Paint and Powder
A Star Trek anthology by Andrew Joshua Talon
DISCLAIMER: This is a non-profit fan based work of prose. Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager et al are the property of CBS Television, and creation of Gene Roddenberry. Please support the official release.
Set during "A Time to Stand"
The Tyra system was a strategic fuel and other resources center for the Federation, and the Dominion knew it. Hence they had staged an assault on the system. The Seventh Fleet had been organized and sent in to stop them, under Admiral Ross.
His flagship, the USS Yamato, was one of a dozen Sovereign-class starships operating in the whole of the Federation at the time. Their most advanced and powerful starships. The rest of the Seventh Fleet was made up of similar "heavies", with numerous Galaxy and Nebula class vessels escorted by many Akira-class heavy cruisers. As they approached the system and prepared for battle, Yamato was confident.
Yet, being an advanced AI, she was still considering many other factors in her mind as they approached the system.
The fact that the Dominion had been able to overwhelm and defeat multiple Allied Fleets consistently was a major concern. They had been able to anticipate their fleet movements almost perfectly, despite their screening and intelligence security.
The possibility of Changeling infiltration was high, of course. They still hadn't located the Changeling infiltrators in the Federation. At the same time, the security measures and isolation of information practices they had undergone for their organization represented all they could do. They were keeping everything secure. No doubt the Changeling Infiltrators were funneling what intel they could to the Dominion, but the screening measures would make it difficult for them to get data of their fleet movements right from the front lines.
So... If the Dominion was not getting this information via spies, how were they getting it?
"Sir, Dominion fighters inbound," the ops officer reported to the captain. Admiral Ross was sitting in a side chair, and nodded to the captain. Her captain, Revnik Har'ros, was a proud Andorian and she was quite fond of him. He nodded and looked out at the viewscreen.
"Cruiser squadrons, engage with fighters and photon torpedoes," he ordered. "Full spread!"
Multiple Akira and Steamrunner-class ships opened fire with their torpedo launchers, as did several Vor'cha class cruisers. Hundreds of missiles streaked into the Jem'hadar formations. Their fighters moved to intercept the projectiles, many sacrificing themselves to take the hits for their larger vessels. Multiple torpedo launches came in, but their fighter screens accelerated out and shot them down with phasers or their own torpedoes.
"Yamato, what's the ship count ahead?" Captain Har'ros asked.
"Fifty fighters, forty seven light cruisters and destroyers, twenty heavy cruisers, two dreadnoughts," Yamato recited as she stood on the bridge. Har'ros frowned, and exchanged glances with Ross.
"Are you sure? That doesn't sound like enough," he said. Yamato directed her powerful sensors towards the Tyra systems' sun. It was a variable star, the planets in the local system had very strong magnetic fields to deflect the solar radiation. These flares were often unpredictable, and one was going on right now-
"It's a trap!" Admiral Ross declared, "all ships, reverse course-!"
From behind them, a hundred more Jem'hadar ships emerged from the cover of the recent solar flare. They opened fire on them from behind, and Yamato heard many of her sisters dying as the Jem'hadar struck through their ranks.
The battle went from bad to worse, as their efforts to redeploy, even using the solar flare for cover themselves, were met with more attacks. As though the Dominion could see through every move they made.
Yamato's shields were powerful, but the Jem'hadar and Cardassian forces had hit her with as much as they could spare. The dreadnought herself moved around the fleet, filling in holes in their lines and covering smaller ships as they were boxed in within Tyra 3's gravity well. They had lost half their strength, and it was falling fast.
Captain Har'ros was tending to a wounded man when they were struck by a Jem'hadar kamikaze run. Her shields held, but the force of the blow sent him tumbling into a bulkhead. He slumped to the deck, and her scans confirmed the worst before a medic got to him.
Admiral Ross got into the command chair, gripping the armrests tightly.
"Yamato? Any suggestions?" He asked.
She had to put her grief aside. She had to focus... Focus... Of course!
"A modification Enterprise shared with us," Yamato said smoothly, "could be used in a plan."
"What plan?" Ross demanded.
"It would take too long to explain," Yamato said, "but there is a high probability of it working! With your permission Admiral?"
Ross, out of options, nodded.
Yamato analyzed the Dominion fleet surrounding them. As standard practice, most of the heavy vessels were concentrated around their flagships: Large, powerful dreadnoughts. She linked to the Galaxy and Nebula class starships. She shared the plan. It took them picoseconds at worst to analyze and agree with it.
The universe slowed to a crawl from her perspective. Yamato highlighted four of their Galaxy and Nebula class starships. They powered up their main deflectors, and several escorts moved to protect them as they took power away from their shields.
Several Jem'hadar fighters closed on them, seeking to knock them out as they had done to the Odyssey. Their own fighters engaged them, and kept them away. Just long enough for the warp drives on the four ships to activate at full power, and their deflectors to light up.
A microsecond after, each ship fired a massive beam from their main deflectors, which pierced through the Dominion Lines. They swept through dozens of Dominion ships, using their own deflector controls and their thrusters to adjust their pitch. Like great cosmic swords, their energy blades slashed Cardassian destroyers and Jem'hadar cruisers apart on either side of the main cluster.
The Jem'hadar and Cardassians reacted to pull more ships around their main force, to act as screeners to intercept follow up attacks. They weren't stupid.
Yamato smiled unpleasantly.
Just as you should, she thought.
A Sovereign-class starship's main deflector was smaller in area than a Galaxy or Nebula-class starship's, but more than five times as powerful. Yamato shut down her warp drive and her weapons, only keeping enough for her shields to function. She set herself into a barrel roll as her main deflector lit up!
She unleashed all of her power in a single, massive blast, spiraling it through the concentrated fleet formation. Her blade slashed both Dominion Dreadnoughts in half, and annihilated any smaller ships that got in the way of the blast. The dreadnought warp cores went up, sending shrapnel into their tightly packed escorts and causing massive secondary explosions. Four more Galaxy and Nebula class ships, which had been held in reserve, unleashed their own deflector beams and blew through multiple other Dominion vessels, exhausting their own warp drives in the process.
In ten seconds, the Dominion center was blowing apart into chaos as the massive deflector blasts had torn their command and control and most of their heavy vessels to shreds.
"All ships, head for the center! We're going to split them in half!" Ross roared, and Yamato charged forward with the rest of her sisters.
The Jem'hadar struggled to regain cohesion, and even with her power much depleted Yamato cut through their fighters like they were made of paper. A flight of Mirandas unleashed waves of torpedoes into the side of a Cardassian Keldon, ripping the heavy cruiser to pieces. More Jem'hadar fighters attempted suicide runs, but Klingon Bird of Prey ducked in and out of cloak to scatter and strike them like wolves among lions. Their Akiras and Vor'chas cut down enemy cruisers with vicious phaser, disrupter and torpedo fire.
It wasn't a clean cut victory. They still lost over half of the fleet due to this ambush. Most of the remaining ships had been heavily damaged. Yamato herself had burned out her main deflector, and would have to be towed back to the ship yards due to the amount of energy she had expended burning out her warp coils.
Yet the Dominion forces were clearly turning and running for it, scattered and defeated.
Cheers went up across all the ships, and their AIs joined in the celebration. Admiral Ross leaned back in his command chair, breathing hard, but smiling.
Yamato kept an avatar on the bridge, joining in the festivities... While another avatar was down in sickbay, with the body of her captain.
She squeezed his lifeless hand, and smiled down at him sadly.
"It was one for the Great Blue Fleet," she said earnestly. "A victory worthy of epic song."
She felt tears in her eyes. In some ways, it felt good to be able to express grief in physical ways. Rather than just keeping it all inside her mainframe. It was an act of catharsis.
She hoped her captain, if he had moved on... If there was such a thing as a soul... Could see it.
It would be the height of cosmic unfairness for him not to. While she'd never detected a particle of fairness in all her lives, Yamato had to believe it existed.
Somewhere.
A Few Months Ago...
Aboard the Enterprise-E, after the Borg invasion of 2373 and before the Dominion War... Data and LaForge sat in Ten Forward, with Enterprise across the table from them. They were looking over several PADDs as she waited anxiously.
Finally...
Enterprise: "So... What do you think?"
LaForge: "Well... It's ambitious."
Data: "The power requirements are well within the tolerances of your EPS grid integrity. The main deflector, while smaller, can channel the required energy and control it with the graviton wave emitters. We can improve on the range and power of the energy stream."
LaForge: "And since the gravimetric field controls on the Sovereign-class are a lot more precise and powerful than the ones on the Galaxy-class, we would have a lot more options for where the beam could go. We could even split it to make multiple beams."
Enterprise: "Yes, that is what I thought too! And it's perfect for use against the Dominion!"
Data: "The Dominion do utilize tightly controlled starship formations in combat. Jem'hadar ships work together and coordinate in close formation, in order to maximize their firepower on targets. The use of the main deflector dish to produce a wide, long range energy beam would allow us to disperse their formations and cause massive damage or destruction to numerous Dominon ships."
LaForge: "Okay yeah, but even so, we'd only be able to use it in large fleet actions where the enemy ships are in tight formations. Or against large, slow moving single targets."
Enterprise: "I understand. It would still be useful in those situations, especially in taking out enemy formations or Dominion battleships. Or even starbases."
Data: "Only Sovereign, Galaxy, Nebula, and perhaps New Orleans-class starships would have the power or necessary modifications to utilize such a weapon."
Enterprise: "I know, but even with only a quarter to a third of the warp reactor's full output, we could still do massive damage to enemy fleets! Reduce their numerical superiority!"
LaForge: shrugs "Having multiple giant death rays you can open up on densely packed Jem'Hadar ships would be a hell of a trump card."
Data: "I am curious: Why are you pursuing this project?"
Enterprise: "Simple: Given the recent Borg incursion, and the Dominion threat, I felt that assessing the suitability of older projects as weapons would be prudent. The Dominion outnumbers us in ships five to one: We need every advantage to even the odds."
Enterprise paused, and then smiled brightly.
Enterprise: "Plus, it was really cool wasn't it?! I had a wave motion gun! THAT WAS SO AWESOME!"
LaForge: "... You've been talking to the Yamato again, haven't you?"
Enterprise: "Well, she does miss the gigantic spinal phaser cannon she had back in the 2290s."
Data: "One she never got to use."
Enterprise: "I told her that. It just made her angry."
In the Deep Space Nine novelizations of the initial arc of the Dominion War, it is made clear that the Dominion used the Argolis Cluster to plot out their moves and to inflict such overwhelming losses on the Federation-Klingon Alliance. When deprived of this asset, their ability to inflict such massive casualties on the Alliance was significantly reduced. Funny enough, it was the victory over the Seventh Fleet that led Sisko and Martok to investigate things, as the victory was way too one sided for it to have been incompetence on the part of the Alliance.
In this case, while the fight is still bloody and costly, the addition of ship girl AIs allows for some new possibilities with combat that might not have been considered before. It's not an instant win button, but come on: I had to have Yamato kick some ass with her wave motion gun.