Lo Que Cargamos: Part V - Cracked, Not Broken

Posted on Sat Jan 3rd, 2026 @ 5:08pm by 1st Lieutenant Ángel Martinez

2,503 words; about a 13 minute read

Mission: Character Backstories
Location: USS Pathfinder, Various
Timeline: 2388/2375

Warning: War violence and death. Please read at your own discretion.

2375: Dominion Frontline Deployment

The rain was wrong. It wasn’t like Earth’s. It wasn’t like Mars. It was warm and oily, stinking of coolant and war. It clung to skin, sliding into gear and pooling in cracks like something alive. No relief in it. Just weight. The kind that soaked through to bone and stayed there. They had been walking since before dawn. Or what passed for dawn on this cursed rock. Three klicks. Maybe four. Carrying Raimi’s armour. Refusing to let anyone else take it. Refusing to leave it. Refusing to leave her.

Martinez’s hands were still shaking. They sat now, hunched against the wall of what barely passed for a trench. Just a collapsed infrastructure channel, filled with rust and rubble and the stink of ash. Smoke still curled from the east. Someone had said Jem’Hadar had hit a medical post there. Martinez didn’t want to know if it was true.

Their helmet was gone. Their sidearm holstered but loose. Blood stained their fatigues, dried and flaking at the edges. Not theirs. Raimi’s. They hadn’t cried. Not properly. Not yet. Not when the medic declared her gone. Not when Terrow dropped his weapon in shock and Jace all but threw him back into the fight. Not even when they knelt in the mud, hands numbed from stripping her gear, from folding what was left of her life into a neat, regulation bundle.

Now, with the others scattered and the lull holding, something inside Martinez cracked.

Their throat burned. Fingers dug into their face as they curled forward, elbows braced against knees. It didn’t feel like crying. It felt like breaking. Like pressure giving way in a hull, sudden and sharp. A low sound escaped them. Not a sob. Not words. Just a raw, aching thing torn from somewhere buried.

They had kept going after Diego. Buried him in silence and duty. Let Raimi be the tether. She had been there from the start. Their start. The one who didn’t flinch when Martinez had nothing left to say. The one who held the line beside them. The one who always knew when they were about to fall apart and gave them just enough space not to. The one who held them tight when the trembling was at its worst, when their throat was stripped bare with silent pain.

Now she was gone. And Martinez was angry. At the war. At the sky. At the filthy, rain-slicked world around them. At the orders. At themselves. They had told her to cover left. Told her it was clear. Lied without meaning to. Lied, and now she was gone.

A shadow shifted beside them. Jace. Of course, as silent as death. He didn’t speak. Didn’t touch. Just crouched beside them, silent as always, but present. Solid. A fact, not a comfort, watching them with pale blue eyes that held more than his lips ever spoke. Some found his eyes cold…Martinez didn’t. But Martinez saw deeper in them than most, saw the hesitancy. Saw the confusion. Not now though. They did not meet his eyes…it would shatter them more.

“I keep seeing her,” Martinez said, and their voice was cracked and frayed, rough in a way that sounded alien to their own ears. “I keep seeing her eyes...when I closed mine.” They pressed their fingers harder into their brow, like they could force the image out. It remained. Red hair, curled, eyes open an unseeing. “She trusted me. I told her she’d be fine. Told her to cover left, and-”

“You didn’t kill her,” Jace said. Quiet. Factual. That neutral draw he had, but each word short…as if there was another language hidden underneath.

Martinez let out a short, humourless laugh, sharp enough to cut. “Didn’t save her, either,” they said, into the rain…letting the words fall with it. It kept raining, the drops trickling down the collar of their jacket, sticking hair to their face. Another breath caught in their throat, part sob, part scream that never made it past their lips…becoming an iron knot. The world felt too loud and too quiet all at once. The war pressed in. Always waiting for the next crack to widen...they could fall into it, completely, if they just…

The thought was interrupted. Jace passed them his canteen. Martinez took it. Their hands were unsteady. They drank. It scalded down their throat and tasted like nothing, but it was real. A thing to hold onto.

“You remember last rotation? That bar. The Trill.” Jace’s voice was low. Quiet. That hint of it that almost made it sound thoughtful, or an observation about the weather. Solid, but also…intangible. A scent on the breeze you couldn’t follow.

Martinez blinked, trying to anchor themselves to the now. “You mean the guy who kissed you like you were real?” he asked, although it wasn’t really a question. Small details had been pulled from Jace. Like it had been a Trill. That there had been a kiss.

That the kiss is what had ended it. Whatever it had been.

“Yeah. Him.” Again, same tone. As if commenting at an odd-looking structure.

Something almost like laughter shook loose from their chest. “You let someone kiss you. That’s the most...person-like thing I’ve seen you do.” It hurt to laugh. Everything hurt. But it was better than drowning in silence.

Jace didn’t smile, but he shifted a little. Not relaxed but changed. “You’re allowed to grieve,” he said. “You’re not dead yet.”

Martinez turned to look at him. Really look. Eyes rimmed red, dirt caked beneath their fingernails, jaw tight with everything they couldn’t say. “I hate this fucking war,” they said. The words dropped like a stone, heavy and hopeless.

Jace just nodded. “Yeah.” No lectures. No hollow comfort. Just that one word. And the shape of it was enough. He didn’t reach for them. Didn’t pat their shoulder or offer a hand. But he stayed. That mattered more. Anything else would feel too raw, this feeling? It was a hound curled up at their feet, keeping watch. Safe, even when everything was not safe.

So, they sat there. Together. In the mud. In the ruin. In the middle of a war that would keep taking until it took them both. Eventually, Martinez let their head fall back against the wall, the pressure…something real. The rain hit their face. They didn’t care. And Jace kept watch. Like always.

2388: USS Pathfinder, Martinez’s quarters, 23:21 hours

The lights were dimmed to half. One lamp near the bed cast a soft amber glow, barely touching the corners of the room. The hum of the ship’s systems whispered low beneath the quiet. Martinez stood at the foot of the bed, bare feet against the cool floor, folding their undershirt with precise movements.

Not military-issue folding. Not the regulation squares they could do in their sleep. This was different. Slower. The first edges folded inward, sleeve to hem, then down again, smoothed flat with the side of a hand.

Raimi had taught them. Years ago, before the 77th had turned to ash and ghosts. She’d called it “the fold that survives a rucksack and still looks decent at inspection.” They’d laughed, but they’d watched. And they’d learned.

Martinez’s hands moved on muscle memory. They didn’t rush. There was something grounding in it, something soft in the rhythm. Not ceremony. Not mourning. Just… remembering. They laid the shirt down gently and sat on the edge of the bed. A breath in. Then another.

The silence stayed.

She’d been the first one to speak to them like they mattered. When they were new in the 77th. She’d brought them into the rhythm of the unit without fanfare, quietly and sneakily…kindness to shield against the brutality of the 77th. She had told them to keep their head down, to not make themselves a target after the time they had been in the pit.

Raimi had made sure that they survived Sergeant Tho. Not just then, but all the way up until the sniper did what no trooper or officer had been able to do: to amputate the rot from the batallion.

Their gaze flicked to the shelf above the bed. There was no shrine, no flowers. Just a small holoframe. It cycled once every twelve hours, different snaps taken in different times, different places. Them and their friend Moriarty during the officer training, them and their family, them and Jace…a rare snap, him looking surprised at the holosnap…Raimi’s face came up now and then, caught mid-laugh beside Kerren, her hand half-raised like she’d been about to throw something at the camera. She was wearing the uniform. Always had. But that day, she’d also worn beads in her hair. They hadn’t noticed until after she died.

Martinez turned off the lamp. The ship’s ambient light filtered in faintly from the corridor, the Pathfinder's bulkheads notorious ill-fitting on the officer deck. Silent rebellion from the enlisted the rumour went. For Martinez it reminded them more that...they were not alone.

They lay back, hands folded on their chest, staring up at the dark ceiling. Somewhere out there was another deployment. Another rookie learning how to fold a shirt. No war though, but other places where young green troopers got sent to. Outposts. Places where the line between Federation Utopia and blood were narrower.

They closed their eyes, and breathed. "Still here," they murmured, into the dark. Not a prayer. Not a promise. Just fact.

2375: Operation Sentry Hook

The tunnels breathed like lungs too long buried. Wet walls, scorched ceilings, and the stink of coolant and ash clung to the air, thick as mourning cloth. Every breath tasted of metal and memory. The briefing had been clear: recon and hold. Reclaim the uplink relay. Ping for orbital sweep. No poetry, no promises. Just death with instructions.

Martinez kept their pace steady. No stagger, no slack. Their boots hit the stone like they still had faith in the ground beneath them. The others sounded ragged behind Jace’s advance; Kerren breathing like he was trying to run from his own heartbeat, Terrow muttering half-prayers in between comm checks, Talvis tapping his kit like the third adjustment would magic up courage. Banik moving like shadow and steel and determination.

Martinez said nothing. Not out of fear. They were listening. To the way the tunnel sighed. To the tension in Jace’s shoulders. To the memory screaming under their ribs.

It had been four days since Raimi. Four days since they'd carried her armour in silence, every step the weight of a broken promise. Her laugh still echoed in the back of their mind. Her patience, her jokes, the way she'd braid her hair on long marches and scold Kerren for forgetting hydration protocol.

She’d been there when Martinez first arrived. Stiff uniform, new to the 77th, a once powerful voice silenced with a punch in the pit. Raimi had been the one to crack that silence open, to tape the split lip with care and warmth, hidden away from the rest. Like a dirty secret, care in backrooms.

Now she was gone.

Martinez couldn’t linger on the grief. Not yet. Not here. So they folded it into their spine, packed it behind their sternum, and held the line.

The corridor tightened. Wreckage curled in like broken teeth, and for a few breaths it felt like the squad might just make it through this one. Then corridor six opened its throat and screamed. The Jem’Hadar came out of nowhere; flashes of blade, the crack of disruptors, the stink of heat and violence. Martinez hit the deck instinctively, rifle up.

Jace’s voice cut through the chaos like a scalpel, just loud enough to cut through, never a true shout. “Cover right!”

They didn’t need telling twice. Didn’t need telling at all. They moved. Dropped into a sideways crouch, barrel lined, fired fast and sharp. Every pull of the trigger was a denial of death. A rejection of the universe that had taken Diego. That had taken Raimi. That still wanted more. A scream from Kerren. Talvis hit. Phaser blast caught him in the shoulder. Martinez clocked it, calculated cover, adjusted field of fire.

Then came the blade.

The Jem’Hadar burst from their left, charging with the kind of suicidal precision that still sent chills through their bones. Martinez didn’t hesitate. Rifle up. Slammed the butt into the bastard’s ribs, heard something crack. Followed through with a knee to the gut, then a boot to the leg. He fell hard. And they didn’t wait. One squeeze. Kill setting.

A twitch. Stillness.

Their hands shook after. Just slightly. Enough that only someone who knew them would see it. Enough that Jace saw it. They stood over the body, breathing like the tunnel had stolen all the good air. For a moment, it was too quiet. Every noise far away.

Jace moved like he always did…controlled, quiet, alert, and their eyes locked.

Martinez didn’t need to be thanked. Didn’t want the silence to stretch too long either. “You owe me a drink,” they said. Their voice was hoarse but steady.

Jace didn’t blink. “I don’t drink.”

Martinez lifted a brow. “Then mint tea, arsehole.” It was a lifeline tossed across ash.

He took it. “Fine.” And that was enough for Martinez, breath harsh in their throat and a feeling of being both dead and alive hanging in the air.

They regrouped. When they got back to fallback, Martinez helped Jace check the perimeter. Let others see to Talvis. Let Kerren curse and shake and come down from the edge. They moved through muscle memory. Clear the flanks. Confirm the scans. Not because they needed the work…but because if they stopped, they’d feel too much.

They didn’t know what they’d say if Jace asked what was really wrong. Not just Raimi. Not just Diego. But that deep, gnawing grief that maybe the war was stealing the pieces of them that knew how to be anything else.

And yet… When they stood there, shoulder to shoulder, quiet in the gloom, Jace didn’t ask. Martinez had known, in their bones, that he never would. Because that would have meant softer words than the man could afford. He just watched.

Not like a man looking for weakness. Like someone trying to remember what hope looked like. Martinez didn’t turn. Didn’t speak. But they felt it. And somehow, that helped. Just a little. Maybe…Just enough.

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