I particularly liked the element of Worf having to work with Telock, the Romulan ambassador. My favorite Star Trek episode of all time is the one where the Romulan needs blood and Worf is the only donor. Undertow embraced the political and also the conspiracy.

In the conference room they find a Romulan, ambassador Telock. He is livid with Sisko over the recent Maquis threats to steal the Defiant! He is more furious over the fact that Starfleet does not want any Romulan security involved. A special team has been detached.

The team arrives, led by the infamous Captain Giram, a Bajoran who was born on a federation world. He left the Federation to fight against the Cardassians. Kira expresses her distress instantly. Giram was a brutal man who may have tortured Cardassian prisoners.

When the team arrives, the second in command, Lieutenant Sirum spills the beans. He was an undercover spy who goaded the Maquis into trying to steal the defiant, in order to set a trap for their military commander, Colonel Robert Panzer. The crew is briefed on the plan. The crew meets Giram with some natural resistance. The argument is made that the federation has to play on a level playing field with the Maquis. He sites the Defiant as a ripe target, after all the security breaches regarding the Maquis on DS9, the Cassidy Yates incident and the industrial replicators. Giram tells them that only Sisko, and his team may enter the Defiant while it is docked at the station. Worf is upset, since the Defiant is his quarters and Sisko calms him.

Intelligence tells them that Panzer is scheduled to visit the station soon. They plan to grab him as he comes out of warp with the Defiant. Sisko does not like this plan, citing that Panzer wouldn't have done anything yet.

Sisko, Worf, Dax Giram and his team take the Defiant to grab Panzer. Kira and Odo being non-Starfleet are left behind. Sisko is not happy about this.

Meanwhile, Dr. Bashir meets Lieutenant Robyn Hainey, the mysterious woman from the replomat, who was watching him and O'Brian. She insists that she knows him from the academy and starts going into who she hung around with him and people he knew. Julian finds this weird, but she seems harmless enough, but he aggress to play a little racquetball with him later.Hainey

Meanwhile, Kira visits Odo in his office. Odo is trying to get a sensor reading on the Defiant. He manages a reading on the sensors on a slim frequency, as the ship is just on the edge of the Bajoran system. There is no action yet and the two start talking. Kira tells Odo that she knows the rumors about Giram are true. She was nearby when he interrogated prisoners and has known about this for years. Odo finds this hard to believe, he in a way admires Giram for his single-mindedness and tough stance.

Cut to Defiant. They are cloaked waiting for something to happen. Giram sits at the Captain's chair and Sisko stands next to him. Panzer's small ship comes out of warp. At this point Giram orders the security sensors to be turned off, leaving no record of what is about to happen. He instructs the crew to not be alarmed at the coming events and instructs the third member of the team, Geoff Nygeun to initiate the "Giram Special" and catches Panzer's ship in a tractor beam.

Back at Odo's office, Kira and Odo are shocked to see the sensor logs black out. They are getting just a few readings, certain power outputs and life signs. They notice one significant power signature rising, Kira notes that that can be only one thing, the phaser banks. Odo begins recording the sensor logs.

Meanwhile on the Defiant, Sisko notices the same things. Panzer's ship hails the Defiant. Sisko tries to answer, but Giram doesn't let him. Dax remarks that the Phaser banks are building up a significant power surge and that Panzer's ship is right in the way. Sisko demands that Giram stop this, but he refuses. The power build up continues, Panzer hails again. Sisko again demands that Giram stop this. Giram orders Sisko to stand down, saying that this is all planned. Sisko orders Worf to stop the power build up. Worf orders Nygeun to stand aside. Giram nods to Nygeunn and he stands his ground. Worf grabs him by the shoulder and a struggle ensues in which Worf takes a beating from Sirum. Giram secures the bridge, letting no more DS9 security enter. Sisko jaws him. Meanwhile the power build up continues. The DS9 crew manages to subdue Giram's people with a great degree of difficulty. Dax then finds that she cannot stop the power build up.

Back in Odo's office. Kira and Odo watch in horror as the sensors reach critical.

Panzer's ship is destroyed (good time to cut to a commercial) and at the same time, Panzer and his wife materialize on the bridge of the Defiant. Giram scolds Sisko for his actions and then lets the security back on the bridge. Panzer and his wife are taken away.

Sisko and Giram have it out. Giram tells Sisko that he has complete control over this operation and that Sisko is now out of the picture. Sisko doesn't buy it and Giram brings up Cassidy Yates again. That pushes Sisko over the bridge and he asks Giram to leave, saying that he is going to get Starfleet command to get Giram to leave.

Giram has Nygeunn and Sirum assigned to the Defiant now, guarding it.

Giram encounters Kira in the hall. He seems to be actually afraid of him. She walks away from him, but he pops up in front of her later. He says that he really needs to talk to her. She goes to walk away, but he says one word that makes her stay. It's the name of the bunker in which he tortured the Cardassian prisoner. She asks him if it really happened. He confirms her suspicions.

Sisko and Giram interrogate Panzer together at Sisko's insistence. He denies all the allegations against him. He says he is just coming to Bajor to visit his wife's family and that's all. He is shown the transmission of him threatening to steal the Defiant and claims it is not him. Giram insists that he must be held and cannot be let go, claiming he may even be working for the Dominion. Sisko doesn't believe Panzer ever had any intention of stealing the Defiant. Still, he cannot have Panzer released. Giram gives Panzer the option to start a new life because the sensor logs registered that he was killed.

Panzer doesn't want this and denies that Maquis has any intention of taking any military action against the Federation.

There is a break-in on The Defiant. An alien gets aboard and begins scanning the vessel. The alarms go off all over opps. A joint Giram and Sisko team catches an alien breaking into the Defiant. Giram now feels validated regarding a still existing threat to the Defiant.

The alien is caught, but when she is being transported by security she breaks away, giving the two security a brutal hand to hand beating. She is able to activate a device and transports away.

On the racquetball court, Bashir is playing racquetball with Robyn. He is still a little wary of her and is asking about different people that she should know. She answers all of his questions well and then Julian tells her an obvious miss-truth about someone. She remarkably calls him on it, but he is still wary. During a rough volley, she falls and sprains her wrist. Julian notes that she hurt it awfully badly and that it is inflamed. They go back to the infirmary and he makes it better for her. She thanks him and comes on to him by putting her hand a top of hers.

After the break in. Giram becomes more distrustful of Sisko and his abilities. He bars him completely from the Defiant while his team does a sensor sweep of the ship. Sisko decides that calling Starfleet this time probably wouldn't do any good. Giram and his crew move onto the Defiant and set up a dampening field so no one knows what they are doing.

Worf is sitting at the Promenade. Telock, the Romulan ambassador comes to join him. He suggests an alliance between them to see what's going on the Defiant. The two make uneasy friends, noting the hatred between Romulans and Klingons. They get Sisko's OK to infiltrate the Defiant ad find out what's going on. With the dampening field, they can only beam out one at a time, so they must be careful not to get caught.

They sneak aboard and hide in the Jeffrey's tubes. They find Giram's crew setting up full sensor scanners, Worf notes that these are the kind of sensors needed to make a full schematic. Giram's crew can't see them because of the sensor dampeners, or so Worf and Telock think.

As Sirum goes over the schematic though, he sees the outline of the two in the in the tube. Sirum goes off the take care of them. Worf hears him coming and beams Telock out of there. Worf starts looking for a place to hide until the transporter can re-charge. Sirum is coming through the tube. Worf pulls out his phaser as he moves through the corridors. At a junction he comes face-to-face with Sirum. They have a confrontation in which they both consider shooting one another. Worf is beamed out of there and Sisko demands that Giram surrender. Sisko imparts that whatever this game is, it is over.

Giram conveys that the whole thing was a test of Sisko's loyalty. Sisko doesn't believe him and than demands that the data captured by the team be turned over to him. Giram hands over blank data cubes. This is not good enough for Sisko and he tells Giram that as long as he is here, he will be in custody and under investigation. At that point Robyn enters and Giram recognizes her as a member of her team. Julian is shocked. She turns out to be the alien who had broke into the Defiant disguised as an alien, a plot to give Giram an excuse to extant his stay and question Sisko's security further. A small ship then emerges from the wormhole and beams the team off the station and takes off. Open examining the Defiant's logs more thoroughly after Telock has gone, they can tell that something has been copied off of the main computer, but they don't know what.