Disclaimer: Paramount owns Enterprise and everything connected with it, except original characters such as Ann Anderson, Mary Sherman and Patricia McCabe, the first two of whom appeared in 'Face in a Dark Mirror'. They belong to me and I'm not sharing.
Ann Anderson appeared several times on screen in 'IAMD Pt. 1'. She is the one with the dark ponytail who is seen in the background Situation Room in the rear of the bridge. She also appeared frequently at that station on 'our' Enterprise, and has appeared in several of these stories.
Mary Sherman is the redheaded woman in Engineering who crossed into the scene while accusations were flying after the cloak 'malfunctioned'. She is seen for some time working in the background while Tucker and Reed argue.
Patricia McCabe was first introduced in 'Cross and Crown' and has appeared in several stories since then.
Rating: M – Adult situations.
This story takes place in the Mirror Universe presented in 'In a Mirror Darkly' and chronologically revisited in TOS episode 'Mirror, Mirror', and thereafter several times on DS9. As I said in the foreword to 'Face in a Dark Mirror', which precedes 'IAMD' by an unspecified interval, if you are not familiar with these people, they are not the ones you know.
This story commences thirty seconds before the end of 'IAMD'.
Warnings: Murder, betrayal, intrigue, torture, rape, revenge; a typical few days in the Empire.
"Who do you trust, when there is no one left?"

Empress Sato
By JMK758
Prologue

Imperial Starfleet Lt. Hoshi Sato, late of the I.S.S. Enterprise, led MACOs Travis Mayweather and Paul Estes onto the bridge of the salvaged U.S.S. Defiant and, as she stepped down to the Command Bay, she glanced at Grace Winters seated at Communications. "Open a channel to Fleet Admiral Gardner," she commanded.

"Channel open." Winters reported crisply even before the sound of the order being fulfilled was heard.

As Estes took a position at the upper Command Deck, the better to cover the entire Bridge and Mayweather assumed a post next to the Command Chair, Hoshi addressed the white haired old Admiral. "This is the Starship Defiant," she said, not pausing as she stepped around to the front of the Helm / Navigation console, the better to put herself up front, center stage, the focus of attention, "if you don't surrender immediately, we'll begin targeting your cities. Respond."

She issued the command as though speaking to a junior Officer, an Ensign or one who had not even reached that lowly rank, someone who had no choice but to obey her. She knew the effect her tone would have on the proud man.

"Where's Archer?" he demanded, at first stunned by the outrageous woman, then his short white beard bristling in his mounting fury, his face growing flushed as his anger grew. The heavy silver epaulets at his shoulders seemed to glint even in the low light.

x

This was unbearable, and helplessness to do anything to combat this ship that had entered orbit above Earth against his orders brought overwhelming fury. He had been expecting Jonathan Archer to disobey his orders not to approach Earth, but for him to deliver a clear and outrageous insult by sending a lackey to pass along his despicable orders was absolutely intolerable.

He was furious to be addressed so by a mere Lieutenant. He was the Senior Admiral of Starfleet. He could feel his face growing redder as his temper flared. "Who the Hell are you?"

The Asian woman adopted an insolent manner to match her tone, and answered him as though the answer had been self-evident. "You're speaking with Empress Sato," she informed him haughtily; then dared to command him to "Prepare to receive instructions."

She gave him the infuriating half smile of someone who knew a long, hard contest had been won.

Chapter One
Establishment

Former Starfleet Lieutenant Hoshi Sato stepped back around the Helm / Navigation console, moving with a slow, slinky walk; carrying herself with a seductive insolence few would dare. Fewer still would turn their back on the irate man. She approached the Captain's chair, turned and slowly enthroned herself upon it as Fleet Admiral Gardner stared, outraged, unable to believe the audacity of the woman. As she enthroned herself in the central chair, Gardner's temper exploded.

"You dare declare yourself Empress?" he demanded furiously, his face redder than it had been moments before. He had been dealing with the megalomaniacal First Officer of the late Enterprise, now self-proclaimed Captain, who had demanded Earth's unconditional surrender. At first, when Archer had sent him word of a fantastically advanced ship, he had been intrigued, and had supported him even over Enterprise's Captain Forrest, believing his claims that the potential power of this ship could turn the losing tide in the war.

But then Archer had been inspired to use that ship to stage a coup, to declare himself 'Emperor' and to demand the unconditional surrender of Earth.

He had ordered the man not to approach Earth or he would order his forces to fire upon them. Sadly however, the war had pulled so many of his forces away from Earth that he had nothing but ground-based installations with which to carry out the threat. And Archer had known it, not turning away in his course for Earth.

But intolerable as that had been, he was damned if he was going to deal with a lackey, a subordinate, an upstart Lieutenant with delusions of grandeur. "Where is Archer?"

"The late Jonathan Archer has retired from the field of battle," Sato informed him haughtily.

x

The bridge crew of the salvaged, incredibly advanced Federation Starship Defiant strove to mask their reactions. They had sensed something was wrong when Lieutenant Sato strode onto the bridge and started giving orders, but they had thought that she was speaking in the Captain's name.

Now they knew that Archer, who had led them through this crisis, was dead, and that Sato spoke for herself. And if she was going to pull off her quite probably long established plans for assuming the reins of power over the Empire, they had better be very careful indeed.

Hoshi addressed the man on the screen from her interim throne as though speaking to a servant; certain that it would drive the proud officer to distraction.

"Your orders are as follows: The Emperor and Regent will forthwith resign and surrender themselves, after which you will inform the Fleet of the Change in Command. You have thirty minutes to comply. Close communications."

At her curt command, the screen changed from the apoplectic face of the old Admiral to the planet Earth rotating serenely below them.

x

"Thirty minutes, Ma'am?" Mayweather, her new Chief Bodyguard, seduced away from the employ of the former Captain by charms and talents Archer had never possessed, inquired carefully.

He stood at the left of her chair, clothed in the red and black uniform of the Federation. The combination, they had learned, would have befitted his rank and station in the alternate universe. The only ornamentation on his uniform was an irregularly joined pair of gold rectangles on the left side of his red shirt, in which was depicted a black spiraling lightning bolt.

Hoshi held her hand out, and he placed in it the weapon they had removed from the late Jonathan Archer's quarters, her hand closing around the handle/power pack of the powerful phaser. Her slim fingers caressed the sleek weapon; trim, smooth, sleek and deadly, so much like herself.

"Many of the Admirals and other top officers of Starfleet are already in, or on their way to, the Admiralty building, preparing the deal with the threat of 'Captain' Archer. This will give all of them time to arrive and to make their plans against us."

x

She turned the throne-like Captain's chair about and faced the blonde Officer who had been her own Beta Shift Relief. "Winters?"

"Ma'am?"

"By now, Fleet Admiral Gardner and the Emperor will be in communication, desperately trying to figure out how to handle this new threat with their Fleet scattered throughout this part of the galaxy. Can you tap in on their signal, put them up on the main screen?"

On the Enterprise this would have been simplicity itself, but these were all new systems that could test the ingenuity of the best in Starfleet. Fortunately, Captain Maximilian Forrest had put a lot of effort into assembling that best.

"I'll try, Ma'am."

Hoshi returned the seat to its forward position and sat back, getting comfortable, almost indulgently so. Ma'am would do for now. It was too soon, and the crew was just getting used to the idea of the rapid changes in command over the past few days. And she had not declared herself 'Captain'. She had, in fact, declared herself 'Empress'; but the Emperor still lived and still wielded the power. She had not yet accomplished her goal, so she could forgive them if they weren't quite sure how to address her.

Hoshi sat back, still lovingly caressing the smooth lines of the phaser in her lap. She adjusted the control at the rear of the deadly device all the way and waited. In the meantime, she planned for her next several moves, adding to their details.

x

In an impressively short time the image on the screen split into the faces of two men. They both faced outward from the screen, but it was clear from their conversation that they saw only one another, not the bridge of the Defiant.

On the left was the white haired face of the furious Fleet Admiral Gardner, galled at having to report to his ultimate Majesty that a crew of his had mutinied and now demanded the surrender of Starfleet and the Empire. Worse, they were in possession of sufficient firepower to back up that demand.

The Emperor's face was familiar to most of the crew, and was now contorted in outrage. The man's face was large, but not in a good way. The powerful warrior he had been at his ascension had given way over the years to the soft monarch accustomed to the good life. Hoshi wondered if this was what the infamous madman Henry VIII had looked like before his ultimate downfall. His eyes bulged unpleasantly at the news, his brown beard bristling with his fury. He was dressed in all the finery of his station.

None of it meant anything to the phasers of the Defiant.

In the background behind the Empire's supreme leader stood his Regent, Vice Emperor in effect if not in title. He was a younger beardless man of about forty years, with enough skill to have earned his position and just enough carefully masked ambition to allow him to keep it.

Hoshi Sato cared little for what the men were actually saying. She had anticipated it accurately long ago, and this eavesdropping was just to confirm what she already knew. In deploying all their remaining Battleships and smaller Cruisers to the fight against alien insurgents on numerous fronts, they had left Earth vulnerable to the unthinkable, a coup by an ambitious crew in command of a super-powerful warship from the future.

That order had been Gardner's, and as the heated conversation progressed it was becoming clear to even the least astute upon the Defiant's bridge that even if Starfleet prevailed against this threat, Gardner's career as Supreme Commander was unlikely to be a long one.

Hoshi smiled. If her plan worked, his remaining career was something Gardner would not have to worry about.

x

She looked around the huge, white bridge, listening to the almost musical background of uncounted instruments and systems, focusing finally on the dark haired woman just slightly before her on her right side, the one at the Tactical station which would normally have been manned by Major Reed.

Reed was still in Sick Bay, recovering from wounds received in a Gorn ambush.

Tactical was now 'manned' by Ensign Ann Anderson, who wore the light blue scoop necked mini-dress of a Federation officer. The woman had handled the Tactical Sensor Control Board at the rear of the Enterprise bridge. Her new duty post brought her further forward onto the bridge proper.

"Anderson?"

The woman turned. "Ma'am?"

"Put up on the corner a Tactical view of the Admiralty building."

A moment later the lower left corner of the screen was occupied by a line representation of the huge tower which was the military stronghold of the Empire, a sprawling complex that was the nerve center of the force that had spread Terran dominance throughout known space.

Highlighted in various colors were the locations of the shield generators in the lower levels, the armory, phase cannon batteries powerful enough to knock any invading force out of the sky, along with every other point of strength in the towering complex.

Every critical center was highlighted in colors corresponding to a side legend that cut off the Admiral's chin. Hoshi wished it could have cut off his mouth.

x

The Imperial Palace and the Admiralty Building were on either side of a huge open square which, combined with dozens of buildings comprising all the other central offices and headquarters for everything from Agriculture to Public Works, housed the seat of the Empire. One could easily leave one administrative complex and cross the huge open space to any other, thus rendering intermingling of the Powers That Be of the Empire an easy thing indeed.

As the two men communicated their emergency plans, in light of the Fleet that could save the Imperials still being a day away from assembling to make any major stand against this ship, the Defiant crew listened to all their plans.

To Hoshi, they contained no surprises at all. She had anticipated the men's conversation virtually word for word. Right now, she had more on her mind. She stood up, facing the Sensor/Tactical station forward of her position on her right.

"Well done, Ann," she complimented the light blue clad woman. Anderson turned her chair about to face her. "You've mastered that board most impressively."

"Thank you, Ma'am."

Hoshi raised the phaser and fired.

x

The blue beam of coherent energy struck the woman squarely in her chest, the high pitched weapon coupling with Anderson's aborted shriek as the powerful beam knocked her backward, the chair toppling over, throwing her to the floor almost under the ledge of controls.

Ann Anderson lay still, as utterly silent as the bridge itself as the remaining crew stared either at her body or at Sato, who turned and handed the phaser back to Mayweather. The woman lay on her back, her long black hair disheveled, her micro-miniskirt flipped upward with the force of her fall to reveal her light blue underwear and long bare legs.

"As we discussed, gentlemen," Hoshi told her guards. Mayweather signaled to the man who had accompanied them onto the bridge, and he to another MACO guard. The latter two stepped over to the stunned woman and hauled her to her feet, boosting her up between them, her arms draped over their shoulders as they dragged her across the bridge, crossing between the Command Chair and the Helm to the turbolift.

Hoshi resumed her place upon her throne, Mayweather standing implacably beside her, and she resumed listening to the exchange between the Chief of Starfleet and the Ruler of the Empire.

As they watched, the screen split into quarters as Gardner and the Emperor finished their conversation and Grace Winters, not daring to be less than a model of efficiency, kept them under surveillance together with whomever they were talking to.

Then Hoshi Sato started to give her silent, very cautious crew detailed instructions on what they were going to do.

x

When the allotted thirty minutes had expired Hoshi, the would-be Empress Sato, did not bother to open any channels of communication. Having heard everything that the Emperor, his Regent and the Admiral had to say, and having monitored all subsequent and simultaneous conversations, something that came very easily to her from her long years as Communications Officer, she knew there would be no negotiating. That suited her very well.

Indeed, she would have been disappointed if she had to sit through a long, painfully involved negotiation. She already knew that all of the Admirals and other high ranking officers of Starfleet had converged within the massive Admiralty building, safe behind shields that could stand up to the full output of an NX class battleship's phase cannons. They were secure and could make their plans while they awaited the arrival of the Fleet.

Across the wide courtyard, the Emperor, his Regent and their Council, Staff, Officers, Ministers and sycophants were safe behind equally stout barriers of force.

"Mister Stewart. Fire."

x

At his Helm board, Stewart pressed two buttons in turn. At the touch of the first, the searing blue beams of the Defiant's staggeringly powerful phasers leaped from the lower part of the primary hull to crash, almost simultaneously with projection, into the powerful defensive screens of the Admiralty building. But strong as those protective screens were, powerful enough to hold off a full barrage of an NX class battleship, they lasted exactly two seconds against the mind-shattering force of the Defiant's primaries.

The shield pierced like a soap bubble against a bullet, the intense beam lanced downward through floor after floor of unresisting masonry. The blue shaft of energy finally expended itself against the subterranean shield generators, which blew up enthusiastically, taking three floors of the lowest levels with them in a cataclysmic explosion.

But powerful as that beam was, as devastating as the explosive fireball it unleashed was, the Admiralty building was so large, so massive, that it could weather this much damage. It could not, however, weather the force that followed.

A moment after launching the supremely powerful phaser barrage, Defiant had unleashed one of its photon torpedoes, calibrated to bring force powerful enough to obliterate an opposing battleship down upon the now defenseless and holed building.

Being physical, it had to descend upon projectors, so the torpedo leaped into the hole so generously created by the now deactivated phaser, and unleashed its payload of antimatter in the center of the sprawling structure.

The explosion, normally vented in the depths of space, erupted with mind-shattering concussion within the huge structure, blowing it apart with a force that rocked everything in a ten kilometer radius, the deafening report heard for ten times that distance.

All residents in the city turned en mass to the central point as the concussion of the explosion reached them; those in the nearer kilometers actually feeling the force, most much too far away to know exactly what had happened. They were only able to see from distant vantage points a column of fire and smoke and debris rising into the cloudless sky.

They did not know the source of the ground quaking explosion, did not know its import. They only knew that something terrible, something absolutely catastrophic, had happened. Some more astute, or closer to the scene, realized it was something that would change their lives forever.

x

High above the city the huge Federation starship, so massive that each of its nacelles was as long as an NX battleship, circled Earth, serenely confident in its power. On the bridge, Hoshi Sato turned to her left, facing Commander Charles Tucker. "Do you still have a lock on them?"

"Yes, Ma'am," the man replied with terrible satisfaction. He had been waiting for this moment for a half hour.

"Mr. Stewart, fire the phasers. But be precise."

This was something she had made sure the man understood thoroughly. When he activated the terrible weapon again, it was on limited power and directed well away from the place where their targets were standing. It was no part of her plan to damage the Palace she intended to call home.

As the beam struck, the defensive shields surrounding the structure, which had barely protected it from the titanic explosion a quarter kilometer away, automatically shifted power to strengthen that section under attack. But it took a staggering amount of energy to maintain a defensive shield that could resist, even temporarily, the mind boggling force of the Defiant's phasers. And that power had to come from somewhere.

"Activate the transporter."

While it was true that a Terran transporter could not breach the shields that surrounded the Imperial Palace, that defensive barrier no longer provided uniform protection. Energy for the shield over the transporter's target area had been siphoned off to protect the area under attack, and this starship's terrible power could and did punch through the relatively flimsy shielding that remained, to scoop up the startled Emperor and Regent and to reconstitute their bodies deep in the bowels of the Defiant.

"They're in the brig," red shirted Charles Tucker, at the Engineering Station to her left, reported with a malevolent smile. Hoshi stood.

"Cease fire," she ordered with immense satisfaction. She turned to her Chief Bodyguard. "Let's not keep our illustrious Emperor waiting."