Phaser and disruptor beams lanced all through the bridge of the Endeavour, followed by pulse phaser blasts from the M.A.C.O. phaser compression pistols and pulse phaser rifles. Miraculously, Alona did not get hit by weapons fire. Already she had killed three Hirogen hunters before she grabbed one of their disruptor carbines and began firing at the remaining Hirogen.
She didn't realize a hunter decloaked behind her before she was struck by a disruptor rifle to the back of the head. It was probably everything the hunter had put into the hit. It didn't knock her out, she dropped down to one knee. She looked down to her right to see a badly bent disruptor carbine, she then put her hand to the back of her head and looked at it to see blood on it. It stunned her. 'I'm bleeding?' she thought, then felt a very large hand grasp her shoulder and they both beamed out.
Kim had been firing his phaser pistol at several Hirogens, more had beamed onto the bridge and there were reports from security and marines where they were fending off boarders on several decks. He was amazed with the captain, he had never seen someone kill a Hirogen so easily without having a weapon in hand, then he gawked at her as she repeated the same action twice more. He had managed to glance over at the captain as he ducked behind the console again to see her get hit from behind by the largest Hirogen he had ever seen. The Hirogen must have been nearly two and a half meters tall, after he hit her, the oversized Hirogen grabbed her and beamed out.
"Captain!" Kim shouted as they beamed out.
Once the captain had been beamed out the remaining Hirogen beamed out as well. The view-screen was still active and he watched at the ship cloaked jumped to warp. "Shit" he said to himself then looked around the bridge.
"Anyone injured?" he asked aloud.
The turbolift doors opened and three marines in power armor entered with their rifles at the ready.
"Clear up" one said.
"Clear down" said another and they lowered their rifles.
"Commander Kim, I am Sergeant Bonner. Colonel Reed has ordered fire teams to sweep and clear the ship, so far no reports of any remaining boarders. What happened sir? Where's Captain Benson?" Sergeant Bonner asked.
"A Hirogen broke his rifle over her head, grabbed her and beamed out, after that the rest of them beamed out" Kim replied.
"Was the captain dead?" another armored marine asked while examining the broken rifle.
"No, everyone, back to your posts, I want a systems status in five minutes. Kim to Engineering" Kim said. Everyone returned to their assigned consoles, the M.A.C.O. armored troopers began to remove the dead Hirogen out from underfoot.
"How can I help you XO?" Bari replied, she sounded perturbed.
"Do we have warp?" Kim asked.
"Not for another hour or so sir, we're having to restart the warp core"
"Any way you could speed that up?"
"We could sir, but we'd have to bypass safeties"
"Do it, the captain was captured and beamed off the ship, we need to find her and get her back"
"Aye sir" Bari said, then closed the channel.
"You heard the man, the skipper has been captured by these fucks" she said as she kicked a dead Hirogen laying on the deck, "So help me get that warp core back online, we have some hunting of our own to do" she finished as her engineering teams double timed to assist her.
Several hours later...
Orlok is a veteran hunter, he should have his own ship and hunting party soon. Then he will collect many trophies, hunting the This Federation captain was an oddity though, he broke his own rifle over her head and shes not dead, shes not even unconscious shes still standing. In fact, had he not placed her behind a forcefield, she would have probably have killed him. He had never seen a human fight so ferociously or be so physically strong, she was at least as strong as two hunters put together, maybe three. It took five veteran hunters just to get her into containment. Bioscans of her indicate that her small intestine is extremely long, making it an interesting trophy. Not to mention, her genetic structure indicates that she has been genetically modified or created, which explains her physical capabilities.
Orlok looked at Alona, she stood in her cell, both arms manacled in front of her connected to the manacles around her ankles. Both manacles were attached to eye on the deck via a chain. No way she could break out of that. She was staring at the deck, her hair covering her face. Those haunting grey eyes of hers seemed to pierce to the soul of every hunter she looked at. Since she was beamed aboard, she had already killed three heavily armed hunters with her bare hands. He needed to talk to Grel, see what he wanted to do with the Federation captain.
A young hunter, Sek, he believed, stepped up to the forcefield. He watched the Federation captain, as a hunter watches his prey. He looked at Orlok.
"Lower the forcefield, its time I took my trophy" Sek said.
"No, you will die. This prey is unique and should be hunted properly. Not killed in a cage like some trophyless animal" Orlok said.
"Need I remind you who your superior is? Now, lower the forcefield"
Alona raised her head, watching Sek and Orlok.
"No"
"Then move aside, I shall do it myself" Sek said and pushed Orlok aside. Orlok unclamped a remote from his armor and depressed the button. With a clank, the manacles holding Alona dropped off her and fell to the deck. Sek glanced at Orlok, over to Alona and deactivated the forcefield smiling.
"Well, you at least give it a fighting chance. Prey, make it hard for me to kill you, please" Sek said grinning.
"Heh, I'll give you more than that" Alona said with a grin.
Orlok shook his head, "You're overconfident Sek. She'll kill you. Did you see what happened when we got her on board?"
Sek turned his gaze to Orlok, "No, nor do I care"
"You should, she killed and severely injured a few veteran hunters already"
"Then I shall steal their glory"
Sek looked back at Alona and pulled a large knife out. Alona, she simply shifted until she was standing with her legs shoulder-width apart. Sek, his left hand was open and his right held the knife. Alona locked eyes with him, her hands still at her sides. Sek beckoned her out of her containment cell for which she took a couple steps out. Orlok had stepped back, a smile on his face as he unslung his tetryon rifle. Glancing at Orlok for a second, Alona returned her gaze back to Sek.
"You going to kill me if I kill him?" Alona asked.
Orlok chuckled, "No, no, this is for my protection, not his. He has already chosen his path"
She turned her gazed back just in time to see Sek swing his knife a couple times at her, Alona side stepping both times, then lunged at her thrusting his knife at her. Alona caught his right hand by the wrist with her left hand, his arm was fully extended. She then chopped with her right hand right into the crook elbow of the Hirogen, the blow was not aimed at damaging the elbow but to use the natural movements of the body. With the Hirogens arm bending as if he was doing an arm curl, Alona still controlling the right hand by the wrist, drove the knife up to the hilt into the throat of the Hirogen. This movement occurring only in about a second, stunned Orlok. Sek took a slow step back, gargling, dropped to his knees, then fell to the deck. He was still holding the knife that had killed him, appearing as if he decided to commit suicide and stabbed himself in the throat.
Alona looked at Orlok, who motioned her back into the cell. She remained where she stood.
"This is set to maximum, if I fire, you will be ionized. I've seen you regenerate from the wounds you recieved, I don't think even you could regenerate from that. Now, if you cooperate with me, I will not have you shackled again" Orlok said and motioned her back to her cell again. Still locking eyes with him she slowly stepped back into her cell. Orlok still keeping the rifle trained on her, reactivated the forcefield.
Alona sat down on the bench behind her, watching as Orlok called a couple other younger hunters to drag Sek's body away. Moments of silence passed as Orlok remained, entering commands into a nearby console.
"What happened? I thought the Hirogen were happy hunting holograms on holostations and on holoships" Alona asked, finally breaking the silence.
"Photonic prey is for gutless and weak hunters who do not like the feel of real blood on their hands" Orlok replied.
"So you don't like hunting holograms?"
"No and the rest of us feel the same way. Even if you can make the prey as unique as you can think of, its still just assembled photons. Holograms are mainly used for training new hunters now, besides, you cannot gain any trophies from computer animated images"
"You know, by now, my ship is probably tracing your warp trail. They won't stop at anything to retrieve me"
"We have assumed as much. You people from the Federation are extremely resourceful, now, the Master Hunter will be coming down here tomorrow to decide your fate. If I were you, I would be polite to him when he arrives, he can simply decide you are too much of a problem to hunt and have you processed" Orlok said, then walked off. Still sitting on the bench Alona put her face into her hands, she remained like that for the rest of the night.
The following day...
Endeavour cruised at warp 9, her sensors working overtime following the warp trail left by the Hirogen vessel. They had trailed the ship for almost 12 hours now, it seeming to zig-zag a lot stopping at several different systems along the way. To the bridge crew it seemed that they were searching for prey, the holographic technology provided by Janeway so long ago didn't seem to sate their thirst of hunting. Kim had been up on the bridge for going on 14 hours, but he had been awake for over 24 hours. It was apparent that he was tired but he was not going to give up on getting the captain back.
He had been racking his brain on why the Hirogen would want the captain. Scratching his chin, he stared at the deck thinking. First thing is he needed to get ahead of the Hirogen ship, intercept it, get the captain back aboard and then worry about why they wanted the captain. So to get ahead of the ship they might want to look for systems around-
"Sir?"
"Yes?" Kim said looking up.
Radis was standing over him, he looked tired too but probably not as bad as he looked now. He smiled at Kim.
"XO, I know you're set on getting the captain back but please, for everyones sake, get some rest. It's my watch, I'll let you know if we find anything" Radis said.
"No, you can go back to your post Mr. Radis" Kim said.
"Sir, as acting executive officer, I am required to give the commanding officer or acting CO advice and relief, especially at times of great stress or extended work hours to alleviate fatigue thereby preventing poor decisions and use of bad judgement. So, I respectfully request that you get off my bridge and get your ass in bed. If you refuse me again, sir, I will have the CMO relieve you of duty until you get some sleep"
Kim blinked at Radis, he had never seen him so serious before. He stood and chuckled, "You play too hard sometimes" he said.
Radis thumbed him towards the turbolift then sat in the seat he was occupying. When Kim reached the turbolift doors, Radis spoke up, "XO, to be honest, I wanted to sit sir, and you were in the nicest chair in the house so..." he trailed off.
Kim smiled and shook his head then entered the turbolift, by the time he got to his quarters he realized how tired he truly was. He hadn't even taken off his uniform when he climbed into bed and was woken five hours later by Radis, they had tracked down the Hirogen ship.
The Hirogen vessel was in a high level orbit over a planet with several late bronze-age sentient populus on it. It was another system wasn't on any of the charts, not even Voyagers database had anything on this planet. The Hirogen vessel didn't respond when Endeavour came into the system, the reason, they found out when they took up a synchronous orbit with it was because the ship had no one aboard. The vessels computer was maintaining its orbit, all other systems were down to conserve power. Kim had decided that it would be simpler to launch some birds to watch the Hirogen vessel, should someone come back aboard it and power up its systems, the Ospreys were to disable its engines and weapons.
Endeavour then began to scan the planet below, it was a gargantuan M-class planet, around the size of Jupiter. The geologists and even T'saal were amazed at the shear size of the planet, to which they dubbed "Gaia". Gaia had several sentient species on the planet, some were evolved from the same genome but others were of a completely different species of sentient being. It resembled earth in a lot of ways with its varying climates and diverese ecosystems. While not as covered in water as Earth, 72% of Gaia's surface was covered by sea water.
There were several stone structures with large, open centers were detected all over the planet large enough to stick a space station the size of DS9 in it. Most of them were populated, the anthropologists aboard thought that the structures were city-states and others were temples. There was a road system on planet stretching for kilometers before it reached a small village or another city-state. Endeavour had already detected 21.4 billion inhabitants on the planet and a dense animal kingdom which made detecting a human lifesign pretty hard if not impossible, but it did not stop them trying.
As they thought, they did not detect anything specific, so they began to scan for advanced technology, such as EM emissions from power generators, tetryon particles, even transporter signatures. They detected EM emissions coming from a "small" uninhabited island chain, each "island" varying from the size of Australia to Africa. They matched known frequencies of Hirogen power generators, possibly an outpost.
"Colonel, I want powered-armor commandoes down there with an entire platoon of infantry backing them up. I can have the CAG send down some birds to keep you covered by air and have a runabout will be on standby should you need it" Kim said.
Colonel Reed smirked, "A bit of overkill don't you think Commander?" she asked.
"Colonel, the captain is down there. Alive or dead, I want her back aboard and I don't care what it takes to bring her back"
"Sir, I'll bring back the skipper, I just ask that you keep Endeavour ready to depart as soon as my boys bring her back aboard. Sure, keep a runabout ready for evac in case a transport inhibitor is activated, I'll use the other runabout as a mobile command post, but right now I want to know about the area I am sending my guys into. I don't want to send them into the fire without at least some intel on the area"
Kim took a deep breath, "Alright, I'll brief whoever you're sending down there in say, an hour?"
"Works for me" Reed said.
Master Hunter Grel was the largest Hirogen Alona had ever seen, he was even bigger than Orlok. She guessed he was at least over two and a half meters tall and his armor was adorned with various marks and small trophies to indicate his hunting prowess. He looked down at Alona, his eyes boring holes into hers. She did not look away, keeping her eyes locked with his. It was a minor battle of wills, as if two predators glaring at one another, seeing who would make the first move. They kept at this for a few minutes before Orlok intervened and asked Grel what they should do with her.
"Have you performed a bioscan of her?" Grel asked.
"Yes, she had a long small intestine, a unique trophy, but her genetic structure is vastly different from that of a normal human, shes at least as physically strong as two hunters put together, maybe even three. Shes also faster than anything I've ever seen. She would make a very challenging hunt." Orlok said. Gerlok grunted in response.
"We're headed for Preserve 17b. Let her loose from there. Prepare her for the hunt" Grel said, turned and departed. Orlok looked at Alona, sighed and shook his head.
"What's wrong?" Alona asked.
"You're being wasted. It's unfortunate Grel doesn't understand that. You would best serve in an Arena or a Hunters Pit" Orlok said.
"I am still getting the chance to live correct?"
"Yes, but again, you would serve better in the Arena or a Hunters Pit. Being placed on a planet to be hunted at the leisure of every hunter on planet is a waste of your capabilities and your trophies. You're life expectancy will be considerably less on the planet, than in the Arena or Pit. We hunters have not forgotten how ingenious you humans are, however, you...I don't think you're human, well not entirely anyway"
"No, you're wrong, I am entirely, 100% human. I'm just, genetically...different, you could say"
Orlok lowered the forcefield and raised his rifle. "You need to be prepared, so, will you cooperate?" he asked.
"You're the one holding the rifle" Alona said stepping out of the cell, her hands raised.
A couple hours later, Alona found herself on a very large planet, from what she saw from the view-porthole, the area she was going to be "set loose" in was a jungle environment. Orlok had seen something in her and tossed her an old type-2 hand phaser - probably from Voyagers own weapons locker - and a semi-dull Hirogen knife, which was more like a small machete to her than a knife. The knife, she slung over her back and she holstered the phaser. Orlok nodded to her and she nodded back, "Good luck, as your people say" he said then without another word he turned back into the shuttle and took off.
She watched it rise into the air and shoot off westward. Alona looked around the ground for a moment, then sat down. She took off her left boot, then pinched either side of the heel. Luckily for her, the Hirogen didn't notice the soles of her boots were a little thick for common Federation boots. A little compartment opened a little, she slid the rest of the little drawer out and picked up the little tricorder. Over the years, the standard tricorder has gotten thinner and thinner to the point of being as thick as a small human hand folded closed.
Replacing the small compartment back, she put her boot back on and stood, opening the tricorder. Massive animal lifesign readings, some of them very large. Fresh water half a klick north. Mountains to the southeast about 18 klicks out. Fresh water, good place to start. These trees are pretty tall and she can gather her bearings there. She kept the tricorder out, scanning for any kind of advanced technology around. Her hopes were to maybe detect the Hirogens body armor systems or weapons but with their new cloaking technology, she wasn't sure if she would be able to detect them at all. She decided to scan for the same type personal cloaking fields that the Jem'Hadar use.
They may had gotten the idea from the Jem'Hadar, probably from hunting holograms of them, however she remembered that they did not appear on sensors. Perhaps she should scan for moving, high thermal sources, or small moving power sources like the power packs for their rifles. Nothing detected within a 25 kilometer radius, the maximum range the tricorder could scan for, well not small power sources anyway. She detected around 23 klicks west, a massive power reading, probably a power generator for their facility. The massive lifesigns from the flora and fauna were throwing scans off, so, for all she knew, shes probably already being hunted as she stood there stupidly looking at her tricorder. She set it to vibrate should it detect any nearby small power sources or large animal lifesign, used it to find which way was north then put it away. She began walking north to the fresh water source, it was getting close to dusk so she began to hurry. After tonight, she planned, she would go to that detected power source and check it out, her survival and escape lay there.
Having a half klick hike hadn't bothered her, it was the animals, according to her readings some of the animals weighed several hundred kilograms to several tons. She pulled her phaser out and turned the setting up to 12. A typical type-2b hand phaser had a maximum setting of 20, which would vaporize just about everything it hit, but this was an older type-2 with a maximum setting of 16 so setting it to 12 is relatively high, enough to punch holes in tritanium alloy. Not many organisms were able to resist such a high setting, it made her feel a little more confident. She kept the phaser in her hand, ready to use at a moments notice. She checked its remaining power supply, it indicated it was about three-quarters charged. Plenty if she got into an extended firefight, but another thought hit her: Why did they arm her in the first place? Was it to make the hunt more exciting?
She came upon a steep incline, so she began her climb upward. There was smaller underbrush to grab ahold of, but she looked at what was going to grab before touching it. She didn't want to grasp some unknown camouflaged animal that could be possibly venomous. Without incident she reached the top of the hill and found a small lake. It was a break in the canopy of the jungle letting in the sunlight. Pulling out her tricorder, she scanned the water, making sure there were no amphibious animals in it, then began walking the shoreline. The water was crystal-clear, appearing from the shore about two meters max deep but according to the tricorder, the lake was 213 meters deep. It reminded her when she was on leave on Earth, she had decided to take a trip across North America, so she was passing through Montana and came across Flathead Lake. From shore, the lake appeared to her to be shallow enough to walk through, but in reality, the lake was 100 meters deep.
This lake was also huge, Alona couldn't see the other shoreline, readings indicated its surface area is 2,398 square kilometers. The water was clean enough to drink, so she kneeled and slurped some down by cupping her hands. She looked around the shore, then along the tree-line, there was some nearby trees with exposed roots that provided a small alcove she could shelter in. On her way over, she picked up driftwood from the shore, dried twigs and leaves. She found some branches that had fallen from a tree that were extremely sturdy. She couldn't break the wood but it bend well. It could withstand impacts from her putting some extra swing into it while whacking the ground. It had begun to get dark when she came into the alcove of trees. Food would become an issue soon but she can manage at the moment.
Alona used the phaser to start a small fire, feeding it with the small branches of the same wood the fire burned strong, she figured those branches should keep it going for quite some time. She sat down near the first and pulled the knife from her back. She began chipping away at the strong branch she had found. Not sure to make a spear or to use it as a club she decided to carve out a point then left the rest as is. A walking stave would work just fine. It was going to be a long night, she had set the tricorder to vibrate and chirp to wake her every thirty minutes so she could check her surroundings.
During the night, she thought she may have spotted a ship in a low orbit. She wasn't sure, it could have been a satellite as well. She didn't know the technological state of the planet so she was at a loss. The jungle got even louder at night and several times the tricorder had vibrated her awake before thirty minutes had passed because of its detection of animals. She added more wood to fire, strengthing the flame in hopes it light would keep them at bay for the night but as an extra precaution she set the phaser to maximum. Feeding the fire a little more, she settled in for the evening.
