Author's Note: Long chapter is long. I've been nit-picking at it for three weeks now. I don't know anything anymore.
Chapter 13: Everything, alas, is an Abyss
Lorca had hoped giving everyone a clear date would help keep them calm, but instead in the wake of his announcement tensions on board the Defiant suddenly reached a tipping point. Violence had been festering among all these people for a long time, raised and tempered in a culture that favoured brutality, their tendencies had had a direction while the fighting had lasted. Now they had had days of comparative peace, a chance to heal what injuries they had sustained and the leisure to bicker and bully among themselves once again.
Lorca refrained from directly interfering, aware that he couldn't be seen choosing sides when it was the exact thing he wanted of them. He let it be known he would treat every serious injury as a personal attack on himself and otherwise let things run their course. He needed to weed out the crew one way or another, but he wanted to do it himself, not just be stuck with whoever was left standing after some scuffle in the mess hall. He wouldn't accept fighting while on duty, either and the reports indicated people were showing a little restraint in that regard.
He was fairly sure it was just a question of time until someone, maybe Tyler, but more likely Balayna or Culber, suggested he reinstate the agony booths, or at least the personal agonisers. If he wanted to discipline these people, he would have to do it in a language they understood. He could almost hear either of them say it.
As he reached the doors of the brig, he pushed the thought aside. He had almost made it through the worst of it, he could get this problem fixed later. First, he needed to deal with Maddox, and Moreau, as the case may be.
The door sensors identified him before they parted and he stepped into the gloom of the brig, grim-faced and remembering the last time he had been in a place like this. If anything, the brig of the Defiant was larger than the one on the Buran had been, but similar in all other aspects. Rows of cells along the wall, partitioned off from the hallway by energy fields, the cells themselves much smaller than Starfleet regulation would allow. The agony booths were dark and silent. He would have them stripped for parts, the Defiant was bound to need them eventually when he had no space-station he could dock at to request replacements.
The brig had been reserved for Maddox and his senior staff, each in their own cell. At the far end of the corridor, Lorca spotted the slim shape of Moreau on guard duty, doing her rounds. For now, he fixed on Maddox.
The Defiant's former captain had been pacing restlessly in his small confinement, apparently a task he was so absorbed in he didn't notice Lorca until he stepped into the slightly brighter area right outside the energy field.
Maddox's reaction was immediate. He swung around and launched himself into the energy field, mouth open in an angry scream, though the sound filter didn't allow any of it to penetrate outside.
Lorca watched him with a jaded curiosity which only riled Maddox up more. To add insult to injury, Lorca glanced to the cell next to Maddox's, where Ina Grife had stepped to the barrier. Unlike her captain, she was just glowering at him and he offered her a toothy smile in return. She mouthed an insult and then pointedly turned her back on him.
He waited until Maddox's rage started to subside, then took another step in, close enough to the energy field that he would've started feeling it press back against him, had he been inside. He remembered well the sizzling, nauseating feeling of it, the sick sense of getting somewhere for a centimetre only to realise he would never make it through.
Still breathing hard in barely abated fury, Maddox had stopped shouting and was staring at Lorca.
"Computer, decrease soundproofing," Lorca said. He listened to the confirmation chirp of the computer and measured Maddox with a cool gaze.
"You got something to say to me?" Lorca asked.
Through bared teeth, Maddox snarled, "Fight me, you perverted coward!"
Lorca arched a brow. "I already won."
Maddox punched his fist into the barrier and though he did his best, he couldn't quite hide the sharp flash of pain it caused. Lorca remembered how that felt, too.
"Drop the shield!" Maddox demanded. "I'm not done with you piece of shit!"
Lorca watched Maddox steadily, giving him no response until the sheer need to engage with his enemy made the bout of rage settle into a seething glower.
Dismissing Maddox for good measure, Lorca looked down at the PADD in his hand and set it to holographic projection. He held it flat out between himself and Maddox and watched as the glowing, miniature of the solar system came alive. It showed the now familiar asteroid belt, circling ever closer to Tarsus, including the first impacts of last night.
"What's that?" Maddox demanded.
"The price of losing to me," Lorca said. "Tarsus IV is facing a series of asteroid impacts. According to my scientist, it's an extinction event, but I don't need a scientist to tell me that. We've systematically destroyed all subspace communication capability on Tarsus. They can't signal for help, not that it would arrive fast enough."
He raised a sardonic eyebrow. "It's Tarsus, help always comes too late."
The bile was in his throat, even now, even after so long and from so far away. It made Maddox look up from the projection and study his face, curiosity taking the place of his anger for just a second.
"So what?" Maddox asked. "Why are you showing me this? You think I care?"
Lorca slashed a smirk across his face. "I'm showing you out of respect, one captain to another."
He gave Maddox the chance to wonder whether he was being mocked or not.
"What do I do with a ship full of prisoners?" Lorca mused aloud. "They'll get bored, they'll plot. My senior staff wants me to kill you all, but that would be… well, too easy, don't you think?"
The projection had advanced to the point where even in the small representation, the landmasses of Tarsus had changed their shape. It would be years to get to this point and invisible in the small display were the effects on atmosphere and weather. Very little would be alive on the planet by then, nothing but microbes and bacteria and if left undisturbed, that was how it would remain for a very long time to come.
Maddox stared at Lorca suspiciously, no doubt realising what Lorca was threatening him with.
Lorca said, "You and your crew will be beamed down to the planet. We've already started with those in the shuttle bay. They should consider it a privilege, they'll have a lot more room now."
Maddox had been holding back on sending detailed reports to his superiors and while the brass was aware Maddox had engaged Lorca's forces, the extent of the destruction was unknown to them. Maddox didn't know ships were already on the way and wouldn't find out he would likely be rescued well before the catastrophe on Tarsus would get to him.
"How dare you!" Maddox snarled. "Give me a chance to fight! I'll show you!"
Still smiling, Lorca merely shook his head, then turned it to look down the corridor and watch as Cadet Moreau slowly edged closer. Her own curiosity was pulling her forward while caution was telling her to keep her distance. Under Lorca's sudden attention, she remained pinned to the spot, the lack of light hiding the details of her expression. It didn't matter, Lorca already knew what role he had assigned to her.
He made a lazy gesture with his hand and called, "Marlena, come over here, don't be shy."
"Leave her alone!" Maddox shouted, but had enough restraint not to punch the shield again.
Lorca glanced over Maddox and watched as anger slowly dripped away into helpless frustration. Not a comfortable feeling, as Lorca recalled, quite enough to drive a sane man mad. Provided he had been sane to start with, of course.
Moreau reached him and stopped to salute. She was a better actor than Maddox, spared him not even a glance, her attention fully on Lorca. She betrayed no insecurity, either, now that she was close enough to observe. Lorca had given her more than enough time to school her features and work through her shock of seeing him there. She had to be wondering what he knew, though, and what he made of it.
Passing his attention over Maddox, Lorca took a step to the side and trailed a hand down Moreau's back, watching the surprise cross her face without leaving any revealing traces in her expression. Oh, she was a fantastic actor and quick on the uptake. If only he could trust her motivation.
"You sick fuck!"
Lorca switched off the hologram, Maddox was paying it no attention since Moreau had entered the scene.
"I was just telling Captain Maddox about his fate," Lorca said to Moreau. "Dying like an animal on a doomed planet. And his people are going to share it."
"Now you listen to me…!"
"Computer, soundproofing on full," Lorca said and Maddox's insult and all his impotent rage crested up against the soundproofing of his cell, leaving only himself to hear and feel it.
Lorca closed a hand around Moreau's upper arm and dragged her, unresisting, with him. He pushed her into the glass side of an agony booth, removed his hand from her to settle it into the glass by her head. His back shielded her almost completely from Maddox's view, making it impossible for him to even observe their faces. No doubt Maddox's imagination was supplying some colourful fantasies about what was being said.
She stared up at him from her large eyes, pretending to be far more defenceless than she actually was, letting him make the next move in case it turned out to be the wrong one.
"You didn't tell him about me," Lorca said. "Why?"
"Why would I?" she asked back, playfulness shone through the thin layer of her deference.
"What did you two talk about?"
She shrugged elegantly. "This and that, I told him what he wanted to hear, mostly. I remind him of his sister."
"I heard," Lorca said. "Lorca got her killed."
Moreau sniggered, "Well, more like seduced her, fucked her so good she turned traitor and then dropped her for someone better. He pimped her out to officials he wanted to turn. One of them killed her. She wasn't so pretty by the end of it."
Lorca merely nodded, unsurprised at how his counterpart had been conducting himself. Balayna crossed his mind and he dismissed the memory and the unexpected pang of guilt in his throat. There would come a time when he had leisure to examine what this universe was doing to — or for — his own vices. It was certainly an interesting exercise for when he wasn't barely one step ahead of a gruesome death.
"I expect an explanation, cadet, no runaround."
To her credit, she barely fidgeted, though he was still keeping her pinned to the glass. In the darkness, the light from the cells cast a dull reflection, just enough to see Maddox still raging in his cell.
"I thought Maddox was going to talk about a lot of things he shouldn't with me," she said. "He thinks I'm going to help him escape, but I'm…" she batted her eyelashes mockingly. "… a little scared."
"What's he been saying?"
"For one, he's been holding his reports back. The brass really has no idea what's going on here. They know of the base, but they have not been informed about you, or, Captain Lorca or whatever, they don't know you're actually here. Or anything about what's been going down on Tarsus."
"I know."
Still, some confirmation Maddox hadn't used a coded channel his Captain's Override hadn't given him access to was reassuring. It meant Lorca had some time and space to breath in. If the Empire knew he was here, they would likely call a sector-wide manhunt.
"Why switch off surveillance?" Lorca asked.
"Because the wrong person could've seen it," she said so matter-of-factly, he almost took her at face value.
Lorca sighed and dropped his head. "Cadet Moreau, I really wish I could trust you."
She bit her lip, watching him, flitted a quick look past his shoulder at Maddox then back at Lorca.
"I thought we'd agreed on Marlena," she said. "I have an idea."
She stole another look at Maddox then said, "Drag me outside." She paused for half a second and added, "Sir."
Amused and curious where she was going with this, Lorca clamped his hand back around her upper arm and yanked her away from the glass. She stumbled against the force of him, but he barely felt her weight as he pulled her along to the door, then tossed her ahead of himself into the corridor, making her fight to maintain her balance.
Once outside, with the door safely closed, Moreau straightened and gave him a nod, as if congratulating him on his performance.
She followed his lead and fell into step beside him, walking down the corridor.
"Let's hear it," he said.
"Beam me down with Maddox," she said.
He felt her search the side of his face, looking and waiting for a reaction but he said nothing until she felt compelled to keep talking.
"I have absolutely no idea what you're going to do next," she said. "I guess you'll try to get home? That won't be easy, right? It'll take a long time and if you're staying in this universe, you'll need more than one ship. I could be your spy."
Why did he not trust her, though? Perhaps he had been going so far down the rabbit-hole he was starting to get in his own way. At home, he would have seen and recognised a manipulative personality in a cadet or junior officer, but he wouldn't have met them with any obvious distrust. People trusted their superiors if they showed faith in them, it was one of the first rules of command. You got the subordinates you deserved. Even if in this universe, everything seemed more complicated, some things must still hold true.
"There's no guarantee you'll be rescued," he pointed out.
Moreau was unfazed. "I doubt it. They'll want to talk to Maddox and he's not going to just let me die."
"What if you're wrong?"
She nodded, pursed her lips and slanted her gaze at him from the side. "I'll be fine, sir."
If he let her go, she had nothing which could immediately hurt him. Down on Tarsus, Maddox's knowledge wouldn't matter and by the time the Empire rescued him and got the full story, the Defiant would be long gone. It might even take off some of the heat, it was unlikely the Empire would invest the same resources hunting a fake Gabriel Lorca as they would in bringing their real enemy down.
If, however, she did ingratiate herself with Maddox and with the wider Empire through him, she could feed him whatever information she deemed fit. It could be the truth, or it could lead him straight into a trap and back into just another agony booth. Either way, he would have to trust her without the option of yanking her chain if she got out of line.
"Leighton stays," he said.
She said nothing for a moment and something had turned a little dry in her throat when she said, "He wants to, anyway."
He gave her a sidelong look and found her avoiding his gaze, though it was barely a second, not enough to reveal anything much beyond what he had heard in her voice.
He stopped walking and turned towards her.
"I want you to pull a double shift today," Lorca said. "I'll need security in shuttle bay later."
The slight frown creasing her forehead told him she suspected something more was going on, which put her roughly on even footing with everyone else on the ship. It didn't matter, because he'd always known he wouldn't be able to keep a lid on it. Now, though, it was just the show of trust she needed from him.
"I can do that, sir," she said.
He nodded, "Thank you, Commander Tyler's gonna walk you through it."
He angled his head back towards the brig. "Back to your station, cadet."
Distantly, he registered her salute as nothing out of the ordinary and remembered he'd found it strange and militaristic in the beginning. Now it just seemed the normal thing to do.
He watched Moreau walk back to the brig, already considering the precise set-up to help her insinuate herself with Maddox while keeping her on board as long as he needed her. It would work quite nicely, keep her on until everything else had passed, then beam her down alone later, giving her a handy story about escaping on her own.
On to the next step, then.
"Lorca to bridge."
"Sir?"
"Get rid of Maddox and the rest," he said.
That was one problem dealt with, he had a few more to go before he could allow himself a moment to just.
Breathe.
Just after the start of the third shift, Tyler's message came through, telling him everything was ready for him. The crew was already assembling in the now empty shuttle bay, but the tension running through the ship was obvious the moment Lorca left his ready room to cross the bridge. Their eyes were on him again, perhaps suspecting they had been hand-picked by him for a reason, but not knowing whether it spelt fortune or doom for them.
He left the conn in the hands of a lieutenant, who was — or was not — someone he remembered from his Buran. One of those who'd thought the Defiant and his command was a chance for advancement they otherwise wouldn't have had, an opportunist, but someone who liked to play it safe and wouldn't spontaneously double-cross Lorca.
In any case, Lorca had spent the past few hours re-adjusting the bridge's access privileges and hard-wired much of them to him alone, ensuring no one was going to just usurp his chair. He was going to be the only person who commanded this ship today, or ever. He was the only one with any claim to it, too.
The turbo-lift carried him swiftly and smoothly downward, where he joined the last crew-members on their way to the shuttle bay.
Their attention was on him like a weight, sharp eyes scrutinising him, keeping a watchful distance from him, out of fear or biding their time, he neither could tell nor cared about.
And then something changed, even afterwards, he wouldn't be able to put a finger on it, something just before the crackling thunderstorm broke, the quiet before a lightning strike. A soldier a few steps behind him changed his pace ever so slightly, angled his body back in less than a centimetre to cause the effect. Someone much further back, barely within the range of hearing, gasped.
It wasn't even instinct that made him slow down, there was no time for anything else, just a slight shift of balance, never getting to know if he would've turned around for that advance warning. It was just enough to save his life. He saw the movement from the corner of his eyes, no more than a shadow and now there was instinct and the crucial step towards the wall, taking the knife into his shoulder rather than his back. The blade scraped through the tough fabric of his shirt, but managed to slice deep into his flesh to be deflected by the bone of his shoulder-blade.
The pain was a match to tinder, fuelling him as he swung around and ducked, his hand going for the knife to stop a second stab. The blade slipped through his fingers, cutting into the skin between them, but he closed his fist around the hilt and Landry's hand.
For a moment, their eyes made contact and in her's there was cold determination, with something else, something softer and terrified swimming deep beneath the surface. Holding her hand and the deadly weapon away from him, he punched his other fist into the side of her head.
Despite the blow connecting, she controlled her fall, twisted her knife free of his grip and swiped at his legs so he dropped back into the wall of the corridor. Snarling, she jumped after him, bringing the knife back around, almost sliced his throat open as she did and leaving a shallow scratch along his jaw.
Landry already knows, Culber had said. He didn't know how much, but it had been enough to trigger a decision. And once made, no Ellen Landry he knew would be swayed from what she thought she needed to do. He doubted there were enough universes strung up all parallel to each other to allow for such a thing.
Landry fell on him like a leopard, fast and vicious, teeth bared, the naked claw in her hand and with the raw desire to hurt. Not just incapacitate, not just finish the fight, but win and make sure her opponent felt it.
Another time, another place, he would have enjoyed this, the mutual understanding that, although they were just sparring, there would be painful consequences to every slip-up, every error. He always did like Landry, more so than he should.
Once, Lorca had sat in companionable silence in a steam bath with Landry, after they'd beaten each other black and blue in the sparring ring. It had been one of the first times, after Balayna's death, that he had basked in a feeling almost like happiness. And Landry hadn't just been there, but she was the reason, she meant something to him. It wasn't love though, because love never worked.
And apart from all the other things he knew about her, he knew fighting her meant to go all in.
He used the wall to launch himself back at her. Because Landry was small, when she fought she had to be fast and tough, willpower and sinews, striking faster than the eye could follow, fully intending to shred him to pieces.
His mind barely registered the pain, just mapped the points of impact to assess the damage. She was smart enough to go for his legs, throw him off balance and negate his greater strength so he let her have it. Dropped back from her and swiped his own dagger from his boot. The upward stab would have sliced open her thigh, but the re-enforced material let the blade glance off without damage.
She snarled at him, teeth bared and eyes bright, not letting have a chance to draw back, catch a breath, re-orient himself after she landed a blow against the side of his head with her elbow.
Around them, the soldiers had drawn back from them, stopped to watch without any attempt to interfere. He had no time to assess their expressions and the underlying moods, whether they were rooting for either of them or were ambivalent to the outcome. It didn't matter, because Landry filled his vision, the lightning of her blade arching a feint he fell for and she tackled him to the floor, burying her knife into the scar tissue. The blade shaved off the new skin to scratch at the bone of his collarbone.
He scrambled for her hand and the blade in an effort to keep it away from his throat and sliced open his other hand just before he buried it into her hair and twisted a rough grip around her ponytail. He yanked, wanted to pull her away, but she resisted and her blade, slid up instead of down and she tore the dagger to the side, over the bridge of his nose. The blade caught the ridge of his eyebrow and sliced across his eye even as he squeezed it shut.
Curiously, there was very little pain, just an explosion of light and the hot, wet rush of blood down the side of his face, followed by a one-sided blackout that was more irritating than debilitating.
He heard himself hiss like and animal. Landry struggled in his grip, unable to get the knife into the right angle to drive the blade through his eye and into his brain. He yanked on her ponytail again, this time dislodged her and she fell backwards, scrambling to dig the knife into his chest, his stomach, his groin, on the way down, but couldn't bring in enough force to do more than scratch.
She scooted away from him, enough space to pull herself into a crouch.
He tossed the fistful of hair aside, angled his head so he could still see her as he regained his feet, eyeing her across the corridor. Her combat armour had few weaknesses, but she had opted for stealth rather than full body protection, leaving her head and face exposed and the narrow slice of vulnerable skin just below her jawline.
He stood up straight, watching her watch him through a haze of bloodlust, breathing hard in exhilaration. He threw his arms wide in invitation. He was so tired of these terrans, always threatening him, always expecting him to bow and submit when not one of them had the guts to just finish him and be done with it.
If she hadn't taken the bait, he'd have thrown his knife away and gone for her unarmed, courting whatever destruction she still had to offer, but Landry saw the exposure and reacted before her tactical mind could warn her of the trap. The moment she moved, so did he, caught her wrist with the dagger even as she was twisting away from him and wrapped his other arm around her waist in the wanton mockery of an embrace, his dagger useless against the padded armour.
She wanted him on the floor? Well, she could have him there. She tried to wind out of his grip, but failed and he kicked her legs away under her, holding on to her as she dropped so he held her down with his entire weight.
He could have stopped there. He could have kept holding her down until the fight went out of her, though there was no indication she was ready to give up, still squirming in his hold, snarling in his face.
He let go of her waist and wrapped his arm around her head, fingers digging into her temple to tilt her head to the side, opening that tiny gap between her jaw and the armour to slide the cruel blade into her vulnerable skin, his hold on her tearing up the cut even as he made it.
Landry wheezed, kicked out uselessly under his weight, as sheer panic took the place of skill and coordination. Her fingers spread and dropped the knife so she could reach for the gap in the side of the neck, fingers sliding through the blood.
Lorca tried to let go of her, gain a little space, but the side of his head was also still bleeding and he slipped, dropped to his side because he couldn't come up with a better direction. He felt like laughing as he caught sight of the audience around them. There was a slight sting of pain now, not just in his right eye, but his entire body, making him feel overextended and ready to shatter into a million brittle pieces.
Landry was making gurgling sounds, but she managed to turn her head and look at him with enough presence of mind to burn him with the abject rage she couldn't act on anymore.
Lorca forced his clenched teeth apart. "Computer, emergency medical transport. Energise."
The transporter beam swiped over them, cooly silken, granting him one heartbeat of blissful oblivion.
Unlike normal transporters, a medical transporter would not adjust or otherwise alter the position of its subjects to prevent any injuries from getting exasperated by the transport itself. Culber watched with faint amusement as Lorca and Landry were dropped on the bed in a tangle of limbs, fresh blood soiling the both of them.
In terms of medically trained personnel, Culber hadn't exactly been spoiled. The best he had were a handful of experienced combat medics, he'd simply promoted to doctors because that's what they would be doing. Everyone else ranged from 'trained nurse' to 'had heard about first aid once'. The lot of them had been doing a fairly good job at patching everyone up, though. He had also been doing his best to ignore the fact that he himself wasn't the most qualified medical doctor in terms of patient care. Culber was just a little proud of himself and his team, even if it was too early to let it show.
Nevertheless, they knew what they were doing when the nurses rushed forward and carefully, but firmly, pulled Landry away from Lorca and put her on the bed next to him.
Culber glanced over Lorca, watched as he groaned, holding a bloodied hand over the side of his face while he looked on as the medics got to work on Landry. She had a knife stuck in the side of her neck, bleeding profusely from the gap it had made.
"Save her," Lorca croaked roughly and his voice didn't carry, but he was no longer someone anyone would dare ignore and the medic in charge gave a curt nod.
Culber stepped close as the medical scanner slid into place over Landry and read the data as it spooled over the screen. She would live, he was willing to guarantee it. He wasn't so sure for how long, however.
Satisfied with Landry's stable status, Culber turned his attention to Lorca. A handful of other nurses and newly-appointed doctors were holding back from him and looking to Culber for a pointer. Nobody wanted to approach Lorca the wrong way while a superior was there to do it for them. Which, much to Culber's chagrin, must be him.
Lorca had kept himself upright until he was sure his order was being followed. Then he gave a small, nearly inaudible sigh and slowly lay back, wincing as he settled his shoulder on the bed and letting one leg dangle limply over the side.
Culber walked around Lorca with a handheld scanner in hand to get some oversight of his status. The scanner registered several minor cuts along his chest, stomach and the side of his thigh. Less than ideally, the recently closed injury across his chest had been reopened in a few places. There was a deeper wound on his shoulder, a slash that had cut to the bone.
Culber came to stand next to Lorca and moved the scanner over the side of his face Lorca was hiding.
"Let me see," Culber said as he lowered the handheld scanner. There was a much more powerful one built right into that bed, all Lorca needed to do was move his damn hand.
Rather than comply, Lorca chuckled, it sounded like there was blood congealing in his throat and when he opened his mouth, it clung to his teeth.
"You've pretty much already seen it all, doctor," Lorca croaked.
"Yes, and the view was great," Culber said, no point in denying the obvious, which the bastard knew well enough anyway. The best part, though, was that right here and now, Culber couldn't have cared less.
"Let me see," he said again.
Far too annoyed to wait for his patient to stop riding that adrenaline high he was on, Culber simply gripped Lorca's wrist and tugged the hand away and down. Lorca was unresisting in his hand right until Culber almost had the wrist in the manacle on the side of the bed. Lorca instantly reacted when he realised what was going on, twisted his wrist free and dug his finger's into Culber's shirt.
Lorca levered himself up and opened his good eye, glaring at the doctor who spread out his hands to placate him and tried a soothing smile.
"I'm helping you," Culber said. "You need to keep still."
"I can keep still," Lorca sneered but didn't fight back when Culber freed himself from his grip, leaving fresh blood stains behind on Culber's front.
"Very good," Culber said, sardonically encouraging. "Then prove it."
Either Lorca had decided to be more compliant or the slight challenge was enough to trick him into it, it didn't matter. Lorca resettled himself on the bed and leaned back as the scanner closed over his head.
"Doctor?" Lorca asked, not giving the scanner time to run its course, voice slightly hollowed out under the machine.
"Keep still," Culber said again. "In case you haven't guessed already, Landry's slit open your eyeball."
Lorca made a groaning sound and gave no answer.
"The lens suffered lacerations, but the good news is, the nerve is still mostly intact," Culber continued. "All we've got to do is fix the sclera, pump it back up with healing gel until the body's replaced the fluid. Cornea and lens can close their gaps with the proper therapy. You won't lose the eye..."
"I need to be in shuttle bay," Lorca interrupted.
"…unless we delay the surgery," Culber finished.
"Do something," Lorca said, an order if there ever had been one. High-ranked military, Culber thought and snorted as he turned away to retrieve his tools. They thought reality itself would just bend over backwards if they used that tone. He considered asking if it was like that in Lorca's other universe or if he'd just gone native, get a rise out of the man on what was an obvious sore topic.
Returning, Culber retracted the scanner.
"I can fix your eyelid," Culber offered with a shrug.
Lorca's hand twitched upward, clearly wanting to cover the eye again, then he thought better of it and just sucked in a deep breath.
Culber reached for a hypospray only to have Lorca edge away from him with a suspicious look at the device.
"It's anaesthetic," Culber said. "You don't want it? Fine, I'll let you suffer."
Lorca breathed again, blinked his good eye closed and visibly tried to relax. "I'm sorry, doctor," he said. "It's just easier that way."
Easier to distrust than to trust and be wrong. Lorca hadn't had the chance to learn anything else since he'd appeared in the universe, as far as Culber knew. Or at least, Lorca thought he hadn't. Personally, Culber blamed Ferasini and whatever depraved little game she had been playing with Lorca — the fact that she seemed to be losing it didn't count in her favour much, in Culber's estimate. Everyone else had been doing nothing but jump when Lorca called. Most of them really didn't deserve this level of suspicion.
"Well, that's just bullshit," Culber snapped. "You've waltzed in and taken over and there's barely been any resistance, give us some credit."
"Ellen stabbed my eye."
"That's because of the waltzing in and taking over part. Her attack just proves your success and she was alone, wasn't she? No one helped her."
"No one helped me."
Lorca was starting to sound petulant, still deflating on the bed as the adrenaline wore off and the pain ebbed up through him. A thin sheen of cold sweat was forming all over him. Culber cast a quick look at his body functions to make sure he wasn't drifting into shock.
"I wasn't there, but it looks pretty much like you had it under control," Culber said. "It's a sign of respect. They respect you. Now, you're going to ask for that anaesthetic or you're not going to get it."
Lorca surprised him again, he hadn't just followed their conversation, he had actually listened to it and must have given it some thought. Through the disfigurement and the coating of blood, his expression lost its resentment.
"Of course I want the anaesthetic," Lorca said, carefully pitched his voice so it wasn't quite an order and wouldn't rile Culber up further. But perhaps he just wanted to be fixed up faster so he could do whatever he had planned to do in shuttle bay.
Culber put the hypospray against Lorca's temple. Lorca took another shuddering breath when the painkiller hit, only now even registering how he had been in pain at all. The tense set of his body eased up gradually and Culber noted how Lorca's breathing pattern and heart-rate evened out, too.
The eyelid itself was an easy fix, accelerated cell division knit the thin membrane together within minutes, leaving no sign of the damage at all, which couldn't be said for the eye underneath.
Culber considered just knocking Lorca out with another hypospray and get the surgery done. It wouldn't be a very good trust-building exercise, considering how Lorca felt about it and Culber much preferred Lorca at least somewhat tractable for future encounters.
So instead of doing the right thing, Culber did the smart thing and fitted a temporary eye-patch over the socket to stabilise the eye and at least prevent the damage from exasperating. Black and metallic-looking, the eyepatch was designed to mould itself to the exact shape of the tissue underneath, gently keeping everything in place.
"Sit up," Culber said. "Gotta fix that shoulder and the rest of your injuries."
Lorca did as he was told without complaint, shrugged out of his torn shirt and then resettled on the bed calmly. It wasn't all fake, either, Culber noted with a look at the life-sign readings.
While Culber fixed the tissue damage on his shoulder, the cut-up hand and ascertained no more severe injury had been inflicted, Lorca raised his good hand and traced the outline of the patch with his fingers, turning his head to test the new limits of his perception.
"Good thing I keep the poisons locked up tight," Culber said as he treated the most superficial scratches.
"Keep doing that," Lorca said and Culber pursed his lips, nodding at the obvious truth of it. Eventually some enterprising crew-member would brew their own and apply it to a particularly disliked superior, but Culber decided Lorca didn't need to know that just yet.
Culber switched the medical tool off and leaned his hand into the bed next to Lorca, saying, "Best I can do."
He raised a finger at Lorca and added, "You get back here when you're done, I don't want to toss one of your pretty eyes into the trash."
A slight smile threatened Lorca's expression, flicking his one-sided gaze up and down on Culber and said, "You changed the duty roster. You were supposed to be in shuttle bay, too."
Culber smirked. "I knew some people who needed to go more badly than I, someone's gotta hold the line."
Lorca took a slight breath and Culber lifted his hand, surprised it actually made Lorca shut up.
"Don't. Say 'thank you', it freaks me out every time."
Mild curiosity crossed Lorca's face, but he didn't press further, only nodded with his eyebrow raised to communicate the question.
"Are we done?" Lorca asked.
With a sigh, Culber said, "Yeah, off you go."
Lorca slipped from the bed and stood up. Culber had cleaned the injuries, but plenty of blood still crusted down his neck and chest. He picked up the torn shirt and slid it back on.
"Lorca to the transporter room," Lorca said. The zipper on his shirt had broken, getting stuck just over his collarbone, where it left the scar exposed.
"Tyler here," the commander said. "Glad you're still in one piece, sir."
Lorca stopped tugging at the zipper and for some reason, he looked back at Culber as if he expected him to understand the unspoken frustration in his pale face. Culber frowned back at him, saying nothing.
"No one with the bite to put me out of my misery, commander," Lorca said. "Are we still good to go?"
"Yes… but, I wouldn't wait for much longer, sir."
Lorca arched his brows, or tried to. He smoothed his fingers along the upper edge of the patch.
"I'm on my way. Wait for my signal."
"Yes, sir. Tyler out."
Lorca didn't immediately leave sickbay, however. He wandered across the room to where Landry was strapped to her bed. Though immobilised not only by the manacles at hands and feet, she could do nothing but glare up at him as he leaned over her.
"Brings back memories," Lorca said.
Landry blinked a few times, still dazed and her voice was rough and weak from the damage to her vocal cords inflicted by Lorca's knife.
"What now?"
Lorca shook his head, dismissing her question. "Do you regret attacking my ship?" he asked. "Or do you just regret keeping me alive?"
She managed to pull a teeth-baring sneer. "Never regret anything."
"And you didn't even make the call."
Her eyes flickered closed, exhaustion or a wash of painkillers or just the very same irritation at the same old argument he was experiencing on a constant basis. Lorca's face mimicked her expression almost subconsciously, crusted blood and all.
Culber stopped on Landry's other side, ostensibly to check her vitals, but also to combat the anxiety stirring deep in his guts. Surely Lorca wouldn't just order them to save Landry only to kill her himself, would he?
Lorca glanced up, angled his head to the side and said, "Can you get her back on her feet?"
"No?"
Lorca waved a hand in the air, "I know you've got plenty you can shoot her up with."
"Medically speaking, I advise against…"
"Objection noted," Lorca interrupted. "Can you do it?"
"If I said 'no', would you believe me?" Culber asked, already reaching for the hypospray and changing the setting on it.
"Not if you phrase it like that," Lorca said, arched his eyebrow again, then frowned and shook his head at the irritation it caused on the other side of his head.
"You could just talk to me," Culber said. Landry's neck was bandaged, so he shifted her right arm up to deliver the charge into her armpit. A shudder went through her instantly as the drug kicked her mind back into focus, negating the calming effect of the painkiller she had been given before.
Her frown passed over Culber, then dug right into Lorca.
"I know," Lorca said. "Prepare an away mission medical kit."
"That's not the explanation I have been hoping for…" Culber muttered.
Lorca looked at him, one eye dark and the metal patch catching the light on the other side, Culber couldn't quite tell which one was more inscrutable.
"I know," Lorca said again.
Passively, Landry let the effects of Culber's drug trickle through her mind after the first shock and the urge to move it had brought with it, sudden and sharp, the need to finish what she'd started.
Two things had been on her mind even before and now floated gently in her awareness. Lorca was not dead. And she was not dead, either. She felt the tug on her throat and the numerous smaller lacerations and bruises on the rest of her body. Breathing was uncomfortable and swallowing took an act of will. She knew her injuries were quite minor, able to kill her only if help hadn't been given quickly.
Looking back at Lorca's stony face, the mark she had left there, she knew it had been a mistake to take him on like that and in public. She had dallied too long, uncertain of her own decision, unsure when the moment to displace him had come, when she didn't need him anymore. The moment, she thought, had come unseen and passed long before she'd realised it.
He had not been alone, though, not since she had been done thinking and began acting. Perhaps she could have approached Ferasini and found an ally there, but Landry couldn't quite fathom what attachment there was between him and her, not enough to be sure of Ferasini's aid and her willingness and ability to render it.
She couldn't well attack him on the bridge, couldn't get to him in his ready room, wasn't stupid enough to approach him during a sparring session, when he was already honing his killing edge.
Lorca exchanged the bed's manacles for solid handcuffs, resting tightly around her wrists and capable to deliver a painful shock if whoever was on the other end of that leash so desired. Disdainfully, she thought she was safe from that at least, with Lorca's dislike for such devices. She presumed it had little to do with a moral stance, he just didn't like how quickly and thoroughly they rendered him powerless.
There was no help to gain from Culber and the people he had roped into his team, though some still retained enough decency to avoid meeting her gaze.
"I've changed my mind," she said. Lorca turned his head so he could fix her with his one eye, the lopsided angle making him look arrogant and familiar and hard to resist. The zipper of his shirt had jammed halfway up his chest. The asymmetrical silver line followed the same direction as the injury underneath. His blood crusted to his collar, over his shoulder and his sleeve while her blood had left ugly patches on the other side.
"I should've killed you," she said.
The corners of his mouth twitched upward in the simulacrum of a smile. He put a hand to her upper arm, barely any pressure and the gentleness was hard to interpret as anything else but an insult.
"I told you so," he said simply.
He marched her through sickbay and she saw no reason to make it more difficult. She had an inkling of what he was about to do and couldn't deny the sense of thrill at watching it all play out, even if it should turn out to be her defeat. Losing to him, it was just a pale shadow of what the Emperor would experience when she lost her empire upon the captain's return. It certainly was an experience.
"It doesn't have to go this way," she said. "We had an agreement."
Lorca chuckled mirthlessly. "And we both broke it. Your point?"
The corridors outside sickbay were empty. The skeleton crew he had deemed trustworthy were at their stations and the rest would've assembled in the shuttle bay, impatiently waiting for the resolution they had been promised.
"What if it doesn't go your way?"
He only shrugged, the movement travelling through her arm ever so slightly.
"You want to revive our agreement?" he asked, sounding conversational.
"We don't have to be enemies," she insisted. She stepped into the turbo-lift ahead of him, felt the prickling of his vicinity in the enclosed space. He was still holding on to her arm, though she had neither the strength nor the opportunity to get away. Not quite the inclination, either.
He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, moving a scant few centimetres behind her.
"But we are enemies," he said and the turbo-lift slid smoothly to a halt and they stepped out.
There wasn't even any anger left in his voice, just utter, unabridged finality, the kind of absolute truth that had allowed another man to cross universes to get what he wanted and left this universe without anything left to fight with.
"You fit here," Landry said and knew the eager little shiver in her own voice was partially fear and partially a side-effect of Culber's drug. All the rest of it was twisted excitement which belonged all to herself.
He gave her a slight shove, into the door sensors outside shuttle bay 2 and said nothing. There was no denial for him to be had and no argument he needed to make for her benefit.
"Computer," he said as he stepped inside after her. "Open shuttle bay doors."
The computer acknowledged the order, activated the energy field and opened the doors slowly to the gorgeous and devastating view of Tarsus IV just below them, bathed in the splintering glitter of the asteroid shower destroying it.
Landry took in the view only for the first second, concentrated instead on the people in the bay. All shuttles had been moved to shuttle bay 1 to make room for the Defiant's crew. They hadn't been moved back, leaving just a huge, empty space, occupied with what was left of the Buran's crew and the staff and soldiers from the base. The impatience in the room was thick, she saw groups of people in tight clusters, arguing with each other, though the opening doors broke them up ever so slightly.
A line of armed security guards had taken position roughly in the middle of the hall, unmoving and stiff. Landry spotted Moreau and Leighton among them. Close to the entrance, scaffolding had been set up as an impromptu podium. It was only three steps off the ground, enough to allow everyone to see clearly whoever was standing on it.
Ferasini leaned on the bottom of it, elbows resting on the podium and toying idly with a communicator. Next to her, the newly appointed governor Kodos stood perfectly still, a thoughtful dignity in his poise. Neither of them, however, knew exactly what was going to happen next.
Lorca disdained the podium, simply marched forward with Landry in his hands and into the centre of the hall. It didn't take long until all attention was back on him, the destruction of an entire planet nothing in comparison to the spectacle.
Landry wasn't surprised when he gave her a shove, much rougher than when they had been unobserved, he took his other hand to her shoulder and pushed her to her knees, then stepped back.
She considered getting back up, but didn't want to make a pathetic spectacle out of herself and instead just lifted her head and turned it so she could at least try to keep him in her line of sight to prove she wasn't afraid to look at him.
Lorca paced a widening circle around her, twice until he had everyone's undivided attention and left Landry the lonely centre of his spectacle. Whenever Lorca wasn't looking directly at her, she took the chance to scan the assembled crowd for familiar and sympathetic faces, but just as before, none of her old senior staff was present. It made sense for Lorca to pick them out one by one before their combined influence could counterbalance his own. Still, it was disappointing to find they all had gone down, especially after they had fought so well for the Buran.
Of the soldiers, she could tell they had spread out in clusters according to their shifting allegiance, but the few who looked like they considered coming to her aid didn't dare breach the circle Lorca had drawn around her. Not yet, at least.
"I've asked you here," Lorca began. "And then I kept you waiting, but I promise nothing has changed."
If the slightly bewildered expression on Ferasini's face was any indication, Lorca wasn't sticking to his own script. The podium had clearly been set up to enable him to be seen while keeping him out of easy reach of an attack, the room's speaker system perhaps connected to the communicator still uselessly in Ferasini's hand.
There was something clever about doing it this way, though. The room was large, but while its acoustic would make for a sorry opera, it did carry Lorca's voice well enough for him to not be misheard even by those furthest away. Instead, everyone was forced into silence, stopping even the shuffling of feet and the shift of clothing to allow them to follow Lorca's words.
"I'm not going to play with words," Lorca continued. "Or lie to you."
His pacing had slowed, but not come to a halt, making eye contact with everyone in passing, never showing his back to anyone for too long.
"It's been not even a week since I took this ship and I've asked only for volunteers to crew her." He paused, the duration of an inhale, narrowing his eyes and resting them on Landry only to take his gaze away when he said, "Yet they didn't come. Which is why we need to talk. No ship can make a journey with her crew in conflict."
Another step, completing a quarter circle, bringing him right behind Landry and she would have to get up to still see him.
"So there's just one question you have to answer: Do you want to be a member of the crew of the Defiant? And you're going to decide right now."
He had stopped, Landry realised. His back to her, the only way he could make it an uninviting target, because no matter what she did, she wouldn't get out of the way of an attacker, not before his security guards had time to warn him and she wouldn't be able to do enough damage fast enough on her own.
Someone moved, a few scant centimetres into the open space Lorca had declared and Landry saw it from the corner of her eyes, looked up to match gazes with a young man, looking intently from her to Lorca, asking her permission.
She could see it play out in her mind's eye, wondered if it was a memory, of an incident Captain Lorca had faced at some point, some young contender thinking they could use his seeming vulnerability only to learn — painfully — that Captain Lorca had no such thing.
"Make no mistake, this is not a Terran ship anymore," Lorca said as if he deliberately wanted to antagonise the people he sought to recruit. "I respect my crew and I demand respect in return. There won't be any agonisers on my ship, no agony booths, I don't humiliate or torture. No officer will take any liberties with their subordinates. We do not lay a finger on each other on my ship unless it is in self-defence. Promotions will be earned through hard work."
The wintery cold of a smile passed through his tone. "We have a whole galaxy against us and I promise more than enough enemies to satisfy all your appetites."
Landry held the young man's gaze, hoping to impress her thoughts on him as if mere willpower could give her the telepathic skill to do so. She cast her gaze down and shook her head in the faintest of gestures. When she looked up again, his face was a mask of confused fury, but he drew back behind the line.
"And know one more thing, too, there will be only one Gabriel Lorca on my ship, we follow my rules here."
He swung back around and fell into a long-legged stride as he walked past Landry, this time without stopping, glancing back over his shoulder and Landry saw a glint in the toxic cobalt of his eyes.
Louder, just on the edge of shouting, he said, "You come with me. Now. I won't ask again."
Some had fought beside him in New Anchorage and had hoped they would not have to declare for him openly, those were probably the first who followed him. The ones who knew him, or thought they did, and wanted to have him as their leader after everything he had achieved for them.
It didn't go smoothly, the conflict he himself had fostered had taken deep roots in the minds of the soldiers and the surviving crew-members of the Buran. Everyone had known this kind of choice would eventually come, but they weren't completely prepared to show their hand right then, in front of their friends and comrades, betraying Landry when she was right there.
The first trickle of people followed Lorca without incident through the loose line of the security guards, those who had already decided to stay anyway or who had no reason not to take a good deal when it was being offered. Landry sneered at them as she struggled to stand. They would've betrayed them to Maddox just as easily and part of her hoped Lorca would choke on them.
After the first, though regardless of their motivation, the dam was broken and the trickle strengthened. Groups broke loose from others and marched across the hall, while more were still engaged in debate, some of them shouting at each other or at someone's retreating back. Off in a corner, the argument turned violent, but Lorca made a sharp gesture at the nearest security guard to stay out of it. Eventually, a woman with a bloody nose marched past Landry while another woman was helped back to her feet by her friends.
Lorca finally climbed the podium and surveyed the hall from the vantage point, doing a count, just as Landry did, though, she didn't want to turn around. Not quite half of them, Landry guessed, but she spotted enough Buran crew-members on Lorca's side to be bothered. How fast they forgot their place, the pieces of their ship were barely burned up and here they were already pledging to another.
Something else nagged itself to the forefront of Landry's thoughts as she observed the setup, the clean line drawn across the centre of the shuttle bay by the guards. Shuttle bay 2, she thought. Where they'd been keeping Maddox's people until this very afternoon. Just as she finished line of thinking to its inevitable conclusion, the energy field was activated, just in front of the guards, locking Landry in with the last of the faithful.
Behind them, the gaping open doors of the shuttle bay loomed, the view of Tarsus just below them and the asteroids destroying it. Just the thin layer of an energy field separating them from a quick, but excruciating death in the vacuum of space. Well then, Landry thought, too tired to be anything but darkly amused by this final reversal of fortune. She missed her captain, more intensely whenever she looked at this distorted mirror image of him for too long. She couldn't quite decide if the sight of him, now that she was going to die, made everything better or everything worse.
She met his gaze across the distance, felt the touch of it over her face and her heart stuttered, making her throat ache at the strain of it.
Lorca held out his hand and after a short, puzzled hesitation, Ferasini gave him the communicator she'd been holding. It barely amplified Lorca's voice above a normal level, just enough to be heard, now that he was further away from many of them.
He swept that gaze away from Landry and over the soldiers behind and beside her, the ones who had rejected him, but when he spoke, Landry realised he was talking to his people.
"Look at it," he said. He made a sweeping gesture with one hand. "Tarsus IV dying just for us. And those people? Who made the wrong choice? I want you to think about what'll happen to them next."
He paused, to give them the space to do so. Even at the distance, his face was a perfectly carved mask of supreme confidence and tightly-controlled savagery.
Landry snorted a laugh to herself and tasted blood at the back of her tongue. She didn't need to be a telepath for that. Everyone was thinking the same. There could be only one reason why he had split them up the way he had, why he had opened the shuttle bay doors. He was delivering a lesson, to establish himself once and for all, or so he thought. Landry knew better, of course, he would have to conceive many more such exhibitions until he'd rid his new followers of any doubt.
She glanced around, watched the glittering of the asteroid shards catching fire on the way to the surface. Lorca spoke again and she turned to look at him to see him restrain a triumphant smirk.
He said, "And now you'll realise that none of you can ever predict what I'd do."
He flicked his thumb over the control of the communicator and said, "Commander Tyler, beam them down."
"Aye, Captain."
The first batch of soldiers vanished from behind Landry, she heard the rush of it and the mutter of confusion and suspicious relief of the others. One by one, they were taken away until only Landry remained.
Lorca jumped from the podium and left the communicator behind as he stepped close to the energy field separating them. Landry considered meeting him halfway, but then remained where she was. He'd get nothing more from her than what he could force.
"I'm setting you down in an area that's going be unaffected for a while," Lorca said and there was almost something like affection in his expression now, a velveteen cover on the roughness of his voice. "A good distance away from where we dumped Maddox. The Empire's gonna come and save you."
She said nothing, tilted her head and focussed on the sharp pull on the skin on the side of her throat. The Empire would never save anyone. It would swallow them and chew them up and spit them out mangled and broken beyond repair. It would've been kinder to jettison them into the unfeeling emptiness looming behind them.
Landry felt the whisper of the transporter beam crawl down her body. As her vision faded, she saw Lorca turn away from her, facing his crew once again.
Lorca's voice reached her through the insulating aura of the transporter beam, a warmth there she hadn't realised she'd missed until she heard it directed at others.
"Welcome to Defiant," he said.
He was so far away already, like history repeating itself and then she found herself again, discarded to the surface of a dying planet. In her mind, a thought circled like a curious shark: They should've let him burn up with his ship in that pathetic universe of his, where he had been kept harmlessly domesticated.
Luck might turn any idiot into a conqueror. History was full of them, over-ambitious and foolish and arrogant, set up to fail from the moment they rose above their meagre talents. But for Lorca, it was just one more opportunity to prove his mastery. He had taken everything in his way and now he was turning himself from a usurper into a king.
End of Chapter 13
"Everything, alas, is an abyss, — actions, desires, dreams, Words!" — Charles Baudelaire
Author's Note: I can't think of anything witty to say. There will be an epilogue, but otherwise, this story is done. I hope it was a decent ride.
I'm also sorry for being AWOL and not replying to reviews. There are times like these, sometimes.