Forwarded by the ASC-VSO 
Posted: Mon, 26 Jan 2004 21:31:14 GMT  
In: alt.startrek.creative 
From: Gabrielle Lawson inheildi@earthlink.net 
 

Title: Faith: Hope
Author: Gabrielle Lawson (inheildi@earthlink.net)
Series: DS9
Part: REP 16/18
Rating: [PG-13]
Codes:


      Bashir clenched his jaw and folded his body over his knees when he 
felt the bone on his wrist pop back into place.  His wrist burned from 
the pain, and the fetal position was straining his ribs.  Then he 
remembered that the stream was there and that the water was cold. 
Straightening as much as possible, he plunged his hand into the water. 
It wasn't cold enough to numb the pain, but after a few minutes it had 
fallen to a more bearable level.  He could use his instruments then to 
heal the fracture.

      He still wished for the tricorder.  There could be internal 
injuries or infection--very likely under the circumstances.  His head 
still ached, and considering that he'd been unconscious--and that Vlad'a 
had come for a visit--a concussion was likely.  All he could do at this 
point was give himself some antibiotics and wrap his ribs, provided he 
could find anything to wrap them with.

      Now that he felt a little better, he could see better his 
surroundings.  A stream wasn't unusual, but the trees, grass, and light 
seemed out of place.  He couldn't remember how he'd gotten injured or 
how he'd ended up among the dead people.  He did remember the moon, the 
transmission, and a cave.  The people he could understand, and he knew 
who killed them and why.  But this did not look like a cave.

      "It's still a cave."

      Bashir had expected Riker, but the voice was too young.  And he 
didn't think Riker was telepathic.  Still, he wasn't altogether 
surprised to see Vlad'a watching him from across the stream.

      "You look better now," the young man said.

      "Miracle of modern medicine," Bashir mumbled.

      "You could have used that before," the boy noted.  "You could have 
helped the man in the train.  Or yourself."

      "It wouldn't have helped," Bashir replied, realizing the futility 
of healing anyone on a train to Auschwitz.

      "You could have helped Andrzej," Vlad'a held, staring him right in 
the eyes.

      His cousin.  Bashir couldn't look away, and he couldn't turn away 
from the what-if scenario Vlad'a had just presented him with.  Given 
modern instruments, he might have healed Andrzej's leg, which might have 
kept him from being immediately selected for the gas.  Maybe having 
family would have helped Vlad'a; maybe he wouldn't have felt he had to 
sell himself for food.  Maybe he would have survived as Max did.

      Vlad'a took the rest of the thought away.  "Sometimes, I think 
it's better he never got the number.  He didn't see what we saw."

      *Worse,* Bashir thought, remembering with a shudder that sent pain 
to his ribs.  *Just for a shorter time.*  He let his gaze fall to the 
water.  It wasn't that he'd forgotten.  He could never forget.  Those 
particular memories had subsided somewhat to a deeper part of his mind. 
  Seeing the slaughter had brought them forward again.  And probably 
Vlad'a, too.  "Not better," he finally said, "just different."

      "What's different?"

      Bashir looked up, not at Riker who had spoken, but at the patch of 
weeds on the other side of the creek where Vlad'a had been sitting.  He 
cursed himself for speaking out loud.  "I have a head injury, " he said, 
too quickly.  He'd sound defensive.

      Riker showed no sign of scorn.  "I realize that," he stated.  He 
was carrying two bundles of cloth, one of which he now laid on the 
ground near Bashir.  "So who was it?  Max, . . . Simon?"

      "Szymon," Bashir corrected.

      "From the cave?"

      He wondered why Riker would be so interested in his 
hallucinations.  But at least he seemed to accept that it was the head 
injury that caused them.  "Vlad'a.  Not from the cave.  From the camp."

      Riker's brow furrowed as he sat down to take off his shoes.  "The 
camp?"

      Bashir still felt like he had to defend his sanity.  "They're real 
people, or they were.  I don't make them up."


      Riker set his shoes down and gave Bashir his full attention.  He 
remembered what Bashir had said earlier about not wanting to see this, 
the slaughter, again.

      "What happened to him?" he asked.  "The Jem'Hadar killed him?"

      Bashir's eyebrows pulled down in the middle.  "The Jem'Hadar?  No. 
  Vlad'a killed himself."

      "Oh," Riker replied, as if he understood.  He didn't.  But he 
didn't necessarily like the idea of Bashir hallucinating someone who 
committed suicide.  It was a bit too pessimistic.  They didn't need 
pessimism right now.  They needed optimism.

      Bashir must have caught his misgivings because he defended Vlad'a, 
whoever he was.  "He had every right.  Every reason.  You can't know. 
You weren't there."

      Riker didn't want to argue about the hallucinatory person, but he 
was even more confused now.  He knew Bashir had been a prisoner of the 
Jem'Hadar, but he'd seemed adamant the Jem'Hadar weren't the cause. 
"Who was he?" Riker asked, keeping his voice soft to try and calm the 
doctor.

      "A young man," Bashir answered, settling back down.  "We were on 
the same train."

      *Train?* Riker thought.

      "I barely knew him," Bashir continued.  "But I had promised his 
cousin I'd watch him."

      Apparently he thought he hadn't done a very good job.  Was it 
guilt that made him hallucinate the boy instead of someone else?  "What 
happened?"

      Riker was surprised by the answer, said so easily and lightly as 
if it were nothing.  "I was tortured," Bashir said, "and then I was 
transferred to another block.  I didn't even know he'd died.  Max didn't 
tell me."

      So Max was from the camp--whichever one that was--, too.  And how 
had he found out, if Max had kept it from him?  "Why did he kill himself?"

      Bashir shrugged and then pointed back the way they'd come.  "Too 
much of that, maybe.  Too much death.  Too much suffering.  He reached 
his limit and found a quicker way out."  He started to pick up the 
clothes Riker had almost forgotten he'd brought.  "He likely wouldn't 
have lasted anyway.  Max was the only one of us who did."

      Bashir was talking, perhaps more than he had for Troi, but the 
more he said, the more confused Riker became.  How could Max be the only 
one to survive when Bashir was sitting right there? "You lasted."

      Bashir started to take off his jacket.  "Then why is my name on 
file at the Holocaust Museum in Washington?  I was gassed along with the 
others."

      Holocaust.  That explained the tattoo, the camp, the train.  "Not 
by choice," Riker repeated Bashir's earlier words out loud.  "How?" he 
asked, feeling as if he were prying but unable to stop.

      Bashir had changed into the clean shirt and was trying to stand to 
change his trousers.  He swayed a bit and Riker stooped to help keep him 
steady.  "Changeling.  Evil, sadistic, warped changeling," he replied, 
and nothing about those words were easy.

      Riker was curious to know more, but he also felt he needed to 
diffuse the situation.  "Ah," he said.  "For us, it was the Borg.  Some 
of us were on the ship, fighting it out.  But I was on the Phoenix with 
Zephram Cochran."

      "I haven't had much luck with time travel.  The first time I ended 
up in the Bell Riots of 2024."

      "You should probably stick with this century," Riker said, helping 
Bashir back down.  He fished Bashir's comm badge from his discarded and 
soiled uniform.

      Bashir took it and put it on.  "Haven't had much luck with that 
either."

      "Surely some of it's been good," Riker offered as he changed his 
own clothes.  "Back on DS Nine perhaps."

      "It's hard to see that now," Bashir replied.  He was staring down 
into the stream.

      Riker waited until he had his shoes on.  "Well," he said, standing 
and offering his hand to the doctor, "that will be a little easier once 
we're out of this cave."

      Bashir stood, with a wince, but his brow furrowed.  "Did we find 
the source of the transmission?"

      Memory gaps.  Not the best of signs, but probably not unexpected 
either.  "You mean before you fell three stories down a turbolift shaft? 
  No."

      "I did?" Bashir said, probably to himself.

      Riker nodded and then refocused on what was before them. He 
hesitated.  It was easier here, with the doors closed, the trees and grass.

      "I've been through all the rooms back that way."  He pointed back 
toward the classroom.  He let the rest go and took a few steps toward 
the large doors.  They were here, too, in the grass, among the trees. 
Riker kept his head up, trying not to see them.  But when he looked back 
to see if Bashir was following, the doctor's gaze was down, looking each 
one in the face.  His chin quivered ever so slightly, and Riker wondered 
if he was seeing his friends more than these strangers.


      He still felt dizzy, but he could walk.  He hadn't expected to see 
them here in the arboretum, but it wasn't so much of a surprise.  Only 
so many people could fall in that one room.  Their faces had already 
started to decay, but he looked anyway.  Someone should bear witness. 
Someone should remember.

      The large door opened, and both he and Riker took an involuntary 
step back against the wave of foul air that rushed in at them.  The bile 
rose in Bashir's throat, and he pushed it down again.  He told himself 
this was nothing new.  But it was.  Auschwitz had been death and 
corpses--and it had had the smoke.  But, in the time he was there, it 
never had the concentration, the bodies left to rot in such close 
quarters.  The closest was probably the train, where the bodies were not 
removed at all during the trip.

      Riker moved off to the right, and Bashir followed, trying to 
construct a lifelike face for each corpse that he saw.  Most here in the 
corridor were young, and they'd fallen in such postures to suggest 
they'd tried to fight the onslaught of Jem'Hadar.  Some wore crisp 
uniforms, stained now, but once immaculate.  Security, Bashir guessed.

      They went into each room, and Bashir was relieved to see the 
number of bodies taper off as they left the large room behind them.  He 
could still smell them, and, if he closed his eyes, he could count every 
one of them from memory.

      There were more quarters here, a chapel, a large washroom where he 
and Riker helped themselves to soap, and a hydroponics facility.  After 
another hour they found the medical bay--if it could be called that.  It 
was no bigger than a closet, but it had a biochair, stacks of supplies, 
and, more importantly, a working replicator.

      Bashir scanned the shelves that lined the walls and started 
filling his medkit with bandages and medicines.

      Behind him, Riker worked at the replicator.  "Here," he said, 
touching Bashir's shoulder.  He handed the new tricorder he held to 
Bashir and motioned to the biochair.  "Check yourself out.  I'll be 
right back."

      Bashir wondered where he was going, and had a brief moment of 
panic.  It passed quickly enough once he reasoned that Riker had had 
plenty of time to leave him behind while he was unconscious.

      Avoiding his left wrist, he sat down.  The biochair and the 
instruments around it lit up and hummed to life.  He unfolded the 
tricorder and took note of the results.  Three cracked ribs but no major 
internal injuries.

      "How is it?" Riker asked, having returned with a bag.  He went 
straight to the replicator and started replicating field rations.

      Bashir's stomach turned at just the thought. "I won't eat that," 
he stated, ignoring Riker's question.

      Riker stopped and turned fully around to face him.  "We didn't 
expect to get stuck down here.  We're all going to get hungry."

      Bashir pushed himself off the biochair.  The sudden change in 
altitude made him dizzy, and, for a moment, he thought he saw Vlad'a 
beckoning to him anxiously from the door.  Bashir spoke to Riker.  "I'd 
rather starve."

      In front of him Riker blew out a long breath.  His voice was 
quiet, his words carefully chosen.  "There's a reason they chose 
Starfleet rations for your replicator."

      "Commander," Bashir replied, choosing his own words, "I'm a 
doctor.  Please don't lecture me on their nutritional value."

      Another long breath.  "I would have thought, with your background, 
you'd never want to go hungry again."

      "Some things are worse than death."

      Riker smiled, "Starfleet field rations?" he asked, chuckling slightly.

      Bashir smiled, too, realizing it sounded silly, but he wasn't 
about to back down.  "Among other things.  Besides, we're not entirely 
without alternatives."

      Riker threw his hands up.  "Okay," he said, still grinning, "you 
win.  Meals are your responsibility."  He handed Bashir the bag, and the 
smile disappeared.  "Now answer my question.  How's your head?"

      "Mild concussion," Bashir replied as he and Riker tried to trade 
positions in the confined space.  "It could have been worse."

      He started punching in commands to the replicator.  It churned to 
life and he brushed the resulting rations into the bag.  Even the weight 
of the half-filled bag caused soreness in his wrist, so he made one last 
request to the replicator and threw the bag over his shoulder.

      "Ready?"

      Bashir wrapped his wrist with the splint he'd just created and 
turned to go.  "Ready."

      Riker held out a hand to take the bag, and they stepped back out 
into the corridor.

      They went on as they had before, checking each room, each crossing 
corridor.  Fortunately for them (though not for the colonists) most of 
the cross-corridors only branched off in one direction.  There was one 
though that went to the left.  Riker decided then that they would split 
up and meet back in fifteen minutes.  Riker took the right, and Bashir 
moved off to the left.

      The left corridor wasn't much different from the main one from 
what he could see.  More rooms like all the others, more storage rooms 
with supplies for the colonists.

      He was in one of those rooms when Vlad'a came to him again.  He 
stood in the door as Bashir turned to go.  "I heard something," he said. 
  "Someone's here."

      "I didn't hear anything," Bashir told him.  Vlad'a had to be mistaken.

      "I still hear it," Vlad'a held.  "Up ahead."  He pointed down the 
corridor in the direction Bashir was progressing.  He kept looking in 
that direction, and Bashir wasn't sure if the boy was concerned or 
afraid.  Then he left, heading toward whatever he'd heard.

      Curious, Bashir stepped out the door, but Vlad'a had disappeared. 
  He closed his eyes and listened carefully but heard nothing but 
silence.  He opened his eyes, and Vlad'a was waving at him from three 
doors down.

      Bashir gave a moment's thought to the two rooms he'd be skipping, 
but Vlad'a called, with urgency in his voice, "This way.  In here!" 
Then he tucked himself back inside the door.

      The door was closed, but it opened as Bashir approached.  This 
room was different than the others.  It was noisy, for one thing, and 
one wall was lined in machines.  He wondered why would Vlad'a have drawn 
him to this.  And he wondered how Vlad'a had managed to hear what he 
himself had not.  The room was apparently soundproof, since he'd heard 
nothing before opening the door.

      He studied the machines and the pipes and cables leading away from 
them along the ceiling.  The largest controlled power to the cave.  He 
could even pull up a schematic of the entire complex.  Another 
controlled the water supply, using the stream as the source and then 
channeling the water through pipes to all the washrooms, the main 
assembly, and the medical area.  The third managed ventilation and 
filtration and utilized the largest of the pipes--ventilation 
ducts--overhead.

      *We only have to follow the air,* he thought.  They could trace 
the ducts back to their source.  But as he visually traced it upward 
from the machine, it led directly into the wall next to a large 
screen-covered vent.

      He went back to the power grid and, by comparing it to the water 
schematic, began to get a sense of the cavern's layout.  Riker said he 
fell down a turbolift shaft.  He found the shaft and some sort of 
doorway a short distance from it on the upper level.  He didn't remember 
a doorway, but that had to be the way he and Riker had entered.  That 
way was blocked.  He did remember Strauf's death.

      So he went back down to the lower level and his present position. 
  If there was another way out, it would be away from the turbolift. 
The doorway above was unusual in that it drew more power than four 
ordinary doors.  There was another such drain at the end of the 
corridor, though he hadn't seen anything from the corridor except an 
ordinary wall.  Still, it was the only other such door.  It had to be 
the exit.


      "They've been gone for hours."

      Grierre was, for the most part, ignoring the chatter.  The others 
were bored.  He would have been, too, if he wasn't in command.  He'd 
been in command only a handful of other occasions, and then for only 
short periods of time.  He hadn't prepared himself for this.  *You're a 
Starfleet officer,* he chided, *in war, no less.  You should always be 
ready.*

      So much for slogans.  He wasn't ready, even if there were only two 
others under his command.  When they'd beamed down they were twenty, and 
he wasn't second or even third banana.  *They* had been sent to lead the 
other two groups.  Hell, he hadn't even been second in this group.  The 
new doctor had seniority.  Strauf, too, by a month.

      Strauf.  Grierre glanced back over his shoulder at the pile of 
rocks that had buried his friend.   They'd tried to clear the rocks, but 
more fell from above when they did.  Strauf would have to stay.

      He would have been better, Grierre decided.  He hadn't felt the 
need to prepare before taking charge.  He had said he thrived on the 
adrenaline.

      "Maybe we should look for an alternate exit."

      "We're on a mountain.  There could be a dozen openings that don't 
even lead to the same passages."

      Grierre half-listened and was content to let them discuss it.

      Then Enyar stood.  "It's better than just sitting here."  He 
started toward the mouth of the cave where Grierre was sitting.

      The movement roused Grierre from his self-consciousness, if not 
from his self-doubts.  "Commander Riker said to stay put, so we stay 
put."  Actually, he'd ordered them to dig their way in, but they'd tried 
that.  What had fallen was too heavy to lift, and phasers only caused 
more to fall.

      Enyar stopped and looked down at him.  "Grierre--"

      Grierre stood, too, and met his gaze.  "Lieutenant Grierre," he 
corrected.  "And we're going to hold position here so the commander can 
find us."

      Enyar was annoyed that he'd pulled rank.  He was a lieutenant, 
too, and they'd often worked the same shift.  "We're not the ones who 
are lost, sir."

      Grierre kept his patience.  "No, but we're their point of reference."

      "If we go poking into openings, we'll likely all end up lost," 
Compton added, again a voice of reason.

      Enyar didn't look happy, but he lost the combative tone.  "So we 
just sit here?"

      Grierre sat down again and let his sight rest on the murky valley 
below.  "We just sit here."


      O'Brien lifted the cover in one big motion.  Dust flew into the 
air and he sneezed, but beneath the cover and the settling dust, the 
Alamo waited.  He'd almost had it destroyed.  He was glad now that he 
hadn't.  Keiko wasn't happy that the model was back in the living room. 
  He could tell, though she hadn't said so.  She wouldn't deny him now 
that Julian was coming back.  At least not for a few weeks.

      There were a few sections that needed recementing, but otherwise 
the Alamo was in good shape.  Which was good, considering the price he'd 
had to pay Quark to store it, even with the Julian Bashir memorial 
discount.  Of course, the discount had been revoked upon the news that 
Julian was not really dead.  Quark had forced O'Brien to pay back rent 
just to get the model out of storage.  O'Brien argued and haggled, but 
in the end, he paid.  Friendship didn't have a price.

      He spent two hours just counting all the little figures.  He 
started with the nondescript ones: Mexican soldiers, unnamed Texans. 
They were easy enough.  And they seemed to be all there.  Then he'd 
searched for each of the characters, the named historical figures: Santa 
Anna, Jim Bowie, Davey Crockett and the others.  The last one he found 
was Colonel Travis, Julian's character.


       They'd fought the battle of the Alamo hundreds of times.  And 
Julian had come close a few of them.  But still Santa Anna had won. 
O'Brien had kept the model up after Julian disappeared, but he'd removed 
it once the word came that he'd died.  All of it.  Except for Travis. 
Travis had gone to the bedroom, into the little box where O'Brien kept 
his mother's ring.  He'd forgotten he'd put it there.  He'd forgotten.

      He should have tried harder, he told himself.  When Julian was 
just missing, he hadn't done anything to try and find him.  He didn't 
ask Captain Sisko for a runabout to track him down.  He didn't pester 
Odo to keep looking for clues when he closed the investigation.  He 
didn't question the report of Bashir's death, as his wife had five years 
before.  Then it had been aliens reporting his and Bashir's death, this 
time it was Starfleet.  Why question Starfleet?

      Because they'd lied or been lied to.  Julian was alive, marooned 
alone in a cave for nearly six months.  He'd been kidnapped from his own 
quarters and taken by Section 31 with no one to stop them.  No one did 
anything to stop them.  Odo couldn't find a trace of the transporter or 
of anyone else's presence in Bashir's quarters.  The sensors didn't 
detect a transport.  There were no unidentified ships in the area. 
Starfleet Intelligence identified the body, and the investigation was 
officially closed..  And no one questioned it.  No one who knew Julian 
had requested to view the body.  No autopsy was performed.

      Looking back, O'Brien realized how easy it would have been. 
They'd only have had to look at the body's left arm.  Julian had kept 
his number tattoo.  Or his left hand, for the reconstructed bones.  A 
DNA test.  Julian's DNA was on file at Starfleet Medical.  All it would 
have taken was someone to push for a DNA test.  No one did.  Not even 
Julian's best friend.

      Hell, O'Brien had felt relieved just to have closure.  They 
probably all had.  Three months ago they'd sent a fake Julian Bashir to 
his final rest, and they felt better just to have their uncertainty 
taken away.  They missed him, sure.  It hurt, but they had gone on. 
They could go on.  Someone somewhere declared Bashir dead, and they'd 
all breathed a sigh of relief.  They could stop looking, stop worrying, 
and get on with the mourning.

      They'd given up.  O'Brien had given up.  He'd given up while 
Julian was still trying to decide if he should wager starvation on 
coaxing a replicator into transmitting a message to an android he had no 
idea how to locate.  It was like he'd acknowledged the Santa Anna's red 
flag.  And O'Brien might as well have been Santa Anna.

      It wasn't dusty, but O'Brien dusted Colonel Travis off anyway, and 
placed him carefully along the East Wall.  The others he left in a pile. 
  Travis was the one that mattered.



-- 
--Gabrielle
I'd much rather be writing!

http://www.stormpages.com/gabrielle/trek/    The Edge of the Frontier
http://www.stormpages.com/gabrielle/doyle/   This Side of the Nether
Blog: http://www.gabriellewrites.blogspot.com

--
Stephen Ratliff
ASC Stories Only Forwarding

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