The Defiant is damaged in a fight with a Calderisi vessel, so, when an eight-thousand-mile-long starship enters the galaxy, destroys the Bajoran colony world of Darane Four and head towards Bajor, the Defiant heads out to intercept it, even though it has no operational weapons systems. The occupants of the intergalactic starship call themselves the Hive and look rather like armadillos. They were forced out of their homeworld in one of the Magellanic Clouds before their sun went nova and had planned to find a new home planet in our galaxy. During the journey in their enclosed vessel, they had become agrophobes, and the leaders had changed the goal to that of building new Hive-ships, using planets as raw material. They have come to view people who live on planets as being mad. In initial battles, the newcomers seem to be invincible, destroying ships with a mysterious weapon that turns out to be monofilament. Some members of the hive are unhappy about the destruction of other sentient beings and start a rebellion against the leadership. Sisko talks to the Hive leaders and gets invited aboard. In return, one of the younger leaders, Tork, accompanied by his planned partner, Sahna, offer to visit Bajor. They volunteer to stay on Bajor as protest against the leaders’ planned destruction of the planet. In the meantime, the Hive has divided into two ships, using the material from Darane Four, and one ship heads towards Cardassia Prime, while the other starts towards Bajor. The Cardassians destroy the one heading in their direction (with the almost total loss of one of their fleets), and the rebellion aboard the other leads to them reverting to their founders’ original plan, i.e. colonizing a new planet. [Timeline: soon after the Enterprise-D is destroyed.]
Invasion, Book 3 of 4: Time’s Enemy
L. A. Graf
Sisko, Dax and Bashir are called back to the Earth’s solar system, where they are shown the remains of their starship, the Defiant, which had been entombed in ice in orbit around Pluto for about 5,000 years. It had been shifted back in time and taken part in the battle that had banished the Furies from Earth’s quadrant of the galaxy. Another Dax symbiont is found alive, but in stasis, aboard the ancient Defiant. Returning to DS9, they find that the wormhole is becoming unstable, and a Vulcan science vessel (led by the scientist T’Kreng) is lost investigating it. Spacecraft are also being mysteriously attacked. Kira is left to investigate these attacks, and Sisko, Dax and O’Brien take their own, non-frozen, Defiant through the wormhole to investigate what is happening in the Gamma Quadrant. Passing through the wormhole, Sisko learns from the wormhole entities that, unless he can prevent it, events soon to occur in the Gamma Quadrant will force them to move the wormhole both in time and space. Sisko discovers an alien lifeform that can adapt to the vacuum of space and which absorbs other creatures in order to use their DNA and incorporates their brains into itself. These lifeforms are planning to move a Jem’Hadar space station into the wormhole and explode it there, to force a time-shift back to when they were a dominant force in the universe. They had been the entities that had previously fought the Furies. The 5,000 year old Dax symbiont gets Odo to take him through the wormhole, where he deliberately gets absorbed by the creatures and (with the assistance of other absorbed consciousnesses) takes control of the alien’s joint mind and causes the captured space station to self-destruct before it can damage the wormhole. [Timeline: Soon after the events told in the book ‘Invasion Book 2 of 4: The Soldiers of Fear’ in the TNG section; book 4 is in the Voyager section]
John Greggory Betancourt
A peace conference to try to settle the conflict between the Federation, the Maquis and the Cardassians is about to start on DS9. At the same time, Major Kira, Worf and Odo set off on a mission to the Gamma Quadrant to rescue an agent who claims to have discovered the virus used to genetically engineer the Jem’Hadar as dedicated warriors for the Dominion. The peace conference is dogged by conflict between the parties and by Bajoran demonstrators, led by Vedic Werron, who think (mistakenly) that the Cardassian negotiator, Gull Mekkar, is a war criminal from the occupation of Bajor. The mission to the Gamma Quadrant is attacked by the Jem’Hadar and Odo gets taken away by two other changelings. He convinces them to show him some of the worlds under Dominion control and ends up back on the same ship with Kira and Worf. While they reach their destination, the planet Daborat V, the Dominion has learnt of their plans (through a link with Odo), but the team rescues the agent although the details of the retrovirus is lost. The sponsors of the ‘peace conference’, supposedly Valtusians, are actually changelings, hoping to gain control of Alpha Quadrant territory, and the conference ends in disarray, as Gul Mekkar gets abducted to Bajor. The DS9 team are able to win his acquittal from all charges. [Timeline: Sisko’s beard was new; it is 3 years after O’Brien arrived; Nog has left for the Academy; Rom is still working at Quark’s.]
Michael Jan Friedman
The surviving members of the Saratoga (Sisko’s previous command, destroyed by the Borg at Wolf 359) are being taken aboard the Defiant to the ceremony for the launching of the new Saratoga. En route, sabotage is discovered but not in time to prevent the ship being caught in the nexus at the conjunction of two supernova energy waves as the ship has damaged engines that prevent any obvious means of escaping. One attempt at repairing the engines fails when the engines are put to the test. Meanwhile, Quark has fallen ill just before he was due to go on an errand of mercy, and Odo masquerades as Quark in negotiations with a Retizian for some Cardassian power coils (needed by one of Kira’s friends on Bajor). The deal is made while, on the Defiant, a way of saving some of the people onboard is devised. That involves carrying them out of the nexus in converted probes, but there are not sufficient to save everyone. However, even that attempt is sabotaged, but the culprit, Lopez, is captured. It turns out that he was going to trade the Saratoga survivors (who all carry corladium-producing organisms wanted by the Retizians) to pay for gambling debts. Sisko and O’Brien had secretly foiled the earlier attempt at getting the engines going, in order to flush out the saboteur, and they are able to get the ship moving again before being taken in tow by the three Retizian ships that had arrived.
Susan Wright
A vast plasma storm (spanning half a sector) is heading towards DS9 and the Bajoran system. Dax and Keiko (who had done some preliminary research on the storm) are sent out to investigate it and assess the danger to the station. The station itself is filling up as ships dock to shelter from the storm. A Federation scoutship, the Ceres, that had been attacked by Klingons, is also brought there, along with the Klingon ship believed to be responsible for the attack. Inside the storm, Dax and Keiko soon realize that DS9 and the wormhole are in serious danger, and they also establish that the storm is a living being, although not sentient. The effects of the storm throw their runabout from one area of the storm to another and they become completely lost. Dax is affected by the storm and begins hallucinating. Sisko sets out in the Defiant to try to locate the runabout and Keiko follows a faint communication signal and is finally rescued. Back on the station, the information collected by Dax and Keiko is used to discover a way to turn the storm away from the Bajoran system. Worf has problems with members of the Sattar Collective (a subject race of the Klingons), but ends up sympathizing with them and instigating Federation help for their situation. [Timeline: 3 or 4 weeks after Worf arrived on DS9.]
David, Friedman & Greenberger
Varis Sul obtains a replicator and associated raw materials in order to help her village, but she gets it through black market sources, and it starts a plague that begins to decimate the Bajorans. Ro Laren offers her help, which is reluctantly accepted. She and Kira begin trying to locate the source of the infected material through Bajoran sources, while Sisko, assisted by Quark, investigate an Orion link to the black market. Varis also starts trying to track down the source she used to purchase the equipment. Each team finds some information and they end up at a slave auction (with some of them initially as captive slaves) where they finally track down the black-market people involved. They don’t have a cure for the plague and a cure isn’t found until Dax recalls a suppressed memory from one of the symbiont’s former hosts, which involved the same plague on Andevian Two. With that information, Dr. Bashir is able to come up with an antidote which is administered by seeding the planet’s atmosphere. [Timeline: after Sisko becomes a captain, but before Worf’s arrival at the station.]
Ira Steven Behr & Robert Hewitt Wolfe
Supposedly a book written by Quark containing short stories, etc., to explain the Rules of Acquisition to hew-mons. Unfortunately, the publisher also released the book on Ferenginar, which landed Quark in trouble … again.
Day of Honor, Book 2 of 4 - Armageddon Sky
L.A. Graf
The Defiant goes on a rescue mission when a research vessel, the Victoria Adams, is attacked by a Klingon ship. The research vessel was going to view a planet being bombarded by comets and the majority of the researchers and crew had had to take a shuttlecraft down to the planet surface to escape the Klingons. When the Defiant and its crew arrive, they discover that there are also Klingons on the planet, split into three groups. All are from one family that had been banished to the planet for political reasons, which was effectively a death sentence due to the comets. The first group that Sisko and his crew encounter have been working for the Cardassians, who had promised to give them a way to escape the planet. Unknowingly, they had been collecting a substance (drevlocet) that could be converted into a potent poison to be used against Klingons. Most of this first group commit ritual suicide, in defense of their honor, on learning what had really been going on. The second (and main) group was led by epetai Vrag and intended to defend their honor by accepting death at the hands of the comets, but finally the epetai announces that they can take shelter with the third group, since the actual terms of the punishment was only banishment (death being expected, but not specified). The third group had broken away to protect what had unexpectedly been discovered to be a native sentient lifeform, the xirri. These primate-like creatures conversed using radio waves, rather than vocally. This third group is also holding the survivors of the research mission. In the end, the xirri save the Klingons and the Federation people on the planet by finding them deep caves to shelter in. Meanwhile, Sisko, aboard the Defiant, has been having problems, first with a Klingon warship (a Jfolokh-class vessel, captained by Dahar Master Kor) then with a Cardassian ship (the Olxinder, captained by Gul Hidret) that is herding comets towards the planet. Sisko gets the Klingons to cooperate after he, with Worf and Odo, challenge and beat the Klingons at the Day of Honor ritual, the Suv’batlh. The Cardassians are cornered and allowed to beat a retreat, but the Klingon, Kor, apparently does not intend to allow them to escape too far unscathed. The xirri are happy to allow the surviving banished Klingons to continue sharing their battered planet with them. [Timeline: 3 months after the breaking of the Khitomer Accords.]
Mark Garland
Quark’s deal with the Aulep from the Delta quadrant goes awry when it turns out that the trellium crystals he was hoping to buy were stolen from the Rylep (and accidentally destroyed by them when they attack the Aulep’s ship). The Rylep had, in turn, stolen the crystals from the Beshiel Second Realm. Ships from all three races turn up at DS9 and Major Kira tries to reach an amicable agreement between these three and with the Ferengi DaiMon Klarn who was Quark’s potential buyer. Captain Sisko and O’Brien take a runabout into the Delta Quadrant to search for Jake and his girlfriend (Elliena) who get accidentally thrown through the wormhole in another runabout after an apparent Klingon freighter (which doesn’t show up on most sensors) destroys a very real Klingon freighter that had just returned through the wormhole. Sisko encounters a strange rogue planetoid in the Myalon Corridor, which looks like a small gas-giant, but which turns out to be a generation ship populated by aliens from another galaxy (possibly M-31 in Andromeda). The aliens had been embryos when they left their home galaxy and are now adolescents and learn by imitation, such as the incident with the ‘ghost’ Klingon vessel, which was the aliens imitating the actions of the real Klingon ship. They hadn’t intended any malice when they destroyed the real Klingon vessel (and two other Klingon vessels that come to investigate the first incident), they were just copying Klingon behavior. After the aliens have captured Jake and Elliena, and then Sisko and O’Brien, the Federation people behave peaceably to the aliens and start communicating with them before Worf arrives in the Defiant. Quark comes up with a deal to satisfy the three Delta Quadrant groups. [Timeline: soon after Jake had been stranded in a disabled runabout on the other side of the wormhole, a few months after the Klingon Empire had attacked DS9.]
Dafydd ab Hugh
Sisko, Dax, Kira and Odo leave on the Defiant to investigate a possible alliance between the Klingons and the Dominion. However, the information about the alliance had been planted by Klingons under the command of General Malach, Worf’s blood brother, who then attacks and captures the almost vacated DS9. Worf is invited to join the Klingons’ force, and appears to do so in order to keep in touch with what Malach is planning. Bashir, O’Brien, Jake, Garak, Quark and Rom avoid capture and join up to fight the Klingons. This they do by turning off the artificial gravity and venting the atmosphere into space, but they are still left to battle a considerable force of Klingons who had managed to get environmental suits on in time. Sisko had realized that they were probably on a fool’s errand and returns to DS9 in time to assist in the recapture of the station. Quark gets ejected from the station in an oversized (for him) spacesuit to act as an emergency beacon, since the Klingons were blocking transmissions from the station itself. [Timeline: a year after Kurn (Worf’s brother) had had his identity changed, the station is basically evacuated because of the expected attack by the Dominion, Kira is carrying the O’Brien’s second child and Odo is a ‘solid’.]
The Captain’s Table, Book 3 - The Mist
Dean Wesley Smith/Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Sisko entered the Captain’s Table bar while on a doctor-enforced vacation on Bajor, and there he meets the Klingon captain Sotugh. He tells the story of their encounter with the legendary Mist, which occurred during Cadet Nog’s first flight aboard the Defiant as a crewman. Sisko and his crew respond to an old-style emergency signal, but they cannot find anything at the source of the signal, in fact the area of space is particularly void of material. Then they are surrounded by a misty cloud and suddenly five star systems appear, along with a large ship under the control of a Captain Victor and Councilor Nana. They are told that the Mist had moved out of regular space a long time ago and that Captain Victor had brought the Defiant across to warn them that some colonists were about to move DS9 into Mist space, to use in a rebellion against the other Mist. Sisko has Victor transfer them back into normal space so he can warn Kira aboard DS9, but the station is transferred anyway and Sisko gets the assistance of the Federation Starship Madison and three Klingon ships under the command of Captain Sotugh. The attack on DS9 is thwarted and Sisko is surprised when all of the attacking Mist ‘colony’ ships are destroyed. Jackson, the leader of the captured Mist attackers, reveals that the attack was planned by Captain Victor, who had said that the Federation were planning to attack Mist space. With the disappearance of DS9 from normal space, the Cardassians, under Dukat, have moved in to try to claim the wormhole. Sisko and his crew recover a couple of the units used to move the vessels into Mist space and they move the station and some of the ships back and forth between normal and Mist space to thwart the Cardassians and the attack by Captain Victor. It has been discovered that if they stay in Mist space for more than two hours and six minutes they won’t be able to return to normal space, and they get Jackson and the other supposed colonists aboard Victor’s ship and get the Defiant returned to normal space with only minutes to spare. The Defiant suddenly finds itself moved back into Mist space again for a final ‘Thank you’ from the Mist High Council, and a warning not to try to find Mist space again. A Quilli who has heard the story tries to buy it from Sisko, and a deal is reached whereby the Quilli will pay the money to an orphanage on Bajor that Sisko sponsors. On his way out of the Captain’s Table, Sisko thinks he sees the long-lost Captain Janeway enter, but assumes it must be her double. [Timeline: during the period of tension between the Federation and the Klingons, just before the quadrant’s problems with the Dominion began. The book also contains a potted biography of Captain Sisko.]
Armin Shimerman and David R. George III
The Ferengi Grand Nagus gets ownership of one of the lost Bajoran Orbs, and then excludes Bajor from the auction for the Orb of the Prophets. In retaliation, the Bajorans ban all Ferengi from Bajoran space, including banning them access to the wormhole. Quark and Rom (and a few other Ferengi) defy the ban and find themselves incarcerated at Gallitep, being tortured by Colonel Mitra and his henchman, Sergeant Wyte. Meanwhile, the Ferengi have implemented a blockade around Bajoran space and the Bajorans purchase some armored transport ships to try to break through the blockade. Surprisingly, two of the armored transports appear to defeat a Ferengi Marauder, and the Ferengi use this as an excuse to attack Bajor directly. Meanwhile, Quark and the other Ferengi have succeeded in breaking out of Gallitep, and Sisko talks Quark into trying to talk the Grand Nagus into letting Bajor back into the auction. Surprisingly, Quark is well received and Sisko carries a proposal back to Bajor, which ends the fighting before any serious damage is done. Quark comes to realize that the whole episode had been orchestrated by the Grand Nagus to pull off a deal in which he gets the highest price for the Orb and gets to sell the same armored transports twice. [Timeline, about 4 years after Sisko arrived on DS9, soon after Sisko had shaved his head and Worf had joined the station, and Cardassia was in the hands of the Detapa Council.]
Rebels, Part 1 of 3 – The Conquered
Daffyd ab Hugh
The Bajorans are taking over control of Deep Space Nine (which they rename Emissary’s Sanctuary) for a trial 60-day period with Kai Winn in charge. Sisko and the Federation crew (along with Odo and Quark) head off to investigate a group of reportedly rebel Cardassians. Arriving at Sierra-Bravo 112-II where the Cardassians are, Jadzia Dax leads an away team to the planet while the Defiant remains cloaked in orbit. She finds a population that has inherited a technology that they use but do not understand and, when the Cardassians and their Drek’la allies attack and turn off the power source, the natives (sometimes called Tiffnaks) have no idea what to do. Jadzia returns to the Defiant and Sisko takes over the away team, trying to train the natives in living off the land and building them into a fighting force. He has difficulty getting them to discard their technology until he shows them another village being devastated by the Cardassians after their tech was turned off. Meanwhile, the planetary defenses have identified the Defiant, and Jadzia has to bring the ship to rest on the bottom of the ocean to escape the Cardassian ships. She and Bashir plan to get to the surface to contact Sisko, and Sisko has decided the only way to prepare the natives to fight off the Cardassians is to turn off their technology. Meanwhile, Odo believes he has identified one of the Cardassians as being a Founder (shapeshifter), and DS9, now called Emissary’s Sanctuary, has come under attack by unknown aliens from the Gamma Quadrant. [Timeline: during a relatively peaceful period after the discovery of the Founders, but before the war with them really got under way, and after peace had been reestablished with the Klingons]
Rebels, Part 2 of 3 – The Courageous
Daffyd ab Hugh
Aboard DS9 (now called Emissary’s Sanctuary) Kira is trying to find ways to hold off the unknown aliens who apparently want the Orb that Kai Winn has. Winn herself spends time reliving (for the Prophets) her life 30 years ago as a servant of Gul Ragat trying to get vital information to the Bajoran rebels. Meanwhile, on Sierra-Bravo 112-II, Jadzia and Bashir have made their way to land and captured a skimmer from the Cardassians. The Defiant is assisted up to near the ocean’s surface by a sea-monster that thinks the ship is an egg. Sisko and the away team get transported across a desert on semi-intelligent six-legged cattle-like creatures, steal another skimmer from the Cardassians, and destroy the power plants that enable the natives’ technology to work. Worf trains the natives in preparation for the coming battle against the Cardassians, while the attacking aliens (who call themselves the Liberated) have boarded DS9/Emissary’s Sanctuary and Kai Winn appears to be about to surrender the station to them. Jadzia and Bashir have discovered that one of the Cardassians on the planet is Gul Ragat, who used to be Winn’s master.
Rebels, Part 3 of 3 – The Liberated
Daffyd ab Hugh
Onboard DS9/Emissary’s Sanctuary the aliens have taken over the station, and Kai Winn is finding ways to delay handing over the Orb, claiming it is mislaid. In fact, she is having a neutron bomb made, which is used to kill the invaders. Kira only escapes because she gets buried under a pile of the aliens after attacking their leader. A Federation starship, the USS Harriman, that had been unable to assist earlier, returns to help secure the station. On Sierra-Bravo 112-II, Sisko’s group and Dax and Bashir finally meet up in an attack against a large group of the remaining Cardassians and Drekla. The Enterprise group, with the fast-learning natives doing most of the work, emerge victorious and, despite being nearly killed by the poisonous atmosphere, they get in contact with the submerged Enterprise and escape from the planet. They had also discovered that the planet was a giant social-science experiment by the race that the Natives/Tiffnaks were descendants of. Garak informs Kai Winn that she seems to be losing political control on Bajor, so she hands the station back to the Federation. Three years later the Federation revisits Sierra-Bravo 112-II to find it has mysteriously disappeared.
Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens, Jeffrey Lang, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Marco Palmieri, Michael Jan Friedman, S. D. Perry, and Steven Barnes
Ezri Dax wanders around the outskirts of a holosuite version of Las Vegas after Dr. Bashir gets called away from a date by a medical emergency. Ezri meets up with Vic, who notices that she seems troubled and gets her talking about herself. She tells of how she came to get implanted with the Dax symbiont, which was being transported back to Trill after Jadzia’s death. The doctor who was looking after the symbiont turned out to be a changeling, as Ezri discovered after noticing how different her lover, Brinner (who was to have been a potential recipient of the Dax symbiont), was acting and she realized the changeling had taken over his form. Ezri became the recipient of the Dax symbiont when it was established that it wouldn’t survive the trip back to Trill on its own. She then goes on to tell of the lives that came into hers. Lela was Dax’s first host and was a politician, and we learn of her attempts to get Trill rulers to talk with an orbiting ship that seems in need of something. She tries to make contact, but the aliens (the Vulcans later identify them as L’Dira) attack Trill and take what they’d been willing to trade for, if Trill hadn’t been so isolationist. This leads to a willingness on Trill to learn more about other cultures. Tobin was the next host and he was on his way to Alpha Centauri when the ship, the Heisenberg, was attacked by Romulans who wanted the warp technology (the first Romulan war had been going on for about 3 years). Tobin is instrumental in helping to thwart the Romulan attack, at one-point distracting one of the boarding party by performing a magic trick on him. Emony was the next host and McCoy met her when she was judging a sports contest. McCoy’s roommate, a Tessma named Sinnit, has something against Trills and attacks Emony Dax, but a Trill athlete (Nar) intercepts the blow. Tessma inadvertently helps the reason for the games, which is to assist people in understanding each other. Audrid was the next host and she and her husband, Jayvin Vod, were selected to participate in the investigation of a mysterious comet, with the expedition being led by Christopher Pike. That turned out to be the first encounter with the parasitic creature (related in some way to the Trill symbionts) that tries later to take over the Federation. Vod is attacked and taken over by the parasite, and Audrid’s failure to tell her daughter (Neema) what actually happened, results in a long estrangement between them. Next came Torias who was a test pilot on the team trying to achieve transwarp. Captain Styles hoped to combine that success with the launch of the Excelsior. Saavik and Torias’s wife, Nilani, were also working on the team. Torias was piloting the craft, and it almost achieved transwarp, but then the craft started to break up. Torias was wearing a suit that allowed him to be transported out of the disintegrating vehicle. He suffered fatal injuries, but they were able to save the symbiont. The next host was the artist/murderer Joran, who was tracked down by Verjyl Gard, whose symbiont was a specialist in tracking these deviant joinings. By the time he was captured, Joran had murdered three times and Gard and Temzia Nirenn (another artist) were planned to be numbers four and five. Between them, Gard and Temzia thwarted his plans and Torias dies falling on his own knife, but not before hearing that future Dax hosts will know nothing of him. Curzon was the next host and Sisko was his assistant as Curzon tried to negotiate with the Bactricans about entry into the Federation. An Azziz ship docked at the Federation’s Pilios Station where the talks are proceeding, and the ship was made up of rather frivolous creatures, while the Bactricans were rather dour individuals. Curzon introduced Sisko to an ‘empathy mime’ on the station, Sabbath Nile. It turned out that Sabbath was one of a ‘third sex’ on the Bactria, that facilitates the mating procedure of the males and females, and Sabbath had been serving the late king and queen who had recently died. Sabbath was expected to kill herself but hadn’t, arousing the ire of the Bactricans. One of them went to kill her, but instead killed the ‘Poet’ of the Azziz. The Azziz were then unable to function as a unit and were unable to return home. The problem was solved when Sabbath joined the Azziz ship to support them on their journey, removing herself from the presence of the Bactricans in the process. Jadzia was the host prior to Ezri and she had got called back to Trill when her sister, Ziranne, was admitted to hospital when she was discovered to have a symbiont of unknown origin. Ziranne seemed to have been taken over by the memories of the symbiont and Jadzia was trying to bring Ziranne to the surface by talking about their growing up together. Bashir noticed signs that the symbiont had been suffering rejection symptoms in its previous host and Bashir also discovered that Verad (who had previously tried to steal Jadzia’s symbiont) was supposedly at the mental ward. It turned out that Verad had actually taken the place of the facility’s Commissioner Duhan Vos. He had discovered a way for symbionts to be shared between Trill (not fully bonding, so they could be moved) and Ziranne had run across this while trying to discover what was behind the mysterious disappearance of one of her students’ grandfathers. She was trying to return the symbiont to the pools.
The Badlands, Book 2 of 2, second half
Susan Wright
Soon after the baby changeling had died, Odo investigates the possible cause of the tetryon poisoning that had caused the death and realizes it must have been the Badlands’ Curse, and finds out about the speculation of its being caused by an AQS (artificial quantum singularity) in orbit of the Badlands. Odo talks Sisko into mounting an attempt to capture the AQS, not knowing that a Romulan vessel in also on the way to try to recover it. The two ships meet up as they are investigating the Badlands region, but neither will admit their real reason for being there. The Romulan vessel is partly disabled by the effects of the Badlands’ Curse but the crew of the Defiant help them back to operational status. The two ships continue their independent studies of the region but,