quick glance at Tark's motionless body but didn't allow himself to mourn or thirst for revenge. Lar'ragos knew he would have to keep his mind clear to survive the next few minutes. There would be time for grief and anger later.
He grasped a compact shield coil from his belt and tossed it into the doorway. A forcefield snapped into place that sealed Lar'ragos in with the murderous Changeling. He issued terse orders to his team and instructed them to remain outside.
The Founder undulated and oozed free of its shackles before it solidified back into the shape of the Velk military officer. It appeared momentarily pained, and it seemed to take a great deal of effort for the Changeling to complete the metamorphosis. The reconstituted simulacrum turned to face Lar'ragos. "Free my man."
"Piss off," the El-Aurian replied flatly. To underscore his point, he tapped a forearm control and sent a stun charge though the bound Velk's restraints. The man moaned, went rigid, and pitched face-forward onto the floor. Behind his faceplate, Lar'ragos smiled. "Just the two of us."
The Changeling cocked its head as it examined him. "You don't fear me."
"I wouldn't go that far," Lar'ragos allowed. "Fear and I are old friends, though."
It moved forward as it formed a sneer with its Velk features. "I'm going to kill you, you know."
Lar'ragos would have shrugged if his armor allowed it. "And my men in the next room will kill you back." He raised a leaden arm and gestured to the Changeling's midsection. "You're injured," he observed.
It looked down at where its torso wavered and clung to solidity. The Changeling nodded, "Yes, wounded." It glanced up and scrutinized the lines of Lar'ragos' helmet. "But not by you. The Affliction was visited upon us some time ago, solid."
Pava reached up and opened his faceplate, a figurative roll of the dice. He was already riding the crest of the worst-case scenario, and his fear of death was trounced by a potent dose of curiosity and his own conceit. Lar'ragos had no idea whether the Changelings were vulnerable to his talents, but it seemed an ideal opportunity to find out.
"Tell me the story," he said conversationally, as if an exchange of personal histories in this venue was the most natural thing in the world. Lar'ragos saturated his voice with competing levels of empathy and interest as he inquired, "How did this happen to you?"
The Changeling continued to inspect him for a long moment before finally speaking. "Your Federation infected the Great Link with a morphogenic virus during the war."
"Really?" Lar'ragos was genuinely surprised by the accusation. "Doesn't seem our style. Dirty cricket and all that..."
It emitted a shrill, keening laugh and its face contorted into a grotesquely large smile. "Doesn't it, though? Regardless, it's true." The shapeshifter extended an elongated arm and began idly batting Haftan's helmet-clad head around the room. "I was returning home to the promise of a cure when my ship was caught in a freak subspace shear. I was rescued by the Gambis, the inhabitants of a local star system. They proved merciful and attempted to cure me themselves."
The creature's arm suddenly liquefied and spattered to the floor in gelatinous clumps that struggled to reintegrate as Lar'ragos and the Changeling looked on. "Their cure was, in many ways, worse than the disease." It continued to watch its tissues squirm helplessly on the floor with a kind of detached amusement.
"The Founders won't help you?" Lar'ragos asked, his curiosity piqued.
"No," it croaked. It finally stooped to absorb its wayward mass. "My genetic structure has been significantly altered. I can never return home, never again join in the Great Link for fear of infecting my whole race with these... revisions." It spat the last word like a curse.
"Alone and apart from your people," Lar'ragos noted, a hint of genuine sadness in his voice. "I can empathize."
"I doubt that," it hissed, its anger suddenly palpable. It advanced on him. "The Gambis tried to send me back to the Dominion by transporting me to Velkohn, but our forces had already left this insignificant sphere. I was marooned with a handful of my Jem'Hadar who became increasingly difficult to control, as the Gambis had freed them from their dependence on the white."
"So what's the point of all this, then?" Lar'ragos focused his concentration like a laser on the Changeling but proved unable to decipher the responses he received.
"If I can no longer share in the order imposed on this part of the galaxy by the Great Link, than I shall levy my own."
Lar'ragos fought back an ironic smirk. "Your people are nothing if not persistent."
The Changeling lurched closer to him. "The Gambis' ministrations did leave me with one significant advantage, however. Even if your friends manage to destroy me, a little piece of me will live on... in you."
Lar'ragos slammed his faceplate shut. "I'm going to have to pass on that, but thanks." He keyed his comms, "Now!"
Twin beams of polaric energy pierced the hatchway's forcefield and slammed into the Founder. It howled in response and became a twisting, undulating mass of flailing pseudo-pods and thrashing appendages.
Lar'ragos scrambled to recover his rifle and added his fire to the maelstrom until the Changeling had been reduced to a quivering mass of protoplasm on the floor. "Cease fire," he ordered tiredly as he clambered to his feet. He deactivated the portable field blocking the doorway and made sure to keep his distance from the innocuous looking puddle. "Somebody get me a bucket."
*****
Ramirez had rigged the team's phaser rifles in a semi-circle tracing the curve of the shield-wall's geometry. Balanced on barrel-mounted bi-pods, the weapons were slaved to Ramirez's tactical forearm padd. The rest of the team stood by, now armed with their secondary hand phasers as the commander spoke quietly with Petty Officer Herschal.
"So this is the configuration the SCE techs used to breach the barrier wall on Krav'st?"
"Near as I can remember, sir," the non-com hesitated. "It has been a while."
Ramirez nodded. "It'll have to do. Thank you, Mister Herschal."
She activated the phasers in concert. The rifles each emitted a beam or pulse at a specific energy frequency that was designed to harmonize in such a way as to create a growing instability in the shield wall.
The problem was that Ramirez had no idea if the frequency variances were correct, and if they were, she didn't know how long the process might take. She looked to another of her team, "Any sign of hostiles?"
"No, sir. We haven't seen any more Velk since we stormed this area, but I'm not sure how often the guards down here were required to check in."
"Right," she acknowledged. “ A response could arrive at any time. Make sure we've got our firing positions pre-established so we can fight our way out of here if need be."
No sooner had she given the order when the comm-net came to life. "Team One to Team Two, we are under attack! Repeat, we are pinned down in the prison block and have encountered a Changeling. Tark and Haftan are dead, and Lieutenant Lar'ragos has sealed himself in with a shapeshifter."
Ramirez glanced at the bank of pulsing, whining phasers, and cursed the fates. Someone would have to remain behind to monitor the breach of the force wall, and loathe as she was to admit it, Ramirez was the best choice for the job.
"Herschal, you stay and cover me. Davikk, you take the rest of the team and fight your way to Team One's position and affect a rescue of Lar'ragos and his people." As the group mustered to carry out her orders, Ramirez added, "Keep your six clear and fall back here once you've extricated our people. Hopefully, I'll have this shield down by then."
*****
"Emergency power to shields!" Sandhurst called out through split lips and chipped teeth as he clawed his way back into the command chair. "Release countermeasures," he added as he engaged the chair's restraint harness.
"We're now being targeted by three defense platforms!" Pell called out above the din of shrill klaxons.
Sandhurst wiped a forearm across his mouth that smeared a bloody trail across his lower face. "Lieutenant Shanthi, if we can't take control of their weapons grid in the next thirty seconds we'll have to break orbit! I'm not stranding our people down there. Give me another option."
Ashok's voice cut in on the intercom, an uncharacteristic tinge of fear in his voice. "Captain, we're not going to last five minutes under fire like this!"
Sandhurst's response was to mute the comm-link.
Intent on his Science board, Shanthi's reply was nearly drown out by the groan of fatigued metals as Gibraltar strained through a series of high-g evasive maneuvers. "I'm not sure what we have will be enough to breach their security lockouts, sir."
"No time like the present to find out," Sandhurst answered as he watched the weapons platforms bracket his ship with gouts of blazing phaser fire.
Shanthi activated the transmitter and bathed the Velk global defense network in an invasive cyber-pathogen. It was designed to compromise the command and control of orbital weapons grid and give Gibraltar control of the net.
From Ops, Ziang reported, "The platforms are beginning to shut down, sir. Reading weapons systems going offline in a cascade progression."
"I don't know how long that's going to last, Captain," Shanthi urged from his station. "If we're going to get our people out, we need to do it now."
Sandhurst released the restraints on his chair and moved shakily to the Science panel. "Kuenre, is that transport scrambler still functioning down there?"
"Yes, sir. We're still unable to beam the team back."
The captain engaged the comms. "Ramirez, report. What's happening down there?"
*****
Lar'ragos scooped the last of the Changeling's viscous form into the carryall with a makeshift trowel. He scanned the area briefly. "That looks like all of him..." he corrected, "it... whatever." The El-Aurian dropped the scanning wand from a medical tricorder into the hard-shell duffle as well, coupled to the stun circuit from a pair of handcuffs.
Yet another contingent of Velk soldiers had rallied from an earlier defeat and returned to try and pin the Starfleet personnel down in the prison block. Sharpe and Valmak lunged into the doorway at random intervals and exchanged fire with their attackers.
"The commander is still working on dropping the shield protecting the transport inhibitor, sir," Sharpe updated him. "Ramirez is sending the rest of her team to assist. They're maneuvering to come in right behind these guys," he gestured towards the Velk fire-team opposing them.
Valmak triggered a volley of phaser fire down the corridor and then gave Lar'ragos a questioning look as the lieutenant sealed the carryall.
"If the med sensor detects movement, it triggers a stun charge," Lar'ragos answered the unasked question as he hefted the duffle. It was heavier than he had anticipated.
"Will that work?" Valmak sounded dubious.
"I have no idea," Lar'ragos admitted.
Specialist Sharpe gestured to the bodies of Tark and Haftan. "Do we leave them behind, sir?"
"We have to," Lar'ragos replied heavily. "We've got to carry Freely and the two surviving Velk rebels out of here with us. Once we‘re back aboard the ship we‘ll find a way to recover them." His voice grew icy with controlled rage. "Even if I have to shoot my way back in here to do it."
"What about our friends out there?"
Lar'ragos took his last grenade in hand and primed it. "Remember, we're done playing nice." He approached the doorway and was on the cusp of lobbing the device towards the enemy when the sound of Federation weapons reached his ears. The incoming fire from the Velk slackened and then ceased.
Lar'ragos heard Davikk's voice, "The cavalry has arrived, sir! Courtesy of the XO."
"Get in here and give us a hand with our injured," Lar'ragos ordered, not daring to hope that their luck might be changing.
"Pava," Ramirez's voice sounded tight with worry. "I know you'll want to fall back to this position, but we've got to get those prisoners to the surface as quickly as possible. Herschal and I will stay here and keep trying to drop this shield. I'm ordering you to take your team topside immediately."
He wanted to ignore her directive and descend to the shield room, but every soldierly instinct Lar'ragos possessed agreed with her assessment of the situation. Liana's tactical acumen was considerable, and she had obviously weighed their options carefully. Pava cursed himself as he rallied the security team to move to the surface.
*****
Saihra Dunleavy's flurry of photon grenades left the Velk hovertank smoldering. The vehicle lay disabled and nose-down in a stream bed as she rocketed past on her SWIFT. Thus far only a handful of Velk military units had tried to break through the Starfleet cordon around the underground facility, and all had suffered a similar fate. If Lightner didn't hit the advancing enemy units with his shuttle's weaponry, Dunleavy and her cycle-borne team made short work of them on the ground.
A platoon of Velk infantry spilled frantically from a stricken personnel carrier. They assembled a hasty skirmish line and trained their weapons on the low-visibility blur that was Dunleavy's hovercycle. Three anti-aircraft missiles flashed up from their firing line and corkscrewed towards her. Saihra blasted one with her phasers and accelerated, causing another of the missiles to detonate well behind her. The third, however, exploded only meters from her SWIFT.
Though heavily shielded, the concussion threw the cycle off course and overwhelmed the craft's stabilizers. It plowed into the ground at close to two-hundred kilometers per hour. A rooster-tail of soil and debris arced skyward behind the hovercycle as it sliced into the earth.
*****
Lar'ragos and his team had made it exactly ten meters up the stairwell when the Velk ambushed them. A withering wall of fire had driven the team members back down to the next landing, where Sharpe struggled to erect a shield wall to protect against the grenades that bounced down the stairs and detonated only meters from their position.
With enemy closing from above and below, the hunters had become the hunted. They were caught in a deadly pincer that was certain to grind them up in a matter of minutes. Lar'ragos recognized that something had to be done to break the momentum of the enemy's advance.
He dropped the carryall and scrambled wildly up the staircase. Lar'ragos ignored the grenade that clattered off his armored back and exploded just behind him. However, the force of the blast threw him forwards and up, where he landed sans rifle amidst a contingent of Velk soldiers. They appeared momentarily stunned by his unexpected arrival.
He activated his external speakers, emitting a piercing howl as he drew his combat knife and lunged into the mass of reptilians. The lieutenant punched, slashed and stabbed as he surrendered his mind to his base impulses and became a mere conduit for his instincts and prescient insight.
As he waded into them, Lar'ragos knew he had only moments remaining, but perhaps those moments might buy some precious time for his people.
*****
Ramirez inserted the power feed cable into the phaser rifle's power tap delicately. She forced herself to be calm under circumstances that demanded the adrenaline surge of a fight-or-flight confrontation. Ramirez secured the final energy cable to the last of the rifles which linked them to a portable generator, a more sustained source of power than their quickly diminishing magazines.
She glanced towards Herschal, who guarded the doorway to the corridor outside. "How goes it?"
"Still no signs of any Velk," he replied.
The audio receivers in their helmets emitted a piercing squeal that was mercifully squelched by safety filters. Petty Officer Davikk's panicked voice cut in, "...to Commander Ramirez, we're pinned down between levels five and six and are taking heavy fire. I've lost contact with Lieutenant Lar'ragos. We need immediate assistance!"
Ramirez looked down to check her phaser's charge and glimpsed the telltales on her forearm display register a growing disruption in the shield wall. Fifteen percent and rising. It wasn't much, but it was the first positive sign she'd witnessed since beginning this desperate gamble. She tapped at the interface and attenuated the beams' frequency even further. The disruption jumped another three percent.
‘Two bodies won't make much difference in a pitched firefight,' she thought, ‘but I could make all the difference if I can drop this damned energy screen.'
She hoped it was the right decision; an impulsive voice in her head clamored for her to rush headlong to her comrades' aid. "Herschal..." she began numbly, "I want you to head up there and try and take some heat off the team."
The man raised his faceplate and gave Ramirez a disbelieving look. "Just me? Doesn't that seem a bit suicidal, sir?"
"Don't put yourself in any unnecessary danger," she cautioned. "Just throw some beams downrange and see if you can't get the Velk attacking from beneath the team to shift formation and realign to defend against you." She handed Herschal the last of her photon grenades.
He met her eyes unflinchingly. "And you, sir?"
She gestured to the crescent of firing rifles. "I'm afraid this may be the only way any of us are getting out of here." Ramirez cuffed him on the shoulder. "Now go."
Herschal slammed closed his faceplate, gripped his phaser pistol tightly and moved into the corridor beyond.
*****
"Saihra!"
Ensign Lightner threw the shuttle into a nosedive and rocketed towards the surface at many times the speed of sound. As he approached the last known location of the petty officer's SWIFT, Lightner unleashed the shuttle's arsenal and rained micro-torpedoes and phaser fire down on the handful of remaining Velk formations.
He evidenced no hesitation, no thought to disabling the reptilians' ground vehicles. Lightner simply annihilated every enemy target within sensor range of his small craft.
Few among the crew knew of he and Dunleavy's relationship. It was a new, tentative, and delicate experiment for the both of them. The thought of losing her was more than he could bear, and though Gibraltar's Ops officer repeatedly demanded that he return to his overwatch position, Lightner continued his descent.
*****