Major Kira receives a call from the Bajoran Central Archive requesting information on her incarceration at a prison on Bajor during the Cardassian Occupation. However, the Major remembers quite vividly that she was hiding with the Bajoran resistance at the time of her supposed stay in the prison. She travels to Bajor to sort out the mess, but is kidnapped and taken to Cardassia.
When the Cardassian occupation of Bajor ended in 2369, the mining space station Terok Nor was left abandoned, its systems ripped out. By invitation of the Bajoran provisional government, Starfleet stepped in to oversee the rebuilding and day-to-day operations of the newly christened Deep Space Nine.
The years of Starfleet's nonintervention into Cardassian matters, however, had taken its toll on relations with the Bajorans. Consequently, Starfleet's position was a tenuous one; many Bajorans, suspicious and hostile as a result of decades of Cardassian oppression and brutality, did not greet the Federation's presence with open arms. The Federation's assistance is put to the test as DS9 becomes a center of travel and commerce that stretches into the Gamma Quadrant.