Author's Note: This story takes place shortly after the events in the episode "Tacking into the Wind."
Legete Dumar scowled at the stony, misshapen planetoid on the Kelvin-class cruiser's ovoid viewscreen. Such a dismal world-if it could even be considered a world. Technically the Cardassian Empire's charts listed it as Celestial Body 1134, but within the military it was known as "Seleke"-the middle-most layer of Cardassian hell. It was appropriate enough, since the lifeless, atmosphereless rock was nestled between two drifting asteroids whose bombardment of X and Y-rays caused a wash of ionized currents and the occasional plasma storm. It was a highly defensable position, as the asteroids were host to numerous monitoring and listening devices that could alert the base-cut into the rock of the planetoid-to the approach of an enemy starship long before they ever came within striking distance.
At least when not distracted they could.
The base was closer on the viewscreen now. Dumar could make out the transmission towers and arcing weapons sails jutting from the blisters on Seleke's surface. He tapped his fingers on the command chair's armrest, then hazarded a look around the bridge. It seemed larger than any Kelvin he'd commanded before. The empty stations, he decided. This ship was running with a skeleton crew, and Dumar had barely been able to put that together. He weakly slapped the chair's arm as a blade of despair ran him through. This is the great Cardassian uprising. The insurrection that will cast off the yoke of the Dominion and remove the Jem'Hadar and Breen from Cardassian soil. Not even enough soldiers to man three medium-cruisers.
He pulled away from it. For his men, those poor, loyal fools who believed in him.
"Sir, we're being hailed," Ruskon said from her station at ops.
"Very well," Dumar said quickly and authoritatively. "Are the modifications ready on the comm system?"
"Yes sir," Kesset answered. "You'll look and sound like my older brother."
A light ripple of laughter circled the bridge, slicing at the tension like a dull, nicked knife. Dumar managed a half-smile. "I suppose I can deal with that. Open a channel to Temeset Base."
The bridge went silent as the lights dimmed to a blunt ochre and the bridge crew slumped in their seats. "Temeset Base, this is border Security Force Alpha-Seven," Dumar said. "We've seen heavy action with the Klingon fleet near Chin'Toka. On of our ships is bleeding dry-plasma and we fear their may be a tetrion radiation leakage as well. We request permission to beam the crew to your base until full decontamination procedures can be carried out."
"Stand by, Alpha-Seven leader," the stiff-looking Vorta onscreen replied with no sense of urgency at all. Dumar felt his blood simmer and override the despair he'd just been feeling. Had this crisis been, there'd be three-hundred Cardassian lives hanging on this arrogant bastard's every moment of silence.
Dumar let his distaste show and infect his bridge crew. To his left, he noted Kesset pre-targeting the main disruptor.
Useless if he'd misplaced his trust. And the space beyond Dumar's ships was empty, as was the space between his ships and the station and the seven Jem'Hadar fighters that circled like scoreth attacker birds.
Empty.
Moments like these made Dumar realize how fragile a trust forged of mutual antagonism toward a single source could be.
"Very well, Alpha-Seven leader. Stand by," the Vorta answered unconcernedly. Behind her, impassive Jem'Hadar watched the proceedings with dead eyes. "We have lowered our shields. Yours and your trail ship can begin beaming crew members down. Our medical services stand ready"
"Thank you," Dumar said with a tight smile and killed the connection. Terekk activated his weapons console and was staring at Dumar with wide, nervous eyes.
"Target their shield-emitters."
"Sir," he said, his voice wavering, "we'll be vulnerable to attack from both the station and the Jem'Hadar."
"Do as I say!" Dumar snapped, then settled back in his chair. "Our allies will protect us."
He repeated it in his mind. Our allies...
But the space around them was empty.
The bridge whined as the Kelvin's main spiral-wave disruptor sprayed raw, destructive energy at the base.
A moment later, the emptiness exploded around them.
Captain Larwin watched as Dumar's ships opened fire on the base. Almost instantly, the base's weapons lit up, washing the void with blue phased-polaron beams and Dominion torpedoes.
"Let's move!" he barked, and the Midway shifted beneath him as she fired up and led his task force of four Intrepid-class cruisers out of their hiding place in a pocket of electro-magntic currents near the asteroid's pole. The Kelvin that had been playing damaged suddenly righted itself and closed off the vents expelling dry plasma and lept into the attacking Jem'Hadar fighters. From within the radioactive cloud of plasma-highly-charged enough to prevent the base from noticing their energy-signatures-the three Romulan Warbirds and ten scouts leapt and solidified. Their fire joined that of Dumar's-the Warbirds pummeling the base, while the scouts faced the Jem'Hadar fighters head on.
"Looks like our allies have things sewn up," Commander Debney commented dryly. Larwin regarded her over his shoulder.
"We can't let them take the brunt of this," he said evenly. "Bad enough the Klingons are the only ones holding the line against the Breen weaponry. We can't let everyone else die while we watch. Tell the task force to start strafing the base, we're going to engage the fighters."
"Aye sir," Lieutenant Peterson answered and began targeting solutions.
Dumar felt a surge of adrenaline as he watched the massive Romulan battlecruisers pour the limits of their destructive capacity onto the base, ripping out emplacements and severing weapons pylons in a mist of molten alloys and organic minerals. As they paused to target the fighters, the cobra-shaped Federation starships nimbly began their strafing runs. Agile as fighters, they lashed out with their dual phaser-strips and tandem torpedo launchers. Ruskon let out a war whoop when the base's main structures began to explode under the small ships' assault.
"Continue firing," he ordered. His crew complied without question. And on his tactical display he saw the Jem'Hadar fighters decimated by the combination of fire from the Romulan scouts and the big, Federation Akira-class cruiser.
For a moment, Dumar felt invulnerable.
Then-
"Sir," Terekk exclaimed, "sensors reading twelve more ships coming out of the second asteroid's umbra. Five of them are Breen!"
And Dumar saw it all fall to pieces.
"God damn it!" Larwin snarled. "When I get my hands on the Intelligence boys who fould this up, I'm gonna tie their necks together! Target the Breen with everything we've got! Our only chance is kill them before they kill us."
"Sir," Debney reported, "message coming in from Admiral Teleki. Audio only.
Larwin had worked extensively with Teleki over the past few weeks as they'd planned this raid. They'd both agreed that taking out a Dominion troop base this far inside enemy territory, and this soon after the disastrous battle at Chin'Toka would go far toward taking some of the wind out of their sails. They'd agreed that a joint, Cardassian/Federation/Romulan strike would be the best way to assure the destruction of such a heavily-fortified base with a minimum of casualties. They'd even agreed on the best way to carry the plan out. And still Teleki's arrogance had made Larwin want to smack him. Often and regularly.
Now, however, staring at the face of their mutual destruction, Teleki's cool, smug voice was the most welcome thing Larwin had heard in a long time.
"Well, Captain. Things seem to have gotten a bit more interesting. I trust we're in agreement on our choice of tactics?"
"Kill the Breen," Larwin said through gritted teeth.
Teleki's airy laugh difted through the bridge speakers. "I'm tempted to say that you've got some Klingon blood in you, Captain Larwin, but it seems in poor taste to insult you at a time like this."
Larwin laughed and the viewscreen spun to the show the oncoming ships. Ankh-shaped Galar-class cruisers trailing the Breen with their complex, swept-winged starships. Admiral Teleki was murderously efficient and had dispatched one of the Breen before the Midway's weapons could even achieve a lock. It shattered into tumbling, components and spiraling flame. Midway's weapons pounded the second Breen ship-photorps pounding the shields until the lancing phaser beams could break through and slice bare hull.
But even as Larwin saw the second Breen cruiser's bridge come apart and the brain-dead ship tumble off her axis, he knew things were lost. The Galors had broken off and were going after the Romulan scouts, while the surviving Breen were taking advantage of the delay their fallen comrades provided by taking out the Intrepids. On Larwin's tactical display, they were motionless characters, waiting for the coup de grace.
Larwin keyed his comm system. "Dumar, get your ships out of here. We'll cover you."
"Just let us complete the mission. The base is still intact."
"Negative. The Cardassian Resistance isn't much without those ships and those men and you, now go. We'll hold them off." Larwin's display showed Dumar's ships taking hits from the Galor's. They broke formation and began heading out of the system.
"Helm, bring us to one-five-niner. Put us between Dumar's ships and anything firing at them."
"Aye sir!"
Again, Midway lurched beneath him as her impulse engines pushed her into a tight arc and into the path of the Cardassian torpedoes. In the distance onscreen, Larwin saw two of Teleki's Warbird's hanging listlessly like windchimes on a still day.
"Fire every-"
Then the ship lurched with the hits. The spaceframe screamed as the shield emitters strained to absorb or deflect the energy that bettered them. Multiple red phaser beams and clusters of torpedoes splayed across the screen, impacted the Cardassians, but they kept coming. Seven warships. Some listing, wounded, some targeting the Intrepids and erasing them with quick, precise disruptor shots. Beyond them, Teleki's Warbird was eviscerating a third Breen ship, while his other two Warbirds slowly burned, beams and pieces of their skeleton piercing their hulls, and they bled atmosphere in glistening trails.
The strange, Breen ships fell into formation behind the Galors and Larwin knew what was coming next. Based on the ashen, bloodless complexion of Commander Janine Debney, so did everyone else.
"Helm," he said, his mouth suddenly dry, "set course for the base. Maximum impulse."
"Aye sir," Peterson choked as she steered the ship into a full impulse course past the dead, disintegrating Intrepids toward the recessed structures of the base.
Larwin caught Debney's glance and put his hand on her arm. She put hers on his. He wished he could feel something, but he didn't. Hadn't for some time now. He'd lost the Milwaukee, all his old friends, Vanessa Brandis, the last woman he'd loved. All this just seemed redundant.
Two seconds later, the Breen energy-dampner hit and the Midway began to shut down. A hail of torpedoes tore through her, tearing off her weapons pod, her port nacelle, and punched holes in her hull.
She burned. She bled. But her inertia kept her on course.
And on the devastated bridge-now little more than a tight collection of garbage and bodies-Larwin and Debney held each other until the end.
With the increase fleet-traffic near the Chin'Toka system, it was easy for Dumar's ships to proceed unchallenged to his safe area. The destruction of the base was recorded in the ship's sensor logs, though he wasn't sure if his allies would care to see it. They had, after all sacrificed their ships and personnel for what was really a minor victory. But then, they had willingly offered their ships and personnel, so perhaps they would see the victory beyond the cost.
One thing he knew with perfect certainty, though--the Cardassia that was would have never understood the sacrifices made this day by allies who only weeks ago were enemies. The Cardassia that would be, however, would understand such men perfectly.
And millions of kilometers away, in a poisonous envelope of space containing three dead rocks, the void was cluttered with debris and errant gasses, fragments of technology and biology and all the dumb things that comprised the machinery of the twenty-fourth century. Amid the flotsam and the jetsam were the bodies-the authors of the debris and its destiny-and they drifted unconcernedly in and through each other's wakes and circles. Romulan. Jem'Hadar. Vulcan. Cardassian. Bajoran. Vorta. Human...