The lift door hisses open, and I race for the transporter room.
There are no signs of damage. The Holst took some heavy hits, but she rode them out - and the special systems worked, exactly to specification. The "Corbomite" device, in particular, worked beautifully.
"Do you have the coordinates?" I gasp at Lieutenant Jenro as I reach the transporter.
"Affirmative." He remains imperturbable. "I have contact with the pattern enhancers on the ground. I can put you safely within two hundred metres."
"Good." I hit my personal buffer and pull out my phaser pulsewave. "Stand ready to send assault squads to the surface, but I'm taking point on this one, and I'm going in alone, first." Thrang will run from a full team, I'm sure of it. But if I'm there, alone, he might just be tempted to take the bait. I step on to the pad.
"Sir!" The door hisses open, and Anthi is there. "Sir, you have to wait -"
"No. I'm going in first. Help secure Thrang's ship, work with Klerupiru on its computer core. Get whatever help you can from this Moreno - she's Pexlini's contact. I'm going in first," I repeat, and my gaze locks with hers. "I'm going in, and I'll be coming back. Because I love you."
It's true. It's also the only thing I can say that will stop Anthi in her tracks. Before she's finished gaping, I snap at Jenro, "Energize."
The world sparkles around me, and I am gone.
And I'm down, under a louring grey sky, in a thin rain that tastes of acid. There are buildings all around me, grey and dirty and lightless. I pull out my tricorder and check my bearings. I'm close to Thrang's beam-down point -
Two figures come loping towards me, through the rain. Two familiar figures.
"What the hell are you two doing here?"
"Nice to see you too," says Koneph Phoral. Beside him, Osrin just grins. "This is pretty much the only place on the planet where it's safe to transport," Koneph continues, "so, hey, we knew where you were coming."
"And we have a positive track on a human life sign," Osrin adds.
"Fine. Feed it to my tricorder, and then get out of the firing line!"
"That won't work," says Koneph. "This place is a mess, you need native guides."
"You're the wrong colour for natives. Now get out of my way."
"Funny thing," says Koneph. "We never did join Starfleet. So you can't give us orders. Now, if we were married, we might give in to you, just for the sake of a quiet life, but -"
I have helpers. I don't want helpers. If they don't scare Thrang off, they might get hurt when he tries for me. But every second I stand here arguing, Thrang gets further away. "All right," I snap. "Keep up. If you can." And I check the tricorder, and set off at a run.
They keep up with me easily. Damn all augments, everywhere.
"I think he's headed for the subsurface systems," says Osrin. "There's a subway entrance -" He points, at a metal arch over a descending stairway. It looks dark and uninviting.
"He's got a protomatter device. He can't set it off while he's standing on the same planet, but he's bound to have some use for it." We reach the arch, clatter down the stairs into a dank, dark space. Part of some mass transit system, at a guess. Once bustling with people, now deserted.
I check the tricorder. Its interface is the brightest light around. "This way." I point down a tunnel. Osrin and Koneph both have tricorders out, too. The three of us move as one. It's... oddly gratifying.
"By the way," I say. "About marriage."
"Oh, this is the perfect time," says Osrin.
"Might not get another chance. Um. Anthi and I -"
"Finally," says Koneph with immense satisfaction.
I sigh. "I gather I'm the only person who didn't know how she felt?"
"Might be some slime molds under a rock in the Delta Quadrant that haven't heard," said Osrin. "Relax. We both like Anthi."
"Assuming she's still speaking to me when all this is over," I mutter. There is light up ahead. I close the tricorder. We slow down, our feet making thin splashes in the shallow puddles of water on the cracked floor.
"That looks iffy," says Koneph.
There's a cubby off the main tunnel - storage space for tools and supplies, once, I'd guess. Now it's got a complicated-looking device inside it, a thing of metal pipes and wiring and flat-panel control interfaces, all wrapped around a hollow transparent container with a familiar dire glow inside.
"Protomatter device all right," says Koneph. His eyes are narrowed, his antennae twitching. "That's not a standard Tzenkethi interface, though."
"You know about these things?" I ask him.
"Nausicaan intelligence had us gather some data on protomatter weapons, one time," he answers. "Before the Tzenkethi started making themselves unpopular, but hey, I keep up with the literature. I recognize the anti-tamper devices, too," he adds. He goes up to the device, kneels beside it, flexes his fingers. "I reckon I can make this safe."
I give him a hard stare. "How sure are you?"
"Kon did a lot of work with bombs, for the Nausicaans," says Osrin.
"Nothing's ever a hundred per cent," says Koneph. "But this.... I don't think your guy's as good as he thinks he is."
"Thrang's a megalomaniac," I say, "but he's a talented megalomaniac. Don't underestimate him."
"Yeah," says Koneph. "Yeah, I can see he's got talent." He whistles tunelessly through his teeth. "Thing is, I've got talent too, and experience. This'll take a while." He makes a minuscule adjustment to his tricorder, frowns, makes another. "Leave me to it. Go after your man. Maybe you can bring him back, and he can turn it off."
Osrin touches my shoulder. "Human life sign, off to one side and below us." He points down the tunnel, to a metal hatch set in the concrete floor. "I think he's taken to the sewer system. He could navigate through that, double back, get to a shuttle landing pad."
"Then we'd better stop him." I heft the phaser pulsewave, lope off towards the hatch. Osrin follows me.
"By the way," he says, "you can't use the gun."
"What?"
"The last sabotage attempt ruptured the city's hydrocarbon gas pipes. There's pockets of flammable gas all through the sub-levels. A phaser blast could -"
"Oh, great." I transfer the gun back to my transporter buffer. "Up against Thrang, bare handed."
"Two of us. In tunnels." Osrin bends down, lifts the hatch open in one easy movement. "How's your th'kara?"
"Passable." I stare into the wet darkness. There is liquid down there, and it smells foul. "Should've brought Anthi after all, she's master-grade." There's a metal ladder. I start down it.
I'm at the bottom, shin-deep in something cold, wet and smelly, when my combadge bleeps. "Shohl."
"Sir." Anthi's voice, brisk and professional. "We've taken Thrang's ship. Deploying assault teams to the surface now. Starfleet and other ships are entering the system in support - including the privateer vessel Anita, under diplomatic protection from the Reman dreadnought Saraswati."
Pexlini and Heizis. "OK. We've located Thrang's protomatter device and have someone working on it. We're after the man himself now. Secure local shuttle pads, he might be aiming for them - We'll talk when we get back, OK?"
"Damn right we will." She sounds more amused than angry, which I guess is good. "Good luck, sir."
"Thanks." I look around. There's very little light. But I'm an Andorian, I don't need light.
In my ears, in my antennae, the sewer tunnel is a huge thing glimmering with echoes. The surface of the water ripples, its liquid sound bouncing off the crumbling walls and making them a weird, ghostly presence. Osrin is a solid warm shape beside me, his pulse and his breathing registering his presence. Somewhere ahead of me -
Concentric ripples of sound mark his course, every footstep giving him away. I'm close enough, even, to feel the disturbance his body makes in the air, a solid discontinuity in the hollow of the tunnel. Thrang.
"Thrang!"
The movement stops. I move, myself, rapid footsteps making splashes whose echoes hang in the air.
"Admiral Shohl. Late to your own funeral, I see. And you've brought a friend. How nice." Thrang laughs. We're getting close. "This is the part where I shoot at you and blow myself up, isn't it? Pardon me if I don't oblige."
"It's over, Thrang. We've got your ship. We've cracked your computer virus. Troops are closing in right now. You don't have a chance."
"Is that really the best you can do? I make my own chances, Admiral."
He isn't showing any lights. His low-light vision must be very good. As good as Andorians, in a tunnel fight? I think we're about to find out.
"Give up. Now." I move into th'kara stance, forcing my awareness into the dark air around me... feeling my opponent, out there in the black.
"You have no idea what you're dealing with."
And he lunges towards me, so quick I can't perceive the motion -
But Osrin is there, and suddenly he's in front of me, and there is a slap of flesh on flesh as he blocks Thrang's blow.
"Neither do you," says Osrin, and he launches a flurry of blows, a precise pattern of strikes in the th'kara style, the martial art devised for the dark tunnels beneath the Andorian ice. I hear the thud of blows striking home, hear Thrang gasp.
"Corodrev. Of course." There is an unpleasant edge to Thrang's voice. Air shifts as he lashes out with another lightning-fast blow. Osrin dodges it. I move, circling, trying to find an opening.
"That the best you can do?" Osrin manages a laugh.
"I know you. An inferior augment. Put together centuries ago, by an Andorian amateur."
More punches fly, and Osrin laughs again. "Maybe. But I trained against other augments, every day, for years. You didn't, Thrang. I can tell. You're slow, Thrang, slow and sloppy."
"We'll see how fast you are," Thrang snarls, "when I've ripped your damned antennae off."
He's moving fast, faster than he should be able to, in the water, in the dark. But I know where he is - I dispense with the initial probing touches of a th'kara fight, and snap-kick him in the middle of his back.
It's like kicking a block of wood. He grunts, and his hand comes round, fast enough to brush my leg, not fast enough to catch it. Osrin punches him again, and again. I move in for another blow, a chop to the neck -
His fist catches me in the ribs, and he is strong, so much stronger than a human has any right to be. I'm knocked off balance, stagger breathless, back through the water, to collapse against the curving wall of the tunnel. I paw at the crumbling brickwork, seeking handholds.
Something moves under my right hand, with a thin metallic grating sound.
Abstract patterns of displaced air mark the path of the fight, Osrin and Thrang battering at each other with fists and feet. Osrin is good, but Thrang is tireless, seems just to soak up the damage from each blow. My fingers explore the thing beneath my hand. Metal. I tug at it.
And it comes loose.
Piping, maybe from the gas lines Osrin mentioned. A length of metal pipe, perhaps a metre long, narrow enough to fit into the palm of my hand. It comes out of the wall with a high-pitched shriek. I feel Thrang's head turn, then rock abruptly as Osrin takes advantage of the opening to land another punch. I grip the pipe with both hands, and I swing it with all my might.
The clang sends jangling echoes all the way down the sewer tunnel. The blow would cave in an ordinary human skull. There's a splash, and confusion in the air as Thrang topples and falls into the water. I move over, and stand on his chest.
"Thanks," says Osrin. There's a wheeze in his voice. I don't know how badly hurt he is. "Can Thrang breathe water?"
"I don't know. I don't think so."
"You'd better let him up to the surface, sometime soon, then."
"I want to be sure he's unconscious."
Osrin kneels down beside me. Droplets dazzle and dance in the air as he punches through the water, into Thrang's face.
"He is now."
---
An ordinary human would be dead or permanently brain-damaged by any one of those blows. In the event, we have to knock Thrang out three more times before we reach the ladder to the upper level.
The hatch is open, and there is dim light shining. A shape swarms down the ladder - a vaguely familiar shape, dressed in an iridescent purple uniform. "You have Thrang," says Heizis's voice. She sounds slightly disbelieving.
"We do," I say, and hit him again, just for good measure.
"Excellent. He is needed alive." Her face, in the dimness, looks horrific, savage eyes glittering in a skull-like mask. Above her, someone else starts to descend the ladder. Someone in massive, clanging, over-sized boots.
"Hey, good to see you," says Pexlini. "I brought something." Metal is jangling in her right hand. "Latest model android restraints. Should hold anything organic, yeah?" She stomps over to us, her boots setting off a torrent of vibrations in the air.
Despite everything we've done to him, Thrang is regaining consciousness again. His eyes open as Pexlini stoops over him.
"Thrang. Heya. About that job offer, yanno?" Pexlini snaps the restraints into place around his wrists. "Take that as a no."
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