The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air.

—Lord Byron, "Darkness"

***

"No, Trip, not this. Anything but this."

"Please, Jon, I want it." And Trip's voice had something in it that Jon had never heard before. "I want *you*."

"Trip, no. No. I might need you later."

"Now look, Cap, you know it's the engineering department's turn, and there's just me and Kelly left. We got to have an engineer, and we should have Kelly."

Well, Trip was right. If it worked at all, they would need living women.

"Anyways, Cap, it's better for you if you don't have to decide." Trip's tone was amazingly calm. "Just think about the good things, not the bad."

But Jon couldn't help it; the tears had started again.

Trip saw them immediately. "Cap'n, don't cry, don't cry."

"Trip, I…"

"Listen, you can't be messing with your internal metabolism like that. My calibrations show a pretty narrow temp range." Then he shrugged. "You know you have to keep your initial input stable."

So Jon tried to put everything out of his mind but Trip. Trip's body, shoulders, beefy arms. Those narrow hips. In the innocent and impossibly sunny days of the past, when they'd swum together, run together, Jon had always appreciated the graceful bulk of Trip's flesh, appreciated it more than he dared speak.

But now it was just another part of the nightmare.

***

"Fucking hell," Malcolm had whispered, "what is that?"

That had been the day they'd discovered it. The goddamn day when the whole goddamn world ended, well, it wasn't just the world, it was all of it, all light and air and power and cells and appetites and impulses.

The entire starfield looked as if somebody had painted tar over it.

And all that day everyone had repeated: "What the hell is that?"

***

"Our captain would appear to be carrying what we might call a fire gene. If he is sufficiently…excited, he can spontaneously create fire. Prometheogenic, I believe it's called. There's a bad side to that, but some good too."

"How come we didn't know about that gene before?" Trip asked.

Dr. Phlox paused. "Nature has her own way of doing things. Before the calamity of birth, babies don't know how to breathe, but, once born, they spontaneously learn. Why?" He shrugged. "Perhaps the need predicates the ability. How did your world begin? Do you know? Was there not a spark of something somewhere? For all we know, a significant percentage of organisms all over the universe could have this Prometheogenic gene, but…until that," he gestured at the blackened starfield, "we didn't need it."

***

The first time it had happened, Malcolm had flung open the door to Jon's quarters with his phaser drawn and set. "Captain, there was a sudden massive discrepancy in the temperature readings! What happened?"

Jon was too astonished to speak. He wasn't even warm. "Hoshi…caught on fire," he finally whispered.

She had begun glowing in Jon's arms and then there was a flashpoint and a few ashes and nothing else.

"We felt the heat." Then Malcolm saw that the captain was naked. "Oh, my God, sir!"

Jon looked down at his still-aroused body. There was nothing around him but air which had been singed black and gold.

In the distance, alarms were going off, one after the other, as the heat hit in powerful waves.

***

"I guess it's one of those black holes." Trip looked away from the monitor, "but I thought they'd be quicker than that."

"There is a great deal about them we have yet to learn," T'Pol said in her measured way.

***

After the engineering department discovered Jon's fire could be used to fight the energy drain of the anomaly, the quartermaster made a pallet in the antimatter containment unit just for Jon's use.

Suddenly everyone wanted to go home. Maybe back on earth somebody could do something. Or save something.

***

Trip was on his hands and knees, and Jon made himself forget everything but the round beautiful flesh that he would soon bury himself in. He was wildly aroused.

"I made Malcolm suck my cock, Jon." Trip was panting now.

"So you've seduced men before?"

"Oh, yes."

"Many men?"

"Oh, yeah. Lots."

***

As they brought his partners to him, chosen in a ritual they only partially understood, Jon kept the strange purity of fire about him. It wasn't that they didn't forgive him. Fire had always been forgiven.

***

Within the last few days (but how could it be a day without a sun?) T'Pol had given up trying to reach the Vulcan frequency. It seemed the dark anomaly had gotten to them first.

At any rate, Earth was closer than Vulcania Prime.

She suffered terribly from the cold, but she did not lose her grim grace.

***

"Where did you and Malcolm do it?" And using that innocently primitive phrase made Jon's blood hum.

Trip gasped. Jon was jerking his heated length into Trip's core again and again.

"We did it in decon. It was so fucking hot." Trip sighed. "Travis watched."

"Did Travis jack off?" The childish phrase disguised the concern.

"Oh, yeah. He's got a big black dick." Of course, Travis was dead now, not even ashes or dust—just an exhausted energy that had sped them a little to their fate.

"Oh, Christ, I can feel it begin."

Jon was beyond the effects of the heat, but he heard Trip's shuddering, convulsing response to it, and then Trip's fingertips began to glow like heated tallow.

***

They could sense it all over the ship; it was like going into warp, but different somehow.

Malcolm looked at Kelly and sighed. "And what did that experiment achieve?" (Experiment: they had no other name for the horror that kept them going.)

Kelly's fingers flew over the dials and gauges and toggles. Then she sat back. "Tell T'Pol to try Earth again."

"Did we get that much closer?"

"Yes," she said quietly.

***

"Captain Archer," Malcolm called through the intercom. "We're reestablished contact with Earth. They are aware that something is going on, but they're weren't sure of its…gravity. Now we are close enough to radio our readings to them."

"Thanks be," Jon said. His power had always sat uneasily upon him. "Maybe we can stop this."

"Captain, I believe they want you to come home."

Jon was silent.

"Captain Archer, they know about our experiments. And about you. They want you there…before the anomaly reaches earth. They can use you as an energy source, they think."

"Oh, God."

"Sir, there's a little good news in a way. The last…one worked very well, and Kelly thinks that just one more will give us the energy to get home."

Home. Where white-jacketed technicians and military bosses could bring anonymous, officially-designated experiments to him. And Jon wouldn't be fucking his friends into flame, slaughtering them for fuel.

"Captain, the…chosen one will soon be with you."

"All right, Malcolm."

***

"Logically, it should be me. I will not mind the heat."

***

It was wrong, but Jon was immediately aroused when she walked in.

"I'm sorry, T'Pol. I'm sorry for all of it. Every damn thing."

She stood straight before him.

He had to forget it was T'Pol. He had to remind himself it would be nice to open those pale thighs and force himself in.

"Take your clothes off, T'Pol. Join me."

She gave him an enigmatic glance. Then, proud and beautiful, she began to undress. She was a boy's dream of big-breasted beauty, those long legs leading to the velvet center of her body.

Then she stood there trembling. "Jon, do what you want," she whispered in her dark voice.

Jon undressed too, glancing at her, disregarding her face, looking only at her breasts, her sex.

And, moving over to her, his knees opened her thighs and Jon found himself inside in her shivering body. Her cool green force versus his great red leaping power. The air was cool, but her skin was hot. It wouldn't take much to push her into flames and Jon kept that in mind as he shoved again and again.

He shut his eyes; he could see her bending over in her tight suit.

Then she screamed in ragged gasps, not at all like her deliberate breathing.

"Oh, yes, scream it out, baby. Scream for me."

***

Malcolm looked at the decimated bridge. Just a few people now. Kelly. Himself as acting captain. Then, scattered through Enterprise, about five other crew members attending to necessary repairs and Dr. Phlox in sick bay.

And, of course, below decks Jon.

When the fire alarms sounded now, they only fluttered and hissed.

Kelly looked at the monitors. "It worked. We'll rendezvous with real earth atmosphere in twenty-two hours."

Jon's fire had fueled a spastic warp, and the ship was shuddering.

Malcolm looked at the blurred starfield. As a child, he'd been quite religious. Candles. Rosaries. Prayer cards. All the dramatic panoply of the Catholic Church.

So many saints ended up in the fire. Ironic really, given how chilly the universe was. Fire and ice. Even more opposite than men and women. More opposite than black and white.

He checked the navigational headings. "Rendezvous. Now that's a word you don't hear every day."