The crew tries to rescue the captain of a stranded ship.
The Defiant picks up a distress call from Captain Lisa Cusak, stranded alone on a planet after her ship was destroyed. Its atmosphere will kill her without medication she is running out of, and the ship is six days away, so the crew keep up a running conversation with her to keep her alert. Over the days she becomes a friend, advising Sisko about having Kasidy aboard and helping Bashir and O'Brien see how the war has cut them off from their friends.
The crew push the Defiant to its limit and arrive just after she loses consciousness, only to find that Cusak has been dead for about three years; an energy field around the planet had carried her transmissions across time. They bring her body home for a Starfleet burial. In a lighter subplot, Quark plans to profit from Odo and Kira's anniversary date. The sixth-season episode is a quiet story about connection and loss.