So, if Challengers isn't a tennis threesome movie, what the fuck IS it?
It's a fanwritten Star Trek novel that, unlike canon, acknowledges that the Dominion is made up of people and gives those people interiority. It begins with Odo, seventy years after having returned to the Great Link, activating a Vorta named Cerin who he plans to raise as both his child and his diplomatic representative in the Alpha Quadrant.
The first few chapters are about her exploring the ship, meeting and learning from the Vorta who crew it (among them, a new Weyoun iteration and a curious yet socially inept physician named Vanath) as well as from Odo himself, but it quickly escalates when the ship picks up another crewmate who turns out to be a Founder named Resolve, playing undercover boss.
The Link, despite allowing Odo to pursue his project of gentle parenting a Vorta, is divided on how much they like this project, and has sent a spy to figure out exactly how subversive this project is and how much the Founders should be shaking in their goop about their servants having autonomy.
Odo finds out that Resolve is really no more than a teenager by Founder standards, though, so instead of dismissing them back to the Link with a warning like he planned, he takes them and Cerin for a family bonding vacation on a planet called Selore. Selore is managed by the Link as a sort of nature preserve, but seems to be lacking its native sophont species, which is revealed to be the species that is now known as the Jem'Hadar.
Cerin returns home to the ship with Odo (and Resolve, who has been convinced by this discovery to join the cause of unfucking the Dominion, because boy, that's fucked up!) But when she returns home, she's under a time crunch to prepare for her first evaluation, which is quite literally a life or death matter for a Vorta Aspirant.
In the background, two Jem'Hadar soldiers stationed on a military outpost orbiting Selore have stolen a shuttle and escaped to the surface. It turns out that the planet itself seems to be having a strange biological and psychological effect on the Jem'Hadar who escape there, mutating them into "something that's not a Jem'Hadar" (Resolve's words) and drastically lowering their aggression. The Founders are responding to this by making preparations to bomb Selore from orbit, killing EVERYTHING on the surface, whether it's a rogue Jem'Hadar or not.
Next up: Resolve drags Weyoun along on a desperate mission to stop the bombardment, and is pulled into the Selora independence movement in the process.
If you want to read it, it's >here<. If you don't, you have the rest of AO3. No hard feelings. Just don't make it my problem.
