Command Training, Part II

Posted on Sun Jan 18th, 2026 @ 1:41am by Master Chief Petty Officer Vashti Rao & Major Clay McEntyre III

1,268 words; about a 6 minute read

Mission: Peril at the Unification Accords
Location: Holodeck 3, Deck 7
Timeline: MD 10, 0606 Hours

Previously: Command Training, Part I

At the first intersection, she leaned around the bulkhead. The hall beyond was empty--much too empty. Dominion ships were rarely quiet considering there was often a decent complement of Jem'Hadar soldiers aboard.

"We'll pass through Engineering junctions first," she whispered. "If we're lucky, we'll find a secondary plasma conduit. Severing it should drop shield harmonics enough for the Sovereign to punch through."

One of the Marines nodded. Another murmured, "Sound plan, Chief."

She didn't tell them she was guessing. Educated guessing, sure. But still guessing.

A skittering noise snapped her attention forward.

She froze.

Then a blur of shrouding shimmer rippled at the far end of the corridor--Jem'Hadar decloaking. Not one. Three.

"Contact!" a marine shouted.

The marines barely had time to react before the marine who called out the contact was stuck in the chest by the bolt of plasma energy from the squad of Jem’hadar that decloaked. Some of the Marines moved to cover by instinct of training, but some of the newer, younger marines froze. For them, this would be the first time some of them have seen actual combat with an enemy force.

"Find some cover!" Vashti ordered, while reaching down to check on the downed marine. She touched his throat, searching for a pulse but found none. At an awkward crouch, she hopped back behind the slight recess of a door frame where another marine was already providing covering fire.

Clay moved into cover, for the sake of keeping the immersion for the Senior Chief, but remained a passive observer in the simulation but holding his sidearm incase the program got spicy.

One of the youngest privates, no more than 18, fresh out of boot camp looked frozen like a board, shaking nervously, holding his rifle close to his chest like it was a security object.

Vashti pressed herself against the slight recess of the bulkhead, heat from the Jem'Hadar's last volley still warm on her chestplate. The corridor thundered with exchange--Marine phaser rifles spitting out disciplined bursts, Dominion plasma firing back and refusing to quit.

Another two Jem'Hadar shimmered into existence, joining the first three. Five now. Too many for a clean push, Vashti thought. Too disciplined to break formation. And Marines--her holographic Marines--were pinned.

She risked a glance upward.

A fat conduit ran the length of the ceiling, glowing occasionally with plasma translation current. If the Dominion followed the same architecture as the schematics they had briefly studied at the Annex--and she prayed they did--then that line would feed from the starboard reactor nodes. This meant it was pressurized. Which it could blow.

She touched the Marine beside her--a corporal hunched tight behind a strut--and pointed up.

"Corporal," she said over the phaser fire, "see that junction? We need a continuous beam on that spot. Phaser frequency nine-point-seven-three terrahertz should do it. It'll destabilize the insulation matrix."

He blinked at her, surprised at her preciseness in the midst of a firefight. Then he nodded.

"On your mark, Chief."

She lifted her rifle, braced it against her shoulder the way she remembered an instructor once showing her. She felt her pulse jumping from inside her gloves.

"Three," she said.

The Jem'Hadar regrouped in a tight wedge, plasma bolts hammering the corridor, sparks ricocheting off the deck plating near the still form of the young private.

"Two."

She glanced over at Clay who was across from her in his own covering position. She wondered what he saw: an engineer improvising or an inexperienced non-comm wasting time.

Clay observed the fight. The chief in his eyes had a good grasp on combat tactics and formation. Though they were on a timetable as the ship lurched and rocked as the first torpedoes from the Sovereign slammed into the Battleship's shields. Clay stood steady. The same though could not be said of some of the marines as they stumbled and fell to the deck, scrambling to recover as more Jem'Hadar appeared.

They would get bottlenecked if they didn't push forward to the shield generators or engine room.

Vashti stumbled slightly as the ship pitched before righting itself. They needed to move.

"One."

Their rifles fired in twin beams, bright and narrow, hitting the conduit above the Jem'Hadar formation. The metal buckled under the constant heat, glowing cherry-red, then almost white-hot.

At four seconds, it ruptured.

The explosion dropped like a mini collapsing star. Molten shrapnel and superheated plasma cascaded down in a violent spray. The Jem'Hadar didn't have time to cry out. The corridor went eerily silent except for the hiss of vapours and the plinking of cooling metal.

Vashti lowered her rifle, arms trembling from the effort and the fear.

Scanning the Marines, she shouted, "Marines, on me!"

One private knelt beside his fallen comrade--the one struck by the opening shot--already reaching to check for a pulse.

"Leave him," Vashti snapped, startled at the force in her own voice. "We can't help him here. Move."

The young Marine hesitated, a moment of grief splashing across his face behind the visor.

Clay noted that she left a man behind. A big black mark on leadership and the Esprit de Corp that the Marines held dear. He stood, following the group as they moved.

Vashti felt the young Marine's hesitation like it was a vice closing around her own throat. Leave him. She couldn't believe she'd spoken those words.

But there was no time. The deck trembled again--another Sovereign torpedo striking hull plating somewhere fore--and the remaining Jem'Hadar silhouettes at the far end of the smoke were beginning to retreat. Reinforcements--maybe three or four. Tough to say. The simulation was not easing up.

"Move!" she barked, louder now, willing her voice to be the steel she didn't quite feel internally.

The squad lurched forward into motion, like an armoured stampede down the alien corridor. She took point because someone had to, because Clay hadn't stepped in, and because leadership--true leadership--didn't wait for her to feel ready.

Ahead, the corridor forked: one path slanting down toward the core, the other angling toward shield control.

She stopped at the junction and raised a fist, the silent signal she wasn't entirely sure she remembered correctly. The Marines halted behind her. She was breathing heavily and swallowed. Her throat felt raw.

You don't leave people, a voice inside her whispered. Not if you can help it.

She pushed the thought aside. She couldn't fix what she had already done.

"Engineering first," she said, gesturing left. "We don't need to worry about shields once we cut power to the entire ship."

They started down the left corridor.

As the Marines moved down the corridor, the ship shook more. It shook violently, hard, knocking some marines down, some against the bulkheads. The sounds of pitched battle and the clunking marching rushed footsteps of more Jem'Hadar coming down the corridor firing on the marines before they could react.

The pitched hard once more, throwing Vashti, Clay, and the Marines to the deck.

Vashti caught herself on a ribbed support strut, her boots skidding as it scraped metal. Someone went down behind her, a burst of air escaping their lungs. Ahead, the corridor narrowed as it led directly to the double-doors of their engineering compartment. Everything here was low--the ceiling, the angles. There was nowhere to run should the shooting start.

And then it did.


~To Be Continued: Command Training, Part III~

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