For the second time in twenty-four hours, the Defiant, now flanked by the starships Thunderchild and Sarekar, disappeared into the transdimensional wormhole. The two Akira-class ships were equipped with Starfleet's closest thing to a cloaking device, a warp signature suppression device that was coupled with various stealth technologies. It would not hold forever, but as long as they kept a low profile, the task force would be safe from detection. As soon as they emerged into the alternate reality, each vessel tightened up and went into silent running.

Captain Sisko had routed the fleet coordination screens to his command chair. He watched the pulsing status icons of the Thunderchild and the Sarekar for a second, then nodded in satisfaction. So far, their plan was working as expected. Now for the primary phase of the mission. "Plot a course to DS-Nine, warp one-point-five. Engage," he said, inputting the order into the fleet transmission data. The overpowered engines of the Defiant rumbled a bit as they pushed them beyond light speed.

"I've got a fix on the station," Lieutenant Dax said after a moment. "Beginning scans for life signs and evidence of Borg takeover."

The viewscreen buzzed and lazily put together a low-resolution image of the arching rings and pylons of Deep Space Nine. Apart from a handful of green glows from exposed hull, it appeared normal. Sisko watched carefully. He knew that it was probably assimilated now, functioning somehow in the Collective's plans. The cube was hanging around somewhere, and with its powerful multi-adaptive sensor matrices, it would probably uncover one of the Defiant's flanks. And if that happened, it was fight or flight for the task force. "Keep an eye out for any hostiles," he commented to Worf at Tactical I.

"No sign of the cube or spheres, sir," he replied. Everyone spoke in relatively hushed voices, as though the Borg could overhear them.

"Preliminary scans of DS-Nine are done, Benjamin." The voice of Dax distracted Sisko. "It looks like Borg penetration is extreme. The core has been modified entirely, and I'm guessing that most of the habitat ring is converted into drone barracks or something, judging by the subspace activity going on. The pylons and docking ring haven't really been touched. And no, I haven't detected any non-Borg life signs." She turned and looked at the rest of the crew. "But, we are at warp speed, and we're using passive scans. The distance doesn't help, either. Once we're in realspace, we're much more likely to detect any survivors."

Minutes later, the three Starfleet ships blurred out of subspace and took up a defensive posture to protect each other. The Thunderchild trained its sensors on their aft quarter, and the Sarekar watched the forward, while the Defiant prepared to evacuate anyone on the station who hadn't been assimilated. Normally, this duty would have fallen to one of the larger vessels and their greater transporter capacity, but the Defiant was smaller, faster, and more manoeuvrable. If they were detected, it had a greater chance of escaping. Jadzia watched her screens intently for a few seconds, then her shoulders tensed in excitement. "I've found non-Borg life signs! Fifteen…twenty…thirty…almost fifty. They're scattered through the station. Most of them are in clusters, but there are smaller groups of five or six holed up, and a few individuals wandering around."

The Kira-replicant snorted. "The large groups will be assimilation chambers. Victims lined up for the slaughter of their individuality. Start there."

Sisko nodded at Dax. "Begin transport protocols."

Jadzia had designed and built a complex software program for the beam-out operation. Cloaking technology limits meant that the Defiant had to decloak, scoop up as many survivors as they could in as short a time as possible, then recloak and hopefully avoid being spotted. As an added precaution, the replicants had suggested that they fire RCS thrusters and change position in between transporter runs, just to boost their chances. With a few keystrokes, Dax had cued the program and took a breath. "Okay. Here goes…"

Lights on the bridge changed configuration as the Romulan cloaking device went into standby mode. They were now exposed. Sisko set his jaw and waited. Damn. The transporters are taking too long. Malfunctions? The indicators on his panel told him that the two tiny transporter pads were working overtime to bring in survivors. He counted to ten as slowly as he could, then felt some of the tension slip as the program brought the cloak back into effect. There didn't seem to be any reactions from the station. Dax said, "First load is in. Only four to go," and let her program take over RCS functions. Tiny jets built into the hull fired in short bursts, moving them around while leaving a minimal trail. "It worked!" she sighed. Unconsciously, she had been holding her breath the whole time. "We're in position. Ready for second cycle."

But before the cloaking field could fade, Sisko heard an eerie humming noise behind. He spun his chair and vaulted to his feet, facing three glittering columns of turquoise energy that coalesced into Borg drones. They stared impassively at him. "Damn!" he exclaimed, sensing that Worf was now on his feet. This had been going too well. He scrabbled for his hand phaser as the Borg advanced forwards. Worf squeezed off a shot that felled the closest drone, but his second scattered harmlessly over the adaptive shields. The drone was almost upon Sisko: he stepped backwards. The bright red laser of its ocular array was blinding as it made direct contact with his own eye. "Dax, beam them out of here!"

The Trill worked her control board frantically. "I can't! They've picked up our transporter frequency and blocked it out!" She pushed out of her own chair. "We've got more intruders in other critical sections!"

Failure. The Defiant would soon be dismantled for useful technology, and the crew would serve the Collective as workers. Sisko tapped a button on the control board, and sighed in resignation as the bridge dissolved to blackness, then vanished to reveal the walls of a holosuite. The station computer's voice said "Program complete," in a pleasant tone.

He sagged against a wall. "What went wrong?"

Dax sat down, hugging her knees. "The Borg traced our transporter beam back to its origin point. They found the frequency and used it to slip a force onto the ship without us knowing." When the others looked at her, she added, "Their body shields were adapted against the transporters by then. It would have taken another few moments to reconfigure the emitters to beam them out. And even then, the drones we get rid of would be replaced by ten more."

Worf kicked a deck plate with one foot angrily. "So they adapt to everything we've tried?"

"Yes," said Jadzia sadly.

"What about countermeasures?" Kira suggested. "In the Resistance, we picked up a few low-tech ways of blocking transporter beams. The Cardassians were fond of these kinds of tactics."

"None of them would allow us to pick up survivors," Dax mentioned. "They piggyback an invasion force over the transporter beam, we get boarded, and our only option is to trigger an immediate self-destruct. There has to be a better way!"

The holosuite was silent for a moment, and the group seemed to share a feeling of immense frustration. Sisko wondered if the replicants felt like this every day of their lives, fighting an enemy that could instantly adapt to every single tactic, replace every lost soldier with ten more, and never ever stop coming. He let another breath go. Intervening in this conflict was suddenly becoming a very bad idea. But, despite the ambiguous guidelines Starfleet laid down regarding temporal disturbances and alternate realities, he knew that he could never condemn an entire quadrant to assimilation. After what the Borg had done to him and his family, there was no way he could let it happen to anyone else. "There is, old man," he said firmly. "And we're going to find it." Sisko started pacing the holosuite perimeter. "Perhaps we're looking at this from the wrong angle. We're trying to evacuate DS-Nine via transporters. What about shuttles, life pods? We need to remember that the station is under hostile control, so they've probably figured out how to use the weapon sails by now. Can we somehow get the survivors out another way? Or, what about neutralising Borg sensors so we have more time?"

"All fine suggestions, sir," O'Brien remarked. "but the Defiant isn't built for these kinds of operations. We could hold our own for a while if it came to a shoot-out, sure. Somehow, though, I think the Borg would prefer to take our technology than destroy it." He wiped his hands on his uniform pants. Sisko knew that he had been pushing the engineer fairly hard over the past twelve hours, but they had to find a way to retake the alternate DS-Nine before the Borg could merge the two realities. The holosuite had been running without a break for hours on end.

While the chief of ops was taking a breather, the captain noticed that Colonel Kira was tapping away at the manual access console. The screen was lit up with variables taken from the simulation. She looked over at the group once as the data scrolled by. "I've done too many evacuations in my lifetime, especially over the Occupation. I've got a few tricks that might speed up the transporters: they're not exactly orthodox procedure, but…" she shrugged and pushed a few keys, then nodded satisfactorily. "If we can set up some auxiliary pattern buffers to carry the load, we can fit an extra few people on each load. It might speed everything up."

"Bearing in mind that we don't know if there are any survivors to rescue," Dax suggested. "Maybe we should prepare more for conflict with the cube rather than saving people who might not exist."

O'Brien wandered over to the console and watched Kira toying with the data. His eyebrows began to rise. He wasn't a stickler for regulations and order either, but some of the hypothetical configurations for the transporter were downright outlandish. "We haven't got the parts for that," he pointed out. "and the transporter room isn't big enough." She cast him a withering glare, and he wisely chose to shut up. With one final keystroke, the colonel highlighted one of her more viable suggestions and turned to Sisko.

"Sir, according to our scans, there's a debris field in between DS-Nine and the Denorios Belt, mostly made up of hull fragments and escape pods from the station. Back in the Occupation, we used to stage prison breaks using the warden transporter pads. But the problem with that was the Cardassians tracing the frequency back to our receiving point." Kira leaned on the console with a sigh. "So, we learned to bounce the pattern along a series of shunt points, each one in a different location. By the time the Cardassians realised what we were doing, we'd already beamed out hundreds of prisoners and had destroyed the transporter."

Sisko nodded slowly. "But what can we use as shunt points?"

"Life boats," she said with a slight glint in her eye. "There are enough out there to link up in a network, and they already have built-in transporter buffers. All we need to do is get the access code uplinks and we have our own shunt points, set up and ready to run."

O'Brien nodded slowly. "I've gotta hand it to you," he said. "that didn't occur to me. And if we do a good job, we can hide somewhere else and not have to worry about being detected."

"Which means the Thunderchild and Sarekar can handle some of the load," Dax added.

"This sounds like a plan." Sisko said. "Now, let's see what we can do."

Odo was secretly impressed with Colonel Kira's demonstration. He had remained largely silent during the holographic simulations, choosing to watch and decide if the proposals were viable security options or not, but even he hadn't remembered the old Bajoran tactic of shunt points. The Resistance fighters had converted some of DS-Nine's cargo transport pads to use as shunts, back when the station was called Terok Nor. How could he have forgotten? It just went to show that even Starfleet, with all it's fancy technology and well-trained engineers, often missed the obvious and simple solutions. Not that Odo minded Starfleet; it was an impressive feat of organisation that had held up over the course of the Dominion War. But they sometimes looked for the most complicated answer, rather than heading back to basics. Sometimes Odo thought that was why he was here.

But despite the arrival of an effective rescue plan, he knew that their success would be short-lived. He had finally received the data packet from Starfleet Intelligence, and the conclusions that he was drawing were not very optimistic at all. As the senior officers filed out, he snagged Sisko's arm with one hand. The dark-skinned man turned and made eye contact with the changeling. "Yes, constable?"

"Captain, I've completed my tactical research, and I have to say that my initial results are not what we hoped for," Odo said, voice gravelly.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that the damage done during the recent Dominion withdrawal has reduced the station's defensive capacity." He shook his head a little. "I doubt that we can stand up to one Borg ship, let alone a fleet."

"Even with the weapon upgrades?" Sisko asked incredulously. Odo knew that he and the captain had campaigned for three years to get retrofits for Deep Space Nine's weapon sails. They had finally boosted the defensive power of the space station to the point where they could repel a respectable fleet of Cardassian ships, but the combined might of the Dominion's warships and the Galor-class vessels had been too much. They had only recently managed to retake the station for a second time, and it was all too clear that Sisko didn't want to lose it again.

"Even with the upgrades. The evidence suggests that the Borg would survive because of their superior regenerative speed: they can patch up damage faster than we can. I don't know if we can alter our phasers and torpedo systems to compensate for that, but I'll keep looking into it," the changeling murmured. The silence in the holosuite was tangible.

Sisko nodded once. "Keep searching, Odo, because I don't want to be caught out if we can't close the passageway between now and then."

"As you wish," Odo replied, turning and leaving before Sisko could say another word.

*                      *                      *

With one last resilient flicker of effort, the bridge of the U.S.S. Sarekar finally returned to its usual state of opacity. Deep Space Nine's science officer had warned them about the passageway's curious effects on the photonic ratios of matter. Despite this, though, Captain T'Svara had not been entirely prepared for the visual disorientation. It was like the protective dome of bulkheads and viewscreen had vanished and left her open to the mercies of the emerald corridor. Even her supreme mastery over emotion could not stop the sudden sensation of falling. Both hands gripped the arms of the command chair with a strength fuelled by her fright. She had to restrain a spire of relief when the ship stopped quavering and normal space replaced the wisps of green energy. "Silent running, code grey," she said. Her voice was surprisingly deadpan, but her white knuckles betrayed the irrational fear lurking beneath the façade of control. "All sensors to passive sweeps. Report any suspicious readings to the Tactical station." T'Svara was renowned, in both her crew and certain circles of the Fleet, for being somewhat flexible in her allowances to illogic, but T'Svara had also faced the Borg before. It was her sound conclusion that there was no room for illogic in a fight with this particular enemy. Her clipped orders and no-nonsense demeanor were just signs of this attitude. "Transporter room one, this is the captain. Report on your status."

"Lieutenant Forbes here, ma'am," a pert, female voice replied. "We've installed Commander Dax's retrieval program, and simulations are looking positive. We might actually pull this one off."

T'Svara didn't move at all. "Your candour is appreciated, lieutenant, but your cynicism is not. Continue refining the operation. Computer, feed select data to my console, categorised under threat probability and scientific interest to the Federation." A screen on the right-hand side of her chair lit up with sporadic lines of information. One of the Vulcan's eyebrows arched. The first reading positively identified as Borg was a large structure near the mouth of the corridor: the Defiant had first recorded it on their initial scout run. If it was, as they hypothesised, a machine designed to maintain the transdimensional wormhole's integrity, then it's destruction was a priority. She flagged the accompanying diagram for later review. A few more data screens flashed by before she got the analysis on the escape pod field. They came up on the terminal as a spray of white dots drifting thousands of kilometres from the violated DS-Nine. She looked at them and found that she had to hold back a pang of sadness. The occupants of the scarred lifeboats were either long dead or assimilated, but their treacherous prisons would now save at least a few lives. She flexed her fingers gently. "Transporter rooms, transmit the access codes on stealth frequencies. Retrieve feedback data and stand by to energise."

The Tactical console pinged, and a glowing line stretched from the Sarekar to one of the white dots. Two, then three, four, five, and six pods, all joined up to their ship by silvery string, like a huge complex molecule floating in the ether. Each one of the lifeboats in the chain had responded to their access code request and had activated their escape transporters. With some clever manipulation, they were able to link the matter stream through each one until it got from the space station to the Sarekar, making the transporter frequency much harder to detect and trace. An officer nodded at her and mentioned that the Defiant had deployed the signal. T'Svara nodded.

"Transporter rooms…energise."

Being cloaked, the Defiant was unable to transport any survivors out from DS-Nine. But the two Akira-class ships could operate their own transporters in silent running, and so began remote sweeps of the station, using the closest escape pod as a baseline reading. The seconds ticked by onerously, until the Tactical office stabbed a control and reported, "I've found one life form. It's human. I've piped co-ordinates to Lieutenant Forbes.

"Transporter room to bridge. We've locked onto the life form and started the transport cycle. It'll take a few moments, ma'am."

T'Svara did not reply, but instead stared into her private screen. A blue dot had streaked off DS-Nine and was now making its way through the network of lifeboats. At each point in the chain, the transporter changed modulation and sent the matter towards another pod, until it finally ended up in the pattern buffers of the Sarekar. From there, Forbes would beam the life form directly to sickbay, so that any wounds could be treated. A moment later, the comm clicked and Forbes said, "Got them! One human, female, now materialising in sickbay. She looks unharmed. Any sign of Borg activity?"

"Negative, lieutenant, although we cannot be sure at this stage."

"Warn us when you are sure, because we're going to have to recalibrate bits and pieces so they don't track us. Forbes out."

T'Svara mentally made a note to give Forbes a commendation for her duty, although her occasionally-pessimistic attitude made dealing with her difficult at times. She looked back to the Tactical officer, who shook his head at her. "We haven't found any more life signs, ma'am. Beginning second sweep." He worked his controls for a number of minutes before shaking his head again. "Negative on the second sweep. Shall I try a third?"

"No. Perhaps the Thunderchild retrieved the others."

"Or perhaps there were no others."

It was an opinion that T'Svara did not particularly like, but she knew that it was probably true. All the hard work designing this operation, and there was one woman who needed saving. "Continue passive sweeps of the area. If you see the cube, notify me immediately. We can watch the Thunderchild and Defiant until they signal us." Her eyes remained fixed ahead of her.

"The Defiant's signalling us, ma'am," the Tactical officer murmured after a moment, as though the Borg would overhear him. "Time to go."

In one smooth motion, T'Svara stoop up from her chair and moved towards the bridge viewscreen, eyes narrowed. This was it. This was the only other crucial moment in the entire retrieval plan. Both the Thunderchild and the Sarekar would hang back for exactly one minute while the Defiant scampered into the shelter of Jeraddo, then diverge and take separate paths back to the passageway. The warship would then take passive scans from the darkness of the moon's shadow and analyse the transdimensional engine, collecting data that would form their plan of attack later. T'Svara doubted that such a plan would succeed without Starfleet assistance, but her role was not to destructively critique the strategies formulated for this mission. She had the sole survivor of the assimilated DS-Nine to get to safety. Right now, the only safety they knew was their own reality. She watched as the stars on the screen started crawling towards one side. They were on the way out: now all they had to do was avoid detection. The three ships were orbiting DS-Nine like moons, and although they were invisible now, she had a suspicion that they were around somewhere, watching them make their escape. T'Svara had decided that despite her logical (if not emotional) convictions, she would not panic. There was still the life of the human woman they had rescued to think about. It was disappointing that the rest of the station's crew had been killed or incorporated into the hive mind, but thinking about the loss would only induce more irrational reactions in both herself and the crew. No, she focused on the viewscreen. It would take an Akira-class ship such as the Sarekar three minutes, fourteen seconds to reach the passageway at their safe speed under silent running. If they were ambushed, they could certainly tackle one or even both spheres, but she truly feared the —

"Borg cube! On an intercept course, bearing zero-zero-four mark nine!" the helmsman bellowed. His voice was dripping with panic. She couldn't blame him. "I think they're running hot, ma'am. Speed of one-hundred-fifty-three percent impulse."

T'Svara clenched her fists until the fingernails nearly pierced the skin. Her breathing remained constant as she tried to slow her triphammer heart. Emotion raged behind her eyes. "Maintain silent running," she rasped.

"Aye, ma'am."

"They're intersecting our impulse trail," the Tactical lieutenant reported. "Average speed is dropping…I think they're analysing the ion stream. Wait…they're vectoring to follow us!"

The temperature of the bridge seemed to drop by a few degrees, which caused T'Svara to shiver violently. All she said was, "Maintain silent running." The screen changed to depict a giant leaden cube that was lumbering through space. She ground her teeth together. Remain calm. Remember that your priority is to get home safely. "Do not fire on them. Disable all sensors. Bridge to engineering: activate and lock the magnetic constrictors."

"Acknowledged."

"All sensors disengaged. Warp signature is undetectable," somebody said.

"Hostile now directly aft, following our impulse trail. Fifty-one thousand kilometres and closing. Fifty thousand. Forty-nine…"

"Have they detected the others?" T'Svara asked.

"Negative. Forty-two thousand…"

"Reconfigure the stealth systems. Dampen out the impulse drive."

"I'm trying, but they've almost got a fix on us."

"How long until we reach the passageway?"

"One minute, eighteen seconds. They'll catch us before we get there."

"Thirty-eight thousand and closing…"

T'Svara thought furiously. The Borg would punch through their stealth devices and lock onto them within seconds. So what would deter them? One lone vessel could hardly deal with a cube. She thought about altering course, but that would probably just allow them to catch up faster. The Denorios Belt was too far away, and heading to the shadow of Jeraddo would open the Defiant to attack. There was no logical solution to this dilemma. Unless…she swivelled on one heel and stalked back to her chair screen. The network of escape pods was still on the display, blinking silently. "Ops," she said slowly. "We have a total complement of six shuttlecraft?"

"Yes, ma'am," the Ops ensign replied. "But…"

"Prepare one for launch, remote pilot only. No live passengers."

"Aye."

She sat down and desperately hoped that her plan would work. Logic dictated that the Borg would follow their set patterns and abort the chase if there was a more attractive target for assimilation. If they hadn't picked up the Sarekar's warp engine yet, they might still have a chance at escape.

"Shuttle ready," said the Ops officer, a young man of Bolian descent.

"Launch."

"Shuttle is leaving our stealth field."

T'Svara nodded. "Increase power to its warp field. Blow the safety mechanisms if you have to."

"Done. Warp signature has doubled in strength…wait! The Borg are altering course! They're slowing down and scanning the shuttle! Thirty-two thousand kilometres distant and falling behind."

If the Vulcan had been prone to emotions, she would have sighed and fallen into her command chair. As it was, she merely bobbed her head once, walked to the helm, and fixed her steely eyes on the viewscreen. They were now only a little way from the transdimensional wormhole. The rescue mission had, against odds, succeeded.

*                      *                      *