Good luck at the utter nastiness and horror of warfare, and how battlefield triage sometimes stimulates impressive creativity. The play on Hephaestic versus Hippocratic was good (e. g. Vulcan, the forge, the heat but also a kind of a perversion of the old "First, do no harm").

Also, a really great means of pulling the reader into the narrative and keeping him/her there. I am very glad that you did not cut away (heh, sorry, bad puns today) to some sterile scene on the Bridge of a starship or the like. You stayed there, and that keeps the pressure up, akin to how pressure needs to be applied to an open wound.

As always an atmosheric piece of writing Nerys, which the story really needed to set the grim scene of trench warfare and for the brutality of what happens to Saan and Folani's treatment for the Vulcan. I liked lots of the little technical aspects to this, from the walking Houndinis to the explanation of how the tricorder could detect shrouded Jem'Hadar. And of course, the main feature of Folani's method of stemming the blood loss. And of course, I generally just like seeing our Bajoran in action anyway! :)

If you'll forgive me, there were several bits that did take me out of the story and the mood you created/were creating. The first was when Spirodopoulos reacted to the curse of one of his fellow officers, considering the degrees of profanity I would have doubted it would have struck him so much. The other was the reference to a 21st century cell, I know it was a way of explaining the tricorder warning but I didn't think your description required the Star Trek tactic of using 20th/21st century to explain things to a viewer. Description is often your forte and you don't need it as a crutch.

The other moment was when they were giving out about Starfleet and the lack of armour. Not because they were making complaints about Starfleet - many valid points are made - but Spirodopoulus worrying that he was betraying Starfleet by having the mere thought took me out. Kind of a foreshadowing of his 'apparent' treason hefrets over in the 13th Order.

I like the whole different approach to battle story telling here. The major fighting has just happened and the rest is mostly restrained to offscreen, the real action is the fight to save Saan's life and the team working together to beat another Dominion weapon with the vampire gun. The focus on that is grim but adds a real dimsension to the story telling and of course made for a truly interesting response to the challenge theme not withstanding being an interesting piece of writing in and of itself.

Wow!  That was a gripping, gritty tale, Nerys.  Your style is wonderful; I felt like a silent crewmember, there with the others, watching this first hand.  Never having seen this episode, your solution was the one that came to mind for me, too - horrible as it is.

It's only a quick fix, though - as I'm sure Spirodopoulos, Saan and the others are aware.  The tiniest bump or scratch - to anywhere, not just the wound in question - will start the process all over again, and that adds greatly to the horror of this weapon.  I can't blame any of them for their anger at Starfleet for not committing to finding a defense, or cure, for this truly insidious weapon.

Oh, boy...The cruelty of a battle; fear, death and anger. And then a fight for survival follows. A desperate fight, a fight that many lost before and a horrible solution--but isn't a life the most important thing and worth protecting and saving at all cost?

"Vampire gun"--a terrible name for a terrible effect of the Jem'Hadar weapon. The Founders don't just want their Jem'Hadar to kill their enemies, the want them to kill slowly and painfully, then want victims to wait for their inevitable deaths with no hope for saving.

Folani's solution is crude and painful and resembles a torture more than a salvation, but it did stop the bleeding and I hope that it saved Saan's life.