“Think outside the box, collapse the box and take a f**king  sharp knife to it.”

Banksy, (2006).

The Hunter/Killer was a remorseless collector of souls and they were as butterflies trapped within its killing-jar.

The need to find an unconventional solution to this most decidedly conventional problem was becoming increasingly more evident and painfully pressing to Lieutenant – Commander Lane Hanley as the CO of the USS Kirk slid, skittering to a painfully sudden halt behind yet another pile of debris and detritus, whilst the deafening howl of the fusion-cannon filled the plaza with the echoing retort of its vociferous roar.

Whilst her suit protected her from the Hellworld’s toxic – atmosphere and meant that she could not feel the air crackle with charged ions as the lethal blue energy issued from the barrel of the mammoth, shambling tank as the ancient combat drone dominated the plaza, the warning warble of the Geiger – counter told Hanley that, with each salvo fired the radiation level in the local volume was rising.

A drop in an already poisoned-ocean, but worrisome, nevertheless. The Hunter/Killer didn’t actually have to physically acquire and destroy them with its lethal ordinance. If the stayed pinned down by its enfilading – fire, eventually the rising radiation levels would cook them alive in their suits.

Hanley had no time to reflect upon the irony of her situation as another bolt of superheated plasma slammed into the building some twenty – feet behind her. She could actually feel the heat as the bolt fizzed through the air and the concussion when it slammed into the crumbling remains of the city actually blew her out from behind her cover and she was forced to be up and running again.

<<Suit Integrity @ 64 percent>> Her suit warned tellingly.

The scouring silica storm that had obscured their view of the long – dormant combat drone had abated as suddenly as it had arrived, only to be replaced almost instantly by the acrid sizzle of acid rain that fell in sheets from the sick-looking brown/green clouds and slowly ate at the outer layer of her EVA suit, even as it turned the ash and dust beneath her feet to a treacherous black sludge that threatened to unbalance her with every step.

The Hunter/Killer predominated the center of the Plaza like a fortress made mobile. It’s six powerful, articulated legs shifting and moving like some nightmarish insect as the huge, armored wedge of its turret swung ponderously this way and that, firing at  the Starfleet away team as they scattered in all directions to divide its fire.

Phaser fire lanced our from a position somewhere off to her left, as Lane ran her gauntleted-fingers down her faceplate in an attempt to clear the viscous fluid that distorted her view. The material on her gloves fizzed and smoked from the effects of the sulfurous rain.

=^=”Our fire ain’t doing Jack, Captain!”=^= Chief Harvey sent grimly over the comms, as he attempted to draw the Hunter/Killer’s attention away from his CO with a withering burst from his phaser rifle. Whilst this seemed to have the desired effect, this also meant that it was his turn to flee, as the massive drone turned it’s turret in his direction and it’s huge, armored legs pincered around and made the plaza shake as they repositioned themselves.

The powerful shielding that had once made the Hunter/Killer near-impregnable had failed thousands of years ago, but the Starfleet phasic – weapons fire was doing little to penetrate the bastion of reactive armor plating that formed its carapace.

=^=”Target its legs!”=^= Lane sent urgently as she slid to her belly and began to fire her hand-phaser in long, protracted bursts at the lumbering behemoth as it stalked towards the Chief – the very embodiment of Death itself.

Another line of phaser- fire arced out from a position directly perpendicular to her own and her suit told her that Ensign Phorrel was engaging the drone from that position.

=^=”That doesn’t seem to be having the desired effect either, Captain.”=^= The young Denobulan science officer sent back apologetically.

Lane swore to herself as she willed herself upright and set off again, firing desperately at the looming Hunter/Killer as her legs pinioned wildly and her lungs burned.

The HUD display on her helmet confirmed that it was only herself, the Chief and Orvid left alive There green dots moving frantically and randomly around the map as they struggled to avoid their fate. Specialist Lin had been killed, trampled to a fine film of gore under the Bot’s leg as it had struggled to life. Of Petty Officer Maylen and Crewman Alba, there was no sign. Their covering fire from across the far – side of the plaza had ceased abruptly when the Hunter/Killer let loose its first salvo. No life signs emanated from the cairn of rubble that had become their tomb.

She had lost half of her away team within the first 5 minutes of the mission commencing. If she didn’t think of something soon, the rest of them would share the same fate and the survivors of the Selquar were almost certainly doomed.

What bitter resolve is required to stay true to duty in the face of insurmountable odds and certain – death?

It was a quandary faced by soldiers and their commanders for as long as conflict had persisted. The answer differed depending upon the person and the set of circumstances faced at the time.

For some a blind adherence to orders and the trust that their superiors actually knew what they were doing guided their actions although often this trust was in vain. They died with curses still on their snarling lips.

Some held the line because there was no other miserable alternative than to struggle against a hopeless situation and hoped that some unlikely form of divine intervention would intercede at the 11^th hour and the would be delivered. Neat rows of tombstones stood eternally on silent parade and spoke volumes.

Others held true to some code of personal honor and stood fast beside their comrades as they perceived it as the right thing to do although, often with no one left to witness and honor that bravery, the value of such self-sacrifice were tenuous at best.

Lane Hanley refused to quit because she was driven by legacy.

Her father’s sacrifice at Wolf 359 had led to the man being semi-deified and all of her life she had struggled to escape the shadow of that overwhelming legacy. She took the pain and frustration that she had felt as a child, the rage she had felt at cruel fate and her father’s willful self – sacrifice robbing her of her childhood and she had forged that ire over the years in the forge of bitter determination until she found it almost impossible to back down from a fight and concede defeat.

It was a ironic duality that made her more like her father and left her hating herself for that fact.

=^= “We’re in its kill-box, Captain!”=^= The Chief sent as the fusion-cannon blossomed death once more and a pile of debris that obstructed the plaza exploded into the air, carrying with it a myriad of fatal shrapnel that unfolded like a flower of destruction. =^= “We need to find some way out of this plaza and we have to do it NOW!”=^=

All it would take was just one puncture of their suits and the lethal atmosphere of the Hellworld would finish the Hunter/Killer’s job for it. Lane thought that she would shoot herself in the head, if it came to that, rather than suffer that awful fate.

The Chief was right. The drone had the upper hand and its martial capabilities were far in excess of whatever they could bring to the field. As long as they reacted to the variables facing them, this situation would not alter and would inevitably lead to their destruction.

Lane had to think “outside the box”, if they were to survive.

The capacity for lateral-thought, looking at a problem from a new perspective and disregarding conventional boundaries and assumptions was all well and good. Discarding traditional thought processes and finding solutions that are not immediately apparent was a little trickier when being pursued by a millennia – old, three hundred ton killing machine intent on bringing about your destruction.

Sensing that its current attempts to acquire and destroy its targets was not meeting with success, the Hunter/Killer determined that adaptation was required and altered its tactics accordingly.

The fusion cannon fell silently and a small hatch opened on the top of its rusted armor carapace, ejecting a cylindrical object high into the air above the plaza.

Lane watched the dark – cylinder climb high into the bruised sky, her HUD tracking its progress as it rose and then flinched involuntarily as the object suddenly exploded, throwing out a hail of small orbs in all directions.

=^=”CLUSTER MUNITION! TAKE COVER!=^= The Chief roared over the comm as the small spheres tumbled to the ground and each exploded in-turn, throwing out a hail of even smaller bomblets.

Hanley just had the presence of mind to grab a rough sheet of debris from the wreckage beside her and pull it towards the direction of the nearest bomblets, which each exploded and in turn smaller and smaller globes issued forth from the shell of the last, bouncing randomly from each small explosion & issued out in all directions like some monstrous diminishing Troika – doll, raining deadly shrapnel in all directions.

It was a ‘Flea – Bomb’.

Lane felt the sheeting buck and it was nearly tore from her grasp and cruel shards of shrapnel perforated its surface. By some miracle, her suit remained intact.

=^=”That was entirely too close for comfort!”=^= Ensign Phorrel sent and resumed firing again.

Lane shook her head, if that sheet hadn’t been lying in the right place at the right time, she would now just be a wet red smear and a footnote that no one was likely to ever read.

Then it came to her.

She had to use the terrain to her advantage. The lessons from her Academy days came flooding back to her as she ceased firing at the Hunter Killer and tried to remember what she could of gaining strategic advantage through what surrounded her and was at her disposal.

Temporizing Ground. The plaza was a battlefield where neither side could gain advantage. If Hanley was to gain the upper hand, she had to retreat to entice the enemy into a false position. She cast around and peered through the driving sheets of acid rain in an attempt to identify such an advantage.

There at the western edge of the plaza, the ruined buildings like broken fangs framed a narrow pass that had once probably been a roadway leading to the square. A strategic chokepoint that could be used to limit and control the massive Hunter/Killers movement.

But trapping the murderous drone would not be enough. Their weapons lacked the penetrating power to pierce its armored hide. She had to evolve her lateral thinking to expand further and identify the fulcrum with which to bring some other force to bear.

Gravity.

Her mind focused and resolved, she threw away the sieved – sheeting and began to pound her way towards the choke-point, firing her phaser to draw the beasts fire.

=^=“Away Team! Fall back under covering fire to this location!=^= she lased the rendezvous point on their shared tactical network with a blink of her eye and as her breath shuddered into her helmet mic, she called to Orvid in short gasps.

=^= “Ensign! You mentioned decay and the presence of underground structures? Are there any under that point?”=^= Lane demanded, a desperate plan forming in her mind as she ran, dodging from cover to cover and pausing only long enough to give covering fire.

The Hunter/Killer began to grind execrably after the fleeing figures; it’s mighty legs shaking the concourse and throwing up clouds of dust as it waded through the debris choking the plaza.

Orvid’s reply sounded similarly strained as the young man fled for his life.

=^=“Yes Ma’am. The entire city infrastructure appears to run both above and below ground level for some considerable distance.”=^=

Above and below.

As Lane neared the edge of the Plaza another detonation of sound signaled that the Hunter/Killer was firing its Fusion Cannon again. This time the shot went wild and tore through one of the skeletal remains of the building to her left, cascades of debris flying through the air as the structure sagged and collapsed.

She stumbled and recovered herself, continuing her desperate plunge towards the narrower roadway. Looking up she saw it.

High up some nearly 800 meters in the air, the remains of some type of bridge or causeway ran between one ancient building and spanned the gap above the street to join the one opposite. In gentler times this might have been a footbridge or observation deck where people had once taken in the wonders of the glimmering city around them.

=^=“Precipitous Heights….”=^= Lane gasped to herself as she ran, a faint smile creasing her lips as she recognized in the bridge another of Sun Tzu’s edicts for utilizing the environment as a weapon of circumstance.

She zoomed the helmet’s imager to focus on where the bridge joined the buildings either side and the CPU identified and highlighted several structural-points in red. The suit took the initiative to broadcast the targets to the away team via the Tac-Net.

=^= When you are clear of the other side of the bridge, take up firing positions and wait for the robot to pass under it, then give it everything you’ve got!!”=^= Hanley commanded as she slid to a stop behind a huge slab where the street surface had canted skyward at an awkward angle.

=^=“Copy that!”=^= Chief Hanley sent and followed her lead, taking up a position across the street from her, his phase rifle training upwards.

=^=“An intriguing solution!”=^= The young Denobulan flashed past her on more youthful legs, drawing the monster onwards.

On came the Hunter/Killer, the ground and buildings trembling at its passage so that sheets and spars dislodged from above as the massive machine began to wedge itself through the narrowing gap, eventually forcing itself through and tearing deep gashes through the unstable architecture to either side.

Was this what it must have been like for the soldiers of old?

Waiting with fixed bayonets, huddled together in the bottom of a muddy foxhole or drowned trench, trembling at the inevitable advance of the enemy, waiting until you saw the whites of their eyes?

With a grim set of her jaw, Lieutenant – Commander Lane Hanley stood her ground and tried not to let the arm that held her phaser trained on the supports of the high-above bridge tremble too much as she steadied her aim with both hands.

Still onwards the Hunter/Killer came.

=^= “Steady!”=^= Hanley called out, as much to herself as to her subordinates.

The Hunter/Killer seemed to loom large in her faceplate now, the ring around the edge of its mammoth gun barrel starting to glow blue as the fusion cannon powered up for the final shot that would surely finish them all in the confines of this narrow space.

It was like looking into the mouth of Hell itself.

=^=”Steady!=^= Lane called out once more, the waver in her voice sounding none to steady herself.

The armored bulk of the drone had reached the critical point, the air crackled and fizzed around the barrel and Lane fancied she could see the bright, blue glow beginning to gather in its depths.

=^=“FIRE!”=^= She roared and her hand phaser joined the other bright beams of light lancing upwards towards the darkening sky.

The supports gave way surprisingly easily and with a great, groaning sound that reverberated throughout the canyon between the shattered buildings, the bridge tore free of its mountings and the great span began a tumbling plummet towards street level.

=^=“RUN!!!”=^= her voice sounded hoarse and belonging to somebody else as she dragged herself from cover and broke into a full-tilt sprint away from the point of impact.

With the sound of vengeful cacophonous thunder, the trailing remains of the bridge and a substantial part of the buildings that it had collided with on its way down, slammed into the top the Hunter/Killer. The combined force of all of this wreckage and gravity impacted in a detonation of kinetic energy that drove the massive war – machine downwards. The ground beneath the drone fragmented and cracked, giving way with a mournful sounds as a chasm opened up and gravity did the rest.

The Hunter/Killer’s final shot skewed off into the sky, a bright white-hot comet of destruction, left soaring without a mark.

After ten thousand years reduced to a grave, the dead city took final revenge on its destroyer.