Star Trek: Dominion (a short story) - Chapter 1

STAR TREK: DOMINION

By

Andrew Brannigan

Acknowledgements:
This story was inspired by The Dominion War
Sourcebook: The Fires of Armageddon by Steven S.
Long and the Trek Role Playing Game net web site
(http://www.trekrpg.net) and the Dominion War
episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

1

Lieutenant, Junior Grade, James (Jim) Kelly stared at the transmission that was currently displayed on the viewscreen in his
quarters. In fact the display was on every Starfleet frequency,
everywhere. The Dominion were making sure that as many Federation citizens as possible could see the devastation. They were also transmitting on Klingon and Romulan, and even Ferengi, frequencies
just to ensure that the entire Alpha-Quadrant knew of the Federation’s defeat at the hands of the Dominion.

The Federation’s Seventh Fleet, commanded by Admiral Borren D’gret, had engaged the Dominion-Cardassian fleet at Tyra, a system 12 light years inside Federation space, in an attempt to halt the Dominion’s advance into the Alpha Quadrant. The Federation fleet was greatly out-numbered by the Dominion who attacked with a fleet of 248 ships. Admiral Borren D’gret rallied his force of 112 ships in a valiant, but ultimately, futile attempt to stop them.

There had been a fierce, but short lived, battle in which Admiral D’gret’s own flagship, the USS North Star, having survived the first wave of the assault, was obliterated by multiple torpedo
spreads from the lead Cardassian vessel, the Gevrok, commanded by Gul Pettar. Thus decapitated, the Seventh Fleet fought a losing battle from the beginning. Although it struggled on valiantly for over an hour, it could not overcome the superior number of Dominion vessels.

It suffered a bitter defeat. Of its 112 ships that took the field, 98 were either destroyed or so badly damaged that they were unable to retreat from the battlefield, leaving only 14 ships of the Seventh Fleet intact once the order to retreat was given. As they left the system at warp the surviving ships monitored the victorious Dominion fleet destroying the disabled vessels, taking no prisoners. The Federation casualties were listed at over 24,000. The Dominion had taken Tyra.

James shut off the display and sank back on his bunk aboard the Defiant-class USS Hunter. Her current patrol assignment, along the
Tzenkethi border was just completed, ahead of schedule, and she had
just received her new orders. She was to proceed at maximum velocity to Deep Space 9.

How in God’s name are we going to beat the Dominion when they can do that to the Seventh Fleet, almost at will?, he asked himself and he feared that he would never have an answer. He lay his head back down on the pillow and closed his eyes. He tried to sleep but all he saw, in his mind’s eye, was the far-off star system that now contained so many destroyed Federation starships and even more dead
bodies.

It would be weeks before James could close his eyes and sleep properly but not because he was relaxed. It was because every day
that passed brought further casualty reports from the front and more and more of his friends’ names were appearing on the constantly updated lists of the dead, injured or missing in action. He was becoming more accustomed to the carnage and war-weary before he even saw battle, at least this time round. He had seen battle before when the Hunter had assisted in the defence of Earth against invasion by the Borg not too long ago. She was now on her way to battle again. She was to join the Federation’s Ninth Fleet based in the Bajoran system at the Federation station Deep Space 9.

Based at Deep Space 9 the Hunter was destined to, and indeed did, see a lot of action along the front lines. Her crew would be rewarded, several times, with many medals for bravery and gallantry. Her Chief Medical Officer was also honoured, posthumously, with the Christopher Pike medal for bravery for sacrificing her life to save her patients in Sickbay. She had sealed herself off in the corridor that led to Sickbay with a hand-held fire extinguisher and fought a losing battle against a blaze that threatened her patients. When her extinguisher was exhausted she drew her phaser and blasted a hole in the bulkhead, opening the corridor to the vacuum of space. With the air vented into the void the blaze had nothing left to feed on and died just as the emergency forcefield erected over the hull breach. Unfortunately there was nothing that could be done to save
Lieutenant-Commander McFadden. Her grip on a bulkhead failed her and she was swept out into the merciless void before the emergency
forcefields were erected.

To Be Continued.....