When a Klingon fleet under General Martok arrives at the station ostensibly to protect the Alpha Quadrant from the Dominion, Sisko recruits Lieutenant Commander Worf to investigate the Klingons' true intentions.

When an aspiring writer turns up in the middle of the night, an elderly Jake Sisko recounts his life, which has become an endless quest to locate his father, after an accident in the engine room of the Defiant apparently claimed Benjamin Sisko's life.