Tranquility Press

One Day In A Very Long Dominion War

“A Bad Day is a Bad Day to the End.” – Legate Damar, 10th March 2375.

Stardate 52194 – the 15th of March 2375 – was just one day in the titanic galactic struggle that was the Dominion War. The fate of the galaxy was not at stake on that day; and yet, trillions across three quadrants and a thousand-score star systems were involved in the delivery of victory – or defeat. The war machine of the Khitomer powers was in top gear, but victory was still far from certain. One Day in A Very Long Dominion War is a project to describe the Dominion War from all fronts in both Allied and Dominion forces; Fleet Admiral or Uhlan; Founder or Chancellor; partisan or munitions worker – just as they saw it on the 11th of March 2375, without hindsight, only with clouded or partial foresight.

Among the set-piece actions of the day are the fierce fighting on and around Chin’Toka, the brutal occupation of Betazed, the retreat of Dominion forces from Benzar, frustrated raiders in the Badlands, savage Klingon attacks on Cardassian colonies and the highly secret Project Prometheus. We also go behind the front lines where civilians are caught up in advancing fleets and armies, where infantry replacements await their first combat. xB “code-talkers” are in training, while Bajoran Partisans wage guerilla war in the former DMZ, and the Dominion plots to turn the war back in their favour. By setting just one day under the historical microscope, a pitiless tragedy is rendered with heart-rending clarity – by you!

One Day in A Very Long Dominion War is Tranquility’s Press’s first mid-length writing contest. We are asking for pieces on events around the galaxy on the 11th of March 2375 – the same day as the baseball match between DS9’s “Niners” and USS T’Kumbra’s “Logicians”. The rules are simple: you can talk about anyone, any group, anything in the galaxy that has been altered by the titanic struggle of liberty against the Dominion: except Primary cast members from any Trek show. We don’t want to know what Jean-Luc Picard or Katherine Janeway were up to, we want you to tell us a story we haven’t heard before. We want to know about Federation reservists on the ground on Chin’Toka, convoy duty near Minos Korva, or new Romulan fleets working up behind the neutral zone. 

We encourage you to consider stories beyond the front line, Starship crews, Marine Raiders, and Klingon Warriors. One Day in A Very Long Dominion War should be about the people’s war too; the Federation factory worker, the Cardassian civilian, the Romulan intelligence attache.

Each story should be between 1500 and 3500 words.

DEADLINE IS THE 31ST OF AUGUST 2025.

SIGN UP HERE!

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The top prize will include Commissioned Art based on your story and exclusive Tranquility Press merchandise. The top entries will be compiled and published through Tranquility Press.

Fighting On All Fronts: The Galaxy in March 2375

“Victory in the Alpha Quadrant is both distant and unreachable, and frustratingly close.” – Min Zife, March 10th 2375

The Chin’toka Front has, despite rapid successes in late 2374, ground to a halt. Despite control of many surrounding systems, the ground fighting on Chin’Toka and the other industrial planets has ground to a complete halt. Cardassian and Jem Hadar soldiers are fighting for every inch of valuable ground, trying to deny the vital port facilities and industrial zones of the planet to the forces of the United Powers. Both Klingon shock troops and Federation Marines have struggled to make headway beyond their main landing zones in the face of fierce counterattack and dogged defence. Amongst Federation troops, casualties are reaching dangerously high levels: even Klingon commanders are starting to show concern at the cost of every mile taken on the march to the final Dominion redoubts.

Despite the size of the Allied blockade, keeping the noose closed around Chin’Toka continues to be difficult: the presence of several large Dominion Strike Groups in the region keeps Martok’s “Grand Fleet” on its toes – as does the infamous “Marratt Express”, the name for the regular high-speed troop convoys that evade the blockade to make landfall on the planet.

Across the rest of the region, the allied consolidation continues. While ground fighting continues on many planets in the former DMZ, there have been few major fleet actions in this region since the first battle of Chin’Toka. The main threat to the allies at this stage is commerce raiding: the Jem Hadar “Scarab” fighter remains a dangerous threat to the merchant navy despite countermeasures. 

The Bajor Front has become a quiet front: the vital port of Deep Space Nine is now reduced to one of many staging posts in the build-up for Operation Acrobat – the allied invasion of the Cardassian sector. With Ross and the bulk of allied forces shifted towards Chin’Toka for now, the bulk of forces here are second-line Starfleet, Klingon and Bajorans, holding the line against the rumps of several Cardassian Orders that have yet to recover from Operation Return. Both sides continue to explore through the Badlands, looking for a way to slip commerce raiders through, but little progress has been made; Allied Command remains anxious about provoking a serious enemy operation that might jeopardise the building up. Coreward of the sector, both the Klingons and Romulans press relentlessly into Cardassian colonial space, cutting trade lanes with the Tzenkenthi, Ferengi and Breen. This is a brutal war of massacre and orbital bombardment, without the rules of conduct the Federation has desperately tried to keep it’s allies too. 

The Benzar Front is more of a miserable, grinding “mop-up” operation now than a real front. With the entry of the Romulans into the war and the liberation of Benzar itself by a combined Romulan-Federation force in November 2374, the isolated Dominion fleet in the region retreated towards Dessica for a brutal last stand against the 18th Fleet and the Romulan  Advanced Strike Fleet (Cheron).

Liberated Benzar remains an issue, however. With no provisional government in place to replace the administration, the Dominion had executed, control of the planet fell to Allied Emergency Government Benzar (AEGBEN). This organisation, however, has little control of the situation on the ground, where ongoing crises threaten to spill over into sentientarian disasters. In the long term, both liberated Benzites and AEGBEN are increasingly concerned with their erstwhile allies from Romulus. With millions of Reman shocks troops now housed on the planet and increasing numbers of Romulan vessels in orbit, questions remain about when – and how – a new Benzite government might ask their gallant Rhiannsu allies to go home.

Federation forces are four days into a new offensive on The Vulcan Front. For the second time in four months, Starfleet is attempting to break the Dominion lines between Argolis and Quam and open to road to Betazed. Many of the forces here include assets withdrawn from the Bajor and Badland fronts, including Admiral Jellico’s 14th Fleet. On March 10th, Federation Ground Forces made landfall on Capella VI, clearing the way for Jellico to begin rolling the left flank of the Dominion position – if he can move his forces in time.  Yet, on Occupied Betazed, these fleets might as well be in the Delta Quadrant. Billions still live under the boot of the Jem’Hadar and the Cardassian, numbed by anti-telepathy networks and subject to arbitrary and regular violence, abuse and execution. 150,000 are dead already; millions more are in captivity, either as prisoners of war or forced labourers. The planet of peace has been transformed into a planet of fear. Any stranger may be a changeling in disguise, or worse: a collaborator. There are still glimmers of hope: Lwaxana Troi’s Provisional Government and the “Holy Rings” resistance cells remain at large, sabotaging supply lines, planting bombs and making life difficult for the occupying forces. Supplied through disguised couriers – and, finally, cloaked Klingon scouts – the resistance is still fighting in the shadows, for now. 

Life for the Cardassian People is equally grim at present, too. Early victories and triumphs had captured a population that had been worn away by decades of stagnation. For a moment it appeared that Dukat’s dreams would come true; that a “Final Order” would see Cardassia stretch as far as Orion – but now, that dream is as dead as the Tyrant who conjured it. The conquests of 2373 and 74 have all but been lost; the ships that demolished Nechayev’s Fleet have been equally annihilated. And now, enemy fleets and armies descend on Cardassian colonies from Chin’Toka to Kavaria. Even at home, the dream has turned sour. Too many late nights are shattered by the wails of parents whose children are not coming home; too many early mornings are broken by the police raid and the removal of “subversives.” Even that word has changed. Traitors were never hung in the street during the height of the Obsidian Order: the myth of civility that sustained the golden age of Cardassia is gone. Now there is only fear, the ration book, and the conscription gang. 

Three things are increasingly clear to the Cardassian people. First – they are losing the war. Second – they are no longer leading the war. Third, and most frighteningly, it is increasingly unclear as to whether they are allies or subjects of the Dominion. The streets of Cardassia Prime are increasingly full of Jem’Hadar. Legate Damar – drunk, despondent and apathetic – seems to have no qualms about letting the Vortas take control of the Cardassian state, enacting typical Dominion brutality on their “allies”. Within the military, both at home and abroad, tensions continue to grow. Yet, even if the rumours that the founders have found a newer, more compliant ally somewhere else in the Alpha Quadrant are true, it would take a lot for the Cardassian people to turn their back on their oaths, and their nation. 

If Cardassia is to die, it intends to die gloriously.

The Federation is in an equally odd state. The last eighteen months of war have altered the social contract of the union completely. For the first time in its history, the galaxy’s largest democracy has mobilised for war. Billions of lives are now working towards the achievement of one goal – total victory against the Dominion. Over 20% of effective labour hours are now directed towards war production of some kind: ship construction, arms manufacturing, engineering or other war work. For many people engaged in these industries, this is the first time in their lives that they have had a regular work schedule. Yet the war remains distant, remembered only in nightly news reports, letters from the front and the holes left by those who have not returned.

On the frontier, the war has changed everything. With civil transport down to a minimum, life has become a question of collective needs and individual sacrifice. Energy and consumable rationing continues to bite nine months after its introduction. Dominion raiding remains a threat, even in larger colonies like New Efros and Vanderbilt. Civil Defence and Home Guard organisations remain on high tempo, despite concerns from pacifist elements about an “armed populace”. 

The war has also strained Federation politics. Though the collapse expected by the Dominion (and domestic pessimists) has not materialised, the utopian coalition of the UFP has suffered under the weight of interplanetary mobilisation and the prospect of a long, total war. The foundational principles of the Federation Social Contract – Liberty, Equality, Autonomy and Prosperity – have been repeatedly challenged by the demands of the war effort. Wedges have been driven between the militant pacificists of Argelius & Vulcan, and the pro-war societies of Andoria & Acturus. Even Min Zife’s war cabinet is starting to lose its cohesion, as the economic aid delivered under the KLEG (Klingon Logistical and Economic Guarantees) treaty continues to grow to extraordinary proportions. As allied planers on Janus VI plot the occupation of Cardassia – and mull the implications of taking the war to the Gamma Quadrant – the question remains: how long can you keep a democracy at war?

There are still thousands – if not millions – of stories to be told at and beyond the fronts, in the halls of power, in the factories and shipyards, in homes across Federation, Empire & Dominion, and all of them have something to add to this One Day in a Very Long Dominion War.