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fredbassettTitle : Confusion to our Enemies
Author : fredbassett
Fandom : Primeval
Rating : 15
Characters : Lester, Lorraine (a cast of thousands in Lester’s thoughts)
Word Count : 1,431
Disclaimer : Not mine, no money made, don’t sue.
Spoilers : Yep, pretty much for everything!
Summary : As Lester waits for yet another struggle to come to an end, he reflects on past antagonists.
A/N : 1) Written for Baddies Week on![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
primeval_denial 2) Denial friendly, naturally.
Lorraine Wickes put a cup of coffee down on a mat on Lester’s desk. “Good news, Sir James. The Minister has just tendered his resignation and it’s been accepted.”
Lester allowed a smile of satisfaction out of hiding. “Your sources remain as impeccable as ever, Miss Wickes. There are times I think you’re still drawing a salary from the security services as well as the anomaly project.” Talking her back into a job with the ARC after her sojourn with MI5 had certainly been one of his better ideas. Losing her services as a result of the Minister’s ill-judged closure of their operation had always rankled. By the time that unholy mess had been sorted out, she’d taken another contract. He often felt that things would have become nowhere near as problematic with Philip Burton if he’d had her watching his back.
Lorraine smiled her most inscrutable smile. The one Lester had spent hours trying – and failing – to replicate.
“Do let me know when the news goes public,” he added.
His personal assistant consulted her watch. “I believe that’ll be in two hours and 37 minutes.”
His smile broadened. “I think when that happens we can allow ourselves some of the Cognac I’ve been keeping for a special occasion.”
Two and a half hours was a long wait for the official announcement. Lester found it hard to settle to a perusal of the team’s latest reports. Matt’s were almost as laconic as Cutter’s and Becker had never met an item of punctuation that he hadn’t wanted to instantly abuse. Lester was considering issuing a memo to the entire team forbidding them to use anything more complicated than a full stop. And as for what most of them did to apostrophes – he shuddered. Better not to go there, that way lay madness.
He drew the line at doing anything quite so crass as putting his feet up on his own desk while he waited but, to be entirely honest, and to borrow a phrase from his teenage son, he really couldn’t be arsed to do anything other than idly flick through the files containing the ever-growing list of opponents the anomaly project had faced – with varying degrees of success – over the years.
First – and possibly foremost – had been Helen Cutter. At first, she had been little more than an irritant; an obvious thorn in Cutter’s side – and his – with her mind-games and misinformation. She’d played them all for her own ends, with the goal of that undiscovered country – the future, no doubt ever-uppermost in her devious mind. She’d found her way there eventually, leaving the collateral damage of Stephen Hart’s friendship with the man who had become his mentor in her wake. Lester knew he’d not paid sufficient heed to the damage that revelation had caused but, as ever, he’d been busy keeping the politicians off their backs and had made the mistake of thinking the team could be relied on to behave like adults.
Finding the future hadn’t been enough for Helen. She’d wanted to exploit it for her own ends, and when she’d learned how to do that, she’d then tried to meddle in the past. That hadn’t ended well for her but fortunately for what would eventually become homo sapiens, her attempt at genocide had failed. When Danny had finally brought news of her death, Lester had been very happy to consign her file to the draw marked ‘Inactive’.
Oliver Leek. Lester found it hard to restrain a shudder. Leek had very nearly been the death of him. He’d badly underestimated the wretched man and he hadn’t been the only one to pay a high price for that mistake. Stephen Hart would never regain full operational fitness but after a long, slow struggle back to health, he had finally accepted a role helping to train new recruits. Naturally, Tom Ryan had come as part of the package, which Lester had been pleased about. Ryan got on well with Becker, as Stephen did with Matt Anderson.
Thinking of Leek brought Caroline Steel to mind. Her latest CV was still in his in-tray. Her desire for something more than the minimum wage job she’d been stuck in at the time had led into far deeper water than she’d ever imagined, but from what Lester had seen of the woman since, she’d genuinely tried to make amends for leading Connor up the garden path and shutting Abby’s pet lizard in the fridge. Caroline had first applied to join the ARC before Connor and Abby had got stranded in the Cretaceous, but Lester had decided the wounds she’d left behind were still too raw, but now that the anomalies were public knowledge, she’d written to him again. As Cutter had recently disposed of yet another secretary, Lester was beginning to wonder if someone a little more robust might be a good fit for the Eccentric Academic. Cutter hadn’t taken too well to Matt filling the vacancy caused by Danny’s disappearance but as he’d still been recuperating from Helen’s somewhat dramatic divorce petition, he hadn’t been in any position to object. Not that that had stopped him…
The ARC had suffered more than its fair share of casualties over the years, but their opponents hadn’t exactly been spared. Christine Johnson’s reputation hadn’t survived the costly attack on her staff and her headquarters buy one of the creatures she’d been busy torturing, not that she’d seen her actions that way. After that, their political masters had been disillusioned with her failure to deliver the results she’d promised. She’d set too much store by the mysterious artefact, falling into the trap of believing it to be some sort of weaponisable power source. But then she’d never lacked ambition, just empathy, as her unfortunate subordinates had discovered. Captain Ross had lost both legs in a landmine explosion during his pursuit of the artefact and the ARC team and Captain Wilder had watched his own spleen being eaten by a future predator. He’d been lucky it hadn’t gone for his heart instead. Lester flipped through his file, wondering if the man might have anything to offer the project. At least he’d never underestimate something from beyond an anomaly again, and his file confirmed that he’d been a competent and well respected soldier, as Ross had been. Lester moved both of their files back to his in-tray for future cosideration
Ethan Dobrowsi, or should that be Patrick Quinn? The wretched man had cost Lester a good team leader and breaking in new ones was such a bore. He still had difficulty thinking of a murdering anarchist from Russia at the turn of the 20th century as Danny’s younger brother even though recent research by one of the historians on the team had now cast doubt on whether Dobrowski was in fact responsible for the half dozen or so murders laid at his door by contemporary newspaper reports. Fake news had apparently been just as prevalent in 1902 as it was now. Lester wondered whether Danny had caught up with his brother yet and if so, whether that had led to reconciliation or mutually assured destruction. The way the team was expanding, he might well be looking for a third team leader before the year was out. If Danny came back, the job would be his if he wanted it. Lester closed Patrick Quinn’s file and slipped it back into the drawer.
Philip Burton’s file was thicker. Lester had made it his business to learn everything he could about the billionaire scientist businessman foisted on him by the soon to be ex-Minister in yet another unwanted public-private partnership designed to allow the government play around with someone else’s money rather than their own. Jess Parker had proved to be excellent at ferreting out information on Burton, pointing up his insecurities and inadequacies, enabling Lester to stay a couple of steps ahead of him.
Burton’s laudable attempts to provide unlimited green energy hadn’t ended well, as anyone with knowledge of the anomalies could have predicted. The man had ultimately sacrificed himself, which had gone some way to redeeming him in Lester’s eyes, but it was just as likely that Burton’s noble self-sacrifice had been driven by the desire not to have to face the possible consequences of the catastrophe that might have occurred if Connor and Matt hadn’t brought New Dawn to an explosive conclusion. There was a footnote in Burton’s file on April Leonard, another woman given the job of spying on Connor and using flattery to drive a wedge between him and Abby. But if she’d lived, Lester very much doubted he would be contemplating offering her a job. She’d struck him as somewhat colder and more calculating than Caroline Steel. Not characteristics that Lester liked to surround himself with. He had enough of that sort of thing to deal with in the Home Office.
Speaking of which….
He looked at his watch. Only two minutes to go before the news broke about the Minister’s downfall. Lester removed a bottle of exceedingly good Cognac from his bottom drawer along with two glasses.
He’d just finished pouring two large measures when his email pinged, exactly on time.
He opened the message and started to read. When he’d finished, he and Lorraine clinked glasses and drank to the time-honoured toast:
Confusion to our enemies.
Author : fredbassett
Fandom : Primeval
Rating : 15
Characters : Lester, Lorraine (a cast of thousands in Lester’s thoughts)
Word Count : 1,431
Disclaimer : Not mine, no money made, don’t sue.
Spoilers : Yep, pretty much for everything!
Summary : As Lester waits for yet another struggle to come to an end, he reflects on past antagonists.
A/N : 1) Written for Baddies Week on
primeval_denial 2) Denial friendly, naturally.Lorraine Wickes put a cup of coffee down on a mat on Lester’s desk. “Good news, Sir James. The Minister has just tendered his resignation and it’s been accepted.”
Lester allowed a smile of satisfaction out of hiding. “Your sources remain as impeccable as ever, Miss Wickes. There are times I think you’re still drawing a salary from the security services as well as the anomaly project.” Talking her back into a job with the ARC after her sojourn with MI5 had certainly been one of his better ideas. Losing her services as a result of the Minister’s ill-judged closure of their operation had always rankled. By the time that unholy mess had been sorted out, she’d taken another contract. He often felt that things would have become nowhere near as problematic with Philip Burton if he’d had her watching his back.
Lorraine smiled her most inscrutable smile. The one Lester had spent hours trying – and failing – to replicate.
“Do let me know when the news goes public,” he added.
His personal assistant consulted her watch. “I believe that’ll be in two hours and 37 minutes.”
His smile broadened. “I think when that happens we can allow ourselves some of the Cognac I’ve been keeping for a special occasion.”
Two and a half hours was a long wait for the official announcement. Lester found it hard to settle to a perusal of the team’s latest reports. Matt’s were almost as laconic as Cutter’s and Becker had never met an item of punctuation that he hadn’t wanted to instantly abuse. Lester was considering issuing a memo to the entire team forbidding them to use anything more complicated than a full stop. And as for what most of them did to apostrophes – he shuddered. Better not to go there, that way lay madness.
He drew the line at doing anything quite so crass as putting his feet up on his own desk while he waited but, to be entirely honest, and to borrow a phrase from his teenage son, he really couldn’t be arsed to do anything other than idly flick through the files containing the ever-growing list of opponents the anomaly project had faced – with varying degrees of success – over the years.
First – and possibly foremost – had been Helen Cutter. At first, she had been little more than an irritant; an obvious thorn in Cutter’s side – and his – with her mind-games and misinformation. She’d played them all for her own ends, with the goal of that undiscovered country – the future, no doubt ever-uppermost in her devious mind. She’d found her way there eventually, leaving the collateral damage of Stephen Hart’s friendship with the man who had become his mentor in her wake. Lester knew he’d not paid sufficient heed to the damage that revelation had caused but, as ever, he’d been busy keeping the politicians off their backs and had made the mistake of thinking the team could be relied on to behave like adults.
Finding the future hadn’t been enough for Helen. She’d wanted to exploit it for her own ends, and when she’d learned how to do that, she’d then tried to meddle in the past. That hadn’t ended well for her but fortunately for what would eventually become homo sapiens, her attempt at genocide had failed. When Danny had finally brought news of her death, Lester had been very happy to consign her file to the draw marked ‘Inactive’.
Oliver Leek. Lester found it hard to restrain a shudder. Leek had very nearly been the death of him. He’d badly underestimated the wretched man and he hadn’t been the only one to pay a high price for that mistake. Stephen Hart would never regain full operational fitness but after a long, slow struggle back to health, he had finally accepted a role helping to train new recruits. Naturally, Tom Ryan had come as part of the package, which Lester had been pleased about. Ryan got on well with Becker, as Stephen did with Matt Anderson.
Thinking of Leek brought Caroline Steel to mind. Her latest CV was still in his in-tray. Her desire for something more than the minimum wage job she’d been stuck in at the time had led into far deeper water than she’d ever imagined, but from what Lester had seen of the woman since, she’d genuinely tried to make amends for leading Connor up the garden path and shutting Abby’s pet lizard in the fridge. Caroline had first applied to join the ARC before Connor and Abby had got stranded in the Cretaceous, but Lester had decided the wounds she’d left behind were still too raw, but now that the anomalies were public knowledge, she’d written to him again. As Cutter had recently disposed of yet another secretary, Lester was beginning to wonder if someone a little more robust might be a good fit for the Eccentric Academic. Cutter hadn’t taken too well to Matt filling the vacancy caused by Danny’s disappearance but as he’d still been recuperating from Helen’s somewhat dramatic divorce petition, he hadn’t been in any position to object. Not that that had stopped him…
The ARC had suffered more than its fair share of casualties over the years, but their opponents hadn’t exactly been spared. Christine Johnson’s reputation hadn’t survived the costly attack on her staff and her headquarters buy one of the creatures she’d been busy torturing, not that she’d seen her actions that way. After that, their political masters had been disillusioned with her failure to deliver the results she’d promised. She’d set too much store by the mysterious artefact, falling into the trap of believing it to be some sort of weaponisable power source. But then she’d never lacked ambition, just empathy, as her unfortunate subordinates had discovered. Captain Ross had lost both legs in a landmine explosion during his pursuit of the artefact and the ARC team and Captain Wilder had watched his own spleen being eaten by a future predator. He’d been lucky it hadn’t gone for his heart instead. Lester flipped through his file, wondering if the man might have anything to offer the project. At least he’d never underestimate something from beyond an anomaly again, and his file confirmed that he’d been a competent and well respected soldier, as Ross had been. Lester moved both of their files back to his in-tray for future cosideration
Ethan Dobrowsi, or should that be Patrick Quinn? The wretched man had cost Lester a good team leader and breaking in new ones was such a bore. He still had difficulty thinking of a murdering anarchist from Russia at the turn of the 20th century as Danny’s younger brother even though recent research by one of the historians on the team had now cast doubt on whether Dobrowski was in fact responsible for the half dozen or so murders laid at his door by contemporary newspaper reports. Fake news had apparently been just as prevalent in 1902 as it was now. Lester wondered whether Danny had caught up with his brother yet and if so, whether that had led to reconciliation or mutually assured destruction. The way the team was expanding, he might well be looking for a third team leader before the year was out. If Danny came back, the job would be his if he wanted it. Lester closed Patrick Quinn’s file and slipped it back into the drawer.
Philip Burton’s file was thicker. Lester had made it his business to learn everything he could about the billionaire scientist businessman foisted on him by the soon to be ex-Minister in yet another unwanted public-private partnership designed to allow the government play around with someone else’s money rather than their own. Jess Parker had proved to be excellent at ferreting out information on Burton, pointing up his insecurities and inadequacies, enabling Lester to stay a couple of steps ahead of him.
Burton’s laudable attempts to provide unlimited green energy hadn’t ended well, as anyone with knowledge of the anomalies could have predicted. The man had ultimately sacrificed himself, which had gone some way to redeeming him in Lester’s eyes, but it was just as likely that Burton’s noble self-sacrifice had been driven by the desire not to have to face the possible consequences of the catastrophe that might have occurred if Connor and Matt hadn’t brought New Dawn to an explosive conclusion. There was a footnote in Burton’s file on April Leonard, another woman given the job of spying on Connor and using flattery to drive a wedge between him and Abby. But if she’d lived, Lester very much doubted he would be contemplating offering her a job. She’d struck him as somewhat colder and more calculating than Caroline Steel. Not characteristics that Lester liked to surround himself with. He had enough of that sort of thing to deal with in the Home Office.
Speaking of which….
He looked at his watch. Only two minutes to go before the news broke about the Minister’s downfall. Lester removed a bottle of exceedingly good Cognac from his bottom drawer along with two glasses.
He’d just finished pouring two large measures when his email pinged, exactly on time.
He opened the message and started to read. When he’d finished, he and Lorraine clinked glasses and drank to the time-honoured toast:
Confusion to our enemies.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2017-09-01 08:34 pm (UTC)Lester + Lorraine = unbeatable.
no subject
Date: 2017-09-02 08:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-09-01 08:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-09-02 08:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-09-01 10:55 pm (UTC)Lester's summation of their enemies is fantastic - really interesting little short character studies of the adversaries that also throw a lot of light on him. And I would pay good money to see Caroline Steel organising the Eccentric Academic!
no subject
Date: 2017-09-02 08:57 am (UTC)The way I see it is that when the ARC was shut down, Lorraine took a job with MI5 and so when the ARC reopened, her had to entice her over.
The short pen-portraits were rather fun to do.
no subject
Date: 2017-09-02 07:57 am (UTC)Lester and Lorraine to make a formidable team. It's nice to know that he values her (and that she values herself, since it took a bit of persuading to get her back!).
Lester's ruminations on his former adversaries was lovely. He really did have them all pegged.
LOL Perfect toast.
no subject
Date: 2017-09-02 08:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-09-02 09:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-09-02 03:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-09-03 02:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-09-03 05:11 pm (UTC)