The Solstice arrives at the Kordikar system and encounters three Jem’Hadar attack ships, commanded by Ublis the Vorta. Chief Purveyor Zivan forces the Dominion to stand down and invites Mel to join her for lunch. The Solstice buzzes the Dominion ships and lands on an atmospheric platform. They meet Zug, Zivan’s chief servant, who leads them to a monorail. Thal’tirian peppers Zug with questions while Ssleestak enjoys worms in a citrus sauce, with aphrodisiacs, and Jessa imbibes a hallucinogenic wine.

The Solstice and her flotilla of Starfleet escorts arrive at their home system. Upon being hailed by Admiral T'konra, Jen suddenly screams an order to vent cargo bay five on the starbase. The Admiral immediately does, beaming all staff inside back to safety aboard the station. Moments later a powerful explosion detonates among the vented cargo.

The Solstice reels from the vented explosion as the staff scramble to stabilize and figure out what just happened. Shan'taar and Jessa figure out the explosive agent used and the amount. The Solstice stabilizes and Phillip guides her into spacedock.

The senior officers along with personnel from their escort ships are summoned for a briefing with the Admiral and Jen Kras attempts to explain her involvement in what happened. afterward the staff is split between investigating the bomb or ship repair. Ssleestak and K'tral discover it will take months of repair and upgrades before the Solstice is fully spaceworthy again. While presenting their repair plan to the Captain, all senior officers are abruptly summoned back to the Admiral's conference room, along with the four religious heads of New P'jem; they are then told of the attacks on Earth and Starbase 375. Phillip is informed privately that his parents are all right, as they had called in.

K'Tral inquires about Romulans on the Solstice. Mel assists Zug and the Wabai gain their respective diplomatic statuses. Fal visits Armina to process his experiences on the last away mission. Jen visits Peel and a very drunk Phillip. Mel recieves new orders from the Admiral and gains a temporary First Officer; they are to transfer to the USS Varich for an exploratory mission. The new orders are forwarded to the crew.

Ssleestak has some feelings about leaving Sola behind, but is reassured. He brings cinnamon buns to alpha shift staff meeting, which are well received. Senior staff go over the impending transfer. Phillip returns to quarters and Sola offers him a few minutes of real-time communication with his parents on Starbase 375. They are all right, but Harrison Dade passes on some doubts about the official story of what happened. Peel enters the cabin and is introduced to the Dades. Ssleestak takes a meeting with Cidhela about the Solstice while EVA on her hull. Jessa counsels Edgly regarding his work on the Ra'vin'ka transporter buffer; Ssleestak later offers insight on Dai'loq tech that may help. Galan'naar offers the service of his navigator for the mission.

Phillip spends some time mollifying Peel after her unexpected "meeting" his parents. After consulting with the Admiral, Mel accepts Galan'naar's offer of his navigator (who is also his daughter) Merek'miir. Phillip later reports to Elias Vaughn to pass along what his father told him about the attack on Starbase 375 and finds out that Armina is waiting for him outside.

Jessa heads to Kelroc's for lunch and arrives back on the Solstice bearing treats. She stops at sick bay and asks Swims for a life size holo for Kel. Swims is confused, but agrees to get one. Jessa next stops in Engineering and thanks Ssleestak for the cinnabuns. Phillip stalls, but finally has to leave SI, leaving him no choice but to walk to the Varich with Armina. After briefly asking about the bloody knife, Armina tells Phillip he may continue his duties if he agrees to see her for 30 minutes per day. Phillip protests to no avail.

Shan'taar leads the officers in a tour of the Varich, during which they meet Lt. Park, who is still working on reconfiguring sickbay for Swims. Afterward the officers scatter to pack, examine their temporary ship further and other necessities before departure. Jessa beams to new P'Jem to look in on the Janneks and the Ra'vin'ka.

The staff of the Solstice prepare for departure. After staff meeting and the christening ceremony of the USS Varich, the crew transfers ships and departs. While at warp, security discovers they have again accidentally(?) kidnapped an engineer. Phillip begins processing his experiences during the temporal disjunction with Armina. Fal invites Science for a drink, which results in testing the carpet for kinetic properties and bemusing other members of the crew.

The Varich approaches the Rupture Zone after a week at warp with no issue. Lieutenant Merek'miir briefs the senior staff on what is known about the zone, including that the area was seeded with probes thousands of years ago. Of interest is the primary probe, whose distorted signal contains two discernable voices. She also talks about the three star systems contained within the zone.

Mel chats with Armina about her apparent problem with temporary XO Hall. The Varich drops out of warp at the edge of the Rupture Zone and captures the broadcast by the lead probe. After processing the first message the crew hears Peel Atuun spewing invective, and the response from an unknown Bolian superior commanding her to follow orders. The second message is dated eight years in the future and is from Captain Shay'taal of the USS Varich, stating they are marooned inside the zone and warning off rescue attempts. Engineering reports energy readings similar to those observed from Kordikar.

Cliff is launched into the Rupture zone and immediately splits into 17 copies of itself, as it has moved into a subspace rupture and scattered. Phillip guides the Varich into the Rupture Zone, showing off with some fancy flying. Power fluctuations and life form signals begin to indicate that several components and crew members are duplicated - it seems the Varich-A are nearly occupying the same space in different time streams. Communication is possible between the two ships.

An older version of Jen Kras and what appears to be 9 foot tall black werewolf suddenly emerge from the turbolift. The wolf introduces himself as Hey'yooth and reveals himself to be psionic, as he immediately picks up Jessa's and K'tral's desires to scratch his ears and he cheerfully complies. The crew eventually understands this Jen is from another point in her own timeline if she had never been picked up by the Solstice. Mel finds out from Captain Shay'taal that in their timeline the Solstice had been lost with all hands. Without them the Krenim succeeded in wiping out the Tizit Consortium, allowing the Wabai Unity to expand.

Alexandria after having a minor breakdown, reveals to Other Jen that they have met before in the distant past, and gives her a chip. Hey'yooth and Ssleestak, under K'tral's supervision, rewires the Varich's warp core to allow the two ships to separate back to their own timelines and the Varich-A to escape the Rupture Zone. While tinkering with the warp core, Hey'yooth also passes on the specs for a kinetic carpet and programs the core to play Rush while executing his changes. He and Jen return to the Varich-A via a subspace transporter he rigged up on the fly, and he and Ssleestak trigger the command button, successfully separating the two timelines to Tom Sawyer. Merek'miir asks again, somewhat hysterically, if this is a normal day for the crew. Of their three possible destinations within the Rupture Zone, Mel opts to go to the third planet as it seems the safest.

Most of the crew experience two days of downtime, as the Varich continues to operate with no problems, with the exception of flight control, which means most of the pressure falls of Phillip. This is suddenly interrupted when a ship resembling a large dirty snowballs appears in front of them. It fires what appears to be smaller snowballs at them and disappears. This appears twice more, at 45 minute intervals, with a noted increase in power of 1% each time. The crew discover the snowballs are ships belonging to a species of being called the Androkai. During the third attack Shan-taar fires at the snowball causing a chunk of it to separate and collide with the Varich, but it is like passing through a cloud; the ship and crew emerge on the other side wet and musty smelling.

Ssleestak suggests on the snowball's next appearance that they fly into the snowball purposefully and into a subspace tear. Mel dismisses the idea as exceptionally stupid and risky, much to Jessa's and the science department's dismay. They agree to send one of the copies of Cliff instead. Upon the snowball's next appearance they fire the probe but the Androkai dodge the fire, and slam into the Varich, which then falls into the subspace tear inside the snowball.

As a result of entering the tear the entire crew of the Varich experience some strange alternative universe versions of themselves before suddenly emerging back into their own reality having cut all but an hour from their original travel time. At the expected time, instead of an Androkai attack, subspace instead ejects several versions of Cliff reflecting the alternative universes the crew briefly visited in their fall through subspace. They collect them and continue.

The Varich continues exploring the Rupture Zone encountering several unusual planets on the way. One of the attempt to follow the ship as it's gravitational force supercedes that of the system; some quick thinking by Fal, Ssleestak and K'tral enable them to slingshot the wayward planet back into its original orbit. They encounter the Dominion base they've been assigned to find, but it has been completely stripped bare of usable tech and life forms.

They continue exploring and find an apparently uninhabited planet, as well as another ship flying casual in the system. The other ship clearly has design elements from an older Starfleet vessel, so Mel decides to hail the other ship, initiating first contact with the Urathi. Two members of that crew, Guardian Galeb Shi'zor and his daughter Ileeya beam over to the Varich.

Through conversation and the consumption of cinnamon buns thoughtfully provided by Ssleestak, the Urathi reveal the fate of the long lost Starfleet vessel Marie Curie and how it helped their people to free themselves from Tizit occupations. They also learn that the "unihabited" planet nearby is seemingly occupied by a human settlement modeled after the Roman Empire, the Urathi have developed modifications to their sheilds that allow them to traverse the subspace tears of the Rupture Zone safely and that cinnamon has an intoxicant effect on the Urathi physiology. The cultural exchange is interrupted by subspace rippling and the appearance of several warp capable ships bearing Roman eagles.

The Varich makes tentative first contact with New Gaul, one of the Vestan Hearthwords. They learn that allegedly the goddess vesta whisked away many of her followers in 380 CE and brought them out here, leading to the rise of the Hearthworlds. They agree to pass on a message to the rest of the Hearthworlds via buoy, and when the Vestans vanish back into subspace, they leave another buoy with tips on how to break free. The Urathi realize they are likely responsible for New Gaul's predicament.

Mel, Fal, Ssleestak, K'tral, Phillip, Jessa, and Peel all suffer from some sort of temporal glitch during the night as a possible temporal signature is detected. They all wake up groggy or worse; Fal has trouble transitioning from Ota Verik and his recipes, while Jessa has to correct which memory goes with which host. The officers investigate and discover a single verteron particle inhabited them briefly, and this particle contained a trace of Jen Kras's DNA. Peel sees the alternate timeline where Phillip killed her father and kicked her; she confronts him about it and he confesses. However, familial homicide apparently leads to sexy times… Later, the affected officers on the bridge have another incident when She-Who-Swims meets Armina and they swear she shrank from the morning meeting. The Varich and the Valiant evade a Tizit prototype warship.