Gul Dukat rules Terok Nor and all of Bajor with an iron (but compassionate) fist. When Bajorans both inside and outside of his labour camps begin dying of a new disease, his workforce is affected and his management looks bad. Bajoran rebels, convinced that the disease has been inflicted upon them deliberately by the Cardassians, strike back at their oppressors with increasingly desperate measures.But Dukat has an even bigger problem: although it seems medically impossible, the disease that originally targetted only Bajorans may now have begun to kill Cardassians as well. Dr. Katherine Pulaski of the USS Enterprise is allowed to work on Terok Nor to study the virus, which bears a disturbing resemblance to the one that ravaged Archaria III two years before. With the help of a Bajoran resistance fighter named Kira Nerys, will she be able to find an answer before an ailing Gul Dukat is forced to take the ultimate step to protect Cardassia: withdraw from the station and destroy the entire planet of Bajor?