Odyssey out of Time.

Kira had seen her friend Jadzia happy on many occasions, but the look on her best friend's face was so radiant and gleeful that Kira was having a very hard time remembering when she had last seen it. Ever since the Odyssey had come through the wormhole a week ago and after the archaic pre-warp starship had arrived in their universe and the salvage team had learnt how the ship worked there had been a massive rush to learn more about the strange ship from another universe. Kira took a sip of her drink, once more savouring the taste of raktajino. She felt herself becoming more alert even as her caffeine levels rose like an oceans' tide, thankful that duty shifts on a space station even one as busy as Deep Space Nine were fairly relaxed despite Sisko's adherence to the rulebook at times.

"You're in a good mood," Kira commented to the Trill while she checked the daily status reports while she tried to keep her mind off the Odyssey. Her heart sank into the deeper recesses of her stomach when she read the reports of more bloodshed. The Klingons had launched four offensives against both the Federation and the Cardassians recently before the Odyssey even appeared; a part of her was surprised to admit this, even after everything she had seen and done in her time in the Bajoran Underground, she actually felt sorry for the Cardassians.

But at the same time, she was angry with the Klingons for caring more about their precious and barbaric honour when the enemy was on the other side of the wormhole.

They knew the Dominion had planned the whole thing. They had kidnapped a high ranking Klingon General who urged the Council, urged Gowron into war. They knew it was part of a plan to weaken the Quadrant and make it easier for the Dominion to walk on through the wormhole. All the Jem'Hadar would likely need to do in an ideal world would be to wait until the wars had weakened everyone to the point where only a few shots needed to be fired.

The Klingons must know what's at risk, so why make that mistake? Kira had once said she didn't understand Klingons. Well, she meant it.

Ever since Gowron had discovered the truth about the Martok changeling, the Klingon High Council had called for a cease-fire. But it hadn't lasted. The war had continued, but for the Cardassians, the war on their side had grown worse while the Klingons had withdrawn ships and troopers from that front and sent them to the Cardassian front.

So many Klingons believed the two powers were weak and they were going out of their way to prove their point. Personally, Kira wanted to shake Starfleet and the Federation council. They needed to wake up and see reality. The Klingons had to be stopped and they needed to be stopped now before the Dominion came, but instead of actually taking the time and energy to come up with new ways of fighting back the Federation was still clamouring for diplomacy. It was the same with the Cardassian Detapa Council. Kira remembered being on the Bird of Prey Dukat and she had stolen, she remembered hearing his anger, his disbelief and his shock at how his government had dismissed the capture of the Bird of Prey.

The Bird of Prey contained up to date intelligence of Klingon battle plans and troop movements. The Cardassians could have located Klingon bases and launched attacks against them while crippling the Klingon movements. With the Bird of Prey, they could have made a stand. And they had access to a fully functional cloaking device, too.

With that, the Cardassians could have found ways to fight the Klingons on a footing the Empire would have found hard to fend off. But the council had decided against it, surprising Kira that they were that naive. In many ways, they reminded her of the Federation. It was no wonder Dukat had taken the ship and gone off on a rampage through the Klingon war.

What worried her the most about what Dukat was doing was Kira had no idea what he would do later on. Still, only time would tell.

"Oh, I am," Dax's smooth reply brought her back into the present and she had to focus on her friend to hear what she was saying, "I've been going over the database files we've downloaded from the Odyssey so far. This Asgard knowledge… is incredible!"

Kira remembered her first sighting of one of these Asgard. Granted it was a hologram and not the real thing, but her first impression of them was that they were tiny. It was hard to believe the Asgard had been a key player in that universe, but at the same time the hologram had spoken to them, accepted the new situation of the Odyssey and their database in the hands of the United Federation of Planets and had even been shown the history and tenets of the organisation.

And the Asgard hologram had accepted it.

Just like that.

Afterwards, the database's sum total of knowledge was open to them all.

One thing that bothered Kira at first when she had been reading through Odyssey's logs were that the Odyssey and a few other ships had been called to the Asgard homeworld for the aliens to fit them with their new technology, and a copy of their knowledge. According to the log, the Asgard reason for that was because they knew one of the ships was assigned to a different galaxy, where an expedition was currently understanding an even older race's knowledge and technology and the Asgard believed it would shorten the gap considerably if they had access to Asgard knowledge while the third ship would be taking the database to Earth.

Had those other ships fallen into the same trap?

But from what she had later learnt the Odyssey crew had sacrificed themselves to save their fellows when emissions from the Asgard database made them easy to track. They saved the lives of their colleagues on the other ships to give them a chance of getting home.

Miles had downloaded a few scraps of knowledge of Asgard shield technology and a few other engineering knowledge to see if they could work on improving the performance of the Defiant and indeed the station. As far as Kira had found out during the most recent staff meetings, the Chief had been sharing his findings with Starfleet and they had added the improvements to other ships in the fleet.

And it wasn't just the Defiant. The Chief had also gone on taking knowledge of Asgard beaming technology and he had been experimenting in making it work with Federation technology, to say nothing of looking at their computer science. From what she had found out, the Chief had been studying the holographic technology of that reality.

Worf had done the same. He had downloaded some information on Asgard plasma beam weapons and he had started designing Asgard derived weapons for Starfleet. At first, the Klingon had been reluctant to believe a plasma beam weapon could be effective, but then he had discovered it was more powerful than a phaser and disruptor beam combined and was capable of tearing through powerful shields.

Kira had no doubt Worf had been sending the daily updates of his work to Starfleet.

The Asgard database contained a lot of medical information and Julian himself had taken relatively small amounts of that knowledge compared to the others. When he had told them straight in the staff meetings that yes he had been looking at the database of the Odyssey, he had wanted to make fresh discoveries and new innovations straight from his own mind.

Kira could understand his point of view even if she knew others wouldn't.

Starfleet had shown a great deal of interest in the Odyssey's Asgard database since the ship emerged from the wormhole into their universe, but the Klingon activity and the fact the crew were trying to understand how the ship worked kept the ship grounded at the station.

Even now, nobody had worked out how the ship had got itself in the wormhole in the first place.

A part of Kira wondered if the Odyssey had only come through under the will of the Prophets. It wouldn't be the first time the Prophets had had a hand in the affairs of beings on the linear plane, and she had to wonder if they had organised the accident she and Julian had experienced when they travelled into the parallel universe, but Kira wasn't sure then and she wasn't sure now.

"Why, what've you found?"

"Nerys there's information in the database I've never heard of and stuff that I've always taken as theoretical. I also downloaded some of their stellar cartography files, mostly for the Alpha, Beta and Gamma Quadrants. It looks like they conducted more in-depth surveys for those parts of the galaxy that even I never knew was possible," Dax gushed.

Kira was not a scientist. She had always had a military background seeded and watered by the Cardassian occupation. But she had learnt over the time she had known Dax and the others there was so much more to the universe than hand phasers. "It's hardly surprising if the Asgard were older than anyone we know."

Dax nodded, conceding her point. "True."

That wasn't all she had been studying.

Jadzia's interests with the Odyssey were growing every single day they had access to the ship and the Asgard database. One of the things that interested her even after a week was the Asgard hyperdrive. When she had first seen the model of how the drive worked, Jadzia's first initial thought of how the drive worked was that it was similar to transwarp corridor technology. They'd already had some experience of the technology, after the Enterprise encountered that group of rogue Borg drones led by Commander Data's insane brother, Lore.

She was more than aware Starfleet was trying to learn more about how the technology worked. The only reason the Enterprise D had succeeded in making use of transwarp corridors was that those rogue Borg had set up the conduit; when the Borg were defeated the conduit was collapsed and Starfleet was unable to make any use of the technology afterwards.

But that hadn't stopped them; Jadzia knew that Lenara was still focused on understanding how to make artificial wormhole travel a reality and make it practical. But she was also aware of several other projects and experiments into transwarp theory. However, the Federation was still lost on how to make it a reality.

The Borg were the only power they knew who still had access to the technology and understood the principles to make use of them.

But hyperdrive was totally different. It worked by opening a subspace window into a lower domain of subspace, termed hyperspace. The ship would then pass through the window, generating a field that formed a hyperspace conduit. In a way, the ship would be generating a variant of a warp field in a deeper subspace strata.

There were apparently two kinds of hyperdrives, and that was one of the most exciting things about the drive. One of the forms was the interstellar hyperdrive which allowed travel within a galaxy. The second was the intergalactic hyperdrive which allowed travel between galaxies, and the speed of the travel time was balanced by what the power source was; not was possible to travel from one galaxy to another in just four days with one power source such as a naquadah generator (Jadzia had been thankful to find the molecular structure of the substance in the Asgard database, and she had quickly found out enough about the superconducting mineral to know it had an alternate counterpart in this reality), but there were other advanced energy sources which could power a ship to travel through hyperspace. There was no need for some strange coordinate system, you simply set the course for the star system conventionally, and you just engaged the hyperdrive.

Jadzia had already downloaded some of the knowledge the Asgard had on some power sources, and she'd discovered they had developed neutrino-ion generators which combined protostar or stellar matter and mixed it with naquadah and its more unstable counterpart naquadria which then split the atoms and then locked the reaction in a stasis loop that created a space/time anomaly. In Earth units of measurement, the output of the neutrino-ion generators created a power output equivalent of one billion kilojoules.

With the hyperdrive and the knowledge of more advanced energy sources, things like warp drive and antimatter explosions and the risks of using theta radiation would be a thing of the past, or warp-hyperdrive hybrid ships could be sent out into the universe on 5-year missions to explore beyond the Federation to other parts of the galaxy that hadn't been touched or explored with anything but a subspace telescope, or into the local group.

The double doors to Sisko's office slid open with their distinctive sound and Sisko stepped out of the office. Kira and Dax both stopped what they were doing and turned to the Captain.

"Well, what did Starfleet Command say?" O'Brien asked. The chief had been studying some of the Asgard transporter technology while he was going over the station technical reports.

Sisko had been called away to his office over half an hour before by a priority one communique by Starfleet Command. Despite the orders to keep the ship grounded before it could be examined properly, Sisko had given his crew orders to go over the Odyssey technology first and to see if it was compatible with Starfleet technology after they'd examined the ship.

The Odyssey had proven to be a ship of interest for Starfleet Command; ever since Worf, Dax, O'Brien and Bashir had been studying some of the knowledge within the Asgard database in the week since she had been docked and sent some of it off to Starfleet as part of their preliminary checks to see the benefits of Asgard technology being mixed with their own technology, Starfleet had become increasingly interested. And with their recent losses to the Klingons and the threat of the Borg and the Dominion looking in the background, Starfleet had seen the advantages of this highly advanced technology very quickly.

At first, Sisko had wanted to send the Odyssey to Earth and allow Starfleet to reverse engineer its systems, but as before with other pieces of technology and databases belonging to lost alien cultures, the team he'd assembled on DS9 had studied parts of the Asgard data core and made small findings which had begun to excite the Federation.

In truth, Sisko had been wondering when Starfleet would order the Odyssey to travel to Earth, with all the Klingon activity happening. Yesterday, he had taken Odyssey on a small trip through hyperspace to Bajor. The first known hyperspace jump in their universe, as far as they knew although it was possible there were other races, or perhaps an alternate counterpart to the Asgard existed in the universe, somewhere who had the power to travel in the same way.

But it would be the first hyperspace trip in Starfleet history. Same difference. He was relieved that he'd had the foresight to contact the Bajoran government and the Bajoran militia to let them know about the plan, or they would have been shocked.

"Major put up a view of the Odyssey," Sisko ordered.

Kira nodded, inwardly wondering why Sisko wanted to see the Odyssey, but she did as she was told.

The Odyssey had been docked at upper pylon 2 since it had been brought through safely.

Sisko glanced at the ship, amazed by its size. At 225 meters long, it was close to the Intrepid class in size, but its alloy of the superconductor naquadah and trillium and several other materials was already impressing ballistic experts back on Earth. "They've been implementing the technology upgrades of the Odyssey that we've gleaned from the ship's computer and technology, but they want the ship to make its way to Earth for study."

"What about the Klingons?" Jadzia asked in concern.

Initially, Sisko and the Deep Space Nine crew had been authorised to study the ship at the station but that changed when the Odyssey's capabilities became known to Starfleet and Deep Space Nine.

Hyperdrive capability, allowing faster than light travel to other galaxies. Starfleet was already demanding information on how it worked.

Better weapons and shields.

A new form of transporter beam.

Starfleet had been excited at first before they discovered the Klingon activity was too high. The Klingons At the same time they had to take into account, they knew little about how the Odyssey's hyperdrive worked. In that time the crew were told to focus on the helm and navigation and engineering systems. Right now they were certain on how to get the ship to Earth. Starfleet had been relayed every report since, as well as uploading the different upgrades throughout the fleet, improving their chances in a galaxy that was rapidly growing madder and madder with every day.

The Klingons had stepped up their attacks. The Empire knew the ship was there, and with every upgrade Starfleet received, but Starfleet, interested and fascinated by the technology was putting several ships and squadrons near Bajoran space. They were running metaphasic and antiproton scans to pick up Klingon cloaks, and several Klingon ships had been destroyed en-route to DS9.

Somehow with that knowledge, Kira could see why Starfleet wanted Odyssey now. She had known that the Chief and Dax knew a lot about the ships' systems to get her working again.

"They want Odyssey the day after tomorrow. But we have a couple of missions first; the first one is for tomorrow, they said they wanted us to help rescue an outpost with the Asgard hyperdrive and its beaming technology. The Klingons have been levelling an outpost for the last few weeks. The outpost contains an intelligence team who've collected a lot of knowledge on the Klingons' movements. They're under siege and our job is to put it right."

Kira nodded when she saw the logic there. "And the second?"

Sisko sighed. "They wanted us to take Odyssey into the Gamma Quadrant, to the Idran system."

"Idran? But that's virtually on the other side of the wormhole, what is the point?' Jadzia said.

"I know that and so do they, Dax," Sisko said patiently, "but Starfleet wants us to see if the hyperdrive is sustainable over large distances. At the same time, if the Dominion does come through, we might need to send tactical missions into the Gamma Quadrant and we know the Dominion will be looking towards the wormhole. We need a back door."

"That would have a significant tactical advantage," Worf commented as he saw the benefits of the plan.

Sisko nodded. "Tomorrow, we're going to have a busy day. Dax, Mr O'Brien, Mr Worf, you'll be coming with me on both assignments. Major, you'll be in command of the station until we get back."