#science saru appreciation post | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

writesandramblings · 7 years ago

Text

The Captain’s Secret - p.65

“The Stars, Broken”

A/N: Covers the events of episode 6, "Lethe."

Sorry for the delay in posting these latest chapters, writing while rewatching the episodes can be a bit time-consuming, and I've been spending so much time working on the fic, my DVR filled up to 5% and had to be attended to! Rest assured, the delay does not indicate any faltering enthusiasm on my part. We're so close now, the home stretch is nearing, and I'm as excited and determined as ever to see this thing through to the end.

Full Chapter List Part 1 - Objects in Motion << Part 64 - Where the Wild Things Are Part 66 - Past and Present Tense >>

You could learn a lot about a person in times of peril, and the experience aboard the Klingon prison cruiser had given Lorca a very good measure of Lieutenant Ash Tyler. That measure was only clarified after a round of target practice against holographic projections of Klingon adversaries. Despite staring straight into the faces of his former tormentors, Tyler held himself together well.

Lorca already knew all the facts and figures of Tyler's life from his file. Hearing Tyler tell them himself, the takeaway was that the young lieutenant possessed a potent resilience, that tragedy did not define him, and through it all he maintained a strong, centered sense of self.

Much more telling than any of the biographical details was the fact that, at the end of their target practice, Lorca had racked up twenty-four kills and Tyler reported he'd gotten twenty-two, which was a lie. Tyler's kill count, when Lorca checked, was thirty-six. Tyler started to apologize for the deception. "Don’t apologize for excellence!" said Lorca, in a tone that was as much an instruction as a warning that lying to him again was not advisable. Then his tone softened. "I want my chief of security to shoot better than I do."

Seven months in Klingon prison and Tyler had not given up. Instead he had fought, learned, and adapted to survive. Exactly the sort of person Lorca wanted on Discovery and a more than capable replacement for Ellen Landry. Slightly less fun in terms of recreational possibilities, but no one could be everything, and Lorca rather thought he was going to make some inroads on that particular front soon enough without requiring anything of any security chiefs.

Lorca was in his ready room trying to think of a way to get Discovery into battle "accidentally" when an alert came that Michael Burnham had collapsed in the mess hall. He beamed directly to sickbay, startling Cadet Tilly, who stood at Burnham's side.

"What happened!" Lorca demanded of Tilly, a degree louder than he should have.

"I don't know, sir!" said Tilly. "We just, we sat down to eat, and then she collapsed!"

"I'm reading an abundance of neural activity," said Culber.

Burnham sat suddenly up and shouted, "Sarek!"

Culber quieted Burnham and gently eased her back down onto the biobed.

"What's the matter with her?" asked Lorca, looking to Culber for some sort of clue.

Burnham answered herself. "It's not me, it's Sarek. He's in trouble." Sarek was Burnham's adoptive father, a Vulcan ambassador.

There seemed to be no immediate reason why Sarek being in distress would cause Burnham to collapse. "How do you know that?" asked Lorca.

Burnham explained. The majority of Burnham's past was already known to Lorca. Her parents' deaths, her adoption by Sarek and his wife Amanda, her studies at the Vulcan Science Academy, where she had outperformed all the Vulcans and graduated top of her class. What Lorca did not know was that, as Burnham described it, she shared a piece of Sarek's soul, his katra, which he had infused within her to save her life when she was a child. Now, twenty years later, that link remained. It had even helped Burnham survive the events of the Battle of the Binary Stars.

Now, the link was telling her Sarek was endangered. Burnham looked at Lorca, her face as close to a plea as her Vulcan upbringing allowed it to be. "Captain, help me find him."

Lorca nodded his head. "The full resources of Discovery are at your disposal."

The first step was finding out where Sarek was and why he was there. Admiral Terral was entirely forthcoming with the details of Sarek's mission. Two Klingon houses, fallen out of favor with the main faction, were offering secret talks to strike a deal with the Federation that had the potential to turn the war in their favor.

But when Lorca suggested Discovery could rescue Sarek before the Starfleet could scramble any other rescue operations, Terral's rejection of the offer was immediate. "Absolutely not. There are protocols to be followed, captain!" Namely, that block Cornwell had put on Discovery actually doing anything.

This was not a battle, this was a rescue operation. There was no good reason for Starfleet to deny Discovery the chance to save a life when there was no real risk to the ship. Most importantly, he had already told Burnham they were going to rescue Sarek.

"You can tell the Vulcans they're welcome, happy to clean up their mess. Discovery out," said Lorca, and closed the channel on Terral.

He reached into the bowl of fortune cookies for a sign as to the likely outcome of this newest insubordination, crushing one between his hands and munching on the remnants. "You are filled up with a sense of urgency. Be patient or you may end up confused," it read.

Lorca twisted the fortune into a tiny curl of paper. The cookie was immaterial. He had already decided on their course of action. The look on Burnham's face was the closest he had seen to true humanity in her, and it was an expression of suffering he did not want to see again. He would endure all the stony-faced, unemotional Vulcan nonsense so long as it meant not having to see her suffer.

Burnham was different than he expected. He had hardly expected her to fall over herself with gratitude at his getting her out of prison, but she had impressed him with a poise and strength entirely unbroken by her conviction and imprisonment. She was like Tyler in that regard. The universe might try to change her, but her inner self was entirely unassailable. She was savvy, too, even if she jumped to conclusions a little too quickly. That quickness was another wonderful trait of hers and it had served her well during the Glenn incident. She hated waiting. So did he.

It was impossible not to admire her. That Starfleet at large had failed to appreciate fully her talents and potential in light of her lone act of informed disobedience was a travesty. There was something truly amazing about this Michael Burnham, and he intended to make full use of it.

They scoured the Yridia nebula for signs of Sarek's ship, but it was not along the course it should have been, and the nebula's gases made the warp trail impossible to follow. Lorca sat in his captain's chair fighting the feeling of helpless frustration that came from not having a clear path to resolving the problem.

Burnham arrived on the bridge, looking slightly worse for wear. He was surprised to see her. "How are you feeling?" he asked.

"I still sense Sarek, but it's growing erratic. Think he's getting worse," said Burnham. This was not the question Lorca had asked. It was a little sad how oblivious Burnham was to simple human kindnesses.

"Don't worry," he assured her, "we'll get him back."

But the nebula was immense. Their sensors were ineffective in its radioactive gases and probes could take months. Saru was making little progress on his scans.

More frustration. "Well, any other options, number one?" demanded Lorca.

"Me," said Burnham. When Lorca looked in her eyes, he saw again that fervent devotion and love for her adoptive father.

The plan was crazy, but it was the sort of thing that just might be crazy enough to work. Lorca accompanied Burnham down towards the engineering lab to pitch it to Stamets. Mischkelovitz would have been a better choice, but no way was Lorca going to make the mistake of trying to put Burnham and Mischkelovitz together on a project. Mischkelovitz was useless if she crawled back into the walls.

In the turbolift, Burnham suddenly staggered slightly as if dizzy and Lorca caught her arm to steady her. "Halt turbolift," he barked to the computer, and asked Burnham a second time, "you okay there, Michael?"

"Sarek is..."

"Not Sarek," he said, "you."

Burnham straightened with one hand on the wall of the turbolift, pulling slightly away from him as she did, and he released her. Something seemed to say that, even if there was good reason for him to have taken her arm, she did not appreciate the gesture on any level and it was as unwanted as it was unexpected.

"We're wasting time," said Burnham. "Computer, resume turbolift." Lorca had not issued a command lockout and the computer responded to Burnham's command.

"You know, it's all right to be human," said Lorca as the doors opened. He saw a momentary hesitation on Burnham's face in response, but then it was replaced by that steely, faux-emotionless mask she wore and she strode out of the turbolift and he followed.

"As any Vulcan will tell you, simply because I was raised according to Vulcan teachings does not change the fact I am human," Burnham declared as they walked down the hall.

Could've fooled me, thought Lorca, but bit his tongue.

Stamets was, oddly enough, happy to see them.

"You're talking about building a synthetic mind-meld augment," he exclaimed upon hearing Burnham's proposal. "Groovy!"

"Clearly your trip down the mycelium path has lightened your mood, lieutenant," observed Lorca with a touch of wry amusement.

Normally, this sort of jibe would have elicited some sort of obstinate pushback from Stamets, but today, the astromycologist smiled benevolently at Lorca. "Once you're past getting stabbed by needles, it's pretty great!"

Lorca narrowed his eyes in assessment. Since when did Stamets have a sense of humor?

At least one thing hadn't changed. Stamets responded to this revelation about the Vulcan katra with excitement for the pure research opportunities of such a network, immediately enchanted by the possibilities and threatening to go off on a scientific tangent. Lorca directed him back to the task at hand with the firm admonition that there was no time for them to explore the metaphysical implications of Vulcan katras. Sarek was out there in that nebula and they needed him, now.

The only problem was, for this plan to work, they would need to put Burnham inside the nebula. The radioactive interference was not just a problem for the ship's sensors, but also Burnham's connection to Sarek. Lorca relentlessly shot back at every problem Stamets presented with attempts to find solutions. "So we take the Discovery inside the nebula and get closer to him."

"Ooh, bad idea," said Stamets delightedly. "Guess what happens if we mix those cosmic gases with the concentration of mycelium spores we have on board?"

"Um," said Lorca, staring at Stamets and wondering if maybe Stamets had taken something before starting his shift. Perhaps tetrahydrocannabinol concentrate. He might need to check the security feeds later to see if Stamets had started eating his precious mushrooms.

Stamets imitated an explosion. Then, he looked at Lorca knowingly and said, "I know, I know, get to work."

Lorca stared after Stamets as Burnham rattled off some mission specifications. Stamets had just willingly set himself to do the actual task he had been assigned to do. What in the hell was happening. There might actually be something seriously wrong with Stamets. Whatever it was, it seemed like an improvement. Lorca found he actually sort of liked Stamets now.

He was only half-listening, still perplexed by this complete change in Stamets' personality, but he heard Burnham request Cadet Tilly's assistance and promised her whatever she wanted or needed for this mission. He gave her Tyler for a pilot, too, and before sending them off he pulled Tyler aside on the shuttle and said, "Bring her back in one piece."

"Not a scratch," promised Tyler, patting the shuttle's controls, and Lorca's smile softened.

"I'm talking about her," Lorca clarified, glancing over at Burnham, and then offered Tyler a piece of his trademark gallows humor: "Or don't come back at all." As usual, despite the smile, there was something very real in those words.

Finding himself in yet another one of those depressing waiting patterns while Burnham flew off to save her adoptive father, Lorca examined the latest iteration of Mischkelovitz's mycelial map from the privacy of his quarters. It was coming along slowly but surely. Each jump added something new, some detail, some revision, some elimination of a previous possibility.

Unfortunately, with an absolute dearth of reasons for them to jump anywhere at the moment, there was really nothing Mischkelovitz could add to the map, so she was back on the Klingon cloaking problem.

An alert from the bridge interrupted his examination. Admiral Cornwell wanted to talk to him.

In person. Her cruiser was here. This, he knew, was not going to be good.

It was even worse than he expected. Cornwell wasn't just mad, she was furious, because the rampant insubordination she had been putting up with for far too long had just spread to his interactions with other admirals.

"You are captain of the most advanced ship in the fleet. The cornerstone of our entire defense against the Klingons!" she proclaimed, her every word a judgmental reprimand. (Could Cornwell even hear herself? Yet again, Lorca was reminded of the fact they would not let him deploy Discovery in battle where it was truly needed. Was the cornerstone of their defense supposed to be empty air?) Her accusations went on and on: he had launched an unauthorized rescue mission with a convicted mutineer and a POW of questionable trustworthiness (unfair; Tyler had proven himself both true and capable to Lorca), he was treating Discovery like his own fiefdom (fair; as far as Lorca was concerned, the ship was), Stamets had engaged in illegal eugenics modifications (but he had gotten the spore drive working in the process and saved everyone on the ship). "There are rules—"

"Rules are for admirals in back offices," he said to her, face set with fierce determination. "I'm out there trying to win a war."

"Then don't make enemies on your own side!"

As strained as things had become, he was stunned by the implication she might now be in some way his enemy. "What are you doing here? What's really going on?"

"I came to see my friend," she said.

There were two ways Lorca could interpret that. One way was to challenge whether or not she truly understood the meaning of the word, because these days he was no longer sure.

He went with the other. "Okay," he said softly, and decided to remind her exactly what sort of friends they were. "Why don't we stop talking like Starfleet officers, Kat, and, ah, start talking like friends?" He produced a bottle of whiskey from under the table and offered a tiny smile of invitation.

He could see the reluctance, but also the hope.

"If you don't want to, that's fine. But it's the end of my day, and it's been a long one, so..." He put a glass on the table next to the bottle and poured himself a measure.

Cornwell stared at the alcohol as it went in the glass. "There are better ways to unwind," she said.

Lorca picked up the drink with a smirk. "Are you offering?"

"Reading, music," corrected Cornwell, kicking herself slightly for walking right into that one.

He took a sip of the whiskey, felt the initial bite of the alcohol dissolve into a smoothly satisfying, earthy warmth, and put a second glass on the table. "You gonna make me drink alone?" Her will to resist dissolved a little more with each passing moment, but she was still not at the tipping point. "You came an awful long way to see me. These days, there's no telling when either of us'll get a chance like this again, to share a drink with a friend."

He said when, but they both knew full well that he could just as well have said "if" and the statement would have been just as if not more true. She stepped forward and he poured her drink. A little more than he should have, so he poured some more in his own glass to balance things out.

"I really hate how we left things on that starbase," said Cornwell.

"Yeah," said Lorca. "Me, too." He sighed and took another sip, leaning his free hand on the surface of his desk.

Cornwell tilted the glass in her hand, admired the amber color. "This war has made things difficult in more ways than I think any of us expected."

"That it has." He watched her take a slow sip of her whiskey. "Do you mind if we adjourn to a more comfortable setting?" She shrugged at him faintly, not saying no. He picked up the bottle. "Computer, two for site to site transport. Captain's quarters."

He closed his eyes as they rematerialized in a shimmer of white light.

"I still can't believe you won't get your damn eyes fixed," she said.

"They're my damn eyes," he said. "And I—"

"You're keeping them, I remember." She rolled her eyes at him and sat down on the chair next to the coffee table. Intentionally, because it only had room for one and kept this encounter more firmly on her terms. He sat on the couch across from her and put the bottle on the table, clinking his glass against hers. "Nothing like a single malt, straight from the motherland."

She recalled a bottle of the same they had once shared while watching the Perseid meteor shower. Lorca smiled at her as she reminisced, but somehow it felt less than fully genuine and slightly distracted.

"We were so young, with grand plans for the future," she said, and lifted her glass with a faintly giddy motion.

"Well, some of us still have," he boasted.

"I know," she said, and sat there, looking at him intently. Her face shifted from the fond sweetness of distant memories to the sharp focus of the here and now. "I worry about you, Gabriel. Some of the decisions you've been making recently have been troubling." She said it with a small laugh, but Lorca could see she was not joking.

"Well, war doesn't provide too many opportunities for niceties," he countered, and framed his response just as jokingly in the hopes of eliciting more of the same.

Instead, the levity evaporated on her side of the conversation. She began to list off some of her concerns: the way he pushed his crew, his recent disregard of Starfleet's orders, of her orders. To him these were mild rebukes. To her, they were serious questions as to what he thought he was doing out here in the reaches.

"Starfleet needs you at your best," she said, trying to soften the blow with a return to a more lighthearted tone. "I'm not sure we're getting it."

"I'm not sure the Klingons would agree," he said with a smirk, raising his glass to his lips, still stalwartly dismissive. Besides, if the Klingons were getting less than his best, it was only because Cornwell kept trying to tie his hands behind his back and stop him from doing what he knew was needed.

"I don't think you've been the same since the Buran."

There it was, of course. Lorca shook his head and chuckled faintly. If this were a drinking game, he would have lost right then and there, because it always, always came back to the Buran. Predictable to a fault. He leaned forward, reminded her he had passed every test, every psych eval, and she admitted that was true. "So what's really the problem?" he asked.

"Less than a week ago, you were being tortured. Now you're back in the chair. How do you feel about that?"

He laughed. They had a bottle of single malt, they were in his quarters, and she was dime store psychoanalyzing him with the greatest known cliché of her profession. "Are we in session?" He put his glass down, shifted his position so he was sitting on the edge of the couch, and leaned in even closer. "'Cause if I have your undivided attention for fifty minutes, I can think of a whole bunch of other things we can be doing." His hand reached over and touched her knee, fingers lightly tracing the fabric of her uniform.

She could not help but smile. Between the alcohol, those clear blue eyes, that devilish smirk, the relentless pursuit and focus that accompanied it, and the way he did everything in carefully-calculated escalating steps to get exactly what he wanted, it was like twenty years ago all over again.

Cornwell stood up, removed her insignia, and put it on the table. The signal was clear. As of right now, she was no longer an admiral, they were just two people in a room with a bottle of single malt.

Fifty minutes turned out to be an exhausting goal. Which wasn't to say that it wasn't fun, and that Lorca didn't enjoy every minute of it, but after a very long day and in the blissfully exhausted satisfaction following, he drifted off into an almost happy sleep.

He awoke to the sensation of something touching the triangular-shaped scar upon his back and with the loss of his sleep state came a surge of panicked adrenaline.

For a moment, he was not on Discovery, he was somewhere else entirely, and it terrified him beyond anything. He instinctively felt someone was trying to kill him. His fingers were already wrapped tightly around the phaser under his pillow and he rolled over onto his perceived attacker with the phaser drawn. His other hand closed around her neck as the phaser pressed against her chin. His breaths were a series of rapid, panicked pants of overwhelmed anxiety.

He saw Cornwell. He was still on Discovery. He looked at the phaser in his own hand almost incomprehensibly. It was hard to tell which of them was more shocked, her for the phaser pointing at her face, or him for the realization he had drawn it on her.

He released her, tried to calm the wrongness of the moment. "I'm sorry," he gasped.

Cornwell pushed him off her, jumping out of the bed. "You sleep with a phaser in your bed and you say nothing's wrong!" she exclaimed.

"Kat!"

She grabbed her clothes, frantically pulling them on. "I have ignored the signs. I can't any more."

He listened with rising alarm as she decried him as a stranger, a liar, someone who had changed in ways that made him unrecognizable to her. He watched the anger and fear on her face and was helpless to stave off the deluge of condemnation. She said, "Now I see it's worse than I ever thought. Your behavior's pathological. That's what tonight was, right? Trying to get me to back off?"

She was fully dressed now. She picked up her insignia from the table and clapped it back onto her uniform.

"I can't leave Starfleet's most powerful weapon in the hands of a broken man."

She went for the door.

For all that he had been scared upon waking, his was even more terrified now. He scrambled from the bed after her, stopping short of reaching for her, because it was impossible for him to unmake her memory of his hand around her neck and he had no wish to reconjure it for either of them. His voice cracked as he pleaded with her, "Don’t take my ship away from me! She's all I got. Please, I'm begging you." She did not respond to this. Lorca changed tactics, attempted to give her what he thought she wanted. "And you're, you're right. It's been harder on me than I let on, I lied about everything and I need help."

He stood there, completely exposed, desperately looking for some sign of forgiveness or understanding or compassion that would signify she was not really going to take Discovery from him. She was supposed to be his friend, she kept insisting she was, and he needed this ship because it was his everything.

"I hate that I can't tell if this is really you," she said, unmoved.

The look on his face was so lost, so scared. She left him standing there like that. As the doors closed, he felt like the universe was about to come crashing down on top of him.

It surely would have had not the comm beeped a priority message from the bridge. It was Saru, reporting the return of Burnham with Sarek. Lorca tried to process this news and everything that had just unraveled around him. "On my way to sickbay," he said, a tremor in his voice.

He had thought she would be putty in his hands, but he'd squeezed too hard, and it had slipped right through his fingers.

Cornwell beelined to Lab 26, not caring if Lorca tracked her movements at this point, intent on ending this farce once and for all and making sure everyone she held responsible for this mess knew they had played a part in it.

O'Malley was outside the door alongside the big Swedish man who had served with Lorca on the Triton and whose name Cornwell did not remember. "Colonel, with me!" she barked, and O'Malley followed her into the lab, not certain what was going on. He found Cornwell entirely not in the mood for small talk as the doors cycled them inside.

Mischkelovitz was startled to see Cornwell come through with O'Malley and beeline for Lalana's room. Lalana was similarly surprised to find Cornwell on her doorstep. Cornwell did not bother to wait for an invitation. She charged straight in and O'Malley trailed after in a continued state of confusion.

Lalana was typically cheerful in her greeting to Cornwell, but as the door slid shut, Cornwell was not having any of it.

"You told me you would tell me if there was something wrong with him," Cornwell said. "There is something very wrong with him!"

"What are you talking about?" asked Lalana, beginning to knock her hands together.

"Come again?" said O'Malley, confused for more reasons than the fact that he had not been privy to the referenced conversation between Cornwell and Lalana.

"After the Buran!" clarified Cornwell, repeating, "You said you would tell me if there was anything wrong with him."

Lalana tilted her head. "That may be what you heard, but that is not what I said."

Cornwell stared, aghast. "Excuse me?"

Lalana's hands stilled. "I told you I would look after him and let you know if there was anything of concern about Hayliel."

Cornwell breathed in, shaking from the combination of anger and adrenaline she was still feeling. It suddenly seemed very important, the exact words Lalana had used in San Francisco, but Cornwell could not remember precisely what they were. "Don't you dare try to downplay this with word games."

"Words are not games," said Lalana. "Words are the most important things humans have because words are used to tell stories."

Cornwell was utterly flabbergasted. After all these years, Lalana remained unmistakably alien and the limited extent to which she understood humanity had clearly failed both Cornwell and Lorca in the most spectacular and unfortunate fashion. "There is something very, very wrong. That is not the Gabriel Lorca I know."

O'Malley began to wonder what he was doing in the room. Bearing witness in the event of legal proceedings? Preventing one of Lorca's lovers from murdering the other?

"There is nothing wrong with him," said Lalana. "He is exactly who he is."

Cornwell exploded. "He pulled a phaser on me!”

O'Malley's mouth fell open in shock. "What? Who?" He did not mean to ask who, because it was entirely self-evident who they were talking about, but O'Malley could not believe it. Cornwell shot O'Malley a look that said his momentary obtuseness was extremely not appreciated and O'Malley hastily replaced it with another question. "Why?"

"Is there a good reason for a captain to draw a phaser on an admiral?"

There were, in O'Malley's experience, several. Admirals were not immune to mistakes and corruption, even if their shortcomings tended to be slightly above his colloquial pay grade. He tried again to elicit an answer that would make sense of this horrifying information. "Why on earth would he do that?"

Cornwell did not appreciate the colonel's questions. It felt like he was interrogating her and from her perspective, the reasons for the offense were not so important as the fact it had happened in the first place. "You tell me. I sent you here to assess him, colonel, and you're telling me you missed that?"

"I—" O'Malley was really struggling with this. "I don't know what you're talking about! He's never pulled a phaser on me. Nor anyone on the crew so far as I know. Why would he? What the hell happened?" Lorca had not even pulled a phaser on Groves, despite having more than ample motivation to do so.

"It was under his pillow," said Cornwell.

"His... His pillow? His..." O'Malley paled, making his freckles stand out in sharp relief. He seemed to come to a full and total stop and stared at Cornwell with a vacant expression on his face.

It was clear what facet of this exchange O'Malley was now processing. "You're focusing on the wrong thing," said Cornwell bluntly.

"No, you are focusing on the wrong thing," said Lalana. "Why are you upset? He did not shoot you. There is nothing for you to be upset about because there is no problem."

Neither human could quite believe their ears. Lalana had yet again found a way to thoroughly demonstrate her utter lack of human morality in a horrifying way.

"We need to remove him from command at the earliest opportunity," said Cornwell. "I'm authorizing you to arrest him."

O'Malley shook his head, mostly to get rid of the idea that Lalana thought pointing phasers at people was no big deal. He focused his attention on Cornwell. "With all due respect, I can't possibly do anything of the sort without conducting a proper investigation. This is a very serious accusation, admiral."

"Accusation?" repeated Cornwell. "I'm telling you what happened." She jerked her head as she said this, emphasizing the bitter truth.

"If I ask Captain Lorca, will he tell me the same?"

"Are you really turning this into a he said, she said situation?" said Cornwell. "I am an admiral and I just had a phaser pulled on me by a man who is completely unfit for command." She was really getting tired of repeating herself for them both. How O'Malley could possible stand there and not immediately declare Lorca in need of arrest, Cornwell did not know.

"Vice admiral," said O'Malley automatically, meaning it only as a technical clarification and not a disparagement, but it came off that way all the same. "And I'm a colonel in Investigative Services. Admiral, I cannot eschew my duties based on the word of anyone. This is literally the foundation of what Investigative Services is built upon. Now, if you want to remove him through command channels, that's entirely your prerogative, but I do not make arrests until after I have investigated the events in question." (There was one exception, if the suspect in question posed a flight risk, but in this instance, Lorca was less likely to flee Discovery than to flee with the ship and O'Malley on it.)

Cornwell could hardly believe what she was hearing, wondering how O'Malley could possibly downplay the magnitude of Lorca's transgression, but O'Malley wasn't done.

"Which isn't to say I won't investigate, I certainly will. I'll take your statement into consideration, and his statement, and, if the evidence bears up, which I should think it would because I do place great importance on your statement and I certainly don't question it, then and only then will I arrest him. But the man has a regulatory right to defend himself and respond, and I'm not the person to strip away anyone's right to a defense." This right to defense was the only thing that had saved his sister.

Cornwell chewed her lip. She was slightly concerned about the optics of removing Lorca in the middle of a warzone and O'Malley was going to adhere to his protocols. There was also the issue that there was no telling how Lorca or his crew would respond to an attempt to remove Lorca by force. The look on Lorca's face when she left him had been that of a cornered animal, and in Cornwell's experience, cornered animals were the most dangerous kind.

Lalana's tail twitched back and forth in catlike agitation. "If you are quite done, you may leave my home now, admiral."

The look Cornwell gave Lalana would have withered anyone else, but it had no effect on the lului. "I should never have trusted you," Cornwell said.

"I believe the human phrase 'you have made your own bed and now you must lie in it' may apply," said Lalana, "as it seems your own bed would have been a better place for you to lie down than in Gabriel's." She had the audacity to click her tongue once.

"Fuck you," said Cornwell, turning on her heel, and left. O'Malley trailed after Cornwell again, offering Lalana one last confused glance as he did.

"I want full updates on everything in your investigation," said Cornwell as they bypassed Mischkelovitz once more.

"With respect, admiral, as you are a part of the investigation, it wouldn't be right for you to be involved to that degree. I'll direct my findings to my superior and she'll be in contact as needed."

"Fine, but don't wait," said Cornwell, and strode away, leaving O'Malley standing next to Larsson.

Larsson watched the admiral go. "What was that about?"

O'Malley just shook his head. "I have no bloody idea, but I'm damn sure going to find out."

Standing in the hallway with Burnham, Lorca looked at the figure of Sarek lying in sickbay, but he was only halfway attentive to the issue of the unconscious Vulcan ambassador. Part of Lorca was still back in his quarters having everything stripped away from him.

The talks Sarek had been delayed from attending represented a very real chance for the Federation to hold its own and even turn the tide of this war. Sarek was never going to make the meeting in his present state.

"The window for the talks closes in a few hours. Even if the Federation wanted to step in, they couldn't get there in time," said Burnham.

As she spoke, the wheels turned in Lorca's head. There were so many things up in the air right now and he was barely keeping it together, not that Burnham seemed to notice. Her appreciation of human emotions was largely stunted because of the Vulcan lying on the biobed.

Something slightly mad occurred to Lorca. "Admiral Cornwell could." He could scarcely believe he was saying it. "I know her. She'd do anything to keep the chance of peace alive."

Even if Cornwell had lost all faith in him, decided he was a stranger, and was now trying to ruin his life, this war was too important and he was not going to take away any hope the Federation had of surviving it. Even if it meant giving someone who was actively trying to destroy him a feather in her cap.

It might actually play in his favor, show Cornwell that he was still worthy of his command because he could appreciate the bigger picture. Make her see the bigger picture, too.

Burnham turned to Lorca. Her expression was still so steely. "Sir, you didn't have to mount this rescue mission for Sarek."

"I didn't do it for him," said Lorca, and for a moment there was something gentle in his eyes. "I need a team around me that's gonna help me carry the day. And that includes you." If he was going to find a way to keep Discovery, he would need such a team more than ever.

"I'm grateful," she said, "to serve under a captain like you." He smiled, nodded, and left her to watch over her father.

This was a shit day, but at least he had managed to make good on one miracle. Time to try for another.

There was precious little time to waste, so even though he received a message requesting his presence at Lab 26 urgently, he went to the actual guest quarters Cornwell had been assigned. She was gathering up the handful of personal effects that had been transferred over from her cruiser, namely a toothbrush and change of clothes.

She was not pleased to see him again this soon. "You have a lot of nerve—"

"The talks on Cancri IV," he said quickly, aware he had to get as much information out before she tried to cut him off or close the door on his face. "Sarek can't make it. No one can, except you. We're halfway there already."

She stared.

The helplessness filtered onto his face once again. "Kat, please. I'm sorry, but this is bigger than either of us."

"You're goddamn right it is," she said, and meant it on two counts. These talks were a real and tangible chance for her to make a difference in the greater scheme of things. Then there was also the fact his command of Discovery was never intended as a personal favor, it was supposed to be for the good of Starfleet, and she no longer believed at all that it was.

He recognized she was agreeing to attend the talks, which was good news, but he had to keep trying to save himself. "And when you're back, then we can..."

"It won't change anything."

He stood there, breathing shallowly. "A bit of perspective might—"

Her eyes were cold and her voice was unyielding. "You're only delaying the inevitable."

"Just tell me what to say to fix this!" His voice rose, startling an ensign at the far end of the corridor. "I'm trying to do what's right. For the greater good." If only he could make her realize how much that applied to his captaincy of Discovery.

"I can see that you believe that," said Cornwell, and closed the door.

There was still the request for him at Lab 26, but he continued to ignore it, instead focusing on preparing supplies and a shuttle for Cornwell's departure. This gave him an excuse to be in the shuttlebay when Cornwell turned up.

One last try. "I'm sorry," he said. "It's unforgivable, I know, but please don't ruin me because of one night."

"I don't want to ruin your career," she told him, intended it as a reassurance. "But when I return, we'll talk about how you step down. And after you get some help, maybe we'll get you back in that chair."

There were a lot of words in that Lorca did not like. Step down, maybe, and even help. He bit back anything that would give her more ammunition to destroy him with and said simply, "May fortune favor the bold, admiral. Good luck with your negotiation." He did not wait around to watch the shuttle launch.

He had a destination in mind but he did not reach it. O'Malley appeared in his path. "Captain, a word?"

"Not now, colonel," said Lorca.

"Yes, now," said O'Malley, and Lorca swallowed, because he knew O'Malley had a connection to Cornwell and had a pretty good guess as to what this conversation was going to be about. "We can go wherever you like, but we are talking right now."

Lorca chose his ready room, as he always did, thinking as they walked towards it how he was going to get out of this seemingly impossible situation. Was he at the point now where he had to be figuring out how to neutralize threats he had thought were his allies?

The dimness of the ready room was comforting and more so the stars, but Lorca was tense and jumpy as the doors closed. He prepared to attempt to defend himself from O'Malley, but before he could, O'Malley spoke.

O'Malley's voice was surprisingly soft. "I heard what happened with Cornwell. Are you all right?"

It was not a demand for explanation but the same question Lorca had asked Burnham, and offered with the same intent. There was nothing in O'Malley's stance or expression that suggested he was here in an official capacity, and everything to suggest he was here as a friend. That thing Cornwell kept claiming to be.

Still. "What, so you can rat me out to her?" Lorca asked, eyes wide. He wanted to sneer but his mouth was not quite managing it.

"I wouldn’t rat you out to Cornwell if she paid me in cheese," said O'Malley, entirely serious and sincere despite the ridiculousness of the words.

Some part of Lorca still worried this was some sort of trap or trick, but he decided to take a chance on O'Malley. His head shook back and forth in small, repetitive denial and his face took on the same hopeless and lost expression it had worn when Cornwell left his quarters. It was an expression he had been struggling to contain ever since that moment. "Mac," he said, and swallowed. "I fucked up." His mouth twisted into an anguished grimace. "Big." Lorca closed his eyes and covered them with his hand, then dropped his hand and turned to look at the stars. It felt like he was on the verge of losing everything that mattered to him right now.

They did not have the sort of relationship that permitted one man to hug another, but O'Malley moved to join Lorca at the window, his freckles reflected in the windowpane, dark specks on pale in a perfect inversion of the spacescape.

"Tell me what happened, in as much detail as you can, and don't leave anything out."

Lorca discovered that, as much as O'Malley was a great talker, he was an even better listener. Patient, attentive, sympathetic. He did request clarification on a few points: "I thought you were sleeping with Commander Landry."

There were a lot of jokes Lorca could have made in reply and he managed to muster up the capacity for absolutely none of them. "There was no actual sleep involved," he said blandly.

"And Lalana?"

"I don't bring a phaser in her room," said Lorca. Being restricted to the lab, Lalana had never been to his quarters on Discovery.

"But you keep one in yours."

"It helps me sleep!" managed Lorca, but even though it was true, it sounded pathetic to them both. "I can't lose my ship, Mac." Lorca's face twisted into an expression so pitiful he looked away from the window so he would not see his own reflection.

O'Malley could see clearly how devastated Lorca was by that possibility, but he would not and could not lie to Lorca. "Gabriel, I'm not sure you have a choice. But it may not be as bad as it looks. Certainly you're among the best tacticians, in a moment when we happen to need that area of expertise. It may be possible for this action to be deferred, at least for the time being, and then we can sort it out after the war."

"If that's the case, then I don't want this war to end," said Lorca bitterly.

"You don't mean that," said O'Malley, but Lorca did mean it a little bit. "You're just lashing out, and understandably. Look, put it to you this way, if it comes out that a war hero has been under a lot of stress and needs some time after the war, no one would judge you in the slightest. It's just a matter of us all getting to that point so everyone can appreciate it. Cornwell isn't the absolute authority of all things Starfleet, she's just your direct supervisor, and from what I can see, that relationship is well and truly compromised. Step one, have Cornwell removed from supervising you. We'll start there."

Lorca almost smiled at that. He had been hoping sleeping with Cornwell would demonstrate to her he was perfectly fine, but now that it had blown up in his face, at least there was still some tactical advantage to the event. It reflected poorly on her, too. Not as badly as it did him given how it ended, but still.

"I don't understand one thing," said O'Malley. "We finally have Stamets acting as a pilot for the drive and it makes the whole thing tenable, but they haven't rolled the technology out even now that we don't need the tardigrade?"

There was something infinitely calming about being directed away from thinking about the pending loss of command and back to the usual set of problems.

"It was a eugenics augmentation," said Lorca. "I don't think Cornwell wants that getting out, and we don't have any more tardigrade DNA to merge into another human." That was another thing Saru might have considered before letting Burnham and Tilly release Ripper, but it was too late now.

O'Malley sighed heavily. "How much simpler my life would be if we didn't have this unilateral ban on genetic engineering."

He finally made it to Lalana. "Something happened," was how Lorca began the conversation, and Lalana listened with just as much attentiveness as O'Malley had, but with fewer interruptions. "There's a chance..." It was hard to say it, even now. "They might take Discovery from me."

Lalana did not hesitate. "Then don't let them. You are most yourself when you are on a ship. You belong here. Don't let them take it from you."

His look was one of utter helplessness. "I might not have a choice." There was no guarantee any part of O'Malley's thought process would actually work. It largely depending on him finding an ally in Starfleet higher-ranking than Cornwell, and the only other admiral he had any particular working relationship with at the moment was Terral, whom he'd angered by rescuing Sarek, in so much as Vulcans could be angered. "Maybe your friends in Starfleet?"

"I will ask," said Lalana, and cupped the side of his face with the broad end of her tail. "I was given the stars by this face. I have not forgotten that. You will always be the man with stars in his eyes to me."

Saru woke Lorca from his bed. Aware his first officer might be coming to try and remove him from command, Lorca slipped the phaser under his pillow into the band of his trousers, hidden at his back, and answered the door.

The news was something else entirely.

"It was a trap, sir. The Klingons have taken the admiral."

The Klingons' invitation to talk had been a ruse from the beginning. The Klingon houses in question had not split off from the main leadership, they were looking to hook a fish to curry prestige and favor. In lieu of the high-ranking Vulcan they had expected, a human admiral from Starfleet made just as good a prize.

"Notify Starfleet Command," ordered Lorca. "Ask for orders."

Saru's head turned, indicating confusion.

"Is there a problem?" asked Lorca.

"No, sir, uh... Just, in the past, we have engaged in alternative thinking on these matters."

"What if we go after her and it's another trap, Mr. Saru? Did you consider that? Starfleet can't afford to lose the Discovery. She's bigger than all of us. If so ordered, we will try and rescue the admiral, but not without authorization."

"I will hail Starfleet now, sir," said Saru.

Lorca closed the door and went to the window, looking out at the stars.

It was everything Admiral Cornwell had ever wanted from him. Obedience, caution, and adherence down to the letter of the regulations.

She could choke on it. It seemed fate had given him a second chance.

Part 66

#Star Trek #Star Trek Discovery #fanfic #fanfiction #Captain Lorca #Gabriel Lorca #Discovery #Michael Burnham #Commander Saru #Katrina Cornwell #Admiral Cornwell #Cadet Tilly #Sylvia Tilly #Lethe

2 notes · View notes

sigmastolen · 7 years ago

Text

dsc 1.15 “will you take my hand?”

1. i have a lot of feelings 2. wtfffffffffffffff 3. spoilers after the jump

for all that mirror!georgiou didn’t want burnham to expose her identity, she sure doesn’t seem to care when it’s anyone besides the bridge crew

i have a lot of Feelings about tyler surrounding himself with evidence of ash tyler’s life as a human

when i took riding lessons they supposedly taught us a bowline knot to hitch the horses to the posts but 1) i’m not sure it actually was, 2) i definitely forgot it immediately, 3) in later lessons and at summer riding camp, everyone just used a regular slip knot whoops

i still feel like the voq/tyler identity struggle resolved too quickly and easily, but i really appreciate his feelings of not belonging anywhere

i love tilly very, very much. i love her hair and her swearing (the command track will train that out of her) and that she’s such a good friend, and i love mary wiseman’s comedic sense.

the going-to-Qo’noS disguises look exactly like the ones used in into darkness and i don’t know how i feel about that

on the one hand it’s funny and consistent

on the other hand i hate stid and everything it chooses to be so damn much

on the third hand, tilly and mirror!georgiou both look smokin’ hot

is it weird that i think the orions aren’t green enough? i want them to look greener. they look really pale, almost pastel or white. maybe just it’s the way this den of ill repute is lit.

(it also reminds me of that language history thing where the stuff about the four horsemen of the apocalypse is usually translated with death on a pale horse, but it’s also the same word as green? also, what webcomic did i learn that from? i can’t for the life of me remember but it was some years ago. i feel like it had really deliberately low-quality ms paint-style art.)

on the one hand, get it, philippa

on the other hand, ugh, here we go again with the mirror universe and depraved bisexuals (but only the chicks)

burnham :c :c :c

i appreciate burnham’s commitment to transparency and i love her character growth but i did not like the confrontation with cornwell on the bridge and tbh i thought the “we are starfleet” thing (#wearestarfleet lol) was silly and heavy-handed #sorrynotsorry

i do like the admiration in owosekun’s reaction shot off burnham

also honestly there is no reason for mirror!georgiou to wait around in the temple chamber, thinking terran thoughts and taking selfies or whatever, except that the plot required burnham to have a bunch of conversations, with tyler and tilly and with saru and with cornwell. whatever, it’s fine, it makes no sense but it’s fine

i’m pretty sure letting mirror!georgiou go free will definitely bite everyone in the ass

next season, i guess

on the one hand i’m excited for l’rell’s journey but on the other hand i find it somewhat unbelievable that this is the solution starfleet agreed to

then again, it was cornwell signing off on it, so maybe it’s not so far-fetched after all

i’m actually kind of excited that my fanciful visions of cornwell and l’rell having diplomatic brunches like civilized humanoids is infinitesimally more possible lol

tyler deciding to go with her is... intriguing. idk how i feel about that, either. HMMMMM.

but i did love the goodbye scene with burnham

amandaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

tbh i’m kind of annoyed that apparently there are no consequences for cornwell and sarek and their genocide plan

i don’t understand why burnham is delivering her speech to the dais & the discovery crew, and not the audience? also, i don’t understand why she is wearing command gold in this scene, when she was in sciences silver for the scene with sarek before it and on the bridge after it. was the command division restored to her along with her commission and rank? does that mean she’s taking a demotion, if not in rank then in hierarchy, by staying on the discovery as its science officer?

i’m not crying about culber’s posthumous medal, you are

i’m still not okay

also, wtf, why did cornwell not call culber by his rank? he was a lieutenant commander. he earned those pips. if he’s getting a medal, he deserves that honor, as well.

also i love that culber outranked stamets

i like that some of the background artists appear to be wearing tos-style colorblocked uniforms, but i don’t understand why all of them appear to be in sciences blue

i can’t decide if i’m excited by the appearance of the enterprise and, presumably, pike and spock and colt and the love of my life, number one, or if i think it’s a cheap ploy to drum up interest for s2

for a second there, i honestly thought the distress call was going to be from prime!lorca, somehow still alive

i’m not mad at the new version of the classic theme, though, can we keep it?

OKAY AND NOW IT IS TIME FOR BURNHAM’S NICE DAY

after trek

tilly’s spore?????????

MUSICAL EPISODE PLEASE YES

omg sonequa crying about the video from the bridge crew actors. how is she so sweet? she’s the absolute sweetest.

idk why but there is something that really rubs me the wrong way about doing the llap-salute with both hands at once. :/ idk

overall, though? i do feel like this was a satisfying conclusion to the wild ride that was dsc’s season 1. burnham got her redemption and learned the true meaning of starfleet, lorca got dead, tilly is going to be a captain, saru is becoming a leader, stamets made friends, tyler has a personal journey ahead of him, l’rell has renewed purpose, and the bridge crew has come together as a team. i’m not happy with every single decision dsc made -- i think it tried to pack more story into 15 episodes than could actually fit comfortably, and some things got short shrift that i wish could have been unpacked, and also for a show getting praised for diversity, it killed a disappointing number of characters with marginalized identities -- but it was engaging throughout, and the performances of all the cast are just stellar. harberts said they plan to examine spirituality and science in the next season, and i hope that will allow for more of the philosophical trek that i so missed in this season’s action-packed war story. it had some rough spots, but i’m willing to give this show my trust. i believe now that its heart is in the right place.

some questions to carry into the hiatus:

who is the new captain????? and why are they on vulcan?

(T’POL. I SUDDENLY WANT IT TO BE T’POL. she would be in her late 160s, i doubt she would have retired yet)

will we actually have an adventure with the pike-era enterprise, or is it just a gimmick?

more importantly, if we do get to hang out with pike & crew, who will be cast as the love of my life, number one? majel’s are some big shoes to fill. and does cbs have the clout to get zachary quinto, or will they have to awkwardly recast spock and then handwave it as alternate-timeline shenanigans? because that would be really unfortunate if they did, quinto is so good as spock

oh no now i’m crying about leonard nimoy again

if tilly got accepted into command training, why is she still wearing ops copper? is she still in ops as an ensign while she is being trained to transfer to the command division? i am confused. whatever.

... so is that it for the klingon war? will we still see hostilities with houses that haven’t got the memo yet? how much will we follow l’rell and tyler’s unification project? because this season never did find a good balance between disco business and klingon business.

will l’rell and cornwell ever get to have brunch? will tyler ever get to go fishing? will burnham get a new love interest?

wtf was up with the black-badge crew members from 1.03? they never got back to that and i still need to know.

how long will i last before i inevitably break down and purchase an officially-licensed DISCO t-shirt? (betting starts now, friends!)

#thinky thoughts #sigma watches trek #sigma watches dsc #space: the final frontier #spoilers #star trek discovery #.........#i love number one disproportionately to her screentime

2 notes · View notes

redscullyrevival · 6 years ago

Text

Kristie’s Favorite Anime of 2018

Here are the (overall) transcripts of my end of the year audio posts covering my favorite anime experiences of 2018. All audio can be located on podbean but tumblr is typically more receptive to the written word and I’m still learning how to do audio levels and editing; it makes sense if people rather read my goofy thoughts!

So starting from the bottom and working our way up to number one, here is my 3rd favorite anime of 2018:

Devilman Crybaby Directed by Masaaki Yuasa From studio Science Saru

Yeah. I know. I know, okay? Look at me - you can't look at me you can only hear me but look anyways - I know.

I like Devilman Crybaby and I don't want to fight anyone over it ever, lol. But I'll you know, take what I got out of the series and scuttle off to inspect it and carry it around with me, I'm fine with that.

Devilman has always been a polarizing experience, that's kind of it's thing, it's why people engage with the franchise in the first place a lot of the time. It's known for being wild and gross and painful and upsetting and super weird... But in the past and now again it's a story that resonates with the less than beautiful aspects of people.

Like a lot of other monster stories different people find themselves reflected in that wildness, grossness, and what's painful and weird. Devilman Crybaby tells a transformative monster story with the highest stakes imaginable and it's very simply not going to be to everyone's tastes, and it isn't even really to mine, but all the same I was swept up into all the many things this series tackles and presents and in the end I was appreciative of it's rawness and nastiness.

Akira Fudo is a nerdy crybaby whose best friend Ryo Asuka is a super genius cool guy. Don't question it. Ryo drags Akira to a wild rave sex party that turns into a demon slaughter and Akira merges with a ancient demon named Amon and becomes Devilman - uhhghhg okay. You all know this already, right? I don't actually have to do this, right? We know Devilman... Right? ... Shit.

Anyways, Akira transforms from nerdy crybaby boy to confident looking big crybaby boy with really nice eye liner and the series spirals widely out of control while going hard in fluctuating between surrealist visuals and it's story on human behavioral faults and triumphs.

First and foremost the basis of Devilman Crybaby's entire premise rests with the idea that kindness, empathy, sensitivity, and patience is our male protagonists' biggest strengths. Akira isn't consumed entirely by Amon but finds a balance of existence because of his ability to love and the depth of empathy he has for those around him, and that's important. That's something that can easily be overlooked by viewers who are overwhelmed with the blood and bodily fluids and incredibly harsh depictions of humanity the series absolutely without a doubt also paints. But it's Akira being intentionally embedded with the tools to succeed and survive this intentionally over-violent narrative world that, should, demand our attention.

Akira isn't without struggling with his inner demon - HAH eahh I apologize - but while the world quite literally starts to fall apart it becomes apparent that this show is yes incredibly violent, is yes crude, yes its upsetting, but it is all those things because it positions not enough of it's made up people are like Akira. Which is quite the statement.

Akira is a horny teenager with a literal demon inside of him and yet isn't a total asshole, so what's joe shmoes fuckin' excuse, ya know? There isn't one. Oh, you got a demon in you? Sorry, but, you still gotta care about people or you're just furthering the end of the world and we're all gonna die. So get your shit together. Learn to care.

Devilman Crybaby acts as a metaphor for many, many things.

It's a reflection on recognizing love with our words and physical acts, yes, but also in more abstract ways; our mom tying our shoe, our friend NOT letting us win, carrying on the dumb joke our dad always used to tell - love is that relay race. It's what you get and what you give.

It's about sadness being the antithesis of love rather than hate. It's so much easier to be angry than to allow yourself to be sad. Its where so many of us go wrong, it's a human fault. We veer off into hate or indifference when we should be sad.

The series also, of course, has big philosophical quandaries on what is good and what is bad and how much of that is defined by society question mark-question mark: But where the show focuses a lot of it's time is on the violence inherent in bigotry, within layers of context. It's about THE OTHERING of people, the othering of our own demons, of our own emotions, which isn't a surprise because as previously stated Devilman Crybaby is a transformative monster story. And that's why we tell these stories. We're still out here in 2018 othering each other, boxing each other in, exchanging well earned tears for rage...

Crybaby is not an easy watch and I don't suggest it even though you're going to be seeing it on a lot of Best of Lists for 2018. The advice I'll give is this: Think of Devilman Crybaby like those movies that soak up award after award. Just because it’s wining doesn't mean you should assume you should watch that film. That's a horrible basis for choosing media.

I'm talking about this series because it affected me but it affected me because I made myself okay with enduring the experience of watching it. All media is a compromise, and while I consider Devilman Crybaby a masterpiece it isn't because it's perfect. It isn't because it's the best thing I've ever seen - but it does rank up there, for me, in being one of the most complicated things I've felt.

#Devilman Crybaby #Kristie’s Favorite Anime of 2018 #anime

0 notes

soap-brain · 7 years ago

Text

@burnhamofvulcan replied to this post (that i’m too lazy to find and link)

AGH tumblr fucking ate my essay long reply to this bUT. while i do think that trek shows after tos did some good social commentary, i also think it's pretty... silly honestly to assume much about the show from the first four episodes (tng anyone?).

but yes lorca is set up as a good villain. he really really reminds me of commodore decker from tos (though less moral). sunday’s episode had a lot of parallels with the doomsday machine, imo. yeah, like i’m not sure if people were just expecting a show that could have existed in 1990, but with better graphics? tv is a different medium now. i’m someone who is pretty squeamish when it comes to gore and horror and.. that was not bad.

(im on mobile so i can’t reply in essay format the way I’d like but) the (constantly shifting) standard of acceptability/perfection is... unproductive. There’s a line to walk — we need to be critical of media, but puritanical ideals are almost irrelevant? so this is to say like there need to be these discussions & writers & directors & producers need to be told to create more diverse stories, but it seems like the shows that really get pushback aren’t the ones with all white/str8/cis/abled casts

i think there needs to be a balance with criticism if that makes sense

(i hope i put all these in the right order lol)

first of all: WAIT YOU’RE TELLING ME TNG GETS BETTER?? holy shit i quit after the first four episodes oh lord :DDDD perfect example right here i guess (even though i barely bitched about it) and yeah, judging from what is only the first look isn’t too cool, and dsc is groundbreaking in many ways, so just because you don’t like some little bits of it you should maybe consider supporting it for those reasons (most notably a diverse cast, and funnily enough the two prominent white men (excluding saru here for obvious reasons) are kind of villainized, especially lorca, but stamnets isn’t making too nice of an impression either, which is pretty revolutionary (oh, and that admiral from the europa was an asshat too).

exactly! honestly, i think if dsc had been more like tos, there would have been little to no views. because when we watch tos now, we enjoy it for the social commentary, for the triumvirate and the family feels, but we smile about it fondly for its slow pace, its nostalgic feeling, its odd effects, its odd dialogue (iambic pentameter-speaking shatner anyone?), its completely ridiculously wacky science that was often more like “let’s add some multi-syllabic words here that have something to do with atoms or with radiation, it’ll sound cool”, its glitter and its general wackiness - but that wouldn’t survive nowadays. i wouldn’t want to watch a show like that if it were made now, because it’ll feel childish and stupid. and the only way they could’ve gotten closer to tos would’ve been by infantilizing and diminishing trek, by making it cutesy and not taking it serious. do they still have a ways to go especially with the social commentary? yes. should there be less war and more peaceful space exploration? maybe. we are seeing a time where there is, canonically, a war - that time still exists a little in tos, and that war was certainly as big as it’s portrayed in the time of dsc.

and yeah! it did kind of resemble the doomsday machine. and we smile on the tos eps, but dsc did something similar only using our current way of displaying events in media, and suddenly it’s bad?

okay, that’s interesting. because i’m very, very not squeamish (luckily for my career, lmao), but then i was correct, it wasn’t that bad. so ... what is everyone getting so upset about?

“we need to be critical of media, but puritanical ideals are almost irrelevant”. YES! THIS! because there are no really puritanical ideals, because what is perfect to one person (ie a display of a mental illness) is imperfect to the other, because the way people perceive their situations differ. we do need diverse stories, definitely, but the second a story tries to be diverse, it gets shot down. the klingons are too weird. the bridge is too grey. the uniforms are wrong. i, a single person of this group, know that there is no way a person of my group would ever, ever have their hair like that and therefore it’s bad. the actor is wrong because they might be (group), but they’re not (something super specific). and meanwhile s//pernatural goes in the millionth season with an all-white, all-male, all-cis and all-abled cast and story creators hear that that’s what people want, because everything else is just never good enough. so yeah, people should criticize and should point out flaws, but they should also point out the good in the media that has been created to include them or other underrepresented groups. because we didn’t make progress by hearing nobody wants a black woman at the helm of a starship - we made progress by being told that that a woc being there made a huge impact on people, that her character was loved and appreciated, and that’s why we have a major sci-fi franchise with a woc lead now even though there were huge setbacks between tos and dsc. but that only means that we need to support dsc even more!

“but it’s not like trek!” maybe not, but we’re getting a metric shit ton of representation. (also, when has trek ever even adhered to its own rules, much less the rules the fanbase made for it? (other than the super rule of “more!!” ofc) )

so. yeah. thank you for your essay and have another essay in return and also i’m VERY EXCITED for monday’s episode!!

#my post #discovery #discovery spoilers #burnhamofvulcan #captains log

0 notes

animebw · 2 years ago

Text

Short Reflection: Summer 2022 Anime

Is it just me, or does summer tend to be the worst season for anime? Ever since I’ve started watching seasonally, summer has consistently been the weakest season every year, with the most high-profile disappointments and the least genuine successes. And that felt especially true this year, with show after how either failing to rise to its full potential or just never showing any potential in the first place. This has been a barren three months, and even after deciding to drop all the shows I really wasn’t feeling, I was left with far more bad than good. If not for a couple spectacular late-minute arrivals, I’d be confident calling this the worst ever season of anime in the modern era. It may well still be that! Either way, fall’s already looking exponentially better, so let’s give this cursed season the post-mortem it deserves and take a look at what gems are worth salvaging. I’ve already given my thoughts on the miserable second season of Devil is a Part-Timer (3/10), the ambitious but amateurish RWBY spinoff Ice Queendom (5/10), and the problematic delight that was Call of the Night (7.5/10). As for everything else... read on.

Shine Post: Unfinished/10

So, I guess the folks at Cygames finally dispense with all the stupid, ill-fitting gimmicks and just make a straightforward idol anime, huh? Forget the unholy amalgamation of horse-racing pop stars that was Uma Musume, Shine Post is pure idol through and through, a story about a bunch of ordinary high school girls chasing their dreams and make the world hear their songs. On the one hand, I appreciate them for finally cutting out the middleman; watching Uma Musume break its own back to shoe-horn all those competing genres into the same space was painful, so deciding to just focus on the idol stuff that was always Cygames’ clearest inspiration was a sound decision. Unfortunately, once you strip away all that genre-blending weirdness that made Uma Musume so compelling in spite of itself, all you’re left with is, well, a basic-ass idol show with no real selling points beyond some admittedly stellar character animation and a unique-but-poorly-utilized gimmick of the manager being able to magically tell when someone’s lying. And then you’re forced to contend with the fact that Cygames writing is pretty uniformly terrible, overwrought melodrama (the second season of Uma Musume nonwithstanding), and all their female characters speak in the most ear-grating attempts at forced, quirky cuteness imaginable, and then you start hyperfocusing on the weirdly sexualized character designs with perfectly see-through t-shirts and prominent thigh gaps and... yeah, suffice to say, my interest in this one is pretty much dead. The last three episodes had to be delayed thanks to an untimely Covid outbreak at the studio, so we’ll see if the finale somehow manages to turn this thing around. But I’m not holding my breath.

Yurei Deco: 2.5/10

Is there such a thing as Oscar-bait anime? I don’t know, but if there is, it probably looks an awful lot like Yurei Deco. It’s an anime original by the critically beloved studio Science Saru! It’s got a unique art style and a eclectic musical score! It’s telling a topical, relevant story about the modern-day surveillance state and how our lives are run by algorithms! It’s a very loose adaptation of a piece of classic Western literature filtered through insane anime goggles (Huckleberry Finn, in this case). It’s a show that practically screams its desire to be taken seriously, to have thinkpieces written about how Deep and Meaningful it is. But all that surface-level posturing can’t hide the fact that this is one of the stupidest goddamn anime I’ve watched all year. The story is limp and fails to connect, the animation isn’t appreciably better than other more generic but better produced shows, the literary references don’t amount to anything and honestly kind of make things worse with their incongruity, and whatever message it was trying to convey ends up so mangled by the end that it feels like you’re being made fun of for even trying to care in the first place. Bad anime are a dime a dozen, but few things are as aggravating to sit through as a bad anime that’s convinced of its own brilliance despite having all the intelligence of a lobotomized monkey.

Shine on! Bakamatsu Bad Boys: 3/10

The easiest way to describe Bakamatsu Bad Boys would be “Akudama Drive in the Sengoku era of Japan.” The premise is similar, at least; seven colorful and color-coded criminals are brought together by an outside force to help change the world that forced them into criminality in the first place. Sadly, the second easiest way to describe Bakamatsu Bad Boys would be “Akudama Drive but infinitely worse.” There’s some good chemistry among the cast, but they’re almost always split off into designated pairs and never allowed to shine as a group dynamic. Plus the animation is weaker, the themes are sloppier, the character arcs are so much more pedestrian, and there’s a real lack of spark to the whole affair. This is a story about criminals taking over the wreckage of the Shinsengumi to help rebuild it into a better force for good, but very little of the juicy potential in that concept makes it on screen beyond some decent moralizing against outright torture. But what really kills this thing is the only female character being subjected to the absolute worst kind of predatory “romance” and gender essentialism. That’s where this show crosses the line from inoffensively boring to outright disgusting.

A Couple of Cuckoos (2nd Half): 3.5/10

Is it just a rule that all harem anime must be cursed to go completely to shit by the end? I remember actually liking A Couple of Cuckoos back when it started out, but by the second half rolled around, it was just completely out of gas. Whatever story it had to begin with round to a halt and stayed there for twelve episodes of mind-numbing, meaningless faffing about, occasionally threatening to sputter back to life before promptly fizzling out all over again, finally belching up one last fart cloud of a non-ending before going completely silent. And I might not even be that upset about it; plenty of great anime have been forged off the backs of watching fun characters just hang out forever, and if there’s one thing I can say in Cuckoos’ favor, it does have some very entertaining character banter. But when you keep threatening to actually do something interesting? With cliffhanger after cliffhanger that are resolved near instantly and accomplish nothing except tricking you into thinking that finally, something, anything is about to happen? That, folks, is where my patience officially runs out. This show is a waste of my time, your time, and the time of every artist who worked on it. Skip it.

Phantom of the Idol: 6/10

Some things don’t need a deep reason for why you like them. Sometimes, just being a good time is good enough. And this heartfelt screwball comedy about a lazy, cynical male idol teaming up with the ghost of a former idol sensation to help advance his career without putting in the work himself is fun aplenty. Sure, it’s no Ya Boi Kongming, and the lackluster CG during the actual idol performances isn’t gonna blow anyone away. But it’s got good jokes, lovably eccentric characters, a sharp sense of comedic timing, and just enough sincerity to balance out the high-tempo wackiness. This is popcorn entertainment at its most easily digestible; it won’t blow you away, but it’s a good time guaranteed if you’re just looking for something to kick back and enjoy without thinking about it too much.

Shadows House Season 2: 6/10

Shadows House was one of last years’ most pleasant surprises, a slow-burn gothic shonen mystery that slipped neatly into the Promised Neverland-shaped hole left by that show’s misbegotten second season. Few anime settings in recent years have been as memorable as the titular house, and the first season left me eager to see Kate and Emilico continue their slowly blossoming revolution. Unfortunately, while season 2 keeps the twists coming hot and heavy with even more fascinating revelations about the systems governing this nightmare mansion, the narrative machinery feels on much less solid footing this time around. Answers come from awkward places and drawn-out exposition dumps, some reveals feel shortchanged, and there’s a frustrating sense that too many of these answers are coming not from the characters putting the pieces together of their own accord, but the narrative just dropping the answers in their laps. If Cloverworks decides to come back for a third season, I hope they’re able to tighten up the story’s structure and make its progression feel more natural. Because there are some damn exciting developments brought about by this season’s end, and I’d hate to see their potential squandered with writing that doesn’t earn their fallout.

Drifting Home: 7/10

Well, this was a pleasant surprise! Studio Colorido has been making this exact kind of whimsical-yet-poignant kids’ adventure flick forever, but this is the first one I’d call an unqualified success (at least from what I’ve seen; I hear Penguin Highway is supposedly pretty great). A bunch of kids break in to explore the worn-out, set-for-demolition apartment building one of them used to live, only for that building to somehow become stranded out at sea with no clear way home. What follows is a far more thematically complex odyssey than one might expect from this movie’s lighthearted exterior. Drifting Home is a story about, well, drifting away from home, about the pain of leaving a home behind and the fear of never being able to replace the sense of love and security that home gave you. But it’s also about those abandoned homes themselves and the emotions tangled up within them, how they reflect the lives lived within them and carry those memories even after they’re left behind. It’s a shockingly heady film, and even at two hours it feels like it could’ve used a little more time just to give it all space to breathe. But it mostly all comes together thanks to the gorgeous animation (seriously, Colorido is really starting to give Ghibli a run for its hyper-romaticized naturalism money), creative high concepts, and instantly lovable cast of child protagonists. Check it out if you’ve got a couple hours to kill; this is one adventure you won’t regret getting swept up in.

The Girl from the Other Side: 7/10

I remember a couple years back when Studio Wit put out a ten-minute short based on this bewitching fantasy manga. Even in such a bite-sized format, it was one of the most evocative pieces of animation I’d ever seen, and I knew I would never know peace until it got a full-length treatment. Well, that day has come at last, and surprising nobody, this movie adaptation of The Girl from the Other Side is absolutely mesmerizing. In a dreary fantasy world beset by curse and corruption, a lost human girl finds solace in the company of a cursed being still trying to hold onto his humanity. The exact details of the world and its greater context are left deliberately hazy; if you’re looking for meticulous fantasy worldbuilding, this isn’t the place to turn. What you get instead, though, is a gorgeous fantasia that makes you feel like you’re wandering the very woods where all those Grimm’s fairy tales took place in. The thick, ink-textured textured animation is like nothing I’ve ever seen before, equal parts terrifyingly supernatural, serenely archaic, and achingly human. And while the story may be as perfectly predictable as any other “jaded old dude takes care of a precocious little girl” plot, the vibes are so immaculate that it doesn’t really matter. If you’ve got an hour to kill, then you absolutely owe it to yourself to give this movie a watch. It’s a dream- or a nightmare- you won’t want to wake up from anytime soon.

Ao Ashi (2nd Half): 7.5/10

I said in my quick thoughts on Ao Ashi’s first half that this show is exactly what I needed to fill the Haikyuu-shaped hole in my heart. While that remains true, the second half has revealed one significant caveat: Ao Ashi has significantly weaker antagonists than Haikyuu. The strength of Haikyuu’s cast was that every player felt like the protagonist of their own story, with understandable goals and dreams, so you couldn’t help but root for them even when they went up against Karasuno. Ao Ashi’s antagonists are aiming for that same kind of energy, but they’re much more one-note and cartoonishly mean. I’m sorry, I can’t take this Akatsu guy seriously as a bully when by all rights he should’ve been kicked off the team for his shitty behavior by now. It’s far from enough to kill the show, thankfully, and the arrival of a shockingly great romantic subplot is more than enough to keep Ao Ashi as one of this year’s biggest delights. And now that the end of Haikyuu’s anime has been announced, I hope Production IG sticks with this one for the long haul as well. With a little stronger production, this could easily become the next sports anime juggernaut.

Made in Abyss Season 2: 8.5/10

You know, it’s funny. I spend most of the first half of Made in Abyss’ second season complaining about how it wasn’t as good as the rest of the series. The Golden City is visually boring and we spend way too much time in it! It’s overly reliant on shock value for the sake of shock value that doesn’t add anything to the overall message! The animation is so much more limited and reliant on ugly CGI (gee I wonder if making this in between seasons of a certain garbage isekai adaptation took a toll on the production)! But then the turning point hit halfway through the season, and it was like nothing had changed at all. The back half of Golden City of the Scorching Sun is as heartbreaking, horrifying, and unspeakably beautiful as Made in Abyss has ever been, finally tying the sixth layer’s meandering threads together into a single awe-inspiring tapestry of loss, vengeance, and what it means to find value in a world that doesn’t offer it easily. By the time it was all over, I barely remembered the awkward, subpar footing it had all started on. Made in Abyss is not an easy show to process, and it’s probably only going to get more and more difficult to stomach as we plunge into the Abyss’ deepest recesses. But while season 2 may be the weakest outing overall, it’s yet further proof why this twisted nightmare of a journey is one of the greatest fantasy anime of all time.

Lycoris Recoil: 8.5/10

You know what I love? When an anime comes out of nowhere and absolutely takes the world by storm. Lycoris Recoil wasn’t really on my radar before the season started, and what few trailers I watched didn’t do much to sell me on its weird mishmash of cute girls doing hardcore assassin work. Well, just slap a big fat egg on my face, because this bonkers original project is one of the most exciting things you or I or anyone else is likely to watch all year. Yes, it’s a little iffy that our protagonists are essentially government-sanctioned child sleeper agents tasked with keeping the peace by murdering anyone who even threatens to disturb it. And while the show does its best to wring some interesting thematic ideas from that concept- authoritarian security vs anarchic freedom, the ethics of killing for government- it’s far from a perfect treatise on the subject. You know what it does do perfectly, though? Basically everything else. Top-tier action, inspired direction and cinematography, consistently spectacular animation for fight scenes and comedy bits alike, a roller-coaster plot that perfectly balances hilarious slice-of-life shenanigans with the intensity of shootouts and car chases, actual canon gay representation (though not in the way you might expect), and two of the most pitch-perfect protagonists to ever share a screen. Seriously, Chisato and Takina own my entire soul and I apologize for nothing. Lycoris Recoil may not be a philosophical masterpiece, but it’s popcorn entertainment at its absolute finest, and I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Cyberpunk Edgerunners: 9/10

Sound the alarm, folks: Trigger’s back on track to save anime again! I knew Cyberpunk Edgerunners was gonna be a great time from the moment its first trailer dropped: marrying Hiroyuki Imaishi’s iconic directing style with the neon-soaked atmosphere of the cyberpunk genre was a match so perfect you gotta wonder how we’re only just now getting around to it. What I didn’t expect, though, was just how goddamn great the story ended up being. Imaishi’s always relied on the back of his high-octane visual style, and the thematic ideas that style alone conveys, to cover for the actual writing being kind of a hot mess. But Edgerunners gives him a genuinely great script to work with for the first time, and the results are magical. This tale of an impoverished teenager lashing out against the hypercapitalist system he lives under and finding companionship among fellow societal rejects may not break much new ground for the cyberpunk genre, but it delivers the single most exhilarating, heartbreaking, and breathtaking version of that story I’ve ever seen. And Imaishi’s style doesn’t just make that story pop, it infuses even the most played-out plot points with astonishing new life. This may well be his best work as a director, and I do not say that lightly. Cyberpunk Edgerunners is easily Netflix’s best anime since Devilman Crybaby, and I consider it a must-watch for anyone who can handle the intensity of its bloody action. Never before has something so perfectly embodied its genre while simultaneously feeling like nothing else that genre has ever produced.

16 notes · View notes

writesandramblings · 7 years ago

Text

The Captain’s Secret - p.53

“In for a Penny”

A/N: I apologize for this blatantly ridiculous chapter, which is fairly long. I especially apologize for Groves' existence. He prides himself on being ridiculous. But there's a good reason he's along for the ride. We'll need him later.

Full Chapter List Part 1 - Objects in Motion << 52 - The Danger Within 54 - Finger on the Trigger >>

Lorca eventually sent Saru off to update Landry on the status of the investigation and remained in Lalana's room, bouncing ideas off her.

"Do you think they want us to realize something about the spore drive?" he wondered aloud. Lalana's rooms were warm enough that he had taken off his uniform tunic, shoes, and socks. The t-shirt underneath was regulation black, as always.

"Perhaps the point is the development of the 'anti-spore' you mentioned. Certainly the crew would not be undertaking that if we were not in null time." Lalana was sitting on the hammock directly behind the couch. This put her out of eyesight unless he tilted his head back, which he did now.

"So, somebody freezes time to force us to develop an anti-spore? How could they even know we'd try that?"

"Emellia said her husband's work was decades if not centuries away from practical application at the level displayed by the shadow-man." This was Lalana's term for Lorca's saboteur. She still rejected the idea of it being outright sabotage. "Perhaps he is from the future, so he knew what we would do."

Lorca tilted his head back down. "You're talking about creating a time loop. It's chicken and the egg. How could the shadow-man have known the outcome of null time before he caused it?"

"Because he's from the future."

Lorca sighed. The logic was fully circular, but there was something to it. Either they were being visited by a time-traveling saboteur, or someone was running around the galaxy with a vast temporal power and had chosen to employ it on Discovery for unknown reasons.

"Do you know, your grey hairs are showing."

"What?" Lorca sat up, alarmed, and self-consciously touched the side of his head where the grey tended to appear. "They are not. I don't have grey hairs."

She clicked her tongue at him. "Of course you don't, Gabriel, not yet, but if we do not get out of this situation soon, others will start to notice when eventually you run out of hair dye. I do not think you have fully taken this into consideration."

Lorca covered his face and groaned. She knew him too well, she really did, and she was having a good laugh at his expense right now.

Her tail flicked down and brushed the top of his head. He peered out from his hand and wrinkled his nose at the motion. She said, "If you bring me the dye, I will fix it for you with such precision you will not run out for many months."

He tilted his head back again and looked up at her. "Appreciated, but it's not needed because we're getting out of here soon, so I can use as much as I damn well please."

"I believe that you believe that," said Lalana. A perfect non-statement. It wasn't even clear if she was referring to his belief they would escape soon, or the idea that he had no need to conserve the tools of his own vanity. Probably it was both.

"I don't mind a few grey hairs," he said pointedly.

"Yes, you do," she said. "As usual, you protest hardest at the truth."

"Right, well, to get back to the topic at hand, what do you think the shadow-man wants us to do?"

"Perhaps it is not us. It could be anyone on the ship."

"Be honest. You think you're so special it must be you," he said in jest.

Lalana chose to take the statement at face value. "I am not special. I am background radiation. That is the opposite of special. The one who is special is you."

"You think I'm the key?" It was hard not to be swayed by the flattery, but Lorca suspected if any single person was the key to this, it was Mischkelovitz. She had the prior connection to the chronitons and the technology in play. He sat up, said in mock seriousness, "Shadow-man! Let us out! That's an order from your captain!"

Nothing happened except Lalana clicked her tongue.

"Not me," concluded Lorca, settling back. "We can also rule out making Mischkelovitz cry, because if that was the secret, we'd have been out of here five times over by now." He started laughing. Lalana clicked her tongue and swatted his head lightly with her tail.

"That was mean, Gabriel!" managed Lalana, but her tongue kept clicking.

"It doesn't make it wrong!" He ended his laugh with a yawn. "It's getting late."

"You can stay here if you like and sleep on the couch."

"Your quarters are a little too warm for my taste." This was an understatement. The temperature could be described as tropical, even if the humidity was slightly lacking.

"Then take off more clothes." He blinked in disbelief. Lalana's tongue started clicking again. She was joking with him, of course. "Go on, then. Maybe Ellen will still be up." It was just after midnight, so probably not, but a lot of crew schedules were getting disrupted absent the meaningful passage of time. Forcing people to live by the ship's clock only went so far when more than half the crew was on standby with nothing really to do besides manual busywork that served only to pass the time.

Lorca sighed and pulled on his socks and shoes. A thought occurred to him. "What if it were Milosz Mischkelovitz, come back from beyond the grave?"

"How would that even work?"

"Honestly? I don't know." The spores clearly had some temporal properties, so maybe a time ghost wasn't completely out of the question.

”I think that would be sad," said Lalana.

"And if it were me, back from the dead to haunt you?"

"What is dead is dead."

Another non-statement. Lorca sighed again and went to the door. "Goodnight, Lalana."

"May your sleep be unencumbered," she said.

"And tomorrow be a brighter day," he finished. Everything on the ship was beginning to feel so predictable. He preemptively closed his eyes as he hit the door controls, expecting to find the lab lights on full.

The lights were dim and the lab was empty. Mischkelovitz seemed to have already gone to bed. Lorca made his way out, slipping his tunic back on in the outer chamber as he waited for the doors to cycle.

O'Malley was standing just outside, apparently waiting for him. "Captain," said the colonel. "A word?" Allan was on shift as well, looking pointedly forward and ignoring them both in the manner a true security professional.

"It's late, colonel," said Lorca.

"I am aware, captain. But as you're here..."

Lorca yawned again. "You have three minutes."

O'Malley motioned for them to move to the next section of corridor and closed the containment doors on both sides for privacy, alarming Lorca. O'Malley was armed with a phaser rifle. Lorca was armed with wit and good looks. In a fight, the phaser rifle seemed to have the advantage. O'Malley said, "Right. What exactly are your intentions regarding Emellia? Are you going to take her off the ship?"

"Not if I don't have to," managed Lorca, yawning again.

"Here's the thing, captain. I think, and maybe it's a bit mad, but she seems happier here than she's been anywhere else since Milosz died. I know Saru has concerns, he's mentioned as much to John, and John certainly has strong feelings, but I'd appreciate it if you'd continue to give her a chance. I realize she's... herself..."

That was one word for it.

"But she really is brilliant, and if anyone can crack this cloak detection problem under these circumstances, it's her."

"You're assuming we get out of null time in one piece," pointed out Lorca.

"Oh, absolutely. Of that I have no doubt. Too many bright minds on this ship for us to fail. So then, I'll have your word, captain? You won't remove Emellia from Discovery?"

Lorca did not answer immediately. There was really no telling what the future might hold and any promise on the subject was potentially a lie. "You have my word."

O'Malley extended a hand. They shook on it.

"What does it matter to you what happens to Mischka?" asked Lorca.

"You might say our fates are tied. Goodnight, captain." O'Malley opened the doors and returned to his post.

Lorca watched O'Malley go. The man was a question mark in a lot of ways. Internal security personnel files were notoriously sparse on detail, and O'Malley's was no exception. Lorca knew less about him on paper than almost anyone on the ship. He could tell O'Malley and Mischkelovitz had history, and O'Malley's words seemed to imply it went back to some point before the Battle of the Binaries, when Milosz had been alive. Was O'Malley responsible for taking away Milosz's work on temporal mechanics and was now guarding the widow out of a guilty conscience?

It was too late to figure it out now. Lorca resumed his trek towards bed.

Based on the single frame, they determined the shadow-man to be between five-foot-eight and five-eleven. This range included most of the male population of Discovery, including Lorca, and several of the women, though the silhouette felt more instinctively male. It conclusively ruled out O'Malley, who was too short unless he had taken to wearing stilettos, and Larsson, who was too tall. Not that Lorca had ever seriously entertained the idea of the Swede of all people being involved in some sort of temporal shenanigans. Larsson was rather like a cinder block. Even time could not move him.

Saru, Landry, and Mischkelovitz were also excluded. Again, not real candidates. That still left Groves as an option, and as ridiculous as it sounded, the idea of Milosz's ghost, because Lorca had no idea how tall the deceased scientist had been. Not that Lorca seriously thought it was a ghost. Perhaps Milosz had discovered some way to encode himself into a temporal plane and created a time remnant as part of his research. At this point, nothing was really off the table.

Except for fungicide. "We cannot use fungicide," said Stamets. They were at another meeting of the senior science staff in astrometrics and Kumar had come up with the idea. "For starters, the spores are trapped in time, so they probably won't even react to an external force of that nature. Then there's the issue that fungicide doesn't just negate spores, it causes a reaction, and adding energy to the system is the reason we can't use a tachyon beam. Right?"

Mischkelovitz nodded her head once.

"How is fungicide different from an anti-spore?" asked Groves.

Egorova explained. "In this instance, an anti-spore isn't really a spore so much as it is a set of particles that possess compatible characteristics to the mycelial particles. When they interact, they re-bond the mycelial particles into a non-mycelial configuration. Theoretically." The word was not intended as a slight against Stamets' lack of progress, but Stamets glowered all the same.

Groves squinted. "What about an anti-chroniton? Negate the temporal particles instead of the mycelial ones."

"If we had the capability to measure the temporal particles, I'd be all for it," said Egorova, "but we don't."

"And we don't have the technology to generate exotic temporal particles," said Saru.

Egorova had some new ideas of her own. "I've been thinking that we might be able to disrupt the field by transporting particles. It would take a very particular beam configuration, but it might work. There also may be a way to draw energy from the system, which would hasten the time it takes the mycelial field to reach the point of collapse."

"That, I like," said Stamets.

"It's interesting, actually," said Egorova, a clear sign she was heading into an aside. "The temporal particles would have naturally detached by now except the mycelial spores provide an excellent power source. Honestly, I'm beginning to really appreciate your research, Paul."

"Thank you!" said Stamets, completely forgiving her for the "theoretical" remark earlier. "It's nice to be recognized." He tilted his head sharply, shamelessly directing this dig at Lorca.

"Kumar, update me on the rationing and power consumption," said Lorca before the conversation devolved into more flattery of Paul Stamets.

After the meeting's end, Lorca held Groves back, waving Mischkelovitz out.

"If this is about me being in these meetings," began Groves as the door closed.

"It's not." Lorca found Groves a useful inclusion, even if he mostly served as a sounding board for the scientists. "I'd like to invite you to dine with me tonight."

"I'll let Mischka—"

"No. Just you."

Groves squinted at Lorca. "Are you hitting on me?"

Lorca rolled his eyes. He regretted this already. "No. Nineteen hundred hours. Dismissed."

Groves walked out looking dazed. Lorca heard Mischkelovitz ask him what was discussed but did not hear the reply. Culber was waiting to enter. "Could I speak with you a minute, captain?"

Lorca waved his hand in assent.

Culber was growing concerned about the crew's mental state. "People are getting stir-crazy, captain, and it's only been a week. From what Paul tells me, we could be stuck in here for months."

"We'll get out of here before then," said Lorca.

"I wish I had your confidence. As it is, I think we need to seriously consider what the crew is doing while they're off-duty."

Lorca raised his eyebrows in mock surprise. "Are we running out of contraceptives, doctor? Personally, I'm not a huge fan of abstinence." He chuckled.

Culber did not find it funny. "Captain."

"Well, I hear board games are all the rage," said Lorca. The classic pastime was enjoying a sudden recurrence as an allowed recreational activity that consumed no active power beyond the initial fabrication of parts.

"The crew can't play board games for weeks on end."

"What would you have me do, doctor?" asked Lorca. "If we try to bring more systems online, then you'd better hope I'm right about us getting out of here." As it was, Lorca was doing everything possible to maintain a sense of discipline and order in a situation where there seemed to be no immediate point. He was personally overseeing the most trivial of assignments to ensure compliance and maintaining as strict a schedule as he could for everyone to remind them this was a military ship with a highly-trained crew. For the most part, it seemed to be working, but the majority of the crew were on shorter shifts out of necessity. There was barely enough work available for everyone to feel they were contributing in any meaningful way.

Really, the person he was most failing with the schedule was himself, because he'd restlessly stayed up late too many nights in a row at this point, and he was starting to feel it. He was puffy-eyed and short-tempered.

"We should organize activities," said Culber.

"Like a pleasure cruise?" said Lorca distastefully. He had made every attempt to avoid having his commands devolve into such frivolity. Now fate had decided to make him eat his words.

"If that's what you want to call it. We keep people active, engaged, and happy."

Lorca exhaled heavily. "Fine. Congratulations, doctor, you just nominated yourself for the job of cruise director."

"I'll have a full list of suggested activities for you tomorrow."

"Don't bother. Just do whatever the hell you want, so long as it doesn't consume any power."

"Thank you." Culber started to leave, then hesitated. "Captain, I can see this is taking a toll on you. I'm here to talk if you need to."

Lorca closed his eyes and touched a hand to his forehead. "Thank you, but no," he said.

"You're a part of this crew," said Culber.

"Dismissed, doctor."

After Culber was gone, Lorca learned on the base of the astrometrics console and sighed heavily. Culber was right, unfortunately. This was taking a toll. He had never been so stuck in his life. The idea they were getting out of here soon was the only thing keeping him going. He couldn't even turn on the starmap and mess with it as a distraction like he usually did. It would be a waste of power.

How desperately he missed the stars.

Groves arrived ten minutes late. "Sorry, I didn't know if I was coming," was his excuse.

"You were ordered to come," said Lorca.

"That was an order?"

"Anything a captain says to you is an order."

"I just don't see it," said Groves, with a shrug. "This is why I never joined Starfleet."

"You're in Starfleet now."

The captain's mess was a very nice room, even with the lower lighting Lorca preferred. The colors were silvery and the table could seat six comfortably and eight without trouble. There was none of the sentimentality and warmth that had been Georgiou's trademark in her dining room. No wood, only metal, and recessed lighting with a blue hue. There were curved lines in the surface of the table that felt halfway between abstract and geometric and provided a visual point of interest. The only actual decoration was a schematic of the Buran on the best-lit wall of the room. Groves looked at it curiously.

"That's the Buran. Your ship that was destroyed," Groves noted.

"To serve as a reminder," said Lorca. He offered Groves a glass of wine.

Groves waved his hand. "Just water, thank you."

They sat down. Groves whistled when he took the cover off the plate. "We're on food rationing and you're..."

"Eating the perishables," said Lorca, smirking.

"I'm pretty sure steak keeps a long time in cryo," said Groves. "Not that I'm complaining." He smiled at the plate and picked up the fork and knife. "So what am I doing here, other than keeping you company?"

"I was hoping for the chance to pick your brain."

"Oh? What on?" Groves expertly sliced into his steak. Not the type to wait to get to the meat of things, it seemed.

"Your colleagues."

Groves froze with the fork halfway to his mouth. He took the bite and chewed a little too thoroughly before swallowing and reaching for his water. "And you thought you'd ask me instead of them?" He took a long draught of water for good measure.

Lorca was disappointed to see Groves so quickly rattled. He covered his annoyance with a liberal dose of charm. "Yes, well, aside from the news coverage, I found Dr. Mischkelovitz's file to be a little bare for a member of Starfleet, and I'm curious about the good doctor. You seem to know her well."

Groves set his water down. "I suppose."

Groves had clearly sussed out that this dinner was in fact an excuse for an informal interrogation, and, in typical lawyer fashion, he was offering short, spare answers. Though this was Lorca's intention, he knew he was unlikely to get far with Groves in this state of mind. "No need to be defensive, counselor, I'm just looking for some insights. I know Saru's spoken to you about Mischkelovitz continuing aboard Discovery once we're out of this little predicament."

"Little predicament" was not the words Groves would have used. "He said you intended to keep her on."

"Unless there's reason not to. Or is this in violation of client confidentiality?"

"Probably," said Groves. "It's a tricky line."

Contented as a cat, Lorca said, "A line you seem to have crossed already."

Groves frowned at Lorca and picked up the water again. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Come on, Groves. You sleep with all your clients or just the ones with dead husbands?"

Groves choked on his water and started coughing. "Whoa, whoa, whoa!" he said when he was recovered enough to speak. "I'm sorry, what!?"

"Did you think I didn't know?" asked Lorca, maintaining an impressive level of calm. "Emellia was very open about sharing your bed."

Something changed on Groves' face. His eyes went wide and his mouth contorted into a smile that threatened to turn into a laugh. "I'm sorry," he said, breathless and seemingly ecstatic, "say that again?"

"I'm aware that you've been sleeping with Dr. Mischkelovitz," said Lorca, managing admirable restraint in light of Groves' rising hysteria.

Groves began to laugh. Pure, unbridled, hysterical laughter. It was higher-pitched than Lorca would have expected. "Oh my god!" he cackled. "I know I said I wasn't ethical, captain, but even I have to draw the line somewhere!" He doubled over, slapping the table with his hand. "This is—this is perfect! Computer, computer. Where's O'Malley?"

"Colonel O'Malley is in corridor 9-B." This was the corridor outside Lab 26.

"Computer! Groves to O'Malley!"

Lorca stared in complete shock as Groves violated every rule of order and the most basic manners by calling O'Malley in the middle of dinner.

"O'Malley," came the reply.

"Mac! Mac! You'll never believe what the captain just said! Okay, okay. He just suggested I was sleeping... with Mells!" Groves started laughing again.

"Right, well, that's amusing and all," said O'Malley, entirely unamused, "but I still don't care. Wait. Aren’t you with the captain right now?"

"I can't even describe his face to you. He looks so angry!" reported Groves, delighted.

It was true. Lorca was positively incensed, napkin gripped in his hand and jaw tensed with anger. His eyes were filled with a dark foreboding.

"John! Knock it off! O'Malley out."

Groves continued laughing hysterically. "I'm so sorry, captain! I just, I just... It's not that I wouldn't sleep with a client, I've done that plenty of times, but you think I'd sleep with my own sister!?" He laughed again.

The revelation washed away much of the anger as Lorca put the pieces together. A mildly amused surprise rose in its place. "She's your sister?" He would never have guessed it. Not only was there no information in either of their files that indicated as much—they didn't have a shared parent listed and they were born on different planets—but they looked nothing alike. Groves was tall, brown-eyed, with medium brown hair. Mischkelovitz was short, blue-eyed, and had dark brown hair. Even their skin tones weren't very similar. There was some resemblance in the nose, and the matter of their secret little language.

"Half-sister, but, that doesn't mean it's half-okay to sleep with her. I mean, come on! But, uh, don't tell anyone she's my sister, okay? It's not exactly public knowledge, and I'd like to keep it that way. For appearance's sake."

"You appeared to be sleeping with her," Lorca pointed out.

"Don't feel bad, captain. You're not the first person to think we were. It just gets funnier every time!" Groves chuckled. He really seemed to enjoy having one-upped Lorca, even if it was in a completely useless context.

Lorca decided to skip to another line of inquiry. "Then you can tell me about her husband?"

Groves froze. "Mischka? What about him?"

There was no reason to waste any more time on Groves than was necessary. Lorca sat back and crossed his arms. "How tall was Milosz Mischkelovitz?"

"Five foot?" said Groves, sounding uncertain.

"Five foot what?"

"No, just five feet. Maybe four-eleven, if I'm being honest? What the hell does it matter. He's dead." Groves was entirely flippant about the death of his brother-in-law.

There went the time remnant ghost theory. Lorca squinted at Groves, wondering what it took to shake him. "Then, Emellia and O’Malley," Lorca suggested. There was an almost lyrical cadence to the combination of names. Given the rather tense relationship between Groves and O'Malley, Lorca was hoping the statement would break Groves' proverbial stride.

It did not. "Wow, captain, you are bad at this," said Groves. He really had no sense of decorum, or even apparently any instinct for self-preservation. "Like, tremendously. I'll put you out of your misery, because Mac does not find this as funny as I do. So, Melly's mum left Mac's dad and had an affair with my dad. Ergo, Emellia. You follow?"

Lorca followed completely. It was Groves who was failing to understand the situation. "You’re dismissed,” said Lorca.

"I'm not your enemy, captain. I left a very comfortable—not to mention safe—position to come to a warzone, of all places, just to repay a debt I owe a dead man."

"Dismissed," repeated Lorca, the word a hiss through his teeth. "If you prefer to go to the brig, that can be arranged."

Groves did not look intimidated in the slightest. "On what charges?"

Leave it to a lawyer to think there was due process involved. Lorca smiled. "This is my ship, Groves. What I say, goes." Not technically true, but a blanket charge of insubordination would suffice under the circumstances.

At last, Groves seemed to grasp the balance of power. He grabbed his plate, went, "Thanks for dinner, captain, it's been weird," and fled with his prize.

Lorca sat unmoving for several seconds after Groves was gone. Refusing to be put off his meal by the antics of an apparent madman, he stabbed at the steak and chewed it, glowering across the empty room at an invisible point in the distance. This week just kept getting worse and worse.

Groves was definitely not ruled out as the saboteur. If anything, he had just jumped to the top of the list.

Over the course of the week, Culber organized jogging, meditation, and debate activities. It helped, but not completely. If this went on for much longer, what other activities would the ship end up with? Cooking class? Choir? Origami? They could fold and unfold the same pieces of paper endlessly as they waited for the end of time.

Someone used their fabrication ration to make a one-thousand-piece puzzle that had taken over a whole table in the mess hall. Lorca tried to decide if he should come down upon the crew like the unholy hammer of god or let them continue using the extra hours of free time most of them now had however they saw fit. "Let them be, it's harmless," was Lalana's advice. "Humans are not as good in captivity as lului. They do not find watching walls an engaging activity."

"You like staring at the walls?" asked Lorca, genuinely horrified at the prospect.

"Where you see a wall, I see many things," said Lalana. "There are better things to look at, yes, but a wall will do when there is nothing else."

Meanwhile, Stamets continued to make slow progress no matter how many impossible deadlines Lorca saddled him with. "I can't make this go faster than it's going," he said miserably. Lorca noted the cultivation bay was beginning to look like a proper forest and suspected Stamets was not working hard enough. Examination of the security footage revealed that Prototaxites stellaviatori grew quite quickly on its own in the right conditions.

Stamets really was doing his very best to get them out of null time and not be distracted by his grow room. He just wasn’t having much success.

In the security footage, Groves turned out to be in the mess hall at the time of the sabotage. There were no phantom smudges to indicate he had anything to do with it or any sign he possessed any sort of device. Nothing turned up in the search of his quarters, either. Lorca decided to keep an eye on him anyway.

Groves was a spectacularly uninteresting man to watch. He spent most of his time in Lab 26, off to the side, totally uninvolved. When he wasn't there, he was in the mess eating, in his quarters sleeping, or shooting hoops in a storage bay with the basketball he'd used his allotted fabrication ration to make. Occasionally he would meet up with Egorova in her quarters. No secret what was happening there, though it was apparently a recent development stemming from their meeting during the current crisis.

It would have been a complete wash except watching Groves gave Lorca the chance to observe Mischkelovitz firsthand and see exactly what had so concerned Saru.

Mischkelovitz never sat still, which Lorca could appreciate. Up, down, left, right, manic to panicked, she was a walking disaster. She was constantly bouncing between half a dozen different things and talked to herself. Sometimes she seemed to be talking to her dead husband. Sometimes she just made funny noises, seemingly because she found it enjoyable. There was never any telling what she was going to do from one moment to the next.

In a temporal bubble where nothing seemed to change, having something so utterly unpredictable was an unexpected delight. It was funny, watching her work. Lorca left the feed up and running as a sort of petri dish of human instability for his own entertainment.

Lalana appeared on the feed, too. She seemed to enjoy watching Mischkelovitz as much as Lorca did. They would listen to music and talk while Groves sat doing seemingly nothing in the corner, Lalana providing her usual brand of pithy fortune cookie insights. Mischkelovitz treated these as mini-challenges to unravel.

On the subject of null time, Lalana said, "A problem is like a cloud. You cannot see the shape of it when you are standing inside it."

"But the cloud is the same shape as the ship," said Mischkelovitz, describing the spore field they were trapped in.

"Is it?"

Mischkelovitz thought about that. Then she exclaimed, "No! It isn't!" This sent her off along some sort of research tangent involving mapping the precise shape of the mycelial field with particle-level precision.

Lorca also observed a marked difference in the way Groves and O'Malley interacted with Mischkelovitz. Groves sat in constant vigilance but ignored her unless specifically directing her to do things like eat, wash, or calm down. O'Malley kept his distance and spent most of his time on guard duty outside the lab, but absolutely doted on Mischkelovitz when they were together and never seemed to do more than faintly suggest she ought maybe to go to sleep if she felt like it. Neither method, thought Lorca, was wholly effective.

The most interesting things were what happened when Mischkelovitz was totally alone. In those moments, she was entirely unencumbered by the need to be anything other than what she was. It was a rare thing to be able to observe a person with such intimacy, to see the person they truly were absent all society.

He should have turned off the feed and allowed her the privacy she thought she had, but there was something beautiful in the brokenness.

Pacing was everything. As Lorca's footsteps echoed down the corridors and sweat dripped down the side of his face, the universe was reduced to the sound of his own breath in his ears and the sensation of his feet striking the ground.

He passed a small group of joggers going the other way. They moved aside and stood at attention. He did not acknowledge them; to do so would have broken his pace. When he was past, the group turned around to run in the same direction. He was the captain. His direction was their direction, even if their little social club was not equal to the brutal pace he set for himself.

The other joggers meant it was 0700. Lorca came to a halt near the turbolift, putting a hand out against the wall and breathing heavily from the exertion. He wiped a hand across his forehead and it came away sopping wet. It had been a good run.

"Hey, Captain."

Lorca did not have to look up to recognize the voice and jocular informality belonged to Groves. He was holding his basketball and dressed accordingly. He bounced the basketball towards Lorca and Lorca caught it on sheer instinct.

"How about a little one-on-one?"

Lorca was a sweaty mess, clearly on his way to a shower, whereas Groves was newly-woken and fresh as a daisy. Lorca snapped the ball back to Groves with a glare.

"Nevermind, then," said Groves nonchalantly, and continued on.

Lorca stood a moment, frowning faintly in thought.

He made a quick pit stop in his study before heading to the storage bay where Groves had set up a makeshift basketball hoop using some spare cables and magnets. Groves was shooting three-pointers with decent accuracy and seemed pleasantly surprised to see the captain. Lorca held his hands out for the ball. Groves tossed it over.

Lorca reached behind his back, took the Reptilian blade he had stashed in the band of his running shorts, and stabbed the basketball. Groves looked momentarily pensive. Lorca dropped the deflated carcass of the ball onto the floor and walked away.

"Would you prefer squash!?" Groves shouted after him, laughing.

Part 54

#Star Trek Discovery #fanfic #prequel #fanfiction #basketball #Gabriel Lorca #Captain Lorca #Paul Stamets #Hugh Culber

0 notes