Alven nodded once, quick and firm. Good, Traan was willing. The plan arranged itself in his head the way evidence always did: tidy, prioritised, with contingencies for when things went sideways.

“Right,” he said, sliding his tricorder closed and tapping open a secure comm loop that would feed the rec lounge’s holo-emitters and the table-side sensors into his console down the hall. His voice stayed low; there was no point in announcing their hand. “You play the rube. Make it obvious you don’t know the openings, lose a couple of quick games, look frustrated – let him coax you into going another round. Say something like, ‘I’m rusty, you’ll teach me one of those tricks, yeah?’ Keep it casual. Give him a carrot: the chance to show off. Don’t volunteer the loss, don’t refuse a rematch. Let him fish.”

As he spoke, his hands moved steadily across a PADD. “I’ll be watching three feeds. The holographic fabric records the intended move and the actual board-state update; the two should be in lockstep. If there’s sleight, we’ll see a mismatch. A move registered on the local console that never propagates, or an emitter patch overriding the confirmation packet. I’ll also ping the table for micro-haptic anomalies; someone fiddling with a manual input panel leaves a signature.”

Alven leaned closer, his voice dropping into the clipped cadence of a man used to coaching rookies through tough cases. “Script-wise, you drop three lines: one to bait, one to flatter, one to provoke. Bait: ‘I haven’t played in years, you’ll go easy?’ Flatter: ‘Nice move, teach me that?’ Provoke, only if he starts leaning on you: ‘You sure you’re not just lucky?’ Keep it self-deprecating. Make him believe he’s better. Let him escalate.”

He set the final pieces in motion: a soft perimeter alert to security on a discrete channel, medical on standby, and a low-level alert tied to the promenade’s maintenance consoles so he could flag any board-side hardware anomalies in real time. The hum of the symbiont’s memories pressed at the edge of his thoughts. Old cases, old cons, and steadied him. He’d seen this pattern too many times before.

Some might say he was overreacting for a simple matter of cheating. But Alven thought those people could fuck off. Crime was crime.

Alven stood, arms folded, and fixed Traan with a measured look. “Ready?”

“Lets do it” Traan nodded and headed out.

After about 10 minutes Traan was uttering the 3rd provocational line. They were about half way through the second match at this point and Traan was nearly out of pawns already.

“I’m not even seeing half of these coming…but then again I’m still kind of new to the game.” Traan said.

“No worries, you can always pay off your debt with extra duty shifts if you want, I’m easy that way.” Said the con artist, who was actually 5/8th Betazoid.

“Yeah…I could couldn’t I?” Traan said without even realizing that the guy has just planted that thought in his brain.

That was enough. Alven slammed his hand against the console.

“Computer,” he barked, “lock down Rec Lounge 13-K. Isolate all holo-emitters and freeze the chess program. Security confirmation: Alven, Torias, authorization gamma-seven-nine-delta.”

The station responded with a crisp tone: “Confirmed. Area lockdown in progress.”

Inside the lounge, the chessboard froze mid-match, holographic pieces flickering and vanishing into static. Bart’s smug smile faltered as the lights above him snapped from ambient gold to harsh white.

Alven was already out the door.

He covered the distance down the corridor in under twenty seconds, his boots ringing hard on the deck plating. When the lounge doors hissed open, the room was already half-standing in confusion. Bart rose from his chair, hands half-raised in performative innocence.

“Something wrong, Commander?” he asked, voice steady but his body instinctively backing away.

“Yeah,” Alven said, stalking forward. “You’re done hustling my crew.”

He circled the table once, eyes darting from the holo-projector core to the side console. There it was, the slim data relay, almost invisible against the trim, plugged into the auxiliary port. Alven plucked it free, held it up between two fingers. “Signal spoofer. Cute. You were feeding in override commands faster than the system could log them. And when that didn’t work, you leaned on telepathy to close the deal.”

Bart’s mouth twitched. “You can’t prove…”

Alven cut him off. “Already did. The logs show the emitter irregularities, the routing path, and the neural field variance spike the moment you tried your little mind trick.” He stepped closer, his voice dropping to something low and sharp. “That’s fraud, misuse of telepathic influence, and extortion against Starfleet personnel. You know what that means?”

Bart’s eyes darted to the door, calculating an escape. Too late. Two gold-collared security officers were already blocking the exit.

“It means,” Alven finished “you’re done. Lieutenant Bart, you’re under arrest for conduct unbecoming an officer and exploitation of crew personal gain, we used to call that extortion. You’ll get your chance to talk it through with JAG.”

He turned to Traan, who had leaned back in his chair with a satisfied smile.

“Good work,” Alven said, the faintest hint of a grin tugging at the corner of his mouth. “You played that game perfectly.”

“Yeah, so, the thing there is. I dont even play chess, sir. Read a one pager on my padd as I walked down the corridor like 15 minutes ago.” Traan chuckled. The Great Chess Lounge caper of 2402 had been solved.