Every one finally made it back to their stations, but the ship was still shaking violently.

"Bridge, our warp cores are acting like magnets to that subspace tear," Kalia shouted. "It isn't coming towards us because there are so many other ships around it, but we can't break free from it!"

"Can we engage our warp engines," Chris shouted in reply.

"Negative," Kalia replied. "Not this close!"

"Helm, full impulse!" Chris shouted. Sarah's hand suddenly grabbed Chris's and squeezed. No doubt she was just as frightened as Chris was at the moment. "Full power to aft thrusters!"

The engines began to drone in distress, as well as the structural integrity field.

Finally, after a few moments, James replied, "It's no good, we can't break free!"

"Captain, it's taking out what's left of our fleet!" Perkins shouted.

"Suggestions!" Chris shouted in reply.

"We could eject one of our cores and detonate it by the tear," Kalia shouted over the comm channel. "It's what the Enterprise did during the Briar Patch incident!"

Chris thought for a moment. It might be the only hope of saving the small fleet of Hintaru ships left, as well as the Dragon.

"Do it!" Chris shouted. "Dump the Beta core!"

"Aye sir, dumping the core…now!"

Suddenly, the core from the stardrive section flew out behind the Dragon. A few more Hintaru ships were destroyed while the core neared the subspace tear.

The Dragon itself started to move closer to the tear as the power on the ships was cut marginally by the absence of one of the warp cores.

Finally, the core reached the tear. "Detonate!"

Suddenly, another large explosion occurred. Right before the Dragon was thrown through space yet again, Chris saw that the sub-space tear close.

A second later, he and the rest of the crew were thrown from their stations to various parts of the ship. Chris saw Sarah land next to him a split second before he lost consciousness.



"The subspace tear closed!" Comaria yelled with enthusiasm. "The Dragon did it!"

Piarn slumped in the command chair and sighed, obvious relief washing over him. How ever, there was one other problem.

"How much of the fleet did we lose," he asked.

There was a moment of silence before Comaria looked to Piarn. She had a look of horror on her face. "We lost over seventy-seven percent of the fleet in this battle," she stated. "And it looks like we lost the Dragon."

"WHAT?!" It was all Piarn could manage from his mouth. He felt partially guilty for what happened to the Dragon. Now, no one in their galaxy would ever hear from the Dragon again…

Piarn stood up and walked closer to the view screen…at the place where the subspace tear had been. Now with the Dragon gone, he felt even more lost. Would they ever win this war? It was merely the second battle, and already the Vorkalai had a major upper hand. Indeed, this battle did determine who would have the upper hand in this war. Unfortunately, the upper hand was rewarded to the Vorkalai.

"Signal Alliance HQ," Piarn ordered. "Tell them we've lost the Dragon and the battle. We are falling back to the defense base and hope to hold the Vorkalai off…"



Science Officer's log: Supplemental.

No one knows what's happened. After the shock wave hit our ship, almost every one was knocked unconscious. Most were injured. I am the only remaining senior officer conscious and totally uninjured. Most of the medical systems were damaged, and for some reason, despite the fact that the sensors are only partially damaged, no sensors of any kind, except, for some odd reason, medical tricordors, are working. This has already caused much death, and those engineers not injured, which is only about twenty, are working to restore life support and our medical systems.



Tom was now walking along the rows of injured people in sick bay.

He had never liked this war since the beginning. He had always been a peace loving person, which is why he chose to be a science officer. That and the fact that he was a natural at science.

He then came to Ada's bio-bed. He stared at her beautiful face… Over the past two and a half months, he had become attracted to her. She was a very strong person, yet indeed she was the opposite of what Tom was. She was a warrior, and that strength was something Tom was missing.

He was never very active, always wanting to stay on the ship where, until coming aboard the Dragon, was the safest place during a mission. Now, seemingly no matter where he was, he was always in great danger.

Now it had put her life in danger. She was in critical condition, but as there were no medical methods for saving her at moment, there was nothing any one could do.

The LMH was the only medical officer who seemed to be watching her bio-readings.

Tom moved next to the doctor and asked, "How is she, doctor?"

The hologram looked to Tom and replied, "Still in critical condition. Unless we can find a way to regenerate her nerves, she's not going to survive. The only thing we can do right now is prevent her nervous system from deteriorating any further than it already has. And even that won't last long."

Tom nodded solemnly and said, "Keep her alive."

"I'll try," the LMH replied.

"Captain!" Tom heard the EMH say in a surprised tone. Tom looked over to see Chris was just waking up.

Tom walked over to Chris's bio-bed. Chris looked at Tom, his right hand rubbing his temple. "What happened?"

"I think we closed the subspace tear," Tom replied.

Chris looked at him with a concerned face. "You THINK?"

Tom sighed. "Yes. Right now, I THINK we are in subspace. My theory is that the subspace tear was creating smaller tears through out the area. The shock wave that hit us when it closed could have pushed us into a larger tear, and now we are stuck."

Chris sighed. "Tell me more…"