Residual: Part XIII – Used, Not Unmade

Posted on Wed Dec 3rd, 2025 @ 3:49pm by Sergeant Jace Morven

2,692 words; about a 13 minute read

FGF Barracks, USS Guinevere, 2388

I didn’t hold anything against Brell. He was a body in a uniform, same as the rest of us. Moved where they told him to go. Could have been any name on the transfer. That part never mattered. When they gave him the stripes, I didn’t argue. Didn’t even react.

It wasn’t that I understood how the system worked. I didn’t. Still don’t. Just never felt like it was built with someone like me in mind. Whatever happened behind closed doors: who they discussed, who they crossed out…none of that reached the dirt. None of it pulled the wounded off the field.

What I knew was this. After Theta-9, after Halric’s silence, after the report went in with nothing redacted and no one punished, they still needed the squad to look right on paper. So they filled the gaps. One Sergeant. Two Corporals. A Starfleet medic. The rest, troopers. It looked official again. Balanced. The kind of unit you could plug back into the system and forget what it had been through.

We went where they sent us. We took fire. We patched who we could. Sometimes we came back. Sometimes not. So nothing really changed. Not where it counted. But I noticed that they never sent us somewhere where we had to make a moral choice again.

Feldin-3, Outer Trenches – February 24, 2375

The dirt feels wrong under my boots. Not because I don’t know it. I do. That’s the problem. It’s dry in the wrong places, gritty where it should be compact, too light to hold shape. Like Turkana, when the ash and sand mix after a fire and you don’t know if what you’re standing on used to be someone. The trench isn’t worth the name. Shallow scrape, maybe knee-height if you hunch low. Not enough to shield you from anything aimed. But it’s the only thing between us and open fire, so we take it.

Brell’s next to me. Down. His shoulder’s torn open, blood thick and hot where it’s still coming. The blast caught him in the upper chest too. Clean hit. Uniform’s burned through, slick and shining in patches. He's still breathing. Mouth tight. Short draws through his nose like he’s trying not to make sound. He won’t stay awake long. Too much blood lost already. If med doesn’t reach us soon, it’s not a question of survival. Just duration

The sky above’s still spitting fire. Phaser bursts cutting arcs through smoke. Jem’Hadar aren’t pressing right now. That’s worse. It means they’re regrouping. Watching. Figuring out where we’re soft. I risk a glance back. Field’s full of bodies. I count. Four Federation. Nine Dominion. Didn’t count them before. Now, I do, but not with focus. My focus is on the gauze, on the blood, on the squad's new Sergeant bleeding out under my hands.

Nothing else to do but wait.

Kerren’s still trying to get a signal through. He’s rerouting through a corridor we’re not even sure still exists. Banik’s already pushed ahead to sweep the next turn. She hasn’t called back yet. Terrow’s crouched close to my left, hands shaking, jaw tight, but he’s following orders. Staying low. Covering the angle. Martinez is steady at our flank, rifle tracking like a heartbeat. In case they come. In case it is a regroup.

And I’m here, kneeling beside the man who’s leaking his life out into the dirt. The medic’s gone. One of the four I counted. Too far back to reach, too late anyway. The kit’s open beside me, half its contents already scattered. Used hypo tossed into the dust. No time to clear the space. No time to think past the bleeding. Brell’s skin is slick and cooling. I keep my hand on the wound, firm and even. Pressure, angle, pressure again. Don’t lift it. Don’t ease up. I know this rhythm. I know how long it buys. “Medevac’s en route,” I say. Not to reassure him. Not for comfort. Just information. A fact to hold onto.

He doesn’t answer. Doesn’t need to. He knows how bad it is. You can see it in his eyes, clouding already, in the way his fingers twitch and fall still again. I keep the pressure. I keep breathing.

That’s all I can do.

Brell’s breathing is ragged now. There’s pain in the way his jaw clenches, in the hitch behind every exhale. The hypo dulled the edge, but not enough to matter. He’s riding it, barely, and his good hand shifts, pressing weakly against mine. Not to stop me. Just trying to help. Just trying to hold on. The dermal regenerator is gone. I already checked. Probably still clipped to what’s left of the medic’s belt, somewhere behind us in the field. Not worth thinking about. We’re too far out for anything clean.

“You shouldn’t have pushed me,” Brell says, voice wrecked from smoke and pain. “You were supposed to be in cover. Not hauling my ass.”

I don’t answer. Nothing in that needs a reply. I did what had to be done, same as always. The rest is noise.

He lets out something between a laugh and a breath. It catches in his throat. “Always the hero,” he says. “That’s the joke, right? You don’t even know you’re not one.”

My jaw tightens. Just slightly. I don’t look at him. I keep the gauze moving, keep it tight and firm, the way it needs to be. His blood slicks my gloves. Some of it his. Some of it not. My cut's not deep, it'll be clotting by now. Doesn’t matter now anyway. Not when the pressure is the only thing keeping Brell here. Hero. Like it’s something I meant to be, that people expect once you put on a uniform.

As if there was ever a choice for me except staying alive and stepping forward. That isn’t heroic. That’s...

I don’t know.

He’s wrong. Or maybe he’s not. Either way, it changes nothing.

Brell’s voice is rough now. Quiet, but it carries. “You’re not a trooper,” he says. “You’re a weapon. That’s what they made. What they kept. You kill fast. Brutal. Clean. You keep people alive, sure… but they’re never going to promote you. You scare ’em too much.”

I don’t move. Not a blink. Not a breath different than before. He watches me. Still trying to see something in my face.

I give him nothing.

“You’re not Starfleet,” he says again. Softer now. Not an accusation. A fact, maybe. A resignation. “You’re what they use to survive the shit they don’t put in speeches. But when the war ends… they won’t need you. No medals. No reassignment. Just gone. Quietly.” He coughs, sharp. There’s blood at the corner of his mouth, and I know that red. Could be lungs. Could be somewhere deeper. No tricorder to check. No medic to call it. Just what I can see, what I can guess. He draws breath again. “So you’ve got two choices, Morven. Change. Or go out on your terms. But don’t let them box you like a mad dog.”

I pause. My hands still. Just for a moment. And in the quiet, something moves beneath it all. Not memory, not exactly. More like the aftertaste of it. A voice in the back of my skull, raw and full of gravel: I’ve buried your kind by the dozen. Tho, sneering it like a truth he wanted to carve into me. Like that dirt was still clinging to my boots, no matter how far I’d walked since. Maybe I am still crawling out of it. Still proving I can stand. Still bleeding for people who never asked me to.

The transporter beam shimmers down through the smoke. That sharp blue-white flare lights the edges of the trench. Warped metal. Scorched soil. Blood cooling where it fell. I rise as the field catches Brell. Watch him go without a word.

Not until the trench is empty again. Not until the silence has teeth.

Martinez finds me after nightfall. No footsteps. Just presence. The kind I don’t need to brace against. I’m near the perimeter beacon. Same place I go when there’s nowhere else to put the weight. Dust on my boots, dried blood on my sleeves. Some of it mine. Most of it Brell’s. Some from the trench. It clings in the seams of the fabric, in the webbing around my wrists. I haven’t cleaned it off yet. Not out of sentiment. Just... haven’t. I sit still. Arms loose over my knees. Helmet at my side. The air’s dry and full of grit, but I don’t feel it. I’m too far down in my own head.

We don’t speak right away.

“You always find the worst places to sit,” Martinez says eventually, voice soft, like they don’t really expect a reply. Just something to fill the space.

I don’t look up. I let the words settle like dust around me. Then I say it. Quiet. Flat. “He’s not wrong.”

Martinez pauses. I can feel their gaze. Measuring, weighing. “About what?”

I don’t answer. There’s no point. Not when the question’s bigger than the words I can form. Brell called me a weapon. Said that’s all I was. That Starfleet wouldn’t keep me when the war ended. That they’d let me vanish. Quietly. No ceremony. No reassignment. Just discarded. Put down like an animal that’s outlived its usefulness. He wasn’t angry when he said it. Just honest.

And I keep turning it over in my mind, a question that has popped up now and then since I first joined the Ground Forces. Is that what I am? I kill well. I protect the ones near me. I don’t lose my nerve, don’t wait for orders when the blood starts spraying. I see angles others miss. I feel violence before it hits. And I move. Not to lead. Just to survive. And make sure they do, too.

But what happens when the last order comes through? When there’s no trench left, no breach to plug, no squad that needs pulling out of fire? I’m not Starfleet, not the way they mean it. I wasn’t trained to inspire or speak on a panel or wave a flag. I don’t know what peace looks like in their language. I’ve only ever known terrain. Contact. Blood on gloves.

And I’ve seen it happen. Soldiers like me. Quieted. Forgotten. Turned into cautionary tales in someone else’s report. That’s the box they built for people like me. One entry. No exit.

Martinez sits near enough that I can hear their breath. Not close enough to crowd. “You saved his life,” they say, gentler now. Less about Brell. More about me.

I shift. A small thing. But it’s an answer. I don’t look at them. Don’t reach. Don’t speak again. But I let them stay. And that’s something. Not softness. Not surrender. Just... stillness, shared.

I silence the thoughts. As much as I can in the moment anyway. Introspection never sits right with me, there’s a cost to it that I am not willing to pay. It will not change anything either. Moving forward, that is what keeps me alive.

“That part never makes it into the reports,” Martinez says. “You pull people out of fire like it’s nothing.”

I don’t answer. Don’t look at them. But my jaw shifts. A flicker of something I haven’t put a name to. Something dull and far off, like a bruise under armour. They step closer. Careful. Not enough to press. Just enough to be near.

Then they kneel. No sound. No explanation. They just lean in and press their mouth to my cheek. Not a hard touch. Not demanding. Not rough, either. It’s nothing like what I’ve experienced or seen before. It isn’t like the like the desperation in a med tent. Not like the bitter, frantic pulls behind barricades. Not like the kindness I’ve watched from a distance, unsure if I was meant to understand it. This is quieter. Not a claim. Not a favour. Just…a moment.
A touch that says I see you not I want or I need or you owe me.

And not I will take.

I don’t tense. That’s the part that gets me. I don’t brace. Don’t pull. Don’t twist my shoulder like I’m expecting pain. I just let Martinez so close their intake of breath becomes my own, echoed somewhere in my chest.

Then they’re standing again. Voice soft. Even. “You don’t have to say anything. Just…don’t forget someone saw you.” And then they leave. No echo of boots. No need for a reply.

Just quiet again. Dry wind. Field static. Distant phaser pops across no-man’s-land. I sit a while longer. The dark settles over everything. I let it. Let the stillness stretch out like canvas. Let my breathing slow back to its own rhythm.

After a while, I touch my face. Fingers brush that place on my cheek where they kissed me. The skin’s still warm. There’s grit along my jawline. Dried blood crusted at the edge of my glove. I don’t wipe it off. I just get to my feet. Feel the ache in my back, the pull across my ribs.

Still standing. Still moving. Still me.

And the war’s not over.

USS Guinevere, 2388

Lights are off, my eyes are closed and I am still awake.

Sometimes it comes back. Not all of it. Just pieces. The trench. That scorched dirt, too dry to hold shape. The sting of blood in recycled air. The way Brell’s hand pressed over mine, more reflex than strength, while I kept gauze on the wound that wouldn’t close.

He’d said a lot. More than I expected. More than I wanted. That I wasn’t a soldier. That I was a weapon. One they’d use until they didn’t. And when it was done, I’d be discarded. Quietly. No ceremony. Just a file no one read. He told me to change or go out on my own terms. Said I shouldn’t let them box me like a mad dog.

I didn’t answer him.

Didn’t know how to, maybe. Or didn’t want to admit he might be right.

Truth is, I haven’t changed. Not really. Still built for action, not quiet. Still better in motion. Still move like I’m checking angles even when I’m not. Still don’t trust peace when it stretches too long.

But I didn’t die in that trench. Or the others. And they didn’t get rid of me. Not yet.

I train the new ones. Keep my squad breathing. Give orders when they need them, not when I feel like it. Doesn’t make me a leader, even if....I am trying to be more than I once was. Just makes me someone who’s still alive. And sometimes that’s enough. Just barely. Just for a little while.

So what does that make me? Not a monster. Not a hero. Not what they trained for or expected. Not what I was supposed to become.

Just still here. Still me.

---

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

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