question about when the dominion took over Deep Space nine

[sayla0079]

Maybe someone can answer this for me it's for a fanfic. anyway when Starfleet abandoned DS9 to the dominion/cardassians in season 5/6 did the starfleet officers grab their personal belongings when they left or just run for it leaving everything behind?

[Jonathan101]

Yes, they grabbed their personal belongings. Abandoning DS9 was a tactical move to keep Bajor out of the war as much as possible, not a hasty decision made on the fly.

We know this because Sisko deliberately left his baseball behind in his office, and Gun Dukat finds it and knows he did it to send him and the Dominion a message- that he'll be back. Also, the DS9 crew had time to methodically sabotage key components of the station to annoy the Dominion as much as possible.

[Yukaphile]

A deleted scene had Bashir commenting on the state of his quarters, as Weyoun had been the one who occupied it. You can find it shortly after the Dominion War arc on Memory Alpha.

[Zoinksberg]

Starfleet had evacuated all Federation members except the senior staff and Defiant crew before the Dominion arrived. They were the ones "occupying" the station when attacked and so as soon as the Defiant left it was officially transferred to Bajoran control. Most likely their belongings were on the earlier ships given the size of the Defiant.

The Dominion, on the other hand, had to cut and run after their reinforcements from the Gamma Quadrant succumbed to the Mind Bomb. They were forced to grab what they could and get the heck out of Dodge.

[PerrySimm]

Well, in "The Circle" they have time to explicitly say how long it would take to do an orderly and complete evacuation from the station - a week. In "The Siege" they show what happens when they only have seven hours, give or take.

"A Call to Arms" maybe was a little faster than they'd have liked but it was basically planned for, and most of the heavy lifting was already done. O'Brien had his family evacuated already.