Chapter Text
No matter the galaxy, a debriefing was a debriefing. Chester slept for twelve solid hours, ate a ration-bar breakfast, and then wrote her report.
It had been a long time since a report had made her giggle while writing. This one did, a welcome reminder of better times. It used to be at least one report a week hit this level of absurdity. Now, it was casualty reports.
There hadn’t been a single casualty among her men. She sat there and felt good about that for a few minutes. It had been so long since she could report that. There would be no condolence letters scribbled in the few moments she could steal for them, no death certificates to sign. She’d brought them all out alive. There’d been a time where she would have viewed that as a given, what it meant to be a good commander. The war had wiped that away. But now… now she could enjoy it.
She wrapped it up, hoped the formatting fit that of the GAR at least generally, salted in a few disclaimers about neutrality and made it a little extra clear she didn’t fucking work for them (she omitted that exact wording after some struggle), and sent it on in. Then she faceplanted back into bed for another four hours in lieu of a ration bar lunch.
Nothing broke, exploded, or made anyone start screaming while she was out. Bliss.
When she emerged back into the waking world, it was late afternoon. Half an hour until debriefing. She dressed, scrubbed her face with a wet rag, then found her men and checked in on them.
Garter, Lingo, and for some reason Joyride were waiting near the command tent, all freshly cleaned up. And, in Joyride’s case, looking like he was about to vibrate out of his skin. Chester found herself grinning. The resemblance to an ensign at their first senior staff meeting was unavoidable. “Nerves, gentlemen?”
“First time doing this kind of debriefing, Commander,” said Joyride. His dark eyes glittered with nerves, but he was grinning, and the overall expression seemed more anticipating than anything. Perhaps that was why he was here, and not his brother Lens; Chester had quickly come to realize nothing fazed Joyride for long. Even when it should.
She thumped him lightly on the shoulder. Joyride had been the first to really cotton on to her on the trip back, presumably because her method of handling Dooku had been most impressive to the inexperienced. For her part, she looked at him and saw another one of her ensigns. “Better to get it over with this early in your career, then. There will be plenty more to come, I’m sure.”
Joyride gave her the hairy eyeball. “With all respect, that’s the least comforting thing you could have said.”
“But true,” she said cheerfully. “Public speaking, bugbear of officers since the dawn of time. Garter, Lingo, first time for you as well?”
They nodded.
“You’ll do fine. My first senior officers’ briefing, I was presenting a prototype communicator, and I fumbled it. It went directly into Captain Picard’s tea, ruining the prototype, his tea, and–I thought at the time–my career. Five senior starship captains watching me, and I toss an experimental and highly valuable piece of equipment directly into the beverage of the captain of the Enterprise , the flagship of the entire Federation.”
She paused. They were all staring at her with identical expressions of horror, much like the ensigns when she told them this story. She could still see Captain Picard’s expression as he cautiously dipped his fingers into what little remained of his Earl Grey and came up with the dripping device. “Is this promising new technology waterproof by any chance, Ensign?”
The communicator had not been waterproof.
“But I finished the presentation as he fished it out, and the worst that happened was my commanding officer howling with laughter the entire way back to the Billings .”
“How is this supposed to calm us down?” said Joyride. “ General Kenobi drinks tea.”
“Even if you screw this up unimaginably badly, it’s not life or death. Drop a comm unit in General Kenobi’s tea, he’ll get over it, and so will you. And I have every faith you won’t screw this up. Even if they’ve hauled all of the Jedi Council and the Senate and the Federation High Council into that tent together, it’s still not going to be a patch on what we just crawled out of, and what all of you have proven yourselves capable of.”
They looked unconvinced. Oh well. You could galvanize a crew into battle with the Borg with a good speech, but nothing ever really overcame the fear of public speaking most sentients suffered. It would make them feel better next time.
Still, her grin remained. They looked exactly like her ensigns. And that made her feel at home.
The anxiety smoothed a little around her, and looking up, Chester saw the reason; Plo was coming toward them. Probably doing something to be deliberately calming. A few days ago, she would have resented it. Now, having experienced what a malicious Force user could do with it, she appreciated the care. “Good morning. Ready for the best part of the mission?”
“Best part,” muttered Lingo, in cringing horror. She couldn’t help but remember him in Dooku’s castle, defiantly facing down certain death.
“You’ll feel better when we get it over with,” she told him, bracing, then clasped her hands behind her back and strode into the tent as if it were the Bedivere’s briefing room and these the senior officers she’d spent the last three years with.
Except it wasn’t just the senior officers of the ship, or even the Jedi and commanders she’d gotten used to over the last weeks. The entire Jedi Council was shimmering in blue holographic form over the table.
Well , she thought, if someone from their galaxy landed one on the Borg Queen, or kneed the Great Link in their jellylike unmentionables, I’m sure Starfleet would pull out all the stops, too. “Good day,” she said. “I understand you have questions for me.”
Master Yoda cackled, practically radiating entertainment over the holocomms. “Many questions we have, Commander. Impressive, your escape was, and very welcome news.” He looked around at those present within the tent. “Present, we all are? Then begin we shall.”
“I assume all of you had the opportunity to read my report,” said Chester, and then quirked a smile at the assembled beings–in wartime, who had time to read every report? “However, I’m more than happy to review the events in question.”
Mace’s hologram made a little go on gesture. “Please do.”
She sketched the events of her capture, noted the cooperation or lack thereof between Trench and Grievous, and moved onto the droids, when Mace forestalled her with a raised hand. “There are some questions about your interactions with the droids, Commander. You taught them to play… ‘checkers’?”
Immediately it was obvious who had read her report and who hadn’t. Eyebrows went up, little disbelieving smiles appeared.
“Yes,” she said. “They’re obviously sentient, even if they’re not terribly intelligent, and they’re not accustomed to interaction with other beings.” She made a face, showing them what she thought of that and of anyone who would treat a sentient that way; the intense silence wasn’t lost on her. “In my opinion, this is a strategic advantage. Your enemy has a vast army of emotionally isolated soldiers who are, not to put too fine a point on it, none too bright. For instance, droids guarding the hyperdrive are usually bored, and simulating firing patterns in their processors to pass the time; more recently, I have reason to suspect they’re trying to ‘draw’ using the same program. I suggested it, and they are deeply distracted when engaged in this activity.”
“Sorry,” said Obi-Wan, bewildered, “I believe you stated you think the droids are sentient. ”
“They experience boredom and anxiety,” said Chester, “and apprehension, all of which denote a strong awareness of self. These are basic criteria for determining sentience.”
Anakin, lurking in the tent corner behind Obi-Wan’s shoulder, frowned. “Well, yeah, sometimes old droids get that way eventually–there’s Professor Huyang at the Temple, and Artoo and Threepio. That usually takes decades, though.”
“And every single droid I encountered during my time with the Separatists,” said Chester, “some of which I believe may have been built much more recently. Perhaps if you are going to build an intelligence complex enough to be any use at all on a battlefield, sentience is an unavoidable outcome.”
“Or they were made that way from the start.” Obi-Wan winced. “Incredibly unethical, but droid sentience has been a hotly-debated topic for a long time.”
“As Lieutenant Commander Data, a senior officer on our flagship, is a sentient artificial intelligence,” Chester said, her eyebrows rising, “Starfleet has excellent evidence that it’s quite possible.”
“Remind me to introduce you to Professor Huyang once we return to Coruscant,” Plo murmured to her. “We don’t disagree–but as Obi-Wan said, most droids are meant to be tools, and it would be a terribly unethical thing to deliberately create a sapient tool.”
There was a certain quality to the ensuing silence. Chester began to think that this might be up there with dropping the communicator into Captain Picard’s tea for her least-well received report ever.
“I think we had best shelve this topic in favor of more immediately actionable intelligence,” said Obi-Wan, before everyone else had quite finished digesting the issue. “There is certainly substance to the report, but let us hear the rest of the story before we commit to any action.”
Chester inclined her head. It was a relief that the Jedi were willing to consider the issue, but a sad non-surprise that they were reluctant to act on it.
Yoda spoke up next, his long ears drooping. “Encountered Dooku then, you did?”
“I did. He had requested that I be brought directly to him, which Trench and Grievous did. Accompanied by a certain amount of disagreement.” Her hands clenched behind her back; given their previous concerns, she worried this would erode the tentative trust she’d built with them, or persuade them to hand her over to Tarkin as fast as possible. No matter; she would deal with that as it came. “His interest in me soon became apparent; he is searching for an apprentice, and attempted to persuade me to join him. I… went along with it, as I estimated my chances of survival to be very poor indeed if I did not. That was the source of the lightsaber I brought back.”
Plo stepped up beside her, rather gingerly placing the inert hilt onto the holotable for inspection. “It is a genuine Sith weapon–the kyber inside has been bled.”
Now there were a number of winces going round the Council. Ki-Adi-Mundi sighed, and looked sharply toward Chester. “Your estimation was almost certainly correct. Dooku is an incredibly dangerous foe. I am surprised that he was taken in so easily, though.”
Yoda hummed loudly, shook his head. “A tendency for fixation, my former Padawan has long had. Cooperation, he prizes, though increasingly cooperation with his ideas it became.”
“And curiosity, I think,” said Chester. “He’s frighteningly perceptive. He had me dead to rights within half an hour, and I will admit I did consider his offer.” She found herself involuntarily looking away, and felt her mouth twist. “It probably saved my skin. It didn’t hurt that he knew exactly what buttons to push to make me furious.”
“A Sith specialty, that is.” Yoda’s expression turned openly grieving. “Seductive, the Dark Side of the Force can be. An easy answer it promises, and only once ensnared does one find these promises false.”
“Any asshole who’s gotten too much power can be seductive,” said Chester, “especially of the ‘strange energies’ variety. I should pause and add here that Starfleet not infrequently has encountered eccentric, immensely powerful beings whose offers of hospitality and power quickly turn into captivity or coercion. We have standard procedures for the resulting circumstances.” She looked down again, drew a breath, pushing away the reminder that Starfleet and its procedures were very far away. “Previous encounters have made it clear that even immensely powerful beings can be taken by surprise, or distracted until the source of their power can be attacked. I focused on surprise and distraction in the hope of escape, and soon enough he made a misstep.”
Wolffe and Cody, over at the other side of the table, began to smile unkindly. They hadn’t needed to read the reports to know what was coming–the story had spread like wildfire among the clones.
“He had spent most of the first few days familiarizing me with lightsaber forms and goading me with complaints about my lack of passion. He was less than impressed with my assertion that I try not to get angry with a sword in my hand, as it’s a good way to make fatal mistakes.” She smiled a little to herself at that, remembering. “Evidently, he thought he’d have more success with a more… dramatic goad. That’s where these gentlemen came in.” She nodded to Garter, Lingo, and Joyride.
Garter, the senior in rank, stepped stiffly forward. “Generals. We had been transported to Serenno and imprisoned for–” he paused, glanced sidelong at Chester– “three days or so. We were stripped of our weapons and armor, but there were no attempts to interrogate any of us. We were then brought into a courtyard in the castle and lined up–we assumed we were about to be executed, which was evidently what Dooku had planned. He singled out Lingo–at random, I think–and attempted to force Commander Chester to kill him.”
“I may have mildly lost my temper,” said Chester, blandly as she could. “I got angry–that made him happy. He’d given me an ultimatum; I could kill Lingo, or he would.”
Garter nodded. “She, uh, said a few things that didn’t really make sense. Lingo figured out it was a code.”
“I attempted to tell Lingo to go for Dooku’s knees and thereby save himself,” she said. “It wasn’t my finest work, I’ll admit, but I gather Dooku was paying more attention to my feelings than what I was actually saying. Lingo got it, and when I hauled off and belted Dooku in the nose, he knocked him over. That freed me up to continue the attack. Previous Starfleet encounters with supernaturally powerful entities have demonstrated that sharp, startling pain can be useful for diffusing powers; this seems to be true of the Sith as much as any other being we have encountered. I attacked him, and succeeded in knocking him out.”
Obi-Wan said, “What she means, esteemed colleagues, is that she kicked him repeatedly very hard in the groin. May I ask why? ”
“Most bipedal species house sensitive reproductive equipment between the legs, and his reaction suggested he was no exception,” said Chester, again carefully bland.
“It worked really well,” said Joyride, doing a very bad job of hiding his own mirth. “He went down hard. ”
Mace Windu pressed his palms together and then touched his index fingers to his lips, frowning intensely. After a moment, Chester began to suspect he too was struggling not to smile.
“You know,” said Kit Fisto, thoughtful, “I always thought that part of human anatomy was a bad idea.”
Anakin made a sound halfway between a wheeze and a heartfelt groan. “You did what to Count Dooku?”
“I kicked him in the balls while he was down.” He was still staring at her, like he expected her to explain further, so she added, “It seemed safer than waiting for him to get back up.”
“You kicked him in the balls ? ” Anakin looked increasingly poleaxed. “And he didn’t even cut your arm off for it?”
“I did not confine my attentions solely to that line of attack; I had also winded him and, I hope, given him a moderate concussion at that point. Then I stunned him with a blaster, just in case.”
“That does make sense, in fact.” Ki-Adi-Mundi stroked his beard, the ghost of a grimace appearing on his holographic features. “Focus is the essence of connecting with the Force, and sudden, intense sensory experiences are rather distracting.”
“And then we stole his ship and came home,” said Joyride, helpfully.
“How did you manage that?” asked Shaak Ti. “There would have been alarms, would there not?”
“Droids, again. I told them we were sparring–Dooku had previously used that term for his attempts at training me. Honestly, I thought it was a remote chance, but they bought it.”
More pained looks. “So… you were able to simply walk out and commandeer his personal starship.”
“Well,” she said, pausing for a steady breath, “I told them I planned to execute the men by spacing them, and for that I needed a ship. They found it eccentric but plausible.”
Obi-Wan winced again. “I’m not sure that’s more or less unbelievable than subduing a Sith Lord with a swift kick to the groin, but the proof does appear to be standing here in front of us.”
“Completely unbelievable,” said Ki-Adi-Mundi, shaking his long head. “Were you tracked, after the alarm was raised?”
“There was a beacon in the sailer,” Garter said. “Commander Chester and a handful of ours managed to disable it.”
“And from there, we made our way back to Felucia,” said Chester. “There were, of course, a few incidents…”
It’d felt good, those days in the horribly crowded little ship, having a team again. It had felt like home. Especially once they’d stopped expecting her to be a Jedi.
That had happened pretty quickly. About four hours out, they’d had to drop out of hyperspace to switch lanes at what Lieutenant Garter, the most senior of the rescued clones, assured them was a backwater junction. They dropped early, just in case–and this turned out to be a wise decision because there was a Separatist cruiser camped out on the edges of the system.
It was a pretty good bet Dooku had woken up by then and was spreading the news of their distinctive little ship far and wide, and consequently that as soon as they were in visual range they might be hailed and then grabbed. “How good are sensors around here?” Chester had asked.
Answer: not nearly as good as Federation. She looked at the comms panel, the background telemetry signals the ship was sending and receiving, and then slid herself under the console. “Lingo, get me some scans of the signals that ship is sending and receiving–telemetry, sensor pings, ID.”
“Shouldn’t we be running?” he said, while she swung the access panel down. “Actually, shouldn't you be doing some sort of Jedi thing on them?”
“I am no more capable of doing a Jedi thing to the commander of that ship than you are, Mr. Lingo,” she said, already up to her elbows in the panel. It was not a Federation design, that was for damn sure, but there were only a certain number of ways you could make a comms interface or a transponder. “However, I can do you one better. Someone bring me a repair kit, I need a microspanner.”
“With all respect, Commander, what are you doing?” That was Lieutenant Garter.
“Making us look like a sensor error,” she said. “Dear god, are you people using wires , or does Dooku just have a fetish? Don’t answer that.”
Something thumped to the ground next to the console. She stuck out a hand and something that did in fact resemble a microspanner was put in it. “Cheers,” she said, and went back to work. “All right, I’m calibrating it now. I’m going to need the amplitudes of all those scans I asked you to do. Let’s start with the transponder.”
Lingo gave them to her; she read them back. “Right, now give me the following values…”
“They’re going to pick us up in a moment, Commander, shouldn’t we–”
“I’m going to need you to keep giving me those every thirty seconds. Lieutenant Garter, please keep reading them off. By mirroring that ship’s signal traffic, I’m making us look like drifting reflective material; we can’t alter course or they’ll pick up we’ve got propulsion. We pass them, get out of range, then get the hell out of here.”
“They could still–”
“If they detect us anyway, we’ll figure it out from there,” she said, still working. “Maybe steal ourselves a bigger ship. We are getting out of this one, gentlemen, all of us; I have every faith in you. Next set of values, Lieutenant?”
He rattled them off; she made the adjustments, silently thanking anything that might be listening that her communications training had been conducted by one of the old-fashioned instructors who believed anyone even close to a comms panel should be able to take it apart and rewire it in her sleep. “Any reaction from the cruiser, Mr. Lingo?”
“No reaction yet,” he said, sounding deeply disturbed. “And sir–it’s just Lingo.”
“Sorry, Starfleet custom. Next values.” Her fingers flew, her back cramping. She ignored it, just waiting to get something wrong and for the entire little solar sailer to jolt with a tractor beam. Dooku would definitely want them alive; he didn’t strike her as the sort to let someone else reduce them to plasma. Not after being kicked like that.
But the jolt never came. After thirty minutes of sweating like a pig under the console, she heard Lingo give much-awaited all clear. The man currently in the pilot’s seat–Chert, he’d called himself–threw them into hyperspace.
She scooted out from under the console, shaking out her hands. “Like working with stone knives and bearskins,” she grumbled, looking back at it, then shoving the access panel unceremoniously closed with a foot. “And that, gentlemen, is how we do it in Starfleet.”
Then she looked up at the cramped ship. All six of her rescuees were staring at her.
“Uh,” said one of the shinies, the future Joyride, raising his hand, “am I the only one here who doesn’t know what Starfleet is?”
That took care of staying entertained on the way home.
“--and then Dukat trying to beam out triggers this recording of his old superior, saying that if you’re watching this message, it’s because you, Dukat, are a coward who tried to escape while the station is rioting, and your secret escape codes are now locked down and you can die in the self-destruct sequence that you initiated. So now we’re all trapped on the station that’s going to blow up, with Dukat , which was much better than being trapped on the station that’s going to blow up at Dukat’s mercy , but on the minus side, the man is the worst person you’ve ever met and he won’t stop staring at people’s asses. So at that point, the chief of operations figures out–”
“Commander, we’re picking up another signal.”
Chester cut off mid-sentence and made her way up to the pilot’s chair. “They see us yet?”
The current pilot had introduced himself as Fin, also of the 104th. (“Short for Fingers,” Chert had said, upon which Fin threw an expensive-looking stylus at him for unknown but probably relatable reasons.) “Yeah, they know we’re here. Hang on–Garter, help, they’re hailing us.”
Garter activated the comm, stone-faced.
It was a holocomm unit, apparently–congruent with the smoothly-elegant fittings inside the sloop.
The tall wiry woman who appeared in the holo looked like she had no interest at all in elegance. “Well, well. I had heard Dooku had replaced me. I don’t know whether to be more disappointed in that… or that he replaced me with you. ” There was a hissed intake of breath in the background as she drew herself up with a sneer. “Well, I might want him dead , but that doesn’t mean some outsider gets to sail in and take the position that should rightfully be mine. Turn over the impostor, clones, or die. ”
Chester made a little gesture to herself and raised her eyebrows, a silent who, me? She glanced at Lingo and Garter, both of whom had gone very stiff.
“Asajj Ventress,” said Lingo out of the corner of his mouth. “Dooku’s apprentice until he tried to kill her. Very dangerous.”
“We might be karked,” said Joyride’s very small voice from the back.
“Ah,” said Chester quietly. “I see.” She turned back to the holoconn pickup and put on the brightest smile she could muster. “Good afternoon, I’m Diane Chester,” she said, with the stupidest little wave she could manage; Ventress actually reared back with an expression like an affronted cat. “I don’t think we’ve met–Asajj Ventress, was it? Pleasure. There’s been a misunderstanding, actually, Dooku hasn’t taken me as an apprentice. He tried, but I had to turn down his generous offer, and I think his feelings were a bit hurt when I rejected it.”
“You expect me to believe that?” said Ventress, and laughed, hard. Chester cocked an eyebrow and waited for her to be done. “You don’t just turn down Darth Tyranus.”
“This is true,” said Chester, brightly. “I turned him down, and then I kicked him in the balls, freed his prisoners, and stole his favorite spaceship.”
Ventress laughed again, paused, obviously registering that Chester was in fact in Dooku’s favorite spaceship and surrounded by very much living clones. Her eyes narrowed. “You’re shitting me.”
Chester let a little more malice into her expression; her smile widened, showing more teeth. “Not in the slightest .”
Ventress, whatever else she was, wasn’t stupid. The expression made her hesitate, and then she too started to smile.
“Also,” said Chester, before she had time to think about it too hard, “he is such a pompous asshole , isn’t he? Blows up the side of the building to make a minor point and then glares at you for using the wrong fork. It’s like, my lack of table manners is not the issue here, my dude.”
Ventress actually rolled her eyes. “Oh, the fucking table manners ,” she said. “You’re there to learn how to be an unstoppable killing machine, not how to use the Alderaanian prawn tongs.”
“Here, look, we’ve obviously got a lot to talk about,” said Chester. “I’m pretty sure the old bastard has a bounty on our heads, but if you know anywhere we can do a pit stop with a bar, I’ll buy you a drink and we’ll swap stories. I better not wake up in handcuffs, though.”
“Oh?” said Ventress, both eyebrows up. “And how do I know you’ll pay up?”
“That’s the best part,” said Chester, reaching into the compartment for the bag she’d dislodged while messing with the comm. She dangled it between her fingers and watched Ventress’s eyes widen. “Apparently Dooku travels loaded. Drinks on him?”
Ventress gave her a sharp-toothed smile. “You’re on.”
The call ended. A few seconds later, coordinates to a planet came through, with directions to a small spaceport bar and inn. Despite the absolute atrocious stupidity of the idea, it was incredibly appealing. There were six sweaty nervous men in here with her, and she couldn’t say she was much better; the tiny cockpit was acquiring a… rather lived-in feeling. A shower and new clothes would be heaven.
The clones stared at the display. Then, as one man, they slowly looked up at her.
“Did you just ask Asajj Ventress out on a date,” said Chert, flat.
“ Did you just save our shebs by asking Asajj Ventress on a date?” screeched Joyride. “Do they teach you that in Starfleet? I wanna join Starfleet!”
Now Joyride was the one being stared at. This, from Chester’s perspective, was an improvement.
Lens broke the moment by grabbing his brother in a headlock, hissing, “How did the longnecks even let you off Kamino?”
“It’s going to be at least a day before we can get hold of a secure GAR comm relay,” put in Fin, determinedly ignoring the squabbling shinies. “I hate to say it but I think this might be the only option.”
“Ventress, of all people.” Lieutenant Garter took a deep breath. “Commander. You know that scar of Commander Wolffe’s? That was Ventress. We thought we were going to lose him to decom after that, and we would have, if the General hadn’t stepped in. The GAR visual prosthetics aren’t rated for front-line combat. Just–be very careful.”
The absolute fury that gathered in Chester’s throat wasn’t aimed at Ventress. “Decom?”
Garter’s expression indicated he was thinking she’d gotten lost in the weeds here. “Decommissioning,” he said.
And what exactly does decommissioning mean? Chester wanted to ask, but she could read it in their expressions clearly enough. It occurred to her that maybe the best course of action would be to turn the ship around and take her chances with getting them to Federation space, even if she had to lock the lot of them in the sleeping-cabin for a week to do it; she could probably even excuse kidnapping them, since it seemed the Republic posed a clear and present danger to their life and health.
Garter saw something of it in her eyes; he shifted his weight just a little away from her, and behind his carefully calm mask she could see fear. Guilt bit hard. Last time she’d been angry around them, they’d thought she was about to kill them on Dooku’s orders. “Commander, whatever you’re thinking, I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
Yes, and the devil of it was that he was right. It would be a risky enough trip by herself; to drag these men into it, men who’d trusted her so far, would be criminal. She let out a long breath, packing the anger away into the white-hot core of blistering rage she’d been carefully managing since the start of the war, and relaxed her posture into something neutral and nonthreatening.
It was nauseating to see people under her command fear her. She never wanted to see that again, and she was going to have to remember to be a hell of a lot more careful about showing that anger. They had very good cause to be afraid of her, even without the Dooku incident. Natborn officers, Force-sensitive or not, still had plenty of power over them.
“I apologize,” she said. “The idea of ‘decommissioning’ sentient people for want of medical care is considered morally repugnant where I’m from. Weird cultural quirk.”
She couldn’t quite help the bitterness that crept in; they looked at her with raised eyebrows. “Whatever you say, Commander,” said Garter, clearly dubious. “But with respect, that is not the issue here.”
The fact your employers can murder you because they didn’t decide to spring for a good prosthetic is much more of an issue than whether my date is going to try and kill me , thought Chester, but said, “I’ll be careful, I promise. I’m not risking your safety by trying to be clever about this. It’s my job to get you home.”
“With respect, Commander, you’re either a civilian or a senior officer, and either way, it’s our job to get you home.”
She snorted. “That’s not how we do it in Starfleet, and that’s not how we’re doing it today.”