Residual: Part VIII – Witnessed, Not Forgotten

Posted on Fri Nov 28th, 2025 @ 6:25pm by Sergeant Jace Morven

2,508 words; about a 13 minute read

Recon Mission Theta-9 -- Dominion POW Camp Perimeter, February, 2375

You’d think after all the mud, sand would be a relief. It isn’t. The temperature drops at night and there is nothing to do except accept it. And when the suns are at their brightest, there is nothing you can do except sweat into your combats.

I lie flat on the stone with my rifle across my arms and keep my eyes on the camp below. Cells cut into the rock, fences humming with current, patrols walking loops so tight they look rehearsed. Cardassians linger at the edges, but the Dominion never lets them near anything that matters. Something has changed, a noose tightening. Now and then, a Vorta appears, always flanked by what I can only call bodyguards.

Behind me the squad wears the wait in their own ways. Kerren works the log, hand twitching more than he realises. Terrow scratches rotations into a PADD, lips moving with the count, eyes dark from too many nights without rest. Banik has curled into her kit for a short sleep, face turned into her arm, taking what time she can. Martinez hasn’t moved in an hour, body still, eyes fixed on the pattern below, jaw tight as if chewing it down until it makes sense.

Five days like this. Rations thin. Water low. The pressure hasn’t shifted since we landed; it sits in my shoulders, in the way I breathe, and I don’t expect it to ease until we are gone.

Martinez shifts close, the brush of their sleeve giving them away before I see it. A small press into my hand, firm, and I know what it is before I look. Hydration tab. I take it because there’s no choice. We’re already cutting measures, the heat pulling more out of us than it gives back. I leave it on my tongue and let it break down slow. Bitter, mineral, coating my mouth like grit. It doesn’t fix thirst, but it keeps the body moving. That’s enough.

Terrow moves in on the other side, a PADD in his hands. His voice is low, worn thin. “Can you double-check this timestamp? I think the rotation’s shortened again...”

The weight hits me before the words are done. That old drop in my chest, the thought of taking it, of dragging my eyes across letters I can’t hold steady when I’m this far gone. It must show, because I see the flicker cross his face. And with him, it’s more than that. He doesn’t need to guess. He feels it.

He stops. Draws the PADD back. His tone is even, careful. “Didn’t mean to assume.”

I turn my head, slow, let him see me look. “You didn’t,” I say, voice quiet in the heat. It’s not to ease him, but he is still tentative around me. So I try to make an effort.

His face stays tight, jaw set, mouth pressed, eyes locked on mine long enough that I know what he’s telling me. No pity. No edge. Just that he knows and he won’t use it. A moment later he nods and lowers himself down beside me, the PADD across his knees like it belongs there instead of with me.

I swallow what’s left of the tab, taste chalking the back of my throat, and shift my eyes back to the camp. “I can hear the pattern. See it out there. Don’t need to read it.”

Terrow glances once, then back to the screen. “Yeah. You’ve been right every time.” The words are quiet, not reaching for anything more, but steady enough to hold.

It changes that night.

The patrol comes sooner than expected. Jem’Hadar. Three of them, formation tight, movement too clean for routine. They are hauling someone. Federation-issue cadet uniform, torn at the shoulder. He looks maybe nineteen. Tallish, lean. Brown hair clumped with sweat and dust. One eye nearly swollen shut.

He does not fight them. Just keeps walking, bare feet scuffing stone, wrists bound. He lifts his head once. Sees the fence. The guards. Us. Then lowers it again.

The camp goes still.

Every prisoner inside those energy barriers freezes, like they know what is coming. Maybe they have seen it before. The squad hasn’t. Not like this.

The Jem’Hadar stop just outside the perimeter. One raises his rifle. Polaron discharge coil already primed. There is no hesitation, no ceremony, no last words…he just fires. The shot cracks out across the basin and hits him in the chest…centre mass. He drops instantly and there is no movement, no second shot needed.

No one says a word.

Banik turns her face into her sleeve. Pretends to check something in her medkit, but I can see the way her hand shakes. Kerren swears under his breath, a low mutter in Te Reo I do not understand but feel in my spine. Martinez just watches. Silent, with shoulders set like they could stop it just by holding still.

Rayian breaks first. “Wasn’t even a protest,” he says. Voice thin. “No trial. Just gone.”

I get to my feet. Walk ten paces to the edge of our ridge. Count each one. Try to bleed it off. Rage, mostly. Not hot, not explosive. Just deep. Lodged somewhere between my ribs. The kind that makes your hands ache because there’s nowhere to put it.

I stop. Breathe in the grit and heat. Picture going down there. Past the rocks, through the fence, into the middle of them. My knife in my hand. I can see it play out. Could do it. For five, maybe six seconds, I could take that space from them.

But I wouldn’t come back. Not whole.

And he’s already gone.

I turn and walk back. Somehow, I manage to make my body obey, to keep my breath even, my mind clear. But I feel it under my skin, like a fever, a rush of something unfinished. I try and shake it away, take another slow breath, but I know this feeling. It’s a sickness settled in bone, in memory.

This is not my first execution. I just thought I never had to witness another.

Martinez’s voice breaks the silence. Not loud. Not cold. Just sharp. “We can’t just watch this.” It cuts through the heat like a pulse of electricity. Even the insects have gone quiet. The camp hums below, same as before. But everything feels tighter now. Like a trigger pulled halfway.

Kerren shifts, his arms crossed over his chest. “We’ve been ordered to,” he says. Low. Automatic. The sort of thing you say when you’re trying to cling to the chain of command.

Terrow doesn’t move. “We’ve been ordered to observe,” he says. “That’s different.” He looks down, at his hands, a frown pulling between his eyebrows.

I stay standing. Still near the edge, ten paces out. The stone beneath my boots is warm even now. I breathe in through my nose, out slow through my mouth. “Command doesn’t want a rescue,” I say. “Too much risk. No support. We’re expendable, but not that expendable.”

It’s the calculation. Not mine but theirs. Whoever sent us out here with eyes and phaser rifles and just enough supplies to feel like they hadn’t already written us off. Sent us here knowing exactly what it was we were watching, prisoners who could have been any of us.

Behind me, I hear Martinez shift. When they speak again, there’s fire in it. Not volume…just pure heat. The kind that builds slow under pressure and flashes out in sudden arcs. Not new, just unveiled. Because I know Martinez’s temper is slow to ignite but when it finally hits, it is white-hot. “So we just watch?”

I turn my head. Their eyes are on me. Dark brown, locked, no soft edges left. Their jaw tight, fists flexed just once before settling again. Not a bluff. Not some angry burst. This is deep. A truth they’ve carried for too long. And now they’re looking at me like they know I would be down there with a knife if there was just me, and no consequences except the loss of my own life.

I still feel it in my spine, that pull. The impulse to move, to cross the rocks, breach the perimeter, break something that matters.

But I don’t. Because if I move, they’ll follow. Without question. And so will Kerren. So will Banik. Terrow, too. They’d all come. And I wouldn’t get them back, not intact, not with a clean record. Maybe not even alive. So I hold still. The anger stays where it is. No place to put it down, no mark to leave it on. Just a heat rising under my skin, behind my eyes, making my hands feel wrong.

The body still lies by the fence. No one’s moved it. And Martinez is still watching me. I blink, slowly, and turn to face them properly. “We do not die pointlessly,” I say. “That is what they want. War without the headlines.” It sounds cold. I do not mean it to be. Just the shape of the truth, as Command sees it. Keep it small, keep it quiet. Teams vanish, and the fewer details they need to put in our final record the less there is to worry about if this war ever ends
.
Terrow’s voice comes in, steady. “But you want to go.”

He is not wrong. I do not answer straight away. The weight of it is too much to carry carelessly. “Not alone,” I say. “Not without consent. One of us goes down, it is a court martial. Or worse.” Because it will not be just me. If I move, they will follow. Martinez first, but Banik too. Kerren. Terrow. They would come. I know that as surely as I know how to field-strip a phaser in the dark. And if it goes bad…and it will go bad then we do not come back as soldiers. We come back as criminals. If we come back at all.

Banik exhales shakily. Presses her palms against her face. “Cannot sleep after watching that kid die.” No one corrects her. Because we all saw it. How young he was. How thin from deprivation. How terrified. And still, he walked out there. Head up, even when he knew what was coming. Federation to the very end.

Terrow nods once. His voice is quieter now. “There is another one with burns. He is barely walking.”

I shift my stance slightly. The stone grinds beneath my heel, hot and dry, like everything else here. It does not feel like solid ground. I relax my shoulders, or tell them to. They obey. Looser, my hands uncurl…I did not realise I had tensed them. But I listen to the others.

Kerren does not look up. “Command does not see it,” he says. “But we do.”

He is right. They are up there in orbit, or safe behind a wall of comms delay and deniability. They see heat maps and daily summaries. Medical flags. Mission viability. Not the faces. Not the bones sticking through skin. Not the way a man stops making sound when he has run out of hope. We do. And I do not want to say what I am thinking next. I do not want to lead this. Not here. Not like this.

But they are all looking at me. Waiting. Even now, no one moves until I do. And then Martinez speaks. Their voice is quiet. But there is iron in it. Tempered, not just hot. Something forged over years of watching the line and refusing to step back from it, but never crossing over into it to become something else. “We are troopers. But we are people first. If we give that up... we are them.”

It lands like a slow blade. No heat. No shouting. Just the truth. The one I have been circling since the shot was fired. If we let this stand, if we keep watching, we become what we are supposed to be fighting. Even if I have never quite understood the line, what is…too much. I know what the Federation stands for.

I just can’t always connect it to what is around me.

I close my eyes. That boy is still there behind my lids. Not just falling, but standing. The moment before. The way he walked. And I do not want to be the one to make the call. I do not. But someone has to. Because even doing the right thing might still ruin us. And doing nothing already is. And I needed Martinez to show me what was what…the line has always been drenched in a fog for me.

I turn back to them. They are all looking at me. Banik with her hands still half-raised to her face, caught somewhere between shock and readiness. Kerren, jaw tight, gaze already calculating. Terrow, still as ever, watching not just me but what this means. And Martinez.

Martinez meets my eyes like they have been waiting for this exact moment. They do not speak. Do not move. But I feel the pressure of it. The silence between us all is not empty. It is full of what we know and cannot unsee. What we cannot come back from. And I realise…truly, fully, that this is a choice. Not reaction. Not instinct. Not some pre-written order I can follow and hide behind. This is me, standing here, deciding to act. To step out of the box I have been put in since I could hold a weapon. To stop being just a tool sharpened by other people’s wars.

I feel something shift behind my ribs. Not grief. Not yet. Just the shape of it forming. The ghost of what is coming. Grief knows how to armour itself, and so do I. I nod once. Simple. Measured. But it feels like a crack running down the centre of who I used to be. “Tomorrow night,” I say. “Storm is due. Cuts visibility in half.”

That is all. No one questions it. The decision was not mine alone. It was made in the way they looked at me. In the silence after the shot. In the fact that we are all still here, still breathing, still watching. I step back from the edge. The camp lies quiet below, the boy’s body unmoved. I wonder if anyone will touch it before dawn. I do not want to be seen as the one who decided this. But I know what it looked like. I know what they saw and maybe that matters too.

---

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

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