Small Wins [1/6]

Posted on Sat Jun 21st, 2025 @ 11:54am by Sergeant Jace Morven

1,600 words; about a 8 minute read

Mission: Prologue
Location: USS Guinevere
Timeline: 2388

The lights were low in the barracks. Somewhere across the room, someone muttered in their sleep. A PADD clicked softly as it slipped from a bunk to the floor. None of it reached him.

Jace lay on his back, arms folded beneath his head, staring at the underside of the bunk above. He wasn’t tired. He’d expected to be. The day had been long, the drills brutal, but his body was still wired with something quieter than adrenaline and heavier than fatigue.

She was still in his head.

Elen Rell.

He hadn’t meant to remember her. Hadn’t meant for her to matter. But she did.

She’d walked into that holodeck, into his programme, like she belonged anywhere she set her feet, dragging light and warmth into his cold little corner. And when she’d seen him, really seen him…she didn’t turn away.

She looked at him like he was a person. Not a trooper. Not a project. Not someone to fix or tiptoe around.

Just… a man sitting alone in a forest.

Jace shut his eyes. The memory slid in easily, as if it had just been waiting: the sharp chill of the simulated air, the heavy quiet he’d carefully constructed, the fog drawn across the trees like a shroud. That space had been his. A sanctuary of silence and routine. Untouched.

Until she arrived. She was all motion and colour, voice light, teasing, but never sharp. She didn’t try to push through him. Didn’t try to solve him. She just asked. And when he didn’t answer, she didn’t flinch.

That stuck with him.

It wasn’t just the things she said…though they’d been strange, bold, disarming. It was the way she looked at him. Not with pity. Not even with curiosity, really.

Like she’d already decided he was worth the time.

He exhaled slowly through his nose, opening his eyes again to the dim overhead light. He hadn’t asked her to stay. But he hadn’t minded her there either. That was new. He didn’t usually want anything from people. They came with weight. Expectations. Risks. But she hadn’t felt like a risk.

She’d felt like a pause. A breath. A space carved out of the noise. Her laughter still echoed faintly in his mind. She hadn’t tried to knock down his walls. She hadn’t even asked for entry. She’d just stood there…hands on her hips, eyes bright…and waited. Not for permission. Not for understanding.

Just... to be there.

And now, the moment lingered.

He turned his head on the pillow, frowning at the ceiling. He’d felt this before. Not often. But it wasn’t unfamiliar. There had been others. People who’d come close enough to leave marks.

Dannic, in a way. She had rescued him, advocated for him. Without her, he wouldn’t be here. It was a fact. He didn’t think about what else he would or could have been. There was no point. He was here, now.

Martinez, more than anyone, had been a steady presence during the Dominion War. Someone who again had seen him.

Vel…much later. And losing him still twisted something inside Jace, something he didn’t have a name for.

But this… this wasn’t about loss. Not yet. It was the echo of something simple. The feeling of being seen…and not being asked to flinch.

Dominion War, early 2374

The jungle was burning.

Not Earth’s kind: no familiar green, no natural order. This was engineered. Thick, chemical air. Leaves that blistered skin. Vines that bled clear sap when cut. The smell was all ozone, scorched root, and the copper tang of blood. It clung to the back of your throat like guilt.

Jace’s boots hit the mud in steady rhythm. He moved low, phaser rifle tucked tight to his shoulder, eyes narrowed. One side of his armour was scorched, the left pauldron cracked where a disruptor blast had glanced off. Close. Too close. He hadn’t mentioned it. Didn’t need to.

Ahead, smoke curled upward from the shattered shell of a Dominion relay tower. The Jem’Hadar had collapsed the hillside that morning. Vasran had taken the hit: chest plate cracked, ribs likely shattered. Still breathing, barely. Medivac got her out. Maybe she’d live. Jace doubted she’d be back. He’d seen the dark veins under the skin too many times before already.

Now they were pushing forward again. Bleeding through another charge. The dermal regenerator was down to fumes. The medic: Starfleet-issue, not FGF, was young, too clean, too soft. Wide-eyed. Always worried. They rotated those ones out fast. Back to the ships. The ones that blew up with everyone onboard instead of losing people one by one.

Behind him, the squad moved like parts of a damaged animal.

Kerren limped, a soaked bandage around his thigh, the blood already drying black. Banik and Martinez flanked right, switching cover with silent ease. Raimi stalked at the rear, blade already wet from two close kills that morning. She hadn’t slowed.

Terrow trailed behind them all. New. Green. Betazoid. Talked too much. Felt too much. But his readings were good. “Two hostiles. North ridge. Forty meters.” His voice crackled through comms…tight, uncertain. They were using their combadges low range…set to only speak without their own group to avoid their signal being detected easily. Jace would have preferred com-silence, but that wasn’t possible. Against regulations. He was getting better at those bits.

Sort of.

Jace didn’t respond. Just raised a hand: halt. The squad froze. Jace stepped forward alone.

A breath. Then two.

And then he ran. No call. No warning. Just movement.

Plans were for officers. Theirs was back with the main body of the 77th. This squad had been set loose to dig in, cut ahead, disappear into the smoke.

Martinez swore. “Shit. He’s doing it again.”

Banik didn’t look up from her scope. “Then shut up and cover him.”

Jace ghosted through the wreckage like he belonged to it. Low. Quiet. Efficient. He didn’t think about Tho anymore. The memory was ash…scattered with the rest of him after the last ambush. The Jem’Hadar were brutal, fast, precise.

So was he.

He spotted the first one crouched behind a ruined dish antenna, weapon raised. Two shots. Centre mass. The body dropped before it finished turning. The second came from the smoke. Close. Too close.

They collided hard. Rifles forgotten. Blades drawn. The Jem’Hadar snarled something guttural: some oath, maybe. Jace didn’t answer. He wasn’t here to talk.

They hit the dirt together, struggling in silence. Jace came up on top. One punch. Another. Elbow to the throat. When the knife found the base of the neck, cutting through that damned ketracel tube…it wasn’t hesitation. It was habit. He twisted the blade. Waited until the body stilled. Then stood. Wiped his gloves on enemy armour. Blood on both hands…not all of it Jem’Hadar.

He walked back into the smoke like he’d never left.

By the time he returned, the medic was on Kerren again. Terrow looked up as Jace approached. Flinched, but not in fear. Recognition. The Betazoid’s eyes flickered. “You’re--”

“Shut it,” Jace said. Not angry. Just final. “Not now.”

They started moving. Jace took point again.

Raimi fell in beside him. “You’re not subtle,” she muttered.

“I’m alive.”

She studied him. “You enjoy it, don’t you?”

“No.” A pause. “But I’m good at it.”

She didn’t press. Behind them, Terrow’s voice came again. Soft. Strained. “The one you stabbed… he was surrendering.”

Jace stopped. Just for a moment. Then kept walking. When he spoke, his voice was even. Not cold…just quiet. A truth too deep for argument. “He was still moving.”

USS Guinevere, FGF Detachment Barracks, 2388

Almost fifteen years. Felt longer. Felt like yesterday.

He thought of Martinez more than the others. Not because they died…they hadn’t. At least, not then. Not in that place. Martinez had made it through with the rest of them. What stuck with Jace was how unshaken they’d always been.
Everyone else gave him looks. Sideways glances, wariness just beneath the professionalism. Even Raimi kept her distance.

But Martinez…

They looked at him like they saw him, all of him, and didn’t flinch. Never asked about the blood. Never tried to explain away what he’d done or who he was becoming.

Back then, Jace had been what, around twenty-five? Maybe? Young by calendar, but already carrying lifetimes. He’d felt old in his bones. Not from injury. From certainty. From how war shaped you into something simple and sharp.

Martinez wasn’t soft, not by a long shot. Solid under fire, steady in the dark. But when Jace came back from that charge, the knife still wet, face blank, they just handed him a water canister and said, “Next time, maybe take backup. We like your grim ass alive.” No judgment. Just fact. Just… steadiness. They never said they trusted him. They didn’t need to.

Martinez was the only one who treated him like he was still a person with a conscience, and somehow, that made it worse.

To be Continued in part 2

--
Sergeant Jace Morven
Platoon Sergeant
Alpha Squad
USS Guinevere

RSS Feed