Star Trek: Defiant

"All For His People" - Part Three

Written by Eric L. Busby

"Like hell we are!" Bridges shouted. He let go of his chair and all but was thrown down to the helm by the bucking ship. Defiant was twisting and turning as it was dragged towards the sun's surface. Gripping the sides of Chad's chair Bridges looked down at the helm controls. Then he looked up in the air, "Daryl I want you to release all control functions now!"

"All system are now free of my control." Daryl said back. Bridges tapped his combadge.

"Captain to engineering." Bridges yelled.

"Bedard here.' The voice of the Bolian chief engineer came back.

"Brian, your systems should have just come back under your control." Bridges said.

"Yes they have sir," Bedard said, "I was just about to report that to you."

"Don't worry about that now," Bridges said, "I want you to give me full warp capacity on my command."

"You'll have it!" Bedard said. Bridges looked down at Chad, "This is going to get ruff. Think you can handle it?"

"I could do it with my eyes shut." Chad responded.

"Good. But I would like you to keep your eyes open. You know, just in case." Bridges said with a smile. He carefully made his way back to his chair. The air was growing hotter by the second. Bridges did not know how much longer they had before Defiant would be destroyed by the suns intense heat. He looked down at his personal control unit.

"You can't be serious," Adam Lebin said, "Your going to go to full warp this close to a star?"

"You have a better idea?" Bridges yelled over the noise of his ship being torn apart.

"But going to warp this close to a star will tear open a wormhole in the fabric of space," Lebin pointed out, "We have no idea what that will do to us. It could destroy the ship."

"Adam we're going to get destroyed if we stay here much longer," Bridges pointed out, "Theres no other way. The impulse engine are not strong enough to pull us free. We have to risk this."

Adam was quiet for a moment and the sounds of the Defiant being pulled apart could be clearly heard. Adam knew the captain was right. There was no other way. If the ship was to survive they would have to risk it. However to date no starship that had ever gone to full warp this close to a star had ever been heard from again. They had all been lost. God only knew what was about to happen to the Defiant.

"Lets do it.' Adam said. He gripped the sides of his chair.

"Bridges to engineering," The Captain said, "Punch it!"

The Defiant's warp engines fired up. And all hell broke loose a second later.

It was nothing like the wormhole near Deep Space Nine. That was a stable controlled environment. The vortex that the starship Defiant now found itself in was chaos given form. A cacophony of sounds, colors, lights, smell, touch, and taste assaulted the crew of the Defiant. It was maddening to endure it. Every second seamed to stretch into hours. Hours seamed to stretch into an eternity.

The energy of the wormhole itself was tearing the Defiant apart at a subatomic level. The ship already weaken by the heat of Bajor's sun was being stripped away. Great hunks of the hull were being torn free. It was as if the ship was flying through a storm of the most corrosive acid. The starboard warp nacelle was literally torn off the Defiant and exploded in the maelstrom of the wormhole. The saucer section bore heavy damage. The front five decks of it were melted away. The eight forward lounge section was disintegrated into nothing in a matter of moments. Five people who had been there lost their lives. Many more died on the other decks. The Defiant began to spin out of control turning end over end throughout the vortex. More and more of the ship was torn away as it went.

It was as if a hole in space was torn open.

A red vortex set against the black backdrop ripped open, and the starship Defiant was vomited out of it. The rift quickly sealed itself behind the starship and vanished as if it had never even been there in the first place. The badly damaged Defiant had been freed. It slowly turning end over end as it drifted in space. On the bridge the lights were flashing as the power faded in and out. Smoke was billowing into the air from a number of burning systems. Bridges pulled himself up from the floor and he saw his own command chair had been torn from its moorings and slammed into the turbo lift doorway. All of his officers laid on the floor with nasty gash to their heads and bodies. Only Chad was still at his station at the helm. He had flown the ship through the storm and out the other side.

"Damage report." He said as he made his way to the environmental system. He wanted to get the air clear of smoke. He had no idea how much damage the Defiant had taken and how many of his crew were hurt... or dead.

Those that could were beginning to pick themselves up from the floor and return to their duty stations. Adam Lebin was one of them. He looked down at his console and shook his head, "Its bad Jeff," The Trill said, "She took one hell of a beating. We have hull breaches on most decks. Deck seven is uninhabitable. All of the power relays exploded and left the deck exposed to vacuum. Anyone down there is gone."

"I was afraid of that," Bridges said. He tapped his combadge, "Captain to sickbay. Rael I got a lot of hurt people up here."

"I got my hands full at the moment Jeff," The voice of Laine Rael said back. It sound as though she was very busy. God only knew how many people had been injured, "I'll try and send someone up as soon as I can. Laine out."

Bridges walked down to the helm, "Any idea were we are Chad?"

"Sensors show we have moved four point two light years from Bajor," Chad said, "We're near Klingon space. Our main guidance and navigation systems are down. We're adrift. The saucer's impulse engines still are on line though, but it does not look like there is anything nearby that we might run into."

"Lets hope it stays that way," Bridges said. He tapped his combadge again, "Bridge to engineering. Brian how are things down there."

In engineering Brian Bedard found he had his hands full. He stood over a console and his hands were flying over the control. Tom Backus, Shellian Renee, and a number of other engineers were racing around the engine room trying as best they could to save the ship. When the warp nacelle had been torn from the ship it caused a massive amount of energy to feed back into the matter/antimatter reaction assembly. If Brian did not shunt the energy someplace out of the ship and fast there would be a core breach very soon. He would have ejected the warp core but those controls had become frozen. His only chance was to divert the feedback.

It was then that Bridges paged him. Brian tapped his badge quickly and got back to work, "Its not good down here captain," He reported, "We lost a nacelle and the whole engine unit is out of control."

"Can you stabilize it?" Bridges voice asked.

"I'm trying." The Bolian said still very intense on his work. Suddenly the coolant tanks on both side of the assembly unit exploded. A cloud of coolant gases began to billow into the engine room like a fog rolling in off the ocean, "Oh shit!" Brian yelled.

"What is it?" Bridges asked.

"We got a massive coolant leak, and I can't shut it down," Brian reported, "We're looking at a warp core breech in less than fifteen minutes."

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