I am not a Trekkie. I am merely in love with Chris Pine and JJ Abrams' reboots. (Title comes from a poem I can't recall the title or author of)
Drifting to the lullaby of humming engines, the Enterprise glides through everlasting night. He's sitting in the captain's chair, his chair.
-He's laughing. Of all the activities he could have been doing at the time, it's pure irony that he's actually happy at the exact moment of catastrophe.
Stars and galaxies linger in the viewport, gentle as snowflakes. No warp capabilities. No navigational systems. No communications array. Just infinite space.
-The systems crash nearly simultaneously. Alarms blare, red lights and reports of damage and no reason no explanation no time.
A cup of tepid coffee is in his hand. He never drinks it, just fixes one at the replicator every morning. Lingering habit, quest for routine, bizarre sign of grief. Whatever the reason, he does.
-He's out of options. The only choice he has really isn't a choice at all. Diverting all remaining power to the transporters is easy. Diverting his crew is much harder.
It's quiet. Without the constant barrage of talk activity life, he can actually feel the vibrations of the engines. They strum up and down his rib cage. Echo back from his hollow chest.
-Of course, they all protest. Fight him with everything they've got. Chekov with numbers. Bones with idioms. He can't prove it, but he's pretty sure Lt. Uhura is about to use her fists.
Sometimes, he wonders how far he's gone. Untethered, the Enterprise coasts on star dust and fractured light. Sometimes, he doesn't leave his quarters.
-It shouldn't surprise him as much as it does when Spock refuses to leave. He likes to think that's a shining example of his influence on his Vulcan officer. Or maybe stupidity is contagious.
In the beginning, when his heart was hammering sweat rolling breaths panting, he tried. He tried to return to his crew. He tried everything. Tried until his lungs ached and his muscles spasmed.
-Spock is smart, but not devious. That's how he gets him, tricks him into leaving. First officers don't go down with the ship. The captain does.
He stands up and shadows shift over his face. There's an idea forming in his head, a concept being birthed. Soon, it'll be a screaming pink thing taking its first breath.
-There's a planet near them. By some stroke of luck, it's Class M. No idea if it's friendly to the Federation. No time to check the records.
The halls are empty. The ship is silent. A thin band of light pulses along the juncture of wall and floor at his feet and just ahead, a faithful companion. It's the conservative emergency lighting.
-They're taken in groups of fifty, a hundred. Women and children first. Then the men. Then the essential personnel. Until everyone's gone. Except for him.
He runs a hand over the suit that would protect him. Leaves it. That would defeat the whole purpose of his self-appointed mission. He's tired of waiting for death.
-When he's sure the last crew member has been transported, he programs his own transport. Bolts from his chair and races to the pad. But he's too late. There's no power for a second try.
The garbage chute is narrow. He fits. Crawls forward on hands and knees. The manual handle is ahead of him, he knows. Space will be cold but it will be quick.
-He's alone.
He isn't alone. Just when he's about to surrender himself to the vacuum of space because death has to be better than sitting in silence in his empty ship, a white hand closes over his. The touch is icy cold. Like space, he thinks. Then he passes out.
When he wakes up, he's not in the trash chute. He's back on the bridge. In the captain's chair. He wonders if he was dreaming. But a flash of white convinces him otherwise. It's a girl. She's hiding underneath the science station console.
He beckons her out with a simple gesture. She comes, hesitantly. He can still see the science station. Right through her transparent face.
It's a trick of the eyes when he sees gold in her curls and blue in her eyes. She's hovering, bare toes not quite touching the deck. Her white dress sways about her legs, though there is no wind.
"I want you to smile."
Her mouth doesn't move but she has a child's voice. He can hear it.
"Who are you?"
Her lips purse, as if he's asked her to figure a large mathematical sum in her head. He waits until she shrugs then he turns away.
-Endless night outside makes it impossible to calculate the passage of time without the use of the ship's computer. He measures it in cups of coffee, in walks through abandoned living quarters, in the dull tempo of blood in his ears.
When she does appear again, he's laying on a bed in the infirmary. With his eyes closed, the scent of his surroundings almost fools him into believing Bones is lurking nearby with a hypo he's always overly eager to jab in his captain's neck. It's the cold that tugs the fantasy away from him.
"I want you to smile."
He rolls over, turns his back to the transparent girl in the white dress. A soft click and then light, brighter than he's seen in ages, tickles at his eyelids. It's the one in Bones' office. He hasn't moved. Neither has the girl. Her young voice still comes from behind.
"I want you to smile."
Pieces start to come together. Not in his head, he's not a genius like the rest of his bridge crew. It's in his gut. Clues and hunches merging into an uneasy feeling he can't shake.
-Without power, he can't launch the escape pods. Even the ones on the bridge malfunctioned. Without an engineer, he can't fix them. Odd that the life support systems are operational though.
Music plays over the ship's internal broadcast. Upbeat, lively, the kind that plays in bars on Earth. Song after song until there's crackling static. He wants to dismiss it as random electrical fluctuations. But he can't.
-Sometimes he drinks. Room temperature liquor. Drinks and drinks and drinks. Till his stomach's ready to burst, head spinning at warp speed and his hurting heart dulls a little bit.
His favorite foods appear on random tables. Tantalizing sweets and savory meals. He swallows bile and keeps walking. The food sits, never rots, suspended in time.
-He dreams of rescue. Of federation ships arriving in the viewport. His crew beaming aboard. His friends come to take him home. Those dreams are the hardest.
Holographic entertainment, voice recordings. Various amusements and comforts. Springing at him from all over the ship. It's no coincidence.
"I want you to smile."
His breath chases steam from his coffee as he stares out the window. He doesn't recognize these stars.
-It's a mild way to exercise his mind, imagining what would happen if a Klingon ship discovered his. Defenseless and vulnerable as she is, the Enterprise would surely be blown to pieces.
He can't always see her, but he's certain she's there. She's the prickling hairs on the nape of his neck. The inexplicable shiver down his spine. That feeling inside, like he's been eviscerated.
-Talking out loud only makes him sound like a mad man so he gives it up. His sanity might be slipping away but there's no reason to abandon it prematurely.
It scares him to think he'll forget about them, the wonderful people who served faithfully under his command. Back braced against the wall, elbows on knees, hands over his head, he recites their names. The faces are fading, but he keeps their names.
"Why won't you smile?"
Her pretty mouth is pouting now. He tells himself to ignore her. Shut his eyes and pretend she isn't there. But he can't live like this. Suspended in time, drifting in space, alone. He can't.
"Because I miss my family."
Fire in his eyes and fire in his belly and fire in his clenched fists. She shrinks away from him, color rippling through her before she bleaches white. White like snow. White like bones. White like death.
"You can not smile without them? Not even for me?"
A crystalline tear wets her eyelashes, captures the brilliance of a galaxy. She blinks and it slips down the curve of her cheek, splashes on her dress.
She disappears.
He holds his breath. Waiting. Then the hum of the engine cuts off. The floor falls away as he floats upward.
The Enterprise is dead.
Panic threatens but the memory of Spock's rational demeanor keeps it at bay. He twists, kicks against the ceiling, angles himself toward the viewport. Part of him wants to calculate how long he has until he runs out of air. The rest of him knows he's been dying since the last crew member beamed off the ship.
Now, without the last reserves of power to keep her stabilized, the Enterprise lists. Twirls passively, no point of reference. He glides across the bridge gradually, in slow motion, no gravity to hold him down.
Everything is soft, hazy along the edges, blurred into indiscriminate shapes and shadows. Mere smears of white and blue and black. White of the walls. Blue of the consoles. Black of the sky.
He's panting. Short shallow sharp. There's a throbbing in his skull but it doesn't bother him too much. Nothing does. Not anymore. He's not sure, can't remember why he was so distressed in the first place. This really isn't all that bad. Sure, he's dying but that's nothing new. He saved his crew. That's the important thing. The only thing that matters. He likes to think his dad would be proud. Maybe he'll even get to join him.
It's a decent way to go. He's a captain going down with his ship. There are worse things. He's on the bridge of his ship. The last sight his eyes will see is the vast expanse of stars he loves to sail.
He thinks he closes his eyes. Thinks but doesn't know. Thinks because he must be dreaming. Dreaming in eternal sleep. Dreams a ship winking out of warp. Appearing so suddenly in front of him. Like the arrival of an angel. Come to take him home. He thinks. Thinks but doesn't know.
After, when the whole incident is behind them. The hours, days, weeks he spent without them. After, he's different. A little bit altered. Changed somehow. In all the small ways that matter. Hesitant to speak, hesitant to laugh. Hesitant to smile and somehow lose them all over again.
An aversion to coffee and long walks through seldom used parts of the ship when the noise of talk activity life startles him so badly his shoulders shake and he can't quite catch his breath. When he stares into the corners of the bridge, stares deeply and intensely into the shadows beneath the science station, he doesn't dare tell them he's looking for a flash of white and a girl's sad face.