Forwarded by the ASC-VSO Posted: 09 Feb 2004 05:15:15 GMT In: alt.startrek.creative From: sisko2374@aol.com (Sisko2374) COR DS9 "Third Way Out" B, Ez, Mir O'B [PG] 2 of 3 In some respects West street wasn't too different than its namesake in Bashir's universe. In both New Yorks some of the smaller buildings from the 20th and 21st centuries had survived, perhaps because of the concerted efforts of high minded citizens who valued them as local historic "landmarks". They had been walking for six blocks or so, the tri-corders registering nothing unusual when Smiley suddenly stopped. "Well I'll be ... I'm picking up an underground chamber, about 30 meters down. Directly under that old brick structure." He pointed to the right side of the street ahead. Bashir scanned his tricorder. "Yes, I've got it. Appears to be a single room with some sort of large box. Encased in ... lead." O'Brien grinned. "Worth a look don't you think?" Bashir extended his arm graciously. "After you my dear Captain." The entrance on West street was collapsed, but O'Brien discovered an ancient security "side" door on Canal street that was hanging on its hinges. He pushed it slightly. The door shattered in to a thousand shards as it hit the ground. "Just don't make'em like that anymore." The Terran grinned. "And a good thing too." Julian rejoined. "Of course a century or more of acid rain didn't help." He flashed his palm beacon into the darkness of the corridor ahead. Miles' tricorder beeped. "I'm reading a shaft 20 meters ahead that connects to the level of the chamber. Got your utility line?" Julian checked. One hundred meters of Tholian filament hung lightly from his belt. "Yes I do. Would you like to use it?" The rebel chuckled. "I'm frightened of great heights. I might fall. Besides, you deserve some glory on this expedition. Don't worry, I'll keep a firm hold on you." There were no doors at the entrance to the shaft. Julian shined his light down the shaft then let it play across the floor he was standing on. Jagged shards of rusted metal lay before him and at the botton of the hole. He frowned. "Looks like someone's been here before us." Miles shrugged. "You mean because of the rust on the floor? Not necessarily. The doors could have just disintegrated on their own." "But why would these doors inside fall apart quicker than the one you kicked in outside? There's more protection from the elements in here." O'Brien had already removed the tethered end of the Tholian rope from Julian's belt and was busy anchoring it to the concrete floor. "Good point. Maybe the Alliance was mucking about here. Who knows?" He stood up. "Are you ready?" Bashir peered over the jagged precipice. "Just keep a good hold on that rope Miles. Let it out slowly." "Nothing to fear." The Terran sat down next to the shaft, his feet firmly planted on the adjacent wall. The descent seemed to take forever. Julian had only repelled once and that was in a holo suite. But there was no safety program here. Only that thin line anchored at the top and fed by the Mirror O'Brien. At last he reached the bottom. Casting his light about he saw no connecting corridor. But there was the outline of a tall heavy rusted door. Putting his shoulder against it he found it swung slowly inward with a loud long creak. Julian's palm beacon pierced the darkness. The room was small, three meters by four, without windows. Flaking faded paint appeared to have been peeling off the walls for centuries. He could almost smell the must and mildew through his bio suit filter. Slowly he surveyed the cubicle. It was sparsely furnished. Against one wall was a broken chair next to a desk littered with the crumbled, blackened remains of what once must have been books. His light played across the floor to the opposite wall, illuminating a wooden bed with two human skeletons, the bones a dirty grey, their arms entwined in each other's rib cages in a final embrace. Suicide pact? Bashir speculated. At the foot of the bed was a metal trunk. Curiosity overwhelmed him. Kneeling, he lifted the rusty lid. Books and photographs, yellowed but preserved, filled the trunk. Pointing his light at the titles of the books he noticed dust particles swimming in the beam. Slamming the lid down he realized his mistake too late. The damage was done. He had exposed this treasure trove of artifacts, sealed for centuries, to the outside air. Oxidation and decay would accelerate rapidly now. A few seconds could destroy centuries of history. He had to move fast. "Bashir to Jordan. I've found an ancient trunk with books and photographs below ground on West street. The documents appear to be intact but..." Jordan cut in, her voiced sounding sick, "You opened it..." "Yes, I'm sorry..." "Beam it to the Defiant right away. I'll have them put it in a stasis field." Julian placed his comm badge on the trunk and hailed the Defiant. Seconds later he watched the trunk disappear in a swirl of sparkles. By the time Bashir and O'Brien made their way back out of the ruins, the archeological survey team was already reassembled at the shuttle. Jordan's greeting was blunt. "Well Doctor, you managed to discover what will probably be the biggest find of the entire expedition while nearly creating the greatest archaeological disaster since the Answan dam flooded the Valley of the Kings. And all in one day!" Julian decided to ignore Cynthia's hyperbole, replying with the tone of one doctor inquiring of another about a mutual patient whose prospects for recovery were very poor. "I'm sorry. How is the trunk?" As if slightly mollified by his concern and sympathy, Cynthia sighed and rendered her diagnosis. "They got it into stasis, so the oxidation process has been arrested. But we need to pump out all the air and seal it in argon as soon as possible. That way we can begin cataloguing and our historians can get to work." Julian nodded. "Of course. Might I offer the use of sickbay's isolation chamber for that purpose?" Jordan managed a pained smile. "Sounds perfect Doctor. Would you like to assist in the opening and cataloguing? After all, it was your discovery." Bashir smiled back. "I would be honored." An hour later, in the Defiant's sick bay, Julian once again opened the trunk. But this time the inert argon gas environment and force field gloves of the isolation chamber ensured there would be no further contamination of the fragile ancient paper within. The first thing he picked up was a yellowed photograph. Jordan recited a description of each artifact for the catalogue. "Item number one: Photograph, approximately 380 years old, showing a man and woman in winter clothing posing beneath a hand painted sign that reads ‘Republic, Not Empire'. Background appears to be late 20th or early 21st century Chicago. Picasso statue in background." Bashir gazed thoughtfully at the two sad but determined faces staring back at him from across four centuries and another universe. Were these the two who had ended their lives in that dreary basement so long ago? What was their story? Gingerly putting the photo to the side he picked up a small book with a black cover, faded red title and a photo of the Earth from orbit. As Julian opened it to the frontispiece, Jordan began her recital. "Item number two: book in the English language, titled ‘The New Rulers of the World', author is John Pilger. Copyright 2002 by Verso Press. Two hundred and forty-six pages with index. Printed in the UK." "Item number three: book in the English language, titled ‘The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic', author is Chalmers Johnson. 2004 edition, three hundred and eighty nine pages indexed, Henry Holt and Company, New York. When Julian picked up another book, Cynthia's eyes lit up. Embossed on a cover of desiccated leather, five faded gold letters clearly spelt out the word ‘Diary'. Grinning, she turned to Julian. "Jackpot! Personal cross-reference material." Several hours later, Julian sat in sickbay, immersed in reading. The trunk did not contain the book so sought after by the expedition, "The Grand Chessboard", but it had produced a fascinating bounty of political literature of the period. The door chimed. "Enter." Jordan stepped in, an arm of freshly replicated books under her arm. "You look thoughtful Doctor. I hate to disturb a man who is thinking." Julian smiled. "Quite all right. Actually, I wanted to talk to you about some of these books we replicated from the transporter record of the trunk." Jordan nodded. "Yes, judging by the diary we found, it appears the two skeletons were those of a pair of professional ‘political activists' of the late 20th and early 21st century. They died around 2020. Probably suicide, considering their last entry." Julian shook his head. "Well they certainly valued their reading." He pointed toward a small pile of books on the table. "These are all very different authors on the surface; Pilger is a journalist, Zinn a historian, Vidal an essayist, Chomsky a linguistics professor turned anarchist, Mahajan an anti-war activist, Chalmers Johnson, an East Asian scholar. Yet they all have something in common. They're old style muckrakers. Quite frankly, reading their contemporary analysis of the events of 2001 C.E. in the mirror universe has given me a disturbing historical speculation about the North American Terrans' ‘Day of Terror'." Jordan sat down across from him. "And what is that?" Bashir closed the book he had been reading. "That one of the government security agencies of the North American republic let it happen. They apparently knew about the plot, yet did nothing, probably so that their citizens' patriotic fervor would be aroused to support the wars that had already been planned back in the 1990's to secure Eurasia, whose resources they viewed as the key to global dominance." Cynthia nodded. "That's one theory someone has already come up with. But it may be even worse than that." Julian frowned. "How so?" The archaeologist shoved her stack of books across the table. "Our team of historians have been reading, analyzing and cross-referencing this new material from the trunk. They've already formulated an initial hypothesis." "Which is?" "That their government actually organized it." Jordan paused for effect. "Let's consider the following in favor of both the ‘organizer' and the ‘facilitator' hypothesis. First, we know that the covert agencies of the old North American Republic were, for their day, every bit as powerful, ruthless, relentless and omnipresent as their contemporaries or say the Tal Shiar and the Obsidian Order in our own era." "Hmmmm. More like Section 31 I would say." Cynthia grimaced. "Exactly. So, given all that, especially the fact that historically, in both our universe and theirs the North American NSA-CIA had been facilitating the organizing and training of a network of 100,000 fanatics in Afghanistan via Pakistan for over two decades before, a case can legitimately be made that they had considerable foreknowledge of the plot. They had plenty of opportunity to infiltrate these same organizations they had financed and created with local operatives. Furthermore, from what we've been able to glean here, after the Day of Terror there were no reprimands or court-martials for negligence of duty in failing to follow standard policy in the event of a hijacking, specifically, intercepting the high jacked aircraft. According to sources cited by Vidal, fighter aircraft weren't scrambled until an hour and twenty minutes after it became apparent that there were simultaneous multiple highjackings, well after the damage was done. Besides which, its highly suspicious that their President wasn't in the capitol on the day of the attacks. " Julian shook his head. If Garak were here now he would no doubt be expressing surprise and admiration for the crafty deceitfulness of ancient human intelligence services. "Blew up his own shop," Bashir mused. "What?" "Oh, sorry. I was just thinking of my old friend Garak again. He once did something similar, on a much smaller scale, without loss of life. When he discovered that an assassin was stalking him on DS9, he blew up his own shop, with himself inside it, so that constable Odo would interrogate the prospective assassin before he could act. Quite a clever ploy actually." Cynthia nodded. "Some techniques never change. When we go to the Islamabad and New Dehli sites on Wednesday I'd like to try to check out Vidal's assertions in his book "Dreaming War" that the Pakistani Intelligence Service wired money to the leader of the hijackers and met with the NSA in the Pentagon a week before the attacks. With luck we can locate the Indian and Pakistani newspaper records that he cites." Bashir shook his head again. "We've been very lucky so far. It's a pretty cold trail after nearly four hundred years." END Part 2 of 3 "Third Way Out" -- Stephen Ratliff ASC Stories Only Forwarding In the Pattern Buffer at: http//trekiverse.crosswinds.net/feed/ Yahoo! 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