Forwarded by the ASC-VSO Posted: 09 Feb 2004 05:18:51 GMT In: alt.startrek.creative From: sisko2374@aol.com (Sisko2374) COR DS9 "Third Way Out" B, Ez, Mir O'B, [PG] 3 of 4 On the bridge of the Defiant, Ensign Jackson, the helm officer, addressed Ezri. "Sir, that Alliance battle cruiser that was in orbit of Alpha III, its disappeared!" Ezri rose from the command chair and stood behind the console. "What do you mean ‘disappeared'?" "When its orbit took it behind the planet, it never came out. It's been over an hour..." An alert beep sounded from the console. "Now there's a ship launching from the surface of Alpha III. Engine signature indicates a Ferengi merchantman." Ezri frowned. "What's its heading?" Jackson's hands flashed over the console. "Its course heading will take it within half a light year of the Terran system." Ezri clasped her hands behind her back. "Dax to O'Brien." "O'Brien here," came the reply over the comm system. "Miles, do Ferengi merchantmen frequent the Alpha Centauri system?" There was a pause. "I really don't know Captain. Ferengi's have license to trade throughout the Alliance. Why?" Ezri hesitated. Eight lifetimes of instinct told her not to tell the Terran rebel too much. "We're monitoring a .... situation here. I'll keep you posted as necessary." The next morning found Julian accompanying Jordan and the expedition back down to the grey dead planet. Today they would be on the other side of the world from New York. Julian watched the coast line of the Eastern Mediterranean grow larger in the view screen as the Chaffe II dropped down from orbit. They quickly descended through heavy rolling clouds of acid rain, emerging above a landscape that was as smooth and featureless as it was dark. Despite the high winds in the area, Alvarez piloted the shuttle to a perfect three point landing. Following the survey team down the ramp, Bashir found himself standing on smooth black glass that stretched out in every direction to the grey horizon. "Where are we?" "Downtown Baghdad," the archaeologist replied routinely as she monitored her tri-corder. Julian was appalled. He was familiar with the ancient city on his own Earth. It was a beautiful historic capital. First, of the ancient caliphates of the once mighty Arab empires, then later in the 21st and 22nd centuries, the Eastern administrative center of the old Arab Federation. But in the Mirror universe it was .... nothing. Despite a creeping foreboding he managed to ask, "What...when did this happen? Was this the Alliance or ..." Jordan kept her gaze focused on her tri-corder readings as she answered the Doctor. "Sometime around 2040 we believe. Late stage of what was still nominally the North American republic. Apparently there was some sort of revolt, centered on Baghdad. All the country's petroleum reserves had already been exhausted, so it was decided that an example should be made. They used nuclear weapons launched from geo-synchronous orbit." Julian stared at the black glass. An obsidian tomb of an entire people and civilization. An unexpected visceral reaction churned in his gut. This site struck at him personally in a way that he had never experienced before, that he had never felt back home on Earth or in the Federation. He realized what it was. He hated the ancient Terrans who had created the Empire here. Those who had done this. Was this then the Mirror Earth's 21st century equivalent of the destruction of Carthage? What sort of ‘Romans' had erased this lovely old city and all its people from existence? And never rebuilt it? This was beyond the tragic neutron nuclear exchange of 2053 in his own universe. This was personal. This was genocide against a helpless opponent. Julian watched Cynthia cut away a cone of the black glass beneath their feet with a fine phaser beam. "Why are we even here?" Jordan retrieved the sample with a gloved hand, placing it in a specimen bag. "Confirmation on the date Baghdad was destroyed, that's all." Suddenly, Alvarez's voice broke in on the shuttle comm system, "Defiant reports there's an Alliance battle cruiser in the solar system and its heading straight for Earth at warp speed! Captain Dax says to get everybody aboard the Chaffe II and off the planet right now!" Klaxons sounded "red alert" on the Defiant as Ezri ordered the ship to battle stations. "Where's the shuttle at?" "Shuttle is away and heading for rendevous Captain." Jackson replied. "Can you give me magnification on the intruder yet?" The star fields in the view screen seemed to lurch forward. A rainbow colored point of light in the center flickered briefly. "Sorry Sir. Intruder is still at warp and beyond visual range." "Location, bearing, and speed of the intruder?" "Intruder passing Neptune's orbit. Still bearing 97 mark 210. Speed is warp 4.3. ETA to Earth is 3 minutes.' Ezri stood up. "They're worried about pushing warp in a solar system. That gives us a little time. If they stay on their present bearing they'll be in the Southern hemisphere when they go to orbit. Mr. Jackson, raise cloak and take us over the North pole, one quarter impulse. Notify the Chaffe II that we'll rendevous on the day side of the planet at the following co-ordinates." Outside, in space, the Defiant seemed to shimmer out of existence, replaced by a hazy bubble that shifted orbit toward the polar terminus. "Where's the Defiant?" Cynthia Jordan pressed her face closer toward the view screen of the Chaffe II. Two hundred miles below, a typhoon churned towards a collision course with the Indian subcontinent. Alvarez switched off the engines as the shuttle achieved orbit and checked the sensors. "No indication yet, probably still on the other side of the terminus... Wait, there she is! Coming up from the South? And I'm picking up ... a distress call. Switching to speaker." "SOS. This is TRFS Defiant calling USS Defiant. We have been attacked by an Alliance battle cruiser. Shields are minimal. Weapons and transporters are off line. Warp core is destabilizing. Unable to eject. Please respond." Julian leaned forward toward the control panel. "That's Ezri's voice! What the devil is the rebel's Defiant doing here?" "Confirm on that warp core, sir," Alvarez called out. "It's on a slow build up to detonation." Julian leaned forward and hit the comm button. "This is the shuttle USS Chaffe II. Shift to our orbit Defiant. When we rendevous with our Defiant we can beam you off. What are you doing here anyway?" There was a pause at the other end. Then the Mirror Ezri replied. "Message received and understood Chaffe II. Making course correction now. We're here because Miles O'Brien ordered us to follow you in case you got into trouble. But it looks like you'll have to save us now. Is this Doctor Bashir? I've always wanted to meet you. Miles thinks really highly of you." Julian grinned sheepishly. "Really? Well, I like him quite a bit myself. I look forward to meeting you as well. Chaffe II out." Cynthia looked apprehensively out the screen towards the rapidly approaching point of light that would soon become the Mirror Defiant. "Do you really think that's wise Doctor? Having them shift to our orbit? If they blow up in our proximity..." Bashir nodded. "Sensors indicate they've got a good twenty minutes before they go critical, plenty of time for the Defiant to arrive, beam them off and get us all the hell out of here. Relax, everything will be all right." The archaeologist shifted back in her chair, folding her arms. "Unless that Alliance battle cruiser shows up first." On the bridge of the USS Defiant, Ezri Dax heard the exchange between Julian and her Mirror counterpart. "ETA to rendevous, Ensign Jackson?" "Two minutes, sir." "Where's the intruder?" Jackson scanned the conn. "They're out of sensor range as long as we're on this side of the planet, sir." "Status of the rebel Defiant?" "Shields down, phaser damage to their ablative armor, warp core destabilizing, ejectors jammed." Ezri sighed, placing her hands behind her back. "All right Mister Jackson, take us to rendevous with the Chaffe II. Transporters, prepare to receive survivors." As Julian exited the Chaffe II in the launch bay, yellow alert sounded on the Defiant. "Bashir to bridge, what's our status?" "Not good, Julian," Ezri replied. "We have a level 3 transporter malfunction, source unknown. Unless we fix it now we won't be able to beam the Terrans off their ship. That Alliance battle cruiser may already be in orbit. And the Terran Defiant warp core will go critical in ten minutes." "We're on it, Captain. Alvarez and I are heading for Engineering." "You've got five minutes, Julian. After that we have to either fight or run." In Engineering Julian was shocked to see that Walter's security team was missing. "Bashir to bridge. We're in engineering but there's no security team around the cloaking device. What's going on?" Ezri's voice responded immediately. "They're not there? Dax to Walters. Who ordered you to leave Engineering?" There was a pause. "You did, sir. About ten minutes ago over the comm system." "Not me Mister. Get back down there on the double!" Julian drew his phaser, checking the setting. "Looks like we've got a saboteur on board, Captain." "Ezri to Walters, dispatch two men to look for O'Brien. When you find him, hold him in his quarters." Alvarez ran a quick diagnostic that merely confirmed what Ezri had reported: that the computer was unable to locate the source of the malfunction. His mind raced, desperately seeking a way into this mystery. There was one possibility. Something he remembered Chief O'Brien mentioning about the early history of transporter problems. "Doctor, could you check the transporter logs for the past two days? See if there's anything out of correspondence, if we transported any radioactive isotopes aboard." Julian's hands flashed over the secondary control panel. "That should be easy, we only transported the trunk and that was made of ...." "What is it? Did you find something?" Julian's eyes narrowed at the screen. "Not sure. The trunk checks out as lead composition. But the log of the trunk transport has been altered somehow." Julian's hands roamed over the panel. "Yes, this log shows a record of an erased second internal ship transport an hour later, just after the shuttle returned from New York. An equal mass exchange of 1 kilogram between the trunk and..." The engineering doors whooshed aside for Smiley. "I heard there was a transporter problem, we've got to get my people off that ship before the warp core goes critical!" Julian turned toward the Terran. "Yes, Miles we're working on it. But maybe you should order your people to go to escape pods just in case." "Escape pods! They wouldn't be able to make if far enough away in time. And you wouldn't have time to pick them up either." Julian rose from the console. "Perhaps. What do you know about an internal ship transport from yesterday, Miles. After we came back from New York?" The Terran shrugged. "Nothing. What has that got to do with anything?" "It was from Sick Bay to your quarters and back again. An equal exchange of mass, small, one kilogram. About the size of an old paper book. Someone beamed a book out of the trunk to your cabin and beamed something back in. Then tried to erase the record. Now our transporters are scrambled. Why did you do it Miles?" Julian drew his phaser. O'Brien's face grew red. "No! I beamed the book out. But I didn't sabotage the transporters! Why would I do that? Sabotage the transporters in the middle of Alliance territory?" Bashir shook his head. "I don't know." Jordan came in from the corridor, phaser drawn. "Give me the book O'Brien." Smiley reached under his tunic and tossed a replicated book to Bashir. "Don't give it to her, she sabotaged the transporters, she's Section 31!" A phaser beam set to stun lept from Jordan's phaser, hitting O'Brien. The Terran went down face first. Bashir froze. Then glanced down at the cover of the book in his left hand, The Grand Chessboard. Now he was facing off phaser to phaser with Jordan. "You two were working together. Miles wanted the cloaking device and you wanted this book. But something fell through." "Brilliant deduction Doctor. But we were never going to give the cloaking device to the Terrans. We only want the book. Give me the book and we can cloak and head home." Jordan shifted the phaser to her other hand. Punching in a code by the door panel she locked the doors to engineering. Julian kept his phaser trained on her. "Miles anticipated you were going to betray him, so he took the book as a bargaining chip. You sabotaged the transporters. Why?" "To save the cloaking device from the Terrans. Section 31 would never let them have it. Now give me the book Doctor so that we can get out of here." Julian shook his head. "Section 31, the state within the state. Humans spent the first 6000 years of civilization under the domination of the state in one form or another. Even the most democratic states ultimately tended toward militaristic totalitarian control or wound up under the rule of a plutocracy. On Earth humans have only lived without the state for the past 80 years. What's so ironic is that the most insidious threat to that paradise has come not from the Borg or the Dominion or the Romulans, but from the very institution charged with defending paradise, Starfleet, the last remnant of the state. Whether it was the Khitomer accords conspiracy or Admiral Layton's coup d'etat, it was from inside Starfleet that our serpents in paradise came, including the most venomous, Section 31" "Oh please, Doctor! Don't throw Section 31 in the same category as those bumbling amateur Bonapartists in Starfleet. We recruit the best and the brightest from there, but we run the show. Not them. Now give me the book, Julian." Jordan leveled the phaser at his chest. Bashir casually thumbed the pages. "I think I found the key passage in ‘The Grand Chessboard' that applies to Section 31's plans for the Federation. ‘Morever, as America becomes an increasingly multi-cultural society, it may find it more difficult to fashion a consensus on foreign policy issues, except in the circumstance of a truly massive and widely perceived external threat.' You plan to start a new war with the Dominion or the Romulans or even the Klingons, don't you? You're going to stage an attack to plunge the Federation into a new prolonged series of wars. Just like they did on the Mirror universe Earth four centuries ago. Why?" Jordan adopted a pedagogical tone, as if lecturing a child. "Because our Earth has grown soft in a violent universe doctor. We nearly lost the last war. Because of the constraints of the Prime Directive, and the weakness of people like you, we didn't finish off the shape shifters when we had the chance. The Dominion is presently at its weakest. Now is the time to wipe them out once and for all, finish the job and ensure the survival of the Federation, the Alpha Quadrant and the galaxy itself. It's the best means of securing galactic peace." Bashir closed the book. His voice shook with quiet rage. "Peace? Through genocide? Through permanent war? That's what they tried here, four hundred years ago and they wound up with a tyranny, not just on Earth but in the known galaxy! We barely survived our own 20th and 21st centuries. In a very real sense these Terrans here never made it out of theirs. Genocidal wars, blockades, state sponsored terror, torture, concentration camps, the abolition of fundamental freedoms, is that what you want to inflict on our Earth once more, on the Federation? If you plunge us into decades of war and terror, what do you think the Federation will look like at the end of it? It will be the Terran Empire in all but name. Has that thought even occurred to you or anyone in Section 31? You are setting about destroying the very thing you claim to be defending." "Doctor, I can see now why Sloan took such an interest in you. Your commitment and intellect would have been a valued addition to Section 31. But despite your genetic enhancement you remain fundamentally flawed. You lack will and resolve. Give me the book." Still keeping the phaser trained on him with her left hand, she extended her right. Julian thought he detected a movement on the floor behind Jordan. Yes. Smiley was stirring. Julian clutched the book to his chest. "Why do you need it? What possible use could a 400 year old book of Mirror Earth imperial geostrategy be to you?" He hoped she needed the book badly enough and was arrogant enough to dialogue for just a few moments more. "To train our cadres of course, so that they may guide the Federation. Why do they still teach Clausewitz, Grant, Zhukov and even Sun Tzu at Starfleet Academy? Think about it. Sun Tzu's "Art of War", a 2700 year old Chinese book of military strategy, still taught at Starfleet Academy! Why? Because it is a classic explanation and exploration of the essence of military doctrine that has remained unchanged from horse mounted cavalry archers to quantum torpedo starships. The same applies to 6000 years of statecraft. That book you're holding is a classic of the art of rule." Smiley was on his knees now, shaking his head. The noisy pulsing of the warp core drowning out all but Jordan and Bashir's exchange. "Yes, rule over others as the art of deceit, domination and enslavement. What about the Terrans here? Are you going to give them the book? So that they can rebuild their Empire? So that they can doom themselves to the whole bloody cycle all over again?" Jordan's derisive laughter echoed in the engine room. "The Terrans? Do you really think it matters to anyone what happens here? Even Starfleet doesn't care about them. That's why they hide behind the excuse of the Prime Directive, refusing to aid them, because they don't give a damn either." "You want the book? You can have it." Julian tossed it on the floor. Jordan's eyes followed it down. At that moment, Smiley rose to his feet and slammed himself into Jordan from behind. The blow propelled her into Julian, knocking him over. As she fell, both her and Julian's phasers flew out of their hands skidding across the floor. Her head hit a deck plate, knocking her out. Alvarez dove for the phasers, but Smiley beat him to it. A moment later Smiley stood over them, both phaser pistols in hand. Julian could hear the Walter's security team outside the door, trying to access the security panel to gain entry. "Looks like all bets are off for the Federation today. You three just relax while the Terran Resistance takes care of everything." Keeping the phaser carefully trained on them, Smiley moved to an engineering panel and opened it. Producing a phase spanner from his jacket he deftly manipulated the light cable inside. The ship's lights dimmed briefly. Slapping the communicator on his chest he called out, "O'Brien to Bashir. Shields are down. Engine room secure." A moment later, the Mirror Julian Bashir and five Terran rebels materialized in a circle around the warp core. Phaser fire erupted outside the engineering doors, then silence. A gleeful grin played across the scraggly bearded face of the Mirror Julian. "Good work Captain O'Brien! Congratulations!" Smiley nodded. "Thank you Captain Bashir." Ezri's voice suddenly sounded over the comm system, the noise of phaser fire and a scuffle in the background. "Ezri to Bashir, bridge is secure." "Well done commander!" the Mirror Bashir replied. A sneer crossed his face as he stared at Julian. "Doctor Bashir I presume?" "Dax!" Julian called out as he slapped his communicator. "Are you all right!" A voice that sounded like Ezri's shot back. "Your girlfriend's just fine Doctor. Except for a glass jaw. She'll be out for a little while." The Mirror Bashir did a visual check of the engine room once more. "Commander, is everyone aboard?" "Aye, sir." "Then by all means begin the transport procedure." Julian frowned. "Transport procedure?" The Mirror Bashir smiled. "Yes, my good Doctor, we're switching ships. We get the one with the cloaking device. Our Defiant is missing a few of your amenities of course, but otherwise, it's a good trade. A Defiant for a Defiant." Julian nodded. "Its what you wanted all along, the cloaking device. But what about her?" He looked toward the still unconscious Cynthia. Smiley scooped up the book that Julian had dropped. Then stood Jordan up, holding her left arm around his neck. "Oh, she's coming with us. A deal is a deal. We get the cloaking device and your Section 31 gets their book." Julian shook his head. "Miles, you heard what she said. Section 31 doesn't give a damn about the Terrans. They don't give a damn about anyone. They plan to start a war back in my universe. We have to get back and warn the Federation." Miles shrugged. "Section 31 approached us over a year ago. We found their book for them. But we told them we needed the cloaking device. They agreed and set everything up for us. They use us, we might want to use them in the future. You Starfleet boys had your chance." "Miles ...." The universe became a shimmer of sparkles as Julian suddenly found himself transported to the engine room of the Mirror Defiant. It was as if he had never left the engine room. Only the people that had been around him were gone. Even as he sprang through the opening doors toward the bridge he continued to slap and call on his communicator badge for Ezri. When he got to the bridge he found the crew, in various states of revival, slumped about what would have been their stations on the Defiant. Ezri was stirring in her command chair, holding her bruised chin in her hands. Julian went to her side, pulling out his medical tri-corder, scanning her head.. "What's the diagnosis Doctor?" Bashir returned his tri-corder to his belt. "Two aspirins and call me in the morning. No fractures, nothing broken, a mild concussion. How do you feel?" Ezri kept rubbing her jaw. "Like I just flunked my command test. Where's the Terran's Defiant at?" Julian moved to the conn. "Halfway to Jupiter and on course for the wormhole. By the way, Jordan was with Section 31. She set us up with Smiley." "Jordan? Why?" "Apparently to get a 20th century Terran book that laid the foundation for the Empire. They want to train their cadre in the art of rule and statecraft. Or so she claims. But what puzzles me is how did the rebels get their copy of the Defiant here undetected?" "False warp signature," Ezri sat back down in the command chair. "They simulated the warp emissions of an Alliance battle cruiser and later on, the Ferengi merchantman. That was probably them that you detected around Alpha Centauri a few days ago. Then they faked us out with an Alliance battle cruiser signature again when they warped into the solar system. That false signature, and some luck, allowed them to get through a few hundred light years of Alliance space as well." "Well, we have to get back before she does and warn the Federation. She admitted that Section 31 plans to start a new war between the Dominion and the Federation." "A war? We have to leave now. Is the warp drive on line?" A flashing red indicator on the conn panel caught Julian's eye. "More bad news I'm afraid. They ejected and destroyed the warp core. Without that there's no way to get back to the wormhole and our universe." "They don't want us following them or alerting Star Fleet that they've got the Defiant. What about the transporters?" Ezri speculated. "Couldn't we alter them like Smiley did when he kidnaped Captain Sisko? So that we could pass through the quantum density field between the two universes and beam back home?" Bashir shook his head. "The original transporter accident that brought Kirk into the Mirror universe was possible only because of a freak planetary ion storm in the upper atmosphere of Halkan. Occurring simultaneously in both universes, it temporarily weakened an already weak section of the separating quantum density field and the transporter ionizer. Smiley was able to recreate that original transporter malfunction only because the wormhole permanently weakens the space-time density field between the two universes in the Bajoran system. That's why the wormhole can serve as a conduit to the Mirror universe. To transport back we'd have to get near the wormhole or somehow find another ion storm occurring simultaneously on a planet in both universes where the fabric of space-time and the intervening quantum density field are already sufficiently weakened. Highly improbable to say the least." Julian slumped in the navigator's chair. "We might as well face it. We're marooned! It will take us centuries at relativistic velocities to reach the wormhole without warp drive! And without a cloaking device we don't have a Breen's chance in hell of getting there undetected by the Alliance. It would have been more merciful if Smiley had simply phasered us out of existence or blown us apart with our own quantum torpedoes." Ezri glumly nodded. "Yeah, quantum torpedoes...that would have been quick." She began to pace the bridge. "Wait a minute Julian! When Smiley downloaded the Defiant's specs do you think he downloaded the plans for the quantum torpedoes as well?" Julian shrugged. "I don't know, why?" "Because there might be a third way out of here for us. I just remembered something that Worf told Jadzia once about traversing a quantum fissure in space-time that launched him into a whole series of parallel quantum realities. If Smiley loaded enough quantum torpedoes on board, maybe, just maybe, we can create our own space-time fissure at some structural weak point in the quantum density field and get home." Julian's face lit up in a big smile. "Captain, I like the way you think" Turning to the navigation console, his hands flashed over the controls. "Yes! Weapons system shows a complement of sixteen quantum torpedoes." Ezri nodded. "Good. We'll probably need them all. The only problem is that we'll have to be pretty close when they detonate. The temporary fissure will only stay open a few seconds before it implodes back in on itself." Julian's face fell slightly. "Oh. Well, at least our stay in the Mirror universe will be over, one way or another. Let's just hope Smiley's boys built as good a copy of the ablative hull shielding as they did of the rest of the Defiant's systems." END Part 3 of 4 "Third Way Out" -- Stephen Ratliff ASC Stories Only Forwarding In the Pattern Buffer at: http//trekiverse.crosswinds.net/feed/ Yahoo! Groups Links To visit your group on the web, go to:http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ASCL/ To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:ASCL-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service. From ???@??? Sat Feb 14 00:47:24 2004 Status: U Return-Path: Received: from n35.grp.scd.yahoo.com ([66.218.66.103]) by merlin (EarthLink SMTP Server) with SMTP id 1aRSBc6GT3NZFlq1 for ; Fri, 13 Feb 2004 21:44:18 -0800 (PST) X-eGroups-Return: sentto-1977044-13172-1076737456-stephenbratliff=earthlink.net@returns.groups.yahoo.