Forwarded by the ASC-VSO Posted: Thu, 15 Apr 2004 04:58:04 GMT In: alt.startrek.creative From: Gabrielle Lawson Title: Oswiecim Author: Gabrielle Lawson (inheildi@earthlink.net) Series: DS9 Part: REP 23/42 Rating: [PG-13] (Violence) Codes: Chapter Ten Thomas tightened the belt of her coat and checked the chronometer. It was nearly time. She was glad that Chief O'Brien had left her some access to the computer's historical database. He had pulled power from nearly every other unessential system to get the sensors working again. He left two terminals open for the database. One for her and Lieutenant Commander Dax, the other for Lieutenant Novak. The costumes were not particularly hard. SS uniforms would have been more complicated, but they had chosen Gestapo. And besides, it was winter. They'd all be wearing coats. Thomas had been more concerned with the hair. She knew what styles were popular with American women at this time, but she wasn't so certain about Germans. The computer helped to fill in this information. Both she and Dax finally decided on severe buns. Gestapo agents probably wouldn't be concerned with fashion. "You ready?" Dax asked. She checked her comm badge to make sure that it was hidden well but still functional. "I'm a little tired," Thomas admitted. "My body was getting used to sleeping right now." "You'll probably wake up when you get down there." Dax stepped forward so that the door opened and then extended a hand to show that Thomas should go first. "I'll probably wake up ten seconds before the transport," Thomas quipped, stepping out. "It's exciting. This is Nazi Germany, after all. Of course, that also means that it's terrifying." "We're counting on you to keep us apprised of that side of things." The turbolift doors closed behind them. "Transporter room," Dax told the computer. "We should be fine in these outfits," Thomas assured her. "We're the secret state police. People denounce other people to us. We're the ones they're afraid of." "Let's just hope they don't check our badges," Dax smiled, and Thomas couldn't help but notice that it looked out of place on her today. She had always thought of the Trill as serene or fun- loving. But today, she looked as severe as her tightly pulled back hair. She fit the part. Except for that smile. The turbolift stopped. The transporter room was only a few meters away from the lift but Thomas felt her pulse increase with each step. The captain was waiting for them inside, as was Major Kira though her shift had ended three hours ago. Chief O'Brien himself was handling the transporter. Lieutenant Novak entered last. He was tall and blond and imposing--the picture of the Aryan "master race." "I've been tinkering with the universal translator," O'Brien said, stepping forward. He held three communicator badges in his hand. "These comm badges don't have one. Thomas told us there were a lot of foreign workers in Germany. You want to sound the part. So you'll have to rely on the lieutenant." "Good thinking, Chief," Dax said, taking off her old badge and replacing it with the new. Thomas and Novak did the same. "Make it quick, Old Man," Captain Sisko admonished. "Try to stay out of trouble." "We'll be fine, Benjamin," Dax said, smiling again. "Who's going to be in a science lab at one in the morning anyway?" "You would be," Sisko answered dryly. "Just be careful." He faced Novak and Thomas. "Lieutenant, your primary responsibility, once inside, will be to find the records and bring them back to the ship and translate them. Dax will get the badge. Everything must be put back exactly as it is found." Thomas already knew her duty. She would watch the door to the lab. It seemed anticlimactic for her first mission into Nazi Germany, but she knew it was crucial. Novak was there to read German files. Dax was there to deal with the electronics. Thomas was there to protect them while they did it. "Good luck," Sisko said finally and he nodded. The three of them stepped onto the transporter pad. Dax checked to make sure her team was ready. "Energize." They reappeared in a dark alley just beside the target building. Dax removed a tricorder from her jacket and scanned the area. She nodded, and slipped it back into a pocket. "Let's go," she whispered. Thomas was amazed. It was different than she had thought it would be. She had thought she'd be overwhelmed by the sense of history here, the different-ness of everything from what she was used to. But all she felt was cold. It felt normal here, like any of the old European universities she had visited before choosing Starfleet Academy. The only difference was the presence of Nazi banners and flags. It looked like a picture from the Holocaust Museum in Washington. They found a back door to the building, but it was locked. Dax didn't seem worried. She had her tricorder out again, scanning the lock. "This shouldn't be too hard," she said. She opened her coat a little and withdrew a small, slender tool. She bent over to press it into the lock. "*Was machen Sie da?*" an angry voice asked behind them. Dax froze for exactly one second. Then she glanced up at Novak and continued her work, using her body to block the intruder's view. "*Geh nach Hause,*" Novak told him in perfect German. He showed the man his Gestapo badge. "*Das hier ist Angelegenheit der Gestapo. Du tust gut daran, dich hier herauszuhalten.*" Thomas caught enough of the German to realize that Novak had subtly threatened the man, using his fear of the Gestapo to turn him away. It worked. The man's angry demeanor melted in an instant. "*Es tut mir leid,*" he said, stepping backwards. He kept his face to them, but disappeared quickly around a corner. The door snapped open, and the away team stepped inside. Thomas gladly closed and locked the door behind her. "That went well," Dax whispered. "You have a lovely accent, Lieutenant. " She checked her tricorder again. Thomas peeked over her shoulder. The comm badge's signal was much stronger here, and the tricorder easily picked it up. "Two floors up." Dax led the way past what Thomas assumed were offices and classrooms, using the tricorder readings as a guide. There was a light shining through one door. Someone was still at work. Captain Sisko had been right to be cautious. Dax made a motion with her hands to show that the stairs were further down the hall. They would have to be extra quiet as they passed the office and hope its occupant didn't look up. Dax went first. Her shoes never made a sound. Novak followed, his own boots emitting a muted shuffle, but he was past the door in two steps. Thomas was last, and she listened carefully as she walked. She heard talking in the office, but it was steady and seemed uninterrupted by their passage. The stairs were just beyond the door, so they still had to climb them quietly. It was an old building, and no matter how silent the three of them tried to be, the creaky steps seemed determined to give them away. Once they had made it up a flight, Dax held her hand up to stop them. They listened to see if anyone had noticed. They heard nothing. The light from the doorway never changed, so they continued up to the proper floor. The hallway here seemed wider than the other one, and the doors were set wider apart. Dax checked the tricorder again and stopped suddenly beside one of them. "Here," she whispered. Again, the door was locked, but it took her less time now to open the laboratory door than it had outside. She inserted the tool inside the lock and turned. Thomas heard a click and the door opened. The lab looked like any other lab Thomas had ever seen, except that there were beakers and tubes here as well as electronic equipment, but no computer or scanning equipment that she could recognize. There were several long black-topped lab tables in the center of the room with tall, glass-fronted cabinets lining two walls. Windows lined the third. One tall file cabinet stood in the far corner, and Novak headed there immediately. Dax found the badge on the center table. She looked up to Thomas and smiled. Thomas stepped back out into the hall, pulling the door behind her. She stopped it just before it could latch into the frame. Dax waited for the door to shut and then turned her attention back to the badge. It was in pieces, literally. Luckily it was all laid out on a soft felt pad. It could be lifted as one piece. The face of it was deeply scratched, but in the low light she couldn't see it clearly. Two small wires attached it to what her tricorder told her was a low level power source that sat nearby. She would have to disconnect it. Careful not to disturb anything just yet, she began lifting the biggest pieces, turning them over and squinting in the dim light to see if they were numbered. She lifted only one at a time and replaced it just where it had been before picking up another. Novak was using a palm beacon to read the files, but without knowing what the Germans had labeled the badge, he'd have little luck in finding its records. He closed the top drawer and pulled open the next one. Dax finished her search of the tiny pieces without any success. Then she turned up the edges of the pad . . . and found a label. "Lieutenant!" she whispered, waving him over. Novak left his drawer open and walked back to the center of the room. He approached from the opposite side of the table and leaned over to look at the label, using the beacon to light it. He smiled. "Not very imaginative," he whispered back. "'Electronic Jewelry.'" Dax smiled too. She had used that one before, telling a twenty-first century man that her comm badge was a brooch. She nodded again and Novak returned to the files. He closed the open drawer and reopened the top one. He began rifling quickly through the folders inside. Dax, satisfied now that the records would be found, turned her attention back to her work. She opened the tricorder, setting it on the tabletop just beside the disemboweled little badge. She checked its readings and memorized them. Then she carefully pulled the two wires loose. Novak stopped rifling and pulled one of the files out. He opened it, flipped a few pages, then snapped it shut again. He held it up for her to show that he'd found the right one. Dax straightened back up and reached inside her jacket, touching the cool smooth surface of her own badge. There was a familiar chirp and the comm line opened. "Dax to *Defiant,*" she said, keeping her voice low. "*Defiant* here," Sisko's voice answered, equally quiet. "Prepare for transport," she told him. She waved Novak over with the file. She noted that he again left the drawer open with one file sticking up vertically to mark the place of the one he'd removed. "I'll patch you directly through to the transporter room." A second later, the Chief's voice acknowledged the connection. "O'Brien here. We've lost the signal. What are your instructions?" "I detached its power source," she explained. "Lieutenant Novak has the file and he's ready to go. The badge is on a felt pad. Best to beam it all up together. They've really done a job on it." Even as she said it, she hoped they hadn't done the same to its former owner. "Lock onto my tricorder signal. The pad is approximately twenty by thirty centimeters in area, just to the left of the tricorder." "Got it," O'Brien confirmed. "Whenever you're ready, Lieutenant." Novak waited for a nod from Dax and then spoke, "One to beam up, Chief." By the time the lieutenant and the badge materialized on the platform, Captain Sisko and Major Kira were back in the transporter room. "How did it go, Lieutenant?" the captain asked, as the Chief collected the felt pad and its myriad minuscule pieces of comm badge. He couldn't move the pad without disturbing them. "Fairly smoothly thus far, Captain," Novak answered, snapping to attention. "Let's go, Lieutenant," the Chief called. He snatched the file from Novak's hand and slipped the rigid folder beneath the felt pad. It lifted easily then and he headed out the door to the turbolift. The mess hall was still the only place with a working replicator. Major Kira stepped up to the console to man the transporter while he was gone. O'Brien tried to walk quickly, but he didn't want to spill or move any of the small pieces. He studied the pieces as he went. The front face of the badge was badly scratched, but he noticed a familiar pattern to it. He wanted to turn it in the light to get a better angle, but the turbolift arrived and moved too quickly. The mess hall was just around the corner. Despite the hour, the mess hall was still busy with crewmembers finishing up their short breaks or grabbing breakfast before their regular duty shift. Everyone backed away from the replicators at the Lieutenant's order. O'Brien couldn't help but notice the response and felt the costume held a large part of the responsibility. O'Brien knelt and set the pad in the replicator, smoothly sliding the folder out from under it. He pressed a few controls and the replicator scanned the pad and its contents. He'd already preset the computer to make an mock-up of the badge, replicating the appearance of its parts but not their function. The Germans would only be able to get the same low-level signal from it. Using the folder again, O'Brien slipped the pad out of the way. A new one, identical to the first appeared in its place. He handed the original pad to Novak, who commandeered a table to set it on. Then he handed the folder back to O'Brien. O'Brien removed the new badge, setting it on the floor in front of him. Its face contained the same familiar scratches. Then O'Brien placed the file in the replicator. A new file appeared beside the old one and Novak removed it, checking its content before he nodded his okay. O'Brien took the original file and lifted the new badge from the floor with it. He stood and found a Security officer in the crowd that was now watching them carefully. "You," he ordered. "Nobody touches that." He nodded toward the original badge. The Security officer nodded as well. O'Brien looked to Novak, but the lieutenant was no longer paying attention. He had already sat down with a PADD in hand to translate the file. O'Brien left the mess hall and retraced his steps back to transporter room. Barely four minutes had passed since he had left, but he knew that Dax was waiting for him. He set the PADD back on the transporter platform, laying the file beside it. "Ready to go, Major," he called and stepped back out of the way. The familiar sparkle of transporter energy fell immediately upon the two objects, and they disappeared quickly from view. Thomas heard the footsteps on the floor below and held her breath, trying to listen harder. The stairs creaked and she knew they were coming. She backed up, letting the door open behind her while she kept her eyes on the stairway. A small circle of light played on the far wall. She stepped inside. Dax looked up when she entered, but Thomas said nothing. She closed the door quickly, but stopped just short of the frame. Then she pushed it slowly, listening to their footsteps still on the stairs, until she heard it click into place. She locked it. "They're coming," she whispered to Dax. Just then the tabletop beside Dax's tricorder began to sparkle. "Take the file," Dax ordered. "He marked its place." The footsteps now sounded loudly in the hall. Thomas snatched up the file folder as soon as all its molecules were in place. She ran as fast as she could without making noise to the file cabinet and found one file sticking up. She checked its label and the label on the folder she held. It belonged just after the vertical one. She slid it in place and closed the drawer, hoping it was a new file cabinet so that it wouldn't squeak. Dax was still working on the badge when she turned around. The circle of light she'd seen from the hall was now poking underneath the door. Someone turned the handle, tried the lock. Dax was attaching a wire to some of the exposed sections of the badge. There was a short spark and then she was satisfied. She snapped her tricorder closed and moved toward the door. She called for transport as she went. Thomas wasn't sure why she wanted to go closer to the danger, but Dax was her superior officer and she followed her lead. Whoever was outside was fumbling with the lock now. "*Wer ist da drinnen?*" a male voice yelled. Dax flattened herself against the wall beside the door's hinge and pulled Thomas over beside her. The lock gave and the door swung open quickly just as the transporter took hold of them both. "Beautiful timing, Major," Dax said as she stepped down from the pad. Thomas took a moment to catch her breath. She held her stomach. "I think I felt the doorknob." Captain Sisko gave them a slight smile. "Good work. Now let's see what we got." Sisko led the way to the mess hall. It was still the best place to have a meeting. Besides, they had another half hour before the next shift went off duty. By the time Worf arrived from the bridge, all other crewmembers, except Novak and the Security officer had left for their quarters, some with trays of food in hand. Sisko dismissed the Security officer and O'Brien and Dax began to analyze the badge. Sisko wanted to give them a little time, so he asked Ensign Thomas for a report. "Things went well enough at first, sir," she told him. "We were seen entering the building, but the lieutenant was able to scare the man off. There were at least two other people in the building, but they didn't appear to hear us. However, someone found out we were up there in the lab. They must have heard something. I heard them coming up the stairs so I went inside and locked the door. We had just enough time to replace everything before they got the door open." "They didn't see you?" "No, sir," she replied. "The major beamed us out just in time." Sisko nodded. He remembered her remark on the transporter pad. It must have been close. "It's Cardassian!" O'Brien exclaimed. Sisko and the others crowded around the table to see what Dax and the chief were discussing. He was holding up the face of Bashir's comm badge. "Well, then we know he was alive to scratch it in there," Sisko decided. "Let me see it," Kira said. O'Brien handed her the badge. She grew up under Cardassian rule, and, though the crew had become familiar with Cardassian symbols, she would still be the best at reading them. She held it up and tilted it so that the light caught the etchings and further defined them. "It's not Cardassian. He used Cardassian syllables to write in Standard. 'Ar, es, ed, po, len' and then a stardate. Arrested?" she said, putting the syllables together. "Poland," Thomas finished unenthusiastically. "Do you know how many camps there were in Poland? I don't. There were hundreds, literally hundreds." "What's the date?" Sisko asked. Kira peered closer at the badge. She frowned. "The day after we arrived in this century." She passed the badge to Sisko. "Well, at least we know he was alive for that long," Sisko said, trying to put a good face on it. "That's a good sign. Most of the others weren't. Now we just need to know which camp he was taken to. Could you hazard a guess as to his chances, Ensign?" Thomas took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. "Well, it depends where he was taken. If it was a concentration or labor camp, his chances might be, relatively speaking of course, rather high. He was young and probably healthier than any of the other new arrivals. If he kept his head down, didn't draw attention to himself, his chances would be pretty good." "Let's work on that assumption then," Sisko said. "Is there anything else the badge can tell us?" "Well, we can give it a good working over," O'Brien suggested, "maybe find a DNA trace. Then we'd know for sure that he wrote it." Kira must have still been tired. "Who else would know Cardassian?" she asked. "The changeling," Dax answered. "Mr. Novak," Sisko snapped, breaking the mood and drawing the lieutenant away from the corner table where he had been sitting the entire time. "Did you find anything useful." "Most of it," Novak said, checking his PADD, "is scientific readings and measurements and suspicions about the badge. They think it might be a radio device used in espionage." He set the PADD down and lifted a piece of paper from the file. "But," he said with a flourish," we also have a custody receipt of sorts, giving the university rights to hold and study the object. They were to extract the electronics and send the precious metals back for deposit with the Reichsbank. Orders given by the Economic Administration Headquarters in Berlin. Unfortunately, it doesn't say where the Economic Adminstration got it in the first place." Lieutenant Novak walked back to his quarters, trying to think in German. His grandmother had spoken German always, never bothering with Standard or universal translators. So when, as a child, he had visited her for the summer in Dusseldorf, he had spoken German as well. Always in May it had been difficult because he first had to translate what he wanted to say before he said it. But by August, his thoughts were in German, and his speech just flowed from that. The university had been easy. Two sentences to a guy in the street. But the Economic Administration Headquarters would be different. They would be going down in broad daylight to a Nazi government agency in Germany's capital. He had to sound like a Gestapo agent, a native German. So he needed to think like one, too. The *Defiant* was well within transporter range for the headquarters already. But they had to wait for the offices to open, so he still had a few hours to catch up on his interrupted sleep. He was fortunate in that the away team members were pulled off the regular duty roster. They would now hold shifts that fit Europe's daylight hours, at least until it became necessary to handle things at night. Bureaucracy took place in the daytime, though, and it was bureaucracy they would be dealing with until they tracked down the camp where Doctor Bashir was being held. He slept for six hours. Halfway through, his dreams changed over to German, and when Lieutenant Commander Dax called to wake him, he even acknowledged her in that language first and had to translate his thoughts back into English. He was glad. It would make things easier down below. To Be Continued.... -- --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 Awards Tech Support http://www.trekiverse.us/ASCAwards/commenting/ No Tribbles were harmed in the running of these Awards ASCL is a stories-only list, no discussion. Comments and feedback should be directed to alt.startrek .creative or directly to the author. Yahoo! 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