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From: sisko2374@aol.com (Sisko2374)
Newsgroups: alt.startrek.creative
Date: 14 Nov 2004 03:23:31 GMT
Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com
Subject: NEW WIP DS9 "In the Wilderness" Sisko [NC-17] 1 of 3
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NEW WIP DS9 "In the Wilderness" Sisko [NC-17] Part 1 of 3
by Sisko2374

SERIES: DS9

TITLE: "In the Wilderness"

CHARACTERS: Benjamin Sisko

AUTHOR: Sisko2374@aol.com (J. S. Miles)

ARCHIVE: Yes

Summary: Post WYLB.  The Sisko journeys back in time to the American Civil War
Prologue:

"I John Brown am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will
never be purged away, but with Blood.  I had ... vainly flattered myself that
without very much bloodshed, it might be done." — John Brown, note written
just before his execution, December 2, 1859


"I know as fully as one can know the opinions of others, that some of the
commanders of our armies in the field who have given us our most important
successes, believe the emancipation policy, and the use of colored troops,
constitute the heaviest blow yet dealt to the rebellion; and that, at least one
of those important successes, could not have been achieved when it was, but for
the aid of black soldiers ... You say you will not fight to free negroes.  Some
of them seem willing to fight for you..." — Abraham Lincoln, public letter to
James C. Conkling, August 26, 1863

 "Fondly do we hope — fervently do we pray — that this mighty scourge of
war may speedily pass away.  Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the
wealth piled by the bond-man's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil
shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid
by another drawn with the sword, as it was said three thousand years ago, so
still it must be said, ‘the judgements of the Lord, are true and righteous
altogether.'" — Abraham Lincoln, 2nd inaugural address, March 4th, 1865

May 7, 1864, Northern Virginia, West of the Orange Turnpike ...

At dawn the two scouts he had sent out the night before came crawling back
through the thicket in the drizzling rain, the pickets challenging them for the
password at the first rustle of noise, "Abraham!"  The reply was a terse
whisper, "Jubilee!"    He made his way forward to the little rise in the forest
where the front line of the regiment rested.   Behind him, men were already
stirring, kneeling around small fires with boiling coffee, strips of bacon and
hardtack.  Some turned away, ill at the sight of the sizzling meat.  It
reminded them too much of the hundreds of  trapped wounded Union soldiers who
had screamed and burned alive throughout the night as the fires set off by the
previous day's battle had scoured the dry scraggly Virginia undergrowth known
as "the Wilderness".

"Ain't nothing but Rebs out there Sergeant.  They's all around us."  

The other scout, a mechanic from Massachusetts, nodded his agreement with the
big ex-fieldhand from Virginia. 

"That's right, Sarge.  We're surrounded."

Master Sergeant James Russell of the 19th Regiment, United States Colored
Troops, sighed and nodded.  "How many?  How far?  Where are they the strongest?
 See any field guns?"

The mechanic cocked his head and replied, almost apologetically, "Can't really
say for sure.  We couldn't get much in between their pickets.  Where the fires
were burning brightest we could see best.  Looks to be like they're strongest
to the East, maybe six hundred there, about a quarter of a mile out, with a
couple of hundred each on the other sides, all about the same distance, a
little closer maybe.  Didn't see no guns."

Russell patted each man on his shoulder.  "You did good, real good.  Now go get
some breakfast and fall out."

As he watched the two men make their way to the rear, Russell thought about the
implications of what they had told.  The regiment was completely cut off from
Thomas' brigade, Ferrero's division, Ben Butler's IX Corps, and from the rest
of the Army of the Potomac.  They'd have to fight their way out.  But in what
direction lay the rest of the Union Army?  To go straight East, where the main
force of the army probably was, would be suicide, for at least one full
strength regiment of Confederates blocked their path.  South and West, if they
got through the enemy screening forces, they were just as likely to find even
more Rebs.  Maybe the best bet was to head North, then cut back East at the
first opportunity.  

Shaking the rain off his poncho, he started toward Lt. Colonel Perkins' bivouac
to make his report. As he passed a canvas pup tent set on boards nestled in
mud, a hand reached out toward him.  It was one of the men wounded yesterday
afternoon in the Confederate assault at the Orange Plank Road, Private Michaels
of A Company.  The surgeon hadn't expected him to survive the night.  He was
gut shot.  Russell stared into the young man's sweaty, feverish face.

"Don't leave me here, Sarge, please don't leave me."

Russell kneeled down, clutching the man's outstretched hand in his.  "Don't
worry, son, we're not leaving anybody, least of all you.  I figure you owe the
regiment about a dozen Rebs, soon as you get out of hospital that is.  I hear
they take real good care of you over at the Colored Sanitary Commission these
days, soft beds, good food ...."

Michaels feebly shook his head.  "I know I'm dying, Sarge, just don't leave me
for the Rebs."

Russell squeezed his hand, then rose to leave, pointing a finger in
admonishment.  "Stay alive, that's an order."

No one would be left for the Rebs, he would personally make sure of that.  The
news last month of the gruesome massacre of surrendering Negro troops and white
officers at Fort Pillow, Tennessee had spread fast.  Most black troops had
known there would be no quarter for the USCT long before the Confederate
Congress had ordered that black troops taken in Federal uniform be enslaved
rather than exchanged like white soldiers.  They knew first hand the nature of
the beast.  So when the Reb soldiers ignored the threat of President Lincoln's
retaliation order,  and showed no mercy for the ex-slaves, free Northern 
blacks or their white officers, it came as no surprise.  But the cruelties
meted out at Fort Pillow had outraged even those who had grown up under the
harsh lash of slavery.  Some of the black soldiers taken prisoner had been
buried alive.  Sergeant Russell felt a chill on his shoulders.  Rivulets of
water poured off his kepi.  Pulling his poncho closer, he walked a little more
briskly toward Lt. Colonel Perkins' tent.   No one would be left behind.  He
would make sure of that.  Nor would the regiment ask for or give quarter to any
Rebs they met.  



The Sisko materialized into congruence with the time line 200 kilometers above
the Earth.  There were no satellites, space stations or starships in orbit.  
The first human in space was just under a century away.   His mission from the
Prophets was simple: restore the time line that had already been altered by a
Pah-wraith killing one of his and Benny Russell's ancestors.  Although the
Pah-wraithes had been sealed in the Fire Caves on Bajor in 2375 when he
defeated Dukat, he now had to clean up after them, restoring the time line in
all the places they had altered in the war to eliminate him.  This constituted
the bulk of the"many tasks" that his Prophet mother Sarah Sisko.  had warned
him of before he unexpectedly joined the wormhole aliens.

The Pah-wraithes' final strategy had been deceptively simple.  This time there
were no grand schemes to drastically change human history, no alterations of
great battles or assassinations of pivotal leaders, just the selective
destruction of himself and his ancestors, one by one, to prevent the Emissary
from coming into existence and discovering the wormhole aliens.  But because he
was human, he could still loose these battles, be erased from existence, never
"discover" the wormhole and thus create a conundrum for the two factions of
wormhole aliens battling to the death in linear time.

Staring down at the North American continent, he tried to recall what he knew
about this period.  The war raging down below was one of the pivotal turning
points in the long struggle to define just who was included in the definition
of "human".   That definition of who had a right to be human would eventually
expand to include everyone on the entire planet.  By the Sisko's time the
definition of equality would no longer be "human" but "sentient".  It would
include a hundred species in the Federation, eventually embracing the galaxy
and someday perhaps the universe itself.

But here and now, in the past of old Earth, that definition was terribly small
and struggling to survive.   There would be more wars in the centuries to come.
  Like this one, some would revolutionize and expand the definition of "human".
 While others would terribly contract it, shrinking it to almost non-existence.
  But in the end "human" and then "sentient" would prevail over slavery and
exploitation.  Due to his own historical knowledge and the knowledge he had
acquired from Benny Russell in the time he had been joined with him, the Sisko
knew just how terrible the conditions of everyday existence were for even the
"freest" people down there. Not for the first time in his journeys across the
continuum the Sisko asked himself, how had humans survived their own past?

END Part 1 of   "In the Wilderness"


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