Bird on a Wire (An Enterprise novel coming in September 2003)
* * * * *
Just one drink.
It's not like you'd been shit-faced or anything. Just one.
But now you half-recline, half-sit in your ready room, chin on your arms on your desk, wondering what the hell had gotten into you, watching the stars as they pass...as you pass them.
They'd heard you, stunned, as a good crew should have been to hear their captain talk like that. Quiet, an errant cough in the background, shifting glances around the room. You'd offered it in the round-robin of the moment, you'd meant it to sound like a joke, but it had come out sarcastically. You couldn't in good conscience say you hadn't meant it, really. All good sarcasm has a bit of truth in it. You'd then excused yourself, and they hadn't said another word.
The time of year affected a lot of people this way, but in the past when the end of one and beginning of another sometimes brought out your darker id, you'd usually melted into yourself, by yourself. Silently offering cynical, half-hearted toasts to the last twelve months, to accomplishments, to the "new frontier." To what it had brought, and what it had not been. Alone, in your quarters, or on your front porch. Not in front of your crew. Never there.
The year had been, well, not as good. Not as good as the first, not as exciting. A lot more expectations, in terms of discoveries, adventures, good old-fashioned fun, even, but then, seconds are often disappointing. The anticipation of something new is replaced with familiarity, and everyone knows what is bred from that. Second marriages. Second children. Second helpings.
Even second chances can leave something to be desired.
This part of space was becoming comfortable, known. But being away from family and friends, being away from the Earth, real earth, beneath your feet, between your toes, tracked into a house, your own house...another year takes you that much further away from all that you know is yours. Has been yours.
Strangers along the way become welcome distractions. The dangers lurking beyond the next star become just another day at work. Faces that pass you in the hall, acknowledge you on the lift, smile at you across the table, they are family now. But not really.
Not the family you can relax with. Tell old stories around. Be yourself.
Maybe that was it. You'd had no time to be yourself. Always the captain, always the answer man. The buck still stopped here. There was no one else to blame.
Even when alcohol was involved. Maybe especially so.
But it had been just one drink, christ.
Enough, though. Enough to make you blurt out a word a thought a sentence...those kinds of words thoughts sentences that are best kept to yourself if only for the sake of your crew.
Only for the sake of your crew.
Not for your own.
Space had become comfortable, in the way that a relationship becomes comfortable. Stale. Bland. Comfortable in a way that makes someone move on to the next empty smile, the next alluring curve, the next good-looking opportunity.
You suppose the sea had the same effect, all those centuries ago. Rise and swell, storm and calm, beginning and ending. Dullness can bring apathy, and apathy can kill a voyage. It's all the same, after a while.
After a long while. Even the buzz you can get from near-death experiences, week after week, can become old, make you wish for something a little more...what? Different? How much more "different" can it all be? After all...going where no man, and all that...different? Hell, how about abso-fucking-lutely off the wall? This was the dream, man, this was how it's all supposed to be.
You've got your aliens, you've got your space ships, your uncharted planets, your time travel...you've got it all. All a little boy dreams of facing in his pre-adolescent days, all a young man dares to think about in his teenage years. All you ever wanted.
All you ever wanted.
So now you had it. You'd had it. Year Two.
And it wasn't what you wanted all the time, anymore. You were tired, and sometimes you were bored, and right at this moment, you maybe just want to go home. You want the familiar past. No, you want...aw, hell you don't know what you want.
Maybe next year things would be different. Maybe next month, you'd feel the tingle again. Things would look brighter. The apathy would be gone, and replaced by that edge, the edge of not knowing, the drug of adrenaline coursing.
But tonight, this year's end...tonight you'd had one drink and forgotten where you were, or where you were not.
You sigh a deep sigh, and push into your forearm with the top of your head, working it back and forth. Maybe you hadn't been heard, really. Maybe no one would wonder. Just a drink talking. Just a moment. The captain is human, after all. He didn't really wish them ill, naw...he's the good guy, he's the captain. He'll sober up.
Just one drink, geez.
You straighten abruptly at the chirp from the door. A terse word from your own lips startles the silence. "Come."
Trip pokes his head in, slowly at first. "Cap'n?" The voice is hesitant, almost whispering. Careful.
"Uh, I'm sorry to disturb you, but..."
"What is it, Trip?" That had sounded harsher than you'd meant. This time, too.
"We were just wondering...I was just wondering, uh...." He stumbles over the words, then finally blurts it out.
"Jon...who in the _hell_ are Berman and Braga, and just why would you wanna kill 'em?"
-- FIN--