Danny Amor's Online Library/Danny Amor's Online Library - Volume 1.iso/html/startrek/incomplete/bajorsglory.ch1

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Subject: Story:  Bajor's Glory, Ch. 1 (.txt)
Date: 22 Jan 1995 23:19:57 -0500
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[Author's note:  to format, italicize everything between * * marks.]


Bajor's Glory
A Ro Laren Story



Chapter 1:  Under Fire

     "Where the hell are they, Neira?!!" Ro Laren cried, not
really expecting an answer from her copilot.  Playing hide-and-
seek inside an asteroid belt with a Cardassian Galor-class cruiser
wasn't something she would recommend as a recreational activity
anyway.  Doing it with half-blind sensors, failing shields, one
dead engine and a cockpit rapidly filling with smoke was downright
dangerous.  She'd used all the tactics she knew to keep herself
alive, but now she was running out of tricks, and the Cardassians
were still out there somewhere.
     Ro resisted the urge to slam her fists down on the control
console.  This was supposed to have a simple mission--that's what
Whistler had said.  Just rendezvous with a Lyserian freighter on
the edge of the Badlands and pick up a supply of portable phaser
re-energizer packs.  In and out--twenty hours, tops.  No mention
of a Cardassian cruiser waiting to unceremoniously blow the
Lyserians into oblivion.  No mention of having to make a desperate
run for the Ginaera system's asteroid belt--the closest possible
cover--under Cardassian fire, outgunned and outshielded 15-to-1.
Ro laughed bitterly to herself.  The good stuff never gets
mentioned beforehand.
     "Neira!" she yelled again, desperation creeping into her
voice.  "Come on!  You've got to give me *something!"*  Behind
her, Neira was coughing, trying to keep from choking on the smoke-
laden air.  The ship's fire-suppresion systems were stubbornly
battling against the plasma fire which was raging in the port
engine.  Somewhere back amidships Jilor and Ras lay dead from the
Cardassian phasers that had mauled the tiny scoutship.  *I don't
give up,* she thought, a mantra inside her head.  *I've got to get
us out of this.*  The control panels began to flicker under her
hands, send a new wave of despair through her.  If she couldn't
control the ship, they'd be as good as dead, sitting here waiting
for the final shot...
     "I can't see anything!" Neira shouted back through the haze.
Ro didn't know if that meant that she couldn't find the Cardassian
ship with the damaged sensors, or that she couldn't see the
screen.  Truthfully, it didn't matter.  The best that seeing it
could mean would be that they would get a few seconds warning
before it finished them off.
     And then suddenly it really *didn't* matter, as Ro guided the
scoutship around the rim of the asteroid behind which they'd been
hiding, and received the greatest shock she could remember.
There it was, right in front of her, a hulking golden shape that
seemed to fill her entire field of vision.  If she'd been going
any faster she would have plowed her ship right into its engine
pod; only training and split-second instincts stopped her from
thrusting out as fast as the remaining impulse engine could take
her.  *Something's wrong,* she thought an instant later, *we're
too close.*  The scoutship was less than a hundred meters from the
cruiser's aft section.  *We should've bounced off their deflector
shields.*  There was a fluctuating shimmer around the Cardassian
ship that Ro's mind refused to process for a moment--and then the
shock of realization flooded her body with adrenalin.  *Their aft
shields are down!  They've diverted power to their forward
shields!*  For what seemed like an eternity Ro was frozen in her
seat, stunned at the enormity of the situation.  *Prophets, I
could--*
     "Photons!  PHOTONS!!!" she screamed, diving across the
cockpit and groping for the firing controls.  She slammed her hand
down on the controls frantically, without waiting for a firing
lock--she couldn't miss at this range.  If only the fire control
system still worked, if the torpedoes were still loaded in their
bays.  She found the firing pad.
Nothing happened.
     *Oh, no...*  She stabbed at the control again, and again,
tears welling in her eyes.  *Oh, please, please....*
     And then two brilliant blue-white balls of light leapt from
the scoutship and slammed straight into the Cardassian ship's
unprotected engines.  The first ripped through the hull just above
the glowing field coil assembly, rending open a gaping wound and
exposing the engineering section to vacuum.  A quarter-second
later the second torpedo followed the first, detonating inside the
ship itself, vaporizing large sections of the engines and
destabilizing the Cardassian's warp core.
     *Oops,* Ro thought, seeing the telltale flashes of an
impending warp core breach.  Flying almost blind, she backed the
ship behind one of the larger asteroids and did her best to coax
the scoutship's damaged computers into pouring whatever power was
left into the shields.  A second later an impossibly brilliant
flash illuminated the asteroid belt all around, and the tiny ship
rocked violently.  Ro was thrown from her seat, thereby missing
the spectacle of seeing the billion-ton rock she'd been hiding
behind break apart like it had been hit by some cosmic pick.
Debris smashed against the ship's shields, worsening the pounding.
Ro lay on the cockpit floor, curled in a fetal position, thinking
that at least she'd taken the damned Cardassians with her.
     And it was over, as quickly as it had begun.  An unnatural
calm settled over the ship, broken only by the dull roar of the
fire in the aft compartment and the crackling of fried circuitry
all around.  After a few moments, Ro gingerly pulled herself up to
a sitting position, checking to make sure nothing was broken.
Looking across the compartment, she saw Neira slumped against the
bulkhead--her head lolled at an angle that made it clear her neck
had snapped in the thrashing.  Fresh tears blurred Ro's vision.
Neira had been something special, a young idealist from Earth who
had come to the Zone in protest of Federation policy there.  She
didn't deserve this.  None of them did.  And now she was the only
one left.
     *Like I'm going to live much longer.  I'm stuck in an
asteroid belt in the middle of nowhere in a wrecked ship.*  Of
course, it was possible that the antimatter explosion had been
noticed.  In that case, she'd be picked up by Starfleet and
promptly court-martialed--unless the Cardassians found her first,
in which case, if she was lucky, she'd just be shot.
Stiff and sore, she laboriously dragged herself back into the
pilot's seat.  First, she had to get out of here.  She could try
to make it to the Jez'nami Nebula, which was actually inside the
Badlands.  Then she could eject herself in the evac pod and try to
send a distress signal to the Marquis.  It was the longest of long
shots, but it was better than sitting around doing nothing,
something Ro had never been good at.  Testing the flickering helm
panel, she discovered with some surprise that the remaining
impulse engine would actually fire at about six percent power.
Having resolved that basic issue, Ro finally bothered to look
outside and see what she'd done.
     The Cardassian ship's destruction had devastated this section
of the belt.  A heavy fog shrouded everything, the after-energy
signature of the detonation, but it would fade fast, and she could
already tell that there wasn't much left to see.  *This is
definitely going to be noticed,* she thought glumly, resolving
again to get the hell away as fast as the ship could limp.  On the
other hand, she'd managed to blast open a wide clear zone, so she
wouldn't have to worry about pulverizing herself against an
asteroid.  Apparently the only one in the area to have survived
was a good-sized planetoid, almost a small moon, which lay almost
directly between her and the nebula, and which was certainly too
big for her to accidentally hit, even though it was veiled by the
haze.  Delicately handling the flickering controls, she nudged the
ship in that direction, accelerating slowly to avoid any more
stress damage.
     *Of course,* she realized, *the Cardassians were facing that
asteroid because they thought we were hiding behind it.  They just
picked the biggest target to start looking.*  But she couldn't
help wondering about the shields.  The Cardassians had diverted
all power to their forward shields--why?  There was no way their
remaining photon torpedoes couldn't have dented them; if they'd
just stayed with their normal shield configuration, they wouldn't
have been destroyed.  *And I'd be dead.*  She felt stupid
wondering about it.  So they made a mistake and they died for it-
end of story.
     The energy residue from the explosion was fading fast.  Ro
hoped that neither Starfleet nor the Cardassians had ships passing
nearby.  She'd need at least twelve hours to get to the fringe of
the nebula, if the engine held together.  She would also have to
break out a life mask; the air in the cabin was almost
unbreathable.  Poking her head under the console, she snapped open
the emergency compartment and pulled out one of the lightweight
plastic masks, strapping it to her face and activating it.  Cool,
refreshed air flooded her lungs, a shock after the smoky
atmosphere of the cabin, and Ro had to fight to keep from
hyperventilating.  In a few seconds the lightheadedness passed,
and she righted herself in the seat.  That was when she received
the biggest shock of all, one that made all the others before it
seem like nothing.  And she realized that the Cardassians hadn't
made a mistake after all.
     Because the planetoid wasn't a planetoid.
     It was a ship.
     Ro was staggered by the enormity of it.  It was *huge!*  Far
bigger than a starbase, all sleek ovaloid lines, even where
various pods were attached.  Everything about it suggested grace
and elegance, as if it had been built by people who placed art on
an equal footing with science.
     It was also adrift, she saw immediately.  The Cardassians
probably hadn't cared, figuring that anything that big couldn't
*not* be a threat.  *If a were a Cardassian and I came face to
face with that, I might be scared out of my wits, too.*
Cautiously, she edged her tiny ship closer.  It was almost
completely clear now; she could see that all of the ports on the
derelict ship were dark, as were any navigation lights or other
subsystems.  Still, there was something, some kind
of...*aura*...about it that made it seem like it only sleeping,
and might awake any second.
     And there was something else, tugging at the back of her
mind, one of those little things that keep you awake at night.
Ro, almost face-to-face with the derelict now, started to move off
to the side, intending to circumnavigate the mystery ship at least
once before heading for the nebula...and then the thought came
into full view, and she learned that the Prophets had at least one
more heart-rending shock for her.
     *No...it can't be.  It just CAN'T be!*  But it was, and she
knew it.  She'd known from the instant she'd seen it, even if her
conscious mind had refused to see it.  Stories and legends,
conveyed in her father's gentle voice, came flooding back to her
memory.  Some small, hopelessly drowning part of her still refused
to face it, but now she was passing to the side of the great
central ovaloid pod, and the strong black calligraphy that appeared
washed away any remaining dissent.
    Dazedly, without even realizing that she was doing it, Ro
backed her ship away, so she could see the whole name of the
derelict ship at once.  *I'm going to have a heart attack if
things like this don't stop happening,* a tiny, rational part of
her mind said.  But nothing could stop her heart from pounding as
she gazed upon the graceful, kilometer-high lettering.
     *Ch'ye-eah nn'Bajor,* it read.  *Bajor's Glory.*


[end Chapter 1]