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writesandramblings · 7 years ago

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The Captain’s Secret - p.63

“A Laughing Rain”

A/N: This chapter covers the events of episode 5, "Choose Your Pain."

Full Chapter List Part 1 - Objects in Motion << Part 62 - A Matter of Record Part 64 - Where the Wild Things Are >>

The salvation of Corvan II was only the first of many miracles. In the ensuing weeks, Discovery broke the Klingon supply lines at Benzar and routed an attack in the Ophiuchus system. In the eyes of Starfleet Command, the spore drive was now a proven technology, and one they needed in all their ships.

They summoned him to the forward command station for a strategy meeting and demanded the technology be rolled out for more starships, but the problem was not their ability to duplicate the drive technology. The real limiting factor was the tardigrade. They only had the one, and without Ripper, the spore drive was unreliable at best and dangerously unstable at worst.

Lorca stood there as Cornwell, apparently failing to appreciate the fact Discovery had only obtained its tardigrade by accident, insisted he somehow do more to make the drive available to everyone else while simultaneously berating him for putting their only fully-operational spore drive at risk by actually using it.

Worse, she seemed entirely oblivious to her own hypocrisy.

He tried to object to her, rank be damned, because this was as unfortunate a tactical failing on her part as could occur, and she responded to this breach of respect by doubling down firmly in front of the other admirals and captains assembled:

"We believe the enemy may have identified Discovery as our secret weapon. You are hereby ordered to reign in your use of the spore drive unless authorized by Starfleet."

How, he wondered as he stood there listening to Cornwell denigrate his achievements, could they possible call it a secret weapon if they did not deploy it?

There was also the issue that every jump seemed to drain the tardigrade, but this meeting was going badly enough without him giving Cornwell an actual problem to castigate him about, so he kept that fact to himself.

When the meeting concluded, he hung back in the conference room and considered everything that had just gone down, quietly condemning the entire assembly of blowhards and fools who had decided to sideline their best weapon when they needed it most.

He was there long enough that the medicine in his eyes began to wear off. He dimmed the lights and began to reapply it. He had only dosed one of his eyes when the lights went suddenly to full and he let out a strangled cry of pain and shouted, "Turn it down!"

It was Cornwell. "Sorry. Didn't know you were still in here," she said, too casual for it to be an honest apology, because it wasn't. She was still displeased about his attempt to counter her orders during the meeting and clearly failed to appreciate the fact his insubordination had been partly an attempt to save her from her own tactical shortcomings. To her, it was simply the latest in a recent string of insubordinations stemming from her failure to keep a tighter rein on him over the years. The only thing worse than a subordinate's misbehavior was the realization that you had bred it into existence yourself.

Lorca also suspected she had entirely known he was in still in the room and turned the lights up on purpose, because she immediately launched into a lecture about the unfortunate nature of his decision to interpret a captain's wartime powers as permission to enlist convicted criminal Michael Burnham into his crew.

He was supposed to have the latitude to fight this war as he saw fit but at every turn Cornwell seemed to be denying him this crucial autonomy. The one person in Starfleet Command he thought would have his back and all she wanted was to hold him back.

It was jealousy, he decided. "Are you uncomfortable with the power I've been given, admiral?"

"I'm your friend," she said, immediately seeing through the accusation for what it was.

"Mm-hm," he replied, sounding about as convinced of that as he was of the wisdom of their decision to suspend Discovery's involvement in the war. He stood up from the conference table. "It's my ship. My way."

He left her there, walked out, because it was the only thing he could do to keep from erupting into an exchange of words they would both regret.

He was still thinking over the meeting's events as he sat in the shuttle on the way back to Discovery. What if they never found another tardigrade? Then sidelining Discovery would have been for nothing. How could Cornwell not see that? It also hardly mattered if Discovery survived the war or not, at least where the drive technology was concerned. Starfleet had the schematics and information needed to make it work if they could locate another tardigrade. And if the technology fell into hands of the Klingons without access to a tardigrade, well, that would probably cause the Klingons to do more harm to themselves than anything else.

The only point he could think of in Cornwell's favor was if—and it was a big if—both the drive and Ripper fell into the Klingons' hands, it would be game over.

He'd blow up the ship before letting that happen. Certainly he'd proven his willingness to do as much already.

Alarms began going off in the shuttle.

"Warning. Incoming warp signature detected."

The Klingons were on top of them like butter on toast, the green light of a tractor beam shimmering through the shuttle windows. Lorca grabbed the phaser rifles by the door, tossed one to the pilot, and took up a position to the side of the door, but the pilot was not a savvy tactician and stood in the middle of the shuttle absent any cover. The Klingons were upon him almost as soon as the doors were open.

Lorca never got the chance to fire his rifle. The Klingons had anticipated his position and wrenched it from his hands, forcing him to resort to throwing punches against opponents who were stronger, better armed, and outnumbered him. A Klingon female clad entirely in white grabbed him and pushed him up against the wall. There was no winning this situation, but as the shuttle pilot slid to the floor, dead from a pair of stabs to the chest, Lorca realized that if the Klingons wanted him dead they would have done so.

He held up his hands in surrender. He heard the Klingon woman say his name.

This was no mere happenstance. He had been targeted.

The Klingon woman pushed him into the cruiser's corridors, driving him like a sheep through dark, angular hallways.

"A little rougher back there and I might think you were coming on to me," quipped Lorca. The Klingon jabbed her fist into his back, pushing him to his knees, and he smiled to himself as he got back up. "Now we're talking."

The next time she hit him, the lights went out.

The news of Lorca's capture rippled across Discovery. Saru found himself suddenly acting captain under circumstances he would never had asked for in a million years. The idea of attaining captaincy by such means was not only unfortunate, it was deeply unsettling.

He did not feel ready.

Cornwell's orders were clear. Recover Lorca before the Klingons could pry the secrets of the spore drive from him. It was a deceptively simple task, but Saru promised it could be done, even if he was not certain it could be. With Cornwell's words echoing in his ears, Saru questioned whether he was the correct person to carry these orders out.

And then Burnham came to tell him she thought they should stop using the tardigrade, the one thing that potentially offered them an edge when it came to rescuing Lorca, because the creature was reaching its limit. They discussed it in Lorca's ready room, which was unfortunately available.

"I mentioned this to the captain and he said we would discuss it when he came back," Burnham said.

"The captain is not coming back unless we can rescue him," said Saru. "And for that we will need the tardigrade."

Burnham remained intent on having Saru come around to her perspective. "I'm concerned that we are negatively impacting the tardigrade with each jump we make..." Her argument was fervent and sound, but Saru had been pushed around by Michael Burnham enough in his life. He denied Burnham's request and declared no further discussion of the subject until after the captain was back.

As Burnham left, Saru felt in some way that he was already failing Lorca. He requested data from the computer on Starfleet's most decorated captains and saw Georgiou's name on the list, but the information did not help him. It was too abstract.

There was one person who knew Lorca better than anyone. He sought her out.

Lalana's response to the news of Lorca's kidnap was to press her hands so tightly together it seemed as if they might break. Her fur writhed faintly. "I very much wish to know what you believe Captain Lorca would do in this situation," said Saru.

Lalana did not reply immediately. When she finally spoke, she said this:

"You must do absolutely everything and anything you can to return the captain to Discovery. If you do not get Gabriel back, then everything on this ship will collapse. You must not let this happen, Saru. If you do anything and everything, then you will succeed, so that is what you must do. Do not let anyone stop you or stand in your way. Discovery is not Discovery without Captain Lorca. And as for myself, I am not done with his face."

Saru stared. "Surely that is an exaggeration."

"Is it? This ship is like an ecosystem. Gabriel's will brought it together and has been tending it since. He has protected everyone, he has created this ambitious project into which we have all been swept. He is what humans call 'a true visionary.' I think you are most interesting, Mr. Saru, but are you possessed of vision such as your captain has? Get him back, Saru. For all of our sakes.”

As Saru passed back through the lab on his way out, he saw Mischkelovitz cradling Lorca's tribble and whispering to it. "Shh. Don't worry, Gabe's coming back." Saru did not think she intended the words for the tribble so much as herself.

Lorca awoke in a Klingon cell in the company of three other human prisoners.

The first was Harcourt Fenton Mudd, a bearded civilian who loftily announced his presence to be the result of a failure to pay off creditors for the purchase of a moon. Tossed to the Klingons in lieu of a debtor's prison. He had a pet with him, a sort of space tarantula he called Stuart.

The second was a human whose name Lorca never got, because the Klingons came in and made short work of the man as a demonstration of their cruelty for Lorca's benefit. Lorca reacted viscerally to the sight of the man's beating, closing his eyes and wincing as the crunch of the man's head under the Klingon's boot suggested he had outlived his usefulness to the Klingons. The Klingons dragged the man's corpse away by the leg for disposal.

"You're gonna want to stick with me," said Mudd in the silence that followed the Klingons' departure. "I'm a survivor, just like you." The notion disgusted Lorca.

The third prisoner Lorca only discovered after Mudd had fallen asleep. A Starfleet lieutenant, his uniform caked with untold weeks of filth, hiding behind some conduits, had slept through the entire exchange with the Klingon guards. The fact that he had slept through such a horrible event said a lot about the state of things in this prison ship, as well as how long the lieutenant had been here. The man's brain had adjusted to such commotion as background noise and found it no reason to wake up.

Lorca sat down on the floor. The light burned his eyes. His ocular spray had been lost in the dust-up with the Klingons. Screams echoed down the hallways. His head was still pulsing faintly from the whack the white-clad woman had knocked him out with.

Despite the situation, despite all of the terror and despair and sheer hopelessness of it all, the lieutenant offered Lorca some food he had ferreted away, a piece of stale cracker. Lorca refused. The young man clearly needed it more than Lorca did. The lieutenant insisted: "I already lost one captain, I don't want to lose another."

There was a heavy strain of loyalty in those words. That was something Lorca appreciated in an officer. "What's your name, soldier?"

"Lieutenant Ash Tyler."

Tyler had been on the Yeager, a ship disabled at the Battle of the Binaries seven months ago. Seven months in Klingon prison. When Lorca pointed this out, Tyler gave a small laugh. The reaction struck Lorca as wrong. "Nobody survives Klingon torture for seven months."

Apparently they did when the Klingon captain in charge of the torture took a liking to them. The white-clad Klingon woman.

Lorca could see the pain on the Tyler's face admitting this. He focused Tyler on the facts: the crew complement, the layout, the information they needed to escape. Lorca just needed to find his way to an active comm relay to signal Discovery.

"We're deep within enemy territory," said Tyler. He had long since learned the futility of hope in this place. "There's no way a Federation ship can make it out this far undetected."

"Oh, my ship can," promised Lorca with a smile. "It's like a ghost." Then Mudd's little spider made off with the cracker, purloining the sole source of sustenance in the room for its obnoxious master.

The Klingons came for Lorca not long after. They grabbed him by the neck and dragged him away to the feet of their white-clad captain, depositing him first onto the floor and then yanking him up to his feet and strapping him into an immobilizing chair.

"Have you ever been tortured before, captain?"

He answered her questions with non sequiturs. She asked about torture, he complimented her English. She listed off his victories the past three weeks, beginning with Corvan, as a sort of taunt. There must have been another Klingon ship cloaked at Corvan that had brought back news of Discovery. Damn that cloaking technology. He was going to have Mischkelovitz redirect more time to cracking it when he got back. The mycelial map was not more important than stopping the Klingons.

Then she called his ship a ghost, the exact words he had spoken to Tyler. Her English was good, but not so good she could have plucked that word out of nowhere.

There was a spy in that prison cell.

She knew, too, about his photosensitivity. When she mentioned it, Lorca taunted her for sleeping with Tyler. She slammed her hand across his face and said, "How strange space must look to you now, through those damaged eyes. A cosmos full of agonizing light."

She may have known some facts about him, but he knew right then and there she would never understand him fully, even if she was right on some counts. As she fixed his eyelids open and blasted his eyes with light that turned his voice into a rising scream of agony, he took comfort in the fact she did not grasp the magnitude of his will, the truths of his desires, or the strength of his endurance.

"Tell me your secret!" she demanded, switching off the lights so he could provide an answer that was not a wordless scream. "Tell me what it is that makes Discovery do what other ships cannot!"

"The secret," he said, "is to use an extra stick of butter. Salted. Make those cookies fluff right up."

The lights came back on. His eyes watered desperately, unable to blink away the burn of air on the surface of his eyeballs and equally powerless to staunch the flood of light. His scream formed words. "Stop! Turn it off!"

The lights remained on. "Tell me and it will stop!"

He screamed, and screamed, and then it turned into a laugh. The Klingon captain stared at Lorca in faint amazement. She was certain by the readouts of the medical monitors on the walls that he was in excruciating pain, and yet he was laughing. What kind of monster was this Federation captain?

Culber administered a set of mild performance enhancers to several key members of Discovery. Unfortunately, Lorca had been taken in late afternoon, three-quarters of the way through most of the day shifts, and they needed their best and brightest on hand if they were going to get him back quickly. With any luck, they would find Lorca before these modest enhancements wore off and the best minds of the crew fell asleep.

He mentioned this to Stamets as he injected the neurostimulator in one of the private rooms off of the main sickbay area.

"Do we have to save him?" asked Stamets, face twisting with desperation.

Culber shook his head at Stamets, smiling faintly. "I know you don't mean that," Culber said.

Stamets pressed a hand to his face. "You're right, I don't, but some part of me..." He sighed. "I hate who he's turning me into! Not to mention what he’s doing to my research."

It broke Culber's heart faintly to see Stamets like this and he enveloped his husband into a hug, running his hand across Stamets' back. "He's not making you into anything, you are too strong to be undone by the likes of that man."

"You think?" said Stamets with a hopeful frown, feeling the stubble of Culber's beard on his cheek. It was a comfortingly familiar sensation.

Culber withdrew to arm's length and brushed a hand across Stamets' hair. "I don't think, I know. I know you, Paul Stamets, and you every bit now the man you were when I married you."

"And when you met me?"

That made Culber's lips press into a mischievous smile. "Give me some credit, our meeting made you a much better person." Stamets hummed in satisfaction at that and slid right back towards Culber, kissing him in loving gratitude.

After a moment, Stamets said, "You know what would really help me work?" Culber could scarcely believe what he was hearing. "You said yourself, there's no better way to de-stress and help me focus! In your professional medical opinion—"

Culber shut Stamets up with a kiss that turned into the exact bit of medicine Stamets was requesting. "If the captain finds out we delayed rescuing him for this," said Stamets, then decided Lorca was the last person he wanted to think about for the next few minutes.

When eventually the conversation resumed, Culber went straight back to the subject of the captain. "Now you have to go find him."

Stamets tilted his head. "I’m beginning to think you actually want Lorca back." It was not an accusation, more a confused observation.

Culber considered that. "I don't like Captain Lorca any more than you do, but there are some people on this ship who do like him. And he's not nice to us, but..." Even if Lorca had been a little rough with Mischkelovitz, he had also given her the tribble off his desk to comfort her when she was scared, and Mischkelovitz seemed to adore him, as disturbing as that was.

"I'm sorry, he was nice to someone?" Even the crew who did like Lorca rarely described him as nice. Funny, smart, and good-looking were the most commonly-used positives, usually couched by negatives that seemed to tip the balance more against the captain than for.

Culber shrugged, not sure what to make of it himself. "I'm just saying the man doesn't deserve whatever the Klingons will do to him."

It was a sobering thought. "No, he doesn't," said Stamets. Nobody deserved that.

Lorca's last words to the Klingon captain were, "Same time tomorrow?" as she retreated from the torture chamber, momentarily defeated by his resolve. The guards escorted Lorca back to his cell, but as dire as circumstances were, this was a resounding victory. He had made it back to Mudd and Tyler on his own two feet, having revealed nothing more damaging than his grandmother's cookie recipe.

Which did not excuse the mole in their midst. The door closed behind him and Lorca charged Mudd, plucked the listening device from Mudd's little "pet," and crushed it under the heel of his boot. "You've been feeding intel on every prisoner that passed through here," Lorca concluded, and threw Mudd's spider against the wall with every ounce of strength he had. Mudd went tearing after the spider, frantic with what seemed to be actual affection.

Tyler followed and pushed Mudd against the wall. "You're finished," he said to Mudd, and then released him, because they were Starfleet, and they did not do the Klingons' dirty work for them, even to Federation traitors like Mudd.

Mudd stroked his spider as he moved away from the wall. "Captain, are you really gonna let this young man humiliate himself by siding with you, hm?"

And then Mudd let Tyler know exactly what kind of captain Lorca was: the kind of captain who abandoned his ship. Mudd knew, as everyone did, the terrible fate of the Buran. His case to Tyler was simple. Lorca was not a captain who deserved Tyler's loyalty, because he had shown none to his own crew.

Lorca stood there and listened to this condemnation, unable and unwilling to deny his actions, guilt etched into his features as surely as anything had ever been. He had to look away. His head hung a moment as he thought of the loss of life at his own hands.

"Apparently, the honorable captain was too good to go down with his ship," said Mudd.

Lorca looked over at Tyler, saw the hurt in Tyler's eyes, and he could not let Mudd's slight go unchallenged. "That's only half-right. We were ambushed and I did... escape. But I didn't let my crew die. I blew them up."

This was a detail Mudd had not known and he looked shocked to hear it.

Lorca told them the sort of fate that awaited Federation crews on Qo'noS, the torture, the parade of death. And when he spoke the words, there was determination despite the anguish of it: "Not my crew. Not on my watch."

He fixed his gaze on Tyler, hoping the young man could understand.

After seven months in a Klingon prison, Tyler seemed to understand all too well.

Though Saru and Lalana were largely indifferent to the plight of the tardigrade in light of Lorca's circumstances, Stamets listened to Burnham's concerns with sympathy for the creature. The astromycologist felt a kinship towards Ripper. They were both of them connected to the mycelial network: Stamets by his years of research, Ripper by the natural horizontal transfer of DNA.

Stamets shut down the spore drive and began working with Tilly and Burnham to find an alternative to Ripper, some species with a DNA sequence compatible to the tardigrade's that could accept a horizontal transfer of mycelium DNA and replace the tardigrade entirely.

Saru arrived in the engineering lab and was entirely displeased to find the spore drive offline. Despite his explicit instructions to continue with the tardigrade as their supercomputer until Lorca was safely back on the ship, Burnham had yet again ignored his orders and undermined his command. Her lack of respect for him was infuriating, but he kept his calm and listened as she proposed the use of a human host in the tardigrade's place. Performing a horizontal genetic transfer to a human.

After her concern about chemical and biological weapons on Discovery, there had to be some cosmic irony in her proposing a eugenics solution to their problem.

He forbade it and ordered the use of the tardigrade. Rather than comply, in front of Stamets and in front of Tilly, Burnham declared that Saru was upset and implied it was some failing in him as a Kelpien, some natural deficiency of his species.

Saru hit her right back where it hurt and said, "Saving this tardigrade will neither bring back nor change the fact that this is exactly the kind of behavior that killed Captain Georgiou."

He was steel in that moment, but he cut himself as deeply as he did her with those words. Only an interruption from Lieutenant Rhys on the bridge announcing they had located Captain Lorca saved them both from anything worse. Saru ordered the tardigrade into the spore chamber for a jump and confined Burnham to her quarters.

They readied for the jump. "Black alert," said Saru, and then intoned the same word Lorca always did: "Go."

In the engineering lab, the tardigrade screamed, and as the jump completed, it collapsed.

Stamets and Tilly rushed to its side. Neither feared the monstrous creature in that moment, or worried that it would rend them as it had Landry. They saw only a pitiful, suffering thing that shrank down into a protective ball.

Extreme cryptobiosis, Culber announced. The tardigrade, just as its microscopic cousins did, had shed all the water from its body and shrunk down to a hard-shelled husk to weather the crisis. It was not a problem they could fix without risking killing a creature that Culber now believed might be sentient based on recent neurological scans.

"As it is our only way to get out of Klingon space, it is a risk we must take," said Saru. "I do not enjoy being in this position, but I have one hundred and thirty-four souls to protect today."

"I will not be party to murder," said Culber.

"Doctor, I was not talking to you," said Saru, and turned to Stamets and ordered his compliance.

As Culber looked on with a mixture of shock and horror, Stamets said, "Yes, sir," and felt himself die a little as he said it.

Two Klingon guards arrived to deliver their own personal disbursement of torture to the cell and it was Tyler who took the beating, volunteering for it, to Mudd's immense relief. Lorca's face contorted with conflict at this this turn of events and he turned away and did not watch as the one guard tossed Tyler around the cell while the other stood with his rifle trained on Lorca. Lorca edged away from the carnage, wincing visibly, looking to the guard with the rifle with a confused plea on his face.

After a moment, Tyler did not get up. The guard administering the beating seemed to strut in momentary pride, then whirled about for one last stomp, the sort that had done away with their departed initial cellmate.

Tyler was prepared for it, jumping to his feet as the guard stomped down, taking advantage of the guard's momentum and surprise to turn the attack back towards the Klingon.

Lorca, too, was ready. His overwrought display of anguish had taken him within arm's reach of the rifle. He grabbed it from the other guard, elbowing the Klingon in the face and wrenching the rifle away, then using it as a cudgel to beat the Klingon before managing to get it around the Klingon's neck as leverage to snap the spine. He turned to assist Tyler, the rifle in hand, only to discover Tyler had managed to drop his opponent all on his own.

Tricking the Klingon guard had not been hard because Lorca's distress at watching these Klingon monsters beat Tyler was entirely genuine. As Lorca well knew, the most effective way to fake something was not to fake it. Something tugged at his memory, something Lalana had said back in San Francisco, but he could not remember the exact words. There had been an awful lot of sedatives in his system when she said it.

Lorca tossed Tyler the guard's phaser and held on to the rifle for himself. They stood on bother sides the door, checking if there were any other guards on the other side before they made their escape.

Mudd tried to leave with them. "You sold us out," Lorca said to Mudd, turning the rifle on him. "You stay."

"You can't be serious," said Mudd.

"Oh, but I can," said Lorca, and cracked the rifle across Mudd's deplorable face. Mudd's pleas followed them out into the hallway as Lorca shut the door on him, locking him in there to his fate at the hands of the Klingons.

The pleas turned to promises of vengeance as Mudd realized they would not come back. "You can't walk away from me, Lorca! I'm coming for you, you hear! You haven't seen the last of Harcourt Fenton Mudd!"

Their escape was not without complications. Lorca and Tyler strode down the halls, vaporizing guards, fending off assaults, but a guard managed to surprise Tyler and further wound the lieutenant to the point where he could barely walk. Lorca pulled Tyler's arm around his shoulder, but it did not last. Tyler slid off onto the ground.

"I'm slowing you down, sir, go."

Lorca did go, but only so far as around the corner. The Klingons in pursuit of them filtered into the hall and Lorca reappeared, firing off a shot towards the white-clad captain that hit the wall of the corridor and blasted the side of her face rather than vaporizing her completely. She lay in the middle of the corridor, screaming in agony as Lorca helped Tyler to his feet and they made their way to the docking bay.

The Klingon ship was not loaded with transport shuttles but with raiders, small assault craft designed to frustrate larger ships. Tyler was surprised to find Lorca seemed to know how to operate the controls. "Redirect all auxiliary power to shields. Blue panel on the right."

There were five raiders in pursuit of them. Lorca manned the guns while Tyler piloted. A good shot picked off one of the five and Lorca winced at the glare of the explosion.

"Your eyes," said Tyler. "That happened when you destroyed the Buran, didn't it?"

"We choose our own pain," said Lorca. "Mine helps me remember."

Ahead of them they saw Discovery. Against the odds, Lorca's ship had found them, but then, that was Discovery through and through. Nothing but miracles aboard.

There were going to need one more miracle, because Discovery had no idea they were coming, and in a Klingon raider, no less. And then the voice came. "Federation starship Discovery to Klingon raider. Identify yourself."

There was the miracle. Lorca grinned and ordered a beam-out. It was good to issue an order to his crew again. The lights of the transporter enveloped them. A moment later, they were on Discovery, and Tyler collapsed onto the transporter pad next to Lorca. Lorca rushed to his side, waving away the guards in attendance. The last thing Tyler needed was to be inundated with unfamiliar faces. "Captain to bridge! You got us! Jump! Jump now!"

They jumped. Tyler did not know what to make of the odd sensation of mycelial travel, but Lorca kept a hand on his shoulder in reassurance. "Thank you, captain," said Tyler.

"For what?" replied Lorca, a mischievous grin appearing on his face. "Dragging you back into the war on a ship with a target on its back."

"There's no place I'd rather be," said Tyler.

That, Lorca thought, was as true a sentiment as could be expressed.

He accompanied Tyler as far as the sickbay doors, made sure he was in good hands, and then strode off down the hall.

Discovery. They were home.

There was one problem. When Saru called down to the engineering lab to congratulate Stamets on his success, there was no answer.

Stamets had sent the rest of his team out of the lab. Saru overrode Stamets' lockout on the door and they found Stamets collapsed in the middle of the spore chamber, the vial containing Burnham's genetic modification cocktail beside him on the ground. He had injected himself with the gene therapy to spare the tardigrade any further suffering.

"Did we make it?" asked Stamets.

Saru stared at him. "Yes."

Stamets began to laugh with a hysteria that did not at all reassure.

When Saru finally came face to face with Lorca, he found the captain in his ready room, bloodied by a gash on his lip but grinning infectiously. "Mr. Saru!" said Lorca, throwing his hands up as he turned away from the window. "I hear I have you to thank for spotting us in that raider."

It was true. Burnham might have suggested Saru's Kelpien heritage to be some sort of deficit, but it was that same heritage that had given Saru the clues needed to identify the one raider in the group that had been fleeing from the others. Without that insight, Discovery might have fired on Lorca.

"I owe you my life," said Lorca, "but I should warn you, there's a whole line of people that's true of." He laughed a short, barking laugh, then let out a little exclamation of happy pain and touched the cut on his lip.

"Perhaps you should go to sickbay," said Saru.

"Ah, this? Flesh wound at best," said Lorca, shrugging comically. It was satisfying in a weird way, to be able to choose his own pain.

"Still. You have been through an ordeal, captain, there may be injuries which adrenaline is preventing you from correctly assessing."

That was a very valid point. "You're right, number one. I just had to come here first." He turned and looked out the window again, his window, at his stars. He let out a small, happy sigh.

Saru considered Lorca. Technically, Lorca was not captain again until after he was cleared by a medical examination, and Lorca seemed so uncharacteristically happy if would be a shame to rain on that happiness by sharing the news of the tardigrade's loss and replacement by Stamets. Besides, a case could be made that the captain might not be in the right frame of mind to fully appreciate the information.

"If you will head to sickbay at your earliest convenience, I will resume my duties as first officer for the time being," said Saru. He waited a moment for Lorca to respond by dismissing him as usual, but Lorca seemed too entranced by the view.

Saru turned to leave.

"Saru?"

The Kelpien turned back to look at Lorca and saw an indescribable joy in the captain's face and a glistening in his eyes. Lorca's voice was almost breathless with relief.

"It's so good to be back on Discovery." It almost seemed like Lorca might cry. He did not, but for a moment it seemed that way. "Thank you for the rescue."

Saru jerkily inclined his head. "Of course, captain."

When Saru was gone, Lorca looked around the familiar surroundings of his ready room, grinning uncontrollably, and started laughing with a mixture of relief, joy, and anguish. He was confused by it himself. He managed to curtail the near-hysteria and said, "Computer, site to site transport. Lab 26."

Materializing outside the door was always an inconvenience, but more so right now as he forced himself to keep it together in front of Allan while he waited for the doors to cycle and permit entry.

Lalana was in the main lab area already. She had ascertained the fact of his return from her feed of the main viewscreen. Lorca practically dove towards her, scooping her up and hugging her more tightly than he should as he resumed his confusingly relieved laughter. He barely noticed Mischkelovitz and O'Malley's presences in the room.

O'Malley tugged on Mischkelovitz's arm. "Come on, love, let's give them some space," he said. Mischkelovitz rose and did one thing for Lorca before heading out with O'Malley: she picked up Merkin and put the tribble on the corner of the worktable nearest the captain.

Lorca stood there holding Lalana as the laughter quieted into steady breaths. After what seemed like an eternity, Lorca finally said, "I just want to stay here on Discovery forever. Forever."

"Oh, Gabriel, you do not live that long. Even lului do not live forever."

"Shut up and let me have this, will you?" he said softly, smiling and not least bit perturbed by her correction, because he was just as glad for her ridiculous pedanticism as he was everything else on this ship. His ship.

On the table, Merkin trilled.

Part 64

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