Beya stood from her desk in engineering and stretched, not knowing the amount of time she sat there working on the several diagnostics of various Pioneer systems before their arrival at Saxue. She knew that these diagnostics were redundant, but it couldn't hurt to be extra prepared, especially given how dangerous their mission was. She decided to complete the rest from her quarters and collected the couple PADDs on her desk before making her way for the exit. 

On her way out, she seen Ensign Tyler still furiously working away at his console, so she decided to make one last stop before leaving for the night. “Ensign, I think we can call it a night, she's as ready as she's going to get. Why don't you pick this back up in the morning?”

Tyler shifted his look from his console to the chief engineer and said, “Aye, sir, there's just this odd power drain that I cannot localize.”

Her curiosity peaked, Beya walked behind him and took a look at his console as he continued, “There seems to be some kind of malfunction in one of these EPS conduits-” He pointed to a junction in one of the Jefferies tubes, “-but for some reason it doesn't seem to respond to my commands. I was just about to go and take a look.”

Beya let out a sigh, knowing that her bed was going to have to wait until they investigated this issue. She nodded to Tyler and put down the PADDs on his console, “Alright, I'll go with you. Hopefully this is nothing, we just completed a diagnostic in this section two days ago, I can't imagine anything would have failed so soon.” Tyler stood up from his post and grabbed an engineering kit, then followed the chief through the junction into the Jefferies tubes. 

Crawling through the tube and down a few decks, they both finally arrived at the junction where the power drain was located. Beya grabbed the access door and pulled it free from the wall, “Alright, let's see what we've got.” She said, setting the hatch on the ground beside her. Giving the terminal a once over, she immediately spotted the problem, then shot a confused look at Tyler.

“Look at this.” She said to Tyler, motioning towards the circuits in the wall. He took out his tricorder and began scanning the junction, then spoke up, “Commander, these circuits appear to have been cut.”

“Cut? Are you sure?” She said, pulling her head away to look at the tricorder with him.

“The cut is too fine, looks like it was done with a laser tool.” He closed the tricorder and looked at Beya, confused, “Why would anyone disable this junction deliberately? All this section regulates is routing secondary and emergency power backups." 

Beya shared his confusion for a moment, then it dawned on her, “What systems does this junction tie into for secondary and emergency power?”

“Food replicators, gravity control, shield generators, replicators, ext-”

“Wait,” Beya said, holding up her hand and cutting him off, “that's it. Hurry, pack up the kit, we need to move." She said, reattaching the access panel to the wall, then tapped her comm badge, “Beya to Savar, bring a security team and meet me on deck eight immediately.”

Tyler fumbled to put the tricorder in place to close the kit, then scrambled to catch up to Beya who was almost running through the Jefferies tube towards the exit.

Reaching deck eight, Beya and Tyler rounded the corner to find Savar and two of his security personal in one of the junctions further in the corridor. Savar was first to speak, “What is the problem, Commander?” Beya motioned for them to all follow her as she hurried down the hall and into the auxiliary control room. The doors opening, she looked stunned to find Lieutenant Commander Sanders handling the controls on the far console. 

Beya looked to Savar, then spoke up, “Commander Sanders, what are you doing in here?”

Sanders turned around, confused, “Running a diagnostic on the lateral sensor array, I noticed a power drain so I wanted to check it out before it became an issue. What's going on?”

Beya walked toward him, looking around at the console, relaxing, “We noticed a power drain in the secondary and emergency power systems, we came up to investigate. What have you found?”

Sanders was about to answer when Savar interupted, “Commander, it is nearly 2330 hours, you were off duty hours ago. When did you notice this power drain? And why did you wait so long to investigate its origin?”

“I had some stuff to take care of after my shift, I came straight here as soon as I was free. Is there a problem?” Sanders asked, plainly. 

Savar shot a look at Beya that she hadn't seen before, but she knew Vulcans well enough to know that look means something's up. She slowly made her way back towards the security team and away from Jack, then Savar spoke up again, “Even so, Commander, you should have reported this power drain immediately upon noticing it. Why did you keep it to yourself and not make a note of it to your superior officers?”

Jack didn't answer, this time just rolling his eyes and turning back to the console to continue entering his commands. “Move away from that console.” Savar commanded, this time more loudly that he had been previously. Jack ignored him and continued pressing the controls, almost as if he didn't hear the Vulcan issue the command, or simply that he didn't care. 

Savar pulled his phaser, his security team doing the same, and pointed it at Jack, “Move away. Now.”

Sanders stopped what he was doing, then turned around and raised his hands, a wide grin beaming from his face. Beya, though she hadn't known the Commander for very long, immediately felt uneasy, looking to Tyler who couldn't move his eyes from what was going on. 

“I'm finished anyway, and so are you.” Jack said, grinning.

“You will come with us.” Savar said as he and his security team moved forward slowly. 

“Your time is almost up, Vulcan. Die well." Jack fell to the ground in a pile of goo, heading straight towards the air duct behind Tyler. Tyler dropped his engineering kit on the ground in shock, and Beya tackled him, moving him out of the way of the incoming changeling. Savar and his security team began to open fire, but not enough shots landed before the changeling could escape. 

“W-w-was tha-” Tyler said, shaking. 

“A changeling, yes.” Savar answered, then tapping his comm badge and calling for Captain Thiren. 

Beya moved over to the console while Savar filled in the captain and she pulled up what Jack, or rather the changeling, was working on. She gasped slightly, but loud enough for Thiren to hear from the comm, “Beya, what is it?”

“The changeling has disabled the shield generators; they have just gone offline. Without the secondary and emergency power systems in place, we have no way to get them back up.” She said, shooting a horrified look at the security chief, “Without the shields, we've also lost the Refractive shielding.”

Savar looked at Beya, holstering his phaser, “Which means we're in the middle of Dominion occupied space, alone, and detectable.”