Residual: Part X – Ashes, Not Silence

Posted on Sun Nov 30th, 2025 @ 9:06am by Sergeant Jace Morven

2,176 words; about a 11 minute read

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

We move through the storm in a broken line, not perfect, not clean, but intact. Fourteen pulled out, two carried, the rest moving because we do not give them time to collapse. Carrying the skinny Bajoran youth, I keep the pace just slow enough that no one falls behind, just fast enough that we might still outrun the worst of what could be coming. The wind cuts sideways, full of sand and static, the kind that works its way under fabric and skin, the kind that stings later when you are still enough to feel again.

Behind me, the squad holds shape. Kerren has the Tellarite still slung over his shoulder, the weight of it shifting unevenly with each step, and he adjusts like it is nothing, like his body was made for this kind of strain...even if I know that later he’ll pay for it when his knee acts up. Banik is near the back, coaxing two of the weakest forward, her voice low, impossible to hear over the storm but steady all the same, a thread pulling them onward.

Terrow is walking too close to the prisoners, no choice now, his shields long gone, and I can feel the way it is taking him apart from the inside. He is absorbing everything they carry. Pain. Terror. That deep, electric burn of not knowing if you are saved or still dying. It drips off them and into him and he is too tired to stop it. But he keeps going, stubbornly.

Martinez does not speak. They move with the line, eyes forward, expression set in something that looks like calm until you look closer. Not numb, just…at capacity. Holding every scream, every fear, every image behind their eyes and letting none of it show. Their silence is not absence. It is pressure with nowhere to go, and it will stay like that for a while.

I watch them for a moment, the shape of them in motion, the way we are still a unit even now, even after what we did, and I know this will come with a cost. Maybe not tomorrow. Maybe not with charges or trials or discipline reports. But it will come.

It always does.

I keep walking, rifle slung, supporting the kid that is clinging to my side. My shoulders ache, but I do not let them fall. The violence is still in my blood, not hot, not loud, just present, like static behind the eyes, like the echo of something already spent that hasn’t quite left. It takes a lot not to push the weight of the breathing body I am supporting away from me, my hands feel too tense and violent to offer anything except pain.

The fallback shelter sits low in the rock, half-visible through the storm, its structural field shimmering in pulses as grit hits the outer wall. Prefabricated Starfleet design, metal braced against sand and impact. One corner hums with the glow of a portable transporter pad, cycling ready, the field just strong enough to hold six at a time. Medics wait outside the barrier, jackets weighted with kits, eyes scanning the line as we approach.

They do not waste time. They move in bursts, stabilisation first, fluids, hypos with enough in them to wake the dead or drop the panicked. No one asks for names yet, just condition, vitals, movement, breath. We spill forward like gravity gave out. Water is pressed into hands. Injections snapped into necks with a practised rhythm. Field stretchers fold out under the injured. No one flinches at blood. No one stops moving. And the freed prisoners are taken from us, into hands meant to soothe and repair.

Kerren drinks in silence, half-leaning against the supply case behind him. He finishes the packet in three swallows and stares through the storm wall like he is still on the ridge. Terrow folds onto a transport crate and pulls his coat around himself, face buried in the collar, hands shaking just enough to be visible. He is not making sound, but I know he is crying, quiet, contained. His shields are ash, and everything is getting in now. Banik sits with her hands open in front of her. No gloves. Skin raw. She looks at her palms like they might still be holding something.

And Martinez, Martinez is near the centre of the shelter, crouched beside a Tellarite female with shock-burn scars across her arms, their hand resting on her shoulder in a gesture so still it looks sculpted. They have not said a word since we came inside. Their silence is not a failure. It is the shape of what they carry.

And I think, Raimi would have known what to do with all of this.

She would have sat down in the dirt with Terrow and made him breathe. She would have cracked a joke just loud enough to break Kerren’s stillness. She would have brought Banik a ration bar and reminded her she still had fingers that worked. She would have pressed her shoulder to Martinez’s and made them drink water even if they did not want it.

But Raimi is gone. She would have calmed them, reorientated them. And I don’t know what to do except be there and watch. So I stay on my feet. Back straight. Hands still curled from the last kill I have not uncurled them from. The grit collects in the lines of my skin and I do not wipe it away. I stand just beyond the line of the shelter’s lights, close enough to feel the hum of the field behind me, far enough that the darkness still feels honest. The storm is quieter now, the worst of it pushed east, but the wind still moves, restless, dragging sand across the ground in low hisses.

Martinez steps up beside me, quiet as ever. I hear them before I see them. The scrape of boots. The slow, steady exhale through their nose. The weight of them, not just physical, but carried. Their uniform is mostly clean now, standard issue wrapped too tight around fatigue and impact. The collar is scuffed, one sleeve still stained darker where blood soaked through. I cannot tell if it is theirs. I do not ask. Their face is turned slightly away from me, but I still see it. The line of their jaw, taut with control, the tiredness in their eyes that isn’t from lack of sleep but from too much held in. Their hair is shorter than it used to be, rough-cut at the edges, like someone trimmed it for efficiency and not care. Their mouth is set in a line I know too well…not a grimace, not silence, just restraint. Just full.

I know that face better than I know my own. I have watched it under fire, in the dark, across rooms thick with smoke and breath. I have watched it soften, once or twice. I have watched it stay still when everything else broke. Tonight, it holds. Barely. Their hands are still shaking. Not badly. Just enough that the movement catches in the corners of my vision. They do not try to hide it. “You saw him,” they say. Their voice is low, even, not searching for anything. Just truth.

I do not answer. They wait. Not long. Not impatient. “The Cardassian,” they say, eyes still forward. “I think he tried to help.”

“I know,” I say. I still do not look at them. Not directly. I do not need to. The wind drags another gust of dust across the light field, blurs the shape of the shelter until it looks like it might not be real. The stars are gone. The storm has taken them. The dark presses in, not cold, not hostile, just present.

Martinez’s hand curls slightly, then stills again. The wind shifts. The field hums. And beside me, I feel more than I hear Martinez speak. “You didn’t leave anyone alive, did you?” Their voice is quiet. Not soft, exactly, just pared down. A statement in the shape of a question, but not one looking for confession.

They already know. The way they always do.

“No.” The word leaves my mouth like a weight placed down, not thrown. I close my eyes for a moment, not to shut it out but to ground myself. The taste of it is still there, the memory of scorched air, the impact of each shot. I did it because there was no other way to finish it. Because I wasn’t going to let them get away with it. Because I knew how rot could fester. “Wasn’t going to let that kid die for nothing.” It sits between us, that sentence, flat and heavy. There is no shame in it, no doubt. Just the truth of it, carved into both of us as surely as if it had been branded to us.

Martinez doesn’t answer. They don’t need to. They stand at my side and let the quiet stretch, let the storm wrap around us again like a thing alive. Their profile catches in the light spill from the shelter, just enough for me to see the lines of fatigue on their face, the way their shoulders hang too low, drawn down by more than the weight of armour or gear. I notice how sweat has cleaned small paths by their hairline, how their lips are slightly parted. They take a deep breath. And then nod.

We both know this doesn’t end here. We don’t speak. We just stand there, two figures against the dark. I let the wind pull at my clothes, my hair. I exhale, slowly, into it.

What we've done, the choices...it just is. There's no room for regrets or second guessing. We just need to stand firm. But even then, with it all...I know that Martinez will carry this differently, this quiet truth of what we chose to do and what we will keep choosing.

FGF Barracks, USS Guinevere, 2388

There isn’t a flinch when I test the memory. No rush of heat, no catch in the throat. Just that familiar pressure behind the ribs, like pressing a thumb to an old wound to see if it still hurts. It doesn’t. Not the way it used to. But it’s still there, deep in the muscle, waiting. I remember the Cardassian youth. What sticks with me isn’t the smell, the body...it’s the message that the Dominion felt they needed to send to their allies.

Mercy, any mercy, makes you a traitor...a clickline, if you speak the Turkana IV Creole. It’s a tough rule. Most Factions on Turkana had them. Even so. It was a clear message for the prisoners below, to see what happened when one of their captors broke under the guilt. And any Cardassian who might look at the horror they inflict and think about choosing conscience over command.

At the time, I didn’t know what he did. Maybe he smuggled water through a fence, or passed a message, or just looked at someone the wrong way. Maybe he was simply tired of standing still while people screamed. It doesn’t matter. The Dominion decided that was enough.

I’ve never been righteous. I follow orders until they stop making sense, and when they do, I move. That night wasn’t about justice or principle. It was about the weight in the air, the smell of fear, the way it settles into skin and won’t wash out. I knew that feeling long before Starfleet. On Turkana, fear was part of the atmosphere. You learned to breathe around it or you died from it. I cut it out of myself to survive. Burned it clean. Dug until nothing soft remained.

A counsellor once told me, voice careful, eyes steady in that way people use when they think you’re damaged but not beyond repair, that I had cauterised part of myself, the part that felt fear and hope and tenderness, and asked if I’d ever thought about what it cost to have done that.

I told them no. I told them that I never recognised those parts, so if I had burned it out...it was complete. There was nothing to reconnect to. That had ended the conversation, and the session.

But maybe that’s why I moved that night. Why I broke orders. Why I couldn’t stand to watch one more day of it. Maybe I burned away softness. But not memory of it in the eyes of another. And I never burned away hatred. Not hatred for people who use fear like a weapon and call it order. Who measure control in screams and obedience...

I never liked bullies.

---

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

RSS Feed