Chapter 18: Another F'Roggy Evening[1]

Saru and Lorenza had lunch together. Saru complained about rumors on the lower decks. People chatted about him and Admiral Timur having some sort of unprofessional relationship.

"I have never experienced such slander," he said. "I believe this is all Thomas Anderson's bad influence. He is not here anymore but his memory lingers."

"Forget about it," said Lorenza. "In my opinion, the lower decks exist on a separate plane of reality, kind of like my family. For example, I made the mistake of telling them I visited Lorca and they immediately assumed I'm involved with him. At first they were all, why him? He's in a crazy house! Next time I spoke to them, they were used to the idea and said at least he's better than dying alone. I'm afraid that when I call again, they'll offer to plan the wedding!"

"It is not amusing when people make assumptions on very limited data."

"Like Lorca."

"Indeed. I am very disappointed in him. I thought he was above this sort of petty rivalry."

"It's my fault. I shouldn't have left Anderson with him."

"No it is not. You had no idea Lorca was so out of touch with reality. He connected with Ash Tyler too, who may have been enough to generate the ridiculous theories about the admiral."

Lorenza agreed that this may be true. They looked out the window. Lorenza was glad Saru did not ask if she was "involved" with Lorca or not. She'd picked him for a lunch partner because he was discreet, unlike the lower decks. What would she say if he had asked? She hadn't spoken to Lorca in two months.

Feeling a sudden need to clarify things with him, she began to suggest they go visit Starbase 5, if only to attend the funeral of Danvers and Perkins. Timur showed up and quickly dispelled that plan. Honorable as it may be to remember their fallen comrades, they had no time. Command came up with a plan for winning the war, based on some pictures Timur found in an ancient text on the geography of Qo'nos, the Klingon home world. The planet was riddled with giant caverns that could hide Discovery while they graphed its surface and found the locations of important Klingon military and religious sites. They planned to put explosives in these areas and threaten to destroy everything the Klingons held dear to force an armistice. Qo'nos was covered in black markets and other shady businesses, so they didn't even need to disguise themselves as Klingons.

Discovery jumped into a cavern on Qo'nos several hours later. Timur sent Burnham, Tilly, Rhys, and one of the Terrans they'd been assigned, to explore the surface and send out a probe. The Terran, Lieutenant Narcissa A. Northwood, really liked the atmosphere on Qo'nos and kept disappearing into establishments the others were too squeamish to enter. Burnham gave up on getting her to do any work and thought, How on earth did the Terran Empire have an empire when they can't resist any temptations?

Lorca stared blankly at the scattered pages of Geology Rocks! Osgood hadn't picked them up when he took his stuff and left. It was the day after the attack on Starbase 5. Time seemed to move very slowly. Lorca was so tired of everything. Sully knocked and came in.

"I've been doing some research," she said. "I think you may be right about some things. I don't know about Timur being a Klingon, but something's fishy. The Federation has a spore drive that can take them anywhere but they didn't go to the territory of Hurgh'hov. If Hurgh'hov had not intervened, the other Klingons would have backed off. They didn't have the numbers. Instead, the appearance of Hurgh'hov prompted the six houses that signed the peace treaty to break it and rejoin the war."

"Peace treaty? The one I signed with F'Rog?"

"Yes. I believe he was left alive for some reason. But all of that is not as important as the fact that the Federation refuses to investigate these new Klingons. Maybe you're right. Maybe Timur is a Klingon and she knows that if people look into Hurgh-hov, they'll discover some grand evil plan. In any case, we can't just sit here anymore! If the Federation won't find out what's really going on, we should do it. Nobody will expect us to leave before the funeral and I'm sure Christine and Malcolm would have wanted us to do this."

"Emilia, don't you think we're both insane and should stay put before we go off and hurt ourselves or somebody else?"

"I have a gut feeling, Gabriel. I've started to doubt my mind during these last few months but I've never doubted a gut feeling. Now you can sit here feeling sorry for yourself and wanting to sleep until the war is over but I am a Starfleet captain who's never quit until the job is done. Are you with me?"

Lorca looked at the scattered pages again and stood up. He took out his badge and pinned it back on.

"Excellent," said Sully. "Now, we need a crew."

"Anderson will be our engineer and Tyler can be the pilot. Where are we going?"

"To find answers. We don't have a spore drive. Who's the closest who might know something about the 25th House?"

"I remember F'Rog had some weirdo monk guy with him, what was the name? Volgor. That guy looked creepy enough to know about ancient Klingon houses and shit."

Thus they decided to proceed, perhaps rashly and foolishly. Lorca called Anderson and told him to sweet talk Tyler's nurse into letting him watch Tyler until the shift change. Lorca and Sully waited in his room. Lorca searched for a topic of conversation.

"Aren't you related to Burnham?" He asked.

"I'm her aunt on her father's side."

"So…you didn't want her? Understandable, she's a pain in the ass, but still…"

"I had just started as captain when her parents were murdered. I did not want unnecessary distractions while I was proving myself. Sarek and Amanda raised her admirably. Don't look at me like that, I doubt I could have done any better than them. I don't like kids."

"So who's Mr. Sully?"

"Don't even go there."

They didn't say much until the shift change. Anderson and Tyler showed up. Tyler agreed to the plan right off the bat, willing to do anything for Lorca, just like his Terran counterpart who died for it. Lorca tried not to think about this.

Anderson believed the plan was risky, crazy, and didn't make much sense, but he knew he couldn't stop them. He could tattle on them to Ginfas but Lorca would never speak to him again. Anderson decided to accompany them, as the only sane person. He was pleased that Sully could speak properly again and kissed her hand.[2]

"Now that you have your voice back," he said, "I'd be thrilled get to know you better."

"I'm 30 years your senior!" She said.

"I would never have guessed!"

They went down to the shuttle bay. Osgood met them there. He was not as dumb as he pretended to be and suspected something like this. However, he did not intend to stop them. He gave them the access card for the fastest shuttle, which he'd stolen from Ginfas.

"Osgood, if this is because I called you a rule-following sheep…," said Lorca.

"Uh…yeah, it is!" Said Osgood. "But don't worry about it. Could you just make it look like there was a struggle and you stole the card from me so I don't get in trouble?"

"Sure. You finally get to experience the Vulcan nerve pinch."

"Wait a second, Gabe. In case you never come back, I want you to know that I'm not mad at you for beating me up. I probably deserved it, if only for talking too much. Also, you're a really good friend and if I were into men, you'd totally be a candidate for Mr. Osgood."

"Oh, Ferdy…I'm touched," said Lorca with surprisingly less sarcasm than he intended.

Osgood began to say something else but Lorca put him out and they entered the shuttle. Tyler took the wheel. They left Starbase 5.

"We should have changed out of these white uniforms," said Anderson. "People might mistake us for a bunch of escaped lunatics."

Northwood wandered back toward Discovery down a tunnel, carrying a bottle of something people probably shouldn't drink. She had such a good time! Maybe she could stay here and become a drug dealer or a prostitute. Why not both? Still, it would be nice to take a shower. The water in the seedy hotel where she'd stayed smelled like sulfur. Qo'nos had these geothermal vents all over the place with weird gases coming out of them. Northwood had stuck her head in one and couldn't remember who she was for hours.

Northwood remembered what Detmer told her and the other Terrans before they were split up among Federation vessels.

"I know this place is boring and has stupid rules, but it doesn't look like we'll be going home soon. Or maybe ever. It would behoove us to play nice. The Federation outnumbers us and they will put us in jail for life if we kill anybody. I've heard some really awful things about their jails that will make your blood run cold."

Somebody raised a hand and asked, "Do they dip your extremities in acid?"

"No, no, no!" Said Detmer. "You obviously haven't been paying attention. It's even worse. They have educational programs in jail to try and make you better people. Look, we're Terrans, we're used to pretending to care about the regime when we only care about ourselves. We have to prove to the Federation that we can follow rules during this war and when it's over, they could give us permanent positions in Starfleet. Some of the deep space stations could be fun and might have little oversight. So behave yourselves!"

Northwood figured she wasn't behaving herself, but whatever. She took a swig from the bottle. She heard a scuffle and looked around the corner. Vaguely recognizing the person that approached her, she asked, "Isn't this place too grimy for you?"

The person stunned her in reply, though she could have been blown over with a wind.

The trip to planet Paywl' took six hours. Tyler hardly said anything. Anderson rambled on about his research and experience being trapped in the mycelial network.

"I didn't need to eat or sleep. I could imagine food and eat it, but it just didn't feel right. It would suck to be stuck there in body and not just in spirit. Also, no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't get a decent bo—"

Sully smacked him and said, "I will not allow this sort of conversation."

"Bowtie," said Lorca. "I think that's what he was going to say, he couldn't get a decent bowtie. But I never suspected the mycelial network was big on fashion."

They arrived by F'Rog's planet and hailed it. The reply directed them where to land, next to a big castle. The village around it was destroyed. Carcasses of spaceships littered the streets in between piles of ash from burned houses. F'Rog came out of the castle to greet them. The main entrance had a couple of spears stuck in the ground around it with severed Klingon heads.

"I think they would have preferred to stay like this," said F'Rog, nodding at the heads, "instead of proper burials. They were with me to the end and I come out to gaze upon them every morning, watching decomposition, animals, and the elements do their work. I spent the last month burning and burying the dead. It was something to do."

He hadn't even said hello. Lorca asked what happened.

"My House has always been in the tenuous position of trying to maintain the peace," said F'Rog. "More or less, anyway. My father told me it's the most disrespectful job a Klingon can have. Everybody shouts for blood, war, vengeance while we have to remind them that there is another way. I didn't want to accept this job, hence my participation early in the war and reluctance to sign the treaty, but circumstances forced me return to my House's ancient calling. Not that it saved us. My allies, who pledged to stay neutral, rallied to Silrek's aid when they heard about his so-called new partners, and called me a traitor. I'm afraid I lack diplomacy and tried to fight with my few loyal followers. You see the result. In the end, Silrek committed the greatest dishonor against me that he could think of. He let me live."

Sully scoffed and said, "Perhaps your House's ancient calling toward peacekeeping was really just an afterthought to make you feel better about yourselves."

F'Rog looked at them phlegmatically, completely indifferent to insults at this point, and asked, "Are you dressed like ghosts for some reason?"

"It's the uniform of a mental hospital," said Lorca. "Not that such an institution would be familiar to Klingons."

"We care for our insane at the family level in my House," said F'Rog. "But actually, most other Houses do have centers for the mentally ill. You can't really expect warriors to take care of people who are touched in the head. I heard that Kol went on a berserker rage one night and impaled his brain-addled grandfather. The old fellow, not fatally wounded, had refused to move to the center but this incident sent him running there."

Lorca waited for some additional biting comment about him being crazy, but none came. F'Rog vaguely looked toward the sunset. He didn't ask why they were there so Lorca filled him in on their curiosity regarding Hurgh'hov.

"You won't get anything out of Volgor," said F'Rog. "He became very depressed after the peace treaty and I bought some old human electronic junk from a scavenger to amuse him. He likes to tinker with devices. He repaired a late 20th century VCR and watched a video. It drove him completely ballistic, not that he was ever quite right in the head. He ripped out his own tooth, threw it at me, and since then can barely feed or care for himself. I do, however, know a few stories about the 25th House. You may come in, if you wish, I have to feed Volgor anyway and we can talk over dinner."

They followed F'Rog through the cold castle. After the battle, the survivors, mainly the old, sick, and nursing mothers, gathered in the castle. F'Rog took care of them as best as he could, though he feared they would run out of provisions. There weren't enough able-bodied people to provide for everybody. F'Rog exchanged words with some people they met along the way, such as a Klingon elder and a mother with a bundled baby. Anderson wanted to see the baby but she ran away from them.

"Was she scared of me?" He asked.

"Have you looked at yourself in the mirror recently?" Asked F'Rog. "You look like a moon with a face. My parents scared me with stories about monsters like you."

They entered a chamber with a long wooden table, covered in old scratches. Volgor sat at one end, staring off into space.

"Is he your uncle or something?" Asked Lorca.

"He's of no relation to me," said F'Rog. "He could be a thousand years old, for all I know. He's a disgraced Boreth monk. The monastery sent a message asking someone to pick him up, claiming he'd blasphemed against Kahless and the values of the Order. My parents took him in. We never found out just what he did to anger the monks, since he was never quite right in the head, as I already noted. Perhaps he insisted that time is linear. I was just a child when my parents picked him up. They let him babysit me and my sister. He had an odd way of coaching us. He'd have us watch videos about poisonous snakes, then put a mechanical snake in our room. Or he'd tell us terrifying monster or ghost stories and dress up as one and scare the hell out of us. Eventually we caught on to his tricks."

Tyler was not in great condition. He mumbled and tripped over his own feet. Sully sat him down at the table.

"Who will bear the torch for Kahless now?" Muttered Tyler.

"Oh my, is that the human-Klingon hybrid?" Asked F'Rog. "L'Rell certainly did a number on him!"

Lorca questioned F'Rog about how many times L'Rell performed that surgery, but he didn't know. House Mo'kai kept their secrets well. F'Rog didn't want to begin storytelling until he'd fed Volgor so they had to wait for that process to be finished. Volgor was reluctant to chew that day. It took a while. Lorca found the VCR Volgor assembled and asked if he could see what video disturbed Volgor.

"Knock yourself out," said F'Rog.

"What?" Asked Lorca. "Where did you learn that expression?"

"That book. It was in the boxes of human electronics I bought."

Lorca picked up a book from 1990 called Hot Dog and Other American Expressions. He chuckled and looked through the video cassettes. He ejected the one in the VCR.

"The Animaniacs?" He said. "I can see how this would drive a Klingon nuts."

F'Rog got as much gruel down Volgor as he could and brought food for the rest of them. Lorca hoped all their vaccinations were up to date, though this planet probably boasted some gnarly new diseases.

F'Rog told the stories he knew of Hurgh'hov, some of which, he warned, were surely just myth. Indeed, it felt like that. He told of old gods who mated with Klingons and produced the ancestors of Hurgh'hov and other stories of kings and queens, crusades, and even dragons. Though this was probably not helpful, the Federation officers listened politely. It had been a while since any of them experienced a good oral storytelling event and all remembered their childhoods, even Volgor, for whom that may have been a thousand years ago.

They didn't speak for a while after the stories were done. Tyler dozed fitfully. Volgor stared at him, muttering something under his breath. Something occurred to Lorca.

"F'Rog, what happened to your sister and your parents?" He asked.

"My sister trained hard to be a warrior," said F'Rog. "She wanted to become High Chancellor too. She thought this war would be the chance to prove herself but instead she and my parents died in her first battle, in an exploding minefield."

F'Rog watched Lorca's expression as the former captain put two and two together. Exploding minefield…the battle where they saved the Carthage…where Lorca gave the order to set off those bombs…

"Am I responsible for your family's death?" He asked.

"As much as I am responsible for the loss of your crew," said F'Rog. "We both knew that our decisions would result in many deaths but those would be the deaths of enemies."

"You didn't mention this during the peace talks."

"Of course not. If you knew that you killed my family, you might have felt we were cosmically even, or something like that. At the time I was looking for any reason to make you break the peace so we could keep fighting until we had clouted each other into bloody pulps. Instead you ended up making the right decision, which doomed so many of my fellows recently. Not that there's any guarantee they would have lived if we hadn't signed the treaty."

F'Rog looked sadly at the table, at where he and his sister had scratched out their names as children. Lorca didn't say anything, feeling that the world was truly rotten and perhaps F'Rog was right. They should have just clouted each other into a bloody pulp.

"Do you know what Paywl' means, Gabriel?" Asked F'Rog. "The name of my House?"

"Uh…the Universal Translator doesn't translate names unless we ask it to."

"It means serenity. As I sit here, looking at this empty table that used to be surrounded by my squabbling, annoying family that I loved, I wonder if perhaps you're the one who's been right all along. Maybe war is just a vanity and something to be outgrown."

Sully didn't have much patience for F'Rog and clapped her hands slowly and sarcastically.

"Oh joy," she said. "It only you had figured that out before you tortured and killed my friends."

F'Rog excused himself and left the room. Volgor had been waiting for just that moment. He seized a fork and launched himself at Tyler, screaming, "Klingon! Not a Klingon!" They grappled on the floor, the fork barely an inch from Tyler's eye, while the others tried to pull them apart. F'Rog came back and dragged Volgor away.

"In retrospect, it was dumb to put them in the same room," he said. Then he told that he'd just sent out some communications to contacts in Silrek's army who owed him favors. He asked them to be on the lookout for the ship of Hurgh'hov.

"I told you a lot of stories," he said. "Now let me tell you something closer to fact. Centuries after all those fairy tales, people continued to believe in Hurgh'hov, that they were descended from gods and destined to rule all Klingons, if not the entire galaxy. They met in secret and slowly the rank of their followers grew. People went missing and their deaths were ascribed to brutal sacrifices by this cult. In the beginning of the warp era, a group of lunatics calling themselves Hurgh'hov held a public demonstration, burning the writings of Kahless and calling on Klingons to join them in a new era of dominion over all species. Perhaps if they hadn't blasphemed Kahless they would have been more successful but instead they were exiled. Silrek must be mad to think he can trust them. If I know Klingons, they must never have forgiven the other 24 Houses for kicking them out. Perhaps Silrek thinks he can use them and betray them."

"So now what?" Asked Anderson.

"Now we wait," said F'Rog.

"We're not going to wait idly," said Sully. "We need a plan in case they do find that ship. We can't go after them with only a shuttle."

"My ship is hidden in a cavern under this castle," said F'Rog. "I didn't use it in the recent battle since we were caught off guard on land. Few people knew about it. I suppose we could…pretend to be part of Silrek's army. It's not very Klingon to pretend to be something we're not but what does it matter?"

"Wait, what?" Said Lorca. "It's not Klingon to pretend to be something you're not? But L'Rell shoved a Klingon up Tyler's ass so he could pretend to be human and infiltrate the Federation!"

F'Rog pretended not to notice the accusation of hypocrisy and said, "It's also practically sacrilegious to rename a ship, but we'll have to change it and draw the insignia of House Kol. What should be the new name of the ship, Gabriel? I hear you're good with names."

Lorca gasped, surprised and troubled at the thought of renaming the ship that destroyed the Buran. Oh, the irony of fate! But he came up with a name quickly.

"Let's call it the Deathly Hallows. That sounds very Klingon-y and it has a certain meaning for me that you'll probably never understand."

"Will you come with us?" Asked Sully of F'Rog.

"To battle the myths of our violent old gods? It's a job for House Serenity, for sure. High time I put on that mantle without equivocation."

"Then Anderson, can you make some devices to disguise our life signs as Klingon?" Asked Sully.

Anderson figured it could be done. Lorca followed him back to the shuttle to get some stuff they'd need. In one hallway, Anderson noticed a door leading to some kind of circular room with a dark hole in the floor. Anderson joked that this must be Klingons' idea of a bathroom, though the ash suggested it was a chimney. Lorca didn't find the joke funny.

"You expect Klingons to be animals that use foul holes as toilets and that's what you see! You and your Terran ilk need to stop making assumptions about people before getting to know them. They're not really that different from us."

They returned and Anderson worked on the life sign devices. F'Rog went over to a glass cabinet with many bat'leths.

"Each of these tools has a special name and purpose," he said. "Something tells me there will never be a son of F'Rog to learn them."

"Oh, come on, you're not that unattractive!" Said Lorca.

F'Rog absently listed some of the names, as if reciting a prayer. One name was completely unpronounceable to Lorca. He repeated it in such a way that it sounded like he was about to throw up. F'Rog snapped out of his trance.

"Your kind use irreverence to hide the lack of ritual and meaning in your lives."

"My kind?" Asked Lorca. "Humanity in general?"

"No, just people like you."

F'Rog opened the cabinet and selected a weapon to take with him. Lorca reached for a pretty bat'leth but F'Rog slapped his hand away.

"Don't touch my family's keepsakes," he said. "Here, play with this instead."

He took something out of his pocket and put it in Lorca's hand. It was Volgor's tooth.

"Why did you keep this?" Asked Lorca. "And where have you been hiding this great sense of humor? If only more Klingons were like you."

They heard a scream and suddenly, Volgor ran into the room chasing a hen and a rooster. The birds flew frantically around the room, clucking madly. While everybody tried to catch them, Volgor took his chance to attack Tyler again. Lorca took the chance to drop Volgor's tooth into F'Rog's cup of coffee. Tyler got his own back this time and smashed Volgor's face into his unfinished, cold bowl of gruel. Sully caught both fowls and returned them to a female Klingon who looked at them all, even F'Rog, with undisguised contempt.

"You're not really insane, are you?" Asked Anderson of Volgor.

But the ex-monk just threw gruel at him in reply.

F'Rog soon received a communication about the whereabouts of the Hurgh'hov ship. If it didn't move away, they could reach it within two hours. They descended into an atrium where F'Rog gave instructions to some old Klingons. Anderson spotted a sleeping old female Klingon with a baby in a basket.

"I want to see the baby," he said.

"That baby lost its parents," said F'Rog. "The last thing he wants is your moon face staring down at him."

But F'Rog let Anderson have a look at the baby. Anderson expected to see a horrible hobgoblin but instead, his moon face practically turned to marble from surprise. F'Rog exchanged a few words with the old female. Anderson continued to stare at the baby.

"Cat got your tongue?" Asked F'Rog, borrowing another expression from the book he found. "What the hell is a cat, anyway?"

"It's so cute," said Anderson, finally.

"All babies are cute," said F'Rog. "Unfortunately, that changes."

They started down into the cavern, using flashlights. F'Rog looked back at the people he'd been taking care of.

"If something happens to me," he said, "you must protect them, Gabriel."

"If it's possible, I promise I will," said Lorca.

"Why is he coming with us?" Asked Sully about Volgor.

"If I leave him alone for more than a few hours, he screams until he's hoarse," said F'Rog.

The cavern did not have overhead lighting and the Klingons who re-painted the ship's name and insignia did not leave their torches. F'Rog asked for some light as he got the door open. Left in darkness, Sully suddenly felt a groping hand on her body. She grabbed it.

"Anderson! How dare you!" She yelled.

But it was Volgor.

"Now I see why you couldn't make it as a monk," she said, with so much venom that the old Klingon actually looked chagrined.

Northwood woke up in the same tunnel where she got knocked out, only instead of a bottle with something barely potable, she had a suitcase. She frowned. She wanted the bottle back. Something made her get up, take the suitcase, and head back the way she'd come. She returned to some den of iniquity. The proprietor, a creature with a mouth the size of a dinner plate and sixteen tentacles, smiled to see her.

"Back so soon?"

"Yes. I want to use the same source as last time. I need to be alone for a few hours."

"Solitude is costly, I have other customers."

Northwood discovered a bar of gold latinum in her pocket. The proprietor smiled even wider and bit the bar to make sure it was legit. Another alien with insect features led her downstairs to a cave with a well in the center. She was left alone. Instead of sticking her head over the well like last time and getting high as a kite, she opened the suitcase and activated some settings on the console of a device, then dropped it down the well.

She had to stay here. This much she knew. But she was also aware that she had just dropped a bomb down a geothermal vent that was about to go off in forty minutes, sending magma gushing up into this very room, and countless other ones like it. For twenty minutes, Northwood battled the peculiar drive to stay in this room. She broke free, not from force of will but because the fumes jumbled everything up in her head, and she figured there would be something to munch on upstairs.

She collapsed at the bar and said, "Fellas, the shit that's about to go down will be a lot worse than a visit from the local mobsters. Hey, do you have any chips?"

F'Rog flew the ship. Volgor attacked Tyler two more times, trying to yank out his tongue. Perhaps he thought he could pull the Klingon out of Tyler like that. It was pretty gross to watch, anyway. Tyler was morose and didn't defend himself. Sully tied Volgor up, but he was slippery like an eel and got out.

The plan was to hail the Hurgh'hov ship and pretend to be having mysterious engine difficulties. As Lorca said, "Nothing is less suspicious than incompetence." F'Rog would engage the 25th House in a ridiculous conversation while the Federation officers beamed onboard. After that, it would likely be chaos.

Anderson found a nook with a window and thought about the Klingon baby. Nobody ever told him the babies were cute! Anderson recalled what F'Rog called him, a moon with a face, the stuff of Klingon children's nightmares. Too true! What about all those bioweapons Lorca50 and the Emperor made Anderson develop? Sure, he'd never been the one to drop them on anybody, but he knew what they were for! He was even proud of how many rebel scum his weapons wiped out. Now Anderson felt a gaping chasm somewhere in his soul and no amount of Terran arguments could fill it up. "Everything is just a game," "Terrans are superior, hence we should prevail over all others," "nothing matters except power," these empty statements and more fell into the chasm but it swallowed them up and threatened to suck in Anderson too.

Lorca found him by the window, biting his lip and digging his nails into his palms.

"What's wrong, Tom, are you scared?" He asked. "I'm sorry I dragged you into this."

"I killed Klingon babies!" Yelled Anderson.

Lorca guessed what happened and held Anderson while the scientist cried.

"It will be…," he began.

"It won't be all right!" Said Anderson. "I murdered them. I slaughtered them like…like animals! Like you said, I expected vermin and I saw vermin and I thought killing them was some kind of game. I should be shot and killed! I should be tortured and ripped apart and just…just…"

Sully and F'Rog came over and watched Lorca try to make Anderson calm down. The scientist kept lunging somewhere. Lorca shoved him against the window. Anderson leaned on it and just cried.

"Look here," said Lorca. "I'm not going to sugarcoat the situation by blaming the Terran Empire and its propaganda for your crimes. You knew what you were doing. You knew your enemies were sentient living beings with cultures and families. It was not a huge mental leap to start treating them like equals! You don't deserve to die. You deserve to put that big brain of yours to use in helping protect our future. Once this is all over we can go back to Ginfas and talk about our consciences until we're blue in the face, but for now we have a fucking job to do and I need you to get your shit together!"

"He's right," said Sully. "Now's really not the time to reflect on your lousy past. We need you."

Anderson wiped his tears and wouldn't look at them. He was ashamed, not of this outburst but of his entire life. Lorca patted him on the back and lightened the blow.

"I'm glad you figured it out. It would have been sad if you kept on going the way you have been. I think we can all be better friends for it."

"Excuse me?" Said F'Rog. "Am I being included in this?"

"Haven't you also recently had an earth-shattering revelation about your own shittiness?" Asked Lorca.

"Are you comparing my realization that war as an ideal is a deplorable folly to this moron's flippant genocidal tendencies?"

"Exactly," said Lorca. "Now we can be good friends and put all that behind us. By the way, who's flying the ship, Tyler?"

"No, Volgor," said F'Rog.

"What?!" Said Lorca and Sully.

"He nagged me into it," said F'Rog.

The smiley proprietor didn't believe Northwood about bad things about to happen until he looked at some sophisticated seismic equipment in his office. He bought it a few years ago after a blast from one of the vents took out his floor and got everybody in the building so high that they were robbed blind. It was a dark day and Smiley learned to read the seismic equipment. Forewarned is forearmed. When he looked at the gauges today, however, he thought he needed to get his eyes checked. The needles had all hit their limits!

Smiley didn't doubt for a moment that the equipment was functioning correctly. He yelled at his waiters to get all the good paying customers out. He yanked Northwood out with a tentacle personally while the waiters directed everybody to his ship. Smiley threatened to leave behind some vagabonds who always begged him into letting them open lines of credit. They paid up this time when they felt the ground shaking. But that was just a drop in the bucket compared to the loss of Smiley's entire establishment. Just as everybody got in the ship and took off, the building exploded in a cloud of happy gas and less happy lava. Smiley grimly contemplated his future, which likely involved moving back in with his parents.

But he was among the lucky ones.

The Deathly Hallows dropped out of warp close to the Hurgh'hov ship and continued on impulse power. F'Rog modified the engines to make the ship move in fits and starts. He threw some garbage in an exhaust pipe that released smoke into space. They approached the Hurgh'hov ship like an animal about to roll over and die.

"I doubt any of us will make it out alive," said F'Rog.

"Didn't anybody teach you optimism?" Asked Lorca.

"No. I believe that's something you have to be born with. Now, let me just say that while you are irritating, I honor you. We are brothers in this war, bound by loss. I honor you all."

F'Rog grunted in surprise when Lorca hugged him.

"Better you for a brother than that prick lawyer I actually have," said Lorca.

Volgor wanted to hug somebody too but Sully cracked her knuckles threateningly and Anderson looked at the ground morosely. That only left Tyler.

"Aw, they've made up!" Said Lorca.

But Tyler grabbed Volgor and threw him over his back.

"You won't take any part away from me!" Yelled Tyler. "I'm fine just the way I am!"

"If that were only true, this could be a powerful statement about self-esteem," said Sully.[3]

They hailed the Hurgh-hov ship. The Starfleet officers went to the transporter room. F'Rog introduced himself with a fake name to the Hurgh'hov general.

"We're having some engine problems. The computer claims the flux capacitor[4] is not working but we don't know what that is or where it is or…or…or anything."

The general wanted to send a team over.

"Oh, no, no, no, you don't want to come here," said F'Rog. "We've got a really bad stomach flu, like really bad. It's extremely contagious. And I just…ugh…"

F'Rog pretended to try and suppress vomiting. Volgor threw up on a console. F'Rog fell to the floor below the viewscreen.

"What happened?" Asked the general. "Where did you go?"

F'Rog held up a shaky hand in front of the viewscreen and said, "There's vomit all over the bridge! I just slipped in some."

The Hurgh'hov Klingons were surprisingly helpful and understanding for an evil cult bent on taking over the world. They offered to send F'Rog some medicine from their planet that should help with the stomach flu. F'Rog pulled himself up into the viewscreen and said that would be much appreciated, then pretended to heave again.

Meanwhile, the Starfleet officers beamed over to some part of the Hurgh'hov ship that didn't have any life signs. They snuck over to the engineering section. It had Klingons in it. Sully and Lorca went around to make a noise and distract them. When the Klingons left, Anderson dashed over to a computer and plugged in a tablet while Tyler kept watch. Anderson downloaded all the logs and reports while looking through some of them on a big screen.

Everything seemed to be going well. Sully and Lorca weren't seen by the Klingons because they hid in a vent. Their life signs were disguised while they left false life sign emitters on F'Rog's ship, so it wouldn't look as if his crew disappeared. It was Tyler that gave them away. Anderson finished downloading the data and they headed back to the place where they had appeared, only a group of Klingons got in their way and they took a detour into the sick bay. It was empty except for a patient on a table. Tyler took one look at the medical tools, the sick Klingon, and the operating room lamps and started screaming. All hell broke loose.

The general realized F'Rog was screwing with him and fired on the Deathly Hallows. F'Rog fought back, with Volgor flying again. Lorca and Sully followed the vent to sick bay and got out to help Anderson and Tyler fight. Tyler realized his fault and fought with the strength of at least four Klingons. The patient got up, deciding he was well enough for a brawl, only to have his recovery cut short by an angry Tyler. They cleared out the sick bay. The Hurgh'hov members were not well-armed, for they rarely participated in hand to hand battles and hadn't expected one to happen that day.

There were only ten Klingons on the ship and the Starfleet officers took out half in the sick bay. Tyler was eager to go after the other half but a second Hurgh'hov ship dropped out of warp. It was much bigger. It blasted the Deathly Hallows, which held up for a few minutes but then exploded. There was no time to feel sad for F'Rog and Volgor. New Klingons beamed down, though the Starfleet officers were already out of the sick bay and running to the docking area.

"You brought a bomb, didn't you?" Asked Lorca of Sully.

"Never leave home without one," she said.

As they passed engineering, she left it by some conduits where she knew it would cause a lot of damage. They got into a brief fight in a hallway and made it to the docking area. Tyler, or rather, Voq, could fly Klingon shuttles. They got into one.

"Can you hit warp from inside this docking bay?" Asked Lorca. "If we fly out now, the big ship will chase us."

"It will be challenging," said Tyler.

"But not impossible. Emilia, take them down!"

Sully set off the bomb, which took out half the small ship. Tyler hit warp and they shot out just as it exploded. The energy from the explosion masked their departure but it still took them ten minutes to calm down and accept that there was no pursuit.

Lorca took the controls after Tyler started moaning and cursing himself for giving them away. Anderson took out his tablet. He looked surprised, blinked a few times, and then looked very upset.

"They had a virus among their data," he finally said. "It's totally destroyed this tablet. We've got nothing."

They were silent for a short while. Then Lorca said, "OK, it's not the end of the world. Tom, you must have seen some of the data while you downloaded it. Was there anything hinting at a super evil plan?"

Anderson considered what he'd seen and said there was a list of about twenty Federation starships. All were extant and Discovery was not on the list. Anderson, with his photographic memory, recited the ship names. They couldn't make sense of it. All were tired and Tyler probably needed medical help before he hurt himself or something. Lorca absently went through his pockets and found Volgor's tooth. F'Rog must have slipped it in there when Lorca hugged him. Sully listened to some news on subspace relays. She looked at Lorca in surprise.

"Qo'nos was destroyed by the Federation," she said. "Silrek's army turned on itself, one side arguing that this is a time for mourning and the other side seeking revenge. A bunch of them annihilated each other. Silrek admitted defeat."

She paused for a moment before adding, "The war is over."

Footnotes

[1] Come on! You knew this was coming!

[2] Ginfas tolerated a lot of Anderson's shenanigans but initially the psychiatrist was worried Anderson would make improper advances on patients who could not give informed consent. However, he didn't need to be concerned on that point. Terran officers apparently had some honor or decency and they didn't include mentally compromised individuals in their "games." Terran Tyler remained unmolested after his incarceration in Admiral Lorenza's prison drove him mad. Of course, mentally compromised individuals who weren't useful as servants or soldiers did usually end up as target practice or cannon fodder.

[3] For the record, Volgor never really disliked Tyler. It is probable that Volgor's attacks and later reconciliation were his way of trying to teach Tyler something about, I…I…I don't know, understanding oneself or something.

[4] Lorca's suggestion, of course.