Chapter Text
When they arrive at the seed-point, Lorca expects to see a black hole, or a vast anomaly, or a strange world, or anything but what they do see: a shuttle pod, utterly still in space. It should be drifting, but instead it’s a fixed point, as though held there by some invisible force.
“That’s it,” Stamets says. He’s standing at the front of the bridge with Lorca, gazing out with the half-dazed look he sometimes gets when he’s trying to look at the mycelial network and the real world at the same time. “The shell, whatever’s keeping the network separated—it all comes from the shuttle pod. Captain, we have to destroy it.”
“Sir, we’re read two life signs on board that shuttle,” Burnham interrupts. “I suggest beaming them out before we destroy the pod.”
There’s something hot and seething in Lorca’s stomach, radiating out into all his limbs—not quite anxiety, but the certainty that something is wrong. The shuttle is devoid of markings, but the shape of it could be any Starfleet—any Terran—pod. He doesn’t want to know who’s on board. He doesn’t want to bring them onto Discovery. He thinks they should destroy the shuttle now, before anyone tries to send another shuttle to investigate—
“Transporter room has a lock,” Saru says. “Shall we beam them over, Captain?”
How can he say no and still seem like their rational captain? He looks to Elan. “Lieutenant? They might pose a security risk. They may be the actual source of this cage rather than the shuttle pod.”
“They read as human,” Burnham tells him, and as much as he loves the sound of her voice, he wishes she would stop arguing for this. He feels with absolute certainty that bad things will happen if they bring those people on board. “Life signs are faint. They may need medical attention. Sir—”
“I know what Starfleet regulations say.” He doesn’t, but he knows she’s about to tell him that Starfleet won’t let them destroy a defenseless shuttle pod with two living humans in it when they’re entirely capable of beaming the humans out.
“Sir?” Saru would never act without instruction from him.
“Do it,” he says, and what he really means is kill them but everyone interprets it as it should be under Starfleet regulations and Saru tells the transporter room, “Energize.” Saru waits a beat and says, “Captain, they’re safely on board, but—”
“Launch torpedoes,” Lorca orders. He’s not going to wait any longer for someone to suggest that maybe they should send a team over to investigate. As happy as he is here in this place with Burnham, the last thing he wants is to form any kind of—link, with that shuttle.
Elan is always trigger-happy and today is no exception. She sends a full battery of torpedoes at the shuttle pod and it vaporizes even as Saru protests, “There could be scientific equipment…”
The Discovery doesn’t rock, but the sky all around them turns blinding white, like a flash of lightning, and it doesn’t change back. “Lieutenant?” Lorca turns toward Stamets and sees him enrobed in the smoke creature. “Lieutenant!”
“I can see the rest of the network again,” Stamets says, voice dreamlike. “We’re not connected, but I can see it. The walls fell down! I need to get to the spore chamber.”
No one can quite look out the front viewscreen and Lorca orders, “Polarize viewscreen.” Even with the polarization, it’s painfully bright.
“Captain Lorca, Specialist Burnham, security team—you’re needed in the transporter room urgently.” The voice comes over the comms and Lorca knew it, he knew something bad would happen, even if he couldn’t have said what.
When they reach the transporter room and see the life-signs that they’ve transported over, the gravity of the catastrophe becomes clear. Had Lorca been asked to name the two people who least wanted to see in the galaxy, he wouldn’t have named either of them, but only because it wouldn’t have occurred to him that it was possible.
Michael Burnham and Gabriel Lorca lie unconscious on the transporter pads.