A world-wide power outage leads Starfleet to believe that a Dominion attack is imminent and forces Admiral Leyton and Captain Sisko to request that President Jaresh-Inyo sign over command of Earth to Starfleet. Meanwhile, Odo finds electronic evidence that an elite Starfleet Academy cadet unit, dubbed Red Squad, was brought back to Starfleet Academy just after the power failure when all of Starfleet at the time was being mobilized. When a Starfleet Admiral tells Sisko to delete the evidence from the computer system, Sisko begins to question the actions of his superiors.
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.