Chapter Text
Tanek sees the frantically hurrying security team rush past him, turning to watch them go with a raised eyebrow. Clearly Starfleet’s incompetence is on display once again.
Not that he’s in a position to pass judgment. The last few days have been thoroughly bruising to his ego.
He steps into the turbolift and directs it to the bridge, and as he folds his arms to wait for the absurdly plushly appointed thing to make its journey, there is a growing hum with him.
“Hold lift,” he says, and then turns to look at the part of the air that is now shimmering with transporter effect. It occurs to him this is very likely the source of the intruder alert. It also occurs to him that a Starfleet officer would find it prudent to call security. He is not, however, a Starfleet officer. He is a Romulan whose pride has been stung thoroughly, and be damned if he’ll give the Captain another excuse to meddle in his affairs. So he waits for the intruder to materialize, and as he watches, he realizes it’s him.
The Romulan Empire has not had any encounters with the mirror universe. It has watched with interest and a certain degree of amusement Starfleet’s blunders, but Romulan engineers and transporter technicians do not tend to be incompetent enough to send themselves or their superiors to an alternate reality on a regular basis. This, Tanek feels, is a baseline of intelligence, or ought to be.
He should have expected some kind of absurdity involving an alternate reality when he accepted an assignment to a Starfleet ship. Whatever the reason for this, he has no patience for it. The moment the impostor is solid enough, Tanek shoves him into the turbolift wall and jams the disruptor under his chin. “I believe you owe me an explanation.”
His alternate is stupid enough to look startled.
“I am not Starfleet,” he tells his alternate. “I am not stupid. You will tell me why you are here.”
“To retrieve you,” his alternate says, and makes a gesture like he’s reaching for something.
Tanek breaks that wrist for him. “You will not be doing that. Why are you retrieving me?”
At least his alternate isn’t groaning about his injury. Tanek doesn’t know if he could have stomached the discovery his alternate was that weak. “If you are not dealt with, you will attempt a rescue of your Captain.”
“And why would I do that?” Tanek keeps his voice level with an effort, but his own anxiety flares; do they somehow know about the debacle on the station? It’s bad enough that it happened. It’s bad enough that he himself is still sorting through what it means to him, personally, and whether it does convey any obligations. He doesn’t want to deal with the alternate universe making tactical decisions about it.
His alternate is looking at him like he’s said something incredibly stupid. “Because she’s your Captain?” he offers, and at Tanek’s continued nonplussed expression, adds, “Because she’s Diane ?”
Tanek just stares flatly at him.
“Are you two not… ” his alternate pauses, still staring, and then sweeps an assessing look over him. “You’re still with the Tal Shiar?”
“Still?” says Tanek.
“My alternate is an imbecile,” says his counterpart, to the universe in general.
“Says a man clad in skintight spangles,” says Tanek. “Perhaps you should start in a coherent fashion. And perhaps I will refrain from breaking your other wrist before I call security?”
He offers it pleasantly enough, but his alternate gives him an annoyed and faintly scandalized look. He just stares blandly back, the thing that so certainly annoys the Captain.
“So. You aren’t planning on rescuing the Captain.”
“The Captain is an unfortunately resourceful woman,” says Tanek. “Her tendency to get herself into fanciful and foolish conundrums is unfortunately matched by her ability to get herself out of such situations. I see no reason to undertake a rescue under most circumstances, even if I were aware of such circumstances.” He leans in. “Are there circumstances that I ought to be aware of?”
“Yes,” says his alternate, with an expression of faint disgust at his lack of knowledge. “My Admiral will be taking this ship for the Terran Empire. Your Captain,” another faintly disbelieving look that Tanek can’t quite decipher, “is her prisoner. If you value her life, you will come with me.”
“I do not,” says Tanek, and shoots him.
It’s only a stun, as the Captain was vociferous in her objection to anything more effective, but Tanek has to admit that it’s satisfying that the man doesn’t even have the time to look surprised as he slumps to the floor. He holsters the disruptor and searches the man thoroughly. For something so formfitting, there is a surprising amount. He finds what he takes to be a communicator and several weapons, and then a few devices he’s not immediately familiar with. He takes a moment to examine them. One appears to be a compact field stabilizer for a transporter; another a homing beacon, a field depolarizer, and a few other highly useful gadgets. The sort of things, in fact, that would be highly useful in staging a rescue of a certain starship Captain with a propensity for getting in over her head.
He gives the slumped body a contemptuous look, and secrets the various devices on his person. Only then does he tap his commbadge. “Subcommander Tanek to Bridge. I believe you were looking for an intruder.”
They have two Taneks aboard. Wonderful.
J’etris looks down at the second Tanek, who she’s had cuffed and who will be staying in the cuffs while they make sure he can’t pull what the Intendant did. Or what was presumably done to Hawthorne—all they’ve found of him are transporter traces.
The ship is still eerily silent, the engines shut down.
“All right,” she says. “Explain yourself.”
He just stares back at her, which is roughly what she expected. He is Tanek’s alternate. “Where is the Captain?”
“She’s safe, if you cooperate,” he says, and the tone in his voice is disturbingly earnest. As if he actually cares. J’etris darts a look over at their Tanek, who doesn’t bother even glancing back.
“Cooperate with what?”
“You’ll see.”
“Usually,” J’etris says, “hostage demands involve…concrete demands.”
“It is not my place to make those demands.” He looks back at Tanek, seemingly split between fascination and disgust. “When the Admiral sees fit, she will contact you. My assignment was to capture him.”
“Why?”
“He seemed the most likely to attempt a rescue.”
J’etris draws in a breath, almost laughs, decides that would not improve the situation at all. She turns to look at their Tanek instead.
As usual, he just looks faintly bored.
Do they somehow know about the debacle on the station? If they do, why are they ascribing any importance at all to it? “You must be close with your Captain, then,” she says instead.
“Admiral,” he corrects and looks—fond? Right. Mirror universe. Mirror universe and its tendency toward questionable interpersonal relationships.
“I see,” she says. “Close enough to be privy to her plans?”
“She will have this ship,” he says. “That is all you need know.”
“No. I will need to know more than that.”
Another level, noncommittal stare. It’s a twin of their Tanek’s own. J’etris just waits for him to blink; that doesn’t work on her anymore. “What does your Admiral want with our Captain?”
That seems to do it. The alternate Tanek’s face lights up. “She wants an ally,” he says, almost eager. “She wants someone who understands her. Who can stand by her side as an equal, not a lackey.”
“Isn’t that your role?” asks their Tanek, snide.
Incredibly, the alternate Tanek shakes his head. He doesn’t seem to be at all bothered by this. Their Tanek catches J’etris’s eye and tilts his head. They step aside. Lieutenant Fult, still bristling about the Intendant’s earlier escape, remains where she is, bristling down at their prisoner.
“I believe,” says Tanek, folding his arms and looking deeply uncomfortable, “that he is deeply in love with the Captain’s alternate self.”
“I had the same impression,” says J’etris. She glances over her shoulder. “That makes it very unlikely we will get any information whatsoever about the enemy’s plans.”
“The enemy?” Tanek’s voice is bland, which means he’s being deliberately annoying. “Shouldn’t Starfleet protocol dictate you try to make friends with them first?”
“That has not worked in our previous encounters,” says J’etris, a growl to her voice, “and they have taken our Captain. I, for one, do not find myself in a friendly mood.” She eyes Tanek critically. “Any information he seems inclined to give us will be of use, Subcommander. And I suspect he’ll welcome the opportunity to talk you around to his way of seeing things.”
“Seeing things,” repeats Tanek. “Elaborate.”
“Seeing the Captain, specifically,” J’etris says. “Perhaps you could let him expound on his Admiral’s virtues. Personal information about the enemy commander could prove useful, and I think he wishes to be very persuasive in that regard.”
The look of artless horror Tanek gives her does her mood a very great deal of good. “He’s not going to tell me,” she goes on. “Clearly, I’m the competition. Or my counterpart is.”
The horror deepens. “I have no desire,” starts Tanek, swallows, and then says, “I have no desire to listen to someone sing the Captain’s praises. There is very little material there. It will become repetitive.”
That would make her angry if she didn’t already know that Tanek resorts to insults when he’s backed into a corner. “Nice try, Subcommander, but your job on this ship isn’t just looking pretty. Go on. Talk to him. Get me some actionable intelligence. Or are your people so reliant on pliers and mind probes you’ve lost the art of persuasion?”
The look Tanek gives her promises retribution at some future date. She’s unimpressed. “We have no information at all on the current situation there,” she tells him. “Thanks to you, we’ve got him. Go make something of it.” She pauses. “Legally,” she adds. “No pliers or mind probes or any other duress, understood? We are Starfleet, after all.”
He snorts. “Your prejudices are showing, Commander.”
She opts not to rise to that bait. They turn back.
Tanek’s alternate focuses back on him as soon as they approach. “I understand you can’t tell us more of your Admiral’s plans,” J’etris starts, “but we know so little of your universe.”
“I, for one, am curious as to how and why you became involved with this Admiral Chester,” says Tanek, folding his arms and looking forbidding as he can, which is extremely. “Her counterpart in our universe is hardly inspiring.”
J’etris grits her teeth. She’s not sure what else she should have expected.
It seems to enrage Tanek’s alternate even more, at least. “That says more about you than her ,” he says. Tanek lifts an eyebrow in cool contempt, and his counterpart draws a breath, ready to launch into a speech, then catches J’etris’s eye and settles sullenly back into his chair. “I’ll talk to him,” he says. “Alone.”
“We’re not falling for that one twice,” says Fult, folding her arms.
“It’s personal,” says Tanek’s alternate. J’etris folds her arms, inwardly delighted. This was exactly what she was hoping for.
“Sir, may I remind you that leaving a Tal Shiar agent alone with a prisoner is a very bad idea?” says Fult, as J’etris pretends to consider it. “May I also remind you that the last prisoner we allowed a senior officer to interrogate subsequently kidnapped that officer?”
J’etris sympathizes. She does not trust Tanek, and that goes double for Tanek’s alternate, but pitting them against one another is the best opportunity she’s had so far to find out at least a little about what the enemy is up to. And they’re running out of time; she’s heard nothing from Diane yet, which means that the Captain has yet to extract herself from her current predicament on her own. Given the things that J’etris has seen Diane climb out of entirely unaided, that is very bad news.
And if they kidnap Tanek, she’s pretty sure he’ll cause chaos over there, too.
The aim, however, is not to let them kidnap Tanek, as much of a pain in the ass as he is, and as much as he has made Diane look a fool over the last week. So she looks at Tanek’s counterpart. He’s…different. She’s no expert in Romulan body language—aside from the body language that means they’re about to attack you—but there’s differences there. She’d almost describe this one as more nervous.
And then there’s what he’s wearing. All black and formfitting isn’t their Tanek’s style. He’s right there in his uniform, looking downright dowdy by comparison.
“I stay in the room,” she decides, as if it’s a difficult decision. “So does Lieutenant Fult. We’ll give you some space, but if we see anything funny, you’re taking a nap. And we’re searching you first. That acceptable?”
Alternate Tanek hesitates, then nods. “That is acceptable.”
“Why don’t you do something better with your hair?” the Admiral asks. It’s much later, in the Admiral’s quarters, which are a little less packratty than her ready room, but not by much.
Chester makes a noncommittal noise, leaning into the gloved fingers running through her hair. “I don’t know. Ponytail keeps it out of my face. I don’t want to fuss with it, and I look like a cadet with it short.”
Her counterpart laughs softly. “Grandmother always says not to neglect your weapons. Any of them. And that’s a weapon too.”
Chester lifts her head to frown at her. “Grandmama’s here?”
“Of course she is,” says her alternate. “I wasn’t going to let her out of my sight. Especially now.”
“I’m glad,” Chester says. At least it’s a point of connection.
“Yours?”
“Back home, with my parents.”
Her counterpart alerts now, pushing up onto her elbows and going still and intent, her eyes very wide. “They’re alive?”
Chester nods, seeing the avid look in her counterpart’s eyes. “Dad is an entomologist at UC Berkeley. Mom runs a bakery. Grandmama retired from Starfleet a little before I was born, teaches a few courses at the Academy, and tinkers with the ovens when she gets bored.”
“On Earth,” says her alternate, a little wondering, and then gets up like she can’t help but move. “You don’t understand. You couldn’t understand. Grandmother is all I have left.”
Chester watches her. She’s only a little disheveled, righting her uniform with the ease of practice, then reaching for her jacket to pull it over her shoulders. “The Intendant told me our parents were dead here,” she said. “Was she actually telling the truth?”
Her counterpart snorts. “Yes. She probably left out the part where she killed them, though.”
Chester’s gut turns over. “She did.” The Intendant’s words, the wistful statement about how she wishes she could have saved Chester’s alternate, become newly sinister.
If something were to happen to her parents…
Chester would have a very hard time not burning the world.
It’s clear her alternate, raised in the darkness of an ore processing center, didn’t bother to try to resist the urge. Chester can’t say she can find fault with that.
“She killed them,” her counterpart says. “In one of her random executions to increase productivity in the ore processing center. It didn’t matter much to her. I doubt she even checked who she killed. But my world ended that day.”
“Why is she still alive, then?”
Her counterpart turns back to her and gives her a mildly disappointed look. “Do I really have to explain?”
“Ah,” says Chester. “She’s useful.”
“She’s useful. I’ve taken everything from her. Her power, her looks, her connection to her home,” her counterpart makes a little gesture at her ear, like an earring. “And now she’s mine, and she does my work for me.”
“And how are you keeping control of her?”
“I haven’t burned Bajor. Yet.” Her counterpart smiles. “Turns out there’s a shred of patriotism in that shriveled thing she calls a heart.”
“Impressive.” The sick feeling settles back into Chester’s stomach. Killing the Intendant is one thing, something she can sympathize with. Killing an entire planet in revenge…
“I’m glad you think so. I’m very much looking forward to when she gives me an excuse.”
“And then you’ll dispose of her.”
“If I’m feeling merciful that day. People aren’t sorry when they’re dead.”
Chester thinks uncomfortably of that piece of wall decor outside. “No,” she says. “They don’t tend to be.”
“Growing up where I did, when I did, I learned that death is a friend,” says her counterpart. She goes to the replicator on the wall and enters a code. There’s a shimmer, and she comes back with a tray with a pitcher and cups; when she pours, the aroma of Bajoran spring wine reaches Chester’s nose. She wonders if this is because her counterpart associates it with opulence, or doesn’t know her own Terran food and drinks. Does she see this as another symbol of her victory?
If only this could be so easily resolved as packing her off with a passel of replicator recipes.
“The dead don’t feel pain,” her counterpart says. “The living and the dying certainly do. But when you’re dead, there’s nothing more anyone can do to you. Whatever happens, whatever superstitions you subscribe to, it stops mattering. So why be afraid of it?”
Chester hums a noncommittal noise and takes a sip of the wine. It is indeed very good.
“Your universe is soft. Ours isn’t. Life is cheap here.” Her counterpart swirls the wine again, sniffs it. “Death doesn’t have much weight when life is cheap. So, I try not to kill when I can avoid it.”
She smiles. It’s not anywhere in the neighborhood of a nice smile.
“I see,” says Chester softly. “I had only read reports of what it’s like here. I didn’t realize.”
“I know. Most people from your universe don’t.” Her counterpart sets the wine down, untouched. “The Alliance is still out there. I’ve driven them off for now. But I cannot do it alone, and I need your ship.”
“And my help.”
“It will be easier, yes. Pulling the people necessary to crew it from other parts of my fleet would leave us critically shortstaffed.”
To crew it after killing Chester’s entire crew. Chester sets her wine down as well, and looks directly into her alternate’s eyes. “It would be a mistake for other reasons, too,” she tells her alternate. “You would find me a very bad enemy to make, Admiral, and it sounds like you already have enough.”
Her alternate gives her a little smile. “Yes, so it would seem.”
“So what would you need from me? A certain number of Alliance starbases destroyed? A last drive to reclaim Earth?”
Her counterpart tips her head back, looking at her. “Earth was destroyed.”
It hits hard. Chester puts her wine down so her alternate won’t see the tremor of her hands reflected in the liquid’s surface. It hits hard, stirring up as it does the Breen attack on San Francisco.
Her parents and the restaurant had survived. But there had been several hours where she had not known that. “They destroyed Earth,” she says, and for a moment feels a reflection of the killing rage that her alternate so eagerly embraces, even though it is not her Earth. It still feels like a grave wound.
“There can be no peace,” says her alternate softly, “after something destroys your home. There can be no peace, after your people have been enslaved as we have. And there can be no peace when your attackers have so completely defined your life for as long as they have ours. So, will you help me?”
But the Empire she’s seeking to revive did those very same things to others. Is doing the very same thing. This isn’t about rebuilding. This is about rearranging the table. Taking power for herself. Indulging that glee in cruelty.
All the same, it’s hard not to find compelling.
“I’ve seen you looking at my quarters,” her alternate says, soft and persuasive. “Grandmother has told me about our culture back on Earth, but she only remembers scraps of Mandarin, a handful of tales told by her own mother, before the ‘reforms’. I’ve found what I can. I’ve read what few surviving books we have. But I can see in your face I’m not getting it right.”
The last sentence is raw pain, as quiet and flat as her delivery is. Chester looks around at the quarters that are about half the sort of cheap shit that gift shops sell to credulous tourists back home, and she gets up and goes to her alternate and folds her into a hug. “I am so sorry,” she says softly.
She too, has felt that disconnect—half-Chinese with an English name, there is always the fear of anything less than perfection, the need for her speech to be exact and perfect, to remember all her older relatives names and relations to her, for her manners to be nothing less than perfect. Her heritage is a deep part of who she is, but there are far too many times she feels as if she’s holding onto a tenuous thread to have it be hers—and not simply being an outsider playing at it. Grandmama has always been an anchor, the one to laugh at those fears. “No one gets to tell you who you are,” she’d said after one of Chester’s aunts had made a particularly cutting remark. “Your aunt is a bigot whose son failed to get into the Academy for the third time.”
To be so completely divorced from even the memory of Earth…
To not have Grandmama as that anchor…
“Don’t pity me,” her alternate growls, pushing her away.
“We have resources, our histories in the library databanks—”
“It’s bad enough learning from books. To have to go looking in an alternate universe’s historical records?” Her counterpart snorts. “No. No. We don’t even know if they’d be accurate to our history.”
It is a fair enough point, but Chester can’t help but feel sad as she sits back down on the bed. “It matters a lot to me,” she says quietly. “I’m sorry it was taken from you.”
Her alternate shakes her head. “Don’t pity me,” she repeats. “I have much more important things to do than mourn over what was taken from me.”
Like mass murder. Her alternate is talking about dragging her and the Interpreter into a war. Chester very, very much doubts she’ll be inclined to let them go. Not when they’re so useful.
She’s right. Chester can’t afford to pity her. Pitying her means enabling what she’s planning to do.
But the horrible tragedy shared by every Terran here—because it’s not unique to her, it’s everyone who lost their history and their culture to the Alliance—staggers her for a moment. And then hot on its heels comes the realization it’s not just them. It’s what the Empire and the Alliance have been doing to every world in their paths, an entire universe defined by brutal imperial struggle and entire civilizations left blasted and silent in their wake, piecing identity together from scraps and cheap tourist novelties. For a moment the scale of it strikes her silent. Then she blinks it away and reaches for her uniform jacket, turning it right-side out and shrugging it on.
“All right,” she says. “We have a job to do. But you still need to tell me what it is.”
Her alternate turns to look at her quizzically.
“I don’t like the idea of the Alliance encroaching on your space. Or of them encroaching on ours,” she says, though she knows the Alliance had an active interest in no contact with their universe. The Alliance never reached across and tried to steal a starship or crew. “To them, I’m willing to bet a Terran is a Terran, no matter the universe we come from, and frankly I’d prefer they not come sniffing around mine. How long would you need us?”
Her alternate pauses, looking at her. “I do not want you going back,” she says softly.
There it is, sooner than she expected and a hell of a lot more honest. “You would ask me to leave my parents.”
A longer pause.
“Threats aren’t going to work,” says Chester, to head off what will surely be the other woman’s first impulse. “Would they work on you?” She flicks her gaze up to her alternate. “I am you. Another, kinder universe, but we’re a constant, aren’t we? We have the same drive and ambition…and the same priorities. You would have me leave Grandmother.”
Her alternate sighs and looks away.
“What are your priorities?” asks Chester. “What must you have, now? Tell me. I can help.”
Her alternate looks back at her. “How can I trust you with this? You might be me—but don’t forget your universe’s first encounter with us destroyed us.”
Chester raises her eyebrows and tips her head at the mess behind them. “Give me something I can do, Admiral. I have two thousand people I’ll have to persuade once I get back over there. Make it something reasonable, something they’ll find normal, and it will go far more smoothly.”
“I need the Interpreter . The real thing or a copy, one of them.”
“I could have my engineer leave plans,” she says. “I can come be the muscle on at least one mission.” Like hell. Even if she was sincere, even if her alternate hadn’t just kidnapped her, she wouldn’t trust her to point them at a real problem. There’s no telling what she’d be aimed at, what her alternate might use her ship to do.
The goal, no matter how sympathetic she is to her counterpart’s situation, or to her loss, is to get herself, her crew, and her ship out of this. Ideally, she’ll do it while leaving a foul enough taste in her alternate’s mouth to discourage this kind of shit in the future. The very last thing Starfleet needs is this woman getting grabby about their ships, their crews, their senior officers. They’re depleted enough from the war.
“I want you to help me,” her alternate says. “My crew need to see that you’ve been turned. Do what you like with yours. But when we do go confront the Alliance… I want it clear that you,” she leans in close, and Chester stays still as her fingers close around her chin, tipping it up. Reasserting control. Chester permits it, but gives her alternate a deeply unamused look from under her lashes. I’ll allow it , her expression says, but do not forget that you only were able to do that because I permitted you to do it. “I want it clear,” her alternate repeats, “that you are mine.”
“Go to hell,” says Chester, pleasant, and her alternate’s grip tightens to the point of pain, her grip strangely strong. There’s something running along her fingers under the gloves, ridges where there shouldn’t be, digging into the soft skin of Chester’s jaw. “I’m not yours. I’ll never be yours. And I’m not playing your stupid little power games.” She reaches for the dagger at her alternate’s waist; her alternate catches her wrist in a grip like steel and drags her to her feet. Chester goes with her, swallowing hard against the pressure against her throat.
“I think you need a reminder, Captain , of who’s in charge.”
“And it’s not you,” Chester says. “As equals, remember, Admiral? I don’t like people throwing their weight around any more than you do. And you do not get my ship or my crew without my full and willing cooperation. Oh, certainly, you could execute whatever clever little plan you’ve got cooking. I’m sure it would have worked against the Alliance. But Starfleet isn’t the Alliance.”
“You’re softer. We’ve seen you before. You’re afraid of crossing lines. Of doing what’s necessary. You’d lie down and die before getting your hands dirty.”
Chester tsks as best as she can, with her alternate’s hand on her throat. “You said you read my record, Admiral. Tell me, did you think much of the war?”
“Your war was laughable. We fought back an empire with mining equipment and pirate ships.”
“I beg to differ,” says Chester, softly. “Let me be completely honest with you, Admiral Chester. You’re just not very scary.”
Her alternate’s face spasms with rage.
“We just fought our war,” says Chester. “We just won. And whatever you are, you’re certainly not the Dominion. You haven’t got their resources. You’ve got what, a few dozen ships and a bunch of conscripts terrified they’re going to end up as wall art? I have a state of the art warship and a dedicated, combat-experienced crew, who I don’t have to worry about sticking a knife in my kidneys if they get ambitious. And I have an entire fleet backing me up. Oh, you’ve got me outdone in low-grade nastiness, I’ll cheerfully admit that. But I’ll repeat, you’re just not very scary, and threatening me isn’t going to get you what you want. You certainly can kill me and you can kill Hawthorne, but I’d give you even odds at best at taking the Interpreter even with her engines down, and it’s a damn good question if you could even operate her.” She snorts. “You’ll find state of the art warships are delicate beasts. You don’t have the materials in this universe for her upkeep, and without me or Hawthorne, you won’t know all her little tricks.” She grins. “Command codes are the least of your worries. You need me, Admiral Chester, and you need me in a mood to help you.”
Her counterpart finally, finally lets her go. Chester reaches up and massages her jaw. “As I said,” she says. “Equals, or not at all.”
“You think a very great deal of yourself,” her counterpart hisses.
“I could say the same of you,” she says, and tips her a smile. “ But one thing, Admiral. I might be from a softer universe, but don’t think I’m softer than you are. I just had to learn to hide my claws better.”
Her counterpart looks down, then back at her face, an icy mask sliding behind her eyes. “So it would seem,” she says. “But watch your arrogance, Captain. My patience is not unlimited.”
Chester gives her a toothy smile back. “Neither is mine,” she says. “We work together, or we kill each other. And by work together, I mean I expect you to cut the domineering crap. You can’t intimidate me, and frankly I’m sick of your posturing.”
Her alternate takes in a deep breath, her nostrils flaring. “I’ve killed people for less,” she says. “A lot less.”
“But you need me,” says Chester. “And you understand me, and you know that doesn’t work on me.”
Of course, she reflects grimly, if she pushes too hard the first sign she’ll get of it is the knife going into her belly. And her alternate isn’t exactly likely to kill her nicely.
Unfortunately, her alternate is now looking at her with an evaluating gleam. “What would work, I wonder?” she says quietly. “You spoke of the Bedivere . You spoke of the value you have for your crew.”
“All you’ve got is my engineer,” says Chester, “and to say the man is a bit of a shit is to put it mildly.”
The speculative look doesn’t fade. And then her alternate looks away and turns back to the closet and drawers against the wall. “Equal we might be,” she says, “but you will need to look the part. My crew have expectations.”
“And what expectations would those be?” Chester asks, sitting back on the bed and then curling her legs under her to show that she is not even in the least unsettled by this exchange.
“They won’t trust you if it’s not clear that you’re mine,” says her counterpart. She smiles over her shoulder, long and slow like a pleased cat. “I like my people to look a certain way.”
Said with no apparent awareness how vilely creepy that is. Chester frowns at her.
“I know you have no patience for my ‘posturing’, but this is anything but. If my power seems to waver, if you seem anything less than completely dedicated, we’re both dead. It’s the look of the thing, you see. Absolute control over all my people. If I slacken it for a moment… well. We follow the proud traditions of the old Terran Empire here. And I have no desire to end up with a knife in my back.”
“Is that what happened to that charming bit of wall decor on your bridge?” Chester asks.
“He made an attempt, yes,” says her counterpart, and smiles as if the memory is a good one. Chester has no doubt that it is.
“It seems it wasn’t a good idea.”
“It wasn’t.” Her alternate slides open a panel on the wall and riffles through the contents. She seems like she’s already got something in mind.
Chester straightens her shoulders, sighs, and then starts to shrug out of her uniform jacket again. She’s sure she’ll much prefer that to whatever her counterpart picks out. “I’m going to need to change back before you send me to my ship,” she says. “They’re not about to trust me if I show up looking like you.”
“Of course,” says her counterpart, selecting something. “I trust your judgment.”
Chester does not frown, not outwardly. There’s something in that tone, an implication…
Somehow, she doubts her alternate intends to send her back to Interpreter.
It would put her in a position of power, put her usual resources at her command, and give the Interpreter and its crew a leader. Hawthorne is important, too, and her alternate might see him as a possible hostage. But given Hawthorne’s unwillingness to cooperate even with a blade to his commander’s throat, Chester suspects that her alternate has dismissed his usefulness in that role. Were her alternate in her place, she would see this as a way to get rid of a crewmember whose loyalty was questionable at best without bearing the blame.
Besides, Chester has made it very clear she values her autonomy and will not hesitate to defy her even with her alternate’s hand around her throat. In command of her own ship, her alternate loses the last vestiges of control over her. And her counterpart has already told her far, far more than Chester suspects she wants anyone to know.
No. Her alternate will not send her back if she can help it, and this little pantomime of appropriate attire is the opening gambit.
“Here,” the Admiral says, bringing over her selection. Chester glances down at it and feels her eyebrows rise.
“Not your usual tastes?” says the Admiral, amused. Chester lifts the top, which looks very much like a black leather corset with a sweetheart neckline, held up by a set of straps running diagonally from one cup to the shoulder, glances down at the… she’s calling those leggings, not trousers, and looks back at her counterpart. “I’m not dressing like Tanek, thanks.”
Her alternate sighs.
“It needs a shirt under it,” Chester tells her. “Otherwise it’s going to chafe like hell. Or, you know, get me something actually practical.” She glances at the bottom of the corset. “Something I can bend down in without eviscerating myself, damn. A nice black leather jacket, or something. You realize your crew will see whatever you put me in, and imagine you in it, right?”
Her alternate huffs and pulls it out of her hands, going back to her closet. “You know,” she says, almost conversationally, “when we broke out of Terok Nor, and when I swore my allegiance to the Emperor, I also made a promise to myself. That no one would ever get to say no to me, ever again.” She glances over her shoulder, a threat in it. “And yet, here you are.”
“And yet, here I am.” Chester smiles to herself. Until her counterpart decides to trust her or kill her, she can be a distracting pain in the ass. Hopefully Hawthorne is up to something more useful.