Stardate 43510.7: During a humanitarian mission on the nonaligned world Rutia IV, Beverly is taken hostage by the terrorist Kyril Finn, who is fighting for the independence of his people, the Ansata. The terrorists are using an untraceable dimension-shift transporter, whose secondary effect is that it gradually breaks down body chemistry the more often it is used, as Beverly finds out. Finn wants to involve the Federation into the conflict at any cost, and he plants a bomb on the Enterprise, which Geordi manages to have beamed off the ship in the nick of time. The terrorists kill three members of the crew and leave with Picard as a second hostage. Data and Wes locate the Ansata underground base, and a combined security team of the Rutian government and the Enterprise beams down to free the hostages. Rutian security chief Alexana Devos kills Finn just as he is about to execute the captain although she may have stunned him. She is not sorry about it for he is better dead and a martyr than in prison and the reason for continuing efforts to free him.

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