Later Days {Star Trek Enterprise Fan Fiction}

Seven Women, Part 7

Winona Kirk

My nanoseconds are winding down. My lungs feel hot. It's hard to breathe at all. That damned fireball is greedily sucking up all of the oxygen in this sealed room. It's a tossup as to how it'll kill me. Smoke inhalation? Burns? Suffocation? I shouldn't joke, but you're talking to a guy with few options but to joke, Kevin. You know I was never a praying man, not like Declan, who converted to Judaism to marry Rebecca.

I don't really know Mrs. Kirk. We met briefly a few times. I knew she was pregnant; I'd see her in the Kelvin's corridors sometimes. She's gotten really big, and seems to be so uncomfortable.

We were attacked; the captain of the enemy ship was apparently a mad Romulan; I gotta believe that now. I dunno what he threw at us, but we had no way to counter it. And so Captain Robau is dead and Mrs. Kirk's husband, George, is in command, and he has been for, what, fourteen minutes? Something like that.

I saw her, you see. She must be in labor, because she was screaming her head off when I saw her, being taken on a gurney, headed for the closest medical shuttle. It's Number 37, I think. No matter, long as they get there.

I saw her, and I saw that fireball, and I hit the controls to shut the fire door and seal this room. This is what I did. As if anyone surviving will remember, Kevin. I guess I saved her life, and that of her kid. She'll never know. And George, I bet he's gonna go down with the ship, too. The Kelvin is, now, a ship of death.

There's an eerie quiet, even though I know that fireball is coming, and it's almost here. Tongues of flame are almost upon me, and I know they must be crackling and sizzling and popping like some sort of demented barbecue. Can you people hear it? Can you? Because maybe in my last nanoseconds, maybe I'm deaf. Maybe that's a blessing, to be spared the sounds, although not the sights, of the end. I dunno.

I have enough air for one last word, as this whole conversation has been going on in my head, lo these many nanoseconds. One word, one name. The name of the one woman of these seven, the one who meant the most. Our mothers, my boss, my honeys, my boss's wife, all of them made the cut, but this name, this is my final cut, I suppose. I said I had never loved anyone. I dunno, maybe I did. Maybe I always have, Kevin.

Here come the flames.

"Takara."