Chapter 12: A Bird in the Hand

"They probably ate him already," said Thomas Anderson.

"It is not in their best interest to eat the President," said Saru. "We suspect the Klingons plan a public execution sometime soon, something to cause widespread fear."

"I still don't understand how you let it get this bad," said Anderson. "The Terran Empire won its war against the Klingons a century ago. If you had just attacked them first…"

"We've talked about this," said Burnham. "The Federation does not blindly attack its neighbors. Now, let's get back to assessing the data and see if anything could help find Ichigari. Airiam, how's it going with the subspace communications?"

Anderson leaned back in his chair and gazed at the top of the space map. This was silly. Why were they trying to find a guy nobody seemed to like whose wife divorced him because she claimed he was an idiot? Nobody would waste time on such a person in the Terran Universe. Apparently, Ichigari was a Symbol of (or maybe for?) the People. What did the people need a symbol for, though? Couldn't they just get on with their meager, slavish lives without a symbol? Oh but of course, civilians had rights in this universe…

There was a meter wide dead space around Anderson, not because he was Terran, but because his hands strayed. Any human who got close to him and started up a conversation inevitably received a warm welcome. Telling him to stop or yelling had no effect. He couldn't understand why people weren't interested in a fellow as obviously attractive as him. The thing is, Anderson had spent six lonely weeks in the mycelial network.

He was horny as hell.

"We intercepted a transmission from a Klingon cargo ship," said Airiam. "The ship was mostly carrying explosives but it was taking them deep into Klingon space. It seems unusual for them to be taking explosives away from the border."

They listened to the transmission. Saru decided it was worth telling Admiral Timur. She left him in charge more frequently than a regular captain because she always had some meeting with the admirals. Everybody filed out of the conference room, avoiding Anderson. He didn't even bother to suggest that after a job well done, they should grab a drink, unbutton their uniforms, and see where the night takes them. He already knew their response to that. He sighed and plodded down to Engineering to work on something with Stamets.

"Admiral Malek should probably hear about this too," said Saru to Burnham. "The computer says he is in his room. How about you tell him while I find Admiral Timur?"

"So many admirals on our ship!" Said Tilly. "It's weird."

Burnham went to Malek's room and rang the bell, but he'd slipped out during the time it took for her to get there. She would have left but she heard the cat crying miserably and checked to make sure it was all right, not that she cared. She looked in and quickly ducked back out. With a queasy look on her face, she walked in a random direction until she came to a break room where she met Lorenza and Dr. Pollard. She sat down. It took a while for the memory of the smell to fade, and then for the disgust to fade as well. She started laughing.

She laughed uproariously for several minutes while the two women stared at her in puzzlement. Burnham's face got hot, tears came out, and she bent over.

"What's so funny?" Asked Dr. Pollard.

Burnham got the words out in between bouts of laughter, which is pretty annoying to listen to if you're not feeling the same sort of hilarity.

"I went into Malek's room…ha, ha, ha…the cat must have, it must have eaten something that…disagreed with it. The entire…the whole room was covered in shit!"

And she was off again, shaking and bending over back and forth.

"That must be why he was looking for cleaning solutions," said Lorenza. "But it's really not that funny."

Dr. Pollard scanned Burnham a bit with her medical tricorder and said, "It's probably the fungal DNA. Stamets got quite funny in the beginning too. It seems to be wearing off for him. But I don't believe toilet humor amused him nearly as much."

"Toilet humor!" Said Burnham and continued guffawing. She hadn't felt this good in a long time.

Saru found her and said Timur's ready room had a note on the door saying only to bother her for red or yellow alert. Then he noticed Burnham's condition and demanded to know if she was having a fit. Dr. Pollard explained the situation and assured him it was just an attack of the funnies.

"Malek's cat crapped all over his room," said Lorenza with a chuckle. She was starting to find it amusing too.

"When is Timur going to get out of this meeting?" Asked Dr. Pollard. "Does she really think she can be both captain and admiral full time?"

"Shit everywhere!" Said Burnham and laughed in a way that sounded more like sobbing.

"Admiral Timur is very capable," said Saru. "Now, shouldn't we obtain more information about Michael's condition? We should ask Anderson if he experienced such behavior when he was first injected with the foreign DNA."

"You go ask him!" Said Dr. Pollard. "He won't try to grope you."

Speak of the devil, Anderson came by. Unlike Stamets, who could bend over his work for hours without looking up or even blinking sometimes, Anderson frequently lost interest and wandered the hallways. There was no doubt it was him. He'd dyed his hair black to distinguish himself from Stamets. He also used to have an eyebrow piercing with ten digits of pi inscribed on it but Saru said it was against regulation.

"Ladies," said Anderson suggestively.

Lorenza didn't give him time to say anything else. She threw a Connect 4 setup at him, scattering pieces everywhere. Anderson could dodge or catch like a professional. He dodged this time, though he once caught and juggled ten objects that people threw at him. Lorenza had more reason than others to dislike Anderson. He surprised her in the shower a few days ago. He was fascinated with her, a copy of the great and dreaded Admiral Lorenza but with none of the blood-thirstiness. He wanted to find out what she was like on a more personal level.

Anderson had no fear of the consequences of actions like these. After all, come on, all he got after the shower thing was a stern reprimand from Saru! If somebody was unhappy with Anderson back in the Terran Empire, the least he could expect was a dagger blow.

Anderson left and went back to Engineering. He analyzed some DNA from that rare fungal sample that saved them from the mycelial network but his mind wasn't on it. No other humans worked this shift, only aliens, but they were starting to get worried. Anderson kept sneaking glances at them, noticing that they had the same general form as humans. Was Lorca right that horniness would eventually win over xenophobia? The aliens tried to be as gross as possible and made sure he saw them eating live worms and stuff like that. Even the ones that usually didn't eat live worms did so because they chose that over Anderson.

"Stop staring off into space and thinking about something indecent!" Snapped Stamets. "We're not keeping you here to have a good time!"

"You wouldn't know an indecent thought or a good time if it gave you a lap dance," said Anderson. "You've been with what, one guy for the past six years?"

"Shut up. You're such a toadstool."

"How. Dare. You."

Burnham got over her laughing fit and felt very embarrassed about it. Timur got out of her meeting and called them into her ready room, along with Malek. He brought the cat. Timur gave him a denigrating look but didn't say anything. They analyzed the area of Klingon space where the cargo ship with explosives had been flying. Was this worth jumping into enemy territory? That area had a few desert planets, largely uninhabited. But they didn't even know if that was the cargo ship's destination.

Captain Ragsy batted at the map every time they zoomed in or rotated something but if she had any ideas, she didn't enlighten them.

A few hours later, Airiam decrypted a transmission that referenced the same cargo ship docking on a planet called Socradespla.[1] It was once a mining planet but had nothing of high priority left to mine. It still had atmosphere, at least. Why bring explosives there? Saru figured it might be to defend some structure where the Klingons planned to kill Ichigari, but they needed to get closer. With the same alacrity as before, Timur chatted with the admirals and had Discovery jump to the back of an asteroid field close to the planet and send out a probe. Soon, they noticed that Klingon ships from various houses were arriving. Why would they all congregate on one planet if not to watch the President of the Federation be brutally executed?

The probe revealed that these Klingons were going inside a containment field. Explosives surrounded the field everywhere except the front door, so there wouldn't be any sneaking in like they did on Norku. There didn't seem to be a way of digging under the field without setting off a bomb or dropping on top of it without being seen. They'd have to disguise themselves as Klingons.

"I said vermin, not varmints. We weren't in some kind of Western," said the hallucination of Lorca50, idly leaning on a wall by the door of Lorca's room.

"Thanks, you're so helpful," said Lorca. "In this one respect, at least. Not in anything else."

Ginfas assigned Lorca the task of writing down everything that happened in the Terran Universe as some sort of therapeutic exercise. Lorca found it rather painful and the hallucination only exacerbated his emotions. He stared at the screen for thirty minutes when he reached the part where Lorca50 kissed him, incapable of writing the words.

"Type already!" Said the hallucination. "How hard can it be to write that it was the most wonderful kiss of your life and if it hadn't been for that stretched out strip of humanoid turkey jerky, we would have made love then and there!"

Lorca begged him to go away and the vision retreated somewhere for a bit, but was soon back, talking crap. He claimed to be a ghost but only provided ambiguities about what the afterlife was like or why he was there. He wore Lorca's blue Starfleet uniform because he said it "looked better on him." Lorca50 was not particularly mean or unpleasant. He didn't try to make Lorca harm himself or anybody else (that was Ginfas' main concern) but he was generally annoying and equivocal.

Osgood entered the room, looking for the hard copy of his book, Geology Rocks. He was so proud of his book that he had a few paper copies printed. He wanted to show the book to the three POWs and asked Lorca to leave the writing and come with him, it was almost lunchtime anyway.

"Just five more minutes," said Lorca, and finally, quickly, and to Lorca50's disgust, simply wrote down what happened.

"Your dumbass shrink won't like any of this," said Lorca50.

"What would you know about shrinks? Your idea of a shrink in the Terran Universe was to whack someone on the head until they shut up."

"You'll see. Where are you going?"

"Lunch. You can't join because you can't eat or talk to other people and because you're not real."

"Dick," said the vision. But he didn't follow Lorca to the cafeteria. He usually disappeared when other people were around.

It was the first lunch shift, the "finger food gang," as Osgood called it. But Lorca and Osgood joined this shift to show solidarity with Captain Christine Danvers, who'd been a POW since the beginning of the war. Lorca didn't want to know everything that the Klingons did to her, but he heard enough. She should have been dead but one Klingon general enjoyed torturing her more than anyone else and tried to break her spirit for a year. The moment she was released from her cage at the recent battle, she rammed a bar through his skull. Only then did she allow her spirit to break.

She didn't talk. Her tongue was cut out sometime during her ordeal. Though it was fixed now, she still didn't talk or interact with anybody, really. She'd tried to kill herself several times and a nurse always accompanied her.

Emilia Sully also didn't talk much, though she could. She just didn't make sense. Both she and Malcolm Perkins got beaten over the head a lot during their brief incarceration on the Tomb in the Clouds. Sully suffered from a sort of aphasia. She knew what she wanted to say but only nonsense came out. "Book" became "table," "starship" became "tadpole," etc. She could still identify pictures and was not the only person with speaking difficulties, for Starbase 5 had many interactive panels with pictures of food, people, and common necessities.

Perkins had next to no short term memory. It lasted about three minutes, and if he didn't look at a person for three minutes, he asked with surprise, "When did you get here?" Things did, however, slowly make their way into his long term memory. It took him two weeks to stop asking Lorca why he was there but he finally got it. He had no recollection of what happened to him on the Tomb in the Clouds. Probably better that way.

He still remembered everything that happened up to that point so Lorca asked how Violet Perkins was doing.

"She still hates your guts," said Perkins. "She's keeps complaining about some old device you destroyed. She said it would have added some glamour to her inventory. I don't think anybody buys anything in her store, ever."

"She should get back to selling contraband," said Lorca.

Perkins punched him on the shoulder lightly and said, "Oh, come on! It was the Chief of Security that sold contraband, not my aunt!"

"So she said, so she said."

Danvers suddenly tossed a fish finger at some random doctor. He didn't even turn around, used to such stuff.

"Fire reveals everything," said Sully, then glared at her tray. She knew nobody understood and it angered her.

"You'd make a good prophet," said Lorca. "You should write your thoughts down. When you get better, you can sell these statements to fortune cookie companies."

Danvers threw some more food around until the nurse calmed her down.

"What's the point of the finger food gang?" Asked Lorca. "All of us can do a lot of damage with just our bare hands, not to mention a tray."

"It's psychological," said Osgood, "like a punishment for a child. It's supposed to guilt you into behaving better so you can eat with the adults who use utensils."

"It's not all psychological," said Danvers' nurse and rolled up her sleeve to show them a bunch of fork scars she kept just for that purpose.

"When I finally visit Tampa, will it be just to die there?" Asked Sully.

Looking at where she looked, Osgood passed her the ketchup.

"I have a taco!" Said Perkins for the fifth time. He kept getting distracted from it by Osgood's book, then being surprised by it. He'd had the book for twenty minutes but was still on the first page, the intro, where Osgood made lame jokes about "silly-con" and schist. Perkins forgot the jokes, then went back to them and laughed again. Osgood gazed at him adoringly.

"You didn't make up those jokes," said Lorca. "They've been around for centuries."

"Ah, but I used them better," said Osgood.

Lorca went to see Ginfas later. It still puzzled him that Ginfas wasn't more concerned about an actual honest to god hallucination. Weren't shrinks supposed to be totally onto that sort of stuff? Wasn't that A Really Big Deal? Lorca asked Ginfas about it again.

"Your scans don't show any glaring abnormalities," said Ginfas. "I don't think this hallucination is a sign of serious mental disease. Since the warp era, we as a society have been exposed to technologically advanced cultures where signs and visions are still considered viable sources of information. Take the Bajoran people as an example. I wrote a paper about this in grad school if you'd like to read it."

"No," said Lorca slowly.

"We could have you wear a portable scanner," said Ginfas. "We could map out your brain and find out exactly what areas light up when you see and talk to this vision. But I think, since the hallucination is not urging you to do anything violent, that you should just hear him out. His purpose may become clear over time."

"You don't think he's a real ghost?"

"Who can say? Of the hundreds of cases that pop up every year regarding so-called ghost experiences, 99% are proven to be somebody playing tricks with lights and mirrors. Or glowing wisps in the woods. But 1% remains unsolved. If it makes you feel better to live in that 1% and believe your friend is a ghost, by all means, you're welcome to do so."

"I wish I could just believe like that," said Lorca. "But I'm a doubter."

"Doubt goes either way. Until we put those scanners on your head and find out for sure, the true nature of your vision remains uncertain."

"If it really was Terran Lorca's ghost, he'd be naked."

Ginfas asked to see the write-up and scanned it quickly. He wasn't pleased.

"This is the most bare bones memoir I've ever read," he said. "Take this back and include how you felt about everything."

Lorca threw back his head and groaned. Damn it, Lorca50 was right.

"But I don't want to write about my feelings!" He said. "This was already hard enough."

"Perhaps our feelings are all that matter, in the end," said Ginfas. "So try your best. Now, how is the anxiety?"

Lorca groaned and grumbled some more. It was bad. He hadn't had a full night's sleep in weeks. Nightmares surrounded him, even when he was awake. The arrival of the POWs and the facts of their tortures that he couldn't help overhearing only added fuel to the fire. Whenever he wasn't distracted by other people or some task, he saw his friends dying, Discovery exploding, people incarcerated and suffering.

"So bad that you can't even talk about it?" Asked Ginfas. "I heard that you didn't make it to anger management seminar yesterday. Where were you?"

"Stairwell F, I think," said Lorca. "Turboshaft was down. I took the stairs and suddenly I imagined Detmer. Her face was covered in blood. They ripped out her augmentation. She was on the floor, crawling, reaching for something."

Talking about this made Lorca imagine it all too vividly again and he painfully clutched one hand with the other, not looking at the psychiatrist.

"Have you reconsidered the use of medication?" Asked Ginfas. "There is nothing shameful about anti-anxiety medication. You're of no help to anyone like this."

"I don't want to be subdued with false feelings of calm!" Said Lorca.

"You know perfectly well it doesn't work like that. Your anxiety is pointless. If you can't control it, you shouldn't suffer like this. Or do you think that somehow, illogically, as long as you imagine these horrible things and rip yourself up over them, that they won't happen?"

Lorca glared at him and said, "You just told me our feelings are all that matter, or something. Well, these are mine. I don't need some crap chemicals helping me think. I just need this war to end."

Ginfas let him go after Lorca promised he'd rewrite the memoir and that he didn't want to be late to visit the planet with Osgood and the others. It was his first time going down to the planet. They needed clearance from park management and the hospital staff complained about these trips. Danvers' nurse hated them because she claimed she always got a runner. There were legends about patients that escaped and were never found.

A lot more nurses, interns and volunteers went down than patients. Even two blue-uniformed Starfleet officers accompanied them. But the park was beautiful and the weather good. Danvers and her nurse sat under a tree. Sully and Perkins wandered around a rose garden. Lorca went off with Osgood as far as the attendants allowed. They stopped by some flower bushes. Lorca held up his hand to block the light and a bird suddenly sat on it.

"Ferdy! There's a fucking bird on my hand," he said.

Even when he brought it closer to his face, the pink and blue bird did not fly away. A few more birds alighted in the bush. Lorca held out his other hand and they jumped to it. He looked really surprised. Osgood laughed. Some of the birds jumped to Lorca's arms and shoulders.

"How come they don't sit on you?" Asked Lorca.

"They sense that I'm an owl on the inside," said Osgood. "But you should shake them off, they crap, like, every few minutes."

Lorca shook the birds off. Some of the nurses had birdfeed and a few patients threw it around liberally, so small wonder the birds were unafraid. Lorca and Osgood went to a table under a tree where a volunteer encouraged a patient to draw. Lorca took one of the sketchpads and drew a bird that sat on their table before the volunteer even had time to chase it off. She didn't want guano on the art supplies.

"Hey, you're so good!" Said Osgood. "Draw me, draw me!"

"The hell would I want to draw you for?" Said Lorca.

But eventually he complied, drawing Osgood on the back of a giant owl flying toward a fortress on a cliff. Discovery also somehow found its way into the picture, and a dragon, and a Dalek. Lorca then tried to just sketch the birds but other stuff kept intruding and his images descended into chaos, but before he knew it, it was time to go.

The Ichigari Execution Party didn't actually have invitations so it was fairly easy to sneak in. Burnham and Owosekun shaved their hair and got outfitted with facial prostheses and Klingon armor. They impersonated members of House Duras. The real House Duras had not shown up yet and didn't look like they were planning to. There was no useful information on this house. The Federation had occasionally been attacked by them during the war, so they did participate, but they seemed to be very minor players, unlike the Houses of Kor or Mo'kai.

They took along large containers of food with a false bottom hiding Timur and Saru. Discovery had been jumping back and forth from Socradespla to various points in Federation space for hours, obtaining the things they needed, such as the food Klingons were likely to bring, the containers, but mainly a Bird of Prey they'd captured intact.

Burnham hailed the building on the planet. They were allowed to beam down with the food. Some Klingons from House Kor helped them get it inside, but with peculiar smirks. The smirks, as well as laughter and outright jeers, followed them all over the place. It took Burnham and Owo a while to figure out why they were objects of ridicule. The first clue was the nickname they were given, which made Owo at first think her Universal Translator was glitching.

"Test tube babies."

Eventually, they learned that House Duras was famous for an event 400 years ago. The Duras ancestor had a flirtation with a Klingon witch and dumped her. The vindictive witch cursed his male progeny to have, let's just say, no luck with procreation. Burnham and Owo couldn't figure out if there was truth to this canard but the Klingons sure had a fun time making inappropriate references about it. House Duras was very proud and didn't spend much time with the others, obviously for this reason. Perhaps it was this disregard that eventually spurred two sisters to make trouble for the Klingon High Council.

The building had a central chamber and a bunch of hastily constructed rooms on the periphery. The containers of food from all the guests were left in a side room and edibles were carried out whenever the table looked empty. Klingons weren't big on four course meals. It was mostly meat and drink. A lot of drink. It looked like everybody planned to get shit-faced, pass out, and then wake up hungover for the execution.

Burnham and Owo expected to get into a fight as people got rowdy and tried to take advantage of them, but at one point Silrek noticed them and looked them over attentively. Had he noticed they were wearing prostheses? Could he smell human?

"Don't they look kind of human to you?" He asked another Klingon, confirming their fears. Burnham and Owo got ready for a bloodbath.

"I knew Duras was proud," said Silrek, "but I didn't think they'd sink so low. To procreate with humans! Ugh!"

It was a joke, probably, but everybody else really took to it and shunned Burnham and Owo for the rest of the night. This was perfectly fine with them. Somebody threw up on them, either from alcohol or thinking about their disgusting parentage or both, but it could have been worse.

Timur and Saru spent several cramped hours in a box, trying not to think of how much it resembled a coffin. Nobody could hear them so they discussed their histories. Timur grew up in one of those "back to basics" colonies in Kazakhstan. The Federation tended to fund these colonies quite well, so while she didn't live like a farm girl from the year 1200, she didn't have access to the internet or modern technology.

"I hated it so much," said Timur. "It seems so silly now. I didn't appreciate my family, who loved me. I was angry because I knew girls my age got to use transporters to dash all over the world and people could fly to other planets and learn fascinating things. I didn't have to stay in the colony. My parents could not keep me after I turned 18 if I didn't want to stay. But as a teenager it seemed like such a long time among the goats and hay bales."

When Timur was 16, her colony got permission to relocate to another planet where the temptations of modern life could be more easily ignored. Timur and her sister threw a fit but their parents and the colony leaders dragged them onto a ship for the first time in their lives. The planet was very far away and they got ambushed by Klingon slave traders. They were packed onto a dirty ship and spent a few weeks in cages while the Klingons searched for buyers. Instead, they got attacked by another vessel that wanted to steal the slaves. The ship Timur was on required dozens of repairs and became critically damaged. Intent on blasting the other ship, the slave traders didn't notice until it was too late. Timur and her family broke out of their cages in the commotion but there weren't a lot of escape pods. Timur's parents put her and her sister inside one and ejected them, but the ship exploded before they could get off too.

"I am so sorry," said Saru. "Did this tragedy induce you to join Starfleet, to help prevent these things from happening again?"

Timur made a face he couldn't see in the dark and said, "It took me years to comprehend the experience. This world that I had wanted to join so badly, that I imagined as a never-ending adventure full of joy, it just wasn't that good without those who were lost. I was so lonely. I sometimes stupidly felt it was my fault the tragedy occurred. If only I hadn't complained so much, my parents wouldn't have decided I needed to be taken away to a purer place. I didn't deserve these technological marvels I had so craved."

"But you do not feel like that anymore, of course?" Asked Saru.

"No, Number One, I am not 19 anymore. I have learned to accept the vicissitudes of fate, though my sister believes I have a vendetta against the Klingons."

Burnham passed by and knocked on the box in a certain way to signal that it was all clear. Saru and Timur got out and snuck over to a cage behind the building where the Klingons kept Ichigari. Somebody was supposed to guard it but Owo had come around with flagons and after one taste, the guard couldn't resist going after more. Ichigari lacked several teeth and was covered in blood and grime, but he wasn't too badly beaten.

Saru kept lookout while Timur picked the lock and approached Ichigari. He came to with a moan. She checked him over for serious injuries but didn't find any. She started to move him toward the door when he returned to consciousness fully and pulled away.

"You shouldn't have come!" He said. "I don't want to be rescued."

"President, it is our job to keep you safe," said Timur. "Please be quiet and let's hurry. The Klingons may be drunk but they're still dangerous."

Ichigari moved toward the back of the cage and grabbed the bars.

"I'm staying here," he said. "I'm going to be the Federation's T'Kuvma. My death will unite the people, like the Klingons are united. I'll be a martyr."

Timur looked at Saru with exasperation.

"The Federation does not need martyrs," she said. "We are united by our shared vision. People do not have to die for us to believe in it. Now please come on, you must be weakened by your ordeal."

"No, no! I must sacrifice myself," said Ichigari. "You do not understand. You are merely human and cannot comprehend reality. I have glimpsed a moment of illumination into eternity. I have seen the turning wheel of time. There is no time! Humans live in perpetual darkness, unconscious and afraid to contemplate the true nature of this world. This darkness is terrible but it is also necessary because enlightenment is too intense for mortals. All actions are part of a pattern but the people cannot see it. I must show it to them. I will accept this fate, I will suffer the consequences, in order to let people see a moment of eternity."

"A moment of eternity?" Said Saru. "I do not understand."

"Of course you don't!" Said Ichigari. "But through my martyrdom, you will! My death will be an act of charity."

"But I understand perfectly," said Timur with a sigh. "Wayne got his hands on a book," she whispered to Saru.[2]

"My death will bring about the age of a new Federation based on humility," said Ichigari. "Recognition of the end leads simultaneously to recognition of the beginning, but only through the death of a martyr. You must suffer this, Ksenia, you must."

Timur was taken aback and Saru said, "I believe he is using the word suffer to mean allow."

"I will not allow it," said Timur. "Number One, what does Federation Regulation 130.42a state regarding the safety of the President?"

"If the President is not of sound mind, the attending officers must take whatever action they deem necessary to ensure his safety, notwithstanding his orders."

"People fear the absence of reason and hope," said Ichigari, "yet we overestimate the power of human actions. We must accept human limitations with respect to our knowledge and strength in order to contemplate profundities. These profundities can only be articulated by my suffering of this fate. The people are waiting to be saved."

Saru seriously pondered Ichigari's statements and said, "If people overestimate the power of human actions, how can you be sure your martyrdom will not lead to greater ill than good? We are here in part because we are afraid your death will frighten the people you desire to save. I do not believe anybody will understand that you want to die to provide mortals with a moment of enlightenment. They will just be afraid we are losing the war."

Ichigari blinked stupidly like anybody who has not expected a counterargument.

"There's a Klingon right behind you!" Yelled Timur and knocked Ichigari out when he turned around.

"I could not listen to this anymore," she said.

"It was an interesting philosophical discussion," said Saru.

"It should have been saved for the classroom."

They dragged Ichigari to the food container, now much emptied, and lowered him inside, then hid themselves. Burnham and Owo calmly shoved the container outside. Owo even did a cheeky wave at Silrek, who got so wasted that he started to think they were kind of hot after all.[3]

Ichigari didn't mention martyrdom again. Good food, a warm bath, and the restoration of his teeth brought him back to normal. A few more guards were posted around his bunker, but he'd learned his lesson. Probably.

Saru helped Timur do paperwork in the ready room about Ichigari's rescue. Timur noticed that he seemed distracted.

"Some of the things Ichigari said resonated with me," he said.

"Just be glad this mission turned out to be as much of a joke as our esteemed president," said Timur. "It would have been very upsetting if people died trying to save that man."

Timur was by far not the only Starfleet officer to have a negative opinion of the President, but the senior admirals didn't want to hear any talk of removing him. They claimed that without Ichigari and his cabinet, the Federation would look like it was entirely run by the military.

"Regardless of Ichigari's qualifications, his speech about martyrs made me think," said Saru. "I communicate as often as possible with the four Kelpian slaves we rescued from the Terran Universe. They feel lost and have a hard time fitting in. They are not used to being treated like people. I so earnestly wish they had a proper home to go to, Kaminar, but they are as barred from there as I am. I think of the friends and family who die there every year, and how nobody thinks of them as martyrs. Complacency has a stultifying effect on cultures. If only the Kelpians had somebody they viewed as a martyr, somebody who inspired awe and rebellion, then perhaps they could shake off the yoke of the Ba'ul. Then we would have a home."

"A lovely sentiment," said Timur. "The desire to find a home has driven many people and communities to great lengths…and often to deplorable bloodshed. Does somebody really have to die in some glorious, awe-inspiring manner to make people shake off complacency?"

"Perhaps there is a way to do it that does not involve bloodshed, but I do not see that happening without the involvement of the Federation."

"Ah, yes, you have frequently spoken in favor of ignoring the Prime Directive in the case of Kaminar. I'm sorry but I doubt the senior admiralty would agree to take anything even vaguely like an offensive action against the Ba'ul so soon after the war. If we win the war. In the meantime, if you really want a martyr for Kaminar, you're welcome to take Ichigari."

"What is your belief, Admiral?" Asked Saru. "Doesn't the Federation provide supplies to starving populations and helps them develop sustainable plans? How is helping Kaminar any different?"

Timur grumbled something about maintaining Starfleet's stance on the matter and not precipitating rebellions. They worked in silence for a while.

"You have a sister there, don't you?" She asked suddenly.

"Yes, Sirrana," said Saru.

"I'll bring up the matter with the admiralty again, but first we have to win this war."

"Thank you, Admiral. This means a lot to me."

"It would mean a lot to the Federation as well and perhaps set precedent for more such negotiations in the future. Dismissed, Number One."

He left with another, "thank you, Admiral." Timur wondered if he, or any of the crew, would ever call her Captain, even though it was a lower rank.

"Can't you do the Vulcan nerve pinch on yourself?" Asked Osgood, who'd been watching Lorca try to take a nap.

"The Vulcan nerve pinch doesn't put you to sleep," said Lorca. "People usually regain consciousness in about 20 minutes."

"Will you do it on me? I want to know how it feels."

"No! I'm not going to perform an aggressive maneuver on you for no good reason."

"Please, please, please!"

"No! Leave me alone."

Osgood called him grumpy and went off somewhere. Lorca tried to call Yana again. He hadn't been able to reach Discovery in days. He feared the worst. News of war developments only reached civilians days or even weeks after the fact. They could all be dead already and he didn't know. Yana could just be a cold, dead corpse floating in space.

"This again," said Lorca50.

"I didn't request your presence," said Lorca.

"I got lonely hanging around in the space between atoms."

The hallucination moved closer to Lorca's bed and made as if to lie down too.

"Scooch over a bit," said Lorca50. "I know I'm insubstantial but it would be weird if part of me were inside you."

Lorca gave up and moved closer to the wall to make space for the vision.

"Isn't this nice, just the two of us?" Said Lorca50. "So what's troubling you, besides that giant owl that you allow to fly around all over the place? Seriously, don't you know that owls puke up bones and fur of the little animals they eat? Do want to deal with that?"

"I…what?"

"I'm speaking metaphorically, dum-dum, though I do see Osgood as an owl on the spirit plane. I'm not going to tell you what animal you are on the spirit plane."

"A jackass?"

"No! But that would have been my first guess, if I hadn't seen it for real. So what's going on?"

Lorca told him that he couldn't reach Discovery, which meant they were probably in Klingon space, doing hell knows what kind of dangerous tasks.

"There's nothing you can do about it," said Lorca50. "Do you expect them to stay home safe and sound? Just try and distract yourself. They'll be back before you know it."

"I can't. I just keep thinking about it."

"Um…want me to take off my clothes? Looking at myself in the mirror used to help me get off."

"Ugh, I knew you'd mention something like this sooner or later! Stop that right now! First of all, I don't want to see you naked. Second of all, doing anything like that to distract myself would be disrespectful to the people I worry about."

"How?" Asked Lorca50, who didn't understand the subtleties of respect in general.

Lorca got up, moving right through him, and looked out the window.

"Rude!" Said Lorca50. "How about an excuse me?"

Lorca ignored him. What was this talk good for? It didn't change anything. Oh, what would he do if it turned out they were all dead? He didn't think he could bear it!

"I've got an idea!" Said Lorca50. "Here, sit down at your desk and take out some paper. This is going to be an interesting job for your hand…"

"What did I just tell you?"

"No, no, nothing like that, ha, ha! Just do it."

Lorca complied for lack of anything better to do. Lorca50 conjured up a stool and sat behind him. He ordered Lorca to pick up a pencil.

"You think you're the only Lorca who can draw whatever he sees, from real life or from his mind?" Said Lorca50. "I used to do a fair bit of drawing myself when I got bored. Here, put your hand over mine. I'll draw something and you have to follow my motions and draw it for real."

It ended up being an engaging activity. Under Lorca50's guidance then and over the next few weeks, Lorca drew visions of the Imperial palace, bizarre curlicues, various Terrans, animals, chemical structures, and schematics of instruments he'd never seen. Frequently, Lorca50 drew a wolf or a pair of wolves in freakish landscapes, running from something or to something, he'd never say. He claimed the images had no significance at all, that they were just distractions.

Yana sat on her favorite windowsill, finishing off Brave New World. She'd finally graduated from manga and Lorca's adventure-themed recommendations, to some extent. Burnham had suggested Brave New World, Catch 22, Slaughterhouse Five and other classics Yana had already finished during her time off. Burnham also wanted to talk about the books to make sure Yana was getting the message but Yana usually avoided her with a vague look and some mention of work to do.

Since the Terran Empire, Yana had experienced something of a moral dilemma. Although she looked like she was in her twenties, everybody treated her like a child. She was fine with that for months. From what she gleamed from books, being a child was quite nice and everybody seemed to miss it, so why not? She didn't used to seriously think about dating someone. She daydreamed about some beautiful love, still far in the future, how it would be so perfect when it happened.

Until Lorca50 shattered her expectations and fantasies. Then he died. Just like that. Just like she could die any day on one of these crazy missions. Hell's bells, life was short! Was there really time for beautiful romances? Shouldn't she try being more like Lorca50 and just seize the moment?

She asked out a cute engineer. They went on a holodeck date to the beach. The engineer talked about the technological advances of the T32 omnitool over the T30. Yana yawned and asked if he'd ever kissed a girl. He got red in the face and said only once. Yana did not ask for a second date. If they could all die tomorrow, she didn't want to waste time on a guy who didn't know what he was doing.

Instead, she went over to Thomas Anderson's room and knocked. He let her in. He had a screen up with some DNA schematics.

"Are you busy?" Asked Yana.

Anderson turned off the screen and said, "Not busy enough."

[1] I'm not sure if you realize what a pain it is to come up with dumb planet names. See if you can decrypt this one!

[2] It was not even a book but his son's college essay on themes and symbolism in the works of T. S. Eliot. The son asked Ichigari for help and the best the President of the United Federation of Planets could manage was a B-. Not that he should have been helping his son cheat in the first place.

[3] This became known as the Duras Debacle among Klingons, even though Silrek and the others understood perfectly well that the Federation was responsible. They just wanted someone to blame instead of their own drunken asses so Silrek told the grandfather of Lursa and B'Etor that if his people weren't so ugly and scrawny, they wouldn't have been so easy to impersonate. Needless to say, this didn't improve the Duras house's opinion of the other Klingons.