Chapter Text
It’s been a very busy few days, and a very difficult few days. Chester and Hawthorne have spoken little, except in quick glances as they’ve put everything in order, checked the medical supplies, moved them to where they’re supposed to go, as Chester has sent some quiet messages and she’s fielded their responses…
…as the Respite issue has gone up in the press equivalent of a fireball.
She’s been fully cognizant of the risks, that this might end up with her command stripped from her, dismissal from the service in disgrace, a sentence to a penal colony. She’s had the time to think about that, to accept that, to decide it’s far better than letting Section 31 use her, or leaving the people on Respite vulnerable to their next little scheme. Nevertheless, it is still hard to walk into Admiral Ross’s office the day after the news breaks and face the dressing down that’s the least of the possible consequences.
But he owes her answers too. He made her a promise. And while promises from Admirals to junior captains aren’t worth the oxygen they’re spoken with, she’d like to think Ross is better than that.
We have to try to trust each other, she tells herself, even if right now misplaced trust will cost her everything.
But she’s lost everything once before. At least this time, there will be a good reason, not the vagaries of war. She has to know–was DeWinter right, is Section 31 an official entity? If it is–that’s too terrible to contemplate. She has to know. She cannot deal with not knowing. She hopes the news will be comforting.
So she stands at attention, and takes the dressing down with a calmly blank face, and waits.
“I could have your commission for this,” says Admiral Ross. “No, forget that, there’s a lot of people back at Command who want your head for this, Chester. What the hell were you thinking?”
Chester waits a moment to make sure he’s done. There have been several such rhetorical questions; Ross isn’t a particularly demonstrative man, but it’s clear that this mess is well beyond anything he’s imagined grappling with. She’s glad she waits, because after just enough of a pause to take a breath, he’s off again. “They want you removed from command, court-martialed, and sent to a penal colony for the next twenty years. And that’s before a few of them got into more… historical suggestions. We don’t classify things at that level for fun , dammit, Chester, you could have kicked off another war with this, what in hell inspired you to bring a reporter there once you stumbled on it?”
“I could have started another war by revealing we were providing basic humanitarian aid to people stranded in our space?” Chester says, dry as she can. “By taking admittedly extreme measures to resolve a severe threat from a domestic extremist group without loss of life? If Respite had gone up in flames, like they wanted it to, we would have had a war. Sir.”
The sir is clearly an afterthought, and he knows it. But she doesn’t miss his look of discomfort at domestic extremist .
“Unless,” she says, “you mean to tell me an official entity was involved in the orders to murder a hospital?”
She can hear the edge in her own voice; this is the point where Rilas or Sotek would be telling her to pull back, but Ross, for all his sponsorship of her career, doesn’t actually know her that well and doesn’t pick up on it. “I don’t always agree with Section 31,” he starts. “But they were necessary during the war. Despite their methods, we still need them–”
“Bull. Fucking. Shit, ” snarls Chester. There goes her temper whipping out of the tenuous grasp of self-control. Actually hearing the words is like a slap in the face, and even for all of Piper’s dark comments, it hurts and it’s a shock, and she’s reacting before she realizes she’s reacting. She stabs a finger at Ross. “You told me that we were done with this. That you wanted officers like me to bring us back out of the war, and you have the fucking nerve to stand there and justify the shit they just tried to use me to pull?”
She reaches for her commbadge and rips it free of her jacket. It lets go too easily, and she wishes it could be more dramatic, because it fucking hurts to do this, she loves Starfleet, she loves everything she thought it stood for. It’s like ripping off a part of herself. When she tosses it at his desk she does so with enough strength it bounces and skitters, and there’s a little satisfaction in that.
She plants both hands on his desk and leans in. “You made me a promise when I agreed to take that ship,” she says, fighting her voice back down into a snarl instead of the scream it wants to be. “You. Made me a goddamned promise, sir. That I wasn’t going to be used as a murderer again. As far as I’m concerned, you just broke that promise. Care to explain why the fuck ,” she stabs a finger at the commbadge by his hand, “I should pick that up again?”
“Captain,” he starts, like a patient father with a sullen teenager, and stops dead at her glare.
“They tried to make me kill a hospital,” she says, “and I stopped them. And here you are, telling me they’re official ? What’s next, are you going to tell me their agent wasn’t lying about them deriving their authority from the fucking Federation Charter? ”
His silence is telling enough.
“You know what, you can have my commission. Go ahead and court martial me. Because I’m not going to be complicit in this.” She turns her back on him.
“They tried to go too far this time,” he says, too fast to be as calm as he’s pretending to be.
It wouldn’t be the first time, she thinks, and doesn’t say. She just stays there and waits, not bothering to turn to look at him.
“They’ve been making some of us nervous,” he says, “looking for a bigger peacetime role. They say they want to make sure something like the Dominion War never happens again, but we’ve had our close calls with authoritarian coups over the last few years.” When she tilts a brief glance over her shoulder at him, he’s examining the surface of his desk.
“And yet you think I should have let them use me to murder noncombatants?”
“You did the right thing,” he reassures, too fast. “But Diane, you’ve had your command for less than a year. This isn’t the time to be making enemies. Not of this caliber.”
“Well, maybe they should have thought of that before they tried to make me take the fall for their war crimes,” she snaps, out of patience. “What’s it going to be, sir? Are you going to throw me to the wolves, or are you going to make good on all those nice things you said about clawing our way back to what we should be? Did you mean all of that you just said, or did you really just bring me back in out of pity , or some sense of obligation to Captain Sisko?”
She’s hit a sore spot; she can see it on his face, and part of her really wants to keep pushing, but she puts it aside and turns around, looks at him with level accusation. I’d prefer that court martial , she thinks. Because then I won’t have to be complicit in this perversion of everything I believe in.
He still hasn’t responded. He is looking at her now, and his expression is very tired and very sad. “I meant everything I said,” he says. “Regardless of why I brought you back in.”
Something in her flinches at that, that it was indeed pity. It’s a confirmation of the dark dread that wraps around her throat when she sits in a too-quiet briefing room, or alone in her quarters after a bad day.
“Command is aware of the risk that Section 31 poses,” he says. “Even if this was embarrassing, we’re glad they didn’t succeed in their aims. Though I do wish you had picked almost any other way to do it.”
“Every other way would have kicked the can down the road,” she says. “I’m not betting that many lives, or peace, on the next captain they approach catching on in time. I almost didn’t.”
He catches and holds her gaze. “Then I’ll be very blunt with you, and I’ll thank you to hold the dramatics until after I’m done,” he says. “No one’s arguing that what Section 31 tried to do here wasn’t horrific, and no one’s arguing that it didn’t need to be stopped. But the way in which you stopped it was risky, deeply unwise, and blatantly illegal. It exposed you to a hell of a lot of risk that I’m going to be hard put to mitigate enough for you to escape a board of inquiry or court martial. I am going to do that, because I agree with you; Section 31’s current activities are concerning in the extreme.”
“Current activities?” Chester asks, her voice cold. She doesn’t care what it does to her career at this point. She’s not giving an inch. She’s not becoming the latest person to fail Piper, or his dead team, or her crew, or herself . There is no part of this that is acceptable, and there is no part of this on which she is willing to compromise.
He gives her a sharp look, and she subsides. “You’re damned lucky, Chester. You handed them entirely too much rope to hang you with, and you can’t afford to be sloppy like that again–especially if you want to pursue this.”
She alerts to that like a dog on a scent, with painful and unexpected hope, the world going suddenly bright and clear around her. “Pursue this?”
“You’re going to see them again,” he tells her. “There aren’t a lot of ships in the Gamma Quadrant, and it seems they’re already interested in recruiting you. Even though you responded this way, they might yet try to gain your collaboration. Especially if there are indications that you remain a good candidate, despite this incident.”
“And if that’s the case, I’ll know what they’re up to,” she says. That’s better than leaving Rilas or Sotek or some other poor clueless bastard in the lurch.
He nods. She wonders how close his contacts with Section 31 are, how much weight his word will carry with them. “And then what?” she asks.
“Report to me,” he says. “We want a close eye kept on this. Maybe they’ve gotten a bit too cocky about having no accountability; it might be time to enforce some.”
“And if I catch them up to something equally heinous?” she asks.
“Can I trust your judgment to resolve it without a diplomatic incident?” he asks. “Or to not interfere if it is genuinely in our best interests because the person doing it is someone you disapprove of?”
It takes her a moment to consider that second one, and she doesn’t like those implications. But turning away from this fight, pretending it’s not happening, goes against every fiber of her being.
“This is going to be dangerous,” he says. “For you, and for your crew . And it may transpire that Respite was a fluke; that Section 31’s activities remain in our best interest and they will have to be left alone.”
Rage prickles at the back of her mind at that. She cannot, will not believe that. But if she shows it or if she says it, this chance to deal with them will slip from between her fingers, and her memory of Piper’s face, of Graves, will allow her to do no such thing. Working with them only to put them down is the sole circumstance under which she’s willing to do anything but go for the throat.
“Watch. Cooperate. Interfere only if you must,” he says. “Chester, if you can’t do those things, tell me now. Because if you decide to interfere, if you’re sloppy like this again, they will destroy you. ”
Consider this, sir–I don’t care! She stifles the words, keeps her face Vulcan-calm. “And if I do uncover a worrying pattern?” she asks.
“We are considering possibilities,” he says. “Well, Captain?”
“I’ll do it,” she says, after the appropriate pause to hide her eagerness. “I’m not letting something like this happen on my watch, sir. Not ever again.”
And if she’s thinking of Piper and Forward Research Three, not Respite…well. He doesn’t need to know that.
---
“The meeting with Ross went well,” says Chester, in a tone strangely between joking and sincere. She sits heavily in one of the chairs and stares blankly into the middle distance. After a while, with an effort, she says, “You were right. They are official.”
She’s hurting. She knows it sounds in her voice, and she braces for his disdain. He told her as much.
“Well, yes,” he says offhandedly, maybe a bit disdainful but sounding more surprised than anything that it bears repeating. He looks over at her, and his tone shifts. “Ah. Yes. Welcome to the existential crisis club. I’d make t-shirts but I think the figurative targets on our backs are enough without literal ones.”
She scrubs both hands down her face. “I feel like I’m in danger of getting used to these existential crises,” she says. There’s a sharp, forced note to her voice. She’s not hiding this well, her humor transparent over her distress.
He lets out a huff of humorless laughter. “Yeah… wait.” He looks up, expression suddenly sharp. “You’re sure they’re official now, after meeting with Ross? He - ? Oh, fuck - what happened?”
“I chewed him out for letting a domestic terrorist group run riot on the station,” she says. “He… told me they weren’t a terrorist group.”
He stares at her. “You thought… a domestic terrorist group. Took over direction of a Starfleet Research Station. For months. And were able to quash whistleblowing through three layers of Starfleet command, and get a cover story with official backing.” He tilts his head slightly, and then shrugs. “Well, I can’t exactly throw stones about rationalizing the improbable to fit. I assume it’s too much to hope for that Ross has actually been doing something about the resident fascists? You’d think they’d have had a harder time getting to you if he was.”
“He wants me to do something about the resident fascists,” says Chester. “With his support. And if he wasn’t on the level…” She lifts and drops a shoulder. “It would have been easy for him to just let me fry for this one.”
“Oh, wonderful, a Starfleet admiral didn’t fry you for not murdering a hospital.” Hawthorne crosses his arms. “And it’s great to hear that this admiral is now ready to get behind doing something about the resident fascists, now that he’s got someone else to throw on the line to do it. How long has he been going along with this? Organizations that see a half-dead body and go ‘ooh free real estate for our mind control experiments’ aren’t typically new to massive violations of sentient rights.”
“I didn’t tell him about you.” Her eyes lift briefly to meet his, and she feels a pang of sympathy. It must be so hard to trust after what happened to him, and she can’t blame him for being worried about her even now. She’s going to have to earn that trust back. Admittedly, she’s not entirely sure how, given his prickly nature.
He briefly drops his head. “Thank you,” he allows. “But there’s no way me and my team are anywhere near the first. He may not have thrown you into the frying pan today, but that’s not fucking much to say for him.” He looks at her seriously. “It was a risk to tell him that much of what you knew, a big one. Not that doing anything about these fascists isn’t risky, but - this could have gone much worse, and like I said… I don’t want to lose the ally I’ve got so soon.”
“The moment I moved against them, I was telling them just as much as I was telling him; they wouldn't have needed to get it secondhand. It’s a chance, Mr. Hawthorne, and I’m taking it.” Her mouth thins. “Section 31 is a monster, and I’m tearing it out of Starfleet by the roots, even if it kills me. We didn’t fight and die for this during the war, and they’re not using us now.”
She darts him another glance. “I know you’ve already come to these conclusions yourself. But…it’s still new to me. And I am very, very angry.”
Her tone and expression don’t vary much; it’s just a bald statement of fact. She doesn’t want to lose control of herself in public twice in one day.
“Well, I had a bit of a head start,” he taps the side of his cybernetics. “And I’m still very angry.”
She closes her eyes briefly, glad of the bad joke. “That was a terrible pun.”
He gives a lopsided grin. “Thank you, I’m full of them.”
She gets slowly to her feet. “It’s the job in front of us, and we might as well get to it… but in the meantime, I need to go pick a nice fictional fight before I’m fit to be around people again.”
“Get back to that sword of yours, I assume?”
“Exactly,” she says. “Socially acceptable stabbing.”
He lets out a huff of laughter. “I might have to ask for lessons. My rendition of Frodo isn’t much to speak of when it comes to Sting.”
“It depends on the style you want to learn,” says Chester, “since Three Musketeers is rather later period than the styles everyone assumes they’re using in the Lord of the Rings, but fortunately for you, I compete in both longsword and rapier.” It’s nice to have something to think about other than grief and betrayal, but she hesitates for a moment. “Well, let me know if you’re ever short a Boromir.”
Hawthorne snorts so loudly it’s likely audible through bulkheads. “You’re kidding, you’d obviously be Aragorn.”
That shows an…astonishing level of faith in her, and she’s not sure where it’s come from so suddenly. She gives him a baldly startled look.
“I usually play Frodo or - well, I don’t usually play the three hunters portions, but I can try out an axe if you feel like stabbing some orcs.” He looks at her, frowning a little at the startled look. “Besides, didn’t I just say I don’t want to lose my new ally so soon? Not even on the holodeck, no fucking thanks.”
She chuckles. “All right, fair enough. No heroic last stands, on the holodeck or in real life. Right. Let’s go fight some easier enemies… so we can come back to the real ones tomorrow.”
There’s the same sound to it as to a promise, and she extends a hand to pull him to his feet, a glitter of determination in her eyes.
“Holodeck evils first, then the real ones,” Hawthorne says, the same determination on his face as he takes her hand. “My Captain, I think we’ll get along just fine.”