Chapter Text
“What happened?” This is not a situation J’etris has ever wanted to find herself in, but Captain Chester has a predilection for disaster.
Lieutenant Fult grimaces at the holding cell. “Evidently we missed something on our guest,” she says. “I’m guessing a field polarizer of some sort; she reached right through the forcefield to grab the Captain, and then transported out. The Commander is trying to determine what exactly she did.”
J’etris glances at Lt. Commander Salera, who’s scanning the field and cell thoroughly. The Vulcan is completely focused on her tricorder; whatever she’s seeing, it’s not what she was hoping for. “Wasn’t she scanned?”
“She was,” says Fult. “I’m hoping we can figure out how she hid it so well, too.”
J’etris folds her arms. “It’s not the first time they’ve abducted one of our officers,” she says. Deep Space Nine had Captain Sisko kidnapped right out of Ops. That memory makes the current situation chafe a little less. “Commander, compare your scans to those of previous recorded encounters with the other universe. It may be an outgrowth of one of those technologies.”
Salera nods her acknowledgement and adjusts some settings on the tricorder. J’etris’s commbadge chirps. “Ensign Nask to Commander J’etris,” a voice says, high with anxiety.
“J’etris here. What is it, Ensign?”
“Sir, Commander Hawthorne is missing.”
J’etris looks at Fult, who taps her badge as well. “Fult here, Ensign. I’m sending a security team.”
“I have finished my scans here,” says Salera, stepping up to join them. “I will accompany the security team. There are some anomalous readings here consistent with the residual traces of Klingon cloaking technology, but they are well within the bounds of margin of error; a larger dataset would do much to clarify their nature.”
“Do so,” says J’etris. Salera nods and steps out of the room.
“They’ve taken our captain and our chief engineer,” says J’etris to Fult, one Tactical Officer to another. “What do you make of that, Lieutenant?”
“Nothing I like. Recommend we go to red alert, sir.” The abduction of two of the officers with the greatest access and understanding of the ship’s systems imply an interest in the ship itself; J’etris suspects this isn’t even an opening gambit, but information-gathering.
“It’s blatant for mere intelligence-gathering,” says Fult, clearly thinking along the same lines as J’etris. “I expect they’ll make another move soon, and it will be for the ship. We’re sitting on a lot of new technology, and a lot of firepower, sir. Pirates aren’t the only ones to find that attractive, and I bet the mirror universe isn’t the stablest place out there after that last encounter.”
“I concur. It’s going to get messier before it gets better.”
Fult smiles. J’etris likes Fult’s smile. It’s an expression that promises murder. Bloody, messy murder, if what J’etris has seen of the other woman sparring is any indication. “We’ll make sure it’ll be messier for them , sir.”
J’etris finds herself grinning back. “Damn right, Lieutenant.”
It won’t be that simple. The warp drive is still down, and now they’re missing their chief engineer, further complicating their repairs. J’etris will give Engineering a few more hours to get the cores sorted out, and then she’s asking them to power up at least one. Their worst fears are being realized; there is someone out there trying to jump them, and they no longer have the luxury of waiting for best practices to be followed. Not under these circumstances.
Not when someone’s abducted her captain and her friend.
J’etris thinks about how that previous incident with Sisko concluded. From the sound of it, the mirror universe was pretty glad to see the back of him by the end of the whole mess. Having known Chester for a significant portion of their careers, J’etris suspects a similar outcome.
Wherever you are , she thinks, give them hell, Diane.
“Fuck, fuck , fucking FUCK,” someone is saying, and Chester inwardly groans. So they’ve got Hawthorne.
She turns over. She can remember a little—mostly transporter hum, and then shoving the Intendant away from her, someone else grabbing her from behind, driving an elbow into their gut, and the flash of a weapon.
She lifts her head from where her cheek presses into carpet, still blinking hard. Her vision fuzzes and sways, as the pounding of a headache from a heavy stun beats against the inside of her skull. Her hands are cuffed behind her. That’s bad. She’s been kidnapped. That’s also bad. By the Intendant, which is fucking embarrassing.
Hawthorne is here, and he’s pretty low on her list of crew she’d prefer to be kidnapped with, which abruptly makes her feel badly she has such a list. But trust makes escape a hell of a lot easier. Also, him being here at all is bad.
All in all, it’s a lot of bad.
She squints, as her vision slowly resolves. They are on a bridge. Or in a throne room. She can’t tell.
Hawthorne’s face swims into view. “Glad you could join us, Captain.”
“Ouch dammit,” slurs Chester, and means it.
“You’re the one who picked an argument with the guys with guns,” says Hawthorne. “Didn’t we have a whole course on deescalation in the Academy?”
“Time and a place, Hawthorne,” says Chester, and flops herself onto her side, then, with effort, to her knees. “Where are we?”
“I was hoping you’d know.”
“I’ve got a guess,” says Chester, scanning their surroundings. It’s almost definitely a bridge, but a beautifully appointed one that makes the Interpreter’s look like a cheap office building. The carpet is dark red and opulent; there’s wood detailing on the edges of consoles and the tactical arch, and carvings and gold trim—pretty much everywhere it can be fit. There are just two seats in the center of the bridge, a grand throne, now empty, and a smaller but far more comfortable one just at the elbow of that throne. The stations are manned by crew in dark uniforms. They’re almost entirely human, with one or two Vulcans and a single Andorian at the back of the room. None of them are making eye contact.
Next to them is the Intendant. It’s not entirely clear if she’s another one of the guards, or a fellow prisoner. She’s uncharacteristically silent, her eyes fixed on the door at the side of the room, her expression drawn.
There are decorations on the walls. Swords and axes and broken bat’leths, and in the center of the back of the bridge, a massive symbol right out of the history books; Earth, impaled by a knife. The old Terran Empire described by Kirk in his logs—and more recently, by the Intendant.
Chester looks to the side of that symbol and frowns. There is an anatomical model there, a humanoid. More is difficult to tell; it’s been carefully dissected, skin cleaned away and muscle groups splayed out, veins and arteries and nerves and organs carefully displayed and gleaming with a concerningly realistic slickness in the low ship’s light—
—That’s not a model, she realizes, and her stomach lurches.
“Can’t,” says Hawthorne, his voice forced, “can’t say much for the decor, sir.”
It’s the friendliest she’s ever heard him be. She swallows hard. “It’s not what I would have gone with, no,” she says, keeping her voice light. The person pinned to the wall over there must be in a stasis field; all of it looks terribly fresh.
It’s an overt threat, and she’ll take it seriously, even though she refuses to be intimidated by it. She really hopes they’re dead.
“Mirror universe, then,” she says as casually as she can.
“Ah yes. That pesky mirrorverse,” says Hawthorne. He’s very pale. Scared shitless and trying to put a good face on it. She finds herself liking him a lot more than ever. “Always up to their…mirrorverse things.”
“Well, time to find out what those are.” She settles herself as comfortably as she can, and glances up at one of the unmoving black-clad guards standing over them. “You wouldn’t know, would you?”
She’s ignored, as she expected to be. Someone who chooses that kind of wall decor isn’t exactly going to encourage chattiness in their muscle. The Intendant’s remaining eye flicks toward her, fear in every line of her face. Clearly, she doesn’t thinks idle conversation is a good idea.
Chester just raises her eyebrows at her, before her attention is dragged away by the sound of turbolift doors opening. She turns her head to see who the new arrival is, and her breath stops in her chest. There’s no question about the identity of the white-clad figure who strides in.
It’s her.
There’s something intensely uncanny about seeing yourself from the outside, and it’s a lot worse because of the differences . It’s not a mirror image of Chester who steps onto the bridge and looks around with arrogant assurance. It’s a version of her that’s not right—her body language, her expression, every movement. The doors close behind her and she stands there very straight for a moment, hands clasped behind her back, sweeping the bridge with a cold, inimical gaze. Her eyes glitter under long dark lashes, her mouth a precisely painted disapproving curve.
I wonder if that’s what Mom means when she pesters me to do something nicer with my hair, thinks Chester, and has to repress the urge to laugh, which would definitely get them killed.
Her alternate self is standing still, like a perfect figure of a tyrant. The uniform she’s wearing is white, beautifully snowy and clean; there’s a lot of gold around the edges, heavy epaulettes, and a series of decorations across the breast. Her hair is whorled elaborately around a smaller version of the Terran Empire’s impaled Earth.
After a long pause, she starts down to her command chair, her glossy boots soundless on the plush carpet. She’s looking mostly at Hawthorne; she glances briefly at Chester, a vicious evaluating gaze that turns quickly to dismissal. She’s got a sword at her side, a swept hilt rapier of quite good make. Chester’s willing to bet it hasn’t got a practice tip. There’s a dagger on her other side.
Chester remembers the frequency with which assassination aided promotion in the old Terran Empire, and wonders just how much use that dagger gets.
Given the body hanging on the wall, it’s probably a lot.
Her alternate comes to a halt in front of them, and looking at her, Chester suddenly can understand why the Intendant described her as ‘frumpy’. She’d be the first to admit that she isn’t precisely the most elegant captain in Starfleet—she has always foregone the more complex regulation-permitted hairstyles, never opted for any of the more elegant tailoring of her uniform some officers experiment with, she has never had any skill in applying makeup, and has never bothered to improve that. Damned if she’ll go out where her crew can see her looking like a teenager who’s just discovered eyeliner—which has always been the effect she’s achieved when she’s tried.
But her alternate has . Chester, who’s also always told herself that she just is one of those people who doesn’t look good with those things, is forced to confront that she is . The woman in front of her does not look silly, or like an incompetent teenager. She looks like a sculpture, an ideal—and horribly dangerous.
“Lieutenant Commander Piper Hawthorne,” says her alternate. “I’ve been watching you.”
Hawthorne blanches several degrees paler under his freckles. Chester wonders briefly if he’s about to pass out right there.
Her counterpart draws her sword, long and glittering. No practice tip. “You are,” she says, contemplating the length of the blade, “potentially of use to me. If you wish to survive, and if you wish your Captain to survive, you will ensure that you are of use to me.”
Hawthorne glares, while still looking like he’s about to pass out.
“Admiral,” starts Chester, not wanting to see what he’ll do while scared out of his mind and running on pure bravado, but her counterpart’s attention flashes to her. So does the sword, coming to a halt at her throat and then pressing under her jaw, forcing her to lift her chin.
“Your input,” her alternate says, “will not be required, Captain .”
It’s an insult. So the Intendant wasn’t lying about how annoyed her alternate is that she is ‘only’ a captain. Chester stays very still.
“Commander Hawthorne,” she says. “I’ll give you a very simple choice. You will help me seize control of your ship. Or,” and Chester can’t help the involuntary sharp breath as the sword digs in against the soft skin of her neck, and a maddening tickle of blood slides down the side of her throat, “I will kill your captain right here, right now, in front of you.”
Chester is going to end up stabbed if she says anything, but she flicks a determined look at Hawthorne anyway. He doesn’t even glance at her. “I’d give you name rank and serial number, but frankly you’re not worth the trouble,” he says, his voice sharp with fear and anger. “So fuck you for asking.”
Which is exactly what she would have ordered him to do. Chester can’t help but feel a little disturbed that he didn’t even look at her for confirmation, though.
This is not the reaction her counterpart seems to have expected. “Our records seem to indicate your universe values your bonds in the chain of command very highly,” she says.
Hawthorne snorts. “Not me. Clearly your records missed that I value not rolling over for fascists.”
He’s playing it perfectly. Either he genuinely hates her that much, or he’s using it to cover both of them. Whichever it is, she’s glad of it. It is probably their best route out of here—unless her counterpart decides to call his bluff.
She really hopes her counterpart doesn’t call his bluff. Dying because of her Chief Engineer’s big mouth would be…
Well. It would be embarrassing. All of this has been acutely embarrassing.
“Then we’ll have to find another way,” her counterpart says. She circles Hawthorne, looking him over. “Those cybernetics of yours, perhaps. Yes.” She snaps her fingers. “Hawthorne, take our guest down to the lab. Get a look at those cybernetics, see if we can use them to compel a little more cooperation.”
One of the dark-clothed crew detaches himself from his station and comes over. Incredible. He’s got Hawthorne’s exact surly expression, only he has no cybernetics at all and looks overall rather healthier. Someone missed the horror of Hawthorne’s accident in this universe, it seems. But it’s a pretty good question which of them looks more scared.
Her Hawthorne swallows hard, his eyes very wide. The Dominion installed those cybernetics to try and control him, Chester remembers, and she can only imagine the sheer terror of having that old ghost dredged up like this.
“Leave him alone,” she snaps. “I’m the one you want—I’m the one with the command codes. Commander Hawthorne isn’t—”
A butt of a rifle slams into the back of her shoulder, flattening her. She grunts, and a boot sinks into her stomach, sending the breath whooping out of her. She lies there, and sees the Admiral’s expression change.
Chester’s counterpart has barely looked at her until now, dismissal in her voice and bearing. Her attention has been on Hawthorne as she tries to pressure him into helping her. But at that involuntary noise Chester makes, her alternate stops and actually looks at her like a cat alerting to a bird, her eyes suddenly very wide and intent.
Her gut and shoulder throbbing, Chester stares back. It’s hard to look away from someone so completely focused on her, even as dread balls in her stomach. The Admiral’s lips are slightly parted, her head tilted a little in fascination, and there’s a hungry look in her eyes. Chester gets the feeling her usefulness is being reevaluated—and most certainly not in a good way.
She’s going to have to work with that. She can work with that.
“Maybe I’ll have a use for you after all,” her counterpart says, slowly. “ He doesn’t seem to like you very much, so you’re wasted as a hostage. And you’ll start lying about your command codes long before you actually break, won’t you? It’s what I would do in your place.”
Chester tips her head in acknowledgement.
Her counterpart takes a deliberate step forward, then another, still looking at her. Watching her. Chester decides to throw her a bone, and flicks her gaze at the horror on the opposite wall, swallowing hard.
She’s not sure it works. Her counterpart follows her gaze, then looks back at her with amusement. “I see. Mr. Tanek, escort the Captain to my ready room. It seems we have a lot to talk about.”
Hawthorne darts her a confused and faintly concerned look, more than he showed earlier. It would be touching if it weren’t also deeply suspicious. But Chester has other things to worry about. Namely, this universe’s Tanek, who’s slipped out of her alternate’s shadow and is coming toward her. Like the rest of the crew, he’s all in black. Very. Form fitting. Black.
Chester keeps her eyes on his face. There’s something off about his expression. She can’t put a finger on it, but he doesn’t look like Tanek . Maybe, this being the alternate universe, his alternate is slightly less of a bastard. Maybe, she’s imagining things.
He kneels and puts a hand under her elbow. She expects to be roughly dragged to her feet—their universe’s version of Tanek is seldom gentle even when he’s being helpful. But instead, he steadies her, helping her to stand.
It is strangely courteous, and she does not trust it one bit. She can feel him watching her, and realizes what the thing off about his expression is. He’s looking at her with genuine interest and admiration.
She does not want to know what the hell kind of relationship he and her alternate have. No. Not at all. She really hopes that it’s because he’s curious about their universe—from her understanding, the Romulans have yet to cross over—but given that he darts a very similar look at her alternate, she’s worried that’s not the case.
“I am not leaving my Chief Engineer,” she says, as firmly as she can. “Admiral, we should talk. There’s a way to work this out without anyone needing to be interrogated, or anyone’s cybernetics used.”
“Don’t resist,” says Tanek softly in her ear. “I will carry you if I must.”
Chester stops where she is and digs in her heels. Fine. Then he’ll have to carry her. “You’ll get much better results with our willing cooperation, Admiral. I think I know a way to offer it. We want to see the Alliance in charge of your universe as little as you do.”
That’s not entirely true. But it’ll have to be convincing, at least for now. She projects earnestness in her expression, in the way she leans against Tanek’s hold.
It’s like a solid steel bar. She’s dropped her own Tanek on his posterior before. She really hopes this doesn’t mean he let her do that.
“Very well, Captain,” says her counterpart with an amused little smile. “We will talk. You will tell me how to avoid cracking your engineer open like an egg, and I will see if I agree. In the meantime—Hawthorne, why don’t you work on your counterpart? Emotionally. Don’t get overenthusiastic on me.”
“Yes sir,” says the alternate Hawthorne, sullen and subdued. “Come on. I can’t haul you around like our resident giant.”
Hawthorne looks at his alternate, then glances at her again; Chester gives him a little nod. Go on , she thinks. Please pretend to cooperate. Please don’t do anything that makes them crack open your skull and turn you against us. Please don’t give them a reason to finish what the Dominion started with you.
Thank anything that’s listening, he goes.
Then her alternate’s attention shifts. The Intendant’s eyes go wide, and she lurches a little under that regard. “I—I brought you the Captain,” she says. “It went perfectly. They have no defenses against the phasic field modulator or our transporters, and I placed the pattern enhancer, just as you asked.”
“Yes,” says the Admiral. “You did. Congratulations, you performed adequately, Intendant. You had better hope you continue to do so.”
“So you’ll let me go?”
“I’ll let you live,” the Admiral assures her with a small smile. “After all, it’s as much as you did for me.”