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[writesandramblings]

The Captain’s Secret - p.96

“Nowhere and Everywhere”

A/N: This concludes the events of episode 13, "What's Past is Prologue." I swear on my life we're almost done. Five chapters remain.

For the record, I think the difference in cranial size makes the show concept referenced in this chapter one of the least credulous "twists" in TV history because brain matter. Where did it go. Was it compressed? How did that not show up on a scan? It's brain matter! How do you not end up with a drooling mess when you compress or remove brain matter? Surely there's a difference in the neurological structures between species that shows up on a brain scan... /rant

Full Chapter List Part 1 - Objects in Motion << 95 - Maybe I’m Amazed 97 - Facing the Music >>

Lalana found Groves asleep in the front of the lab, his head resting on his basketball, a line of drool trailing down onto the metal surface of Mischkelovitz's desk. She considered waking him, updating him as to the status of things in the other room, but she decided to sit in Mischkelovitz's chair and watch him sleep instead. Dreaming fascinated her. It was not an action lului had the capacity to do. She wondered what thoughts were running through Groves' head. Many times she had watched her Gabriel Lorca sleep, and sometimes, when he woke, he even remembered what he had been dreaming and described it when she asked.

Eventually Groves stirred, wiping the drool from the corner of his mouth as he sat up. "Hey," he said in greeting. "You want some tea?"

The delicate aroma of the pu-erh tantalized the surface of her cells as it brewed. It really was no different to any other foodstuff from her perspective, but the hot temperature was reason enough for her to enjoy the experience of drinking it. "Perhaps you could bring Gabriel a cup."

"Nuh uh, I'm not brewing this for him."

"It is a shame you two do not get along. You are so alike."

Groves snorted. "You realize that's an insult."

"Not to me it is not."

He poured out Lalana's cup first, piping hot, and then his own, which he left sitting on the table to cool. She dipped her tongue into the scalding hot liquid, absorbing the mixture of tea particles and water. She could have, if she wanted, strained out the particles of tea from the water, or the reverse.

Groves leaned over his cup and breathed into it, letting the steam wash over his face. "So," he said, settling down into his chair. "They kick you out, too, or have you finally had enough of all the bullshit?"

Lalana tapped her fingers and let her tail drift back and forth like a stalk of wheat in the wind. "I will never have enough of it for as long as I live."

"That's a long time."

Her tongue clicked. "Yes, it is!"

They sat in silence, sipping tea. Groves noticed Lalana's padd on the workbench. Just prior to Lorca and O'Malley's arrival, Lalana had come out from her quarters with the padd saying she had noticed something unusual. "What was that thing you wanted to show me earlier?"

"Oh! There was a glitch in Brig Chess." Lalana pressed her tail against the padd, turning it on, but the program did not load. It stalled out on a "no connection available" screen. Brig Chess resided in the central computer core, which they were presently cut off from.

"Probably just wear and tear on your padd," said Groves. The fault had to lie in the hardware because Brig Chess was a perfectly coded program. "If you wanna play a game, maybe we can, I dunno, use some of Melly's junk as chess pieces?" There were plenty of bits and bobs around, the scattered remnants of Mischkelovitz's many forays into cloak detection research.

"I would rather not, I am still recovering from helping Gabriel and I do not feel up to a game. It is very taxing, redirecting internal resources to affected cellular regions."

Groves hummed in disinterest, unsympathetic to the lului's self-inflicted plight, and looked over at the door to Lalana's quarters. "She about done in there?"

"Emellia has finished with the surgery and is now working with the spores in the wall. That is why I left. It was too bright to look at the spores directly. Like a halo of supernovas."

"What's she doing?"

"Something involving particle charge. She became very excited about it after we watched the message from her future self."

The veil of disinterest lifted. Groves sat straight up and spilled a small quantity of tea onto his leg in the process, wiping at the liquid hot spot with his hand to distract from the faintly scalding sensation as he abandoned his cup. "We have the message?"

"Yes. Gabriel has it. If you like, I am sure they would let you see the message, too."

Groves considered that. "Eh." He shrugged. There were still forty hours left on Mischkelovitz's protocol and whatever tea party was going on in the next room was not one he had an interest in joining. Not while he had a perfectly good cup to finish out here. "In a bit. We got plenty of time to kill!"

Lalana's eyes glinted mischievously as she asked, "Will this be first- or second-degree murder?"

"Neither. I'll represent us. Guaranteed acquittal."

Lalana clicked her tongue and rolled back on her haunches, recalling a conversation with the original Lorca. "I doubt they have a murder sentence long enough to be truly punitive to me."

"Yeah, but you've got money! They could always go after damages. Take your ship, for example."

The clicking ceased and Lalana gripped the back of Mischkelovitz's chair and curled her tail around it. "I am very much looking forward to being back on my ship." Saru's shipwide announcement regarding the possibility of jumping back on the wave of the mycelial reactor's destruction had given everyone something to look forward to. There were still particles of the other Gabriel Lorca present in the dusty corners of the Gabriella. "Though, it will mean that Gabriel becomes no one again. Do you know, Emellia said the message was about saving Gabriel the whole time? Apparently, the words 'I can't save anyone' were a reference to Captain Nemo."

Squinting thoughtfully, Groves said, "Huh, yeah. In qoryan, that'd be 'no one can be saved.' And, well, nemo est supra leges! Geez, now that's got a double meaning, too. Wait. Why's he Captain Nemo?" Groves jabbed his thumb towards Lalana's door.

"Because Gabriel's favorite book is Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, he is a captain, and in our universe, he is also no one."

If Groves had still been holding his cup, he would have dropped it. His jaw went slack.

Lalana watched the spreading despair on Groves' face. "What is wrong, John?"

"We're..." He worked it over in his head again to be sure. Allan thought the timeline had corrected itself and expected Lorca to die. If history said Lorca lived, this whole timeline would become a manifest paradox. "We're the remnant. Oh, god. It's us." He covered his mouth with his hand. The only thing keeping them extant was the null time bubble.

Lalana pressed her knuckles together. "I do not think that is the case." Allan might have been lying when he said the message was the remnant, but Lalana was looking at this from the perspective of a lului, which told her something very different.

"Unless!" snapped Groves, jerking his finger into the air. "History stays the same." His every word was punctuated with determined intensity. He dropped his gaze away from Lalana, ruminating a moment, then grabbed the padd from the table and opened Brig Chess.

The main chess program remained inaccessible, but Groves didn't need the main program. He just needed the initialization skin on the padd. He began to program a series of commands to automatically trigger once the padd's connection to the central database was restored.

"What are you doing?" asked Lalana, leaning forward and peering over the top of the padd. From her perspective, Groves was programming upside-down, but she had no difficulty reading the letters on the screen at this angle, even if she did not understand what all the numbers and symbols meant.

"Everything must go," declared Groves. "Anything that'd clue a historian into what's going on. All the footage in the lab since we got here, all the footage in the hallway... Too obvious. I'll wipe it all. Just make it look like a... power surge. Burn up all the security footage and backups since our last data transmit."

This suited Lalana just fine because it proved the thing she had been suspecting for a while now: once the deed was done, it was done. They had been past the point of no return from the moment she encountered the Triton. None of them could see the bigger picture in the moment, but they were all pieces who had been moved into place by someone who could. Someone with a very long perspective indeed.

The issue of the security feeds was now solved, but not the source of the problem. Groves put the padd down. "Listen. I have to tell you something. You're not gonna like it. That man in there? He is a threat to our entire existence. If we don't get rid of him, and someone finds out he's not dead?" Groves brought both his hands up and imitated an explosion. "Poof! We vanish in a paradox. He can't be alive."

"Then I will make sure he is dead," said Lalana.

Groves blinked. He had expected at least some pushback to his latest time travel murder proposal. "So, how do you wanna do it? Phaser or some sort of injection... Vent the atmosphere?" He shuddered at the thought and realized if they were going to do this, he was not going to be the one to pull the trigger.

Lalana clicked her tongue. "There is no need. We have a perfectly good dead body just outside."

Einar Larsson. She was proposing they pass off Larsson as Lorca. "You don't understand. If he's walking around—"

"I understand perfectly. My mission is clear. I must make sure history believes Gabriel Lorca is dead. I know I can do this because I have already done it. If I had not, we would not be having this conversation."

It was partly true. Time was a flat circle, nonlinear, all points happening at once, except right now, they were in a bubble that was not permitting information to escape. Once the bubble popped, either Lalana was right, or they were all dead. No, not dead. Nonexistent.

Groves had questioned the value of existence for most of his life. A few times, the answers had been force-fed him by O'Malley and others who found existence worthwhile and insisted he fall into line with their values. He acquiesced not because he agreed, but because he wanted them to be right and to figure out whatever it was everyone else saw in life that made it so worthwhile and meaningful. Thirty-seven years of enduring futility. Now that he found himself suddenly confronted by the end of all the futility—potentially forever—he did not want it to end. He wasn't even sure why, just that he desperately wanted to stay alive and keep existing. Maybe just to prove he could.

There was one big problem with Lalana's idea, emphasis on the big. Larsson's size was unmistakable. "No one's gonna believe Einar is Lorca."

"They will when I am done with his body."

"Oh, god," said Groves, covering his mouth again, this time to fight the liquid bile rising at the horror of her suggestion. Blood drained from his skin, turning him an ashy brown. "He's your best friend!"

"He is," said Lalana. "He was dying, John. At least this way his death has served a purpose."

It was perfect lului logic  Groves still struggled with it. "You used him," he said in a small voice.

"I did, but because we loved each other, he was happy to be used. It was of benefit to us both."

Groves shook his head. Was that what love was supposed to be? He realized he didn't know. He still wanted no part of this, but if this was the price of preserving reality, then he had to pay it. The alternative was unthinkable in a wholly literal and terrifying sense.

Out of nowhere, the computer said, "Fifteen. Fourteen. Thirteen..."

Groves startled. "Computer!"

"I think it is time," said Lalana, hopping down from Mischkelovitz's chair and pushing it aside to access the passage into the wall. "I will go and fetch Gabriel's hair dye. Please inform him of what we must do and bring Einar's body inside." She ducked into the wall and disappeared as the countdown ended.

The prospect of dragging Larsson inside was daunting. Groves grimaced and went to the interior door to ask for help.

The scene that awaited him was not what he expected. Lorca, alert and propped upright, and Mischkelovitz collapsed into a twisted lump in his arms. O'Malley slumped on the floor next to the coffee table. Cables running from the couch to the wall and an exposed wall panel revealing tubes filled with the remnants of what had to be Prototaxites stellaviatori spores, but they were green instead of blue.

Even stranger, Lorca looked relieved to see Groves. "Get Melly to sickbay," he ordered.

"Don't call her—"

"Now!" barked Lorca, gasping at the resulting pain.

Groves lifted Mischkelovitz up as easily as a paper butterfly, his eyes widening at the sensation of dead weight in his arms.

The comms sounded. "Bridge to O'Malley. What's your status?"

"Don't answer," hissed Groves to Lorca, then shouted, "Can't talk! Call back later. Groves out." The comm cut off and he started towards the door. "You say anything to anyone and we're all dead! Got it?" He did not wait for a response and went tearing out of the room.

Lorca sat there, mildly amused by Groves' outburst. This was not ideal, but once he cleared everything up with Saru, Discovery would realize helping Lorca was its best chance at surviving in this universe. They would rally Lorca's supporters and cement control of the Charon. Then he could get back to what was really important: executing Georgiou. Burnham was going to feel like a total idiot once she heard the truth about the emperor. Let her, he decided. She needed to know there were consequences for betraying him.

A minute later, Groves was back. "What the hell! She has a heartbeat, but..." He shook his head back and forth in denial. Zero neural activity.

"Mally," prompted Lorca.

Groves grumbled in qoryan—it sounded to Lorca like swearing—but managed. O'Malley was not much bigger than his sister.

The lights suddenly shifted and the computer calmly intoned, "Black alert, black alert."

"Shit," said Groves.

"Stamets?" asked Lorca, because last he knew, Discovery was incapable of performing any spore jumps owing to the incapacitation of its mycelial-modified navigator.

Groves ignored Lorca as he headed towards the door. "Computer! Override all Lab 26 operational protocols to my voiceprint only. Authorization Game..."

The door slid shut. Lorca stared a moment, a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, then slid his legs down from the couch to the floor. "Lorca to bridge." No response. "Computer, status report." Nothing. Lorca got up from the couch, fighting the reeling sensation in his head, and used the coffee table as support to reach the door. He hit the controls. Nothing again.

Discovery shuddered under an impact and Lorca half-slid, half-fell to the floor. He was trapped, just like the little girl in Mischkelovitz's story.

The command to access the system override turned out to be a sequence of attempted moves on the Brig Chess practice game screen. Petrellovitz found the sequence buried in the middle of the program's code and intentionally mislabeled. Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, commit, cancel. She executed the code through the program's interface and just like that, she was into Discovery's data.

The first thing she looked for was important information. The most highly-guarded files, the secrets coded for the captain's eyes only, and anything that had high levels of encryption. There were plenty of files about the spore drive to parse. Petrellovitz skimmed past them. She hardly needed instruction on how to conduct mycelial transports.

There was a file about her neighbor in the brig that made for some interesting reading. Normally Petrellovitz had little regard for the medical sciences, steeped as they were in interpersonal interaction, but this one represented a real threat to the Terran Empire. Aliens capable of disguising themselves as humans well enough to fool medical sensors. Disgusting.

Also potentially useful. Petrellovitz did a mental reassessment of the Klingon woman, willing to admit L'Rell was a scientist worthy of some begrudging respect for her accomplishments in this area.

She also accessed her own personnel log. It took a moment to locate because her counterpart's surname was "Mischkelovitz," but her given name was still "Emellia." When Petrellovitz opened the file, she found her own face looking back at her, entirely unblemished, and could not help but stare in dead-eyed wonder. Stranger still, this "Mischkelovitz" had been married—to "Milosz Mischkelovitz," who could only be Milosz Mieszała.

Petrellovitz's memories of Milosz were of a depraved, perverse, cruel boy who had given her all her early scars. They had been bitter rivals up until the moment of Milosz's death. She missed him sometimes. Hating him had been the highlight of her childhood.

Petrellovitz's foray into the "what ifs" of her counterpart's life was interrupted by the sensation of Discovery dropping out of warp and firing its weapons. She switched to the bridge log and read through the action. It was a little dry absent the sharp tones of command under pressure; the computer rendered every line with only the most basic punctuation.

[OPS] LTJG OWOSEKUN: Sir, incoming emergency transport. [CMD] CDR SARU: Is it Burnham? [OPS] LTJG OWOSEKUN: No. It's the colonel, and... The containment field is still up. [CMD] CDR SARU: Mr. Bryce, find out O'Malley's status. [COMM] LTJG BRYCE: Yes, sir. Bridge to Transporter Room 1. [OPS] LTJG OWOSEKUN: Sir. Burnham did it. The containment field is down. [CMD] CDR SARU: Get her back, now. [OPS] LTJG OWOSEKUN: I can't get a lock, captain. I'm working on it. [CMD] CDR SARU: Work faster. Mr. Rhys, torpedo status. [TACT] LT RHYS: Armed and ready to launch. [COMM] LTJG BRYCE: Copy. Bridge to O'Malley. What's your status? [OPS] LTJG OWOSEKUN: Detecting a comm signal. I've got her. [CMD] CDR SARU: Get her out of there now. [OPS] LTJG OWOSEKUN: She's onboard. [CMD] CDR SARU: Black alert! [ENG] CDR AIRIAM: Aye, captain. [OPS] LTJG OWOSEKUN: The Terran ship is targeting us, sir. [CMD] CDR SARU: It's now or never, Lt. Detmer. [NAV] LT DETMER: Aye, captain. [TACT] LT RHYS: Locked on, captain. [CMD] CDR SARU: Fire all three. [TACT] LT RHYS: Aye, sir. [CMD] CDR SARU: Warp speed, now. [NAV] LT DETMER: Yes, sir.

There was a tremendous shudder as Discovery was racked by a series of concussive bursts. Not weapons fire, waves of energy from an explosion. The whole ship shuddered and shook.

Then the spore drive engaged. Petrellovitz felt the hairs on her arm stand up. She had never experienced mycelial transport firsthand, Georgiou had captured her before she had the chance, and she was thrilled to finally have the chance. She switched over to the data stream from the engineering lab. The power and possibility of a fully-functional ship with a spore drive.

She realized immediately this was no normal jump. The data was incredible. They were sustaining travel through the mycelial network. That meant two things to Petrellovitz: first, that their target was not anywhere near their starting point, and second, that they were not going to end up where they intended.

Then it was over. Petrellovitz checked the scans just to be sure and found her suspicions entirely confirmed.

They were back in the universe of Discovery's origin.

Petrellovitz scowled at the tiny brig control screen. This was a significant setback. While Lorca could pass as the alternate version of himself and move freely through this universe, she could not.

Unless Lorca was onto something with all that nonsense about fate. The guard walked by to check they had both survived the trip and Petrellovitz glared at him, then resumed pretending to play chess. The guard resumed his post by the door. She opened a comm line.

"Don't look up. I'm in the other cell. We're not supposed to be talking."

The answer was slow to come, hesitant. "Who are you?"

"My name is Petra. I'm a captive of these humans, same as you are, but not the same, because I've taken control of their computer core. Do you understand what that means?"

"Yes."

"I've noticed you speak English well. I had a question for you. Your work creating infiltration agents, Ash Tyler, could you do the same to me? Can you re-skin me?"

Across the brig, L'Rell twisted slightly in her bunk, turning her head to look at the woman in the other cell. Petrellovitz was staring intently at her cell's computer panel, apparently engaged in some sort of human game. L'Rell had seen the game in her own brig controls, but she did not know how to play and no inclination to learn. "You want me to turn you into someone? Who?"

Petrellovitz smiled at her fake display. "Myself."

L'Rell sighed and settled back down. The weapons fire and black alert had roused her from her sleep and now she was being prevented from returning to it. "You do not understand. In order to re-skin you, I need another person to use as a material. Then there are the bones and muscles. They must be resized..." That had taken a very long time to sort out with Voq, especially owing to the difference in cranial size between humans and Klingons.

"I understand perfectly. How long would it take if the template possessed the exact same physical dimensions and characteristics as the person being reskinned? If you only had to change the surface and the surface already matched perfectly in every dimension."

This was a curious question. "A day, with the right tools."

"What about just the tissue on the skull and hands?"

The questions were getting stranger. "A few hours," offered L'Rell.

"Do they have what you need in sickbay?"

L'Rell thought back to her time there, when she had released Ash Tyler from his torment and turned him into whatever he was now. "Yes, they do. But why would I help you?"

"Because we have something in common. The people on this ship are our enemy."

This was not the first time L'Rell had been part of a deal to work alongside a human out of mutual self-interest. She had done the same with Cornwell aboard the Sarcophagus. That arrangement had been sufficient for L'Rell to escape Kol but it had not played out as expected. Instead of being transferred to a secure holding facility, L'Rell had been left to languish in Discovery's brig, a forgotten token of a war that seemed suddenly unimportant to Discovery.

There was no reason to expect this would not turn out similarly, but equally, sitting in this cell was an embarrassing, dishonorable circumstance with no clear end in sight.

L'Rell said slowly, "It would be very painful."

"Sounds fun," said Petrellovitz, keying in new commands through the master override hidden within the Brig Chess program. "Let's take a field trip."

Materializing with Georgiou in Discovery's transporter room, Burnham looked for some sign of Lorca but all she saw was a pool of blood smeared across the transporter pad. The computer announced a black alert. "Where is he," Burnham demanded of the transporter technician as she stepped down from the transporter.

The curly-haired cadet looked at her haplessly. "Lab 26."

Any further investigation was cut short as Discovery shuddered under an impact. Georgiou stepped down from the transporter pad, hands tight on her phaser rifle, her eyes scanning as if she could spot her prey though Discovery's walls.

"Burnham to Lab 26."

"Unable to comply. Lab 26 is under a command lockdown."

There was a smaller series of shudders—Discovery firing torpedoes—and then the whole ship shook as it initiated a jump to warp ahead of the resulting explosion.

The shaking intensified as the familiar shift of the mycelial drive kicked in. "It's our spore drive," Burnham explained to Georgiou, but this was unlike any previous spore jumps. The shaking did not stop and the vibration of moisture particles in the air continued far longer than was normal. All they could do was hold on and wait.

Discovery dropped back out into normal space. The air around them stilled. Glancing between Burnham and the fearsome Emperor Philippa Georgiou, the transporter technician offered an update: "There was an emergency transport from Lab 26 to the medbay." Emergency medical transports bypassed the transporter pad, but he had seen the transport in his logs.

Burnham turned to Georgiou and held out a hand for her weapon. "You can't keep that on this ship," she advised.

Georgiou handed it over with a sneer. "I don't need it," she proclaimed. "I will make sure he is dead with my own two hands."

For the first time, Burnham felt a slight tinge of concern about the woman she had rescued, but the idea of leaving Georgiou to die on the Charon was too much to bear. The face was cold and hard and angry almost beyond the point of recognition, but when Burnham looked at the emperor, she still saw her old captain and she would not be responsible for Georgiou's death again. This seemed the only way to be rid of the guilt.

Saru's voice came over the comm. "Burnham, what is your status?"

"Cuts and bruises. Nothing serious," said Burnham. "And Lorca?"

There was a pause—a small one, just long enough for Burnham to realize Saru was receiving new information. "Lorca?"

"He beamed over with O'Malley," said Burnham.

(On the bridge, Saru looked at Owosekun, who shook her head. She had tried to say the name in the moment but had been too shocked herself.)

"He was wounded. He'll be in the medbay," Burnham stated. "The emperor and I are headed there now."

This time, there was no hesitation at the new information. Saru said smoothly, "I will meet you there."

Lorca was sitting on the ground next to the coffee table, violently throwing the implements of Mischkelovitz's trade at the wall, when the door finally opened. He grabbed the nearest tool, a spanner, and lifted it to throw at Groves' smug face only to freeze in place, not that it mattered. His throw would have been too high. Lorca's face twisted into a question.

"Voice modulator," said Lalana, disturbingly in Groves' voice. She removed the device from the translator around her neck and her usual voice returned. "How are you?"

"Better now that you're here," offered Lorca, liberally smearing on the charm. The confinement had given him time to strategize. "I know a lot's happened, but we can fix this. My people listen to me. They'll back down if I tell 'em. Tell Saru I'm prepared to negotiate, we don't have to be enemies. I want Discovery to get home as much as its crew does. Just not with Michael. I need her. Hell, you can stay too, if you want."

"We are already home," said Lalana, settling down next to his knee.

All the levity fell away. So many times Lalana had said something that seemed to be figurative and it turned out to be literal. There had to be a reason the spore jump had taken far longer than it should have, but Lorca figured it had something to do with compensating for Stamets. Surely she was not saying that... But he knew she was. He stared at her in horror.

Lalana flicked her tail across Lorca's hair at his obvious distress. It only annoyed him further. "I am sorry, I know this is not what you wanted, but it is not as bad as it seems."

Lorca closed his eyes and exhaled. Starfleet was going to lock him up in a hole so dark, it would make this confinement look like an amusement park. When he opened his eyes, it was with an expression of determined annoyance. "How do you figure that?" he seethed. "You gonna help me escape?"

"If need be, but I do not think I will have to. You have committed no crime."

"Really?" said Lorca crossly. "Killin' the other me and taking his place? That's not a crime?"

"I believe they can be convinced to forgive you for taking his place, and they will never know you killed him. Life is a story we tell each other. I told them a story of you. And I am a very good liar, Gabriel."

Except O'Malley had asked the question point-blank on the Charon. The cat was already out of the bag. "I think they're gonna figure it out," said Lorca. Probably as soon as O'Malley woke up. "We need a plan."

"I have a plan. I told them how scared you were to lose Discovery, so now they will understand and help you."

He could scarcely believe his ears. "Why would you say that!" he howled, ignoring the pain.

Lalana's head twisted. "Because it was true. I needed that truth to convince everyone of the lie."

Lorca stared at her. "No wonder Saru fired on the Charon! You emasculated me."

"Gender is not a lului concept," noted Lalana, clicking her tongue lightly.

Lorca grimaced, not meaning it literally, but as usual, literal was what he had gotten. "You know that's not what I meant," he scowled, filled with revulsion and contempt. "You told them I was weak."

"That is the difference between our universes, Gabriel. In your universe, a weakness is something to be pounced upon and taken advantage of. Here a weakness can be something else. It can be something for which people have compassion. Now they will help you."

At what cost, he wondered. This was a disaster. He pressed his hands against his head, fingers digging into his scalp.

"The important thing is, they now know what I know. They know you are a good man and that you have a good heart. A heart that includes me."

He remembered the fortune he had cracked open when he first took command of Discovery. Then, as now, he did not believe its contents. "You have got to be kidding me!"

"I promise I am not. For as long as you live, my cells will be in your cardial tissue," Lalana assured him. "I had to put them there to keep you alive."

Petrellovitz, he realized. She was here on Discovery. Petrellovitz had gotten him through the universes the first time and could do so again. He had to find her, get some spores, recreate the experiment, get back, rally his people and convene a meeting with Sarek. Sarek was on his way to the Charon right now, would probably arrive within the hour. Not enough time to set up a return transport, but Lorca would arrive a day or two late, make a dramatic entrance, proclaim some tactical advantage had been gained by this course of action, act as if the whole thing was intentional. In fact, this was an opportunity to negotiate terms with the Federation for every alien not of use to the Empire to be deported to this universe and bring back confirmation of the deal. With a bit of bluster, Georgiou would be cowed back into submission and executed. He had already proven she was weak.

This was salvageable. Lorca could fix it, put the puzzle back together, make it even better this time.

The sound of the door interrupted Lorca's plotting. It was Groves. He dove towards Lorca, grabbed him by the shirt, and shook him as he sprayed spittle and shouted in Lorca's face, "What the hell did you do to her!"

Lorca could feel the rip in his chest begin to tear again. A heady wave of pain swept over him. "Get off me," he said through gritted teeth, half-twisting away.

"Yes," said Lalana, wrapping her tail around Groves' neck. "Put him down, John, or I will deprive your brain of oxygen."

The threat was not idle. Groves could feel the surface of his skin being prodded by a thousand tiny little tendrils. He released Lorca and retreated a few steps. "So help me, I'll kill him myself! You killed her!"

Sneering, Lorca pulled his shirt back into place. "I didn't do anything."

This was enough of a clue for Lalana to realize Mischkelovitz's absence was not because she was watching over an unconscious O'Malley off in the medical bay. "What is he talking about, Gabriel? Where is Emellia?"

Lorca explained, more or less, what Mischkelovitz had said she was doing. Groves watched the message for himself. When it was over, he snatched the holodisc from the air and threw it across the room.

"That is the most asinine thing I've ever heard!" he yelled at the top of his lungs, apoplectic with rage. He sat down on the floor and put his head in his hands. How could Mischkelovitz be so stupid.

Because it was a pattern. Mischkelovitz saw patterns in everything. She was easily swept away by them, obsessed with them to a fault. She really, truly thought the universe was configured like a jigsaw puzzle and that everything fit together one way and if she could just figure out all the pieces...

Groves knew the truth. There was no pattern. Oh, there were some patterns, like physics and math, but not on the level of significance where Mischkelovitz saw them. Patterns on this level were just the human brain trying to make sense of the random coincidences of the universe.

She had fried her brain for nothing, chasing a remnant that did not exist.

As the rebel forces neared the Charon's position, an alarm sounded. "We are detecting weapons fire at our target coordinates."

"Do we have a visual?" asked Sarek. He was standing beside the captain's chair on the bridge of the Vulcan-Klingon-Andorian cruiser currently serving as the rebel command ship. Voq was seated in the captain's chair itself.

An image appeared of a small but unmistakable ship silhouetted against the massive glowing orb of the Charon's mycelial reactor: Discovery, barreling down towards the reactor in an apparent suicide run.

"Turn us around," said Sarek.

The helmsman complied, but Voq bristled with dismay. "Is that for you to decide?" Voq asked.

"Perhaps not," said Sarek as the Charon exploded in front of their eyes, "but it seemed only prudent."

The shockwave produced by the ship was massive, on a scale unlike anything. Cheers erupted from the non-Vulcans present. Lorca might have been in control of the Charon, but the ship was a symbol of Terran superiority, and every non-Terran had reason to enjoy seeing it destroyed, even the Vulcans.

Sarek watched the shockwave dispassionately. "It would appear we have gotten more than we bargained for," he intoned. "I suspect this means our deal with Lorca is no more."

"This is a victory!" said Voq.

"It is," agreed Sarek, and signaled the two Vulcan guards standing at the bridge doors with a wave of his hand. At once, their weapons were firing, cutting down every Klingon and Andorian on the bridge.

Voq was splayed out on the ground, gasping as he stared up at Sarek. "You... Why? You have betrayed us."

"No," said Sarek, taking the phaser the guard offered and pointing it down at Voq. "I've done what was necessary for my son." He pulled the trigger and ended Voq's life.

Sarek did not need Lorca or Michael. Waiting in the wings were other, more Vulcan-friendly Terran factions who could see the difference between Vulcans and the other, more grotesque humanoids. As he opened a channel to the rest of the fleet, the pattern of death was repeated across every ship and the Vulcans took control.

"The fall of the Charon," said Sarek, "is the rise of Vulcan."

Part 97

#Star Trek Discovery #fanfic #fanfiction #Captain Lorca #Commander Saru #Gabriel Lorca #Mirror Lorca #michael burnham #Emperor Georgiou #Mirror Sarek