Patterns in the Silence: Part IV – Feeding You to the Teeth

Posted on Fri Sep 12th, 2025 @ 5:55pm by Sergeant Jace Morven

2,182 words; about a 11 minute read

USS Guinevere, 2388

Korrin had invested in me and, in her own way, cared about what happened to me. I know it, and even now it sits strange in me. A memory of something beyond my reach. Dannic had cared too, enough to make the effort. They were both women, and maybe that mattered back then. At that age they felt less like a threat. Softer, but not weaker, just with a lesser want to hurt for the sake of dominance. They carried the comforts of Starfleet with them, years of steady meals, clean beds, quiet corridors. They looked at me without seeing a weapon to be sharpened or a body and mind to be broken.

Maybe that was what made me care back. Hope, sharp and unwelcome, slipping under my guard. Hope that they saw more than what Turkana had left behind.

I exhale slowly as I step out of the sonic shower. Waterless hum fading, skin still tingling. I dress without thought. Movements automatic, drilled into me.
Back at my bunk I sit, shoulders bowed, forearms heavy on my legs. My head drops forward, not from choice but from weight. Sounds pass around me. Voices. Footsteps. The hiss of doors opening and shutting. I let them fade.

Outside, the ship hums steady, a breath drawn through metal lungs. Inside, the ghosts stir. Not full memories, just fragments. The echo of boots on stone in dark tunnels. A hand yanking me upright when I stumbled. Dannic’s voice asking my name. Korrin’s silence, patient and steady, giving me space to find my ground. They are not gone. They never go. They wait in the quiet, pressing close, reminding me what I was and what I still carry.

Starfleet Enlisted Preparation Programme, 2368

Confrontations here do not often start with fists. Not like Turkana. Here they start with words.

“You think you’re better than us?” Marris sneers. Human. Broad-shouldered. Accent too clean. I know he was born on Earth. That much I caught. Beyond that, I know nothing. Where he grew up, what his family is like, who he talks to at night…none of it reaches me. Those things are shared in the circles I am never part of.

On Turkana, I would already have swung. No pause, no words wasted. End things before they begin, because that was the only way to live. There was no reward for patience, only the risk of being the one left bleeding.

But here I do not move. Korrin has been teaching me that silence can carry its own weight. Different from the expected silence on Turkana. Here, it can answer in ways fists never did. So I stay sitting on the bench in the locker room, peeling the tape from my hands after the last combat assessment. My knuckles are split and raw again, skin pulled thin and stinging. I look at them, flex my fingers, then let the strips of tape fall away. Pain is familiar and in this moment, a distraction I need.

“You never talk. You don’t train right. You’ve got no control,” Marris presses. He steps closer, trying to push me into something. “You’re not one of us. You’re a thug they dragged in off some backwater dredge.”

That makes me stand. Not to loom over him. Not to threaten. But I am done sitting. He has a few centimetres of height, a little more weight. It does not matter. He is a bully. I have known bullies all my life. The only thing that changes is the uniform they wear, the bands tying them to factions…the sort of violence they inflict on you. I look at him the way I look at a bag before I hit it. There’s not any emotion direction at a bag, just the focus of where you’re going to land your punches. I watch him the same way. I know that I could break his nose, crush him down, make sure he never steps up to me again. But that’s not acceptable here. I know that. “I do not think I am better,” I say. My voice is quiet, even. I am just offering a truth. “I think I am still alive.”

The room goes quieter. Not deafening quiet, but some conversations pause, from those who had been watching. I’ve not had that effect on people before. Maybe they were expecting a punch instead? Marris flinches. Not because I raised my voice, because I didn’t. Maybe he recognises the truth of it. Maybe he just instinctively knows, deep down, that if he keeps pushing, I will not stop at words. I want to be better, but my body remembers lines I cannot forget.
I walk away even if it is difficult to turn my back...but I know he won’t attack. The eyes are wrong and there’s too many witnesses. We all have the same leash here even if it is unsaid.

The weeks that follow stay tight, like a wire pulled too hard. The programme is ending. Last chance for them all to prove they belong, to show they pass the tests and wear the uniform without question.

I know I do not belong, not in the way they mean it. But I also know what I can do. In some things I get things working faster, the engineering problems, spatial awareness…things that others look at a manual for and I look at the stuff before he and just know. The puzzles are good. I find myself solving them. That has carried me through where words and charm never could. It has been enough to get me here.

There were two evaluators. A shared PADD between them, glowing with words I cannot hold long enough to read, even if I stood behind them. I can guess what is on it. Recommendations. Concerns. My fate reduced to lists. Korrin sits beside me, her fingers laced tight in her lap. She is usually composed, voice steady, eyes clear, silences measured. Now, for the first time, she looks tense. It’s small, but I see it, the way her shoulders are tense, the way she unlaces her fingers and moves a hand to press on the table rather than rest it there.

She’s worried. It makes me feel as if danger is a breath away and I have to push the instinct to get out, or charge forward, away.

The Vulcan speaks first. “Morven has passed.” His tone is flat, precise, stripped of anything I can use to read him. Vulcans are still strange to me. Solid, present, yet distant in a way that makes it feel like they are here without truly being with you. Turkana was only humans, and even then survival stripped away difference. Now I am being judged by someone whose face gives nothing, whose voice offers no crack to hold on to. Where silences are empty. “Marginally. His academic performance is below standard. While physically proficient, his interpersonal skills are…” He pauses, and even the pause feels sharp. “…unsuitable for long-term assignment within Starfleet’s primary exploratory divisions.”

I keep still. My eyes on him, my mind quiet. I do not know what it means to be measured by a face like that. It feels less like being seen and more like being scanned, like a system deciding whether to keep me or discard me.

The Betazoid speaks next. A lieutenant commander. His tone is softer, but his eyes are not. They carry weight, as if he can see further than the words he chooses. “We are recommending enlistment in the Federation Ground Forces. Structured. Martial. Roles tied to defence and suppression. He will be utilised. And less likely to fall behind.”

Utilised. The word strikes me harder than the rest. That was what I was on Turkana. Useful until I was not. A body with a purpose. Carry this weapon. Guard this door. Fix that wiring before it kills someone. If you were useful, you lived. If you fell behind, you were replaced, forgotten, left for the rats. The difference now is that here they plan to feed me while I am being used.
Something twists in me then. A flash of anger, sharp and hot, cutting through the stillness I keep wrapped around myself. I have worked to be more than that. I have held my fists when I wanted to strike. I have learned silence, learned to wait, learned to speak in ways that did not bruise as much. I thought it mattered. To them, it does not. They still just see the potential for violence.
I press the anger down, bury it before it can show. If I let it rise, I will only prove them right.

Beside me, Korrin shifts. A small movement, but I feel it like a change in the air. She almost speaks. I see the breath rise in her chest, the way her lips press together. Then she swallows it. I know her silences now. They are not like his, cold and unbroken, or his, soft and deliberate. Hers are chosen. Restraint, not dismissal. She feels more than I allow myself to feel. She is angry for me in a way I cannot risk being angry for myself.

I hold onto that. Not the words on the PADD, not the judgement in their voices, but the knowledge that when they speak about me as if I am already slotted into a box, Korrin sits beside me tense with the effort not to break the silence.

The rest of the meeting I find myself not concentrating on what is said. The words slide over me, blurred and thin. Recommendations. Placements. None of it feels attached to me. My name sounds like it belongs to someone else. Easier to let it wash past.

I fix on the table instead. The PADD between them glows too bright, light spilling across the grey surface. My eyes go soft on it until the words are nothing but shimmer. The Vulcan’s hands stay folded, perfectly still. No twitch, no shift. The Betazoid breathes slow and deep, longer than mine, steady as if even the air listens to him. These are the pieces I hold on to. Not what they say. Just details. Enough to keep me tethered while the rest of me drifts.

Later, in her office, Korrin says it plain. “They are feeding you to the part of the Federation that bites.” Her voice is low, worn at the edges. Like she is handing me off and hates herself for it.

I keep my eyes on the window. Ships move across the stars. Sharp lines of light, every one of them carrying direction. They have places to go, courses locked in.

What do I have? This.

“I do not care,” I say. I want to mean it. I want the words to scrape out the sting that I am not good enough for their colours. Not red, not gold, not blue. Not a healer. Not an explorer. Not someone trusted to change or build or carry their banner. I try to picture that life, their mess halls, their crews moving together in a mission of exploring. To create and build rather than hurt and destroy. My place is outside the circle, where they keep the ones meant to fight and bleed so the others do not have to.

Korrin looks at me. Holds me with her eyes. “I do,” she says.

“Why?” The word tears out of me before I can hold it back. They feel childish, young...they sit awkwardly in me, makes the ache under my ribs throb.

“Because you are not stupid, Jace. And you are not just angry. You survived what would have broken others. You remember after hearing once. You map a room in seconds. You see people when they do not think they are being watched.”

No words come back to her. My throat is tight, my voice gone.

She puts the recommendation in my hands. I do not try to read it. I hold it for the weight, like stone in my palms. Heavy enough to anchor me. “Ground Forces Basic. Three weeks. Earth.” She waits, then steps closer. “Do not let them shape you into just a weapon,” she says. “You are more than that. Even if they do not see it.”

The weight drags into my chest, lodges in my throat. “I am not good at anything else,” I mutter.

“You are better at everything else,” she answers. “You just never got the chance.”

I do not answer. I know I should. Faith like hers deserves an answer. But what she gives me and what they expect are not the same thing. Two paths only: go to the Ground Forces or walk away and become nothing.

What is left if I leave? A universe I don't understand, left behind to drift.

There is no choice.

---

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

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