Star Trek: Dominion - Part 14

14

Jim stared at the viewscreen almost straining his eyes in the hope that he would be able to spot the Cardassian Galor at the earliest opportunity. Any advance warning could be the difference between survival and destruction.
“What do we know about the Badlands that could help us?”
“Well, for one thing, it makes navigation extremely difficult,” announced Ensign Jokana from the helm. There was a sprinkling of nervous laughter on the bridge at the comment.
“Warp drive can’t be used inside a plasma storm,” said Lieutenant Flynn. “It would ignite the highly charged plasma!”
“That’s it!” Jim announced as he thumped the arm of his chair in triumph. “But first we’ll have to let the Cardassians find us.”
“That’s crazy!” someone said and then silence descended on the bridge. Jim looked around at the worried faces of his crew. He knew that he could simply order them to follow his plan but as their friend he felt obliged to offer them an explanation.
“What I plan to do is to let the Cardassians find us. Then we’ll make a run for the edge of the Badlands. As soon as we reach the trailing edge of the plasma storm we’ll jump to warp. That will ignite the plasma behind us taking out the Galor. Hopefully we’ll be far enough away by that time to avoid being destroyed ourselves.”
He could see the crew think this over and one by one they saw that it was their only chance of escape. They were the equal in weaponry of the Galor-class vessel but she was larger in size than the Hunter and without shields she could take more punishment than the Federation ship, even with the help of her ablative armour. That decided the crew began the search for the Dinok. The little Federation warship was now living up to her name, the Hunter set off in pursuit of the Cardassian vessel.
Down in Engineering, Lieutenant Granger, the Chief Engineer began to tweak the systems of what he referred to as his ship. He set his engineering teams to reinforce the Structural Integrity Field while he concentrated on fine tuning the warp engines. He wanted to make absolutely sure that the Hunter would enter warp speed ahead of the shock wave that was sure to follow the ignition of the highly charged plasma of the storm front. They also got damage control teams ready to go at a moment’s notice should they be damaged when they carried out Jim’s plan.
Ensign Jokana continued to pilot the Hunter expertly but blindly through the plasma storm. They had begun to feel that the Cardassians had given up the chase and gone home when they got a flicker on the viewscreen. A few seconds passed before the image cleared and they realised what they were seeing. They had come to within a few metres of the Cardassian vessel. If they had spotted it on their viewscreen a few seconds later it would have been too late, the two ships would have collided. Realising that they were too close to the Cardassian ship Jim now knew that executing his plan now would present a greater danger than before. Nevertheless it must be attempted, it was their only hope.
In the command seat on the bridge Jim sat nervously. It was time to execute his plan but he hesitated. He was afraid that he had miscalculated and by his orders he would doom the Hunter and its crew. Finally he put his doubts aside and decided to press forward.
“Battle stations!”

To Be Continued...