After Breakfasting with Stadi, Ashok returns to his home to confront Muirgheal, the woman who turned his cafe into a pie and ale house. Loras Veltr'a visits Kathlar and Kar'al to ask to pursue Klingon culture, with a view to eventually gaining the Rite of Ascension. They say yes, but Kar'al warns him the road will be long and arduous.
M'Kress and O'Reilley discover a dozen ringed tunnels running through auxiliary caves and around the portal. A Starfleet scientist (Jackson) identifies them as tetrion cyclotrons shortly before they activate and an energy release burns out the sensors around the portal.
Chlorine tainted oxygen and nitrogen flood into the cavern from the other end of the portal, which now lies on a class M planet. The senior officers discuss sending a probe through, and decide to wait until they can eliminate a candidate world in the Romulan star system: they do not, after all, want to bring the Romulans into the war on the side of the Dominion.
Stadi asks to be de-assigned from the Starfleet Counselor role in order to concentrate on the New Lhasa syndrome. Horah-Morash reluctantly agrees.
A few hours later, terrorists attack a communications tower in the outskirts of Po'rama. Loras Veltr'a orders his security teams to take the building. They report that the aggressors look like Jem Had'ar, but, unsure whether the perpetrators are Dominion soldiers far from the front line or telepaths projecting an illusion, some of them hesitate to set their weapons above heavy stun. The security team takes 30% casualties - tragedy is piled upon tragedy as first officer Mortimore is mortally wounded. The perpetrators succeed in getting a message to Tholian space before Peterson and Reinhardt's teams take the building. They do not recover bodies, and suspect some perpetrators escaped.
Stadi takes Ashok to her quarters, and she gives him a family heirloom - her grandfathers fliptop Starfleet communicator. She tells him to contact her if he is in danger. She explains she has lost everyone she was close to, and doesn't want to lose him.
When the Romulan candidate world is eliminated, M'Kress prepares to send a probe through the portal. As soon as the she takes down the force field that was protecting the portal, Jem Had'ar beam into the cavern, and then into the facility that had been built to monitor it. Horah- Morash is injured and Hillback captured before a larger security team arrives to drive them off. O'Reilley finds his courage, and teleports himself to the cavern where he follows them through the portal. M'Kress directs the probe through the portal and locates the other world, in the gamma quadrant.
The remaining leaders of New Lhasa are summoned by planetary security to the cabinet office, where Bernard Hyde-Pierce shows Stadi and Heraza a Tholian and Chakuun fleet crossing into the New Lhasa sector and heading for New Lhasa itself.

To be continued ..

I believe in Season cliffhangers.

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