As Chris put his communicator on, another voice came over the comm system. “Halkrat to Harriman. Sorry to bother you Captain, but I’ve discovered something interesting…”



“I was looking through the computer at some records when I came upon a record of forty Jem Hadar advanced warships that came from seemingly no where and destroyed Deep Space Nine,” the ship’s science officer, Lieutenant Commander Thomas Halkrat, said.

Sarah, Chris and Tom were on the bridge at the computer station, looking over the record, which included pictures taken by the one ship that survived that battle.

“Yes, we all know the story,” Chris said. DS9 was barely holding when four federation ships arrived at the scene. Only one ship survived out of the total combined ships…the Defiant, as well as escape pods from the Enterprise. “What’s your point, Tom?”

“Well, there was an encrypted part of the document that has Orion security clearance only,” Tom said. This surprised Chris in that only an Admiral could access these files.

“Computer,” Chris began. “Is it possible for a captain to access files under lockout Orion under certain situations?”

“Affirmative,” the familiar female voice responded. “Only under extreme emergencies or when a ship may be stranded and no admiral could ever be present to unlock the file.”

“I think that applies to this situation,” Chris said.

“Affirmative,” the computer replied.

“Then computer, open the locked file in the battle of DS9 on stardate 50143.2,” Chris ordered. “Authorization: Harriman 22 Beta Gamma.”

After a moment, the computer stated, “Confirmed, file is now unlocked.” Suddenly a whole new file opened itself, showing pictures of the forty warships while in warp. Under the picture were the words ‘Taken by USS Furious NX-80165 under the command of Captain Eric Sanders. Destroyed when warships discovered the USS Furious was following them.’

Chris then began to read the file. It said:

According to the only surviving crew member of the USS Furious, Ensign T’ranna Marel (ship’s science officer), the USS Furious was on an intercept course with some temporal anomaly when it noticed about forty ships traveling at high warp away from the anomaly. They went to take a closer look and discovered they were advanced Jem Hadar warships. The Furious was discovered and had to hide in a nebula. The warships then continued on, leaving the Furious behind.

Lieutenant Commander Hannah Bates (ship’s chief engineer) suggested a modification to the shields that, at least for some time, would allow the Furious to follow the warships with out being detected. Captain Sanders agreed and modifications were made immediately. The Furious caught up to the fleet and recorded some pictures. They discovered that the fleet was heading for Deep Space Nine (under command of Captain Benjamin Sisko). Captain Sanders ordered Ensign Marel to take a Danube class Runabout with the information that had been recorded and head for the nearest outpost. Ensign Marel at first resisted, but then Captain Sanders insisted and, due to the circumstances, was forced to threaten Marel with charges of insubordination. He ordered her to try to contact the nearest ship.

In the words of Captain Sanders: “We have to try to slow the warships down so that other ships can reach DS9 in time.” It was later discovered that not long after Ensign Marel left, the warships detected the Furious and made short work of her.

The warships then reached Deep Space Nine and began to bombard her. The following ships reached Deep Space Nine: USS Enterprise-E, USS Intrepid, USS Galaxy, USS Paris. During the battle the USS Intrepid and the USS Galaxy were destroyed. The Enterprise was forced to ram a warship that had set a collision course with DS9. Escape pods were launched, and surprisingly, left alone by the warships. The USS Paris was destroyed when four of the warships collided with her. After Deep Space Nine was destroyed, the USS Defiant was forced to use her barely functioning cloak and made it to Bajor. The 35 warships that survived were seen several times during the war and caused the destruction of many ships, outposts, etc. The remainder were destroyed during the Great Battle of Betazed.

Ensign Marel believes that these forty ships came from the future, sent by the Dominion to change the tides of the war. The USS Paris (USS Europa renamed USS Paris in honor of USS Paris’s destruction at The Battle of DS9) was sent to the future to try to stop this from happening, but was never heard from again.

Chris looked at Sarah with a surprised look upon his face. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking,” Sarah asked.

Chris nodded as he replied, “The Battle of DS9 was never supposed to have even happened!”

“Captain, we’re approaching that M class planet,” Lieutenant James Trikal, the ship’s primary helmsman, stated.