Residual: Part III - Knowledge, Not Instinct

Posted on Tue Nov 25th, 2025 @ 4:21pm by Sergeant Jace Morven

1,709 words; about a 9 minute read

USS Guinevere, 2388

Fifteen years. It sits in me two ways at once. Too long, like another lifetime, and close enough that I can still taste the air if I let myself, feel the gloves with blood crusted at the seams. It’s Martinez I think about most. Not because they died. They didn’t. They made it through with me. It’s the way they carried themselves, steady when everything else was sliding, the way they would at times crack out a comment, blunt and sharp, with that small grin tugging at their lips. It was never at anyone’s expense, always about the terrain. It was things I understood and I know that they did that on purpose, speaking a language plain for me.

The others looked at me different after that fight. They tried not to, but I saw it. A flicker of wariness under the routine. Even Raimi, who never rattled easy, gave me more space for a while, as if unsure about what had been unleashed.

Martinez didn’t. They met my eyes and held them. Never asked what I had done, never tried to soften it or put it into words. Just took me as I was, still sitting shoulder to shoulder with me when the nights were cold.

According to my file I was twenty-four, or twenty five. 2350. That was the year the Federation wrote down as me having been born when they took me in after I escaped Turkana, the number they gave me. No day or month, just a year based on scans and guesswork. I never knew if they were right, or wrong. Didn’t matter. Certainly not in 2374. By then my bones already felt older. Not from scars, not from the years, but from how war strips you down until only the sharp parts are left.

Martinez was in their early twenties. Not soft, not hardened so much that they couldn’t smile. Always solid in the fight and calm when it had ended. Spoke softly about Mars, playful about food and family…yet never made me feel I was lacking by having neither experiences to draw on. Just took me as I was. I came back from that charge with blood still on me and nothing in my face, and all they did was hand me a canteen of filtered water and say, “Next time, take backup. We want your grim arse alive.” No judgment, no weight in it. Just fact and an eyebrow raised as if to dare me to disagree.

They never had to tell me they trusted me. It was in how they stood beside me, how they talked to me when the silence around us was reduced to breath and heartbeat.

They treated me like I still had a conscience, that I was more than just survival instincts. And that cut deeper than if they hadn’t.

Federation Forward Encampment, Chin’toka System Outpost - December 25, 2374

The rain comes in bursts, hammering on the bunker roof until it sounds like the whole roof is shaking apart. Acid sharp, eats through gear left outside, leaves the ground steaming when it stops. The sound keeps me awake more than silence ever could, knowing that it’s only the work of others that keep the bunker from collapsing. No one walks directly over it and there is a slight buzz of the forcefield above us, humming to protect us if the acid eats its way through.

The air inside pulls at memory. Old sweat, fabric that never dries, bandages tossed aside once the wounds under them were sealed. It reminds me of Turkana after factions fought, the same sour mix of blood and damp and bodies too close together.

On the rota pad the date is marked in green pencil. Banik caught me staring and said, “Christmas. An old Earth thing.” The smile she gave with it was tired, not warm. I did not ask what it was meant to be. She would only shrug. Someone taped scraps to the wall. Ration packets, torn sleeves, held up with surgical strips. I would not have known it was supposed to be anything until Banik called it a tree. It still makes no sense to me. Just looks like waste patched together, leaning wrong.

I sit at the end of the table with the ration heater cupped in my hands. Heat seeps into my palms, steady, familiar. My sleeves are rolled up. A trooper passing by glances at the scars on my arms, holds the look for a moment, then drops his eyes and hurries off. Not one of mine. Just another body from the battalion.

The silence feels heavy, thick enough to choke, and Martinez sits at the centre of it. They look blank if you do not know better, face set, shoulders square, but I can see how tightly they are holding it in. Every line of them is pulled taut. I see the tremble in their hands as they grip the PADD. The report is simple. Recon unit gone. No survivors. I know what that means. Young ones pushed through training too fast, sent out ahead so the rest of us would not bleed first. A loss someone behind a desk called calculated.

Martinez reads it twice, lips pressed tight, knuckles white on the PADD. When their voice comes it is low. “I told him not to go. Orders were orders. I knew it would not hold. Too green. They even told them it could happen, called it a calculated loss. And they still went out.” The last words are choked out, the accent usually reserved for quiet moments barking through.

No one answers. It isn’t a question or a request for reassurance. Raimi’s eyes fix on the wall as her lips press together. Kerren stares at the floor like it will give him something back if he pleads with it enough. Even Terrow, usually restless, sits still, eyes wide, as if he is drowning in what Martinez is holding inside themselves. I hear the catch of breath, close to sobs, at the edge of his breathing.

I do not speak. I cannot put myself in that place. I never had blood to lose, never had family to grieve. It is not my language. But instinct tells me one thing. When someone in your unit cracks, you do not look away. You hold with them until they can breathe again. And I’m not abandoning Martinez even if I don’t understand what I am feeling. I get to my feet and walk across the room, slow and deliberate, so no one mistakes it for anything else. I take the bench beside Martinez, not close enough to touch, just near enough that they know I am there. I know they’ll get up if they want to be left alone. Martinez has never been shy about what they were thinking or feeling.

They do not look at me. The skin around their usually calm brown eyes is tight, and their short hair has dried into uneven spikes where sweat had soaked through. They look blank if you only glance, but I know the signs of someone holding themselves in too tight. I know Martinez.

Their voice comes low, not broken but filled with something I don’t understand. “He was fifteen when I enlisted. He followed everything I did. I told him not to join. He said I didn’t get to make that call. That there was a war on. And he was old enough.”

The silence after it feels like gravity. Heavy, unbroken, pressing down on all of us. I hear the squad shift, the choked sob from Terrow. I glance up and see Raimi walking over, to kneel by him. I know Raimi will handle him, tether him. So I can focus on Martinez.

I reach into the inside pouch of my fatigues and take out the tin. It’s silver with some engraving, looks like leaves and waves. By now it is scuffed and filled with mint leaves. Not powder, not replicated, real. Martinez gave me some last winter, after Tho. First time I had ever held anything like it. The first gift I had ever been given with no strings attached. They smiled when they passed it over as if they knew it mattered to me.

I set the tin down between us without a word. Martinez stares at it a long time before they say, “Thanks.” They don’t take it but their hand comes out, elegant fingers brushing close to it.

I nod once. Not to dismiss it, just to show I heard. My hand twitches for a moment, to put mine over theirs. But I don’t. I don’t understand why I want to. And…it isn’t about what I want. It’s about Martinez…so I just stay still, keep watch beside them, listen to their breathing, the quiet whispers in a language not meant for me, but that I’ve heard enough to understand the shape of it.

The rest of the night holds quiet. Banik passes out heat packs and a flask of something that burns like coolant. I do not touch it. I do not drink when I need to stay sharp. Raimi takes the doorway, still as stone, eyes fixed on the treeline just above the steep stairs, the shimmer of a forcefield lighting her.

The rain has stopped.

When Martinez finally stands and leaves for their cot, I stay seated. The tin rests on the table until I reach forward, slow, and tuck it back into the inside pocket of their jacket where they left it. I don’t expect it back and it isn’t the point. For as long as Martinez needs it, they can have it.

I do not know family. But I know the shape of loss in others. I’ve never been able to say the things to help. When we’ve lost people, I notice their absence and the only way I understand how to honour it is to stay awake and hold the watch.

---

Sergeant Jace Morven
Platoon Sergeant, Alpha Squad
Federation Ground Forces
USS Guinevere

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