An Alternate Suggestion

Sul Midak was not a worrier.  He was typically calm, cool, collected... orderly, and order-driven.  That was the Cardassian part of him, no matter what he called himself.  He knew this.

Nevertheless, he felt a pang of despair, as he suddenly saw his error... and wanted to slap himself for stupidity.

Entering the transporter room, high up on a floor of the towering skyscraper that was Cardassia's Central Dataplex, another thought came to mind.  He stopped.  What in the name of Quatal was wrong with him?  Why hadn't he thought of that?

Maybe it was the Cardassian atmosphere, or weather.  The heat outside, earlier.  Maybe he had breathed in lingering trace pollutants, and they had gotten into his brain, impairing his judgment.  It was a very poor move for the ops man; very poor – the kind that, were this a life or death situation, could have gotten him killed.  Him, or Captain Rampart – who was depending on him and Nyerko to be found, and found alive.  For the captain, life or death it could well be.

Stasia Nyerko.  Transporter station 462.  Whether the Bartokian realized it or not, she had just provided the penultimate step in Rampart's rescue.  It fell into place, right after Midak suggested paying Legate Rutlik another visit.  Nyerko informed him that she wished to change clothes and clean up before meeting him at Rutlik's location.  It was just as well.

Transporter station 462's logs held what he wanted: A record of Nyerko's origin point.  Wherever she beamed from – there they would find Captain Rampart.  Turning from the screen, he regarded the troop of security officers Nyerko had assembled, standing on the transporter pad, ready to go.

"I've prepared a recycling modulation sequence," Midak said.  The plan: To beam them in and out by pairs.  As soon as the last pair materialized, the first would be routing back to this station.  Presumably they would return with Rampart, in one of the rotating cycles.  Nyerko carried an enhancer chip, to boost Rampart's signal, giving the targeting scanners something extra to lock onto, just in case.

Nyerko nodded.  "Energize."  She went first, with a partner.

By the time the last pair beamed back, Stasia's had returned, and Midak knew what she knew: They found the abandoned transporter room... empty.  Rampart... gone.  If only they had thought and acted sooner....

They had the abandoned facility's coordinates.  The security troop left a locating beacon.  Unfortunately, station 462 wasn't equipped with all of the modern technology; Midak couldn't trace it from there.  He contacted Central and requested a fix on the beacon, as it appeared on the planetary sensor grid.

It failed to resolve, at first.  Midak considered the runabout, what Nyerko said about the timescale discrepancies she and Rampart experienced.  He applied a chronal detection algorithm, and there it was: In the jungle where Rampart vanished, not far from the runabout... emitting a temporal shift.  The eminent readings repeated, over and over.

"What is it?" Nyerko asked.