The Avenger went out of warp. She would not go further. Fourth seethed in frustration, and the very gesture put him in extreme pain. Fourth was dying, he knew it; the severe burnings that covered all his body and that had completely ruined his right side, maiming his leg and his hand, clearly said so. But the heart of his ship was dying too, and that hurt Fourth even more. Gasping for air, the Jem'Hadar chief engineer checked the warp core parameters. Around him, all the surviving members of his team worked hard to put the warp engine back on line. They coughed, for part of the room was still burning and the smoke was dense. Fourth elaborate breathing was also due to internal problems, thought. He would not resist much more.
Seventh neared him, his clear gray skin had turned almost black, except for a stark cut that crossed his left side, still dripping blood. Seventh's wounds were not fatal, however, and thanks to his natural high levels of stamina he kept working. Fourth looked up at him. Seventh was a good warrior, and a very good engineer; but Fourth knew that, in their case, that was not enough.
At the Avenger's bridge, the situation was not much better. The bridge had not received any direct hit, and apart from some bruises, all the bridge crew was fine. The consoles, though, were malfunctioning, and most of their data was unreliable. First tried hard to contact with all the parts of his ship and had an assessment of their situation. Impulse power was currently available, and they could still fire their disruptor array, but the energy needed to fire their weapons would deplete their failing shields. Besides, they had lost more than one third of their crew.
Their sensors went on and off line continuously, and Third worked hard to fix them. He was recalibrating the half-charred power source, that is why the Rhian'Unnr was first seen by Second on the bridge's view screen.
The D'Deridex class warbird decloaked at their port side, her green glowing light a deadly menace to their crippled smaller ship.
First set his jaw, his cool eyes sweeping over his comrades. First had been thinking about their return to the Dominion; now he realized that was not going to happen. But the Jem'Hadar leader had promised his soldiers something different than coming back home, First had promised them to live as free warriors, and the life of a warrior was usually short. Maybe their lives were going to end right then.
"Obedience brings victory." "Victory is life." The sentences repeated so many times before came to his mind. For a fleeting moment he questioned his decisions; First knew that they were being disobedient trying to live by their own means, maybe that was the reason they were going to die. It did not really matter at that moment.
"Concentrate all the power there is left on the disruptor array," he ordered Second.
It had been a very short trip at warp speed. The Avenger had hardly reached 3.5 and the amount of particles she had left behind indicated the state of her warp core was precarious. The ship had jumped out of warp, and when they have followed suit, the battered vessel, with several direct hits and her integrity hardly holding, was almost wreckage.
Raghnill had ordered a report on the state of the Tal Shiar ship; Lior had just started to enumerate the list of their malfunctioning systems, an easy task considering the vessel did not resist their sensors' exploration, when he detected the charge of their disruptor array.
Raghnill ordered immediately a defense maneuver, and none of the fire directed towards them hit them; however, she did not order to counter attack. For all she knew, her mother was in that ship, and the slightest shot could blow it up.