Stillness Isn't Peace [4/4]
Posted on Mon Jun 9th, 2025 @ 8:36pm by Sergeant Jace Morven
1,780 words; about a 9 minute read
Mission:
Prologue
Location: USS Guinevere
Timeline: 2388
Federation Forward Training Base Epsilon-Kappa, Mars, Mid-2372
The 77th had a reputation. Not whispered, exactly, but spoken with a certain edge. Like handling a blade without knowing which side was sharp. Rapid-deployment. High-risk zones. Collateral expected. Casualties a statistic. Jace wasn’t noticed at first. He was a name on a PADD and when Tho did see him, he saw someone quiet, unreadable. A walking question no one wanted the answer to. He didn’t speak unless spoken to. Took orders like a machine: fast, accurate, detached. The kind of cold that made others uncomfortable. Not angry. Just… still.
He had started to relax in the 103rd, the hope for something a bit warmer, eye contact and a smile directed towards him. It had scared him, the transfer had felt like an escape so he didn’t fight it. Didn’t know how to fight it.
What he hadn’t realised was that he had ended up with something worse than he could have guessed.
The first test came fast. Bare knuckles behind the barracks. Dust and sweat and the kind of silence that preceded violence.
Jace moved like instinct. Like muscle memory. No emotion behind it. He wasn’t fighting them. He was fighting the space inside himself that still flinched. They went down. He didn’t gloat. Didn’t breathe hard. Just walked away.
It should’ve ended there.
But Tho made sure it didn’t.
The fighting pit that had somehow become a ritual for the 77th newcomers. Somewhere to test out the new transfers, break them on the wheel. A twisted tradition. After the fight behind the barracks he got ordered there. And he saw it. And felt it. Bigger opponents. Harder hits. And every time Jace stood up because the other option didn’t exist.
Until he couldn’t.
Not from fear. Not even pain. Just… shutdown. Body offline. Nerves frayed. Limbs too heavy to lift. He collapsed like a switch had been thrown. His mind tried to retreat somewhere. Quiet. Safe. It didn’t exist.
Tho crouched beside him.
“I’ve buried your type by the dozen,” the man said, low and conversational. “Tough-looking bastards with nothing going on behind the eyes. Think being mean makes you strong.”
Jace’s jaw throbbed. Blood stung in one eye. He listened, because he couldn’t not.
“You think pain makes you special? You’re meat.”
He didn’t feel anger. He wanted to. Wanted something to burn away the shame, the numbness, the sense that maybe Tho was right.
But there was only silence in his head. A beat. A breath. A heartbeat. A breath. Stay still. Don’t move.
Then Tho left.
Jace stayed on the ground until his lungs found rhythm again.
And no one helped.
Because the 77th didn’t work like that.
U.S.S. Guinevere, 2388
He wasn’t hungry anymore.
The tray in front of him blurred. He wasn’t sure if it was from focus or disassociation. His hands were fists on the table, knuckles creaking slightly under pressure.
He stared at nothing.
He didn’t move. Movement felt too close to cracking.
So he folded himself inward. Into breath. Into stillness. Into the smallest version of himself that still functioned.
Heartbeat. Breath. Count it.
Stay quiet.
Stay small.
It passes.
It always passes.
77th Infantry Barracks, early 2373
The bruises faded. The wounds healed. But something in him didn't go back. No one fought him again. Not directly. But Tho’s presence still saturated the air. Made people flinch out of instinct. Made silence more dangerous than noise.
Jace noticed.
He didn’t connect. Didn’t confide. But he watched. And watching was enough.
Kerren’s hands trembled when he reloaded. Banik stopped meeting eyes. Raimi limped with a jaw clenched too tight. He didn’t need to know the stories. Just the signs. So he acted. Quietly. Precisely. Like a scalpel drawn in the dark.
Reassigned duty rotations. Quiet trades. Unspoken offerings. No one saw him do it but they saw the aftermath. The damage repaired just enough for survival. No speeches. No rules. Just action.
And one day, someone noticed. “You’re not as dead behind the eyes as you look, Morven,” someone muttered near him. Jace didn’t look up. Didn’t respond.
But his jaw twitched. Not anger. Not pride. Just a flicker of something still breathing under the surface. The 77th taught him no one would protect you. So he chose to be the exception.
Not for praise. Not for absolution. Just because someone had to. And if that meant being the one who stood up when no one else could? Then let him be the wolf.
U.S.S. Guinevere, 2388
He had control again.
It came back in small, silent waves, first the awareness of his breath, then the shape of his spine, how tightly he’d been holding his shoulders. His hands were still curled, not fists anymore, but tight enough his knuckles ached. He let them unfurl one finger at a time. Slow. Methodical. Like disarming a mine.
He didn’t remember eating, but that wasn’t new.
He stood.
No tremble.
Good.
The movement was precise. Measured. He walked the tray to the replicator and recycled it without wasted motion. Shoulders level. Chin lifted just enough. No darting eyes, no twitch of breath. The armour was on. The version of him that moved through Starfleet corridors could pass inspections and psych evals.
He headed back to the barracks with that same clean stride. Silent. Efficient. He didn’t look at anyone. Didn’t need to. No one stopped him.
His body was obeying. That was what mattered. Because his mind… it wasn’t here, not entirely.
He knew where it was going next. What memory the fork had shaken loose. He’d learned the sequence, one always led to the other. And he knew better than to try to stop it. The best he could do was be somewhere safe when it hit.
So he was already on his bunk when the flashback came.
Forward Deployment Zone, 2373
Mud swallowed the soles of boots. Rain slammed into them sideways: sharp, needling. Enough to soak through the seams. Enough to turn skin raw. The artillery never stopped. Not even pauses anymore…just rhythm. Like breathing. Like heartbeat.
There was no sky. Just smoke and fire and the distant shriek of falling metal. Jace barely registered Tho’s shouting. The words were just sound. Spit and hate and panic disguised as authority. Another day, another push. No one flinched anymore: not at Tho, not at the screams of the dying. You flinched, you died. Simple as that.
Helmet on. Rifle checked. Squad tight.
They moved.
And Tho… didn’t.
He kept barking behind them, hands flailing like a drowning man. Then came the shot. It didn’t echo. It didn’t ring out.
It punched the air.
Tho’s head vanished. One sharp bolt through the side of the skull—clean, almost surgical. The sound he made wasn’t even human. He dropped. No one screamed. No one warned. Jace didn’t hesitate. He moved on instinct, an instinct trained under fists, honed in blood. One hand went up: tight signal. Down. Smoke out. Eyes forward. No words.
They followed. Just like that. No rank. No title. But Jace moved, and they moved with him.
The trenchline was a graveyard. Bodies stacked like sandbags. Jace didn’t blink. He didn’t flinch when the gore splattered. His boots were steady. His rifle barked when it had to. His knife when it didn’t. He cleared space the way fire cleared a forest; merciless and necessary.
By the time they reached the bunker line, he was barely human. Just purpose. He went in first. Knife in hand. No words. No sound. When they caught up, he was already inside, breathing heavy, blood soaked. Two Jem’Hadar dead. One with the throat cut from behind. One stabbed through the eye.
He looked up. Just nodded.
“Next one’s bigger.”
No fear. No anger. Just information.
Later, when Vasran twisted her knee, he carried her. When Terrow froze under fire, he covered the flank and didn’t say a word about it later. He didn’t bark orders. Didn’t offer encouragement. He acted. Martinez stayed at his side, their eyes watching him with a mix of horror and hope. As if he could somehow get them all through it.
Back at camp, he sat alone, hunched by his pack, steaming mug between his palms. Tea. Mint and sugar and hot. He never explained it. Never offered it. He held it like a weapon. A ritual. A tether.
No one asked him about Tho. No one needed to. They followed Jace after that. Not because he inspired. Not because he commanded. Because they knew: if things went to hell, he would stand between it and them. Even if it broke him.
Even if there wasn’t much of him left to break.
U.S.S. Guinevere, 2388
He lay still.
Back flat on his bunk, hands on his chest. One finger twitching. The only sign of it, that the trench was still there, just behind his eyelids.
He didn’t thrash. Didn’t sweat.
That wasn’t how it worked anymore. He didn’t feel panic. He’d trained that out. Dug the nerves out of himself like shrapnel, one piece at a time. But the memories still came. Not like dreams. More like intrusions. Fragments. Visceral. Weight and scent and pain, layered in his bones. They never left. They just waited. He didn’t dwell. But he had to live here. In this body. In this brain.
He cracked his eyes open. It was time. New squad. New names. New possibility.
He got up. Deliberate again. Every movement a test of his own control. His hands moved like they belonged to someone competent. His spine stayed straight. He dressed in silence. Armour on. Uniform sharp. No hesitation. Then he paused—just for a moment. One breath.
And he put the memories away. Not gone. Not forgotten. Just folded. Tucked behind the steel of his will. They would wait their turn again.
This squad didn’t need a ghost. They needed a leader.
He didn’t know if he could connect with them. Not really.
But he could protect them.
He could keep them alive.
And maybe that was the only thing left in him that still counted.
Maybe it was enough.
Maybe it had to be.
****
Sergeant Jace Morven
Platoon Sergeant
USS Guinevere
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