Chapter Text
Beckett Mariner: Hey, little dude! This is Aunty Becky on the Enterprise! Your mom and dad said you wanted to hear from me in the next data stream, so here I am! Things are going great here on the Enterprise and your folks are doing real good. We haven’t had a battle in close to a week, and I’m just itching for another fight. Don’t worry, though. The Enterprise is a beast! We’ve been in all of these battles, and I don’t think the Dumb-inion has even managed to knock out our shields yet. So don’t worry, Bev. I know you’ve been having nightmares about Jem’Hadar running amuck and hurting your parents. But don’t you worry. If any of them come aboard, I’ll kick their butts. I won’t let them near your mom and dad. That’s what good first officers do.
Your mom gave me a list of questions you wanted to ask me, so let’s dive into those, okay? Let’s see. First one! Yes, I do have a mom and dad. My mom’s a captain just like your dad. Her ship is called the Farragut. I know, it’s such a weird name. She’s not in the Gamma Quadrant with the Enterprise, though. She’s back in the Federation kinda holding it all together. You know, cause so many ships got sent here to fight, there aren’t as many left to do all the little things to keep the Federation running. You know, supply runs and stuff. And answering all these distress calls. Some of them are important, some of them are not, and some of them are weird!
“Our industrial replicator broke, and the guy who knows how to fix it joined Starfleet for the war effort.”
“The people who live underground on our planet are threatening war, and the guy who knew how to handle them joined Starfleet for the war effort.”
“We have a terrible disease making everyone sick, and our only doctor is really really dumb.”
“It turns out our planet was once populated by another species, and their ghosts are running amuck.”
“That chick who pretended to be that one planet’s devil is at it again. Would someone please come and arrest her?”
“Everything is fine. Do not come to our planet. For any reason. Ever.” Yeah, Mom headed there as fast as she could. Everything was not fine.
“We don’t feel safe. Put one of your ships in orbit so we feel safe.” Yeah, no. It seems like a good idea to show the flag and be a presence. But those planets always expect you to stay there permanently.
Second question! Yeah, I think the war will end pretty soon. Maybe within a year or so. I mean, the Dominion is getting pushed back farther and farther. They can’t last forever, amiright?
Next: What’s the hardest part of my job? Well, as first officer, I’m in charge of personnel stuff. Like promotions and transfers and things like that. So, that leads to a lot of people kissing up to me, hoping for a promotion. Probably the biggest butt-kisser on the ship is Lieutenant Jack Ransom. He replaced me as chief of security. I think he was bummed that he didn’t get to be tactical officer, too. But with the war and everything, your dad decided to break those positions up. He’s always trying to impress me. Problem is, the way he does it isn’t really impressive. And he seems to think he’s some kind of ladies’ man. Nah.
And last question: Who’s your favorite member of the crew? Well, no offense Beverly, but it’s not your mom or dad. Though I do like them a lot. My favorite person on the ship is our head barber, Mr. Mott. He’s a Bolian, so it’s pretty funny that he cuts and styles hair for a living. But the thing is, he will talk your ears off while he’s working on you. Your dad told me a story about how one time he cut this one guy’s hair way too short. It was Worf. I’ll bet your mom and dad told you about him ‘cause they used to work together. It’s just funny watching the others sit in his chair and try real hard not to snap and tell him to shut up and finish their haircut. He never does my hair, ‘cause he doesn’t know how to do my kind of hair, so I’m spared the pain. Haha. My stylist keeps having to remind me to hold still, ‘cause I’m shaking with laughter just watching the show.
Hopefully you and your little bro are having lots of fun with your grandma and your uncle and that big dude, Mr. Homn. I’ll bet she’s spoiling you rotten. You’re lucky. I know for a fact that if I ever have kids, my mom is not gonna spoil them one bit. My dad will, though. Haha.
But one of the coolest parts of being on the Enterprise is that since we’re the force’s command ship, Admiral Kirk is on board! I get to work with Kirk! And he is soooo cool! He drinks with me at the bar. Uh, you know. Lemonade, iced tea, chocolate milk is my favorite. Yep. Anyway, he tells us stories about the old days. We even toured a holo-simulation of his first time on the Enterprise back when it was under Pike. It was that one time everyone was singing and dancing because of an anomaly. And I gotta say, I was thoroughly unprepared for how hot young Spock was going to be. Never mind, you’re five.
I gotta get back to work, sweetie. But just remember that you and your family are safe on Betazed. And I’m gonna take good care of your mom and dad so they can get home to you safe and sound. Sleep tight, Bev.
-Mariner out
FEDERATION NEWS SERVICE: THE FOUNDER’S HOMEWORLD TAKEN BY THE UNITED POWERS – by Benec Thars
A United Powers fleet defeated Dominion opposition around a rogue planet in the Omarion Nebula that had previously served as the home world of the Founders. The changelings were not present on the planet when the allied fleet arrived to engage a force of 260 Dominion ships. It is unknown whether or not the Changelings ever returned to that world after evacuating it in advance of the Tal Shiar and Obsidian Order’s doomed assault nearly ten years ago. It is also not known how long they had lived there before they evacuated. However, it is a significant moral victory for the United Powers that have been pushing farther and farther into the Dominion over the last year.
To this day, much remains unknown about the Changelings who run the Dominion. They had claimed that they were persecuted by non-shapeshifting life forms, or ‘solids’ as they call them, and driven into exile. But how true that really is may never be known to a certainty. When asked about it, Admiral William Ross said, “I don’t know what their background is. I don’t know if they were actually victimized by solid lifeforms. But I do know that it doesn’t matter. Whatever some races did to them a millennia ago does absolutely nothing to justify the harm they have caused since then.”
With the Omarion Nebula secured by a fleet led by the Romulan battleship Scimitar, a second force led by the USS Enterprise has been tasked with clearing out Dominion resistance in the systems between the nebula and the previous front lines of the conflict. Commander Beckett Mariner, the Enterprise’s first officer, had this to say: “We’re giving the Dominion a beating that I like to think it hasn’t faced in its entire two-thousand years. You know what? I just thought of something. We don’t know how old the Dominion really is, do we? We only have the Dominion’s claims that they’ve existed for two millennia. What do you wanna bet they made that up? I’ll bet the Dominion was only founded like four or five hundred years ago. They just say it was founded two thousand years ago because it sounds impressive.”
The Enterprise is believed to have added two cruisers and five attack ships to its list of ship to ship kills during the battle to take the Holiksa system. Normally, the Federation flagship would not be actively involved in the fighting. But at the urging of Captain Riker and the Enterprise’s former commander, Admiral James T. Kirk, the ship was put in charge of the Federation’s component of the United Powers assault force. The native species on the second planet was not contacted under the constraints of the Prime Directive, as they are a pre-industrial society. It appears that the Dominion rarely interacted with them as well. However, since the Dominion does not have anything like the Prime Directive, Starfleet Command believes it likely that the Holiksans simply had nothing the Dominion needed. Admiral Owen Paris noted that it is fortunate that the United Powers drove the Dominion away from before that changed.
One of the key elements of the United Powers’ continued success in the last several months has been the installation of cloaking devices in the Federation and Cardassian ships in the fleet. The Romulan Senate opted to temporarily release the Federation from the restriction placed on that technology by the Treaty of Algeron. And while the Cardassians had never signed such a treaty with the Romulans, it was understood that Cardassia not making use of cloaking technology was a key element to their continued stable relationship with the Star Empire. Due to their previous experience with installing cloaking technology into Cardassian ships, the Romulans handled the installation on the Cardassian fleet. While the Klingon Empire, being much more familiar with Federation technology, led the installation process for the Federation fleet.
While the Dominion has a tachyon beam scanning device that allows them to penetrate cloaking technology, that method does not allow the range, resolution, or field of view of standard long-range sensors. It is believed that cloaked United Powers ships are still able to sneak around undetected in most cases. Some key systems are equipped with a tachyon detection grid. These systems are typically assaulted directly. Although in cases in which the detection grid’s source vessels and stations have been knocked out, cloaked reinforcements have been employed with the Dominion unable to spot them and rearrange their forces accordingly.
<Recording in progress…upload to main computer>
<William Riker> Okay, let’s do this. Begin recording.
In war, civilization is often one of the first casualties. An obvious example of this would be the Tholian War. We came closer than most would like to admit to actually destroying the Tholian race. I spoke to Admiral Jellico early in the Dominion War and asked him if he would have carried out the extermination of the Tholians. And he told me that, in retaliation for the destruction of Earth, he absolutely would have. When I asked how confident he was that the captains of the other ships in his fleet would have done so as well, he explained that it wouldn’t have mattered. They had set up a temporary interlink that would have allowed him to order the ships in the fleet to fire on the Tholian home world from his command ship. And he didn’t set that up due to the risk of captains in his fleet not wanting to go through with it. Jellico planned to use the interlink from the beginning. He didn’t want any of his captains or crews to be saddled with the guilt of that act. Jellico would have taken it upon himself and himself alone. He and I may not be fond of each other, but I have to admire his selflessness.
The Dominion War was proving to be a bloody struggle in more ways than one. The Federation did deploy troops to the Dominion controlled worlds we attacked. But after the initial engagements, we largely stopped. Once we had denied the Dominion fleet access to a star system, we found that we didn’t really need to send ground troops to worlds inhabited solely by Jem’Hadar and Vorta. We just needed to keep them from being evacuated or resupplied. And security elements left in place would watch from orbit as the Jem’Hadar ran out of ketracel white and turned on the Vorta, then each other. In a sense, we were starving them to death. If Sela hadn’t been so interested in seeing how white withdrawal unfolded, because of course she was, we might have just bombarded them from orbit to spare them the suffering.
The greatest danger was found in the worlds where the Jem’Hadar and the Vorta were not the only inhabitants. We did our best to create a perimeter around the local population to shield them from the Dominion forces. Unfortunately, the Dominion liked to use civilians as living shields. Despite our best efforts, many of these innocent people would be killed during the battle. On some worlds, we committed troops to ensure that the bulk of the local civilization would be protected from the Dominion forces once their supply of ketracel white was gone. And tragically, we weren’t always entirely successful. Luckily, the Dominion never managed to kill all or most of any of their victims’ populations. If you can call that lucky.
As we pushed further into the Dominion, I found myself worrying more and more about what the Founders would do as things got more and more desperate for them. While it would not be the Federation’s way to simply exterminate the changelings, the Klingons, Romulans, and Cardassians would see it differently. Of course, Starfleet ships would not participate in any such extermination. But there wouldn’t really be anything we could do to stop our allies from picking up the slack. Ultimately, I wouldn’t be able to fault them for wanting to finish off the Dominion once and for all. I just wish the Founders hadn’t gone out of their way to make it seem so necessary.
For my part, it has been a difficult time, but not so hard that I’m starting to bow under the strain. It probably helps having my wife at my side through all of this. I can only hope I help with the strain she’s feeling half as much as she helps me with the same. Having to help the crew through their fears and trauma, and often aiding crews on other ships and outposts, can’t be easy for her. And I’m sure that being separated from our children is harder for Deanna than it is for me. But she walks the corridors of the Enterprise with that same beautiful serenity I’ve gotten used to seeing in her over the years. I had suggested that she move to DS9 and conduct counseling sessions via subspace, but Deanna wouldn’t have it. She explained that she can’t sense the emotions of the crew, and thus steer herself toward the ones who are struggling the most, if she’s hundreds of light-years away.
In moments where I don’t have anything pressing to do, rare as those are, I mostly think of my kids. I haven’t seen them in person since Lwaxana came to pick them up ten months ago. And considering how young Beverly and Ian were, that’s a huge loss. If it wasn’t for our frequent messages via subspace, I’d start to really fear that Ian would forget about us. He was only 18 months old when we saw him last. But when he waves at the imager and says, “Dada”, I swear this job feels so much easier. Well, the sooner we finish off the Dominion, the sooner I can hold them in my arms again. But as they say, “miles to go before we sleep”.
During my earlier years on the Enterprise, some of the crew really began to feel like family to me. Captain Picard was my wise old uncle. Deanna was the girl next door I was head over heels in love with. Beverly was like her older sister. And then of course, there were my close friends Geordi, Data, and Worf. Back then, it felt like we could do anything together. But after seven years, it all ended. For much of the next three years after that, Deanna and I thought we had lost all of them. We were so happy to be proven wrong, if only partly so. The worst part of mourning Beverly and Geordi was the fact that we had to do it twice. One would think that that would have made it easier, but it didn’t. I’m sure that Deanna could offer a detailed explanation of the psychology of that.
Then, when our Enterprise got a new engineering section and returned to service, it was an adjustment. I had to remember not to expect as much from our new operations officer, since she wasn’t an android. Our new chief of security and tactical officer was half Worf’s size. He fought mostly through stealth and cunning rather than overwhelming force. And our new chief engineer was a Vulcan who had mastered Kolinahr. He was an excellent engineer, but not at all personable. Which is fine, of course. It’s just a big change after getting used to Geordi. And of course, our new captain was worlds apart from Captain Picard. Though it was certainly an amazing experience to serve under James T. Kirk. Obviously, that’s something I never thought I would get to do.
But the important thing is that as the years passed, the crew came to feel like a family again. I suppose Jim is pretty good at creating the right environment for that to happen. He’s done it before, after all. People came and went a bit more rapidly. I mean, we’ve been here on the newish Enterprise for about as long as our time spent on the old one. But we’re on our third chief engineer, our second operations officer, our fourth tactical officer, and our fifth chief of security. And Mariner’s my third first officer since I took command. I tried to call them Number One like Captain Picard did, but it just never felt right. So, I just address them by their name or rank. I gotta say, Mariner is my favorite first officer so far. Though I wonder how much longer she’s going to be here before she gets her own command. She’s not much older than I was the first time Starfleet offered me my own ship. Honestly, as much as she’d be missed here, I hope she takes it when they offer it to her.
Mariner really gets along well with Jim. Initially, she missed out on the opportunity to serve with him since she came aboard when I was captain. But once the war began, and Jim came aboard as the fleet commander, they met and hit it off right away. Not like that, though. He’s still a ladies’ man, but not with other Starfleet officers, particularly the ones significantly below him in rank. They became good friends faster than Jim and I did. Not every commander gets to call a fleet admiral by his first name. Of course, we both only do that when we’re off duty. Mariner created this holoprogram that-
<Sound of red alert siren>
<Sound of door opening>
<Riker> Mariner, what is it?
<Commander Mariner’s voice> A whole damned fleet of Dominion ships just decloaked all over the place! The fleet’s engaging. Two fighters coming our way. The Dorset and our CAP are moving to intercept.
<Lieutenant Augie Bitterman’s voice> Sir! Ships all over the fleet are suffering complete power failure!
<Mariner’s voice> The Breen!
<Admiral James Kirk’s voice> Signal all ships to fall back to mobile position five!
<Bitterman’s voice> Aye, sir.
<Mariner’s voice> The two attack ships have been destroyed. Four more are bearing down on us. Fire at will! Evasive pattern Lambda!
<Kirk’s voice> Losses?
<Riker> Eighty-five ships gone dead so far. Over a hundred now. The larger ships are dropping like flies! Order all ships to deploy their fighters, right now!
<unknown voice> Aye, sir!
<Kirk’s voice> How many ships do they have?
<Riker> At least 3000 coming at us in waves. That’s just what we can see. Admiral, we gotta get out of here!
<Kirk’s voice> Order the fleet to withdraw to DS9! Have all ships in the AO do the same. We need to consolidate and make a stand with as much firepower as we can muster.
<Mariner’s voice> You heard him! Maximum warp right now!
<Lieutenant Tish Valtaine’s voice> Aye!
<Bitterman’s voice> Enemy ship firing!
<Mariner’s voice> Jink!
<Bitterman’s voice> We’re hit! We’re losing all power. I think our fighters are engaging the last attack ship, but I can’t tell.
<Connection to main computer lost…storing recording>
<Riker> Mariner! The backup comms!
<Mariner’s voice> On it!
<Riker> I’m activating the abandon ship alarm. Mariner, tell the nearest operational ship to pick up Admiral Kirk and get him out of here!
<Kirk’s voice> Will-
<Riker> Sir! You have to go! And Beckett, signal all ships that still have power to try and rescue as many as they can. You have the bridge, I’m going to Deck 42.
<Mariner’s voice> What?
<Riker> They can’t have the Enterprise, Beckett! With no power, I’ll have to rig the charges on the pods manually.
<Mariner’s voice> I’ll do it! You-
<Riker> No! You get as much of our crew off this ship as you can. That’s an order, Commander!
<Backup communications system online…streaming recording to USS Io>
<Sound of door closing>
<Sound of Abandon Ship alarm>
Damnit! All right. Let’s hope this thing still works. Looks okay.
<Sound of access panel opening>
<Sound of Abandon Ship alarm>
<Sound of gravity stabilizer powering up>
<Sound of impact>
<Sound of gravity stabilizer powering down>
<Riker> Whew. Good thing I’m still in shape. Damned door!
<Sound of door opening>
<Sound of Abandon Ship alarm>
<Riker> Three hundred meters. Let’s go, Will!
<Sound of rapid footfalls>
<Sound of Abandon Ship alarm>
<Sound of heavy breathing>
<Sound of Abandon Ship alarm>
<Riker> Move it! Get to the escape pods!
<Unknown voice> Sir! What’s going on!
<Riker> Just go! Get off the ship right now! Right now!
<Unknown voice> Aye sir!
<Sound of Abandon Ship alarm>
<Sound of door opening>
Twenty-seven decks. Gotta drop fast.
<Sound of Abandon Ship alarm>
<Sound of gravity stabilizer powering up>
<Sound of gravity stabilizer stops>
<Sound of heavy impact>
<Riker> Agh! Damnit! Arrggh!
<Sound of Abandon Ship alarm>
<Jem’Hadar voice> You! Surrender or die!
<Sound of phaser fire>
<Unknown voice> Captain! You okay?
<Riker> My knee! I have to get to the antimatter pods. We have to destroy the ship!
<Sound of Abandon Ship alarm>
<Unknown voice> Okay, sir. We’ll get you there. Lean on me. Max! Cover us!
<Max’s voice> I got you, Jennifer. Let’s go!
<Sound of Abandon Ship alarm>
<Sound of Dominion weapons fire>
<Sound of phaser fire>
<Jennifer’s voice> Almost there, sir!
<Sound of Abandon Ship alarm>
<Sound of door opening>
<Sound of Dominion weapons fire>
<Sound of phaser fire>
<Jennifer’s voice> Can you get to the console on your own, sir?
<Riker> Yeah.
<Jennifer’s voice> We got you covered.
<Sound of Abandon Ship alarm>
<Riker> Okay. Good luck.
<Jennifer’s voice> You too, sir.
<Sounds of grunting and shuffling>
<Riker> Never thought I’d actually have to do this.
<Sound of Abandon Ship alarm>
<Sound of access panel opening>
<Sounds of unknown mechanisms>
<Sounds of weapons fire>
<Sound of human male scream>
<Sound of phaser fire>
<Sound of Abandon Ship alarm>
<Jennifer’s voice> Max is gone, sir. I’ll be outside. Good luck.
<Sound of door closing>
<Sound of phaser fire>
<Sound of Abandon Ship alarm>
<Muffled sounds of weapons fire>
<Sound of unknown mechanisms>
<Sounds of weapons fire>
<Sound of phaser fire stops>
<Riker> Well done, Ensign.
<Muffled Jem’Hadar voice> Cut the door open.
<Riker> Too late, you bastards.
<Sound of digital timer>
<Riker> I love you, Imzadi. I’ll be waiting for you. For you and our children.
<Loss of signal. Commbadge no longer transmitting.>
<End of uploaded recording>
<Complete recording uploaded from USS Io to Deep Space Nine in accordance with record retention protocol 5378c>
<Complete recording uploaded from Deep Space Nine to station OS 37 due to imminent threat of station system failure>
<Complete recording queued for review by OS 37 communications officer>
Mariner: It was a nightmare. One minute, everything was fine. We were at yellow alert, but we always were when we were in the war zone. Then the tactical console beeped. I was right next to Loomis, so we looked at the same time. Tachyon surges from ships decloaking. I was wondering why they didn’t signal to us they were there, until I saw the sensors identify them. They were Jem’Hadar ships. Thousands of them. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised that the Dominion would make use of cloaking technology eventually. But they had us majorly outnumbered. I think our fleet in that system was about 1380 ships. They had over three thousand.
Will came out onto the bridge, and I let him know about the decloaking Dominion fleet. At first, I wasn’t sure what I was looking at when I saw how fast our ships were reading as disabled. They couldn’t be disabling this many ships that fast. But they were, and there was only one explanation. They’d gotten the Breen energy dampening weapon. We were completely screwed. Then they disabled the Enterprise, and Will headed to the bottom of the ship to rig the backup autodestruct. I wanted to go in his place, but he ordered me to focus on evacuating the ship and getting nearby operational ships to rescue as many as possible. I wanted to disobey his orders so badly. But I had to save as many as I could, like he told me to. Besides, he wouldn’t have let himself be evacuated if any of his crew were still aboard anyway. And there was no real hope for evacuating the whole crew no matter what we did.
I got the USS Io to take Admiral Kirk and get him to DS9, along with a few dozen crew randomly selected by their sensors. Then the damned Jem’Hadar started beaming in. They killed Augie, we killed them. When I realized they were boarding us and trying to take the ship, I hit the transport inhibitors, and told everyone to get to the escape pods. We couldn’t let any other allied ships beam us off because that would put them at risk of being boarded by the Jem’Hadar. The only thing that got me out alive was the IKS Drovana. That was General K’orin’s flagship. He didn’t mind the Jem’Hadar coming to his ship. If anything, he and his crew would have relished the opportunity. Oddly enough though, the Dominion didn’t attempt to board while he started beaming up the escape pods we were launching.
I asked him to look for a human on deck 42. His systems officer found the captain, but the inhibitors were making it impossible to beam him off. Even worse, there were Jem’Hadar right outside the door trying to get into the antimatter storage pod room. I asked if there were any points on the Enterprise where the inhibitors didn’t have coverage. I planned to beam in and run for deck 42 and cover the captain. It was a stupid plan, I know. I knew it then, too. And as much as K’orin loves a good fight, even he knew it was a fool’s errand. I yelled at him that I can’t just leave my captain behind. Whatever K’orin said in reply, I don’t think I heard. I was too busy watching the Enterprise explode. It really was too late. Will Riker was dead.
I remember how ashamed I was that I had failed to keep the promise I had made to Ian and Beverly. I hadn’t kept their father safe. They would never see him again. God, Ian wouldn’t even remember him. Then the shame got so much worse when I had one of those intrusive thoughts we all have but never like to talk about. I was wondering if Deanna had made it off the ship, and for a split second, I thought about how much easier it would be for me if she hadn’t. If I didn’t have to face her and tell her that Will was gone. Yeah, sure Beckett. Real easy for you, but not so easy for their orphaned children. I mean, I didn’t want her to be dead. It was just my fear of having to face her that made that ugly thought pop into my mind. At least, that’s how Deanna would explain it to me later on.
She was picked up by the Drovana, too. And when I saw her, she was just doing her job. She was reassuring the more rattled survivors. But when we locked eyes, I saw it. She knew already. Of course she knew. Deanna and Will had that Betazoid Imzadi thing going on. She felt it when he died. I mean, he wouldn’t have suffered. But she felt that one moment he existed in this world, and the next moment she didn’t. And then, damn. She walked right up to me and gave me a hug. Deanna was trying to comfort me! How messed up is that? Of course, she did. She’s a counselor. She must have sensed my shame and guilt and wanted to basically let me off the hook. After a while, I would learn to let it go. But man, that was, I think, one of the hardest things I ever went through.
Of course, that was on top of the fear everyone was feeling at that point. The Dominion had wiped out our fleet. They had the Breen energy dampening weapon. They had cloaking technology. Now, every ship we had left was falling back to DS9 to make a stand. Probably a final stand. When we got to DS9, I was beamed over to the station along with the other survivors that had been picked up. The remaining ships didn’t need extra crew on board, so we were evacuated back through the wormhole. While a lot of ships were coming through to the Gamma Quadrant to bolster the last line of defense over there, the United Powers were keeping a lot of ships on the Alpha Quadrant side. But most of the defense net was made up of mine layers and mobile turrets.
I ended up on one of the O’Brien stations near the wormhole watching the live sensor feeds with everyone else. The Dominion reached DS9 with over 2800 ships. By then, we had only the station, a dozen mobile turrets, some cloaked mines we were able to deploy on short notice, and 1100 ships and about 300 fighters. Most of our fighters had been destroyed, since they weren’t fast enough to outrun the Dominion fleet on the trip back to the wormhole. This was going to be a losing battle, and everyone watching knew it. I actually closed my eyes just as the Dominion forces got within weapons range. Then I cursed myself for being a coward and made myself look.
The mines helped, but the Jem’Hadar went straight through them. They just accepted the loss of the twenty or so ships the mines took out. Then the fleet and the station opened fire, and Dominion ships started winking out on the tactical display. But our ships were dropping fast, too. One hit from the energy dampening weapon, and they were dead in space. Ships further back were beaming survivors off the stricken ships and sending them on to transports running between the ends of the wormhole. But they couldn’t get everybody, or even most of them. We were losing ships too fast. I think only five minutes after the first shots were fired, it was over. About 130 ships made it back through the wormhole after they were ordered to retreat to the Alpha Quadrant. And Deep Space 9 was gone, too. The Dominion had completely retaken the Gamma Quadrant.
But they didn’t stop there. They poured their fleet through the wormhole, looking to press the attack into the Alpha Quadrant. But this time, we were ready for them. The mines took out a whole bunch of the Jem’Hadar. Then when they got past those, the turrets and ships were shredding them. The following waves found themselves having to push through the debris of the ships that had gone in front of them. Our ships were pushing the debris back toward the wormhole with their deflector arrays to give the Dominion one more obstacle. It forced them to turn about ninety degrees once they came out of the wormhole, and we were able to lay mines in their path and focus more of our firepower on them. After a while, they stopped coming. Our listening posts showed them taking up defensive positions on the other side of the wormhole.
And just like that, it was over. I mean, we didn’t relax right away. We fully expected them to take a minute and then push back into the Alpha Quadrant. But they didn’t. Minutes became hours, and hours became days. Nothing. They just sat there on the other end of the wormhole. So, we took stock of what we had lost. All told, over eight thousand ships were destroyed or crippled. And the crippled ones were probably captured. So, they’re going to learn more about our technology. A lot more. And there wasn’t a damned thing we could do to stop them.
We couldn’t evacuate most of our troops and engineers and relief personnel on the worlds we’d captured. And we saw on sensors that the Dominoin just blasted them from orbit. Millions of Federation, Cardassian, Romulan, Klingon, and Gorn lives were lost. We’d lost Deep Space 9, and with it, Admiral Sisko. That was a huge blow to morale, as he was one of the best leaders we had in this fight. Like Captain Riker, he’d refused to be evacuated as long as members of the station’s crew were still aboard.
I didn’t get a lot of time to process that, because I still had a job to do. I needed to see how many of the Enterprise’s crew had made it out. Each transport and station did an inventory of who they had on board. I got a PADD and compared the list to the Enterprise’s crew manifest. Then I did it again. And then I did it a third time. I couldn’t believe it. The Enterprise had had 1140 people on board, and only 239 were accounted for. That gave me nightmares, because what if they weren’t all dead? What if before I turned on the transport inhibitors, the Dominion had beamed some of the crew off the ship as they were beaming their troops onto it? I couldn’t imagine what the Dominion would do to its prisoners.
No. That’s crap. I could imagine it. That’s why I had nightmares.
I was so pissed off at the Breen. I assumed they gave the Dominion the weapon. And as it turned out, I was right. The Romulans, the Cardassians, and the Klingons were pissed, too. They’re leaders all pointed out to President Levi that if we had insisted on getting the Breen energy dampening weapon two years ago, we would have known how to protect our ships. All three of them wanted to send ships into Breen space to punish them. Levi flat out told them ‘No’. Before they could kick up a fuss, he explained that the Breen were the Federation’s problem, and the Federation would solve it.
Then, without closing the channel with the United Powers leaders, he contacted Admiral DeSoto. He was commanding a fleet that we kept outside Breen space just in case. Levi told him to go in and finish the Breen once and for all. He wasn’t telling DeSoto to exterminate them or anything, but to destroy their ships and stations and leave them utterly defenseless. And once the Breen home world was subdued and surrounded, DeSoto was to demand of the Breen leadership their unconditional surrender and every bit of data on the energy dampening weapon. Once we had that, we would be able to figure out a way to protect our ships. But Garak, speaking for the Cardassian Union, pointed out that given how many ships we’d all lost, we still wouldn’t be able to push back into the Gamma Quadrant anytime soon. Killjoy.
Levi assured them that the priority was maintaining the defense of the Alpha Quadrant while we rebuilt and rearmed. Having a defense against the energy dampening weapon would be vital to that. At any time, the Dominion might try to push through the wormhole again. And there was no guarantee that we could stop them. And if a sizable Dominion fleet got out of the Bajoran system with cloaking tech and the energy dampening weapon, it would be a damned nightmare. So, every moment would count. Then Levi promised all of them that the weapons tech would be shared with all of them, not hoarded by the Federation. With all the confidence of someone who hadn’t just witnessed a total disaster, Levi promised that the Dominion War was nowhere near over.
I was assigned quarters on the station, and I got to work on writing 901 death letters. No, I actually sat there on the floor with a PADD in my hands for like an hour. Then Deanna came to see me. She sat down next to me with a PADD of her own and reminded me that we share the personnel responsibilities for the Enterprise, so we should do the letters together. I told her she didn’t have to. She waved me off and we got to work. For the most part, the letters were generated by the computer. But we wanted to add a little something to each one. A personal touch. These people deserved better than a mere “We regret to inform you” speech. It wasn’t always easy, since we didn’t know all of them that well. But we managed.
The whole time, I wanted to ask Deanna if she’d told her kids yet. Luckily, she was an empath instead of a telepath. So, all she knew was that I was feeling conflicted. After a couple hours, we got to the top of the list. There was only one name left. Will. Obviously, no letter was needed here. But we just sat there another few minutes and looked at his name on the casualty list. God, as hard as this was for us, it was so much worse for so many others. I mean, we knew from the Drovana’s sensor records that the Dominion didn’t capture the occupants of any of our escape pods before the friendlies could beam them aboard. A lot of the retreating allied ships passed the Enterprise and kept the Jem’Hadar ships from getting close enough for transport. The ones that sent those boarding parties got whacked pretty quickly.
But the thing is, the surviving ships could tell that the Dominion captured a lot of people from the other stricken ships. In the mad dash to get out of range of the Dominion’s energy dampening weapon, everyone was focused on destroying any enemy ships that got close. So, no one tried to scuttle any of the disabled starships. I had hoped that the Dominion would destroy them. But as we later found out, the Dominion repaired them, scoured them for intel, and then put them into service against the United Powers. As if we weren’t outnumbered enough.
As for the prisoners, we had no idea how many there were. But there were probably an awful lot of them. Tens of thousands, at least. And while it normally would be a good thing to hear that crew from a destroyed or disabled ship managed to survive, well, that’s not what happened there. They were captured by the Dominion. And that would probably mean torture and death for damned near all of them. And there wasn’t a thing we could do about it. I wondered if the Founders would reach out and threaten to kill the prisoners if we didn’t promise to abandon the war. There was no way we’d agree to that, and they probably would have known that already. Maybe they’d do it anyway, just to twist the knife a little bit more.
Deanna got up to leave, as we had finished our last duty as shipmates. I got up and asked her if she was okay. I mean, I knew she wasn’t. How could she be? But I felt I had to say something and that’s what ended up coming out. But before she could answer, a voice came out of both of our commbadges. It was from the same guy. He was reaching out to both of us because he wasn’t sure who to call. The guy, I can’t remember his name, told us what he’d found, and then we were both sitting on the floor again. Will had been recording a personal log through his commbadge when everything went to crap. And he never turned it off. Probably forgot in all of the madness. And when the Enterprise’s computer went down, the badge started sending the live recording to the nearest Federation starships, which automatically transmitted them to DS9, which sent it through the wormhole.
So, she and I sat there and listened to Will Riker’s last few minutes. We heard him running, yelling at crew he passed to get to the escape pods. Then we heard him jump down the turbolift shaft in the engineering section. I guess his artificial gravity module failed while it was slowing his descent, so he landed hard and probably blew out his knee or something. I swear, my heart about stopped when I heard a Jem’Hadar soldier telling Will to surrender. But then came friendly phaser fire and a couple of crew showed up to save him. He explained where he was headed, and instead of going to the lower deck escape pods, they escorted him there and covered him. One went down, then the other. But Will got the destruct mechanism going in time. And then we heard him say goodbye to Deanna. And that’s when she let herself cry. And I just held her.
When she was ready, she downloaded a copy of the recording from Will’s commbadge and headed back to her quarters. She said she needed to tell her kids. I offered to come with, but she said she needed to do it alone. She gave me another hug and left. For a few minutes, I sat there with no other ideas as to what I should be doing. I was sure I would be getting a new assignment at some point but had no idea when that would happen. Then it hit me just what I should be doing. I opened up the letters we had written to the families of the crew. Luckily, there was such a backlog that none of them had been sent yet. From what I heard, I was able to identify the two ensigns who saved Will and fought to the death to buy him time as Jennifer Sh’reyan and Max Stone. I added to their letters to let their families know how brave they’d been at the end. Then I wrote up a formal recommendation to Command for them to receive the Christopher Pike Medal of Valor.
And they would get it, and so would Will.