RECAP of chapters 1-8:
Lorca, partnered with Kodos for the drama, abducts a vulcan researcher, Sennai, so she can built him a spore drive. He makes a deal with two black market dealers over some dilithium crystals and Sennai and escapes the planet with Sennai and a gorn, Zralisss.
In order to ensure compliance by his motley, terran crew, Lorca has threatened them with an automatic self-destruct should he not return. It's causing all sorts of issues for Tyler, currently in command of the Defiant. He puts one of Lorca's pet projects, an augmented human named Noor Alibali, in charge of defusing this self-destruct. (Lorca's other pet project is Irsa, the kelpien, who's Lorca's personal bodyguard, partly because it annoys the terrans.)
Upon return to the Defiant, Lorca reveals that the self-destruct never existed and it was merely a dick move, prompting Tyler to attack him. Unfortunately for Tyler, he ends up tagged with a personal agoniser and sent to his room.
Lorca bumped his knee in the fight with Tyler so he gets Culber to shoot him up with some fancy drugs. (Culber yet again declares his love for/loyalty to Lorca, but that's not a relevant plot point.)
Lorca appoints Ferasini to replace Tyler on the bridge, like she's wanted all along, causing her to forget her bitchiness for a whole minute.
Chapter 9: Game Theory
Ferasini didn't bother to ask Lorca about what Culber had wanted. He wouldn't reveal anything and maybe even lie to misdirect her assumptions. Besides, she didn't need medical knowledge or mind-reading ability to make a good guess. The pallor of Lorca's face was quite enough for it. He would have been up almost nonstop while on Yemuro, the mission parameters didn't allow for anything else, and he knew he wasn't going to get much rest on the ship either. No doubt Culber had some concoction to help with the issue and it wasn't entirely agreeing with Lorca.
Perhaps, she thought, Lorca felt grateful for her silence. His mind worked like that, always that odd dependency on other's, that need to connect with them. Not that she would mind connecting with him again. Now that her fever for him had slowed down to an ever-present simmer, she could think clearly again, even in his close vicinity and she would readily admit — though perhaps not aloud — she found much to enjoy about even his more infuriating preferences.
If nothing else, he was an interesting specimen to observe, on a merely scientific level, as he navigated a culture completely alien to him. It was fascinating to see the minute changes it caused in his mindset, one small step at a time. Eventually, he would lose so many of these perplexing streaks of his, if he lived long enough anyway. There was another sort of pleasure in being there, giving him that tiny nudge in certain directions — or in the opposite direction, just to make him rebound. It was bad science, of course, but she was hardly going to be able to publish on it, so it didn't matter and she could enjoy it all the more.
By intention or coincidence, Lorca kept his long-legged stride just expansive enough to make Ferasini struggle slightly to keep up. She was never quite sure how much of his antics were due to a real desire to manipulate and how much of it was simple reflex and instinct.
"I know magic mushrooms aren't your area of expertise," Lorca said.
"Naturally," she answered without inflexion.
He actually chuckled a little before he continued, "But you know how a scientist thinks, how they reason and come to conclusions. That's why I want you to have scientific oversight of the project."
"What about your vulcan?"
Something about the question irritated him. Perhaps the possessive, perhaps that she used the species rather than Sennai's names, perhaps that she'd put the finger on his weakness immediately.
They reached the turbolift and he shook off his irritation as he stepped through the door.
"I'm not giving her the run of it without anyone looking over her shoulder. I'm adding Alibali to the team, too, once I've had a talk with her about what went down during my absence, but..."
"Tyler wanted her to work on your self-destructive sword of Damocles."
"I don't know what Tyler wanted." A snarl in his voice at the mention of the man, a problem he knew he would have to deal with soon and didn't want to have on his plate.
"Well, that makes two of you," she said. "I'm sure he doesn't either."
The turbolift slid smoothly to a halt, releasing them into the corridor leading to the officers' and captain's quarters.
Ferasini assumed they were here to pick up the vulcan and indeed, Lorca brought them right to her door.
He buzzed himself in without waiting for confirmation, but the vulcan's expressionless features showed no offence, as, of course, they wouldn't. She looked like she had been heading to bed — or meditation or whatever esoteric habits these vulcans had. She put on a thin cardigan, flowing tails around her hips and arms. Not a garment she was likely to have brought with her, so she would have had to make use of the replicator in the officer's quarters. She certainly wasn't shy to take what was being offered.
She was older than Ferasini had thought, grey through her hair and lines in her face. How old did vulcans get anyway? How many grudges might this one have collected over the years? Even the ones in comparatively comfortable employ weren't treated as equals and a species as proud of their intellectual prowess as vulcans had never taken well to it. Privately, Ferasini had never quite believed in their successful subjugation.
True, Vulcan was part of the empire and one of the least conflict-prone areas of it, yet... somehow they always looked that little bit too smug about everything. It was for that reason Ferasini had always refused to work with vulcans. She had never wanted the added hassle.
"Dr Sennai," Lorca greeted her and her eyebrow twitched ever so slightly. It was unlikely she held that title, even if it seemed appropriate. She didn't correct him, though, and Ferasini made a mental note of it.
"Please accompany us to the lab," Lorca said and although it was a request, he didn't give her much choice on the matter, simply turned and walked back out, never questioning whether Sennai — or Ferasini for that matter — followed him, because of course, they did.
#
The lab Lorca had selected for Sennai's project — or was it Lorca's project? — was the largest the ship had to offer. At its centre, a round platform offered a large containment option, equally suited for physical entities as it was for exotic energy particles. Its control console faced the door and the walls of the lab were lined with computer equipment. Ferasini had read in the ship's logs that the lab had been used for research into alternatives to dilithium crystals, but the project had been abandoned years before when it's lead scientist had been found faking her results to maintain influence.
Lorca shoved a PADD at Sennai, making her reflexes struggle with the graceless gesture.
"The lab's spec and a full list of everything we have on board and everything we can manufacture or replicate," he explained. He fixed Sennai sharply and the vulcan went still under his gaze, meeting it evenly without letting herself be distracted by the PADD idly in her hand.
Lorca said, "Whatever you need, it will be provided."
He glanced at Ferasini, "Dr Ferasini has been given oversight of the project, but she's not going to interfere. If she tells you 'no', you come to me directly and immediately."
Sennai passed a look over Ferasini, assessing her with unknown result. Ferasini almost rolled her eyes.
"You have access to crew profiles, too," Lorca added. "In case one of them has the expertise you need, you just tell them to jump."
"I wouldn't want them to jump," Sennai said, her tone so dry, it might have been a joke. "Doing their work is more than satisfactory."
Lorca chuckled.
"I'll need a moment," Sennai said and turned away. She walked to the central console, put the PADD down and accessed the lab's computer, asking it to display its specs for her.
Ferasini watched her for a moment, then looked at Lorca, indulged in the small shiver down her belly as she thought of tracing a hand up his arm to his neck, wondering if he'd flinch, or moan, or lean into it.
Instead, she said, "You know giving me the bridge changes things."
"You wanted it all along," he said. "I know you don't know anything about it, but I trust you can catch up quickly."
"That's not what I meant," she said. She plastered a smile on her face, ignoring the pervasive taste of ash the thought of it left on her tongue. "I can't be seen sleeping with you if I want to command any sort of respect."
That got his attention since it clearly wasn't what he had expected her to say. A mischievous spark crossed his eyes, proof if nothing else, of how much more comfortable they had become with each other to be able to laugh together. When she didn't follow his lead and remained serious, he tucked his amusement away.
"Everyone can sleep their way to the top," she said. "The moment you're out of the picture — or just out of the room — my word will mean nothing. I can't command a ship on your authority alone. The crew wouldn't respect me."
Slowly, a frown settled on his face. "They don't respect you?" he asked. "Has there been an incident I don't know about?"
She laughed, though mirthlessly. "Nothing I can't handle myself. Certainly, nothing I need your help with. But as I've said, giving me the bridge changes things."
He was silent, pensive. "I didn't know."
"No, you didn't," she said, sharper now. "And you didn't care, either. Your behaviour has consequences and regardless of your intention, the members of this crew will draw their own conclusions based on what they know and who they are. A captain taking a lover is nothing special. You don't mess with them, because that's more trouble than it's worth. A captain promoting that lover is different. It makes me look incompetent and you look weak."
"They should know better by now," he said.
"But I'll have to show it on my own."
She reached out to him, touched his arm and felt him tense under her grip. "You'll find somebody else. I suggest steering clear of the gorn, however, that would be embarrassing to me. The kelpien is bad enough."
His frown deepened, only to be replaced by a curiously raised eyebrow as the meaning of her words became obvious. "That's what they think?"
"Some," she shrugged. "You treat aliens very strangely. What are they supposed to think?"
"You people don't have sex with aliens?"
She considered the bare, naive confusion in his tone. Of course, if he thought about it at all, he would know the answer. To Lorca it was a question of relationship, or even of romance, she supposed, something undertaken between equals at any rate. To a terran's mindset, members of lesser species had to be available, sexually or otherwise, to serve.
The shared amusement, she realised, was a new thing between them. It made her feel comfortable in his presence in ways she hadn't before. She didn't like it.
"Not the way you think of it," she said finally, it didn't seem important enough to elaborate further. She had a sharper blade to twist in his gut.
She said, "You'll have to deal with Tyler soon."
It didn't have quite the effect she had been going for, but the levity trickled away and his expressive face settled on a more serious look. He put his attention back on Sennai as she finished her tour around the lab and stopped close to the central console to look back at Lorca.
"When it's time," he said dismissively and took the few strides close to Sennai.
"How are we looking?" he asked her.
"The laboratory fulfils the basic requirements," Sennai said. "And I'll be able to set it up within three to five days, depending on how cooperative your crew is."
"Three days, then," Lorca said.
Sennai didn't even arch her eyebrows. "We'll need a botanical garden, too. The spores are alive and for testing, we'll need a large supply. We have to be able to harvest them as needed."
Lorca sighed, "The Defiant used to have that. It's all been transformed into crew quarters, but space is there."
"Have you thought about where to get the spores?" Sennai asked.
Smiling a little, Lorca said, "I thought you'd tell me."
"No, I can't. I never knew the origin of the spores or under which circumstances they were discovered."
Ferasini had walked up next to Lorca, though keeping her distance and taking a look around the lab on her own. If she was honest, the prospect of overseeing this kind of project excited her, even if she had little knowledge and no experience in the field. It didn't matter what Lorca needed to get out of it, the discovery of knowledge, the uniqueness of what they were doing, it did make her heart beat a little faster. Now all they had to do was get it off the ground.
She watched Lorca's face and could immediately tell he had an idea.
"How resilient are the spores?"
"Very much, they may go dormant for a prolonged length of time, in that state, radiation doesn't damage them. Vacuum on its own is not an issue, since the spores straddle normal space and subspace. When it comes to destructive forces, the spores can be destroyed. They'll burn, to put it simply. Although they may only be destroyed in normal space, while the other side remains intact."
"Could spores still be found in the wreck of the Charon?"
Ferasini had to hand it to him, putting such a look of surprise on a vulcan's face was no easy feat.
"I expect spores to have survived."
"Enough for what we need?"
"Yes, almost certainly, but they will have dispersed over much of the area."
Lorca shrugged. "One step at a time, doctor. Let's finish the setup first, then we go hunting."
Sennai looked like she wanted to argue, but thought better of it. Ferasini indulged in imagining Sennai was doing it to let him suffer the consequence of his own wilful ignorance. Lorca needed to do this, telling him 'no' wasn't going to win anyone any prizes.
"I'd welcome it if you could share lunch with me regularly," Lorca asked Sennai. "So we can talk about your progress."
"When working on a project, I usually eat very little, it takes away valuable time."
"Try to make the time," Lorca said, although still smiling, the command came through clear enough this time. d
"Of course," she said. "May I keep the PADD? I would like to review the materials some more."
"Take the PADD," Lorca said. "Take whatever you need."
Sennai nodded, looked briefly at Ferasini, then back at Lorca. "I would like to return to my quarters now."
"You're free to go where-ever you want," Lorca said. A frown crossed his face. "I prefer you to. But if you wish, you can use site-to-site transport, the computer privileges are all already set."
Sennai nodded, pretended to think about it for a second then spoke the command that made the transporter pick her up and put her back in her quarter.
"No one would dare touch her on this ship," Lorca growled.
"Yes, well, but how can she be sure?" Ferasini asked and made herself a target for his seething anger.
"Because I said it!" he snapped. He immediately reined himself in again, took a deep breath and squared his shoulders in an ineffective way to force himself to relax.
Ferasini tilted her head at him and waited him out. She knew his next step would be to retreat, dismiss her and find something to take his mind off the issue he knew he could never solve.
"Do you have anything to add?" he asked, still with a roughness in his voice. "About the project?"
"Not right now," she said and decided to throw him a bone. "If it's alright, Sennai had the right idea, let's look through the inventory first and I got to do some reading. Some of Straal's and Stamet's published work should be in the archive. It wasn't classified when they were still two imbeciles with space mushrooms. I'd like to know at least the basics."
"Good idea," he said quietly.
She nodded and turned to go without the moment of standing to attention the other crew-members offered him. Even Culber did it sometimes, but there was a line to how much respect she was willing to give a rank which had no meaning to her.
"Attention everyone," Lorca's voice drawled through the ship's speakers, a laconic anger underlying his tone. "I have been gone from this ship for a week and many of you seem to have instantly forgotten what this place is and who it belongs to. I'm disappointed in the patterns of behaviour that spread on the ship in my absence." He paused for a moment. "So let's remind you. You've chosen to be here. You've chosen to follow my rules on my ship. If you no longer stand by that choice, you are free to come talk to me in my ready room. We all pride ourselves in our honour and our bravery, so if something bothers you, I expect you to have the guts to say it to my face."
He let it simmer for a moment and changed his tone just slightly. "Now, we have two guests on board. One is a gorn, she will be with us for a short time only. She will be treated with utmost respect or she has my permission to rip the offender's arms off. The other is a scientist from Vulcan. She will be part of Project Putaway. Every order she gives is my order. There will be no insubordination. We are heading for dangerous territory and we have many hard fights ahead. A word to the wise, therefore: Chose your battles. The galaxy is already our enemy and screaming for our blood, we do not need enemies in here with us, because then we'll just all go down together. Let's not do that. I'll bring you out the other side if you do your part. Lorca out."
The ready room was brightly lit, the trapping of past terran occupation removed, leaving a bare space, like the day the ship was launched, when it and its crew were still innocent of the atrocities waiting for them.
When Lieutenant Rubau stepped into the room, she was predictably unaware for the way these thoughts drifted through Lorca's mind when he briefly paused in his work and found himself, accidentally, contemplating his surroundings. She did, however, squint in the brightness and stopped perhaps further away from the captain's desk than she had intended.
"Congratulations," Lorca said without looking up. "You're the first one to take me up on my offer."
She held herself still and waited for him to be ready to give her his attention.
"Sir," she said, no inflexion, none of the slight arm twitch some of the crew-members suffered from when their ingrained reflex to salute collided with the conscious decision not to annoy Lorca in what could be a delicate moment.
Lorca dismissed Rubau's file from the screen and finally regarded her across the room. She was small, stocky and athletic, with fierce determination woven into ever tense nerve end as she forced herself to be perfectly still while the discomfort of the lights and Lorca's silence gnawed away at her confidence.
He kept watching her, seemingly mapping all the little flaws in her very being.
"Well," Lorca said, gently mocking. "Speak up."
Where her confidence had threatened to tip into agitation, his permission put her back on solid ground. Her stance softened, almost readying herself to spring, even if all she did was take another two steps forward, closer to the desk without breaking eye contact.
"I had an argument with Lieutenant Zhang," she said. "And I want to explain myself."
"Where I'm from, we don't have arguments with our fists. That's called a fight."
"It was nothing that serious, sir," she said with the flitter of a smile.
"Say it anyway."
Lorca hadn't changed his tone and his expression was still cooly assessing her, humouring her.
The order unsettled her balance only for a moment, recognising the nature of it. She said, "If it's lip-service you want, fine, I can do that, sir. I had a fight with Lieutenant Zhang. But I took you for someone who wants to be talked to straight."
Lorca raised his eyebrows and, thinly, he said, "I don't like to be second-guessed, Lieutenant."
She shook her head, exasperated with how he kept derailing her, turning the conversation around corners she hadn't anticipated, ridding her of her control. He must have read Tyler's report on the incident and some aspect of it had him riled up. Something about her, or Zhang, or perhaps she was just suffering some of the fallout from his fight with Tyler. She should have thought this through better, but it certainly was too late to back out now.
"In that case, what do you want us to do?" she asked without bothering to hide the demand in it. "You made us a promise when we chose to follow you. And then you broke it. You're leaving us behind. That's what I told Zhang and that if you broke faith with us we owe you nothing. He wants to follow you blindly. We did that, once, to the Emperor and it didn't work. That's why I 'fought' with Zhang. And I bet it's the reason for our 'bad behaviour' across the board."
All he said was, "You failed to address me properly."
"You've made a mistake, sir," she said with a snarl.
Despite her anger, she couldn't quite stop herself from flinching ever so slightly as he stepped around the desk, still facing her, predatorily amused for his own, unknown reasons. The kind of approach which, in anyone else, would have made her throw the first punch. Right then, she wasn't angry enough to be this stupid.
"The self-destruct," he said and allowed himself a little sigh at his own expense. "I agree, the threat may have been too much. It wasn't real. I never set a self-destruct. You were never in any danger."
"With all due respect, sir, that makes it worse."
Defiance and challenge spoke from every fibre of her being, but it was a brittle thing, facing him as she was. He and his responses were an unknown, unpredictable factor to her. He could — and far too often would, according to some people's careful whispers — play the terran convincingly. Only for him to turn around and do the least expected thing.
And the uncertainty of it, of what he would say next, or do next, or think next, eroded her sense of purpose.
"I expect a little faith, Lieutenant," he said, the mildness of his tone so clearly fake it rattled her more than if he had shouted. "I already conceded I may have overdone the threat, but there was no danger. All you had to do was keep your feet still and trust I would return. And I have."
She braced herself, took a breath. She said, "I don't do blind faith."
He chuckled, amused or feigning to be amused, still advancing her, stopping only when he made her tense and raise her head.
She blinked, struggling to keep eye contact, unsettled, untethered strands of her seething anger pulling her this way and that and thus keeping her pinned.
Lorca sighed, long-suffering, artificial. "There must have been some cultural misunderstanding. It happens. I am a nice person, lieutenant. I don't like to have my subordinates have to walk on eggshells around me. It doesn't mean I can be disrespected with no consequence. You got into a fight over my decisions and that's not your place. I expect an apology, Julieta."
The emphasis was off, the low drawl on her name, his gaze too heavy as he was standing well inside her personal space. If her realisation was immediate, her reaction lagged behind a scant, drawn-out millisecond, scattering her considerations across her expression. A distinct, if fast and fluid, shift from surprise across a slither of disgust through a vein of rebellion and into calculation and then what she thought of as sultry acquiescence. It ended with her drawing a breath, already letting her gaze drift away from him across his chest and back up, meaning heavy, no longer looking for his confirmation — although perhaps she should have — as she dropped to her knees.
Almost immediately, his hand settled against the back of her head, an unyielding grip in her hair, digging through the tight hold of her fishtail braid. The earlier flicker of rebellion flared up again and didn't take. She took her focus down.
Lorca gave her a hard shove, intentionally loosening her hair, making her feel the sting and tuck of it as she toppled back, too surprised to steady herself fully. By the time she had gathered herself, Lorca was already gone.
Glancing at her over his shoulder as he walked back to his desk, he said, "You second-guessed me. You guessed wrong. That's why I can't trust you."
He reached his desk and with a flick of his hand summoned several holographic displays, his attention deliberately elsewhere as Rubau stood up, humiliation staining her face.
She didn't immediately know what to do with her hands, but some deeply ingrained default took over and made her stand to attention, watching him silently with her best effort at controlled indifference.
"You came here to give me a piece of your mind if I wanted to hear it or not. Brave of you," Lorca continued, mockery thin and sharp. "You had something, lieutenant. But then you went and made my point for me. All I had to do was say your name. That's why you people need to be kept bridled."
He sat down behind the desk, attention on the task in front of him.
"Your concern is noted, Lieutenant, dismissed."
She jerked into motion, badly concealed eagerness to be gone warring with what was left of her pride. She turned away and walked to the door with the urge to break into a run visible in the snapping tension of her muscles. As the door hissed open she found herself smoothing over the dishevelled part of her hair, far from subtle enough not to attract everyone's attention as she hurried from the bridge to seek temporary refuge in the fleeting privacy of the turbolift.
Newly acting Chief of Security Thomas Leighton watched the stars rush by past the large observation windows without actually seeing them. The crew lounge behind him was moderately lively, a background buzz of conversation. Sometimes there was a more anxious note in it, which Leighton knew came from the way people dropped their voices when they talked about the huge gorn comfortably sitting alone in a corner.
As far as he could tell, no one had approached the alien and neither had she made any such attempt. He wondered what had prompted her to sit out in the open like this. Except, perhaps, to bask in how untouchable the captain's speech had made her. Certainly, she didn't look like she would be incapable to dismember someone without putting much effort into it.
It was, Leighton thought sourly, a problem the Chief of Security should have an eye on. And although he was technically off duty, it was impossible to shake the pressure of responsibility. He'd rather be in his quarters to ponder the issue, but real alcohol was restricted. He could probably have smuggled a bottle or so to his quarters, but the thought didn't sit well with him, either.
Nothing felt right. He took a long gulp of the vodka in his glass and let it burn down his throat, temporarily dulling the lump seemingly lodged there permanently. He'd never wanted a promotion. It was a piece of clothing that didn't fit right, chafed on his perception of his place in life. It didn't help that he didn't know — and hadn't for some time — what place he had at all.
Some days he missed Marlena. With her, these things would have been so much simpler to figure out. Like she was a lens through which things he looked at made sense. He hated himself for never going up to Lorca and asking about her. Lorca would tell him, he was sure of it, would even pass a message on if he'd asked. Though, what would he even say? He had no delusions about Marlena at all, she had led him astray only for her own goals. All his life, someone else had been in charge, so why not her? He had not put up much of a resistance against her advances, going all the way into high treason by following a man who would be emperor.
As a child, his father had mocked his every weakness until a small cut became a bleeding wound of the mind. His mother had had a more straightforward approach, doing her best to beat the weakness out of him. They both had always known he would never amount to much and made sure he was aware of it. He didn't know what they would have thought of him today, but he knew they would have been swept away in Gabriel Lorca's conquest. They had been weak in the same way they had always punished him for.
A few seats down, Kodos was talking quietly and intently with someone.
"… the raw calculations were the easy part," Kodos was saying. He sounded more animated than normal, the wonders of alcohol, no doubt, and the relief of coming back from Yemuro. He continued, "So many people, so many food stocks, so much time until resupply arrived. No, the tough part was filtering the people. Some of the council-members wanted a completely random system. Like a lottery. There were plans to enact it, even, and that's what they were going to call it. Sacrifice Lottery."
"The slogan would've been pretty interesting," the crew-member said, chuckling. "Do your part for the Empire, enter the Lottery!"
Ah, Leighton thought into his drink. That's why he was thinking of his parents, he didn't usually dwell on them much. So little, in fact, he had himself convinced he'd stopped caring entirely.
"That would have been a little crass if you ask me," Kodos said. "But I'm sure it would have amounted to something close it. I have to say, I'm glad Governor Ribiero put a stop to that. It was already looking very drab, it just seemed wasteful to go about it so thoughtlessly. We had a chance, she said, to make something good out of it. To let this terror attack help make us stronger and better so that the entire Empire could benefit from it. That's when the difficult calculations came in."
Leighton didn't realise he'd stood up and downed the rest of the alcohol. Maybe Lorca shouldn't keep it quite so locked up, people couldn't hold their liqueur and made foolish decisions then. Off in the corner of the room, the gorn was watching the room as if it was putting on a stage performance for her. Leighton had a pretty good idea what his parents would have thought about that.
"Ah, lieutenant," Kodos greeted him amiably. "Uneasy is the head that wears a crown, isn't it? Come, share another drink."
The crew-member, Mavi from engineering, he'd been talking to nudged her armchair a bit to the side so Leighton could join them more comfortably. He sat down and let her refill his glass.
"You are a native of Tarsus, aren't you?" Kodos asked. "We were just talking about the famine and what it took to win it."
"You win a famine?" Leighton muttered into his glass.
"Well," Kodos conceded. "It's making the best of it. And the famine crisis on Tarsus, it was a test for all of us, a test of our strength and ingenuity and convictions."
"It didn't feel like it, then," Leighton said.
"Sometimes it takes perspective," Mavi said. "You don't get that in the middle of the shitstorm."
Kodos nodded, "Yes, it… none of us had a chance to think much outside of our immediate task."
"So how did you figure out who should win the lottery?" Mavi asked.
"The calculations said that at least four thousand people needed to be culled for the colony to have a reasonable chance of survival. And the main problem was, we were a fairly rural colony, very homogenous, so the differences between groups were minor on first look. Starfleet sent us their prediction software, the one they use to evaluate their recruits to determine their career tracks. But that only gave us a baseline and it was very clear we had to be more thorough than that. Which member of the colony was going to be most useful for the future of the colony?"
"Young, strong ones," Mavi said immediately and Kodos nodded.
"None of the exiles," Leighton added. His glass was almost empty and he put it down.
"Exiles isn't a term we used," Kodos pointed out. "But there was a certain amount of people who had been resettled by the Empire on Tarsus because they had been causing problems elsewhere. These people served no real purpose other than maintaining the machinery of food production. And since there was no more food production, it was obvious that they should contribute in the only way they still could."
"That was enough?"
"No," Leighton said.
"No, it wasn't. The last step was to incorporate the medical records, vetting for genetic defects in the individuals and their family lines to determine their worth. That gave us more people than we strictly needed, but everyone agreed we should use them anyway."
Mavi's wide-eyed enthusiasm grated along Leighton's right side as she leaned forward. "How did you go about it? People didn't just comply, right?"
"There were riots," Leighton said, reached for his glass, realised it was empty and pulled his hand back empty. He looked up at Kodos.
"Our security forces and the small Starfleet complement were outnumbered and weakened by the lack of food like everybody else. Of course, every attempt was made to keep the decision quiet, but there were far too many people involved, especially once we started with the actual preparations. The intake vats of the food processors weren't built to cope with people, never mind the necessary decontamination beforehand."
Leighton shook into motion and sat back, staring directly at Kodos now. He remembered when they had come. His parents had been some of the last to be picked up and by then, everyone in the colony already knew what was happening. Some people had fled the cities and settlements, tried to hide in the mountains, only to be picked up or starve out there.
Leighton's parents had decided to stay. They had been passed over several times and must have felt save enough, so when the soldiers came to their door, they were wholly unprepared. It had been sunset, Leighton remembered, and the street had been ghostly quiet. His mother had put up a fight, for what it was worth, only to get her teeth smashed in with the butt of a phaser until she stopped struggling.
Leighton had killed one of them, sprang at them from behind with a kitchen knife while they wrestled with his mother. He'd pushed it into his neck and yanked to the side, severing the artery there. The spray of blood had hit his father, already tethered and watching impotently. Another soldier had smacked Leighton in the wall, rattling his senses and leaving him dazed on the floor as they dragged his parents away.
Somehow, Kodos' complex calculations had decreed Leighton should be spared. He didn't know which variables had caused it.
"I have to say," Kodos said. "It was difficult work and not everything went smoothly, but that's how you know your own mettle. How you handle the adversities. I'm proud of what we've achieved."
Leighton didn't know what his parents would have thought of him, later or today. He'd never had a chance to pay them back their insecurities and failings. He could never show them that he was made of stronger stuff them him.
He got up slowly, felt Mavi watch him and misunderstand his intentions. Engineering, how would she tell and Kodos? The fucking bureaucrat who'd made sure he and his cronies wouldn't be on any list, Kodos had no chance at all.
He lunged across the table for Kodos' throat, easily yanked him from his seat and found the panorama window to smash him against before Kodos even began to muster some feeble defence. He pulled back and hit Kodos' head into the window a few times, but then settled both hands comfortably around his throat.
Kodos's fingers scratched along his arms in an uncoordinated attempt to free himself, legs kicking out below him without connecting with anything meaningful. His eyes were wide, uncomprehending, slowly getting bloodshot as the air ran out.
There was some noise behind him, some commotion, but it seemed far away, unimportant to him, unable to touch him. Someone was shouting in his ear, Mavi maybe, he didn't bother to listen while Kodos was still twitching.
A hand fell heavy on his shoulder and another closed around his wrist, breaking his grip and pulling him back like a natural force. The reflection in the window betrayed the faint, hulking outline of a monster, the gorn plucking him off Kodos as if it was nothing.
The gorn made a hissy sound as she put Leighton back down, but kept a painful hold of his arm, even though he didn't struggle.
"This is more fun than I thought," she said.
Kodos had slipped down the window to the floor, coughing and gasping for breath. Throughout, the confusion had never left his expression, even now, he didn't understand the first thing about what was happening to him. Just for that, Leighton decided they weren't finished with each other.
Still somewhat in a daze, Leighton found himself sitting in Lorca's private quarters not much later, uncomfortably tense in the plush of a couch. His mind still felt empty, but at the edges, some sense had begun to crawl back in. Sense enough at any rate to know that something wasn't right about this. Lorca should have put him in a cell, not on his couch.
"Here," Lorca put a large cup of black coffee in his hand. The scent so strong Leighton felt a pulse of pain in his temple when he inhaled deeply. He kept doing it and looked at Lorca through the steam as he sat down facing him. The captain didn't seem angry, in fact, his face was calm, almost serene as he regarded Leighton, waiting on him to come around.
"Sir," Leighton said, figured it was a good a start as any. "I don't know why I did that. I know my behaviour is inexcusable."
Lorca tilted his head, the corner of his mouth curled into what wasn't a smile at all.
Lorca said, "I think it's time you and I talked about Tarsus IV."
End of Chapter 9
Author's Note: Still no excuses, the world still sucks, here's a new chapter.
It's been widely acknowledged that I have a very underdeveloped sense of humour, so let me know if the recap style is actually funny or just annoying. I hope it helps a bit with bridging the long gaps between updates.