Lo Que Cargamos: Part VI - Choices Made

Posted on Sat Jan 3rd, 2026 @ 11:36pm by 1st Lieutenant Ángel Martinez

3,204 words; about a 16 minute read

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

Warning: Contains scenes of violence, swearing and upsetting material. Reader discretion is advised

2388: USS Pathfinder, Martinez’s Quarters, 03:19 hours

They weren’t sleeping again. The lights were low, just the faintest ambient glow from the corridor filter bleeding under the door. The quiet hum of the ship pressed in at all sides, familiar and constant, like a heartbeat that wasn’t theirs yet a reminder that there was something right in the universe.

Martinez lay flat on their back, arms crossed over their chest, belt biting into the hip. They hadn’t meant to stay dressed, but the moment to undress had passed, and now it just felt like too much movement, too much bother….Too much choice. The ceiling overhead was patterned in standard-issue plating, neutral and unremarkable. But it felt like a sky. Still. Empty. Waiting. Listening for footfalls that wouldn’t come.

He wasn’t there.

Not that Martinez had expected him to be. Not after thirteen years of silence. Not after all that time and distance. But still. Jace Morven had a way of being present even in his absence. A weight. A fixed star by which Martinez had once navigated the worst moments of their life, that resonated through the years until they still expected the soft weight of him at their shoulder.

They had not seen him since 2376. Since the war ended. Since the 77th was dissolved and the names were carved into polished walls and empty air. Jace hadn’t been one for goodbyes, and Martinez had understood. There had been too many ghosts between them all. Too much loss. But some nights, like this one, it pressed in all the same.

Martinez turned their head slightly, eyes catching the field jacket folded and put over the back of the chair, 1st Lieutenant’s bars and all, so different from Corporal’s stripes…the colour different than the Federation dark blue they had worn during the war. No, this was Marine green. Still, it was folded the way Raimi had taught them. That quiet, steady method. Hands moving with calm even when nothing else had been.

Their jaw clenched. A long breath dragged through their chest, the kind that didn’t ease anything.

They didn’t know if Jace was still alive. Not really. Rumours came and went. Someone saw him in a ground forces unit. Someone had said they’d heard he went off the books, got put in Echo with the rest of the FGF’s broken toys. Someone heard that he had retired and returned to Turkana IV. Someone else swore he was dead, then not. It all blurred after a while. But Martinez held on to something else. Not hope exactly. Not certainty. Just memory.

Jace, crouched beside them in the mud. Jace, eyes scanning the dark for threats long before anyone else had noticed them. Jace, bruised and battered, blood on his knuckles, always the one who stayed. There had been comfort in that. Even when nothing else made sense. Even when grief hollowed them out. Even when the war took their brother, and then Raimi, and then parts of themselves they hadn’t even known could be broken.

Jace had never asked for anything. Never offered soft words. But his presence had steadied them. A quiet reassurance that someone else understood how it felt to survive when so many hadn’t.

Now, years later, Martinez was still here. Officer’s rank, although a Marine now. A quiet ship. A bed they didn’t use properly. And still thinking about a man who had once handed them a canteen and said nothing at all, and in doing so, had said everything.

2375: Recon Mission Theta-9, Dominion POW Camp Perimeter

The desert here did not feel foreign. It hissed and whispered like the ones back home on Mars. Same bite in the air after sundown, same way the heat lingered in stone. Martinez had grown up with terraformed dust and still nights broken by wind. That, at least, was familiar. What was not familiar was this kind of silence. This kind of watching. No wind chimes, no laughter in the air. Just silence, and the shift of boredom and fatigue rubbing nerves raw.

They were five days in. Dug in beneath a rock shelf, observation post carved from broken terrain and heat-scoured metal. The Dominion prison camp stretched below like an old wound, half-sunk in its own misery. Automated fences. Makeshift cells cut into the rock, not even forcefields but metal bars. Patrols looping in cold, clockwork steps. Martinez knew their movements well enough…they knew the tempo of the squad better.

Jace lay at point, rifle resting across his forearms. Still as ever. His breath barely moved his shoulders. Behind him, the squad shifted in rhythm. Kerren murmured to himself over the logs. Banik scribbled in the margin of her own field notes. Terrow tapped at a cracked PADD with a dirty finger, ungloved, vulnerable to the elements. Martinez crouched nearby, posture easy but alert. Not relaxed. Never that. But settled. Like someone who had been waiting all their life, a stillness that only the war had solidified into something real. Their squad had a rhythm. After so long together, it lived in the space between words. Small things mattered. How someone passed water tabs. The way they adjusted their kit. Whether they slept with boots off or on.

Jace was a metronome. Unspoken, unyielding. Except when it came to certain things. Martinez handed him a hydration tab without comment. Not asking if he wanted one. Just...the usual routine. Jace took it with a small nod, didn’t chew, just let it dissolve like always. Martinez wasn’t sure how he managed that, when everyone else’s instinct was to chew.

Movement beside them. Terrow knelt and held the PADD between them, eyes on Jace. “Can you double-check this timestamp? I think the rotation’s shortened again…” The words hung a little too long in the air. Terrow hesitated. Jace didn’t move. Then, the awkward recovery, flat and neutral. “Didn’t mean to assume.”

Martinez watched. They all knew. None of them ever said it out loud, because it didn’t need to be said. Jace didn’t read reports. Not really. Not unless he had to. He could take in the shape of things. Numbers, yes. Timings, certainly. But anything longer than a tactical readout? That was where Martinez came in. Summarising quietly. Offering verbal briefs. Making it seem natural, so no one outside their circle knew that the letters would tense Jace up like no disruptor fire could. Jace turned his head. Not fast. Not slow. Just enough to meet Terrow’s gaze.

“You didn’t,” he said. The air shifted slightly. Terrow nodded and backed off, but didn’t retreat. Just sat beside them. Not pitying. Just...staying. Jace’s voice, low and even: “I can hear the pattern. See it out there. Don’t need to read it.”

“Yeah,” Terrow said. “You’ve been right every time.” There was something honest in that. Not camaraderie, not yet, but something solid. Terrow had been green when Tho had been lost, had missed the initiation in the 77th by sheer timing of war. He had a good head, and he saw things. Martinez clocked the exchange, filed it away. Bonds forming firmer, both ways.

But that was before the prisoner.

The Jem’Hadar dragged him out like he weighed nothing. Young, Starfleet uniform, barely more than a boy, hair damp with sweat, a limp in one leg. No warning. No words. Just a crack of sound and the body hit the ground. Martinez did not look away. Could not. The moment carved itself into them like so many others. But this one...this one burned.

Beside them, Banik turned into her coat. Kerren whispered a curse. Terrow’s hands had frozen mid-mark, eyes wide and black for a second before they closed with a shudder. Rayian, a new face in squad, muttered in a pained voice, “Wasn’t even a protest. No trial. Just gone.” His antenna twitched with it.

Jace stood, slowly and steadily, each movement controlled. He took ten paces like a man walking out a scream. Came back. Didn’t speak. Martinez found their voice, low and edged, cold anger rising inside them, fire and ice colliding beneath their ribs. “We can’t just watch this.”

Kerren snapped back, “We’ve been ordered to.”

Terrow, cooler, sharper, spurred on by the emotions around him bleeding into his own: “We’ve been ordered to observe. That’s different.”

Jace spoke then, each word steady and bitter. “Command doesn’t want a rescue. Too much risk. No support. We’re expendable, but not that expendable.”

Martinez’s temper flashed, rose through their mouth, their eyes. Made hands tremble. “So we just watch?” they demanded, shifting, hands balling into fists as they watched Jace.

Jace didn’t blink. “We don’t die pointlessly. That’s what they want. War without the headlines.”

Terrow again, thoughtful now…latching onto something only he could feel from Jace. Martinez saw it, in the slight lean towards the other man. Betazoid empathy and telepathy weaponised in the moment. “But you want to go.”

Jace didn’t argue. He never argued. Especially not against truth. “Not alone. Not without consent. One of us goes down, it’s a court-martial. Or worse.”

Banik’s voice cracked. “Can’t sleep after watching that kid die.”

“There’s another one with burns,” Terrow added and there was a quiet steel in his voice now. Aged beyond his years. “He’s barely walking.”

“Command doesn’t see it,” Kerren said as he frowned, arms folded. “But we do.”

The silence stretched this time. Thicker. The kind that built in the lungs and wrapped tight. Martinez didn’t raise their voice. Didn’t need to, not when the truth was so clear in their throat. “We’re troopers. But we’re people first. If we give that up...we’re them.” That seemed to hit. Not with a clang. With a thud. Like the moment something breaks and you know it will not be put back the same.

Jace looked at them. Eyes like slate. But something flickered behind them, soft and dangerous. Like grief had learned not to cry but to wait, to harness into something that to Martinez was still alien. Then he nodded. “Tomorrow night. Storm’s due. Cuts visibility in half.”

No one argued. Not really. The choice had already been made, the moment that boy fell. Everything after that was logistics. They were troopers. But they were still people. And some lines were not meant to be crossed without a fight.

The storm came like it had claws. It did not sweep in. It tore. Sand whipped across their faces, screaming as it went. The wind spat dust into every crack of every weapon. It shoved into their coats and turned skin raw. The temperature dropped so fast Martinez’s breath turned shallow, cold in their lungs. You could lose the top layer of paint on a house in a storm like this, walls too if they hadn’t been secured properly.

But Martinez did not flinch. You did not flinch if you had grown up knowing the edge of a storm was not a threat. It was a test, part of living on Mars. Different planet. Same principle.

The squad moved in silence. No light. No comms. Phaser rifles set to kill. They were not here to scare anyone. They were not here to posture. This was not about making a point. This was about finishing something they all knew had started the moment the young man had been shot.

Jace led. He did not gesture much, did not need to. Martinez tracked the way his shoulders set and followed. They always did. When it was bad, when it really counted, he did not run hot like the others. He got cold. Like a locked weapon. Tension in muscle and breath, but never in doubt.

The perimeter crumbled faster than expected. Banik took her target down so smooth it looked rehearsed. Kerren was quieter than usual. Rayian kept close, kept his rifle ready as he moved. The closer they got, the more pinched the corners of Terrow’s mouth got. There was no talking. No need. It was not about glory. It was about making sure those prisoners did not have to wake up to another dawn in that hole.

Inside the camp, it was worse. Smelled like time and pain. Old blood. Metal. Suffering. The kind of smell that soaked into cloth and stayed long after you scrubbed it. Martinez followed the path toward the cages. Their hands worked the locks without thinking. One. Two. Three. Each cell opened with the same resistance, the way rust never wanted to let go. The prisoners did not speak. Most just stared. Hollow-eyed. Half-broken.

Terrow worked beside them, his fingers flying across the interference relay. Martinez caught glimpses of his face. Strained. Pale. Eyes wide in that way Betazoids got when they were feeling more than they could carry. Martinez could not help him. Not now. All they could do was move.

Nine alive. One not. Martinez paused at the last cell. The man inside had not made it. Died alone. Curled in on himself. The kind of death that left no mark but absence. Their hands slowed for a moment. Then they moved on.

They were heading back toward the fallback point when Martinez noticed Jace was not with them. His silhouette was not among the moving figures. No shadow where there should have been one.

Martinez turned.

The admin wing loomed quiet across the open path. No guards left. Nothing moved. Martinez crossed fast, weapon steady. Checked corners. No sign of a fight. But something had happened here. The air felt wrong. Not dangerous. Just heavy.

They found the message room first. It was clean. Too clean. No signs of scuffle. No overturned chairs or debris. Just order. And in the centre of it, the boy. A young Cardassian. Maybe seventeen, maybe older. Young anyway, judging by the neck ridges, the slack hands bound. Slumped forward, folded at the knees. His uniform was half-undone. Not in struggle, but like he had been preparing something. His head was gone. Gone clean. No blood pooling wildly. Just enough to mark the floor, edges seared.

Martinez stepped forward. Slowly. Their boots felt too loud. There was a strip of blue tied around his neck. Federation cloth…no…Federation flag. Martinez crouched and looked. Not a message for them. This had been for the others. The prisoners. The guards. The cloth was frayed at the edge, like it had been pulled from a field kit, or a souvenir.

The boy had tried. Risked everything. Maybe he had smuggled water. Maybe messages. Maybe hope. And the price had been this. The word traitor was not written. It did not need to be.

Martinez stood again, breathing slow and rough. It was quiet. He had died alone. They did not linger. There were others who needed them. And they knew what would have followed this, when Jace had found the body. They did not need to see the trail of blood to know what it had unleashed. For a moment, they closed their eyes, with something akin to grief. Every time, something would push them all further into something that wasn’t…humanoid. An act, a reaction, and each time it would push them one step closer to the dark. And yet this time? Seeing this boy?

Fuck it. Maybe the darkness needed to be embraced in places where hope had fled and those who should keep the moral high ground blinded themselves.

They finally saw him, standing silently over two bodies. Jem’Hedar. Dead. Didn’t look like they went easy either. They should feel something at that, but all there was inside was the sense of something finished. Not good. Not bad. Just done. Martinez let out a whistle, quiet, a tune that had become a small signal within the squad. Jace turned his head, eyes flat and cold..but not empty. Never empty. But he shouldered his rifle and followed.

Outside, the squad was already falling into the rhythm of rescue. Two wounded being carried. Prisoners clinging to one another. Medics moving in, hands firm and voices low. Someone handed Martinez a water pack. They drank slowly, swallowing dust and silence. Terrow was shaking, holding himself small. Banik sat staring at nothing. Kerren had his eyes closed, lips pressed tight. Martinez walked between them, checking their gear, their pulses…saying nothing, but a touch here, and nod there. Present. There.

That was the job now. No one said it, but they knew. Martinez steadied. Martinez saw. Martinez took the edges and held them until they did not cut as deep...it was what Raimi’s death had left them. Martinez had to step into that role because without it, they’d all crumble at the pace of the drums of war.

Later, they found Jace standing near the perimeter. Far enough from the light to disappear if you blinked. Martinez came to stand beside him. The wind still howled, still pulled at coat seams and stung exposed skin, but they did not notice it as much now.

"You saw him," they said quietly, shoulder to shoulder against the elements. Jace did not answer. "The Cardassian," Martinez added, voice soft but certain. "I think he tried to help."

"I know." It was not a question. It was not surprise. It was a fact Jace had already swallowed whole.

"You did not leave anyone alive, did you?" Martinez asked, voice heavy with it. At the implications of the words. And their wish for it to be true and what that made them.

"No." The word was clean. No defence. No regret. Just weight. "Was not going to let that kid die for nothing."

Martinez looked out into the dark. The storm still raged. But inside, it was quiet. They had done this. They had chosen it. And no one would thank them. No one would know the name of the boy. No one would write down what had been done in that sand-swallowed camp. The Federation would read the report and count it among the list of unauthorised actions, noted with silent relief and official disapproval, potentially a court martial. None of them would lie. There were enough lies in war.

Martinez felt the tightness in their chest deepen. Not shame. Not grief. Just that same old pressure. The one that came from living through a war that kept asking you to hold your breath for other people’s peace.

Their hands still shook. But they would settle. They always did. Beside them, Jace said nothing more. So Martinez stood with him. Two figures in the dark, side by side. The wind howled. The sky stayed empty. And inside, they made space for everything they had carried. Everything they had done. And everything they still refused to let go.

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