Chapter 9: The Reward for Bad Behavior
Just a few days had gone by in the Federation universe when they got back, not nine months. Still, a lot happened during those few days. When the USS Discovery finally arrived at Starbase 46, it was immediately nabbed by two tractor beams from two Federation ships and warned that if they made any threatening moves, they'd be shot at. This clued them all in that the ISS Discovery had not gone unnoticed.
Cornwell, Malek, Sarek, and some other people beamed onboard. They pointed phasers at everybody. The Discovery crew acted placidly enough that the Federation officers soon became less stiff.
"If you were really where we think you were, I'm sure you all know why we're taking precautions," said Cornwell. "You got replaced by a ship full of psychopaths. We need to make sure you're not Terrans. Sarek, Malek, check the bridge crew. Terral, why don't you go downstairs and take a sampling of the rest?"
"I can already tell this is our universe's Michael Burnham," said Sarek.
"I'm not doing him," said Malek, indicating Lorca. Then he realized he'd just made a double entendre and looked down, red in the face.
"Oh, grow up," said Cornwell. "Though I share the sentiment. Sarek, check Lorca. Although, if he's been replaced with a Terran, I can't help but feel we may be better off."
"Not if you knew the guy," said Lorca.
Malek went over to check Detmer, Rhys, and the others with just a touch of the hand. Sarek did a mind meld on Lorca and looked confused for a moment.
"Well?" Demanded Cornwell.
"I think this is the right one," said Sarek, "but his mind is a chaotic mess, barely holding on to reality."
"That's our Gabriel!" Said Cornwell.
"Kat, all you had to do was ask me about that tattoo you got years ago," said Lorca. "Then I could say that it was a purple winged elephant on your left…"
"That's enough!" Said Cornwell.
The admirals calmed down and accepted that this was indeed the Federation Discovery. Cornwell told them what happened after they got replaced with the Terran vessel.
"At first, when I called to ask why the hell you weren't en route to Starbase 46 and Tilly answered as captain, I decided it was some stupid joke of Lorca's. I yelled at her and dropped it at that. Then, the other admirals and I were served a steaming pile of shit by Sarek about Lorca's behavior. We contacted Discovery again. They'd wised up in those two hours and created very realistic holograms of Burnham, Lorca, and Saru. Of course, they knew nothing about the contents of Burnham's report and sounded really sketchy, so we flew after them. They ran, we gave chase. We caught them eventually and boarded their ship. They attacked us like barbarians. I'm surprised nobody was killed. Even so, that Tilly doppelganger ripped up Duffield's arm and chewed off part of his ear, which is why he isn't here now."
Burnham spurted with laughter.
"I'm sorry, how is a man's painful mutilation funny?" Asked Cornwell.
"At least now he'll have something interesting to talk about during dates," said Lorca, to distract attention from Burnham's unexpected outburst.
"You," said Cornwell, looking pointedly at Lorca.
"Oh, fuck, here it comes," he muttered.
Cornwell turned to the bridge crew and said, "Your captain has been lying to you since he first arrived on this ship. He has something very shameful to confess. Unless of course, he's too much of a coward to do it, in which case, I'll gladly tell the story."
For some reason, Rhys elbowed Bryce and whispered, "I told you so!" Cornwell shot them a look and they quietened down.
"Must we do this now?" Asked Saru. "We have all just been through a terrible ordeal. I am sure people want to call their families and rest without hearing any more bad news."
"Yeah, well, she's already brought it up," said Lorca. "I'll make it quick. Basically, after the Buran was destroyed, I didn't get a clean bill of mental health. I was diagnosed with PTSD. Except everything was such a mess that I managed to bribe an old doctor acquaintance to fake my record. I couldn't sit by while Klingons demolished the Federation. So…"
He tapped the back of the chair and didn't look up at his crew. They didn't say anything. To break the uncomfortable silence, Saru said, "Why, I do believe the ISS Discovery is still here."
"Oh, goddamn it, yes!" Said Cornwell. "We thought that thing would disappear when you returned."
It was in a containment field. Cornwell figured Captain Tilly and her band of barbarians had enough food for months. The Stametses had predicted the two ships wouldn't switch places this time because the massive outward surge of energy from the exploding spore power generator would push back on the ISS Discovery. Which was good for them, because otherwise they would have returned only to blow up. Cornwell was not thrilled when she heard this.
"What are we supposed to do with them?" She cried. "They're animals!"
"We must study and educate them!" Said Malek, suddenly fired up at the idea. "I can already imagine it, the Terran Rehabilitation Project. Maybe I could get mother to leave her current job and join me on this. I can't wait to teach them to be proper Federation citizens!"
Sarek looked at him condescendingly, not because he didn't like the idea but because he thought Malek was acting too excited for a Vulcan.
Only now did Burnham think to ask what happened with the Klingon War. Sarek told her that things went south badly. A ton of Klingon vessels converged after the Ship of the Dead was destroyed and went on a rampage (this just hours after the ISS Discovery was contained). The Federation managed to beat them off but took a big hit. Some Klingons got away and they took prisoners, including Captains Emilia Sully and Malcolm Perkins.
"It would have been bad indeed if you had not returned with the cloaking algorithm," said Sarek.
Then he looked sternly at Burnham and asked, "When exactly were you planning to tell me that you got married?"
Oh, he knew perfectly well that the marriage was unintentional. Not from Burnham's report, it was the one thing she didn't mention, but from Discovery's transactions that Cornwell ordered them all to parse after the ship disappeared. This was Sarek's One Joke of the Year.
Cornwell walked down to the window to look at the ISS Discovery. Suddenly, as she stepped forward, a thin wooden pole shot up from the floor and whacked her on the face. She stepped back, dumbfounded. She made no comment on the occurrence, as if this, the perfectly explicable (if unnecessary and belated) presence of a rake on the bridge was the most extraordinary of all that had happened recently.
Sarek, Malek, and most of the other admirals and officers went back to the starbase. Cornwell stuck around to get more information and prepare some paperwork. Lorca went to his room, packed his stuff, and changed out of the black uniform. He de-synthesized most of it except his fake Terran badge.[1] Other people who had Terran uniforms found it easier to cut the things off than to deal with all the buttons and buckles. Lorca dozed for a few hours until Burnham showed up.
"Did Terran you break that mirror? Seven years bad luck, according to some illogical beliefs," she said.
"I suspect the bad luck reflected onto me," said Lorca.
He picked the three knives from among the fragments. He couldn't bring weapons to the mental facility, so he stuck the knives into his only paper books, which he later gave to Yana. Burnham sat on the edge of the bed. He did too. They looked at the broken mirror.
"You know, I really thought the Federation forgave me," said Burnham. "I really believed they understood that killing T'Kuvma was a mistake and the war wasn't my fault. But when I started figuring out your history and reading news articles and memoranda about Discovery, I realized the admirals assigned me to this ship for the same reason they assigned you. They thought the spore drive was a joke, they didn't like you, and they didn't trust me, so we seemed like a great fit."
"I guess we were each other's punishment."
"I guess. I was so angry at you, and I still kind of am, but now I've realized that the admirals were right not to trust me. I am brash and unpredictable. I'm capable of causing great harm in the pursuit of good. After seeing that other woman, that butcher who jokes around and acts as if it's OK to commit genocide every day, I'm just second-guessing myself. I think I have not properly processed what happened at the Battle of the Binary Stars. I've felt proud and angry over the Federation's opinion of me when I should be searching for…redemption."
"Perhaps, but don't be too hard on yourself."
"Anyway, I've rambling on about myself when I actually wanted to say something nice to you…but you were such a jerk and it's just so hard!"
"Is it? On that same note, it's just so hard to believe we're not sleeping together!"
Burnham laughed loudly.
"You have to be careful," said Lorca. "That's how it started with Stamets too."
"You think hilarity is an effect of the foreign DNA?"
"You didn't used to have much of a sense of humor."
Burnham asked him to follow her to find Cornwell with some forms. They went to a common room. The bridge crew was gathered around a table.
"Surprise!" They yelled.
It's wasn't anybody's birthday but they decided to have a going away party for their captain. They synthesized a cake and somebody decorated it with a picture of a cat hanging onto a tree branch and the words, "Hang in there and get well soon!" Lorca hated the "hanging in there cat." He considered it the most insipid curse from the 21st Century. The bridge crew knew this perfectly well. He'd ranted about this a few times.
Lorca drew in a deep breath and shot everybody a very pointed glare. Then he said in a sickeningly sweet voice, "Oh, how lovely! Such a pretty picture! What's all this about?"
Burnham had been wrong about Detmer feeling ashamed that Lorca gave her a promotion. The bridge crew were quite attached to their captain and sad to see him go.
"We want to thank you, Captain Lorca," said Detmer. "Cornwell told us we should be angry at how egotistic and irresponsible you were and she probably has a point, but we learned a lot from you anyway. We never got the impression that you compared us to the crew you lost and we believe you had things under control. Most of the time."
"You pushed us to our limits and you trained us to be better officers," said Airiam.
"And even though, I'm guessing, you were pushed to your limits too," said Tilly, "you stuck it out with us. So thank you!"
They clapped and Lorca bowed, quite overcome. They wanted him to give a speech but he was mostly out of words.
"Really, really, I'm the one who's grateful to you," he said. "For putting up with me. I'm sorry for everything. You're all terrific and…I don't want to go."
Cornwell, who sat off to the side, said, "I expected him to make some dumb movie reference."
"With all due respect, admiral," said Airiam, "that was a TV reference. 'I don't want to go' is the last line of David Tennant as Dr. Who."
"You remember that?" Said Lorca.
"It really is a good show," said Airiam.
"You're all the best, truly," said Lorca in a rather dazed manner. Airiam and Detmer urged him to sit down and passed around the cake. Cornwell pushed a tablet across the table at him and had him sign several forms, including a nondisclosure agreement about the spore drive technology. Lorca signed without looking. Burnham came over.
"You should really read everything you sign," she said.
"I don't think any of these are marriage agreements," he said.
"Who would want you?" Said Cornwell. "Now, you have two options. You can either enroll in the psychiatric program at Starbase 5 or you can go home, if you still remember where that is. I suggest you leave. Leave and never come back, Gabriel. You won't pass the psychiatric evaluation because you've been nuts your whole life. They can't fix that in a few months. Plus, there's no drinking on Starbase 5. I don't see how you'll manage."
Lorca glanced at his crew and said, "They're worth it."
"Stop trying to sound like a nice, normal person," said Cornwell. "You'll be throwing shoes at your psychiatrist before the week is out, I bet on it!"
Lorca signed the form authorizing his transfer to the mental facility. Cornwell got up to leave, feeling that she'd overstayed her welcome. The two Stametses came in.
"Isn't she a burlesque dancer on Starbase 10?" Asked Stamets50 about Cornwell, loud enough for her to hear.
"Shuttle will pick Lorca up in two hours," said Cornwell to Burnham. "Make sure he's on it, if you have to knock him out. He's not your captain anymore, you can beat the ever living crap out of him."
"I think Emperor Georgiou already did that," said Burnham.
Lorca went over to a synthesizer, having noticed that Stamets50 squinted painfully from the light. Dr. Pollard promised to make Stamets50 a device soon, sort of like a pen, that he could use on his eyes for the light sensitivity. Lorca made a pair of sunglasses and brought them over to the scientist. Stamets50 put them on and thanked him.
"Matrix sunglasses," said Lorca, making a bad pun. Then he added, "I don't think Stamets wants to share his name, or his bed, with you."
"Exactly!" Said Stamets50. "Unlike Lorca and Burnham, I'm totally not into my mirror image. He's just so…"
Both Stametses made an identical sound of vague disgust.
"Thomas Anderson," said Lorca. "That could be your new name."
That did, in fact, become Stamets50's new name, so that is what we shall call him.
Lorca went over to Rhys and Bryce and asked why they'd made a commotion on the bridge earlier. They'd started drinking before the cake was made and nudged each other stupidly for a bit.
"Oh, uh, well…," said Rhys. "When Cornwell said you had a shameful confession to make, we kind of just assumed…"
"We figured you might have been in a porno," said Bryce.
Lorca laughed and they did too, then Rhys added, "Probably an X Men-themed porno."
"How would that work?" Asked Lorca.
"You've said that you could see yourself being Magneto," said Bryce. "So in a porno, you'd probably be using your powers over metal to…open some flies!"
They laughed in a stupid drunken manner.
"Oh boy," said Lorca. "Are you two sure you aren't Terran? Did you sneak over from the ISS Discovery, kill your Federation counterparts, and take their place?"
"He's onto us!" Yelled Bryce. They ran off to the other end of the room.[2]
Lorca sat at a table where Burnham, Saru, Dr. Pollard, and Stamets started playing poker. Lorca looked askance at Saru but didn't say anything to his former First Officer. The game proceeded in a rather boring manner.
"Maybe we should play strip poker," said Lorca. "I won't be wearing this uniform for much longer anyway."
Then he bit his tongue, thinking that this was just the sort of thing Lorca50 would have said. Except it was the sort of thing he said too! Should he not say that sort of stuff anymore? He looked uncomfortably at Saru again.
"Do you want something from me, sir?" Asked Saru. "You are making me nervous."
Lorca indicated that they should go to a corner and after some anxious dithering that hardly seemed like him, he said, "Saru, I was a shit to you and I'm sorry. I really took those pranks too far and I feel like crap about it. I took advantage of your good nature over and over and it was just so terrible of me."
"Captain, say no more…"
"I'm not your captain anymore!"
"Maybe not officially, but I believe you will return to us. Please, do not trouble yourself over those pranks. You were not well and under a lot of stress."
"I was well enough to tell the difference between right and wrong!"
People looked their way when Lorca shouted. Saru put a hand on his shoulder and said, "It will be all right. I do not hold anything against you. I respect you and admire your courage."
"Respect me? After I messed around with a man who called you a brisket?"
Jittery, hot, and worked up, Lorca leaned on the wall. His crew tried not to stare but they finally understood that yeah, the mental facility was the right place for him. Could he really get past this and come back to them?
"Captain, we cannot judge the Terrans by the same standards we use for ourselves," said Saru. "They are a civilization of broken people in a broken world. I do not find you reprehensible for feeling sympathy and affection toward your Terran counterpart. In fact, I believe it is a sign that your heart is in the right place. Whatever his faults, that man died for you in the end. You were attracted to the good you saw in him."
"But…but I…the dark mirror…"
Saru wondered what Lorca could mean, then took a guess and said, "Yes, I suppose he did turn a dark mirror upon you, showing you all the blackest parts of yourself. But it is for the better, in my opinion. Now you know what to change."
"And I turned an obsidian slate upon him, and he couldn't handle it. He couldn't…"
Lorca's hands shook and Saru led him to a chair and called over Dr. Pollard.
"When's the last time he ate something?" She asked.
She went to get some nutrient infusions. Yana showed up and Detmer came over. Lorca put his head down on his hands until Dr. Pollard came back and gave him an injection. Detmer offered him the cake he hadn't tried yet.
"Just a little at first," said Dr. Pollard. "We don't want him throwing up."
"I'm more worried about them throwing up," said Detmer, nodding at Rhys and Bryce's ardent game of beer pong.
"If you do not need me anymore, sir, I would like to go check on something on the bridge," said Saru. "I am sure we will see each other again."
"Of course, Saru, you can always find something to do on the bridge," said Lorca.
"I see you are not calling me Twinkletoes anymore."
"I think I'm done with stupid nicknames. Especially after…"
"I still like Fury," said Detmer.
Saru and Lorca shook hands and the Kelpian left. Howls of annoyance came from the beer pong table as a ball rolled off across the room. Anderson looked through a box of stuff from a costume party and suddenly threw a furry object onto the floor.
"Tribble!" He yelled.
He looked for a phaser to blast it, couldn't find one, and attacked it with a trident from the same box of costume stuff. Everybody looked at him like he was insane.
"It's a tribble! They're vicious!" He said.[3]
Owosekun came over and nudged the object with her foot. It was just a fur hat.
Yana and Lorca were left alone.
"You shouldn't have followed me into the palace," said Lorca. "It was really unsafe. If I had lost you too there, I'd be going home now."
"I couldn't let you go alone. I was really, really worried about you."
"I was still your captain back then. You should have followed orders."
"Terran Lorca seemed to think…"
She looked down, bashful, and Lorca snapped, "And you shouldn't have followed him when he ran off! He was a dangerous psychopath who could have killed you. What did he think? He had a lot of stupid opinions."
"He thought I might be your daughter."
"Huh, is that how you think of me? Most people don't get to choose their parents. You should pick somebody else who's not about to be locked up in a psych ward."
"I don't want anybody but you!"
"If I'm to be your father, then you need to find some cool new friends so that I can embarrass you in front of them."
Yana, sounding like she was elementary school age, cried, "Dad!" They hugged. Yana didn't give much thought to Lorca50's insinuations that platonic relationships of this type don't work. He was wrong about a lot of things.
Lorenza watched them from a corner. She cracked open a cold beer and finished half of it before walking over to them.
"This music sucks," she said. "Why don't you play something, Yana?"
Yana took out a device that generated an electronic piano and called it up. Lorenza yelled for somebody to turn off the music. Yana played something classical.
"You can't shoot the blind side of a barn but you can play the piano?" Said Lorca.
Lorenza went over to the poker table. Yana played something else. Lorca asked what it was and she said it was from a song called "Ghosts" by The Head and the Heart. Lorca asked her to sing the words but she didn't think she had a good singing voice. Eventually he convinced her to sing a few lines.
Yana tried to teach Lorca to play the Dr. Who theme music but he was crap at it and couldn't pay attention anyway. Finally she asked the question that had been nagging her for a while.
"Do you think we killed him?"
"Oh kid, I don't…"
"I glued him to the throne and you told him all that stuff about caring that made him feel like he was so much worse than you."
"It was either me or him. Would you rather he was here now?"
"Fuck no!"
"Language! You're my daughter but I'd rather you didn't talk like me. Look, logic tells me that Terran Lorca was headed for a fall even without our intervention. Certainly, at least one of those three was going to give up the ghost."
"That's what logic tells me too. What do you actually feel, though?"
"I think that's what I'm going to ponder on Starbase 5. And you should not worry about gluing him to the throne. He was going to kill me, at that moment. I couldn't beat him. He was stronger, faster, and, judging by the classes he took, smarter."
Lorenza walked up behind them as he said this and added, "But he must have decided those were not the qualities that made him better. Your shuttle's here. I'll walk you to it."
They went to get his bag and he gave Yana the books. Lorca had Yana promise to call him every few days. He went with Lorenza down to the shuttle bay. She still carried a beer.
"We never had that drink," said Lorca.
"I'll come visit and we can have something boring and non-alcoholic at your looney bin," said Lorenza.
"I never thought this is how it would end. I always figured I'd go out in a blaze of glory."
"Nothing's ending, they just want to make you talk about how you feel until you don't feel anything. You'll come back and shit will return to normal."
"I don't know. I've kept myself so busy since the Battle of the Binary Stars. I'm kind of terrified of what will happen when I'm forced to really think about it, and nothing else. And now the Terran episode hangs heavy on my heart."
Lorenza made a "hmm" sound, not comfortable all of a sudden.
"You've been very supportive of me," said Lorca. "Thank you, though I do wonder why?"
"Perhaps it's because you're soooo cute!" Said Lorenza, mimicking Lorca50. "Nah, but seriously, my sister urged me to be more approachable and supportive of people but I didn't succeed. I tried with you and couldn't manage with anybody else."
"Again, thank you," said Lorca and bowed at her.
Lorenza muttered about his "stupid gimmick" and started to walk away. She turned around and saw that he still watched her. She waved her beer and said, "Come back soon! We'll keep your chair warm for you, mon capitaine!"
The fact that she called him by the same epithet Q would one day use to refer to Picard was a meaningless coincidence.
End of Part I
Footnotes
[1] Can stuff be de-synthesized back into matrix, or is it an "irreversible reaction?" In my opinion, the synthesizer is the closest thing to magic among the Federation's technologies.
[2] Just in case there is any doubt, they were not Terran. Terran Rhys and Bryce thought the Federation was lame and just wanted to go home and get back to cracking rebel skulls.
[3] There is a badly-drawn image here in my original document. Panel 1 shows a Terran stick figure running from a giant tribble. An arrow with the words, "Crunch, yum, satisfied purr," over it points at a handful of new tribbles.