Julian Bashir, genetically-engineered doctor, surgeon, therapist, and all-round good guy, checked the screen on another padd, then tossed it into a pile. It had only taken him a few seconds to read the lines of eye-friendly orange text, but in that tiny space of time, he had already picked out key words, determined its usefulness, and discarded it. The Defiant was certainly not Starfleet's smallest ship. Bashir had, however, taken enough trips on the warship to know that space was certainly at a premium, especially in the poor excuse for a sickbay. They were taking a trip into a Bajor sector controlled by a mortal enemy. He had downloaded all the files he could dig up on the Borg Collective, as well as various papers on restoring an assimilated drone back to individuality, and jammed them into a boxful of padds for the journey.

But even now, he could feel doubt gnawing at the fringes of his brain. Bashir knew that it was because he would possibly face not only the new dimension on the other side of the passage, but the new frontier of fighting Borg nanoprobes on the operating table. He had never personally encountered the machine-men; when Worf had bravely commandeered the Defiant during the last incursion, he had been assisting a clinic with a medication supply issue on Bajor. He knew that they were fascinating from a xenobiological perspective. If he could study a drone unimpeded, it would make an excellent topic for his next contribution to the Federation medical journals. There was also a healthy dose of apprehension mixed in with his optimism, though. No species on file had managed to repel the Borg and keep them out of their space for good. Only a handful of starships had survived the last encounter with a cube, which only proved that Federation weapons had a limited effectiveness at the best of times against the Collective's huge vessels. How much more effective would his hyposprays and surgical tools be against an assimilated crew member? Sisko's battle would be fought outside the ship; Bashir's would be inside the patient. The engineered analytical part of his mind knew that this was only a scout mission to observe the situation at DS-Nine, but his more human heart told him otherwise.

"Bridge to sickbay," said the intercom.

"Approaching passageway," Dax called from the helm.

The Kira-replicant looked up from Tactical II. Half of her battle-worn face was lit up green, distorting the curves of her cheek until they became eerie and cold. "No sign of Borg activity, captain," she said. With that, the ship bucked gently as it came to a stop at the edge of the emerald hurricane before them. The Bajoran cringed at the sight of it. Her own reality had been overrun by an evil bent on remaking everything in its own twisted image, and now that evil was threatening a new and untainted universe. She would not let that happen, even if it meant her own death. Was she willing to die for these people? Sisko, O'Brien, Bashir…she had known them before, but then they had been assimilated. And now, she had a chance to know them again. If only things had been different.

"Here goes," Captain Sisko said. "Computer, confirm shield modifications."

"Shield modifications complete and on-line," came the reply.

"Alright. Bridge to sickbay."

There was a rustling on the other side of the line before a weary voice replied, "Bashir here. What do you need, sir?"

"Just checking that you're ready for our little spin," the captain mentioned.

"We're stocked well enough, and my usual contingent of medical staff has been briefed on what to do if we get some uninvited guests. I'd say we're as ready as can be."

Sisko shuffled a bit in his chair. "Good. We're about to enter the passage; keep an eye on the crew to see if it does anything to us. Sisko out." He tapped the controls on his chair and fixed his gaze on the temporal wormhole. "Dax…take us in."

There was a subtle shift in gravity, and suddenly the Defiant was inside a haze of colour. Energy began to wash over the modified shields and push the ship around a little. Jadzia compensated where she could. She tweaked the impulse engines up a notch, and suddenly they were over the threshold and falling down into the heart of the tempest. That much was obvious when the bulkheads suddenly became invisible. Consoles and crew members faded in and out randomly.

"What the hell is going on?" Sisko demanded.

"Temporal displacement," Dax commented as she touched a control before blinking out. Her normally-strong voice became a tenuous, quiet thread of noise until she and the helm/ops station came back to the bridge. "…interesting. I never predicted this, Benjamin." She turned and squinted at him. "Benjamin?"

"What?"

But she could not see him, and Sisko realised that he was probably invisible, just as she had been moments earlier. She picked up on it quicker than he did. "It seems as though bits and pieces of the ship are phasing out in the temporal stream. It shouldn't pose too much of a problem for now, but we can't risk prolonged exposure. I…" Dax paused momentarily as she became translucent, then finally looked over at Sisko, seeing him for the first time again. "Nice of you to join me," she said wryly.

He smiled a little. "I think I deserve to be the one saying that. Just get us through to the other side," he said with a nod. "I don't know if I can stand this funhouse-mirror stuff."

With a final shuddering protest, the temporal passageway spat them out. Dax worked the controls and tried to steer them into a tight turn that kept them within the cover provided by the misty jade clouds. She brought them to a stop and nodded. "We're clear of the mouth, sir. I'm not seeing any vessel activity nearby, but I can't be sure on passive scans. If I could run even one standard sweep…"

"No!" shouted the Worf-replicant, standing up from his stool with a bit too much force. "The Borg will no doubt be watching this wormhole of theirs. Any regular sensor activity will show up and we will have to deal with a defence force." His skin blanched a little as he looked past Sisko, past Dax, to the viewscreen. "By Kahless…" he muttered. The others turned and saw nothing but the star-spattered darkness. Then, if they peered at one spot for a second or two, they could make out a tiny grey smudge. "Computer, isolate and magnify section nine-A on the viewscreen. Compensate for distance."

The image refreshed, now displaying a view much closer than the Defiant was. The grey mark had now ballooned to become a tangle of straight lines and harsh angles, backlit by a cold green light. Sisko knew that this was a Borg station of some form. It seemed to be made up of a central bolus that was linked to massive arrays made up of seemingly-delicate girders; on the screen, it looked to be fairly small, but then he saw a cube nudged up beside it, and got a sense for its real size. Someone whispered a curse as they picked up on the same thing. It wasn't huge, but it was fairly hefty. And by the looks of things, it was nowhere near completion.

"A construction array," spat the Kira-replicant. "This could be a problem. It's normally used as a power generator for larger structures. Sometimes they don't even bother to take it away at the end: they just mix it into whatever they're building. Looks to me like they're making something big, though."

"Opinions?" Sisko asked her.

The Bajoran shrugged. "I can't tell you at this stage. It could be a nexus so they can control their operations in this sector, but I figured that it would have been more efficient to modify DS-Nine for that function. It's certainly carrying more powerful communications devices. Maybe this is how they made the passageway."

As if on cue, the Worf-replicant looked up from the auxiliary stations at the back and cast a nod in Sisko's direction. He had voluntarily given up the Tactical stations so he could work with the Dax-replicant on various computer simulations, using the data from the Rubicon's recovered core as a base. "That was not present when we entered the conduit, but we hardly had time for full sensor scans. The large arrays could be field emitters to keep the instability to a minimum." He snarled a little. "Captain, if the structure does not already have defensive shields built into it, there will be a projector platform somewhere nearby to keep it protected. Permission to start searching our scan results for such a platform."

"Granted."

For a few minutes, everyone had their heads bent over their consoles, looking through the first sweeps for a clue as to the purpose of the mysterious station. Sisko stood up after a while and paced around to the Kira-replicant. Her screens showed nothing in range other than the structure on the screen. Amazingly, it seemed that they had not been detected. "Let's do this quickly and quietly," he said to her. "Keep phasers and torpedo tubes on passive only; I want no telltale energy emissions. Activate the cloak on my mark." He paused. "Bridge to Engineering. Activate reduced-power mode. Flush the propulsion vents with coolant, then close up the temperature vents. Impulse and warp drive, if you please."

"Acknowledged, sir. We've sealed the vents. Give me a moment, and I'll put this baby to sleep…okay, impulse cut-offs set to seventy percent and warp cut-offs now at warp four."

"Thank-you. Kira, the cloaking device."

The viewscreen fritzed for a moment, then the regular bridge lights were replaced with red glowtubes that brought out the console illumination that much more. A Romulan icon appeared on the Tactical II screen, then on Sisko's chair panel. Dax turned around to look at the Bajoran and the human. "With the impulse heat vents closed, we'll reach the maximum safe point in an hour, if we run the drives continuously. I've found a quiet spot in the shadow of Jeraddo to rinse out the excess heat when that happens. Same goes with warp drive."

Sisko bobbed his head once at the Trill. "Good thinking. Take us to one-quarter impulse, direct course to Deep Space Nine. Remember to run the engines in short bursts to cover our trail. We can't risk getting caught at this point."

A slight tremor told them that the Defiant was now biting eagerly at the space in front of it, bounding forward as Dax skilfully ran the sublight drive for ten or fifteen seconds, then put them in standby and let the momentum send them forwards, until they slowed down a little and she applied some more power. It was a clumsy and inefficient way to fly, but no-one was complaining as long as it meant that the Borg couldn't see them. It took them nearly half an hour to get there, but finally they arrived at DS-Nine.

It was still the same basic shape, but it was somehow inexplicably, unutterably different. There were gaping tears in the duranium walls where weapons had sliced through like Garak's old-fashioned scissors had through a piece of fabric. In fact, the docking ring had buckled in several places, if the fuzzy image was correct. But what worried everyone was the spires that poked through, or the machinery that seemed to grow out of the breaches like sinister weeds crawling towards space. It was as if the Borg had germinated a hideous techno-organic seed in the heart of the Cardassian station, and it had spread through the hallways and maintenance tunnels, climbing outwards to bathe in the cold light of the Bajoran sun. Sisko balked at the sight. It was as if he was looking at the violated corpse of an old friend…or the burnt shell of a familiar house. How much worse was it for the replicants? He glanced sideways at Kira, and she was staring at the screen with shock and fury in her eyes. Her jaw was locked.

"I was expecting this," she said through grinding teeth. "but I didn't ever think it'd feel this bad. I mean, look at it!" One hand pointed indignantly at the viewscreen. "They've taken our home and twisted it into…into…something else. Prophets, what happens now? Earth, Trill, Vulcan, and now DS-Nine. How much more can we take before we give in?"

The Worf-replicant went to her side and laid a brawny hand on her shoulder. "We will take it back, Colonel. Somehow, we will push the Borg out and restore DS-Nine." The Bajoran choked back an angry sob, then nodded. "Do not worry," he comforted. "we have the might of the Federation at our backs once again. After the admirals see these pictures, I'm sure they will be tripping over themselves to mass a war fleet."

Through her anguish, she did not notice a lamp start blinking on her console. Worf leaned over her shoulder and pressed it, then grimaced at the results. "Borg cube approaching us, sir! Zero-point-eight of warp speed."

"That's too fast for an attack run," Sisko mused. "But then, the Borg don't exactly stick to anything orthodox. Prepare for red alert. Don't touch anything unless they open fire on us."

Everyone watched as a leaden speck on the screen grew quickly to become a huge square that appeared two-dimensional, until it vectored to the right to show its depth. The cube was bigger than DS-Nine, and probably just as well armed, and yet they were right in its path. Could they be seen? So far, they had followed every precaution and kept to a safe distance, but perhaps their plan had been foiled. Nothing was foolproof, after all. Sisko glowered as the cube rushed towards them, as if he could turn aside the leviathan ship with his icy gaze. He was certain that they were flying in the face of danger: he opened his mouth to issue orders. His instincts screamed, Run! Run! Put the shields up and run like hell, because no starship can stop the Borg. Sisko drew a breath and angled his head towards the replicants.

But then the cube hurtled straight past them, roaring by in a blur of motion. The pewter ship has come so close that the Defiant was rattled by the engine wake. Sisko gripped his chair until it had passed them. "Why the hell did they do that?"

"Incoming vessels, sir. Cardassian warships," the Worf-replicant growled, then tossed the image up on the screen.

The wedge-formation of five yellow starships was darting towards the passageway's mouth, and for a moment, it seemed as though they would outrun the Borg. But the cube was too fast. Way, way too fast. It caught one in a tractor beam. Two other warships moved to defend it, and they were dispatched by two torpedoes that issued from some unseen orifice on the surface of the ship's skin. One of the remainder opened fire on the cube and dodged, but was caught by a devastating ray of bright that lanced right down the ship's axis, igniting the forward disruptor batteries and blowing the ship to kingdom come. Whichever gul was commanding the surviving ship decided to flee; as it turned, a second tractor beam lashed out. It was unable to get a solid grip on the warship itself, but it caught on the tail and yanked ruthlessly. The long boom of the aft was ripped clear off the rest of the sandy-coloured ship. Atmosphere and Cardassians bloomed into open space as the cube slowly pivoted and shot back towards DS-Nine with its prize.

"I didn't think the Borg took ships," Dax commented.

"They don't," the Worf-replicant replied. "Cardassian warships have a crew of about three hundred potential drones, but they don't have any technology that the Borg are interested in. I am unsure why they have suddenly decided to take captives."

"It can't be anything desperate. Out of a possible five, they only stole one ship," Dax replied. Then a beep distracted her, and she looked at a timer on the helm. "Impulse temperature hitting first warning mark. Alter course to Jeraddo, sir?"

Sisko nodded thoughtfully. "Yes. Then take us home. I think I've got enough evidence to convince the admirals of the threat now."