The first challenge facing the escape plan was the accuracy of their intelligence.

Otib had been in the brig for over a week and had observed a fairly regular schedule with regard to the agony booths. The one to the left, from the perspective of the cells, was used for special interrogations and short-term crew punishments. Prisoners cycled through the other two for standard sessions of six to eight hours. The guards had started using the right-hand booth for the Tellarites, which left the center booth for them.

This information was important because, typically, the only time there weren't at least two guards attending each prisoner who was outside of a cell or agony booth was when one prisoner was being removed from the booth, to be replaced by another. For this, generally only two guards supervised both prisoners. Perhaps the guards were supposed to move the prisoner from the booth into the cell first, then move the other prisoner from cell to booth. But usually they just followed an efficient pattern: stun the people in the cell, drag the next victim out, then throw the person coming off the agonizer into the cell while near-simultaneously shoving the next person into the booth. It all happened within a few seconds, and neither prisoner was in much shape to fight, given that one was stunned and the other had just been agonized.

If their guesses about the schedule were right, there should be just such a situation coming up: Lorca would be in the agony booth for the first shift, followed immediately by Ko'mek.

And so it was. Lorca couldn't say he was happy when they tossed him into the booth that morning, but at least he had the satisfaction of seeing the plan coming together.

XXXXX

The second challenge facing their plan was Lorca remembering that there was a plan.

He wasn't capable of much in the way of rational thought when he was in the agony booth. So, it was a real question whether he would be able to get his wits about him immediately upon release, in order to act. He'd raised that issue with his cellmates while they were hashing out the details of the plan:

"I've seen people come out of the booth looking a lot better than me. They're not exactly dancing jigs, but they're alert and ambulatory. How come it kicks my butt more than them?"

"You are old and weak," Ko'mek offered, helpfully. Lorca scowled at him.

Otib said, "If it's true that you are new to our world, then you haven't built up any tolerance. It never hurts any less while you are in the booth, but you eventually become more able to function afterward." As Ko'mek began boasting about his own ability to shake off the effects, Otib added, with a smirk, "And then the brain damage sets in."

Neither of them had been able to offer much in the way of practical advice. Apparently, Vulcans had techniques for keeping one's mind focused during the torture, but both Otib and Ko'mek seemed to find Vulcans cold and overly intellectual, so they hadn't learned said techniques. The best they could come up with was mentally yelling the thing you are trying to remember at yourself, like an angry mantra.

Fortunately, it kind of worked. Sure, a lot of the time he was in the booth he was a gibbering idiot, with not a thought in his mind but the pain and needing it to stop NOW. But he had moments of relative coherence, when he reminded himself what he had to do. And when the agonizer door slid open and he saw Ko'mek being brought toward him, everything snapped into place.

XXXXX

The third challenge facing the plan was whether Lorca would physically be able to do anything upon release from the agony booth. Past experience suggested that curling up and shuddering were about all he could manage.

He didn't need to do much; Ko'mek would handle the heavy lifting. But Lorca needed to create a distraction to occupy the guards long enough for Ko'mek to recover from being stunned. The stunning was minimal—they wanted prisoners to be able to walk and didn't want them to miss out on any of the agony. And Klingons bounced back quickly. Probably a minute or two would do it.

Lorca didn't resist as he was hauled out of the booth, letting the guard do most of the work. Then, when he was out, he brought his hand to his stomach and pitched forward suddenly, counting on the universal aversion to having someone throw up on your shoes to make the guard let go of him and step back. Instead of puking, he fell to the ground, rolling toward the guard so that he knocked into his legs, sending him staggering into the second guard, who was minding Ko'mek. Both guards went down momentarily, but quickly disentangled themselves from each other and turned their anger on Lorca, kicking him first in the stomach, and then, when he rolled over in the other direction to avoid this, in the back and kidneys.

Rolling over brought Lorca face-to-face with Huss' putrefying corpse. He flinched away, looking back over his shoulder to see Ko'mek shaking his head to clear it. Seized with sudden inspiration, Lorca ran his hand along Huss' midsection until he found the buckle of his belt. Naturally, their captors had stripped them of all potential weapons. But this was just a simple ring of metal, attached to a thin strip of leather. No sharp edges, not even all that heavy. Lorca pulled the belt from Huss' body and made eye contact with Ko'mek, before tossing the belt up to the younger Klingon.

For a split second, Ko'mek stared dumbly at the object he'd caught in his hand. Then his eyes lit up with understanding, delight, and fury. He shouted something in Klingon—the only word Lorca understood was Huss' name—as he took up the belt and swung it, whipping it through the air to strike one of the guards in the eye with the buckle. That guard went down, clutching his face, while Ko'mek turned on the other one and strangled him with the leather strap.

Two more guards ran into the brig, followed by a third. Ko'mek used the strangled guard's sword to dispatch the first two, while Lorca picked off the third with the guard's phaser. The third man had just been entering the brig and the door hadn't yet closed after him; he fell in the doorway, keeping it open. Ko'mek charged out through the opening, continuing his killing spree in the hallway.

Now came the trickiest part of the plan, the part where outcomes were unpredictable and decisions would need to be made.

Though every muscle in his body screamed at him to stay down, Lorca dragged himself over and up to the control panel. He started trying out security codes. On the "this is a different-but-similar world" hypothesis, it stood to reason that there must be some insanely improbable coincidences at play. Despite completely different political structures and historical events, many of the same people existed, doing similar jobs on similar ships. That meant that somehow, against astronomical odds, sperm and eggs identical to those in the world with which he was familiar must have combined. And perhaps less improbable but more intuitively striking, many ships had the same names and layouts as their his-world counterparts. Who the hell names a warship 'Discovery'? Yet he knew the Federation was building a science vessel with that name.

So, it was at least possible that some of the access codes from his world would be the same here. Now, if he had only his own codes to work with, the chances of success would be negligible. But, as it happened, Lorca was something of a collector of other people's codes. Any time he heard someone with a useful rank or access level use their code, he noted it. You never know when there'll be an emergency, or when there'll be some information he needs that Starfleet brass is not sharing. Back home, he had a list of about twenty codes, though he had only a dozen or so committed to memory. He tried them all, restarting the procedures frequently so the computer didn't lock him out for repeated errors.

Bingo!—one of them worked. To test his access (and to be a decent human being), he shut down the right-hand agony booth, where one of the Tellarites had been howling. All eyes in the brig were on him now, and he had a tough choice to make. He could open the cell doors and they could leave the brig, but then what? Even if he and Otib managed to steal a shuttle, they would be shot down before they made it to safety. The alternative was to learn all he could from the terminal, then play possum and wait for a better opportunity that might never come.

The prisoners in the cells were clamoring for release. One voice made itself heard above the din: an older, portly Tellarite bellowed, "We have a ship! Free us, Terran!"

That tilted the odds in favor of immediate action. Lorca dropped the force fields for all the cells, five in total: the Tellarites' cell, the one containing Otib, two containing a few humans, and one that was dark, apparently unoccupied. He figured the other prisoners would either become his allies or become useful distractions.

The prisoners spilled out of the cells. Otib wisely gathered the remaining weapons from the fallen guards. Lorca asked the older Tellarite, "Where's your ship?"

"We were in a small merchant-ship when they caught us. Last I saw it, it was in the docking bay. We have a bigger ship nearby." Then the Tellarite looked Lorca over with suspicion. "Who are you, Terran? Are you Resistance?"

Before Lorca could decide which lie would be most effective, Otib stepped in with, "Yes. He's with me."

Time was of the essence. Security was presumably focusing their efforts on Ko'mek, but at any moment more guards could come through the door to make sure the Klingon was the only escapee. While the Tellarites were milling around, the humans were edging toward the exits. That made sense. The humans were probably crew members, here for disciplinary infractions. They might want to get out of the brig, but they were unlikely to throw their lot in with a bunch of aliens to actually try to leave the ship. And, while the aliens he met seemed not to recognize Lorca as his alter ego, Terrans might. That could be useful.

In a loud, authoritative tone, Lorca addressed the room at large, "If you're with me, fine. If not, feel free to leave. We're taking Discovery. I've got people on decks 6 and 9. Our first stop is the Armory, then on to Engineering."

The Tellarites looked startled, and even Otib cocked his head to the side curiously. The last of the humans fled the brig. After a beat, the old Tellarite said gruffly, "That's a stupid idea. You're going to get us all killed. And who put you in charge?"

Lorca responded, "Of course it's a terrible idea. I'm counting on the Terran prisoners who just left sharing it with their superiors, in order to get back in their good graces."

The Tellarite snorted appreciatively.

"I don't have any 'people'. It's just the ten of us—eleven, if we can corral our angry young Klingon. Which reminds me . . ." Lorca went over to the first guard Ko'mek attacked, pulled him up to a seated position, looked him in his remaining eye and asked, "You want to live?"

The man nodded, warily. Lorca said, "Report that the Captain's new personal guard is complicit in the break-out and attempted coup. You can say you heard it from him"—he gestured toward the strangled guard—"so you don't get blamed if it turns out to be false." The guard complied, and Lorca knocked him unconscious with the butt of his gun.

The group left the brig and moved down the corridor cautiously, Otib and a pair of Tellarites in the lead. Lorca brought up the rear, alongside the senior Tellarite—whose name he learned was Taureg, though everyone called him "Targ". He walked with Targ to be able to confer with him, and not at all because, post-agonizer, a rotund aging Tellarite was about his speed. As they passed bodies Ko'mek had left in his wake, the Tellarites efficiently appropriated weapons.

"You are trying to confuse the girl-Captain." Targ said.

"Yep," Lorca confirmed. Though probably not as crazy as she pretended to be, at her age Tilly couldn't have all that much command experience. He wanted to feed her paranoia, get her looking for internal threats rather than focusing on potential escape routes. Since her personal guard must be a recent replacement of the one the Klingons killed, he was a plausible target for mistrust. Lorca also recalled that he was big and strong, maybe tough enough to take on Ko'mek. Casting suspicion on him might remove a threat, should Ko'mek make it into Tilly's presence.

Tellarites were known for being fierce and methodical fighters. These were no exception. But they were also keener than others of their race Lorca had met, moving swiftly without the usual grumbling. They met little resistance, dispatching maybe a dozen attackers before arriving at a small unmanned auxiliary control room just outside the docking bay. As the nonhumans would attract attention standing in the corridor, they all had to crowd inside. Lorca was only able to gain limited access to the computer, but it was enough to determine that the Tellarites' vessel was inside the bay, along with a number of small combat crafts, and that there was a supply transport ship scheduled to depart soon.

"So, just how attached are you to your ship?" Lorca asked Targ.

Targ grumbled.

XXXXX

The bay doors opened, and the Tellarites charged straight for their ship, thundering like a herd of wild boar. They took out the security officers guarding the impounded vessels and, by the time crewmen from elsewhere in the docking bay arrived to engage them, they had boarded their ship and established defensible positions near the entry door. Taking advantage of the distraction provided by the initial charge, Lorca and Otib slipped onto the supply transport vessel and quietly disabled its three-person crew. The last crewman to be stunned input the necessary take-off procedures, motivated by Otib's recently-acquired dagger at his throat.

Then Lorca disembarked and headed toward four small combat crafts nearest to the launch area. The Tellarites shut their entry door, which was the signal for Otib to beam all the Tellarites, except Targ, from their ship to the transport ship. A minute later, Otib took off. Before the launch bay exit could close, Targ followed him out.

While all eyes were on the escaping ship—and the poor benighted supply transport it nearly brushed against in the process—Lorca phasered the landing struts on three of the combat crafts and hopped into the fourth, whose cockpit was left open as its pilot presumably went to help with the crisis. The landing strut sabotage wouldn't actually keep the ships from taking off, but it would raise alarms in start-up, triggering a diagnostic sequence and giving Lorca a head start.

By now, the bridge had been alerted to the problem. Discovery fired on the Tellarite ship, but it was too close to the hull to target properly. The transport vessel blundered around, trying to avoid getting hit, nearly crashing into the Tellarite ship, which took a shot across their bow. Otib—whose accent was minimal, compared to that of the Tellarites—sent a panicked distress call, audible in the docking bay: "Hold your fire, Discovery! Navigation failing! Request immediate assistance! Hold your fire!"

Lorca wouldn't put it past Tilly to blow up their own supply ship, if it got in the way. Tamping down his own regional accent, he transmitted, "Fighter 1-2-2 requesting emergency clearance to intercept fugitive vessel."

Permission was granted, and he took off. He made a show of exchanging fire with Targ's ship, then transmitted, "Transport vessel, you're in my way. Discovery, hold your fire so they can clear the area. I wanna barbecue some piggies!"

His accent slipped a little on the word 'barbecue'; hopefully nobody noticed. There was no confirmation of a cease-fire, but Discovery did pause their blasting and the transport ship limped off.

Lorca and Targ engaged in battle more intensely. Targ's shields failed. Lorca carefully avoided any direct hits on his "opponent" until he detected the transport ship, in the distance, making a sharp course correction. Then he targeted the engine and blew the Tellarite ship out of the sky.

"Nice work, 1-2-2. You are cleared to re-dock," came the transmission from Discovery.

Lorca responded, "Copy that. My pleasure. I'm coming in." Then he shorted out one of his own thrusters, causing a cascading overload in the ship's systems. "Hang on. He must've nicked me. I've got engine trouble. Initiating fire suppression."

Moments later, sounding alarmed, Lorca transmitted, "Mayday! Mayday! I'm losing containment! Request—"

The transmission cut out. Within the space of a breath, Lorca's fighter exploded.

XXXXX

Lorca materialized on the transporter pad of the supply vessel. The small space was crowded with Tellarites. Targ was nearby, and Otib was visible in the pilot's seat. "Did you get him?" Lorca asked urgently.

Both of them shook their heads solemnly. Otib said, "I couldn't detect any Klingon life signs to lock onto."

Targ added a gruff, "I scanned too. Found nothing."

Lorca sighed. "He must've already been dead." It had been a long-shot. They had no idea where, on Discovery, Ko'mek had gone. Their only hope was to get a transporter lock via his distinctive life signs, as the only Klingon on board. Of course, that only works when one is alive.

Ko'mek wasn't the first soldier Lorca had sent to his death. And all of the Tellarites had made it, though one was badly injured. Overall, a win. Assuming, of course, that Targ's friends were nearby.

They were. Once the transport vessel had put some distance between themselves and Discovery, Targ signaled the larger Tellaraite vessel, which he said was lurking not far away, in "stealth mode". The Tellarites warped in, beamed them up, and warped out. At Lorca's behest, they left the transport ship on autopilot, awaiting its crew's return to consciousness.

Lorca didn't believe in Sto-vo-Klingon-Valhalla, but he nevertheless hoped that Ko'mek found himself in a better place.

XXXXX

Note: This is shaping up to be a long story—several more chapters, plus two epilogues. Our friends from prime Discovery (and Cornwell :-) will appear later on. I hope you are enjoying the ride!