Chapter Text
Captain Diane Chester has spent all morning making mistakes, and if she’s not very careful, they’re about to get her killed.
Nevertheless, she grins as she jauntily salutes the three men in front of her with her rapier. “I regret, gentlemen, should I be unable to discharge my debt to all of you. You see, I’m engaged to fight Monsieur Athos first, and so he has the right to kill me first; which may well frustrate Monsieur Porthos; and Monsieur Aramis, whom I am not to fight until two, will have very little chance of a contest at all. On that account–and that account only –do I apologize.”
She takes her hat off, sweeps them a bow, and sets it aside. “Now, gentlemen– en garde! ”
She’s tweaked this program; rather than the stage fighting of the original Three Musketeers , it’s a real fight, based on the competitive historical fencing she does. It means this counts as practice. Really fun practice. And the satisfaction of an actual contest–it feels more like what fighting Athos would be like, with the difficulty dialed up as high as possible.
But they only trade a few blows before a shout stops both of them. The Cardinal’s Guard has arrived to break up the fun, dueling being illegal in the Paris of this time, and the little knot of Musketeers is in flagrant undeniable violation of the edict.
There’s only one thing to do. Chester and her erstwhile enemies turn as one on the Cardinal’s Guard. Chester aims for Jussac, the commander of their attackers, moving in close and finding his blade. He disengages, but she follows him, turning her blade to foul his lunge.
“Should have run while you could,” he sneers. “It’s hardly sporting to kill a foolish youth.”
Jussac, too, is programmed to fight like someone who knows what he’s doing, and Chester finds herself rueing turning up the difficulty settings. But as her arm starts to go sore, he gets sloppy. He’s going red in the face. “Insolent whelp, I’ll teach you a lesson!”
“I’d prefer not,” she says, “your carelessness would spoil my form,” and slips her sword up in a sharp-angled parry, shoving his easily out of the way and rolling over his blade to drop her tip down directly at his heart and lunge –
At a figure who is no longer there.
Chester stumbles a little, pulling her sword up out of line as Jussac and his outrage vanish.
In front of her reappears the black walls and orange lines of the holodeck, and the doors open to reveal Lt Commander Hawthorne, one hand on the wall console, the other holding a datapad he’s glaring at. “Sorry, Captain Chester,” he says, not looking up from the datapad and not sounding sorry at all, “emergency maintenance. One of the other holodecks is having glitches so we’re doing a full shutdown and maintenance checks before someone ends up held hostage in the ancient American west.”
Chester takes stock of herself, in doublet and breeches and full-sleeved white shirt, her elaborately plumed hat on the ground some distance away, where the post she’d put it on has vanished, and her sword in hand. She’s still in full extended lunge, her sword the only part not in line to kill, but pulled up and to the side.
“Right. Of course.” She steps back, dropping into a more natural stance, and looks regretfully around the holodeck. “Understood, Mr. Hawthorne. Were comms working?”
Hawthorne finally looks up, briefly registers with widened eyes that she’s got a sword in hand, then looks back down. “Spotty in the one that was glitching. Gull and I need to go and make sure the last two are shut down.”
She steps back, sheathes her sword, and goes to get her hat. “Better safe than sorry,” she says, but can’t really put her heart into it.
Hawthorne is already moving along down the hallway.
Chester sighs heavily. The Negotiator and Captain Jeln aren’t due back to Deep Space Nine until tomorrow. So much for The Three Musketeers to take her mind off the waiting. At least Hawthorne didn’t walk in on Milady DeWinter instructing her ruffians to rob her while she was face down in the dust of the innyard; who knows what he would have assumed from that. The sword seems to have spooked him enough.
Dispirited, she slopes off down the hall in the opposite direction, sword in sheath and hat in hand.
Piper’s had plenty of time in the Gamma Quadrant to think about ‘if I were Starfleet Secret Police, what methods would I have for monitoring and long range communication with my ranking Starfleet operatives?’, tinkering constantly with mechanisms to detect encrypted comms and sweep for bugs. But of course, the constant traffic of DS9 makes it the perfect place for a covert meeting, so he’s been poring over the transit logs to look for anything that raises red flags.
That is, when he’s not dealing with glitching holodecks. No one’s getting stuck in some James Bond adventure today - or, apparently, in some ancient swordfighting adventure.
But the systems have been shut down, the bug identified and cleared, and the systems triple checked and brought back online incrementally for testing. And no one had gotten stabbed! Somehow.
His first inclination is to go back to poring over transit logs, something that might be productive in figuring out a next step to identify what the secret police, and particularly his secret police captain, are doing. Particularly anything that will make him feel a little less freaked out about having said secret police captain point a sword at him, even incidentally.
But. He’s not - well, he’s mostly not stubborn to the point of stupidity, he knows how long he’s been at the transit logs and the holodeck debugging and he knows about medical recommendations and how overwork and lack of breaks makes you prone to errors. So he is actually trying to take a break when he’s over on DS9, out walking above the promenade, watching the wormhole.
Of course, it’s when he’s not looking that he spots it. Or rather, her.
Chester isn’t sure what pulls her out of sleep, but she wakes up in a hurry, hairs prickling upright on the back of her neck and hand reaching for something to defend herself with, even as she rolls out of bed and onto her feet. A sweeping glance shows her commbadge nowhere in evidence, and the faint glow of all the computer access terminals is just as tellingly absent.
Her questing fingers find a familiar hilt on the bookshelf, and her hand closes around the solid, comforting weight.
There’s a human woman in the armchair between bookshelf and door, blinking down the length of steel leveled at her. She’s small, blond, pretty in a picture-book way, huge blue eyes and pouting lips over a black, featureless uniform.
“Explain yourself,” Chester says.
The woman looks at the sword, then at her face, then back at the sword. “There’s a practice tip on your blade, Captain.” She says it like she’s doing Chester a favor.
“We practice in armor for a reason,” says Chester coolly. “Explain yourself.”
The woman sighs, makes a gesture at the bed. “Have a seat, Captain Chester. The Federation needs you.”
Chester remains standing. “Because I should trust the word of every person who sneaks into my quarters in the middle of the night that she’s a representative of the Federation.” She eyes the other woman, critical. “Dressed in leather, too. Legitimate security activities aren’t the impression that conveys–not when you break into people’s quarters and start ordering them around.”
The woman huffs, plainly irritated, and uses a beautifully manicured finger to nudge the point of the sword out of her face. “Are you quite done?”
Chester shrugs, flicks it right back into place. “Door’s right there. You can leave at any time.”
“A covert branch of Starfleet Intelligence requires your assistance, Captain.”
“You don’t say.”
The woman gives her a tight smile with no amusement behind it at all. “Would it make you feel better to have something to call me while you threaten me with that ridiculous toy of yours? How about DeWinter.”
Chester can’t help the snort of laughter. “What, seriously? Fine. What’s my chances of meeting Richelieu?”
DeWinter chuckles. It’s not a nice laugh. It’s the sort of laugh that might make Chester reconsider her crack about the uniform, if she weren’t so annoyed. “Oh, he’ll certainly be interested in meeting you one of these days.”
She does realize Milady DeWinter is one of the villains, doesn’t she? Chester elects not to say this out loud. “Yes, everything about this screams above-board and perfectly Starfleet,” she says. “None of it has been sinister or threatening at all. Since when do we take notes from the Tal Shiar?”
“We can spend all night engaging in the witty banter you so enthusiastically parrot on the holodeck,” says DeWinter, “or we can get to work. The facts are simple, Captain–Starfleet needs you.”
“You’ve given me no evidence you’re actually Starfleet.”
DeWinter sighs and settles back into the chair, hands folded in front of her, and gives Chester a tight smile filled with dislike. “Maybe you’re just going to have to trust me.”
“Maybe I’m a remarkably untrusting individual. It’s night, I’m on leave–whatever this is, you can either spit it out now, or it can wait for morning.”
“Your leave’s been canceled, Chester. Check the rosters. You’ll be on a delicate assignment related to Federation security–”
“Nice try. If you actually were familiar with me and my files, you’d know that I’m not a soldier, and that I don’t do spy shit.” She stares the woman down. “I left that behind with the war. This ship left that behind with the war. Starfleet wasn’t a military, and it never should have been.”
“How sweet,” says DeWinter. “Except we both know that’s a lie. You have a Tal Shiar agent on your bridge and you know the Gamma Quadrant better than almost anyone else in the fleet. You know not being a soldier is a luxury, Captain. I can’t blame you for indulging it, now that you can, but right now, you’re needed. Or would you prefer that you and this lovely new ship of yours be used to start the next war?”
“I still don’t have a reason to trust a word you say. Work on that.”
“The hypervigilance and combativeness aren’t in your profile,” says DeWinter. “But, as Captain Jeln may tell you, useful in an asset.”
Chester leans forward. “I am not an asset. Not yours. Not anyone’s.”
DeWinter just gives her a cool, disappointed look.
“I’ve worked with Starfleet Intelligence before,” Chester says coldly, really meaning that she’s talked with Rilas Jeln about working with Starfleet Intelligence before, and had some passing encounters with agents on their way to and from the field. “This isn’t how they operate. This is how a spy in a particularly bad holonovel operates. This isn’t about hypervigilance or combativeness; you’re putting me on the defensive so I’ll want to be more agreeable in order to seem reasonable. No, this is psychological manipulation to ensure I’m not thinking clearly when you tell me what you want me to do. That is not the behavior of someone engaging in legitimate activity, Intelligence or otherwise. You’ve ensured I can’t call Security. That’s not an indicator of legitimate activity, either. What little credibility you have is eroding by the second. So if you’re not playing silly games, start talking, and stow the flattery.”
DeWinter eyes her, evidently evaluating how serious she is. Then a touch of a smile curls her mouth. “There are plenty of officers who’d jump at undertaking a dangerous secret mission to save the Federation offered by a mysterious stranger, you know. Unfortunately, that’s not the kind of person we tend to recruit for these assignments–and your reaction is exactly why we want you for this one, Captain. You’re not easily taken in.”
If that’s not blatant flattery, Chester doesn’t know what is. She silently raises her eyebrows, waiting for DeWinter to continue. “I represent a particularly covert branch of Starfleet Intelligence. Your next assignment, if carried out as ordered, will pose a threat to Federation security. I am here to enlist your aid in making sure that doesn’t happen.”
Reward the behavior you wish to see. Chester lowers her weapon and takes a step back to sit on the bed, her entire body language saying, I’m listening.
Her next assignment is an aid mission. The Federation under threat from them playing delivery service? This gets fishier by the moment. “And who is this ‘we’?” she asks.
“Section 31. Our authority is in the original Federation charter,” says DeWinter, evidently guessing that starting with the legalistic argument is her best bet. “We are an autonomous department. We submit no reports, undergo no reviews, and we do not answer directly to Starfleet Command. You have not heard of us because our existence is highly classified–your loyalty to the Federation is clearly unquestionable, or I would not be here. Our secrecy and autonomy leave us in a unique position to protect the Federation from existential threats–threats like the Dominion.”
“Or the Romulans,” says Chester softly. “Or, a few decades back, I’m sure the Klingons were on that list.”
“Times change,” says DeWinter. “And we change with them.”
“Of course you do,” says Chester. Perhaps her tone is a little more snide than it ought to be.
“We take care of those threats before they materialize,” says DeWinter, as if she hasn’t spoken. “We’ve saved millions–billions even–of lives, and because we did our jobs, the rest of the Federation will never know. You’re a woman who knows what it is to do what you need to, even if no one ever knows. Your conduct during the war shows that much.
“We’re closer to another war than you know, Captain Chester. The Dominion isn’t as beat as it would like us to think. You know where you’re taking those medical supplies next week–but you don’t know their final destination.”
“They’re medical supplies,” says Chester. “We hit the Dominion’s production capacity hard during the war. And as soon as they lost–as soon as there was a crack in the facade–others moved in. They’re not the only empire in the Gamma Quadrant, and even pirates can make a hell of a dent.”
“Those medical supplies are going back to the Alpha Quadrant,” says DeWinter, quiet and intent, “to a rocky planetoid called Respite at the edge of Cardassian space. The treaty allowed the Dominion to use it as an evacuation point for their forces. But they’re still there…and those medical supplies will be used to make ketrecel-white. I want you to go to Respite, Captain Chester, and I want you to see for yourself what’s coming. Everything you need to know is on this padd. I’ll give you your next instructions when you arrive.”
She rises and walks out the door. Chester hurries after her, a little too late–by the time the door opens onto the hallway, there’s no one there.
“Captain?”
No one there but J’etris. Dammit. Chester’s learned just enough from Tanek to know that revealing the activities of a covert organization to one of her officers is probably a very good way to put a lot of other people in danger. But she’s realizing there are only so many excuses for appearing in the corridor in the middle of the night with a sword in hand and pajamas with little smiling cacti on them. The options spiral through her head–a little late night session in the gym (no, the pajamas put the lie to that), I thought I saw a vole (particularly inhumane, to go after it with a blunt practice sword), simple insomnia, Q?
“Doing some drills,” she says, lifting the sword, “thought I heard a noise. I know the station team thought they got rid of the voles, but we’ve heard that before.”
J’etris’s eyes gleam with the prospect of making someone’s life miserable. “I’ll get sweeps started in the morning, sir. There are a few ensigns that could use the practice.”
“Better to be safe than sorry,” says Chester. “Thanks, J’etris.”
She goes back into her quarters and contemplates the padd, wondering whether she’s got any inclination to sleep now. Then she picks it up, looks it over. Respite is eighteen hours away by runabout; the rendezvous is set for two days from now. She looks at the bed, then sits down on it with the padd.
A check with the ship’s computer does indeed show that she’s been recalled from leave and placed on a “sensitive field assignment” for the next five days.
There’s almost certainly a way that could be manipulated. Going would be stupid. But not going–and leaving the upcoming mission to get sabotaged by Section 31 in a way she won’t know about–will be stupider.
…and what if they’re right? What if the Dominion is planning another invasion and it can just be quietly stopped, right now? Without more deaths, just with a small change to the incoming supplies? No more ships dying like the Bedivere . No one making the choice between their life and the lives of others.
Her mouth tightens for a moment with pain, and then she sets the padd aside and starts to pack.