Warning: This story might spoilers for all of season 1 as well as the novel Drastic Measures.
Important Note: For the past few years, I've been writing in a tiny fandom with an equally tiny, but steady readership (welcome back, btw!).
But seeing as this is a new fandom and people seem to actually be reading my scribbles (something that'll never cease to surprise me) it's occurred to me that you guys might not know what you're getting into (a courtesy Disco's actual writers didn't extend.)
Please know that one of the few rules I adhere to in writing is that I do not pull punches. I don't deal in redemption arcs. I don't care if my characters are likeable or relatable. The narrative takes no moral stance. If you see me write a badass, be assured they're going to remain a badass until the, frequently bitter, end.
I also coin-flip the gender of nearly all OCs. I don't do overtly specific warnings. I assume my readers are adults.
Part 2: Red Lines Drawn in the Sand
Crawling through the Jeffries tube with a prisoner in tow ranked fairly low on the list of Lorca's personal preferences. He needed to leave Landry the use of her hands, though the thought of her wriggling helplessly would have been cause for some minor amusement if the things she had told him hadn't cast a suffocating black shadow on his mood.
Like her counterpart, this Landry had little patience for scientific problems. She was a soldier and this one was no different. Somehow, she and the intruders had arrived on top of the Buran from a parallel universe. With the general sensor failure, Lorca found it quite plausible that an entire ship had escaped their notice, or at least until it was far too late. They employed something Landry referred to as a 'displacement-activated spore hub drive'.
"Magic mushrooms?" Ensign Narang had supplied as Landry described the basic concept behind it.
"So it would seem," had been Lorca's reply, keeping a watchful eye on Landry in case he needed to catch her lying.
There was nothing fundamentally unbelievable about Landry's claim of being from another universe. It was scientific fact, proven without doubt countless times. Equations existed laying down the exact energy requirement to make a jump from one to another and even several feasible ideas of how such an engine might be built. Though as far as Lorca knew, these things were barely past the theoretical stage, generations away from the construction of even the first prototype.
The ship that had brought them here, according to Landry and the sudden leer on her face, was called 'Buran', but she insisted on calling it an Imperial Starship, nothing so pedestrian as a Federation in her universe.
Lorca was beginning to understand some of what made these people tick, regardless of whether he was going to fully believe Landry's story or not. Their trigger-happiness and their complete overkill of anyone they encountered in their attempt to take over the ship, their mockery in the face of even a hint of compassion.
If what Landry said was true, their leader on the bridge was something far worse than just a clone.
The Jeffries tube ended in a closed bulkhead just above the sickbay access hatch. Lorca shuffled both Landry and ensign Narang on to get to the control panel to punch in his override code and get the bulkhead to open. The console chirped its denial. Lorca tried again and again was denied.
Landry chuckled.
"Your alien on the bridge," she said, grinning. "He's revoked your access after taking one look at my captain. Quick thinking, especially for a dumb alien. Shame it won't matter."
"The 'alien' is my first officer," Lorca said, a simple statement as he slipped his fingers into the narrow seam behind the control panel until he had enough of a grip to yank it free. Some wires came lose with it, dripping blue sparks over his hand. It tingled slightly.
"Smart enough to get the better of you," he added and continued to tear into the circuitry behind the panel.
If Pentawer had revoked his access, then no amount of hot-wiring was going to restore it and rightly so. If it had been so easy, then it would've been useless. There were only few people on a starship with the kind of authority to cut her own captain off from his universal access and luckily, his face flickered onto the tiny screen on the lose control panel.
Lorca picked up the console and angled it at his face.
"Captain?" the CMO said.
Few vulcans served in Starfleet, usually preferring the Expeditionary Group of their home-world. In addition, Lorca had found some hints scattered throughout Mirak's files indicating that previous captains had declined a vulcan CMO on their ships. In their estimate, the CMO needed to be the emotional core of the crew's wellbeing, kind and warm-hearted, and neither were attributes usually associated with vulcans. Mirak wasn't warm, but he had his own kindness and a serenity Lorca found well-suited to keep control in a crisis.
"Yes," Lorca said with a glance at Landry. "I'm stuck outside in a Jeffries tube with ensign Narang and a prisoner. Open the bulkhead for a second."
Unsurprisingly, not even the faintest muscle moved on Mirak's face. He glanced to the side at someone unseen, than dropped his gaze to the console in front of him.
"Sickbay transporters are still functioning," Mirak said. "Under the circumstances, it's prudent to keep the bulkhead closed."
Lorca just gave a dismissive wave with his free hand. "Sure, go head, it's cramped in here."
Mirak nodded, slipped his finger elegantly over the controls and the transporter beam sizzled over the three humans in the corridor. The sickbay transporter was on its own separate network, only capable for inter-ship transport in case of emergencies. The expenditure of energy could no doubt be detected from the bridge, but with the compartmentalised networks, they couldn't hijack the transporter signal to breach sickbay.
Lorca, Narang and Landry re-materialised on the other side of the bulkhead, but separated each inside their own containment field.
Lorca realised instantly what had happened, rolled his eyes because he figured Mirak wasn't going to care either way. Then he watched as the CMO walked around the console to face him.
"I apologise, sir," Mirak said. "However, I've studied the logs as they are available to me. Commander Pentawer has revoked your systems' access using an emergency override command. He did this before triggering the other fail-safes. Which leads to the obvious conclusion that he considered you a threat."
From inside her own containment field, Landry sniggered. On Lorca's other side, Narang cast confused glances between the higher ranking officers, then stepped back to sit down stiffly on the examination bed.
Two security officers stood back against the wall behind Mirak, otherwise this section of sickbay was deserted. Mirak must have cleared it as an additional safety measure.
"I'm afraid it's more complicated than that," Lorca said, realising he was being wordy for no particular purpose other than stalling for time to sort out his thoughts. He certainly didn't need to lessen the blow for Mirak's sensibilities.
"Looks like we've got boarded by a raiding party from a parallel universe," he pointed with his chin at Landry. "She's not the Ellen Landry I've been trying to get on the ship for the past few weeks. Their leader appears to be my evil twin."
He shrugged, fixed Landry and bared his teeth a little. "Or possibly I'm his. Who knows?"
Mirak looked wholly unimpressed with the explanation. The CMO was silent, then glanced back down at his console. "I believe nurse Konetzky has a recreational interest in multiverse theories."
He summoned the nurse and silence dropped heavily while they waited. Lorca knew it was barely a minute before the door slid open, but it was all Lorca could do not to pace in his cell. It didn't really help that it all was perfectly logical, from Mirak's perspective. They didn't have time to play around like this, a life hung on every passing minute.
Konetzky was a large, muscular man moving with an athlete's grace, taking in the scene without comment. He looked from Mirak to Lorca and back, visibly biting back the burning questions lodged in his throat.
Past Konetzky's bulk, Lorca caught a glance of the ordered chaos reigning in the rest of sickbay, bearing Mirak's guiding hand and buffered by a generous complement of security officers courtesy of Basora organising resistance. Lorca itched to get in touch with his senior staff, figure out what really was going on and how to end it.
"Nurse," Mirak said. "Do you know of a way to determine whether a person is from this universe or another?"
Konetzky blinked as the question hit him, palpably, out of left field.
"I'm not sure?" he said uncertainly.
"I understand it is an interest of yours?" Mirak queried.
Lorca already sensed the back and forth that was about unfurl in front of him and eat away more minutes they didn't have.
Sharply, he interrupted. "She," he pointed at Landry. "Is from a parallel universe. So is her leader, who happens to look a lot like me, which is why my own doctor is currently keeping me penned up in here. Short of asking the other me for confirmation, got any ideas?"
"Sir, I'm not an expert…" Konetzky began.
"You'll do," Lorca interrupted. He spread out his hands in barely contained impatience. "Get to it."
Finally the hesitation and reluctance fell away from the nurse and he moved to the console, Mirak calmly stepping out of the way. Konetzky muttered his explanations more to himself than to the captain, who, at this point in time, was far more concerned with the precise order of his next dozen moves.
While Konetzky worked to modify the medical scanners, Lorca noticed Landry drawing ever further back in the small space of her confinement as if she was looking to hide. There was nowhere for her to go, though, so she just leaned her hip against the upper edge of the bed, crossed her arms over her chest and cast her face morosely downward.
"Commander… Landry's?… quantum signature differs from…" Konetzky looked up, at Mirak, then at Lorca.
The captain had snapped his attention back to the nurse the moment what he was saying was of interest to him. Lorca took a step forward, close enough to the energy field he felt it as slight pressure against him.
"Everyone else, sir," Konetzky finished. Mirak read over the results displayed only on the console, eschewing the use of holograms to unburden their potentially damaged energy grid.
"The conclusion appears to be in accordance with the data," Mirak said.
Lorca just gave him a look, eyebrows raised.
"I'm releasing the containment on you and Ensign Narang," Mirak said and settled his fingers on the console.
"Thank you," Lorca said, half-heartedly suppressing a sneer.
The containment field lifted and Lorca didn't permit himself even a deep breath as he strode out, restless energy finally able to be directed at something to do. At the back of his mind, the lives of his crew ticked away one by one.
Despite Pentawer's earlier order to remain in their quarters and stations, it was impossible to keep a lid on what was really going down. The ship had taken too much damage, her systems had become too unreliable and there was too much fighting and death in her corridors. The crew had understood something was wrong, even if the true dimensions of the disaster they were heading into remained hidden from them.
Sickbay was filled with people, off-duty personnel helping out with the startling number of injured crew-members who had fled, or as it turned out, been beamed there with the sickbay transporter. The very reason Lorca had wanted Mirak as CMO was proving itself right. Even in the middle of a crisis, sickbay was running smoothly and it kept unnecessary casualties at bay as well as the rest of the crew calm.
Lorca's arrival went like an intangible ripple through them, though he doubted they knew of the little hitch delaying him. He sensed their attention on him as he stepped out of the isolation section, which, had been made into an impromptu transporter room — and brig — at the suggestion of the security personnel Basora had dispatched to sickbay.
It took only a quick survey of the area for Lorca to find who he had been looking for: a young lieutenant he'd seen in the gym and subsequently told to see a doctor for a sprained ankle he'd sustained while working out. He was a computer tech and as Lorca had hoped, had never got around to leaving.
With his help, the captain brought himself up to speed within just a handful of minutes, it wasn't complete, too many sensors were offline and too many systems were inaccessible. Watching the data spool down in front of him, taking in multiple protocols at the same time and noting what gaps there were in them, Lorca's mood darkened more by each passing second.
The first minutes of the attack were the most telling. This other Buran had materialised above them, its arrival was to blame for the complete systems outage. Whether intentional or not, the outage had created a gap in their security, barely seconds long, but enough for intruder to beam over. Once the systems rebooted or switched to failsafes and redundancies, the ship should have gone to red alert either automatically or at the order of the commanding officer, but there was no trace of it. Instead, the logs showed that the red alert had been countermanded before it was even issued. The override originated in the captain's ready room. If Pentawer had been thinking fast even then or whether a man looking exactly like his captain had had to make a personal appearance first didn't matter. Locking this man out of the systems had been the most crucial decision in the first stages of the invasion. With the bridge and a voice the computer followed perfectly, the Buran could have been theirs before Lorca even left his quarters.
Instead, Pentawer's move had forced the terrans to turn his ship into a war-zone, complete with territories stacked and marked out, fights breaking out all along their borders. In the time Lorca had held Mirak's hand through accepting his captain's orders, the armoury had been overrun, though Basora had taken what armament he could and booby-trapped the rest right ahead of these terrans, as Landry had referred to her race. Basora had managed to set up a basecamp in the shuttle-bay. The bulkhead seals still partitioned the ship, necessitating movement via Jeffries tubes and hatches, creating neat little choke-points. They couldn't reach engineering and for all Lorca knew, someone else was already busy slicing these doors open.
Co-opting Mirak's office for some privacy, Lorca established a connection with Basora.
"New orders," Lorca said, pacing with a PADD in hand. "Phasers to kill or this won't go our way."
Basora was audio-only, the connection crackling through the rough encryption the computer tech had slapped on it. He was currently setting up a batch of communicators, using the same system, allowing some independence while the Buran's internal communication was most likely compromised.
"Sir, don't take this the wrong way," Basora said. "But I thought I was supposed to do that anyway. Was the smart thing to do, soon as I saw what we're up against."
"I should un-retire you," Lorca remarked.
"Ellen's gonna be good for you," Basora said, humour strained but tangible. "Puts you through your paces, sir."
"That's the idea," Lorca said. The mention of Landry reminded him of an asset he hadn't exploited fully yet. Without breaking the conversation he strode out of the office.
Sickbay was another basecamp, fortified because it was surrounded by closed bulkheads, entry only granted via the transporter that could only be controlled from the inside. In fact, the review revealed they had control of most of the middle of the ship, but other than the hangar, the belly as well as the upper decks and the bridge were entirely in terran hands.
The flood of people from the sections they didn't control had slowed to trickle, beginning to dry up. Lorca had no way of knowing how many people he had already lost. He didn't even know if his enemies were still making good on their word of executing someone every five minutes. But as much as he wanted to, he found he didn't doubt the threat. Not after what Landry had told him of her universe and what he suspected a man such as himself would be like, coming from such a place.
"Captain, we could really do with a game-plan," Basora said. "We've fought them to a standstill, but the bulkheads won't stop them forever, and if we try a sortie without a plan, that's just wasteful, sir."
"I know," Lorca said. "I have a plan, but the timing will be tricky. How many combatants do you have?"
The term very clearly distinguished between random crew-members getting a phaser shoved at them and crew-members able and willing to use them, especially if they were set to kill. Lorca supposed anyone who had seen the kind of slaughter their enemy left behind in the corridors would eagerly flip that switch, but most hadn't. He should've recorded the image outside the upper engineering door, plastered it across the ship to drive the point home, infused them with fury to match their enemies' ruthlessness.
"Not enough," Basora said imprecisely. "Let's say fifty, sir."
"Split them into small teams, I'm thinking three to four max. Use everyone who can hold a phaser. Get them into position inside the bulkheads, but keep the noise down. Be ready to move out. How long?"
"Fifteen minutes."
Three more dead, on top of all the others, Lorca thought and pushed it aside immediately.
"Do it," he said. "Lorca out."
They had devised a workaround by which to give Lorca back some of his authority by linking his voice print to a specific phrase. Lorca used a similar phrase lock for personal logs and found the system clumsy, but it was better than exposing them to someone completely different giving the orders.
When he finished the conversation with Basora, the computer tech signalled him that everything was ready and he walked over to the computer console.
"What phrase should I set it to?" the tech asked.
Lorca hesitated. "I can't risk this other me being able to guess it. Any ideas, doctor?"
Lorca was certain being put on the spot like this made even Mirak uncomfortable, whether he showed it or not had no bearing on it.
Despite this, he answered almost immediately, "I suggest 'Regulation 104 Section B'," he said. "It is obscure, but you are more likely to remember it even under stress, due to a… personal connection."
Lorca gave him a frown. "That reprimand was never put in my file."
"That may well be," Mirak said. "But you did require a follow-up, which is in your medical record."
Few members of the crew and even the senior staff would have allowed themselves the freedom to crack this type of joke at their captain's expense in the middle of a crisis, but then Mirak had some of Lorca's measure and knew the captain valued the dryly humorous nature of the reference. That he, as a vulcan, went to such length was nothing less than a sign of respect.
The tech didn't seem to understand the implication, he merely nodded, slipped his fingers over the console.
"Ready, captain."
"One-oh-four B," Lorca said.
"All set," the tech confirmed.
"Good work, lieutenant," Lorca said, dredged up some modicum of emotion for his subordinate's benefit while his mind was already several steps ahead.
He crossed sickbay to the door where Landry was still being held.
The door parted for him. Only one of the security personnel had stayed behind in the room with Landry. She stood to attention as Lorca walked in, though he didn't even look at her.
"Dismissed, lieutenant."
"Sir," she acknowledged and left.
While he had been gone, Landry had climbed on the bed in her prison, pulled up her knees and wrapped her arms around them. Her forehead rested on her knees, hiding her face and making her seem small in the bare, bright room.
Lorca tossed the PADD at the console, hard enough to make it clatter loudly as it landed. Landry snapped her head up and stared at him. Her eyes were still narrowed as before, though she didn't look enraged. She looked pallid, expression hollowed out with barely any hint of the steel core he knew his Landry had and he assumed this one shared.
"Computer 104B, decrease illumination by half."
The room fell into twilight, washed out its dimensions in his field of vision before his own eyes adjusted. Despite her best attempt to hide it, Landry shuddered just a little as she unwillingly relaxed.
"That's a bad Achilles' heel you've got there," Lorca said. "Especially since we still have environmental controls."
He guessed environmental controls weren't high on the list of priorities, because Lorca wasn't ready to space his own crew just to make a point, or perhaps the terrans had come prepared and didn't need to bother with securing it.
She was too smart to deny the obvious, opting instead to keep her silence while she could.
"How debilitating is it?" he asked, slowly advanced on the containment field, stopped right outside of it.
Landry sneered, but still said nothing.
"Computer 104B, disable containment."
The computer acknowledged the order and the air shimmered just for a second. There was a chance Landry played up her state to get him to do just this, so Lorca was prepared for an attack, though it never came. He saw her tense, as if she considered it, realised it wasn't going to work and forced herself to keep still. He gave her no time to change her mind about it, because time wasn't something she and her people had left him with.
He crossed what space remained between them too fast for her to react in her crippled state. He wrapped his fingers around her throat and pinned her upper body back on the bed, caught one of her hands and forced it down into the holding straps. He let go of her and bent his torso to the side just in time for her flying fist to miss his temple. Snarling, Landry tried again, kicking out with her legs to get herself higher up and into a better position to fight back. On her second swing, Lorca caught her balled fist and held her for a moment before yanking her hand down on the other side of the bed and into the strap. He had to bent over her to reach and she tried to headbutt him, but couldn't get far enough down to actually hit him. All she achieved was a bit of spittle landing in his hair.
The medical monitors kicked in automatically when he secured the woman to the bed.
Lorca walked back to the foot of the bed, wiped at the dampness on his head and arched a curious brow before fixing on Landry again.
"How many people have you brought on my ship?" he asked.
She glared at him, the comparative darkness reviving her will to fight with every breath she took. Lorca wondered if it was worth repeating the question or if he needed to step up the methods of this interrogation already.
"Our Buran has the same crew complement as yours," Landry answered. "Except we can all fight."
"I asked how many are on my ship," Lorca said. "Or is your ISS Buran now completely empty? Because if that's the case, I can think of several very interesting opportunities." He gave her a meaningful look.
She clenched her teeth. "We brought all the soldiers we could, transported to all non-shielded areas of the ship."
"That's also not true. You only managed to bring a small complement, enough to take the bridge and make a mess of things in some other areas. But there are none here, none in engineering, none in the shuttle-bay. You managed to dispatch two to my quarters as if that was going to be enough."
She glared a little harder. "Why are you asking if you already know?"
Lorca chuckled darkly. "So you realise you shouldn't be lying to me."
He took a breath, slowly broke into motion again and walked in a small circle around the bed until he stood by her right side, glancing down at her prone body, though out of reach of her still unshackled legs.
"You said you needed access to engineering, or you couldn't get home. I asked you before, why are you on my ship?"
"And I told you before, I really don't understand it," Landry almost laughed at him. "I'm here to shoot on sight, that's what I do. That's what my captain wants me to do."
"How many people are on the bridge? How many can fight?"
"We all fight," she said as if the mere implication someone couldn't fight was an insult.
"You came here riding experimental tech, which means not everyone's talent is shooting on sight."
He leaned forward over her, but she had herself better under control than earlier and didn't flinch, staring back at him in open challenge.
"Tell me a number," Lorca said, dropping his voice low. "What resistance awaits me on the bridge."
"Only the captain and his private guard, that's two, and already more than you can handle," she snarled. "The others are scientists."
"I don't believe you."
He might as well have slapped her, eyes going wide at his statement. He couldn't be sure her surprise was due to how he had called her out or because she simply didn't know how she should convince him of the truth. He had already put most of it together, anyway, analysing the scattered reports and computer logs, reviewing the first few chaotic minutes of the attempted hostile takeover. At a guess, he supposed their experimental tech wasn't reliable yet, causing some damage to their ship or systems as they jumped to this universe. They needed access to the Buran's warp core, probably to bolster their own energy output to get back home. He considered the possibility that they hadn't even wanted to be here, only been dropped in the midst of all this due to some calculation error, but he wasn't quite willing to believe that option just yet. It all seemed far too neatly organised.
"You know," Lorca said, sliding his hand up the side of her face. "I didn't really need to ask all that. I was just talking to pass the time."
She frowned, honest confusion and dark suspicion in her face. Landry spat a curse, kicked her legs uselessly in his direction and then relaxed as well she could, seeming to resign herself to what was, predictably, coming next.
He draped his palm over her forehead to keep her head pinned down and dug the fingers of his free hand into her eyelids to force them open against her instinctive attempt to squeeze them closed.
"Computer 104B, increase illumination," he shouted the order and narrowed his own eyes. "Three hundred percent above standard."
The light flared up, filled the room and ate away all the lingering shadows and the comfortable twilight from one moment to the next. Landry gave a surprised shriek, lurched in her restricted position and tried to pull her head away so she could close her eyes for a little relief. Grunting and whining in pain when it didn't work, interspersed with curses and insults.
The medical monitors sounded an alarm, the display offering several treatment options for the issues it had detected.
The door hissed open.
"Captain!" Mirak raised his voice to reveal his vulcan self-control as a thin veneer over what, in someone else, would have been outrage.
Lorca huffed and took his hands away. Landry's whimpering quieted as she was allowed to hide her eyes.
"Captain," Mirak started. "I prefer to be given an alternative explanation for what you are doing, because the only logical conclusion available to me is that you are torturing a prisoner of war."
Lorca shrugged and let his attention trail over Landry, taking in her state, glancing over the readout of the medical monitors above. There was no guarantee it would give them more than a handful of minutes, a small advantage and it would work only ones and only as long as they could keep the environmental controls.
"Captain?" Mirak prompted and Lorca snapped his head up to look back at the doctor.
"I'd never fault your logic, doctor, you should file a complaint with Starfleet Command," Lorca suggested coldly, walking past Mirak and out of the room. He had a plan to implement before more people died without being given even a fighting chance.
It would've been easy to explain to Mirak that Lorca had needed to know the effects of light exposure, he needed that edge in the fight to come, because he liked the chances much less than he was willing to show. He thought of the Klingons and the battle with them which, secretly, he had wanted for months. Perhaps they could've held their own in ship-to-ship combat, but being boarded? They weren't going to last against a Klingon strike team if they couldn't handle a handful of human soldiers. True, these terrans had come prepared and were ruthless in executing whatever plan they had, but there was no reason to think Klingons wouldn't be exactly the same. It was a sobering thought, weighing on him far more then Mirak's silent disapproval stalking him outside.
He heard the vulcan order the computer to decrease illumination again.
It took barely ten minutes to do a head-count and assign them into teams, equip them with the phasers and body armour from the locker in sickbay and assemble everyone in the central room for Lorca to give them a quick outline of the plan ahead. He didn't tell them he suspected once the bulkheads were actually open, all bets were off, but if they didn't know it already, they'd find out soon enough.
Lorca would've liked to broadcast to the entire ship, but it would only tip the terrans off that they were gearing up to something, so he handed the gist of it down to Basora and from there to each individual team leader. Following Lorca's orders, Basora had made sure they retained sole authority over the environmental controls, including and especially the lighting. Lorca had considered playing with them some more, switching off life support or gravity in those parts of the ship occupied by the terrans, but decided against it. He would sacrifice his people, he knew as much and Starfleet had watched him do it at least once before giving him the chair.
He wasn't going to stand back and watch them being executed, though. If it came to it, he'd pitch them against the terrans one by one and see whose material outlasted the other. Starfleet knew this, too. And this other him on the bridge, he'd learn soon enough.
PADD in hand, he nipped away from the central room to where the replicator was. On the PADD, information updates trickled in of the teams moving into position by the bulkheads, their confirmation when they reached it. He checked the status of the environmental controls. No attempt had been made to force access, neither physically nor through the computer network.
Power distribution had stabilised somewhat, emergency systems kicking in to replace what the fighting destroyed. Not everything had come online, but there were enough redundancies he could afford to make a small gesture.
Glancing up from the PADD, he scrolled through the replicator controls, selected the recipe he'd programmed into it years ago and picked a list of potential messages to include. He confirmed the selection and the replicator opened its hatch to retrieve the bowl of fortune cookies.
He left the bowl on a table off to the side without comment. The crew would spot it and be reminded their captain thought of them even in their darkest hour.
"Captain," Ensign Narang said, standing a respectful distance away from him. She looked worse for wear, even with all her injuries treated properly. Her eyes were wide and pleading, but only when she continued to speak did he realise what she was begging of him. "Please take me along, sir. I know I'm not the most qualified, but I need to be there. I… what I saw in that corridor? I need to…" she faltered and shook her head, searching for words.
"You're in, ensign," he said, interrupting her, no warmth in his voice, just professional calm. "Assemble with the others."
She blinked, once, she must have expected his refusal and come prepared to argue her case. She caught herself, nodded curtly and hurried away to join lieutenants Renaud and Mah, who the captain had picked to come with him.
Lorca adjusted the straps of his combat vest and stepped into the middle of the room, checking his phaser casually as the assembled people quieted and focussed on him.
"You've heard a lot of rumours tonight," he said. "You've heard a lot of stories. Some of you, maybe you've seen what's going on out there in the corridors of our ship. Some of you haven't heard from friends and shipmates since you said goodbye to them in the mess hall yesterday. Here's what happened. At 0300 this morning, we were boarded by a force of hostile humans. They used an experimental engine to jump right to our location and we received no warning. Shields could not be raised before hostiles beamed on board. This surprise attack has centred on the bridge and the bridge is in hostile hands. Ship controls, however, are still largely in ours. These humans… well, let's not mince words, they are from somewhere they call the terran Empire, an alternative universe parallel to ours, but theirs is a savage one. You may see familiar faces, you may see your own face staring at you from behind the barrel of a phaser rifle. Don't be fooled, they are not your friends, they are not here to take hostages, or prisoners. They are here to kill you. They think we are weak. Soft. Cowards. But I look at you and I know you are not. You've all been briefed on the plan." He tilted his head a little. "Let's teach them the truth of what we're made of. Let's take our ship back."
He swung into motion, a slow long-legged stride picking up speed and strength as he crossed through the ranks to the door. Renaud, Mah and Narang fell into step behind him.
"Move out," Lorca snapped sharply and turned away.
End of Part 2: Red Lines Drawn in the Sand
Note: The "Regulation 104 Section B" joke would've been a lot funnier if I could've just quoted the number and be done. As it is, it's not canonically numbered: "All Starfleet personnel must obtain authorization from their CO as well as clearance from their medical officer before initiating an intimate relationship with an alien species."