MARY CELESTE | @wentnotgentle
Soldier’s steadiness sets in place; breath in, and out, heartbeat slow ( ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum; a moment there — was it his heart? Or the small silence broken by the ship? ). It’s a shift; one that washes with a gentle ease like water against the shore. He trusts it, always will. Survive. Survive. Survive, it echoes. A reminder of time that once was — something left behind with an ease with fall of loyalty. An explorer now, he reminds himself ( but still he catches glimpse of form; of a wariness that collects ).
Paranoia comes early, silence momentarily there before their steps ( boots with a softened clang against metal floor ) — before a strange hum of life that causes frown. A look to share with the other, where he thinks back to words before: Trouble? Us? The pilot wonders if it’s that which jinxes them, coaxes something dormant here to wake. Making it worse for yourself, ‘Ru. Don’t, he thinks. Panic confuses the mind, and in turn, threatens error.
Another deep breath, and another push of air from lungs.
He was never good with anything that even touched the thought of spooky.
You’re an explorer, Ru, explore.
“ No welcome party — little creepy, ” he says, voice light as if in search of joke as he walks, eyes scanning the distance, watching for movement — for any sign of … well… anyone. Life.
( It’s cold, it’s lonely, walls whisper yet the pilot doesn’t understand. )
Strange, where things seem intact ; where there around them are signs that life once lived here. Recent, too. A gesture then, for them to turn and follow the corridor. If there’s no crew, they’ll find the answer elsewhere — to bridge, and to their main computer. As they walk, he settles in those moments of silence and wonders, what could happen?
It’s space; vast in its spread and ever expanding — there they are, in the unknown. And where nothing should seem out of the ordinary here ( possibilities endless, and the threads of time that cross and weave seem infinite ) — it is. Hard to ignore relativity that comes with knowledge; that which now was beyond that generated by knowledge had and shared among the planets of the Federation. They expand, like the space around them, but so the question comes: How much do they really know?
More questions, than answers. Sulu hopes that this one is straightforward.
“ Seen anything like this before? ”
The tension radiating from Sulu is palpable, radiating from him with every steadying breath, every cautious glance. In this hollow space, it seems to be dampened, absorbed by the cold, quiet metal of the silent ship beneath them.
And it is cold. Not fatally so, but Coop can feel the warmth leeching from his fingers just as the hard-wired tension is leeched from the air. Freed from his helmet, his breath ghosts through the air in misted puffs, skittering away with the current of the circulated air. Perhaps the Agrathi run a little colder than humans, he tells himself. Perhaps this is normal.
“It’s a big ship,” Coop muses, gloved fingers of his spacesuit reaching out to brush the dim-lit sides of the corridor they’re in. “Could be they’re still en route.”
And then, because the observation was made to lift spirits rather than to close them in with claustrophobic doubts, he smiles a lop-sided smile. “Still blowing up balloons, maybe.”
He’s never seen the other pilot like this. For all that he’s good at hiding it, the set of his bones whispers fear, or at least the potential for it. The cage of his ribs is an empty space waiting to be filled, and Coop can see the doubt, the threat of panic, setting in around the edges. Still, Sulu holds himself together. Coop’s tranquil, not yet raised to anything above unease. He follows Sulu down the corridor, their footsteps echoing back on themselves.
He tips his head at the proffered question, takes a long moment to find an answer.
“In movies, maybe,” he says, words desert-dry with humour. He resists the next words. Right before everyone dies.
From the silence swims, gradual, the sound of music. It coasts along the corridor, slow and steady, seemingly louder and then fading once more; the orbit of a shark, hungry and waiting. Coop stops by a door, head ducked to listen. When he reaches out, the door ghosts open with a half-heard whisper.
It’s an office -- small, crowded, scattered with the debris of any engineer’s work space. In the corner, the blue-white glow of a screen marks the source of the music. On the desk, a collection of parts, a spanner, seemingly abandoned mid-use. He picks up the parts, examines them. One screw is loose, half in, a job not quite finished.
It’s as though, between one breath and the next, the ship was fully abandoned -- no warning given, no preparations made. She’s still drifting, slow, still showing signs of life not-long gone. Something stirs at the edges of his memory.
“They found her at partial sail,” he murmurs, to himself, and turns his head, seeking an access panel -- something that might give him some clue to the ship’s engines, her escape pods. There’s nothing here; the bridge must remain their destination. “Lifeboat gone. Never found the crew.”
