Wound up tighter than a racecar's suspension Ezri stormed down the corridor toward sickbay. Given the evening's late hour she had decided not to wake Commander Vaughn with her recommendation that both journalists be jettisoned as early as was reasonably prudent. She'd initially made her way back to her quarters, but soon found that sleep was a no go. She'd gotten the computer to search for Julian and it confirmed to her that the Doctor was still in sickbay. Knowing he was awake and wanting someone she could speak with candidly, who knew her past, her situation, and her insecurities, she couldn't help but make her way to him.

The sickbay doors swished open, "Julian I - " she began but cut herself off when she discovered the inanimate body of Doctor Bashir laid out on the floor unceremoniously letting his uniform soak up some sort of dark beverage.

She rushed to his side. Checking his pulse she was relieved to find that he was still alive. "Dax to Richter," she said slapping her combadge. Ezri used the time between her initial call and the groggy response that eventually came from the clearly sleeping Nurse to roll her former lover into the recovery position.

Proper medical help was on the way but still wanting to do something she made a move to the hypo preparation area. She took a glance around sickbay en-route, and noticed... all the beds were empty.

She looked at the one that had been their guest's, the detective in her noting the manner in which the bed sheets had been clearly thrown aside suggested the person using this bed must have almost leapt out of bed.

Wide eyed now in sudden realization Ezri tapped his combadge once again. "Dax to bridge. Sound red alert, we have an intruder."

Fortunately the officer on duty this night was Lieutenant Bowers, the Defiant's Chief of Security.

"Lieutenant," Ezri continued as the deafening red alert klaxons began to sound. "Get a security team down to sickbay. Get all non-essential personnel locked down in their quarters. The intruder is the..." she searched for the most accurate words; "... the pod person."

Richter was on the scene now, she had made double quick.

Confident in Bowers' ability to lock the Defiant down tight, Ezri ended the transmission in time to assist Richter in raising Bashir onto the nearest biobed. Ensign Juarez, Defiant's other Nurse, arrived with the security team a few moments later.

After a brief word with the nurses to look after the Doctor Ezri left sickbay, tapping her combadge as she went. "Dax to Bowers, any luck locating our assailant?"

"Negative," Bowers said sounding frustrated. "I didn't think anyone could hide on a vessel this small but with the majority of the crew being Human it's difficult to lockdown life signs."

Ezri entered the turbolift to find Vaughn, fully uniformed, waiting inside. "Going my way?" he asked.

The bright lights were a constant burning on her eyes to begin with. They drove her headache, they created waves of light and spots of black and blue in her vision. But these, as the headache and burning dissipated over the time it took her to reach the turbolift from sickbay. She didn't, and couldn't, fully understand the technologies laid out before her but had managed to figure out the lift was voice controller.

Groggy from her centuries of chyro-sleep, partially blind, and with no concept of what wonders technology would present her with, she made her way out of the turbolift and toward her destination. She'd encountered only other member of the crew after leaving the Doctor to "sleep it off" and she had left them unconscious too.

Rational thought was proving easier by this point and her superior strength was helping carry her a-pace beyond the output most Humans would achieve with her leave of difficulties.

"Boudica," a female voice said from behind. Boudica, name taken from the ancient Celtic Queen who had fought the Roman Empire gallantly centuries before, stopped and turned to identify the owner of this new character in the story of her life.

"I'm Laura Cartwright," the owner of the voice said. Her tone was respectful, but her mannerisms showed just a slight contempt, or was it simply nerves?

"I've been waiting such a long time to finally meet you," Cartwright said, her face creasing in a smile.

"You," Boudica struggled, her throat was as dry and a bone. "Know of me?"

"I do. A very great deal. I'm here to assure you your second coming isn't wasted. This is the rise of the Super Human."

Nog was way past his clocking off time, but he'd always been a sucker for a mystery and the Defiant had certainly provided plenty of those on this trip.

He'd determined the cylinder was an escape pod or sorts used aboard the earlier DY-100 vessels. What they were designed to do was encase the cryogenically frozen traveller in the event of a catastrophe that would mean their remaining aboard the vessel would cause them harm, or death. The cylinder would then be automatically jettisoned into space, sending off a distress signal. For 1990s technology all of this was pretty sophisticated, but to Nog it seemed absolutely antiquated. Sure he'd learnt about Earth's history whilst at the Academy, most Humans didn't like to talk about anything pre-Cochrane, but some did talk about World War III and the Eugenics Wars on the 1990s. The Ferengi were already long since a space-faring race at this stage, and part of this longer status as a warp capable species made Nog a little snobbish over the antiquated Earth technology. A feeling he'd never verbalize, but one he'd already harboured when being forced to endure the, predominantly, Human members of Starfleet cooing and crowing over some ancient Earth tech / ritual / sport.

Beyond this, and a general mechanically understanding of how every part of the device worked, Nog knew nothing. He couldn't tell you why it had been jettisoned, how it had ended up some 50,000 light years away from Earth, nor who the occupant was. Confident in Bashir's ability to bring their guest into the land of consciousness and would therefore provided answers to the questions Nog was still thinking about, he decided to call it a night. He cleaned the four hundred year old grease from his hands at a small clearing station in the corner of the cargo bay, allowed himself one muscle relaxing yawn inducing stretch and turned to leave.

Then the red alert klaxons sounded.

"Rest a moment," Cartwright said offering Boudica a chair. They'd taken refuge from the piercing blare of the red alert klaxons in some crew quarters. These had also provided them with a handy hostage, poor Crewman Patricia Long had been caught napping and was now gagged and bound with her own bed sheets.

Boudica, not accustomed to her new found weakness, took the offer greedily.

"I wanted to be there when you awoke..." Cartwright was saying, but Boudica wasn't listening. Her mind was processing, calculating. She still hadn't computed where she was, by the looks of things potentially some sort of submarine, which meant she was back planetside. But how many years had passed? What of Khan?

"You will answer my questions," Boudica said after raising her hand in a "stop" motion to her companion.

Silenced and in awe of the unfrozen augment's command Cartwright didn't respond for a moment.

"What year is this?" Boudica asked, this was front and centre. She had escaped the Earth with a great number of her fellow augments in 1992 before the going got tough real fast, on the understanding their teams on the ground with pilot the DY-100 vessels from the surface, keeping them in a safe orbit until it was time to return to Earth to ascend to whatever thrown they'd laid claim to.

"2376," Cartwright confirmed sheepishly, she obviously wasn't fully prepared for the conversation and moved and spoke with all the awkwardness of a parent taking their child through the birds and the bees.

"Nearly four hundred years..." Boudica said trailing off. This changed everything.

"You're still in space," Cartwright continued, with the truth following she didn't want to stop the tap.

"Aboard a predominantly Human starship; called the Defiant. It is, however, run by our enemies, but I have a plan that will see your escape and then... finish what you and my ancestor's began.

Ancestors? Things were falling into place for Boudica now. The shock of how much time had passed was soon dispensed with when she began to consider all the technological advances there must've been in that time frame, it would make her invincible. Trusting her fate to this, clearly, inferior Human specimen wasn't the wisest course of action; despite their apparent loyalty through some sort of tie to the past, it was prudent for Boudica to do so for now... at least until she was free to study this century's advancements in enough detail.

"We must begin a new," Boudica said feeding her companion what she wanted to hear. Already Boudica pictured sacrificing her as and when required.

Information filtered down to the off-duty Engineer quickly, and having been relieved of any kind of sentry duty on the cargo bay by two Security heavies, Nog made his way to the transporter room which he knew would be unmanned on the night shift. He wanted all ways off the Defiant locked down before they ran into any trouble.

Nog was half way through re-routing the transporter controls to the bridge, and only the bridge, when they entered.

The only thing he had time to see before dropping to the deck to take cover from a phaser blast was the bright green and orange of the unfrozen Human's attire.

"Surrender alien!" came a great hurling voice from the transporter room door.

"And perhaps there will be a place for you in my new Empire," the same voice continued. Nog had unholstered his own weapon and, with painful memories of AR-115 flashing in his eyes, shift his position to provide better cover.

"Come on out," came the powerful voice again. "Or we kill this one."

In defeat Nog threw out his phaser and came out with arms raised. Boudica stood front and centre, her uniform as imposing and impressive as that of any of the Federation's rival alien powers. She was flanked by that not-so-much-of-a-journalist who held a phaser to the head of the gagged Patricia Long.

"Do not hurt her."

Boudica was quiet for a moment, she seemed to be taking stock of Nog, as if she'd never seen any alien before.

"You beam us to these coordinates," Cartwright said, taking her focus away from their prisoner for just a second to retrieve two documents from inside her jacket.

Nog took the paper reluctantly. "We're a lightyear or more from the nearest planet, and we're travelling at warp. Where are you transporting to?"

"You shall see," Boudica said, her first acknowledgement on the simple demands her sister-in-arms had laid out.