Chapter 7
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"How and when and where and why
stars and sun and moon and sky"
(P. Gotlieb)
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He blinked his eyes open. Darkness. Complete absence of light. The algid, empty, silent blackness of space. He was floating around in space, his eyes open but unseeing.
"There is nothing to see," he thought. "So this is it. Darkness. Void. Emptiness. Death."
He let the freezing blackness envelop him, powerless against the endlessness of space. He floated around lightly, boundless, he himself a tiny bit of the unforgiving, calm, icy expanse.
And then he felt something brush against his right arm. He moved his hand, and felt a cold edge under his touch. Solid. Metal, maybe.
He grabbed it and levered on it, gyrating his body. His right foot made contact with another solid surface, thumping dully. "Sound. There's air in here…"
Just as the thought traversed his mind, his eye caught a flicker of light from his left and he turned to see what it was.
Glittering stars were watching him, motionless, shaping in the darkness the silhouette of one of Enterprise's portholes. A faint memory flickered through his consciousness, the echo of a voice. "Remember the stars…" But his rational mind was struggling to put the pieces together and take in the situation.
He was not floating in space, he was aboard Enterprise.
But the absence of gravity, the darkness and the growing cold he could feel seeping to his bones told him something was terribly wrong.
"There's air still," he thought, "but the life support must be off, or the temperature would be warmer…." He felt panic settle in the pit of his stomach. He knew the air left would be exhausted very soon, or, otherwise, everyone on board would die from hypothermia, whichever came first.
"Maybe it's possible to restore the atmosphere pumps… at least some of them."
He had to get to the environmental systems. Now.
He began thrashing around, holding to the built-in furniture, trying to swim towards he didn't know what, unidentified objects bumping inordinately on him. Then he realized this wouldn't bring him anywhere. His ship and his crew were in danger. He breathed deeply, closed his eyes and focused himself, calling forth his inner strength. First of all, he needed to know where he was.
He began feeling for the floating objects surrounding him. A cold rectangular shape…. probably a PADD. A puzzling roundish object. He discarded it quickly, no time to lose. A mug. "Maybe I'm in the mess hall. The furniture though doesn't seem right." The pliant texture of paper. He grabbed it. Pages. A leather cover. A book! As far as he knew no-one else, beside him, had books on the ship. So this must be either his ready room or his quarters. He felt around, trying to locate the main pieces of furniture, hoping to God he'd find himself to be in his quarters. But soon, he had to acknowledge he was floating around in his ready room.
To reach Engineering he'd have to crawl down the vertical service tube to D-deck.
He renewed his efforts to reach the door, swearing under his breath.
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The Bridge was even darker than his ready room, the powerless main screen a dead void of even the faint light of stars. But here he could at least grip the rail running around the central section and shove himself ahead.
He bumped twice against the unconscious body of a floating crew-member. The temptation was strong to stop and check on their condition, but he knew that, if they had a chance to be saved, he needed to reach engineering. It was a race against time.
"It's too late." A familiar voice resonated like a breath in his ear. The slight foreign accent made his skin goose bump on his arms. "You cannot do anything. They're dead already."
"They're not dead!" he cried into the darkness, rage shaking in his voice. "I can still save them!"
He doubled his efforts, his breath ragged in the thinning air.
"There's nothing you can do," the voice whispered sweetly. "Let it go…"
Jonathan didn't answer. He gritted his teeth and pushed harder against the handrail.
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The sound of his ragged breath rebounded against the surface of the narrow tube, while the jumping light of the plasma torch made it vacillate around him. It was strange to glide in the darkness without an up or down, his limbs and body weightless.
He knew that time was running out, but a strange idea of being suspended in time, a sense of estrangement, was taking him.
"I am no-where…"
The thought was like a vertigo sweeping through him. But he shut it away, taking a strong hold of himself. He had a mission to accomplish. People depended on him. He couldn't stop to think now.
He had reached the junction to what would, under normal circumstances, be the horizontal tube leading to engineering. Only, now, there wasn't horizontal or vertical, only the way he had to follow, taking him deeper into darkness and silence.
The tube seemed to narrow around him, his breath became more laboured and his chest felt tight. He stopped a second, rubbing his face with his hands, inhaling deeply. The air was cold, thin, stale.
Another fleeting thought passed through him: it felt like a tomb. Dark, cold, narrow.
He chased it away, again. He took another deep breath and pushed himself ahead, gliding away into darkness.
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The hatch to engineering had jammed and he had to use a spanner to force it open. He was exhausted, the air was getting unbreathable.
"Time is running out. I must be quick!"
He propelled himself to the environmental system control panel. He checked it out feverishly. The system had collapsed. He tried to restart the safety interlocks, praying they were not irretrievably damaged. There wouldn't be time for anything else.
He waited with bated breath, one, two seconds. Three.
Then he heard a thud coming from somewhere deep into the bowels of the ship and the whizzing sound of the pumps restarting. A kind of enormous breath passed through Enterprise, inflating her ribcage and lungs. Archer felt the familiar pull of gravity drawing him softly to the ground and emergency lights began to flicker around, heralding the return of life.
He crumpled to the floor, spent, heaving with painful gasps. He would have cried with relief, but, together with light and air, the blaring sound of alarms was invading the ship. His blood froze in his veins. He knew the sound only too well.
It was the sound no-one wanted ever to hear on a starship: the peculiar sound of the alarm signalling that a warp core breach had occurred.
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He stood in front of the main reactor panel, trying his best to reverse the damage, but he knew very well it was a miracle which would not happen. The antimatter containment was lost and the only viable, although very likely useless, option, was trying a warp core ejection.
"I told you it was useless. They're dead already, you cannot do anything," the voice said once again at his ear. "Let it go."
Archer wheeled around, expecting the familiar red glare, but there was no-one in front of him.
"Stop it!" he challenged. "I will not give up. There's still hope!"
He turned back to the console, working quickly, starting the ejection procedure. The blaring of the alarm had now taken on a frantic quality. He knew, in the rational part of his mind, that there was no hope.
But, for some unknown reason, he could not let himself accept defeat.
There was something inside of him which would not give up. Something as hard as steel and as shapeless as water. Something warm and strong and easy. Life.
He felt light and heat surge through him, starting from a flickering sparkle in his chest, growing and radiating, reaching his stomach, his legs, his arms and spreading through each of his fingers, his head, expanding, enveloping him like sunlight.
The bodiless voice was now raging in his ear: "Fool! It's too late! They're dead! Can't you see it?"
But then, he couldn't hear it any longer. The white heat seared through him and the scorching light of a collapsing star invaded his very soul. He struggled not to fall, had to close his eyes, blinded, staggering.
He blinked twice, trying to see. Disoriented.
And when he finally succeeded in opening his eyes again, it was to the pure white light of Enterprise's sickbay.