Star Trek - TNG - Dominion War 1 - Behind Enemy Lines

by Behind Enemy Lines (lit)

  Would a person who had free will plant himself at the edge of a black hole? Could a sane person look into that opaque abyss every day?

  Picard wasn't surprised when he heard from Ro a few moments later. "Captain," she said breathlessly, "it's true. They're Starfleet, all but one Trill civilian.

  There are seven in all, and a few are wounded. But they're alive." "Make them comfortable," ordered the captain.

  "Send La Forge to Engineering, because we're getting out of here. I'm concerned that the Jem'Hadar may have sent out a distress call. I'm pulling back to maximum torpedo range." Had he more than one torpedo, the captain would have blasted the Cardassian tanker right then and there. But with only one, he had to be content to sneak away to a safe distance and watch the crippled vessel drift closer to its doom. If he ever had to destroy a starship without leaving a trace, now he knew where to bring it. Finally, the ship disappeared like a candle flame being blown out.

  At least they had rescued a handful of prisoners, prisoners who might have a great deal of firsthand intelligence. Most importantly, they had stopped work on the artificial wormhole. Feeling a measure of relief, Picard set course for the Badlands at maximum warp.

  Captain Picard and Ro Laren sat in the mess hall of the Orb of Peace with the three healthiest of the rescued prisoners. Two of them had served aboard the Enterprise, Sam Lavelie and the Vulcan, Taurik-- Picard remembered them as friends of Sito Jaxa. The other man was a Trill scientist named Enrak Grof, who had been captured during the fall of Deep Space Nine.

  After the preliminaries, they got down to important matters. "Have we really managed to deal a serious setback to the enemy's artificial wormhole?" asked Picard.

  Sam, who was still dazed over their rescue, nodded slowly. "I think we have. They can't finish it without the Corzanium you sent back into the hole. Thanks to you, I think we've stopped them." Taurik and Grof looked less convinced. A show of enthusiastic confidence was not expected from the Vulcan, but the Trill's gloomy expression was troubling.

  "What's the matter, Professor Grof?." asked Picard.

  "You don't share Sam's opinion?" The Trill sighed heavily. "I wish I could, but I know something they don't know." He looked glumly at Sam, whose smile slowly melted from his face.

  "Sam, I... I made it sound as if we were the only team sent to extract Corzanium, but that isn't true. At least one other team of Cardassians was sent secretly to another black hole. I fully expected us to be the ones who succeeded when they failed." "Why am I not surprsied?" muttered Sam, rising to his feet. "Just one more lie you had to tell us, huh, Grof?." "Come on." The Trill scowled. "You didn't expect the Dominion to put all their eggs in one basket. We were an important experiment, but they were prepared for our failure... or attempted escape." Ro Laren slumped back in her chair. "So what you're saying is--we've still got to take out that verteron collider." Grof nodded wearily. "Yes, it's a shame, too, because it's a triumph of engineering and construction.

  It would have worked." "It will work, if we don't destroy it," concluded Taurik. "The Dominion has the resources and the resolve to complete the work. Before the accident which necessitated our mission, I believe they were nearly ready to begin tests." "And they'll probably use prisoners for that," said Sam gloomily.

  Tight-lipped, Picard turned to Ro and said, "Put the subspace beacon away. We're not going home for a while." Boredom was an abstract term to an android, but Data knew very well what it meant: the absence of something to do. He had a duty, of course-- monitoring the scanner array he had set up on the barren moonrebut it required less than one percent of his attention. Staring at the starlit sky had never impressed him as being an entertaining activity, as it was for many humanoids, but he found himself doing just that for hour after hour.

  Finally, in the interest of experimentation, Data turned on his emotion chip. At once, a shock wave of worry, fear, guilt, and war sickness slammed into him, making him feel more despondent than he had ever felt in his entire existence. The horror, tragedy, and destruction of the war was too much to contemplate, even for his positronic brain, and Data could only stare at the dust at his feet. He fretted over his lost comrades, all of whom were afraid, lonely, grieving, and bored.

  Realizing it had been a mistake to activate his emotion chip, Data reluctantly turned it off. After returning to normal, he still felt weakened and sobered by the assault of heartrending emotions. Now Data had an interesting question to contemplate as he sat on his barren outpost: How did humans and other sensitive races deal with war, knowing its horrors?

  How could they possibly maintain their sanity?

  The End