Stillness Isn't Peace [1/4]

Posted on Mon Jun 9th, 2025 @ 8:34pm by Sergeant Jace Morven

1,806 words; about a 9 minute read

Mission: Prologue
Location: USS Guinevere
Timeline: 2388

USS Guinevere, 2388

The gym on the USS Guinevere was large enough to house equipment, but tucked far enough from the Ground Forces’ barracks to stay quiet, especially at this hour. No viewport to the stars. No distractions. Just the sterile hum of environmental systems and the faint echo of a life lived through repetition. The floor was partially matted, a silent invitation for activity. The weights were stacked with precision against one wall: secure, impersonal, maintained by someone who wanted no excuses. Jace noticed the care in their arrangement. It wasn’t just storage; it was someone’s turf. This wasn’t his space. It might one day feel like it, but not today.

The punching bag hung in the corner, that bland Starfleet blue shade like someone picked the first option on the replicator menu and never looked back. Functional. Forgettable.

He stood in front of the mirrored wall. The screens were in mirror mode, and there he was. He tilted his head slightly, as if trying to see himself from another angle. Not vanity. Analysis. Cold, detached. The same way he’d study enemy movements, entry points, angles of fire. He wasn’t tall. Not imposing in that easy, wide-shouldered way some troopers were. But he was built like a problem you didn’t want to solve. Muscle earned through necessity, shaped by years of conditioning and survival. Quick, brutal. Made for damage. Not built for show, or for speed but for impact. Dark hair, regulation-trimmed, but barely. Shaved short on the sides, left longer on top in a style that suggested maintenance, not preference. Combed back with indifference. A shadow of stubble darkened his jaw, rough and uniform, hiding the soft dip of a dimple. His lips pressed together in a hard line. Habit, not emotion.

And the eyes: pale, sharp, unflinching. Cold as vacuum. Except right now, in the quiet, there was something else behind them. Something not quite sadness. Not yet regret. A softness caught in confusion, like memory had pulled too hard and left the thread exposed.

He looked away. Dismissed his own reflection like a waste of focus.

Self-analysis wouldn’t help. Not now. Not with this kind of weight settling under the skin.

Instead, he approached the punching bag.

A moment’s pause as he remembered Doctor Vale’s voice from earlier.

You are instructed to come to sickbay for all health issues, however minor you may consider them.

She’d been clear. Not a suggestion, but an order. If he tore a knuckle, bruised a finger…she’d expect to see him.

He sighed, already annoyed at the prospect. Then reached into his fatigues pocket and pulled out self-adhesive gauze. The wrapping was quick. Efficient. He’d done it hundreds of times before. It was the ritual that grounded him.

He squared his stance. Pivoted. Then struck.

The hit landed solid, unshowy. No wasted energy. He moved again. Another punch. Then another. He settled into a rhythm, a methodical violence that felt less like catharsis and more like calibration.

And somewhere in the sweat and movement, memory began to surface.

Turkana IV, 2361

The underground workshop stank of heat and rust. Burned plastic, scorched insulation, sweat that never got the chance to dry. The kind of place where the air stuck in your throat and didn’t let go.

The plasma stabilizer in Jace’s hands was bent to hell, blackened at one end. Probably shrapnel damage. Didn’t matter. He could still fix it.

His fingers, calloused and raw, worked without hesitation. Blood mixed with grime in the creases of his knuckles. He didn’t stop to clean them. What was the point?

“Boy.”

Jace didn’t flinch. Just raised his head. Steady. Eyes flat.

Ten years old. Scavenged off the street by a faction who liked their recruits small, fast, and hungry enough not to question anything. He remembered the first time someone had tried to drag him off: how hard he’d bitten. How fast the boot came in response.

You learned the rules early on Turkana IV. Pain meant order. Obedience meant food. Resistance got you dead.

Serri Harven stood in the doorway, one shoulder weighted down with a coil of power cells. His boots were caked in something that looked too dark to be dirt. Jace didn’t ask. The last week had been bloody. The factions were circling again.

“You deaf?” Harven snapped, voice like a knife wrapped in gravel. “You playing engineer or prepping the cache?”

Jace didn’t look up from the stabilizer. “The outer turret’s dead. If they hit us tonight, southeast’s wide open.”

Harven frowned, but didn’t argue. He never liked being reminded Jace was useful.

“Fine. After that, you check the cache.”

A grunt. A flick of fingers. He lingered, though, one foot still planted in the room like he had something else to say. “You still going by that name?”

Jace tightened a bolt. Deliberate. “I don’t remember.”

Harven gave a dry scoff. “Someone called you ‘Jace’ last week. That stick?”

Jace shrugged, not breaking stride. “Someone used to call me that. Maybe.”

The silence that followed stretched like wire. Then Harven’s voice dropped to something colder, sharper. “Forget it. You don’t get to keep names unless you earn ’em.” Then he was gone, boots thudding down the corridor. The door hissed shut like it was exhaling.

Jace sat there a long moment, hands still. The hum of machinery buzzed like static in his ears.

He thought about a woman’s voice. Gentle. A touch to the shoulder. Had she called him Jace?

He didn’t know.

Maybe it didn’t matter.

Maybe Harven was right.

Names were a luxury. Not something you carried. Something you clung to—until someone tore it away.

He went back to the stabilizer. The turret needed to be fixed. That was what mattered.

U.S.S Guinevere, 2388

Jace blinked. His knuckles stung. Sweat trickled down his temple. He’d lost track of time again.

He grabbed his water, drank deeply, half out of need, half out of habit. It didn’t help the ache in his left shoulder: a familiar throb, more memory than pain now.

He wiped his face, breathing slower. Focus settling. The bag swayed like a heartbeat. He considered hitting it again.

Instead, he kicked it. No form. No martial elegance. Just a blunt-force front kick, the kind meant to break someone’s balance, to throw them across a room. A message, not a technique.

Jace stared at the bag, jaw tight.

Then he stepped back. Slowly. Let the rhythm fade.

Turkana IV, 2363

The rifle was too long for him. It bit into the soft of his shoulder, awkward and unwieldy. It wasn’t made for someone his size. No one cared. The fight had already started, and Jace was big enough now, big enough to fight. Or die fighting.

“Red scarf,” someone hissed. “Aim for centre mass.”

Jace didn’t ask who they were. You didn’t ask. The red scarves made them enemies. That was enough. That was all.

They crept through the tunnels, dim and jagged, the air sharp with metal and stale breath. Territory didn’t matter anymore: it blurred. Maybe it had once been theirs. Maybe it never was. It didn’t matter now. The walls had been carved by hands long gone. Smooth in some places, scorched in others. A half-drowned memory flickered in him, that he had crawled these same halls once, hiding, running. He shoved it down.

Jace crouched beside two older boys, their rifles shaking, knuckles white. Not for long. Not after the first shot.

He didn’t fire first. Not yet.

Then the world cracked open.

Plasma fire. Screams. The stink of burning flesh. Smoke and ozone choked the air. Someone crumpled ahead of him, face-first into the dirt. Jace blinked, pulse roaring in his ears as blood pooled under the fallen boy like spilled oil.

And then the sharp snap of a projectile. Different. Wrong.

Phasers were honest. They killed clean. Projectiles tore. They broke things inside you. Shattered you. Left jagged edges.

He hated that.

Movement just beyond the crate. Too close. A blur of red.

The kid didn’t raise his rifle. Just turned. Started to run.

Jace didn’t think. He fired.

The boy dropped without sound, folding like cloth into the dirt.

Then silence, the kind that rang in your skull. That was always the worst part. Jace moved forward. Training or maybe Harven, they merged…said you checked. Made sure. Learned the lesson.

The kid’s body was slack, twisted wrong. Blood soaked the rock where his head had struck it.

Jace knelt. Reached down.

His fingers touched the scarf. Soft. Faded red. Worn thin from too much sun, too much sweat. It smelled of smoke and skin. He didn’t know why, but he took it. Slipped it into his belt pouch like it was nothing. Didn’t tell anyone. Never wore it. Never spoke of it again.

A year later, he couldn’t even remember the kid’s face. Just the scarf.

U.S.S. Guinevere, 2388

His left shoulder ached.

Jace paused, rolled it back. The ache wasn’t pain, not really. Just memory. An echo lodged in the muscle.

He acknowledged it. Then shelved it.

Pain happened. Discomfort was a visitor. He didn’t let either stay too long.

The punching bag swung gently, still trembling from the last blow. His knuckles tingled. Sweat had carved its way down his spine, soaking the fabric at the small of his back. His breath came heavier now, ragged from focus more than fatigue. His hair stuck to his temple, wild and flattened in places.
His arms ached. Good. Not enough to stop.

He grabbed the water bottle, drank, then poured the rest over his face. Coolness shocked his skin. The urge to tear his shirt off sparked through him, brief and hot, but he didn’t. If someone walked in, they’d stare. The scars would do that.

Some in Starfleet wore theirs like medals, most got them removed. Jace kept his like a map, a history carved in tissue. Not for pride. For distance. They said things so he didn’t have to. They warned people. Kept him apart. That made things easier.

He wasn’t good with people. Didn’t understand them. They smiled too much. Laughed too easily. Asked questions and expected things he couldn’t give.
He looked at the bag again.

Stepped closer.

Hit it again, low, hard, calculated…a body blow meant to take the legs out from under someone.

To be continued in part 2

Sergeant Jace Morven
Platoon Sergeant
USS Guinevere

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