Two pairs of feet strolled their way through an empty hall. The walls were made of complete steel, as was the ceiling, with simply a black through rug, racing it's way throughout the maze of twists and turns that was Johnathan Archer's ship.
The two pairs of feet belonged to none other than the Captain himself, and his young companion, Sim.
Enterprise was deserted except for the two. Sir had ordered that all persons were to be removed from the ship, and be stationed on the planet, but within their claimed boundaries.
About five years ago, SEF(Space Exploration Forces) set out a surveyor vessel to chart unknown areas of their galaxy, and others nearby. That ship was the Enterprise. Captain Johnathan Archer's mission was simple; graph and inspect any new uncultivated planet within their Territory. A pleasure Johnathan had, was to meet and greet new alien species, the first encounter was very important.
And so five years ago, the Enterprise came across a smaller vessel, belonging to the race of Xindi. Poor, unsuspecting and naive Archer welcomed them aboard, having a positive reaction with other first encounters. The Xindi boarded, and executed all female crewman, under the impression that the humans were reproducing on this craft, and so increasing their population in order to invade and cultivate any desolate planet, thus spreading their species.
Now Xindi are not a very friendly race, they like to be dominant, and the idea of a growing alien population expanding toward their own galaxy and home planet wasn't a very comforting thought. So after the massacre, they placed a micro-explosive in Enterprise's Warp Reactor.
When Archer and his remaining crew started the engines again to follow the Xindi ship's warp trail, their Warp Reactor imploded. The ship was forced down onto a nearby planet, fortunately, it was a scanned planet, and they knew the elements in it's atmosphere were made mostly of Nitrogen and Oxygen. It was habitable, for now.
For five years, Archer's remaining crew had laboured over their ruined craft. Within the last month they had grown so incredibly close to completion, but then... a disastrous accident struck, and they were left stranded again.
"This way." Sir instructed.
Johnathan walked up to a steel door, and it automatically slide open. Sim trailed behind his Captain, as entered into a dimly lit room.
Archer had lead the teenage boy in to his personal quarters.
Sim walked into his master's room, and glanced around, surprised at the extreme neatness. Not knowing what else to do, he sauntered over, and sat down on Sir's bed.
Archer suddenly whistled, and a small land mammal bounded across the room toward him.
"Hey, Porthos." Johnathan cooed, and scooped the small Beagle into his arms, "Hey boy."
"How cute." Sim admired. "Can he do any tricks?"
Sir glanced at Sim as he placed the dog down onto his bed, beside his other pet. "Well.." he dragged, "he can eat and sleep...not play fetch though. For some reason, I'm under the impression that he believes it to be degrading. Although I did try to teach him once, but after the age of eight months he stopped. Must've realized he was the only one chasing the tennis ball."
Sim chuckled, and reached out to gently stroke the back of Porthos' head, while the dog kept trying to lick his hand, in his own manner of greeting.
" I used to have a dog once..." Sim mumbled absent-mindedly, as he continued to try to pet the dog, and the dog continued to try to lick him. "...We called him Draco because he was as large as a Dragon,...and had the breath of one too."
Johnathan shifted his feet uneasily, trying to overcome the guiltiness he felt, somewhere in the pit of his stomach.
"Me and my baby sister Emily, used to play for hours with him..." Sim continued, "He was always so happy..."
"I see." Archer stated stiffly. Sim glanced upward, back toward the man standing only a few feet from him, and saw how rigid and anxious the Captain's face appeared to be. Awkwardly, the boy shifted his gaze, shifted them to somewhere else, anywhere else, and sparkling eyes fell upon a photograph, neatly placed on the Captain's wooden desk, of an older man.
Sim looked at the surprisingly intact photograph thoughtfully, pondering possible answers.
"Oh!" he exclaimed upon finding a suitable one, "That's Zephram Cocrine!". The boy excitedly stood up and stepped toward the Mahogany desk. He picked up the plastic frame with delicate fingers, as not to damage it in anyway, and stared with great admiration into a pair of tired emerald green eyes.
"This was the man who first developed Warp Drive." he whispered in awe, gazing upon the withered face of a fifty-two year old man. "He's practically my hero... Without his efforts, we'd still be stuck on that little planet."
Sim suddenly turned apologetically to Johnathan, "Not that I don't like Earth. You know, it's my favourite place in the whole world, in a matter of speaking."
Johnathan smirked, amused, "Yeah it's a pretty nice place." he chuckled.
Sim rounded on the photograph in his hands again. There were trees in the background. Large ones, the size of perhaps, Enterprise. If he could recall correctly, they were called Douglas Firs, and there was only a few of them left on Earth. They were one of the planet's many endangered species.
Gently, the boy stroked the captured image of the planets sky, almost longingly. He could remember spending long summer days with his friends at the lake, lying on the grass, and staring up into space, wondering if one day they could travel to stars so distant, that from where the were, couldn't be seen.
"...I miss Earth..." he sighed to himself.
Johnathan said nothing in response, but after a minute of dead silence, forcibly cleared his throat.
Sim glanced over his shoulder at him, and lightly placed the photograph back down. "Sorry," he smiled.
"--You know Sim," Archer began quickly, "I think the Launch Bay would be a better place to hang out, don't you? In fact, there's something down there you might be interested in...There's not much of really anything in here,...Except of course, Porthos."
Sim smiled, "Sure" he agreed.
It took the two only a few short moments to reach Launch Bay One, even though it was five floors below them. But with a brief walk back down the hall, and an even briefer trip in the turbo lift, the two humans found themselves in a very large, empty room.
Sir was right, Sim thought sarcastically, the Launch Bay is a much better place to hang out.
Where they had arrived, seemed to be incredibly bare.
In the centre of the Launch Bay was a Shuttle Pod, directly below it a trap door, and attached to the balcony, were control panels for the Launch Bay doors, and other operations. Besides those two objects, and the metal staircase leading to the balcony, the room was virtually vacant. And as the rest of the ship, it was constructed of primarily steel, giving it a very "metal box" appearance.
The Captain looked back at Sim expectantly. "Roomy, huh?" he asked.
Sim raised his eyebrows dubiously, and quickly glanced around. "Definitely roomy," he said.
The boy watched his Captain trudge toward the Shuttle Pod, open the hatch door, and rummaged around the insides, without saying a word. To be in such a large, empty, place was new to him, and made him feel slightly edgy.
"This is the perfect place,..." called the muffled voice of Captain Archer, "...to fly,...one of these." He suddenly withdrew from the Shuttle, holding a medium sized box under his arm. Then slammed the hatch door closed, and trudged back to Sim, unfolding the box's flaps as he came.
"I know when you were younger,... " Johnathan explained, extracting a Styrofoam covered object form the white cardboard box, "...that you had one of these. So I thought it would be fun, if you and I could play with it."
Images and memories of old toys and collectibles desperately played in the boy's head. He could only guess which one it might be. Sim stared eagerly at the mysterious padded item in which Sir was exposing. After a short battle with the Styrofoam, he held triumphantly in his hands,... a fully functional hover-craft.
Archer glanced up at Sim after revealing his present, and tried to gauge the boy's reaction. A delightful gleam of desire that shone in the Sim's gemstone eyes, told Archer he had picked the right box.
"A-A..." Sim stuttered, a little stunned, but thoroughly surprised and excited.
"A hover-craft?" Johnathan asked. Sim shock his head vigorously, his eyes never parting the small semi- plastic and part metal, hover toy.
"How did you know?" he asked, after the moment of disbelief had passed. He gently traced a slim finger down the nose of the small craft, feeling smoothness which plastic could only bestow.
Sir didn't reply, forcing Sim to avert his gaze, and shift toward his Captain.
"Sir? How did you know?" he reiterated.
Jonathan's tongue felt thick and dead, like some large disgusting fish between his teeth. "How did I know?" he confirmed, and sighed, stressfully thinking. "What man didn't have this toy growing up? Especially if they're in the Space Travel business."
He had hoped that elaborate explanation had satisfied what ever needed to be satisfied, and didn't require further extensions. The real surprise had to wait until later. The kind of later that was never meant to actually come, the kind of later that was difficult when it finally came.
Nevertheless, that simpleton answer seemed to please the simpleton, for Sim nodded his head in agreement.
"Would you like to have the first fly?" Johnathan offered, holding out the craft. "Captain?"
"Watch it, watch it... Keep the nose up, keep the nose up!... Okay now, good... Just level in out..."
called a tense voice, echoing throughout the unfilled air that was Launch Bay One. It ricocheted off the silence and metal walls, back to the strained ears of Sim.
"That's good flying." Johnathan complimented, after Sim had levelled out the remote controlled hover-craft, flying ten feet above their heads, in a zigzag like pattern. Ten minutes ago, the boy had trouble just keeping the toy from crashing into walls, which was really the only obstacle, but nevertheless, was still a difficult task.
His young face was furrowed in a deep concentrated stare, not once letting the hover-craft escape his sight.
It took another few moments for him to relax and feel comfortable at the wheel of a vessel as precious as this.
A thought struck him suddenly, without any evidence of being conjured, it was just abruptly there. He wanted to become a Starship Captain.
"You know my mom wants me to be an architect, can you believe that?" he sneered distastefully, " And my dad wants me to be an engineer one day. Which I guess is a bit better than being,.. you know,...an architect."
Although Sim caught a glimpse of the momentary stiffness on Sir's face, when he glanced quickly over to read the Captain's expression more closely, by that time he was already smirking. What ever deep feelings the Captain truly had, obviously, he had learned to keep them hidden. Or at least tried.
"Oh yeah?" Sir snorted.
"Yeah, but do you know what I really want to do?" Sim said in a more serious note. As serious as a teenage boy could be, "I wanna do this, I wanna command and fly one of SEF's Starships." Sim paused thoughtfully, "I wanna be just like you."
Even though he had caught the uncomfortable grimace on Jonathan's face previously, he completely missed the sharp smile Archer had flashed him. It meant nothing more than, "that's cute kid", in an almost condescending way.
"In fact, I bet I could tell you what my dad would say if I ever told him," Sim continued to chatter, trying to operate the Starship and hold a conversation at the same time, that too, proving difficult, " he'd probably say something to me like," Sim deepened his voice dramatically, trying imitate that of his father's, "Trip," he began, paying no attention to the returned expression on Johnathan's face, the same one he had hoped to catch a moment ago, the one of somber and attentive alertness, "If you become an engineer, than perhaps you can engineer a ship for SEF, hell, perhaps even become a Chief Engineer one day. But if you decide to become a Captain, what good'll that do'ya?"
His father, in Sim's opinion, always thought himself to be correct, no matter how foolish he sounded . Sim chuckled to emphasize that it was a joke when Johnathan didn't.
In fact, he didn't even reply, not that he didn't find it funny, but for the collected guilt in his stomach, left the air dead once more. Sim felt that the silence was too overpowering, and was compelled to keep it that way. His gaze shifted from the Starship, to it's controls. That irrepressible knot formed again, causing the all too familiar feeling of disappointment and, this time a hint of shame to override his mind.
For only a moment, simply because he could contain it no longer, Sim studied the joysticks and buttons on the control. But the question, like something sticky and wet stuck dead in his throat, had to be forced out. He bided his time, and edited his thoughts, making sure what he was to say, was said correctly, because the thought of repeating those words, made his stomach churn.
"Sir?" he cautiously drawled, "Why is it that everyone here calls me Sim, but my parents,...and Emily,...They all call me Trip?"
'Dammit', Johnathan thought angrily, 'so he had noticed that too. It's not like it was some miniscule detail either. Things like that only needed time before it rose to the surface.'
"Where is my family?" Sim whispered. He felt his voice begin to give, "Why am I here?"
'It was time' Sir decided, 'he has the right to know.'
The Captain cleared his throat, uncomfortably and forcibly, merely to prepare the silence for his important words to follow.
"That's a little difficult to explain," was all he said at first. Sim had suspected something simple like that to cover the truth, but what came next was completely unanticipated. "...Perhaps I should show you."
A breath of hope passed wildly through his fragile mind, "Wha-" he sputtered, and tore his gaze away from the answerless controls. Their eyes locked for a simple moment, a pair of blue and brown caught in each other's stare.
Sir felt he had to break their connection, feeling he could no longer stare at his desperate friend. The guilt was too much, it ate him from the inside, but whatever interior battle was being fought within him, it showed no sign on his emotionless face. To himself, it felt whenever he looked into Sim's eyes, he saw someone else's. Someone's who were exactly the same in every way, the only difference being, they belonged to another.
Sir opened his mouth, and parted his lips slowly, ready to say something, ready to explain, but the words kept getting lost in his head, kept getting pushed further away, by some nervous force. With an averted gaze, he cleared his throat again, and quickly spoke in a very casual manner, "Accompany me down to the Sick bay."
Words lost Sim too, and struck him mute. Though he tried to eagerly accept his Captain's order, his jaw was clamped shut, so he nodded his reply.