Author's Note: There's an updated introductory note in the first chapter if you're confused about this story's premise! I think it's necessary to clear these things up as we're heading into the climax of the story. I don't want anyone to be disappointed.
Part 4: A Sacrifice of Kings
When the turbo-lift door opened with a quiet hiss, Lorca tossed out the communicator he'd used to call the bridge, shortly followed by the charge of a phaser and then the weapon itself. He'd picked up the phaser on the way and the charge was empty anyway, but he figured it was all going to be in the gesture.
He stepped out of the turbo-lift with his hands loosely by his side, taking in the bridge without turning his head. It bore the marks of fierce resistance, though ventilation had cleaned the air by then, Lorca still smelt the hint of burning meta-material and expunged electricity fires from shortened circuits. Energy weapons had cut deep grooves into the walls and some of the consoles. Operations was a dark pile of charred polymer, but it was the only non-functional station. Terrans manned all other stations, the short glimpse confirming they knew the systems they were controlling and had probably been able to compensate for much of the damage.
Counter to his expectation, there were no corpses, though he had seen Lieutenant van der Merwe's body posed just outside the turbo-lift when he'd got in. He assumed the missing members of his bridge crew had been similarly posed somewhere else on the ship. The three who were still alive sat in front of the view-screen. Officers on duty, operations and science, Skelnik and Chaplin, both looking only slightly less battered than Lorca did.
A slow ripple went through them as they saw him, but Lorca was displeased to realise their relief mixed with both worry and suspicion. Lorca wondered what sorts of mind-games had been going on on the bridge up until now. He sought out Pentawer's gaze, but the deltan avoided it, opting instead for a look over the others, who then settled down with tired patience. Lorca had expected to raise his crew's spirits with his appearance, and their lack of reaction rankled. Not only that, though, he was going to need them later and he wouldn't have time to explain anything to them. They needed to trust him and jump when he called. While he should've expected this desolation, he had hoped for something better.
The woman in the captain's chair studied him with blatant curiosity, much like a playful predator would consider the presentation of a new toy. She looked familiar, but Lorca couldn't place her immediately, so he simply returned her gaze steadily. A slow smirk spread across her face, flecks of light in her eyes. She slipped to her feet in a perfectly smooth motion, stepping towards him with the deadly grace of an advancing wildcat. Lorca held himself still, but arched an eyebrow at her when she stepped so close to him, she had to raise her head to keep meeting his gaze.
Disappointment shot across her viciously amused expression.
Lorca found a sneer to put on his face and into his voice, he said, "Oh, was I supposed to flinch?"
"You are supposed to kneel and surrender," she said, playfulness blown away as quickly as it had come at his insolence.
"Not to you," he said, casting another look around the bridge, dismissing her even though she was right in his face. For a moment she looked like she was about to strike him, but as her face unexpectedly settled, Lorca finally realised why he knew her, but couldn't quite place her. She wasn't a member of his crew. She was Michael Burnham or at least some version of Starfleet's only mutineer. As someone who had never quite disagreed with Burnham's intentions — though her tactical execution and success left something to be desired — he was curious what this one would be up to.
"Not today," she said, taking some of the sting out of the remark for her own benefit and the ears of her listening subordinates. Terrans, Lorca was certain, had a fragile ego in these matters and he had not enough left to lose to try and spare them.
Burnham looked past his shoulder and said, "Cuff him."
Giving her a faint smile and willingly put his hands behind his back, gaze brushing over the terran guard who came forward and slammed the cuffs on his wrists. The locking mechanism engaged, resting heavily but without any actual constriction on his arms.
"Come," Burnham ordered and stepped past him, gliding towards the ready room. Lorca tried again to catch Pentawer's gaze and this time his first officer looked back. His porcelain skin was bruised and he had smoothed his face into an expressionless mask he didn't allow to slip, but he gave a very faint nod before re-angling his face downward again.
Lorca turned and walked after Burnham and into his own ready room.
"…not how it works! You need me!" a man's shouting spilled onto the bridge when the door opened rooted Burnham to the spot in the doorway. Her previous self-assurance briefly suspended as she realised Lorca probably shouldn't be made privy to an internal rift.
Thinking, showtime to himself with dark amusement, Lorca stepped close behind Burnham, crowding her with his presence, but she had enough self-control to hold her ground. Or possibly she was more captivated by the scene.
Over her shoulder, Lorca trailed his attention through his ready room. Except for the dim lighting, nothing seemed to have changed. The two narrow couches following the outline of the room on either side of the door, smooth white material uninviting to linger on. Two PADDs and an empty coffee cup still rested on it, where he'd left them. The two sketches of 19th century sailing ships a girlfriend had given him on his birthday many years ago, Erebus and Terror prominently displayed in flowery writing underneath each ship. He could respect a captain willing to command ships with these sorts of names. On the opposite wall, his collection of bladed alien weapons was entirely untouched. He glanced over the sharp edges as they glinted in the distant starlight, indulging himself in picking out a good place for a terran knife.
Two men stood in the open space in front of the desk, facing each other. The one who'd shouted was unknown to Lorca, pale and blond and sardonically sneering even though his body language wavered between deference and insolence. Though wearing the same uniform, he didn't have the bearing of a soldier. Egghead, Basora would've said with some disdain and Lorca concurred. He recognised the tone and voice of the man who had told Landry not to blow up engineering.
The man he was facing was the terran captain. Lorca searched his mind for the correct term to use for a man who looked exactly like him and came up empty. It had been deceptively easy with Landry, but this was an entirely different obstacle.
The terran captain didn't move, only turned a frosty blue gaze towards Burnham.
"Get out or come in," he said, prompting Burnham to step forward and Lorca slipped in behind her, walking far enough to let the door slide closed behind them.
The terran took his gaze back to the blond man. Although they were standing nearly at arm's length apart, the terran towered, poised and intimidating. It was far too late to be surprised or taken aback by how similar this man was to himself, so Lorca merely took it in, observed him, same stature and posture, same piercing stare, even the same lines beginning to mar his handsome face. The similarity didn't stop at mere looks, either, they shared the same mannerism and Lorca recognised the languid anger simmering just beneath the terran's seemingly controlled exterior.
However, underneath a black leather jacket, the terran was wearing a Starfleet uniform.
"Would Straal be giving me the same answer?" the terran captain asked.
The blond man bared his teeth. "Straal's dead. I really hope he doesn't give any answers anymore."
"Hmm," the terran captain said, angled his head back and gave the blond a skeptical look along the length of his nose. "He's dead because you killed him after you stole his research."
"Oh don't be silly," the blond said, offended all the way through. "I never even needed his research. I just wanted to fuck him." He shrugged. "And fuck him over. Can't really say which I enjoyed more…"
"Did I back the wrong man?" the other Lorca asked, feigning mild curiosity with an arch of both eyebrows. He didn't wait for an answer to a threat dressed up as a rhetorical question.
"Paul," the terran crooned, took a crucial step forward and wound a hand around his neck before the blond had time to figure out if he wanted to flinch or stay. Either way, he wasn't getting away anymore. The terran leaned a little closer, his grip forcing a downward tilt and making it impossible for Paul to keep looking at his face. "If you're no longer useful, I'll kill you."
Paul didn't resist the grip, though his body was fidgeting just a little, resisting the urge to get some distance back between them and knowing he wouldn't be allowed to leave.
"You don't even understand the spores," Paul insisted, though he couldn't stop a whine from creeping into his voice. "How are you going to bring them back? You'll just be stranded. You'll need me."
"I can't hide a whole ship in a war, she needs to go home and you need to hold the network together until I get back. I'll find what help I need in this universe."
He loosened his grip just a little, a smile sliding into his voice like an unsheathed dagger. "But I didn't know you cared."
He gave Paul a slight shove as he released him, visibly pleased the scientist didn't actually lift his head towards him even though he was free to do so.
"Ellen has finally gotten control of engineering," the terran said as he stepped back to the desk. "Hook us up, we've wasted enough time."
The brief encounter had clearly rattled the blond, but he still groaned. "Landry?" he asked, pulling a grimace. "Just… don't do me any favours."
"Just don't make me shoot you," the terran said in dismissal as he stalked around the desk. He disdained the chair.
With the blond gone, the terran looked at Lorca directly for the first time, though they both had caught him sneaking quick glances even though he had been focused on his little intimidation game. Just like Burnham before, he made no attempt to hide his curiosity, gaze raking down Lorca's body as if searching for any deviation and coming up empty.
A smile full of teeth spread across his face. He lifted his hand and gave the bowl of fortune cookies a little shove before he picked one out and said,
"Why does a man who makes his own destiny keep these around?"
He snapped the cookie in half, crumbled it a little and put a piece in his mouth.
"Old family business," Lorca said.
The terran made a non-comital sound, pulled the little piece of paper from the other half of the cookie, straightened it out in his fingers as he chewed. His eyebrows wandered up and for a moment it seemed like he was fighting laughter. He offered no explanation, dropped the paper and ate another piece of cookie.
"Tell me what you're thinking, Gabriel," he asked as if they were old friends meeting at a bar.
"I'm thinking of this risian I wouldn't mind having two of."
Behind him, just at the edge of his vision, Burnham poised herself on the couch, content to watch the spectacle.
Humour crossed the terran captain's face without reaching his eyes and without lingering. He bided his time as it dripped away and vanished as it had never been. He said, "You're going to give me access to your personal logs."
"You came all this way just to read my diary?" Lorca asked and shook his head, pretending to fight off laughter, when in truth he felt anything but. He had his suspicions why the terran wanted the personal logs. It was for the same reason he was in that uniform.
"I came all this way because I'm fighting a war for what's mine," the terran said. "I have a powerful weapon, but we've run into some minor setbacks. Overambitious scientists, prototype tech, you know how it is. Useful, though. Worth it."
He shrugged, shook himself free from the desk and sauntered around it to come face to face with Lorca. He held his gaze a moment, then looked around the room, Lorca taking his lead because he was curious where he was going.
"I've read your files," he said, his nostrils flared briefly. "Nothing interesting, just the basics, it was all there was." His attention glided over the sketches but came to rest on the weapons. "No mention of this."
He snapped his gaze back around sharply. "The logs would've made it easier, but I think I'll manage."
Delicately, he reached out with one hand and plucked the rank insignia from Lorca's chest. It wasn't an unexpected thing to do, Lorca merely narrowed his eyes, but kept himself very carefully still. Even when the terran took a half-step back and affixed the insignia to his uniform.
"What about my crew?" Lorca asked. Apart from those on the bridge, he had no guarantees anyone was even still alive, but it still bore mentioning. Some pockets of resistance would still be holding out on the ship, perhaps even having given up fighting and chosen to hide instead, hoping to be saved or spared when they realised there was no winning for them.
The terran shrugged out of the jacket, twisted and tossed it carelessly at the desk. It was Burnham who answered.
"Their lives depended on your surrender," she said. "You haven't."
Lorca felt her gaze pass over him and lock with the terran captain's in some silent communication. "And you won't," she finished. It wasn't a question, it wasn't even yet another demand for it. She'd concluded he wasn't going to simply because there was nothing left for him to gain. If this terran wanted to take his place, then no one could be allowed to survive anyway.
He wondered if she had considered he had nothing left to lose, either.
Lorca turned his head to the side, caught a glimpse of her and curled one corner of his mouth upward into something that was not at all a smile.
"Got it in one. You wanna a cookie?"
"I could break you, you know," she said.
"'course, but you'll need more than one lifetime."
He arched an eyebrow, challenging her. She looked like she was fully prepared to take him up on it, too, ready to pounce on him and start. He realised he was tensing under her steady gaze, giving too much of the contest away, but then the moment snapped and he was spared for once.
When the terran captain started for the door, Burnham immediately forgot Lorca was even there, slipped to her feet and caught the terran captain around the waist and he willingly swung around in her embrace. She gave him a leisurely kiss, tightening her grip on him and bringing her other hand up to dig her fingers into the short hair at his neck.
Arching a brow to himself, Lorca glanced over his desk, but dismissed it and sauntered over to the couch, opposite of where Burnham had sat and took a seat, casually crossing his legs at the ankles and relaxing as well he could into the uncomfortable upholstery.
It was the terran captain who pulled away, casting a short glance past Burnham's shoulder at Lorca, a look which might mean many things.
The terran pushed his chin towards Lorca and said, "Keep an eye on him and all pieces intact. In case we still need him."
Burnham made a growling sound, whether disappointment at the ease with which her captain stepped out of her grip or at the orders, Lorca couldn't tell and barely cared beyond a petty sense of triumph at her minor misery.
In uniform, with the insignia and without the leather jacket, the terran would've been a true mirror image of Lorca, if not for Lorca's weathered state. His uniform had suffered burns and cuts, there was a tension along the side of his cheekbone that told of a spreading bruise and blood crusted over his knuckles. As it were, he looked much more like he belonged in a barbaric counter universe.
The other man's plan was still vague, the incomplete snatches Lorca had heard of the conversation with the blond not nearly enough to assemble the full picture. Though still pondering what he knew, Lorca leaned into the couch and watched him leave, the relaxation not entirely fake. It was the terran's move now. Someone would throw him a line soon enough.
The door slid closed on the bridge again and Burnham twisted around on one heel, giving him a contemplative look, chewing her lower lip between bright white teeth.
Or someone could be made to throw him a line.
Lorca angled his head back, baring his throat just a little, watching her with a heavy gaze, wondering if she would accept the invitation or sense the trap and keep her distance.
She swallowed the bait whole.
She took the two steps towards, she straddled his hips, knees folded on the couch on either side of him, bringing her smirking face close to his. She teased her hands up his arms, over his shoulders, then dug her nails into the sides of his neck, cupping his face in a none-too-gentle grip.
"Why so desperate?" he asked in a low croon, shifting his body towards her to free his bound and trapped hands a little against her added weight. "Gabe not getting it up for you?"
Fury flared up his eyes and then died down to heated smoulder and she chuckled at the, to her, obvious ridiculousness of the implication.
"We could show you," she cooed. Her grip tightened to the point of pain, tiny punctures along his jaw from her nails, finding the edge of the bruise. The skin felt like it was about to split. She drew a thin line of pain as she wrapped her hand around his neck, pulled at his hair. She folded her steely fingers over the back of his skull, keeping him securely in place as she curled her body close above him.
He gave a slight smile of his own, just enough to keep her distracted, voice still low.
"I'm sure I'll find that sweet spot in no time."
He leaned forward as if to kiss her, though he had a feeling she would prefer a bite. For just a moment, he wasn't even sure he was opposed to either, but that was just the adrenaline talking.
The handcuffs gave the quietest possible click.
"Ah." He winked at her. "Found it."
Her expression hardened, suspicion drawing her brows together and she began withdrawing from him, though he didn't let her get very far. Lorca brought his freed hands up. One to grip her shoulder and hold her in place while he swung the handcuff into his other hand like brass knuckles and punched it into her temple.
He didn't have room to swing, so he compensated by giving her two more, short jabs before she mustered her combat training, deflected his third blow with her arm and butted her head down onto his nose. He tasted blood, twisted the arm she'd caught to free it and dislodge her. She didn't resist, probably as eager as he was to get a little breather before the action started. She rolled to the side and to her feet with the same feline grace she had shown in all her movements.
Under different circumstances, he might be wary of her, aware he couldn't simply overpower her, taking her down needed finesse, not brute force. But these weren't different circumstances. The fresh pain did nothing but thrilling as he used the moment she was off him to twist around and pick a nausicaan scimitar from the wall just above, then swung away from the wall instantly.
It was an antique, but it was hardly a ceremonial weapon, longer than the mek'leth just as its side on the wall, ending in a pick rather than a tip the inside curve jagged like shark's teeth and the outside edge perfectly smooth. And by some odd chance, it fit his hand as if it had been made for him.
He kept pressing her, making her scramble away from him awkwardly, unable to go for her weapon, but then she moved as fast as he had suspected she was capable of. With the tiny distance she'd gained, she took a running start in a tight circle around him, used one of the couches as a springboard. She drew the knife and jumped for his momentarily unprotected side.
She sunk the blade into his shoulder but at the price of the scimitar's spiked hilt hitting the back of her neck. She stumbled and ripped the dagger free of him and punched the flat of her free hand into his already sore nose. Lorca aligned the long scimitar with his forearm and brought it around, delivering a long cut along her belly just below the protective breastplate just as she twisted away. He lunged for her and the scimitar's pick tip caught on top of her breastplate, he turned them around and levered her into the door.
She hit it, just before it hissed open and dropped her on her back on the bridge.
Following her, he flexed his hand to check for damage in his shoulder, but found only a thin slice of pain running through his muscles.
Attention fell on them, as the terrans and remnant Starfleet crew worked through their momentary surprise. Lorca spotted the terran captain by the comm station, glancing up at them looking for all the world like a prim and proper Starfleet captain. He had even smoothed the hair Burnham had tousled before.
No one interfered.
Grinning with bloodied teeth, Lorca lunged after her. The much shorter and smaller terran knife put her on the automatic defensive, allowing him to drive her further back with each step. She tried to compensate, flowing inside his guard like water and striking with the relentless lightning speed of a viper when she did.
Every time she landed a blow, a stab, a slice with her knife, the terrans cheered her on. He was beginning to feel it, too, he'd been fighting for hours before even getting here and the sick thrill of it could carry him only so far. He was losing not just the big game, but this small part of it, too.
He caught sight of the terran captain's face when the rhythm of the fight brought them around and saw him past Burnham as she crouched for a jump. He had expected to see calm confidence on the other man's face, but his stony expression was an ill-fitted mask. His sharp eyes darted between Burnham and Lorca, tracking the location of their blades, clearly mapping the potential attack vectors and vulnerabilities and he did not like what he was seeing.
Burnham jumped. At the same time, so did Lorca. He wasn't going to defeat her by trying to overpower her, she was too fast and too nimble and she landed too many, too heavy blows. The only way he'd get her to truly engage him, he'd have to give her a weapon equal to his. Or... he went for her knife, the wrist of the hand that held it while he dropped the scimitar back, aligned once again with his forearm like an oversized dagger. She saw the lunge, dragged her knife back, scraped the spikes of the handle over his palm, twisted it and stabbed it past his arm at his stomach. He turned away from the blow, baring his side where the scimitar was and sliced it square across her torso, just below the breastplate.
She hissed sharply, her uniform gaping open, welling blood, but he hadn't cut deep enough to gut her. Yet. He stepped close to her, going for the knife again, knowing she'd twist it away and try him again. He wrapped his fingers around the hand-guard, the bare blade cutting into his palm, but he had enough grip to yank it from her. Deliver a blow with the hilt of his scimitar into her side before she could evade him. She doubled over, tried to withdraw and gain some space.
Someone shouted, "Burnham!"
A terran tossed her a new knife and she threw herself towards it. Well-meant, Lorca thought, but her move exposed her. He slung the handle with the knife around her back and towards her throat, smashing the spikes of the hand-guard into the soft skin underneath her jaw.
The thrown knife hit her elbow with its hilt as she failed to catch it against his onslaught. He pulled her as close as he could, driving the spikes of the handle as deep into her face as he could, though he was doing more damage to his own hand.
He dropped the dropped knife, gave a hard shove away from him. He swung the scimitar back into a forward position and rammed it forward into her body, cutting through skin and flesh and cartilage like butter. Lorca came close again, following the blade and his bleeding hand on her shoulder to keep her in place, gaze digging into wide-open eyes, drinking in the succession of emotions from surprise to shock to absolute pain and then the gruesome realisation of her own death. A wail worked itself from her open mouth, gasping for breath as if that would make a difference.
Lorca's dragged his gaze past her, to where her lover stood. Lorca had, for just a second, an unmitigated view of the expression of his face. He'd lost the mask and his face was full of raw, helpless fury.
He was too far away for the scimitar, no matter what Lorca tried or not tried, but the woman was right here, twitching in his hands and on the end of his blade. He made sure the other one saw his face as he twisted the scimitar just slightly, making sure the pick tore through new tissue as he slowly withdrew the blade. She made an aborted sound, ridiculously faint given the magnitude of the damage he was inflicting on her.
Lorca ripped the scimitar free, opened the wound he had just made wider, small bits of bright-red flesh still clung to it, blood poured freely from her. When he let go of her shoulder, she collapsed, a marionette with her strings cut and lay at his feet, gargling helplessly, spasms running through her body, twitching as if in carnal pleasure in her dying.
Something had shifted around him, Lorca could feel it in how the cheering had gone out and been replaced by a reluctantly reverent silence.
Inter-species Cultural Dialogue was an infamous course at Starfleet Academy. Required course-work for every cadet, but it could make or break anyone on the command track. It was notorious for being an essential topic, ruined without fail year after year, by being held by the least engaging lecturer Starfleet was able to find. Cadets sat through it, beat the details and concepts and conversation formulae into their brains, only to find, two words into a conversation with any alien a better way to do it. Lorca, for his part, had walked away from the lecture with a lesson learned he wasn't sure Starfleet had ever considered in all its implications. The point of the lecture was for cadets to understand that their own norms were ill-served by being forced onto others. Lorca had carefully checked the required answers and kept his own counsel. It never was about respect, as Starfleet clearly thought. No, the point was understanding these alien cultures so well, he could beat them at their own game.
The terrans were looking at entirely the wrong man.
Lorca raised the scimitar, the elegant blade felt heavy to his tired muscles as he forced himself to keep it steady, aiming the tip at the man wearing his face and an expression of absolute shock carved all the way down.
"Look at him," Lorca said through bloodied teeth. "Is that your captain? Is that who you follow? Too weak to fight his own battles? Too stupid to pick a worthy champion? Too cowardly to finish what she started?"
Silence was his only answer, but he could feel the world impacting the terrans' mindset, considering the implications of what this Federation officer had just done, and what it meant to them.
The terran captain shook free of his immobility and walked close to Lorca, showing no hesitation despite the sharp edge of the scimitar still levelled at him.
"You," the terran captain said, voice so low it was barely audible, but in the near absolute silence it carried. "Need to bow."
He glanced at someone behind Lorca and there was movement. He couldn't have defended himself even if he had wanted to, he needed to keep his gaze on the other man. A moment later, a sharp pain bit through his leg as a terran cut through the tendons on the back of his knee. He dropped as his leg gave way, needed to use the scimitar as a crutch to lean on and keep himself from falling further. He'd bared his teeth at the pain but made no other sound.
The terran captain stepped close to Lorca, showing no hesitation despite the sharp edge of the scimitar still in Lorca's hand. Destroyed leg or no, he had just proven he had to be counted with. But the imposter had no choice, not with that silent shift, not with a crew that valued strength and ruthlessness over all else. With the blood beating hard in his temples, adrenaline still coursing through his limbs, numbing the pain and the source of all his hatred within reach, Lorca entertained what it would be like, to kill this abomination and take his place, keep him alive just long enough to make him understand the precise nature of his failure.
"Was it worth it now?" Lorca asked, dragged his gaze away from the other man and down to the body of Michael Burnham, made sure the other had followed it and had to look at her. True mirrors of each other in this one single instance of loss and desolation. "You're not getting her back."
"Won't I?" the other asked, arching his brows as he struggled to regain his composure. "Seems like there's two of everything here. I'll find her again."
"Won't be her," Lorca shrugged, though his body hurt and his damaged shoulder made the gesture awkward. He bared his teeth, dropped his voice to a disgusted drawl. "Just another imposter."
The red alert howled into the silence, a five-minute countdown splashed across the view-screen: Self-destruction sequence active.
Around Lorca and the terran captain, the terrans shook into motion again, remembering their duties and the stations they had manned. The Buran shuddered.
"Captain, we've engaged the tractor beam," one of them said. "It's locked on our ship, sir."
"Disable it," the terran ordered without moving.
"I... can't."
The terran captain's eyes narrowed against the thin smile Lorca couldn't stop from creeping on his face.
The terran captain said, "Computer, disable self-destruct."
"Unable to comply."
The terran's nostrils flared. "Computer 104B, disable self-destruct."
"Unable to comply."
"You didn't think that'd work, did you?" Lorca said.
The terran broke into sudden violence, kicked the scimitar out of Lorca's lax hand and wrapped his fingers around his throat. The grip was not secure enough to truly choke him, just enough to pressure to allow Lorca to lever himself back to his good leg, his focus narrowed at the sick anticipation of the minor rush once the other released him.
The terran tossed him back, into the captain's chair and followed him there, leaning down over him with both hands supported on the chair on either side.
"What did you do?" the terran demanded.
"Something like a dead man's switch," Lorca said, couldn't help the smile breaking into a grin, didn't want to, either. "Starfleet didn't want me to install it, so I did it anyway. We're at war with the klingons. Do you know what they do to prisoners? That won't ever happen to my crew on my watch."
For a long moment, the terran said nothing, though Lorca knew the thoughts and calculations chasing each other inside his mind, trying to wring some kind of victory out of the situation.
He angled his head to the side. "Give me engineering."
"Landry here, what's going on?"
"Do we have what we need?"
"Yes, ready to go, sir." She paused for just a second. "What's...?"
"Then go. Bridge out."
The terran leaned forward again, fixing Lorca with the same cool gaze.
"I've read about your Federation," he said. "A ship, her crew and their captain, that's your heart and soul."
His face turned vicious. "But you'll never again be that kind of captain. I'll take every legacy you might've had from you."
"You're making a lot of promises today," Lorca said bemusedly. "I will find your spores, I will take your legacy, I will find a lookalike of my dead girlfriend, I will come home, I will, what was it? I will win the war for what's mine? Are you sure you're up to all that? Or are you just going to keep on making empty promises until someone puts you out of your misery?"
Instantly, Lorca realised he had pushed too hard. He could've exploited the other man's fury and grief, but now he had given him the incentive to pull himself together. The terran's expression settled, cold eyes still dark with anger, but the mind behind them ticking in its own familiar rhythm again. A smile tucked unpleasantly at the corners of the terran's mouth.
"It's time to go home," he said and pushed himself away from the captain's chair to take two long strides to the centre of the bridge. He swivelled on his heels, gaze drifting over Lorca slouching in the captain's chair, rested briefly on Michael Burnham, but this time his expression was firmly under his control.
The terran communications officer relayed the information and already they began following some hitherto unknown script, non-essential members of the crew filing out until only a handful remained.
Fresh, Lorca might have been able to take them on, make a mad dash and free Pentawer and the others, it might have been enough to overwhelm them, but he wasn't going to dash anywhere anytime soon.
"Launch the escape pods," the terran captain ordered.
"Done, sir."
Lorca tilted his head at him, listened to the minuscule sound as the pods launched and imagined them float away on their trajectory, broadcasting their emergency signals back to Starfleet. There had been no indication they had ever sent a distress signal, but now Starfleet would be on its way. Too late to render aid, to be sure, but they wreckage would still be hot when they got there.
"Sir," another terran officer said. "There's a problem with the transporter."
The terran captain glared at the officer, with the look of someone fully willing to shoot the messenger if it meant venting his anger.
"What problem?" he asked, irritated because she had made him ask.
"The ship's transporter can't get a lock on our people. We need to beam them out from the transporter room." She looked up, stole a look at the countdown. "There's not enough time for everyone."
"Can we get a lock on from our ship?"
The officer's fingers flew over the consoles, on the view-screen, the seconds trickled down. Lorca hoped it was just as uncomfortable for the terran as it had been for him, knowing his crew was being murdered on a schedule.
"I can't handle all that suspense, Joann," the terran captain said.
"Sorry sir, I'm trying to find a workaround, but I don't know... we could maybe get the transporter on this ship to use the transporter lock function of our ship, but... I need to get down to the transporter room."
The terran spread his arms out, arched his brows.
"Get going then."
She nodded curtly, turned and hurried away.
"Watch 'em run," Lorca chuckled.
The terran turned his attention back to him, pensive now. He said, "Oh, you think you're getting to go down with your ship?"
Lorca gave him a dismissive wave. "There's nothing you can do to me you haven't already done. If you're stupid enough to spare me, I can't stop you."
The terran captain kept his own counsel, looked over the remainder of his bridge crew. He sucked in a breath which might have been rougher than he intended. He said, "Get to the transporter room."
The terrans hurried to the turbo-lift and their captain stalked after them, stiff-legged gait under Lorca's mild, sardonic gaze. Neither man said anything. Threats and insults had all been used up and made no difference to either man's trajectory.
Lorca slouched in the captain's chair, stretched out his damaged leg in front of him in an attempt to ease the pain. The shape of the future writing itself into his consciousness. He still didn't know why this other… him... had come here at all, why he had come here like this. Some war Lorca didn't know or care about when his own war was already lost to him. Still, it was rather enticing, a vision of himself crossing a universe just to get what he wanted.
The turbo-lift hissed closed, the familiar sound like the closing of a coffin lid. For a long moment, the bridge was silent again.
Lorca took a harsh breath of his own.
"Get over here," Lorca ordered, gaze digging into Pentawer's. His first officer hurried over and Lorca unlocked the cuffs, the bright light of the countdown flickering down on them from the view-screen. Freed, Pentawer turned to assist Skelnik while Lorca uncuffed Chaplin.
They stood in front of the captain's chair, looking back at him with faces struggling to find an expression. Exhaustion was there, and fear, an uncertainty at the core of them.
"What are you waiting for?" Lorca snapped. "Break's over. Back to your stations. Let's see what we've got left."
Pentawer took on weapons and tactical, Chaplin despite her injury was taking over navigations, rerouting the helm while Skelnik picked a seat at communications and engineering.
The rundown was as bad as he had expected. Even though they had full control of the ship back, most systems were unresponsive. Their dilithium crystals were almost completely depleted, unsurprisingly, after the terrans had been all over them. They detected more than fifty life-signs, scattered throughout the ship, though the sensors couldn't distinguish between terrans and humans without modification.
He cut in when Chaplin started on life-support.
"I can tell I'm neither floating nor suffocating," he interrupted her. "I need four things."
He gripped the armrest of his seat, disliking the way he had to sit there uselessly.
"One: hold that ship in place. Two: bring us as close to them as possible, ram into them if you can. Three: do we have any weapon capability left?"
"Phaser banks are offline, torpedo bays..." he scrolled through them. "Torpedo bay one, three and four have gone through an emergency shutdown to prevent accidental ignition. I can reboot them, but it'll take too long. Torpedo bay two is still functional. "
"Yes!" Lorca hissed. He closed his hand around the armrests, forced his weight to his good leg and stood up.
"Four: I want to see them."
"On screen now, sir," Skelnik said after a moment and the image of the ISS Buran displaced the countdown to the upper edge of the screen.
With the enhanced image on the screen, the damage to the terran ship looked far more extensive than Lorca had been able to see with the naked eye. One of her four nacelles was clearly too damaged and had been shut down, though the Buran was better equipped to compensate for such an issue than most ships even if it required more processing power to calculate the power distribution.
"Number One," Lorca said. "Do you see where their magic mushroom drive connects to the nacelles? That looks like a weakness to me."
"Agreed, sir," Pentawer said dryly, finding some thin slice of his old humour to put into his tone. "Torpedo launchers are responding sluggishly, it might take some time."
"You have all of two minutes and seventeen seconds left. Light 'em up whenever, commander."
He took a very careful step forward, turned his head and said, "Lieutenant Skelnik, is a ship-wide broadcast possible?"
Skelnik nodded silently, tabbed on the console and said, "Go ahead, sir."
Lorca watched a handful of seconds count down, picking his words slowly. "Everyone, this your captain speaking, but I cannot prove that. By now, you'll have all noticed the red alert and the countdown. We're going to self-destruct in just under two minutes while our enemies try to run away like the cowards they are. You all gave a good accounting of yourself tonight. I'm proud of every single one of you. I want you to know I'm the one honoured to sail with a crew such as you. It's too late for me to make promises to you. But here's where we're at. Right now, our ship has locked onto the enemy ship with tractor beams and we're on a collision course." He arched a questioning brow at Pentawer, who paused in his work to gave a slight, silent nod in confirmation. "And with any luck, just a sliver of it, we'll be blowing their engines to smithereens and take them down with us."
Lorca paused, sighed. "That's all I've got. We'll keep the channel open."
"Aye," Skelnik said.
Lorca's damaged leg and battered body demanded he sit back down, but he didn't move. Barely more than a minute now, there seemed to be no point. His focus shifted away from the crew, even as they issued statements and progress reports. Their professionalism in the face of certain death was both admirable and a transparent attempt at distraction. Having no other options, they had grasped at the straw he had handed them, giving them their routines to cling to, their orders to occupy their hands and minds. It saved them having to consider what would be coming next. He had no such anchor to hold on to and a distant, secret part of him disdained the need for it.
He fixed the strange, familiar ship on the screen instead, tracing the lines of its strange drive installation, the delicate support structure that tied it to the ship itself as if he could feed his instincts of where they needed to hit it directly into the targeting computer and make sure the torpedoes found their mark. It would be the last achievement he could ever have, failure was not an option. They inched closer and closer to this other Buran, too, though they had been well within blast radius from the beginning.
"Torpedoes ready," Pentawer announced, his voice tipping just a little in macabre excitement. He launched them instantly, twenty seconds down on the self-destruct and after the launch confirmation sound, the bridge fell into silence again.
Lorca took a hobbling step toward the view-screen as the bright white lines of the torpedoes appeared in the frame. He watched as the rings on the other ship's drive began to spin-up, listened to Chaplin's announcement of an energy spike in the other ship, her wonderment a strange nostalgia this late in the game.
She said, "I've never seen anything like this."
And she never would again, either.
Lorca took another step, fingers flexing against the pain in his shoulder and aching muscles, willing the torpedoes to go faster, to hit precisely, his farewell salvo.
The countdown hit zero.
There was no delay, no moment in which fate hung in the balance, however imagined it might be. A trick of the mind, perhaps, was all Lorca had, in which he could imagine the flicker of the screen denying him the sight of the torpedoes' impact and the false-mirror reflection of the Buran disintegrating. The explosions rip up from the floor, the controlled and simultaneous overload of all energy lines in the ship, ripping her apart at every seam, flinging the pieces through white-hot fire into the cold brilliance of space.
And among the searing, all-consuming destruction, the cool, gentle caress of the transporter beam devouring him.
End of Part 4: A Sacrifice of Kings
Note: One more chapter to go.