I don't own Star Trek Deep Space Nine.
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Whispers of the Dominion.
Still shaken by the loss of the Odyssey and worried the Jem'Hadar would come after them for more, Sisko didn't waste time and he sent a message to the other runabouts to follow at maximum warp, but to keep on the alert for warp signatures. It wouldn't take the runabouts long to return to the wormhole, to Deep Space Nine.
There was a lot for them to do; they would need to warn Starfleet of the Dominion, and report to them the loss of the Jem'Hadar's attack on the Odyssey and the destruction of the Galaxy-class starship; the runabouts had collected a lot of sensor data of the Jem'Hadar weapons and the ships they used, so hopefully they would discover something, some inherent weaknesses they could use in the future, but Starfleet had to do something about the traffic entering the wormhole from this moment forward; with how the Dominion had warned the Federation about entering the Gamma Quadrant, they needed to make it clear that going through the wormhole could mean instant death.
But he couldn't help but think about his own words following the destruction of the Odyssey.
The Jem'Hadar and the rest of the Dominion wanted them to know how far they would go to inflict casualties, to destroy, and win. The loss of one of their ships in a suicide run was nothing to them.
"Commander," Sisko turned his head, snapping out of his thoughts when he heard O'Brien's voice; he was relieved everyone else had left the cockpit and had gone to the passenger lounge. He hoped they got over what had happened, especially the Ferengi; Quark had only come with them because he had wanted to use Nog's position as Jake's friend to haggle over one of his latest moneymaking schemes.
"Yes, Chief?" Sisko was surprised by how weary he sounded; after the night of hell and the subsequent run, the loss of the Odyssey, the adrenaline was wearing down.
O'Brien stared sympathetically at him, clearly seeing what the problem was. "When we heard about the Dominion from the Skrrea, this is not the way I'd expected we'd meet them."
Sisko knew what he meant. While he would remember the Skrrea bittersweetly after the way the hopeful refugees had come through the wormhole, looking for a new way of life after being held in slavery for so long by the T-Rogorans, a race they had never met and hadn't even heard whispers of since, only when their attempts to colonise a small chunk of Bajor was turned down so quickly and the Bajorans showed the kind of xenophobic fear instilled in them by the Cardassians, Sisko would remember fondly the wisdom many of them showed before it went so wrong, so quickly when Tumak refused to listen and was killed for his troubles.
"I know, and then there were Odo and Dax's reports about the holographic colony world, and how that poor man lost everyone and created holograms of his people," Sisko remembered the story well, and he decided to open a communication channel with the other Runabouts. Instantly the screen split showing Major Kira and Doctor Bashir sitting at one Runabout console and Odo and Dax in the other Runabout.
"Benjamin!" Dax's smile was one of the most beautiful sights he had seen today, and he hadn't seen much although the planet had been beautiful before the Jem'Hadar soiled the experience. "How are you?"
"I'm happy to see all of you," Sisko smiled in turn, although he knew it was tinged with the darkness they had seen today.
"Commander, is anyone over there hurt?" Bashir asked worriedly.
"Maybe a few bruises; the Jem'Hadar don't really subscribe to theories of morality, and they don't seem to care for any rules of interstellar war or common laws. You will need to check us over, Julian," Sisko said.
"I'll do that now. I'll transport you over to your Runabout," Bashir stood up from his seat.
"Major, Dax, drop out of warp," Sisko ordered promptly; while the Runabouts could travel at warp and beam people to and fro at the same time, it was not a pleasant experience.
"Aye, sir," Dax said, instantly getting to work at her controls while Odo helped and Kira did the same while Julian was transported onboard. The moment the doctor arrived and reorientated himself, he took out a tricorder and scanned Sisko.
"You'll be alright, sir," Bashir smiled reassuringly before he nodded in the direction of the passenger lounge. "Are the others back there?"
"Yes," Sisko replied.
Once Bashir had left to go on his rounds, Sisko turned to the others. "Chief O'Brien and I were just talking about the Dominion. We knew we'd meet sometime, but this isn't how any of us imagined it would go."
"Indeed not, Commander. Did they ask you anything?" Odo asked.
"No. They seemed more interested in threatening Quark and me, he's alright by the way," Sisko added, knowing Odo had likely come out here to look out for everyone, but also to see if Quark was in good hands after all he would want his long-term nemesis to know he was always there, "and keeping us prisoner. They didn't seem bothered or concerned with the typical prisoner-prison mentality. Anyway, what did we miss?"
Major Kira sighed. "A Jem'Hadar ship came through the wormhole, Commander. He beamed through our shields and even a forcefield was thrown up to stop him from leaving and he handed us a datapad from the New Bajor colony, with a list of the ships the Dominion have destroyed over the last few months. And that's not all. The colony…. It's gone, sir. All gone; when we came through the wormhole, I opened a channel to New Bajor, but there was nobody there. It was dead."
The sadness in Kira's voice was so heartrending that Sisko had a hard time not tearing up himself. Sisko knew sooner or later the truth would have come out; ships heading to New Bajor, the colony opened by the Bajorans when the wormhole was discovered, were frequent. Many Bajorans had wanted and hoped to find a new world to settle in and forget about the horrors they had endured their whole lives. Some of them, simply couldn't cope at all with the destruction, and they wanted to make a fresh start.
And now it looked like they had a new war on their hands.
"When we get back to DS9, I want to find out how many references of the Dominion there are," Sisko's hands flew over the console and the ship shot back into warp, followed closely by the others. "Dax, can you use your contacts?"
Dax nodded thoughtfully. "I can get in touch with the Vulcan High Command, and use the contacts Curzon made over the years to find out more. The Vulcans have been exploring the Gamma Quadrant and made many discoveries; they have lost a few ships themselves, but some of their captains who were luckier must have heard something."
"Do it," Sisko nodded. "I'll speak to Starfleet Command, see if the captains of the ships who went through and survived the Gamma Quadrant heard anything. We need to find out everything we can about the Dominion before they come."
"Another war," O'Brien sagged. "The Federation has barely recovered from…Wolf 359," he hesitated, knowing like everyone else the painful cost Sisko and Jake had suffered from that mess. The loss of their wife/mother.
Sisko bit his tongue to stop the pained sorrow from leaving his throat. "We might have to fight," he hoped he sounded reassuring because he didn't even reassure himself.