Chapter 5: A Vision of Judgement
Power, Lorca thought idly, was a heady thing. The longer Kodos and Emm talked, the more of the sparkle returned to her demeanour. She gestured more, even smiled a little, but all Lorca had to do was move in his guarding position by the door. The first time, he hadn't quite realised he was doing it, but he had started pacing slowly in the small space in front of the door, more to keep his body limber than anything. Emm had glanced at him and her expression had instantly darkened, eyes narrowed and voice bleached of inflexion.
He'd stopped and waited and done it again just to see what happened. Every time he reminded her of his presence, her instinctual response was to cower. She hadn't afforded him this level of respect when he'd been tied down, or even when she'd spoken with him in the lobby. He'd spooked her badly. Still, it was a heady thought to be able to affect a stranger so easily and so completely.
The reptilian had done nothing after regaining control of their body, only sat up against the bed and waited patiently. There was nothing to read in these alien features for Lorca, neither anger nor fear, but it surprised him a little that Emm didn't use the reptilian to turn the table back in her favour. A real fight between Lorca and them would be very short and very painful on his part. If Emm played her cards right, she could have him dismembered before he had time to bring the phaser up.
The thought seemed not to have crossed her mind, however, and he wasn't going to help her out.
For what it was worth, the deal itself was going fairly well. Non-confrontational as Kodos could be when it suited him, he almost matched Emm's level of diminutive behaviour, slowly putting her enough at ease to at least believe some parts of the story were true. Emm might not trust them as terrans, or Lorca as Lorca, but she believed they really did want to make that deal with her.
Unlike Earth, Terra still maintained a monetary economy, although it only applied to the lower classes, those who had no power of their own and needed something else to barter with among themselves. Powerful terrans didn't need to buy and sell anything, because they could just take whatever they wanted so money didn't matter to them.
Emm outright rejected the Terran Imperial Credits Kodos offered her, fearing it could be tracked and Kodos could not convince her otherwise. Though, the money scheme was in fact fairly foolproof. Even if someone were to try and track it, it would eventually lead to the conclusion it had come from a black budget account owned by someone very high up in the terran hierarchy and therefore someone who simply wouldn't be investigated. Marlena had been instrumental in setting it up, but it maintained itself automatically. All they needed to do now was transfer money information from ships they boarded. In terms of money, Lorca supposed, he was quite rich now.
Emm was more interested in the military schematics Kodos was offering her, weapons and armour were valuable and difficult to come by outside the law and without the right genetics. She didn't like Culber's pins, suspicious of the inherent drawback of putting drugs out on the street to do what damage they could. She accepted them anyway.
Emm needed four days of preparation to get the dilithium, since it had to be syphoned out of the stocks gradually, to mask its disappearance in the amount Lorca needed. He'd expected that and he needed the time to secure passage off the planet. He also needed to get Sennai somehow. He wasn't quite sure if Emm would be willing to help out with that issue, though.
"Emm," Lorca said when she and Kodos were wrapping things up.
She looked at him, blinked as if she had trouble focussing, and sucked in a deep breath to steady herself.
Lorca said, "I think I owe you a drink. You mentioned a bar not far from here. Join me?"
She didn't immediately respond, began a shrug and aborted it. She stood up and her body changed, turning her from beautiful into a far more fearsome alien. Bigger and heavier, thick hair framing a deeply lined face. In his universe, being shown the true face of a chameloid was a sign of affection, reserved for family and close friends or lovers. He doubted that was what Emm was going for here.
Lorca suppressed a chuckle and said, "I think a human shape might be better around here."
"I don't plan to drink with you," Emm said.
"Why not? I owe you a drink, but also an explanation."
"I have work to do," she said.
"An hour won't make a difference."
Casually, he walked towards the table, ignored the way she shifted to the side, though still well enough within striking distance if she wanted to. In her true form, he could well imagine her being a formidable opponent, but the thought didn't even seem to occur to her.
He put her phaser on the table next to her. He said nothing, the gesture was clear enough. Then turned away and crossed to the bed to release the feeble shackles on the reptilian's arm. There was a moment, then, when the bonds retracted and the reptilian stirred into motion when Lorca sensed the considerations coming off them. Attack now. Attack now and put an end to it all. And a snarling part of Lorca's consciousness answered. Try me.
Instead, the reptilian merely stood up, filling the room.
Lorca turned back towards Emm, resisting the urge to gain a saver distance to the reptilian as all his instincts demanded he do. If a show of faith was all Emm wanted, she could have it. He spread his arms out in a placating gesture.
"Do you want me to say 'please'?"
Emm still hesitated. He knew she thought he wasn't really giving her a choice, mocking her and showing his power once again, simply by putting himself in a vulnerable position. But there was no gesture he could make which would give her back the sense of control he had taken. It was the wrong universe for that.
"One drink," she finally relented. "I don't have time for more if you want your dilithium."
"That's all I asked."
Within the dark haze of the bar, Lorca remembered just how tired he was. The music beat against his consciousness, something mixed in with it to cause tangible sensations like a finger down his spine, playing with his fight or flight instincts, never quite settling on excitement or arousal or fear.
The drink was good, though, just as Emm had promised and as time progressed, he thought she was warming a bit towards him, though he suspected the alcohol and the mesmerising quality of the music had its share in the effect.
Back in her human male shape, Emm's only revealing feature was rendered invisible in the dim lighting and at some point, she had started smoking a large cigar, the smoke adding a layer of diffusion between them. Sometimes he thought she was going to offer him a drag, then thought better of it. Too intimate, perhaps and he hardly minded. Spending as time as he had in the enclosed environment of space stations and starships hadn't lent itself to develop the habit.
"What if I told you that everything I've said was true?" he asked.
"About what?"
"About me."
She choked back a laugh, still skittish around him, a fear rooted too deeply to be banished so easily. "The sex clones?"
He merely shrugged. "Not what I meant, but do you have any doubts about the depravity of the emperor's court?"
"You tell me," she said, a slither of challenge in her tone and he shook his head, dismissing the topic.
"What I mean is," he started, stopped to pick his words. "There are many universes parallel to this one, each similar, yet different. And with the right technology travelling there is no different than breaking the warp barrier. It's the same technology that powered the Emperor's palace ship. I've been to these other places, you know. I've seen them."
"As far as I'm concerned," she said and he could tell she didn't want his words to affect her, burying her curiosity deep inside her glass. "I've got enough problems right here, don't need to go looking for them elsewhere."
"But imagine the possibilities."
He raised his hand to silence her objection, glad for once of the power he held over her when she let her words fade away unvoiced. He said, "Or rather, imagine what it does to a man who has only ever known his own ambition, to see into infinity and to realise that his way is not the only way. The Empire is not the only way. There is a whole universe on the other side, where they have a union of alien worlds, each interacting on eye level, respecting and helping each other and it doesn't make them weak. It makes them stronger."
He paused before he got carried away, unwilling to dive so deep into his own feelings he could get lost in them, honest as it would be. Just as with Sennai, revealing too much might undermine his intentions.
"Obviously, that's not our way, either," he said, sharper now, bringing them both back a step. "But, if the Empire doesn't reform, it will destroy itself and take everything with it."
Emm said nothing, struggling with her thoughts, trying to figure out what she thought of what he'd said.
"Is there another version of you in this parallel universe?" she asked and for a split second, he was convinced she knew everything. Only, of course, she was merely attacking his character in a roundabout way.
He chuckled, "Yes."
"What would he say?"
"Nothing you would believe."
Perhaps it was just a trick of the light, an effect of the music or the drink, but he thought he spotted the hint of a smile on Emm's face, just before she hid it behind her glass. Though, it still lingered at the corners of her eyes as she lowered it, laced through her voice when she said, "Gabriel Lorca the reformer."
It wasn't as mocking as she could have made it, disbelieving but without the sharp edges of true suspicion.
"I never thought those were the reforms you were going for," she added pointedly.
He had read more about Lorca's policies than he cared to remember, had sat there listening to Culber going on about it and downing one glass after the other in hopes it would make things easier to stomach.
"I'm old enough to have learned a few things," he said with a slight smile. "I think maybe the universe hates waste. And the Empire is wasting a lot of potential by keeping so many aliens on the fringes. You could make us all far more powerful."
Because who would believe a terran who claimed he didn't want power?
"You and I, we'll never see that different Empire," he continued and thought of the cruelty of saying all this to her when it was nothing but a snare. The truth was, he couldn't save this empire and none of its slaves from themselves or their masters. He recognised an impossible task when he saw one.
"But I fully intend to put it on the right path. And to do that, right now, all I need is some dilithium."
"Well," she said. "We already made a deal. I wouldn't last long in this business if I didn't stick with deals I made, but if you want me to feel better about it…"
"I need one other thing."
The atmosphere of the place dulled the impact of what he said just enough so he didn't quite drive her away again, give her the incentive to rebuilt the walls he had started to erode with the bare beginnings of the vision he had painted for her.
"There is a vulcan scientist," Lorca said. "She is a specialist in the technology I mentioned. I need her help."
"She's what, indentured? A slave?"
"No, she just doesn't want to help."
And the mood shifted, finally, back to the dark place it had been before. The moment's reprieve from the millennia of tyranny already falling by the wayside.
"And you don't take 'no' for an answer," Emm said, bitterly, remembering her own attempt, not so long ago to deny him. "You think she'll like it, too?"
He didn't flinch at the reminder.
"She'll see the logic of it," he said and paused for a moment as Emm hid her face behind a gust of cigar smoke.
Lorca added, "I won't treat her badly. Sometimes people need to be saved against their will, that's all."
She tapped the cigar against her lips in thought, eyes narrowed at him. "There is this terran saying, every time you open your mouth, I think of it. A leopard can't change its spots."
"Maybe," he conceded. "But I can pick who I bite."
She looked down as if the rapidly depleting contents of her glass were the most interesting thing in the world.
"I don't deal in slaves," she finally said.
"That's not…"
"It's the expertise you need," she interrupted him, perhaps not wanting to listen to another sermon of a universe far better than hers. "Abducting aliens, that's what slavers do. It doesn't happen here a lot, but Zralisss used to work for one of them before we partnered up. She can help you out."
Emm lifted her gaze and dug it into his. "If she wants to."
"For the right price."
Her sense of superiority wavered at the reminder and she took a deep breath. "Yeah," she said and looked away as if searching for answers in the blurred milling of people in the darkness.
"There's something we really need," she finally said. She had the look of someone who was about to make one of the hardest cases of her life and expected to be laughed off the podium.
Lorca just waited, hoping it she would ask for something he could actually provide.
"It's food," she said. "That is, better nutritional matrices. Food for the slaves, indentured workers and the free working class is regulated and gets restricted at the whims of those in charge. We can salvage old food synthesisers and replicators and get them working again, but they're inefficient and many produce barely anything more edible than the raw waste we put in."
"The matrix used on my ship is human-centric, it can be adapted, but only within limits."
"You tried the noodles at the hotel, didn't you? That's what terran customers get, can you imagine what's on the menu for the rest of us? Your ship... I don't see you riding just any old garbage hauler."
Lorca chuckled a little as he thought of the Defiant. At home, it was a mark of honour to be given command of a Constitution-class ship, though of course, he had merely stolen it so it hardly counted.
"Whatever you have," Emm said, a slight frown on her face at his reaction. "I bet it's better than ours. That's what we need. Just food. That's the price."
"And Zralisss will stand by the deal?"
"Zralisss and I, we've been partners for a long time. I go where she can't because she wouldn't be allowed in here, do you think that's the first time it's happened?"
"No," Lorca said with an inward sigh. "No, I don't."
The truth of it was uncomfortable, but familiar, sneaking into Lorca's consciousness on the back of the insistent beat of the music, reminding Lorca not only of where he was but made him acutely aware of his surroundings. When Emm had approached him in the lobby of the hotel, she had mentioned this bar and she would have had to know the kind of place it was. Had her invitation been only an attempt to buy time, because he'd come back too early and she hadn't been ready? It was difficult to see in the darkness, the smoke and flashing lights, but not few of the patrons were using the effect of the music to get frisky with each other. It wasn't something he suspected Emm had in mind for him, not after she'd shifted into her true form to turn him away. She found him distasteful, probably in the same way Lorca would have been disgusted at her alienness.
As he finished his drink in silence, watching her smoke the last of her cigar, he considered making a pass at her anyway. It would at least be refreshing to face rejection after the months of blanket consent his crew offered him, a reminder that he was not — as his counterpart thought of himself — in a fact, a king of any kind.
Though, what kind of person would he be if he asked, knowing full well that she might be too intimidated to say no, especially after so much of their dealings so far had pivoted on that point? He didn't want to put her into such a position.
He paid for their drinks, carefully disinterested in the monetary transaction despite his lack of familiarity with the attitude in general. Emm made no comment and would have left him standing there in the orange gloom of the city street the moment the doors slipped closed after their passing.
"Why did you invite me here?" Lorca asked before he could stop himself. The remnant sensation still traced hooked tentacles up and down his spine, even more pronounced now that their immediate cause had faded to a distant tremor.
"You invited me," she pointed out and thought about for a moment before adding, "Thanks."
"No, I meant before, in the lobby, you were coming on to me."
Emm blanched, but the effect was barely visible.
"I was just trying to keep you oblivious, the element of surprise, you know," she answered and met his gaze, alien pupils made apparent by her wide-open eyes.
He nodded then shrugged. "Well, your loss," he said as he turned away. "Be in touch about those deals we've made, I won't forget."
Darkly, she answered, "Neither will I."
It was good enough to alleviate his paranoia. He trusted Marlena's vetting process enough not to direct him to a dealer who would betray him the first chance they got. And beyond that, he knew he had offered Emm a deal she couldn't justify walking away from, even if it meant striking a blow at him. He wasn't sure if she believed his stories about the Federation, but it wouldn't something she could easily dismiss it either.
As he left the bar behind, he mulled it over in his mind. It was all the Federation had become, a story to tell, something to barter with to neutralise his counterpart's reputation on a one on one basis even if the wider context was out of reach. Besides, Lorca didn't deserve to be redeemed even in the eyes of the galaxy which had spawned him and shaped him into the man he had become. Sometimes, it was an easy allure to succumb to, Lorca would admit, if only in the rare privacy of his mind, when his barriers were worn down. It was easy to seize power in this galaxy, all he had to do was reach out and take it. Sometimes, it was shocking just how easily it came to him to just say and do what was required to put himself ahead.
He thought of what Sennai had said and tried to picture what it would look like if he truly set out to make this into his home. What would he become, then? All his ambitions so far had been focused on going home, his energy aimed for just that one goal, disregarding all other opportunities. In truth, he didn't want to stay, he still wanted to go home, but what if Sennai failed him? A million things could still go wrong, Sennai could stand by her refusal no matter what he told her, or perhaps she would end up simply being unable to rebuild the spore drive, what then?
The Empire had a new Empress on the throne, after going through a substantial number of contenders in a mere handful of days, it was unlikely this one was the best of the bunch. She was just another indication of the inherent flaws of the Empire, which would eventually bring it to its knees. The aliens Lorca saw scratching at the borders of terran power, they would eventually reach critical numbers and simply sweep it away. Lorca had been wrong about many things, but he had seen the signs quite clearly.
Good riddance to this rotten hellhole, Lorca thought, but it was a stance he could only take if he could leave it behind. If he had to stay, he would have to turn his attentions back to the Empire.
A minor shift in the crowds slowly dispersing out of his path worked itself too late into his consciousness. He only spotted the couple when they were right in front of him, making his steps stutter for the time it took for either of them to each grip one of his wrists and pin him to the nearest wall. The impact wasn't too hard, but the woman followed it immediately, crowding him into the corner with her weight. She leaned her face close to his, blue-painted lips framing sharp teeth in a predatory smirk.
"We," she cooed, "want a piece of you."
Her companion slid his hand between Lorca's and the woman's body and for a moment Lorca merely registered their intentions as antagonistic, but not immediately hostile. The man's groping hand wasn't trying to disarm him.
Lorca snorted and dropped his head back to look down at the two of them.
"Wait your turn," Lorca said, the sheer, casual disrespect of the approach made some inner part of him snarl angrily. He was tired of all the fighting, of days and weeks and months of it, which was not to count all the times he'd been attacked since setting foot on this forsaken planet. Everything was violence in this place, it seemed, even picking up a random stranger off the street to complete some sexual fantasy. Though, if it was violence they wanted, he could certainly provide.
It wasn't hard to shake them loose, using the hold the woman had on him as leverage, he yanked her towards her partner roughly and slipped away from the wall, watched them tumble with something akin to curiosity. Then, as she caught herself on the wall, grinning wildly and preparing to launch herself from the wall back at him, Lorca punched into her side, settled his hand on her neck and thrust her head down to meet first his knee and then the wall again. She choked on her own cry.
In the time it took for her to crumple at his feet, Lorca had pulled the dagger from its holster at his thigh, bringing it up just in time to make the man stop short in the middle of his own lunge just so the tip of Lorca's dagger scraped down the centre of his chin to come to rest just above his Adam's apple.
The man was grinning wildly, though he raised his hands in mock surrender.
"Knew you liked it rough," the man said with a triumphant glance at the woman.
"You have no idea."
Lorca stepped around him, out of reach of the woman in case she gathered her wits, tracing the tip of the dagger along his jaw until it rested right over the excitedly pulsing artery.
"Let's take this somewhere private," the man drawled, seemingly oblivious to Lorca's blade at his neck.
"You're wasting my time," Lorca said.
Lorca cast a disdainful look from the man to the woman, then back sharply just before the man could make a move. Lorca had hoped to see the naked lust there begin to waver at the very real threat of Lorca's blade, but found he had stoked the flames even more. It would be easy to just finish him off, leave him bleeding out in the street next to his girlfriend as she struggled to catch her breath. He suspected the two of them would get off on even that.
Lorca stepped around the man, letting the tip of the blade trace his progress until he stood right behind the man so he shielded him from the woman in case she was able to mount an attack. Though, she seemed to be relaxing into the wall, one of her hands coming up to lovingly stroke her bruised side before she settled her other hand over her crotch.
Bracing himself, Lorca stepped in close behind the man, gripped his forehead and forced him back against him, knowing full well he was playing to their fantasies. But the blade's threat seemed to be doing its work because the man did not, as Lorca had expected, rut right back into him but kept himself as still as possible.
Lorca leaned in close to the side of the man's head and made eye contact with the woman over his shoulder.
"Leave. Me. Alone," Lorca hissed lowly. "If I ever see you again, what I'll do to you will be over too quickly for you to enjoy."
He held the blade where it was, flicked a glance towards the man, letting the seconds trickle away until he knew he had made his meaning clear. He snapped the blade away and let go of the man, took one careful step back from the pair. Neither of them moved, but when he took another step back to break through the sparse circle of onlookers the altercation had attracted, he heard the man begin to chuckle. The woman joined in until both were laughing.
By then, Lorca had made it to the other side of the street, the eyepatch allowed him to keep them in view longer as he moved away. The man offered his hand to the woman and helped her to her feet, pulling her into a tight embrace and a hungry kiss.
While Lorca had entertained Emm, Kodos had moved them into another hotel. It was similar to the first if anything even more rundown. The lights in the lobby had mostly failed, leaving the place in semi-abandoned dilapidation. The two food replicators were flickering error messages as Lorca passed within their sensor range as if reminding him of the scope of the deal he had made over Zralisss' fate.
The room Kodos had secured was less luxurious, too, two beds set up on either side of the door, synthetic bedding meant of one-time use. A narrow door looked to be leading to what sorry excuse of a bathroom this place offered.
Kodos was sitting up on one of the beds, head leaned back into a wall, dozing. He looked young in this world, inexperienced, someone who had gone in over his head and had no idea what he was doing. Just a bureaucrat from a backwater, insignificant planet. No one cared about him either way. Even in his universe, they had never looked deeper into his death, never even bothered to make absolutely sure the body they found belonged to him at all, letting a mass murderer potentially walk free.
The sight of him made Lorca stop, regarding him, indulging in the slow, black tar swirl of his mood, letting the events of the day wash through him and feed into the seething anger.
"Kodos," he said, loud enough to startle the other man awake.
A frown settled on the man's face, a moment of sleepiness wiped away when he saw Lorca. "I thought we used our…"
"Kodos."
He took the hint and swallowed down any other objection he might have had.
"When I left earlier," Lorca said, sounding frighteningly clam even to his own ears, painfully aware that there was nothing he could not do right now and not walk free, too.
"I told you to wait. But you didn't, did you? You took matters into your own hands and you reached out to the contact Moreau had given is." He very carefully wasn't making it a question, just an assertion, he might as well have been there.
"We didn't have time…" Kodos said, doing his best to sound reasonable.
"I gave you a direct order."
"Yes, but…"
"But you knew better," Lorca finished for him, the calm slowly peeling away. "You looked at the situation and thought you knew better. You needed to make the call because nobody else would."
He lifted a finger towards Kodos, then flexed his hand into a fist. "You are just the same. I'll tell you something. In my universe, Kodos seized control of the Tarsus colony and ordered the massacre of thousands of people because he thought he knew better. I was there and you have no idea what I've lost."
He dropped his hands by his side, returned Kodos stare evenly, basked in the sudden realisation there and the fear it caused, now that every caustic remark Lorca had ever levelled his direction made sense.
"You're dead man walking," Lorca said. "Don't step out of line again."
He broke into motion and Kodos flinched, unsure of where to go and what to do with himself. Lorca shrugged the overcoat from his shoulders and let the weaponry it contained drag it to the floor as she stepped out of it. Without looking at Kodos again, he slowly disarmed himself, tossing the phaser and dagger to the unoccupied bad, one after the other until only the small blade in his boot remained. He pulled it out but kept it in his hand as he made his way to the bathroom.
"We'll be sleeping in shifts," Lorca said. "Since you've already started, I'll wake you in five hours."
He looked over his shoulder as he pushed the bathroom door open and gave Kodos a small, unpleasant smile, knowing full well sleep wasn't going to be comfortable for him any time soon. And he could count himself lucky a little discomfort and insecurity were all he was facing right now.
End of Chapter 5
Note: I changed "glucose matrix" to "nutrional matrix" on the assumption not every alien's diet will be compatible with glucose.
It's also ridiculously hard to figure out how a money-free economy would work.
Author's Note: Grammarly thinks my writing is a bit bland. I think it might be onto something there. I really need to read books again before my vocabulary shrinks down even more.