Lieutenant Brock worked feverishly on the lower level of engineering. For the past few days he had been busy trying to incorporate the bizarre, alien time-twisting machinery the Mekong's crew had found aboard the Han'gosian space station into the circuitry of the Knight's transwarp drive.
He was almost ready, he thought.... He couldn't be sure, the alien contraption was just so weird! He had nightmare of himself pushing the "On" button, and the ship disappearing into the depths of time forever!
A few more days of tinkering were needed to work out a few of the more annoying kinks. But now that they had a time machine, time had become slightly less of an issue.
Lieutenant Lee Carter was in the main shuttle bay. Her work on the Peregrine craft had been progressing smoothly, although a lot more slowly that she would have liked. Replicator resources that would have been applied to producing components for her new fighter ship design had been diverted to the engineering section for replacement part for the Knight.
She had suffered no ill effects from her short existence as a small, distilled geometric solid, and had no memory of it of course. As far as she was concerned, one moment she was in the pilot seat of the Mekong facing a Kelvan that wore her face and had her finger on a small black box on her belt. The next thing she knew, she was in the Knight's sickbay, staring at Doctor Kira, who was holding some sort of small black control box.
But now, finally, her baby was almost ready. The ship that had once been a lowly Peregrine courier ship was transformed into a formidable fighting vessel! Rapid fire pulse compression phasers where a mere phaser bank had been; quantum torpedoes replacing micro-photon torpedoes; dual warp cores; increased speed, increased shields, increased hull integrity -- it was a fighting force to be reckoned with!
The specifics of the program she had snuck from the holosuite in Quark's Bar on Deep Space 9 was sitting on the deck of the hangar bay in front of her in real life! If this crazy idea actually worked, she would definitely repay Quark!
It was time for a test run....
Meanwhile....
The Kelvan Conquest Planet was working its way further and further into the heart of the Alpha Quadrant at high warp speed. Along the way, it had met no resistance it couldn't handle easily.
The remnants of the Cardassian Union surrendered after the utter destruction of their homeworld, Cardassia Prime. Planet Bajor suffered the same fate as their one-time arch-enemy Cardassia -- utter destruction -- the proud Bajorans would not yield to anyone ever again.
Soon after Bajor, the Kelvan planet-ship crossed the Federation's declared borders. The first casualty was the Federation's gateway to the Gamma Quadrant, Deep Space 9. It was destroyed easily before any resistance could be mounted.
After that came the Ferengi Alliance and the Sheliak Corporate. Still the Kelvan Conquest Planet worked its way inward, either destroying utterly, or subjugating by fear. The Tholian Alliance was taken only after a fierce struggle because the Kelvans had never met a species like the Tholians before.
The Kelvan planet-ship was headed for the heart of the Federation.