Star Trek: Defiant

"The Federation Strikes Back" - Part Ten

Written by Daniel Clark

Doctor Laine Rael stared down at the broken and burned body which had once been her friend Myah Wolfrom. She was about to turn away from the corpse when the nurse who had been running the final scan said, "Doctor! I just picked up some residual brain activity."

Dr. Laine leaped into action, "All right, then lets get to work. Serrin, prepare the operating room. John, establish a sterile field and prep her for surgery. I’m going to check on the other doctors and will meet you in there in two minutes."

The Defiant chief medical officer walked away from her friend, took a deep breath, and sought out Julian Bashir. She finally found him cordically stimulating a Middy for engineering. "Julian, I have to go into surgery. A potpourri of nerve and vital organ damage. I’ll be in there for a while. Can you take over triage, while Dr. Crusher is roaming the ship?"

Bashir nodded his head, but never took his eyes off the crewman he was trying to resurrect. Laine turned on her heal and as she walked picked up her surgical garb. She threw the sterile clothes on and walked into the operating room. She took a deep sign and began to issue commands to her surgical team.

"Here’s the plan. First we start artificial respiration, then we get her brain working. Then we fix her autonomous respiration and cardiovascular. Finally we fix the life threatening damage. We’ll worry about the cosmetic stuff later. Okay? Hook up the respirator, and then start giving here cortical stimulation at 125."

Captain Jeffrey Bridges watched with pleasure as the last nanite ship decisively blew up. It had been a quantum torpedo from his own ship that had been the final blow, although the majority of the damage had been done by the prototype Defiant. It was tie to assess the damage, "Status report."

Commander Kliemann swung from the ops seat which he still occupied. "Captain, the ship is heavily damaged. Decks 4-5, 8-12, and 14-16 are uninhabitable and exposed to space. Decks 2-3, 7, 13, and 20 all have hull breaches. 25 crew members are still unaccounted for, add that to the 65 crew we know are dead. There are over two hundred casualties. The good news is that the engines did not suffer and major damage. The structural integrity field is still intact; so we can go to warp. Last reports from Barak are that although four of his shields overloaded the cloaking device is fully operational."

The Captain tuned to Matute, who looked like she had spent the last three hours sipping tea and not facing down an armada. "Weapons status?"

"The phasers are pretty much burned out. We’re going to have to replace the focus assembly before we fire another shot, but aside from that they are fine. The problem is the torpedoes, we’re down to our last five quantum torpedoes. Shields are a mess. Forward shields are gone. Fore port and starboard shields are at 15 and 12 percent respectively. Aft port and starboard shields are at 51 and 42 percent respectively. Aft shields are off but the generators can still be fired up to 100 percent."

Bridges turned to K’larn, "How goes our mission?"

K’larn looked up briefly, then back down at his console, "One moment, sir." He waited a few seconds, then hit a key. "Captain, the last atmospheric torpedoes is off and will detonate in the atmosphere in thirty seconds. We can start transmission after that."

A broad smile came across Bridges face, "Excellent! Hail the Defiant, start the transmission and engage the cloaking device." The rubble of the last nanite ship was quickly replaced by Captain Benjamin Sisko’s beaming face. "Captain, its good to see you in one piece."

"Thanks to you. To say you were timely is an understatement."

Sisko smiled at the Captain’s weak attempt at humour. "Well, Admiral Picard ordered me to be your backup about ten minutes after you left. We would have been here sooner but your ship is significantly faster than mine, and it took us a while to catch up. Besides, you have my doctor on board, and you know how hard it is to break in a new doctor."

Bridges laughed in spite of himself. "At last report your doctor was fine, and was assisting in the medical efforts in our sickbay. Captain, we’re in pretty bad shape, we have to stay in orbit around Riza for a while longer to finish the mission. Unfortunately aside from our cloak we’ve lost our ability to defend ourselves. I hope you’ll stick around?"

Sisko nodded, "Our orders are to follow you back to Deep Space Nine when your mission has been successfully completed. So as to run interference for you we’ll cloak too and position ourselves a million kilometres out to intercept any bad guys who come a-calling."

"Agreed. Thank you, Captain."

Dr. Laine slowly walked out of the operating room. Fatigue leeched out of every pore in her body. She stumbled across to her office and sank gratefully into her chair. Upon seeing her Dr. Bashir and Dr. Crusher followed her. The battle was long over, the ship was cloaked, her mission continued, and the repair effort began.

Bashir started the traditional medical complaint fest, "I haven’t been this tired since I worked a field hospital during a Klingon raid. I think my body from the waist down has been asleep for the last hour."

"Hah," Crusher continued, "I’m so tired I could sleep through a Klingon opera. The one about Kahless and one of his battles."

Laine piped in, "They’re all about Kahless."

Bashir continued, "And they’re all about his battles."

Laine took her turn, "I’m so tired if Leonard McCoy walked through that door I would tell him to go to hell, because I was going to take a nap."

Crusher smiled, "Damn, you are tired."

It was time to get back to work. Laine sat up, and asked for a status report. Bashir responded, "All surgical cases have been triaged and are all stable. I’ve set up a surgical schedule for tomorrow. We’ll have three punctured lungs, four cardio-malphesions, two brain de-polarization’s both of whom have been repolarized but still need to have the damage repaired. There are also fourteen limb reattachments. The limbs have been found and are now in stasis."

Crusher took over, "I treated 85 crew members throughout the ship with a assortment of minor injuries and damage. I found ten critical cases who were evacuated to sickbay and I assume were treated by Julian. Oh how did your case go, the immediate surgical one?"

"She’ll pull through. I was in there for four hours putting her back together again. Not to mention sometime in the next week she is going to need some major cosmetic surgery. Otherwise Lieutenant Commander Miriah Wolfrom will be fine."

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