Asset remains unwaveringly loyal to the cause and considers death an acceptable outcome.
Their odds were worse than a dabo game rigged in favor of the house. Seska would laugh, if it wasn't completely absurd that she was about to be phaser-canon blasted into the pre-warp age by her own people.
A lesser agent would try to find a way to indicate to the Glinn and his troopers that they were firing on an undercover Cardassian. A lesser agent would have washed out of training and tainted their future children with the mark of weakness.
Seska had graduated with highly classified distinction, thank you very much.
She fired at four troopers blocking their exit from the depot. One went down with a severe phaser burn to his abdomen, another dropped when she caught him with a beam to the face. The first would live, if he received proper medical care quickly; the latter was probably dead already.
"Six more incoming," Torres slid behind the cargo crate beside her, looking unseeingly at the corpse of Rolans, who just seconds ago had perished at the end of a phase-disrupter blast.
Rolans should have kept his head down.
Seska fired another volley before ducking low, "How did they know we'd be here?"
The question was sincere. She hadn't been able to meet with Holtat in four weeks.
The half-Klingon was out of breath, but formidable, firing shots in between trying to rig a site-to-site back to the Val Jean. Without looking up from either task, she did her best to hypothesize.
"My bet is the Federation. Ayala thinks they've found a way to track cell movements. Then they let the Cardassians do their dirty work for them."
Most likely.
The Federation excelled at pretending it was above the moral failings of non-member species, whatever morality meant to them, but it was just another organization made up of arrogant men and women at the end of the day. One where someone wearing admiral pips could easily justify letting their once-enemy pacify terrorist cells.
"Ghuy'," B'Elanna swore, slapping the transceiver she was trying to siphon power from.
"What do you need?" Seska demanded, monitoring a gap in the Cardassian offensive created by Ayala and Tuvok. This was a munitions depot, one the Cardassians were meant to leave unguarded (what a joke), but it should have something Torres could work her magic with.
"A miracle."
"Come on B, give me a request I can actually work with."
There was a glint in the engineer's eyes. True fear, the kind that Torres liked to pretend she never felt but would sometimes share with Seska. When she needed Seska's bravado to see them both through.
"Anything with power."
Seska cast her eyes around and spotted an active terminal ten meters away. It wouldn't have a lot of juice, but it might just be enough.
"That, I can do. Cover me."
Running, half bent over while dodging phase-disrupter rifle fire was a skill hard earned, and Seska excelled at it. Twice, a pulse passed too close to her head for comfort — once it seared the skin of her ear — but she was able to duck behind the terminal and begin prying into its guts.
"You're going to owe me one," she muttered darkly, just before doing the dumbest thing she possibly could.
The thing about Cardassian engineers was that they never thought through safety guidelines the way the Federation's did. If time with the Maquis had opened her eyes to anything, it was that her people could learn a thing or two about the safety life cycle of systems.
All of which meant that Torres' power relay was going to come at a cost.
Seska bit the inside of her cheek and ignored the smell of burning flesh as she pried it loose.
…
Federation parties made her itch. A mandated counselor had told her once that it was a physiological response to being surrounded by people she thought were better than her. Seska thought that the man didn't know how the Cardassian mind worked. It was clearly a physiological response to being surrounded by people that had or would look at her and decide if she had redeemed herself enough to be included in polite company.
That they thought this was their right — no, their moral obligation — would call her to violence if she was still a relic of the bygone era of imperial political thought that had defined her people.
She wasn't. Over twenty years on Voyager had changed her, enough to see the error of her old ways.
Thinking of the shame gave her indigestion, which in turned annoyed her. She was still Seska, after all. Compared to the average Starfleet officer, she had the moral depth and clarity of a puddle of mud in a desert.
"Your wife is too young," while the woman in question went off to mingle with the Wildmans, Seska took the opportunity to pick on the Doctor.
The alternative would be to insult Paris, but there was no fun in picking on a man whose life had soured.
Besides, the hologram liked her well enough to take the jab for what it was, a plea for momentary distraction from the other party goers.
"Technically, I'm only in my thirties," he smiled at her in greeting and handed her a flute of champagne.
"Has she even graduated college yet?"
"Graduate school, in fact. A PhD in cultural xenogeography. She's on faculty at Oxford," he was almost laughing at her now, silently challenging her to do better.
Seska realized she was scowling and threw back the entire glass. To hell with waiting for a toast. The dead weren't going to be deax for long, and the living didn't need their egos stroked.
He clinked his own glass against hers and followed suit, "Not bad for a piece of dung who refused to change himself, hmm?"
"Stop bragging, before I find a way to shave another inch of your height."
"Another?" this time he did laugh.
Then, after savoring the fine vintage of a second glass of champagne, the Doctor decided their once a year tête-à-tête was over, "The Admiral is looking for you."
"Better let her find me, then," Seska ignored the attendant walking by with a tray to collect cast offs and pushed her empty crystal back into the Doctor's free hand.
She smirked when he huffed at her retreating back, but the expression melted off her face when she spotted Harry. Despite being ten years younger than her, he didn't look it. Time in the captain's chair had grayed him — it had added a few more wrinkles too.
He nodded at her as he moved away from the friendly grasp of the woman she was looking for.
"Admiral," she greeted.
Once, Janeway had asked Seska to call her Kathryn. That had been years ago, when they were nearing the end of their return to the Alpha Quadrant, back when Seska was one left who regularly challenged her.
Seska had never complied. They weren't peers. Admiral had none when she was the Captain, and she certainly didn't have any now. The only candidate had long ago started scribbling demented conspiracies on his room walls.
"Seska, I'm glad you could make it," Janeway did look happy to see her. Perhaps it was due to genuine — hard won — fondness. More likely it was because she expected to receive good news.
Well, who could say no to that?
"Wouldn't miss it for the world," Seska's tone implied the opposite, but Janeway laughed and guided her to a loud corner with a gentle hand on her arm.
"It's done," Seska muttered, faux smile on her face as the Admiral regaled her with stories of the latest generation of brats the crew and their children had popped out. As always, no one was looking, but someone was watching.
Despite the overlap in their talking, Janeway heard exactly what Seska meant her to. The chrono deflector was hers, courtesy of a Cardassian once again taking on the facial ridges of another species.
Klingon this time. Which had been about as fun as interrogation resistance training. Remember the teeth alone was enough to make Seska shudder.
At least this time it had only been for eight months.
When the Admiral had asked her to steal the device, she didn't say what it was for. Seska wasn't an idiot. She knew what it looked like to drown in regret and self-blame, and what it would take to make it all go away. Janeway planned to risk her life on some pipe dream of changing the past
Good riddance.
Maybe this time she would get Voyager home with her pet drone — with Torres — alive.
If that meant Seska disappeared in a puff of timeline collapse or spent the rest of her life in a Federation penal colony, then so be it. At least then she might be able to say she'd settled her debts with the woman who'd let her choose the better path.
Author's Note: Voyager Week, Day 4, Time Travel. Set pre-series and 7x25 Endgame.