Ad Astra :: Star Trek Fanfiction Archive ^{Beam me up, Scotty.}

Chapter Text

From one side of the forcefield, Chester stares at the Intendant with exhausted resignation. From the other side, the Intendant stares at Chester like someone promised a grisly shuttle crash and presented with an overturned bicycle instead. 

“You’re so plain ,” says the Intendant. “And frumpy .” 

Chester just draws in a long breath and looks at her. “What the hell are you doing on my ship.”

The Intendant is still staring. “You’re really nothing like her, are you?” she says, glee creeping into her voice. Her remaining eye is too wide and too bright and the smile spreading across her face is too big. Maniacal, relief and hate a potent mixture. 

Chester just waits. She’s read the reports about the mirror universe, and about this woman, and it’s better to just wait. With the brig forcefield solidly up. According to the reports, the Intendant has a habit of stabbing people. 

Chester’s gotten about three more hours of sleep, which is a hell of a lot more than she got most of the time during the war, and she’s glad of them. An unexpected intruder—this unexpected intruder—is certainly not an emergency she anticipated. And when Hawthorne called her, indignant incredulity in his voice as he reported Ensign Nask, a soft-spoken agent of general chaos, but not Chester’s first guess at a crewmember who’d take hostages first and ask questions later, had captured an intruder, she’d had to ask him to repeat himself, which had endeared her to him no further.

And now she’s standing in the ship’s brig, too large like the rest of the ship, designed to hold many prisoners, and staring down a woman she’s only ever read about.

Lieutenant Fult is standing some distance back from her, radiating disapproval at their prisoner, but so far content to have Chester this close—there is the forcefield, after all.

“You’re no fun, are you,” says the Intendant, annoyed by Chester’s lack of response. Her pacing brings her right up by the forcefield, where she settles and tips her head back with a pout to look at Chester. “Just a Captain. Oh, she hates that.”

Chester folds her arms and stares her down. “All right, let’s start with the basics. Who is she?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” says the Intendant. “She’s you .” 

She looks at Chester’s nonplussed face and laughs, throwing her head back. “Oh, so stodgy too. Have I come to the wrong place?”

Chester just stays silent. It seems like the best option. 

“My dear,” says the Intendant, now conciliatory, “I realize this is a lot to take in, but you really must believe me. Your life depends on it. As does,” she looks around, then down, shakes her head as her gaze flicks back up to Chester, “your entire crew.”

Chester sighs and keeps looking down her nose at the other woman. 

“You see, your counterpart is an ambitious woman.”

“This somehow does not surprise me,” says Chester, unimpressed. 

“Oh, so you can be funny. That’s better. I like funny. I’m here to help you, Captain. Don’t look at me like that. It makes you seem so boring. I’m here to help you, because you’re going to need it.”

The sing-song trill at the end sets Chester’s teeth on edge. “Madam, if you think I am going to do anything but return you to your universe as soon as we’ve figured out the transporter frequency—”

The Intendant is already shaking her head, a rapid nervous motion. “Oh. Oh no you won’t. You’re having trouble with your engines, aren’t you?”

Chester freezes. The shock doesn’t reach her face, but the Intendant picks up on it all the same and laughs again. It would be a nice laugh coming from someone else, but it makes Chester want to reach in there and throttle her. 

“Why do you say that?” she asks, keeping her voice pleasant.

“Because she did it, of course. Look, can’t we have this discussion somewhere else? Your quarters, maybe?”

“Absolutely not.”

The Intendant tsks, takes another round of the cell before coming back to the forcefield, shifting with nervous energy. “She wants your ship, Captain,” she says, all earnestness. “And what the First Admiral of the Resurgent Terran Empire wants—” she draws in a breath through her nose, tipping her chin up, and tilting her face so the horror of her empty socket and the ragged scar down her cheek are fully visible, and her voice goes dry and bitter, “she always gets.”

“Then I very much doubt you’re here without her permission.” There’s a bravado to the Intendant’s movements, a nervousness. It’s probably explained by the missing eye, but… 

She has no reason to come here and put herself in further danger. She has no reason to help them. She would have already asked for asylum if that was what she was after, played up the fleeing refugee role. This… 

The Intendant is picking up on the suspicion in her eyes, and Chester can see her decide to change tacks. “I didn’t have a choice,” she says. “She’s good at not leaving much to choice.” Tears cloud her remaining eye, and she turns away, tipping her chin up. “I have suffered, so much , since the Alliance fell and that—barbarian—took the reins of the Terran resistance. I tried to be good to the Terrans, I really did, but they left me no choice. Of course,” she laughs, a fragile noise on the edge of hysteria, “their new ‘republic’ didn’t last so very long, did it? Poor, stupid Smiley, so full of his ideals. It turned out that the one thing he couldn’t handle was his own people.”

“And what do you mean by that?” asks Chester. Exactly what happened after the defeat of the Alliance in the other universe is unknown, and garbled, coming as it did from Quark and Rom.

“We…didn’t stamp out the old Terran Empire entirely,” says the Intendant. “There were some, in exile, who left when Spock’s reforms began, and when we conquered the Empire… more joined them. And after the Alliance collapsed, they came back.”

That has the potential to be very bad. “One moment,” says Chester, and taps her commbadge. “Chester to Bridge.” 

“ J’etris here. ”

“Yellow alert. Our engine malfunction might not be coincidence; I want security sweeps of all decks. Work with Hawthorne to get sensor sweeps going; we might have some cloaked ships out there too. The mirror universe is up to its old tricks.”

“Understood. ”

“Still inseparable, even here,” says the Intendant. “So strange a pair. She had every reason to hate the Klingons, you know.”

“You were saying about the exiled Terrans,” says Chester, and gives the Intendant a hard look. It’s alarming to see the other woman quail under it. Like she’s seen it before, and like, when it comes to her counterpart, it precedes something much worse. 

“They came back,” says the Intendant. “And they ground Smiley and anyone who wouldn’t line right up with them into the dust. But your alternate,” she stabs a finger at Chester, who just refolds her ams and continues her unimpressed stare, “your alternate, she’d been with the rebellion, and she toed the line. Oh, how she did.” The smile she flashes is sharp with anticipation of another’s pain. “She betrayed everyone. Even me! She’d grown up on Terok Nor, orphaned— sometimes I think if I’d just noticed, she might have been something else , something better, but no.” She presses a hand over her chest, a wounded expression coming into her eyes. “So much potential, and what she did with it…”

“My counterpart grew up as a slave in your ore processing center,” says Chester flatly, because the stream of histrionics is profoundly annoying. “And you’re upset she turned on you.”

The Intendant draws in a shocked breath. “Of course you wouldn’t understand! I did my best for the Terrans. But sometimes they were just so…just so…” She gestures, clearly expecting Chester to finish the sentence. Chester does not. “So stubborn,” she finishes.

“Imagine that,” says Chester, still flat. 

“Your counterpart,” the Intendant draws in another dramatic breath, “betrayed her own crew and swore loyalty to the Emperor personally. The Terran Emperor favored her after that. Ships, the best of the fleet—and then the whole fleet. She’s the Emperor’s right hand now.”

“Interesting,” says Chester. “And what interest does the Emperor’s right hand have in my ship?”

“She wants it,” says the Intendant. “I came to warn you.”

“Did you now,” says Chester. “I’m sure you got her to let you go somehow.”

“Me?” The Intendant gestures to her face. “Look at me! I’m no risk to her. Not anymore. She let me go.”

“You’re working for her,” says Chester evenly. “She’s good at not leaving you much choice, you said.”

“I could work for you!” The cracks are showing now; there’s open desperation in the Intendant’s face. “I would be good at working for you. Look, I don’t need to tell you any of this. But she needs your ship. The Alliance isn’t beaten yet. Not even close! The Terrans are fighting a battle on all fronts, and she’s going to need a lot of help, even with all the technology their Emperor has brought back from exile, and she’s cornered. She found out about your ship, and she wants it. She thinks it could turn the tide.”

“That’s useful to know,” says Chester. “Thank you. I’ll take it under consideration. Some details would be appreciated, however.”

“Details? Details! I come here and warn you about a threat and you demand details? Do I look like she told me details? ”

“You must have played a significant role in her plan,” says Lieutenant Fult. She tips her head and offers the Intendant a tusked smile. “She wouldn’t have let you out of her sight otherwise.”

“Maybe you could tell us something of your role,” says Chester, glad of Fult’s input. She’s significantly more experienced than Chester herself, a career security officer stubbornly refusing promotion or transfer. Her teams during the war had some of the lowest mortality rates, and it wasn’t for lack of action. 

“My role was simple,” the Intendant says. For all her easy manner, her eyes dart, trapped—she hasn’t thought of a way out of this one. She sidles closer to the forcefield, lowering her voice so Chester has to lean in to hear her. “I was supposed to plant a device that would make it easier to beam in and out of this ship. And then,” she lowers her voice still closer, tilting her head up to look at Chester, eyes low-lidded until they suddenly aren’t, and her hand darts out through the forcefield, fisting in the front of Chester’s jacket and hauling with unnatural strength, and Chester finds herself abruptly off-balance, stumbling toward her, and the hum of a transporter fills her ears as the Intendant finishes all but in her ear, “ be a distraction. ”

Hawthorne is juggling ten things at once. “Oh yes,” he mutters as he works, trying to figure out how to start up their warp engines in a way that won’t kill them all , “give me options, Hawthorne, this is perfectly reasonable, Hawthorne, your first solution isn’t going to be good enough, Hawthorne , never mind I’m not an engineer, never mind that you have years and years of experience over me, never mind you know how to prevent us from blowing up , Hawthorne, just get it done in half the time with a quarter the resources, I have every faith in you, Hawthorne.”

Someone moves behind him. “Whatever it is, I’m busy,” he snaps. “You know, trying to keep us alive.”

“I need you to come with me.” Hawthorne straightens up and turns, all the better to glare at Tanek. 

“I said, I’m busy,” he snaps. “Are you running errands for the Captain now? That a Romulan engagement tradition?”

“And I said,” Tanek looms closer, and a hand like iron wraps around Hawthorne’s mouth, Tanek’s arm pinioning his own to his side, “that you are coming with me. Now. ”

His tricorder clatters to the deck. Hawthorne tries to yell, kick the bastard’s knees as he’s lifted off his feet. It’s like kicking a brick wall. There’s the chirp of a device activating, and Hawthorne has the time to think, oh FUCK, before the world dissolves in transporter shimmer.